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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 924022691 21 
 
SOME ASPECTS OF THE 
 GREEK GENIUS 
 
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON ■ BOMBAY ■ CALCUTTA 
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 TORONTO 
 
SOME ASPECTS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE GREEK GENIUS 
 
 S. H. BUTCHER 
 
 HON. D.LITT. OXFORD, HON. LITT.D, DUBLIN 
 
 HON. LL.D. GLASGOW AND EDINBURGH 
 
 LATE PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THK UNIVERSITY OF FDINBURGH 
 
 FORMERLY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDfiE 
 
 AND OF UNIVERSITY COLLECJE, OXFORD 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 I 9 I 6 
 
COPYRIGHT 
 
 Pirst Edition i8gi. 
 Second Edition 1893. 
 Third Edition 1904. 
 Eot^rtk Edition 1916. 
 
PREFACE TO THE THIRD 
 EDITION 
 
 No material changes will be found in this volume, 
 though some slight additions and corrections 
 have been made. The essay on " The Dawn of 
 Romanticism in Greek Poetry " was introduced 
 into the second edition. The same subject has 
 recently received interesting and independent 
 treatment from my friend Professor W. R. Hardie, 
 in a chapter entitled " The Vein of Romance in 
 Greek and Roman Literature," whigh forms one 
 of his Lectures on Classical Subjects (Macmillan 
 and Co., 1903). It seems worth while to remind 
 classical readers that, though we cannot efface the 
 broad differences which are compendiously ex- 
 pressed in the terms " classical " and " romantic " 
 poetry, the lines of distinction are not so hard 
 and sharp as we are sometimes inclined to imagine. 
 
VI SOME ASPECTS OF THE GREEK GENIUS 
 
 Stray touches of modern sentiment, and even of 
 what may be called " romanticism," are met with 
 already in the strictly classical period of Greek 
 literature ; and these anticipations of a new era 
 occur with increasing frequency in the later Greek 
 poets. Of the literary products of the Hellenistic 
 age few complete specimens survive. Yet the 
 comparatively scanty materials we possess, com- 
 bined with what we know from other sources, 
 enable us to draw certain general conclusions. 
 Nature and Love — these are the two new motives 
 which now enter into imaginative literature: or, 
 if the motives themselves are not wholly new, the 
 mode of poetic utterance is perceptibly altered. 
 There is an inwardness of tone, a reflectiveness, 
 a heightened sensibility — often indicating a vague 
 disquiet of the mind and betraying itself in 
 accents of longing or regret — that may be traced 
 also in other regions of feeling. Some detailed 
 illustrations of this mood are given in the essay 
 itself 
 
 September 1904. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I'AGE 
 
 What we owe to Greece . i 
 
 The Greek Idea of the State 47 
 
 Sophocles . 85 
 
 The Melancholy of the Greeks . 133 
 
 The Written and the Spoken Word 177 
 TitE Unity of Learning . . . .211 
 
 The Dawn of Romanticism in Greek Poetry 245 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 The question to which I would here attempt an 
 answer in rudest outline is, What do we owe to 
 Greece ? what is the secret of her power and 
 permanence ? what of her own has she contri- 
 buted to the world's common store ? what is her 
 place in history ? If we find, as I think we shall, 
 that Hellenism has not given us enough to live 
 by, yet we shall also see how greatly they mis- 
 read the mind of Greece who think to become 
 Hellenic by means of eccentricity tinged with vice. 
 First, then, the Greeks, before any other people 
 of antiquity, possessed the love of knowledge for 
 its own sake. To see things as they really are, 
 to discern their meanings and adjust their relations, 
 was with them an instinct and a passion. Their 
 methods in science and philosophy might be very 
 faulty, and their conclusions often absurd, but they 
 
 had that fearlessness of intellect which is the first 
 
 B 
 
IVHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 condition of seeing truly. Poets and philosophers 
 alike looked with unflinching eye on all that met 
 them, on man and the world, on life and death. 
 They interrogated Nature, and sought to wrest 
 her secret from her, without misgiving and with- 
 out afterthought. Greece, first smitten with the 
 passion for truth, had the courage to put faith in 
 reason, and in following its guidance to take no 
 count of consequences. " Those," says Aristotle, 
 " who would rightly judge the truth; must be arbi- 
 trators and . not litigants." ^ " Let us follow the 
 argument whithersoever it leads," "^ may be taken 
 not only as the motto of the Platonic philosophy, 
 but as expressing one side of the Greek genius. 
 
 The Eastern nations, speaking generally, had 
 loved to move in a region of twilight, content with 
 that half-knowledge which stimulates the religious 
 sense. They had thought it impious to dravsr 
 aside the veil which hides God from man. They 
 had shrunk in holy awe from the study of causes, 
 from inquiries into origin, from explaining the 
 perplexed ways of the universe. Ignorance had 
 been the sacred duty of the layman. Scientific 
 
 ^ Arist. de Cnelo i. 10. 279 b 11, Set BuuTfirki dXX' oi5k ivTiSUovi 
 elvai Tois liiWotiras TdXtjBki Kplveiv Uavus. 
 
 ^ Plat. Laws ii. 667 A, 6 \67os Sttj; ^ipei, rairri Tropeuii/ieffa. 
 Rep. iii. 394 D, iiiri; hv 6 \6yot Sxrirep irveO/Jia <l>ipTi, rairfj Iriov, 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 questioning and discovery could hardly exist where, 
 as in many parts of the East, each fresh gain of 
 earth was thought to be so much robbery of 
 heaven. , 
 
 At the moment when Greece first comes into 
 the main current of the world's history, we find a 
 quickened and stirring sense of personality, and 
 a free play of intellect and imagination. The 
 oppressive silence with which Nature and her un- 
 explained forces had brooded over man is broken. 
 Not that the Greek temper is irreverent, or strips 
 the universe of mystery. The mystery is still 
 there and felt, and has left many undertones of 
 sadness in the bright, and heroic records of Greece ; 
 but the sense of mystery has not yet become 
 mysticism. One writer, it is true, whose temper 
 was that of the mystic, appeared in Greece in the 
 first half of the fifth century B.C., Empedocles 
 of Agrigentum. At once poet, priest, and philo- 
 sopher, skilled in medicine and a student of 
 natural science, this striking and poetic figure 
 passed in pomp through the towns of Sicily, a 
 healer of the diseases both of mind and body. 
 He speaks of himself as a heavenly spirit, exiled 
 from the company of the blest, who for the taint 
 of crime is condemned to be incarnate upon earth 
 
IVffAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 As a fallen intellect he has lost the full and un- 
 broken vision of the universe ; still he is gifted 
 with an insight beyond common men into the 
 truth of things, and speaks with lofty pity of 
 mankind, who, knowing nothing, "boast that 
 they have found out the whole — an idle boast ; 
 for this the eye of man hath not seen, nor 
 hath his ear heard, nor can his mind conceive 
 it." ^ He himself shrinks from learning more 
 than it is given to human wisdom to know. 
 He would tell only such things " as creatures 
 of a day may reverently hear," and prays the 
 Muse who inspires him to "guide her light car 
 from the house of Holiness."^ Such cautious 
 reverence, alternating with bold utterances in 
 moments of illumination, is rarely met with in 
 Greek literature. Greek thinkers are not afraid 
 that they may be guilty of prying into the 
 hidden things of the gods. They hold frank 
 companionship with thoughts that had paralysed 
 Eastern nations into dumbness or inactivity, and 
 
 1 Emped. 6-8. 
 
 t6 S' S\op ii,h^ edxerai, iiipeiv' 
 
 oCroJs o6t' imdepxTa rdS' AvSpinv oih' iiraKovnTb, 
 
 oire vbif jrf/JiXijTTTii. ' 
 
 i lb. 13-14. 
 
 AvTofJUU Sill Bifui iarlv iiprmeplouriv iKoieiv, 
 
 vinve Trap' TSi(repL7is Adoii<r' eMpiiov &pixa. 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 in their clear gaze there is no ignoble terror. 
 Inroads, indeed, there were at times from the East 
 of strange gods and fanatical rites ; and half-lit 
 spaces always remained in which forms of faith 
 or ritual, lower as well as higher than the popular 
 creed, took shelter ; but, on the whole, we are 
 henceforth in an upper and serener air in which 
 man's spiritual and intellectual freedom is assured. 
 " Know thyself" is the answer which the Greek 
 offers to the Sphinx's riddle. How truly does all 
 Greek literature and art respond to the command ! 
 When philosophy had as yet scarcely begun to 
 look inward, the poets — Homer, Pindar, Aeschylus, 
 Sophocles — with large and impartial observation 
 had reflected human life. Euripides, indeed, stands 
 on the confines of a new poetic age. Tie widened 
 the range of poetic imitation, and made his tragedy 
 to reflect more closely " the whole tragi-comedy 
 of life." ^ The old classic clearness of outline 
 and precision of form are already being blurred. 
 The image is presented to us in shifting lights 
 and through a turbid or refracting medium. 
 There is an intrusion of the pathetic element, a 
 portrayal of transient and unruly emotions, for 
 the better exhibition of which the poet seeks out 
 
 ' Plat. Phil. SO B, Ti} ToC ^£ou %v\nri.a-Q rpayifSlg. Kal KUixifSiq.. 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 striking situations. He projects his own personal 
 trouble and the colour of his times into his art. 
 A sense is left of. contradiction and disquiet, 
 of vague and inarticulate wants. The doubtful 
 gleams of a roinantic light already play over the 
 surface of the Euripidean tragedy ; the echoes 
 are heard of a music dying away in the distance 
 and baffling the ears which are strained to catch 
 it. Euripides provokes questioning and reflec- 
 tion ; he does not, like Aeschylus and Sophocles, 
 lead to a reverent acquiescence in the mystery of 
 things. But they and he alike look with un- 
 averted eye on the mixed spectacle of life, and 
 accept, with fortitude whatever may be appointed. 
 " Now observe," says Mr, Ruskin — his primary 
 reference 'being to Homer — "that in their dealings 
 with all these subjects the Greeks never shrink 
 from horror ; down to its uttermost depths, to its 
 most appalKng physical detail, they strive to 
 sound the secrets of sorrow. For them there is 
 no passing by on the other side, no turning away 
 the eyes to vanity from pain. . . . Whether there 
 be consolation for them or not, neither apathy nor 
 blindness shall be their saviour : if for them, thus 
 knowing the facts of the grief of earth, any hope, 
 relief, or triumph may hereafter seem possible, — 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 well ; but if not, still hopeless, reliefless," eternal, 
 the sorrow shall be met face to face." ^ 
 
 But to the Greeks "Know thyself" meant not 
 only to know man, but — a less pleasing task — to 
 know foreigners. And to this study they were 
 impelled not solely, or even chiefly, by a com- 
 mercial and gain-seeking instinct, such as moved 
 the Phoenicians, but by a single-hearted desire to 
 know. It was a new thing in the world. The 
 people of ancient India did not care to penetrate 
 beyond their mountain barriers and to know their 
 neighbours. The Egyptians, though in certain 
 branches of science they had made progress — in 
 medicine, in geometry, in astronomy — had acquired 
 no scientific geography, for they kept to themselves. 
 But the Greeks were travellers. Of Odysseus it 
 is said : " Many were the -men whose towns he 
 saw and whose mind he learned " ; ^ and in this 
 respect he is typical of his race. We are often 
 told that the Greeks were exclusive ; and their 
 phrase " barbarian " for a foreigner looks a little 
 ugly and contemptuous. But the invidious mean- 
 ing was acquired only by degrees, and not, per- 
 haps, without reason ; in any case it is a less 
 
 ' Modern Painters, v. 215. 
 2 Odyss. i. 3. 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 invidious term than that of " devils," by which 
 many Easterns have designated their neighbours. 
 And what is more significant, Aristotle thought 
 it worth his while to analyse and describe the 
 constitutions of a hundred and fifty-eight states, 
 including in his survey not only Greek states but 
 those of the barbarian world. He was the first 
 student of what we call Comparative Politics. 
 
 The ripe science of Aristotle may be found 
 already in germ in the history of Herodotus. 
 While his history is marching forward on epic 
 lines and with quickening speed to the great con- 
 flict between the West and the East, between the 
 Greeks and the Barbarians, yet he has no hard 
 words for the Barbarians. He can view them 
 with candid surprise and impartiality. There is 
 no pause but no haste. He finds time to linger 
 by the way, and exhibits the open-eyed delight of 
 a child who is introduced for the first time into a 
 strange world, where everything, great and small, 
 is alike interesting and worthy of an intent regard. 
 With him we trace the courses of rivers, the move- 
 ments of tribes ; we touch and handle rare objects 
 of nature or of art; we wander through temples 
 hitherto unexplored, we hear him questioning the 
 priests in a tone whose secular curiosity is tempered 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 only by a native piety. There is more here than 
 the unembarrassed wonder of childhood ; there is 
 doubt as well as wonder, reflection as well- as 
 observation ; he compares his reports, he weighs 
 his evidence, he is conscious of his own office as 
 an iflquirer after truth. A fact interests him 
 simply because it is true, apart from its emotional 
 or poetic value. Nor does he merely note the 
 facts, he seeks to discover the law which governs 
 them. This law has generally a religious basis. 
 " The providence of the deity " ^ reveals itself even 
 in the habits of the animal kingdom ; and to 
 acts of divine intervention he ascribes the more 
 impressive of human events. Yet in spite of 
 his belief in a jealous God, who humbles human 
 greatness and "suffers none but himself to be 
 haughty," the genius of criticism, the spirit of 
 science, is already awake. 
 
 It was the privilege of the Greeks to discover 
 the sovereign efficacy of reason. They entered 
 on the pursuit of knowledge with a sure and 
 joyous instinct. Baffled and puzzled they might 
 be, but they never grew weary of the quest. The 
 speculative faculty which reached its height in 
 Plato and Aristotle, was, when we make due 
 
 ^ Herod, iti. loS, tov deiov ij irpovottj. 
 
10 WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 allowance for time and circumstance, scarcely less 
 eminent in the Ionian philosophers ; and it was 
 Ionia that gave birth to an idea, which was foreign 
 to the East, but has become the starting-point of 
 modern science, — the idea that Nature works by 
 fixed laws. A fragment of Euripides speaks of 
 him as " happy who has learned to search into 
 causes," who "discerns the deathless and ageless 
 order of nature, whence it arose, the how and 
 the why." ^ The early poet-philosophers of Ionia 
 gave the impulse which has carried the human 
 intellect forward across the line which separates 
 empirical from scientific knowledge ; and the 
 Greek precocity of mind in this direction, unlike 
 that of the Orientals, had in it the promise of 
 uninterrupted advance in the future — of great dis- 
 coveries in mathematics, geometry, experimental 
 physics, in medicine also and physiology. Already 
 in Heraclitus {circ. 5 1 3 B.C.) the one thing per- 
 
 ' Eurip. Fr. (Nauck 902) — 
 
 lsK^i.0% SiTTis Trjs laroplas 
 ?(TXf fiddrfffiv . . . 
 dXX' ddavdrov Kadopwv ^tjireoji 
 K6(rfAov df/ipta, irij re avv^a-n} 
 Kal 6ttj Kal Sirtos. 
 
 Here la-ropta bears its earliest sense of "research," or. "search 
 after truth." Cp. its use in the opening words of the history of 
 Herodotus. 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 manent in a world of change is the law which 
 governs that change. The physical order of the 
 universe is under the guardianship of the same 
 powers that uphold the moral order. " Helios 
 will not overpass his appointed bounds, or the 
 Erinyes, the ministers of justice, will find him 
 out." ^ The poetic form under which the thought is 
 here expressed is adapted to a prevalent sentiment, 
 which long lingered, that man might indeed overstep 
 the limits of existence and violate nature's order, 
 but not with impunity. The poets contained 
 signal examples of the penalties inflicted on mis- 
 guided mortals who had raised the dead or other- 
 wise encroached upon the prerogatives of the gods. 
 But by the middle of the fifth century B.C. the 
 general conception of law in the physical world 
 was firmly established in the mind of Greek 
 thinkers. Even the more obscure phenomena of 
 disease were brought within the rule. Hippo- 
 crates, writing about a malady which was common 
 among the Scythians and was thought to be 
 preternatural, says : " As for me I think that 
 these maladies are divine like all others, but that 
 
 ' Plutarch, de Exilio II, "HXios 70^ ovx virepflTiffeTai IJ^tjm,, 
 (p'qfflv 6 'Hpa/cXeiros' el 5^ /at}, 'EpLvves luv SUrji iwlKovpot i^ev- 
 pi)(70vaiv. 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 none is more divine or more human than another. 
 Each has its natural principle, and none exists 
 without its natural cause." ^ 
 
 Again, the Greeks set themselves to dis- 
 cover a rational basis for conduct. Rigorously 
 they brought their actions to the test of reason, 
 and that not only by the mouth of philosophers, 
 but through their poets, historians, and orators. 
 Thinking and doing, " the spirit of counsel and 
 might," — clear thought and noble action — did 
 not to the Greek mind stand opposed. The 
 antithesis rather marks a period when the 
 Hellenic spirit was past its prime, and had taken 
 a one-sided bent. The Athenians of the Periclean 
 age, in whom we must recognise the purest em- 
 bodiment of Hellenism, had in truth the peculiar 
 power which Thucydides claims for them, of think- 
 ing before they acted and of acting also. In the 
 mouth of Pericles are placed the words : " Debate, 
 we hold, does not mar action ; the mischief is 
 rather setting to work without being first en- 
 lightened."^ And among the ideas common to 
 Thucydides and Demosthenes this is one — that 
 reason is a formative and conquering power ; that 
 
 ' Hippocr. irepl 6.ipav, iSdriav, Thvuin, ch. 22. 
 ^ Thucyd. ii. 40. 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 13 
 
 a strong and clear intelligence can prevail over 
 outward circurnstances, and can shape events ; that 
 victory is assured to those who see things as they 
 are and shun illusion, and who at the same time 
 summon to the aid of thought a sustained and 
 courageous energy. In the divorce between 
 thought and deed, between speech and action, 
 Demosthenes truly saw the flaw that was destined 
 fatally to impair Greek conduct and character. 
 In the best times Greek thought did not spend 
 itself in barren effort. Wisdom and heroism, 
 elsewhere found apart, were combined by the 
 Greeks, even as Pallas, goddess of war, was 
 goddess also of counsel. 
 
 Thought had become fully conscious of itself in 
 Greece some time before it found the appropriate 
 vehicle of expression in prose. It was not till the 
 sixth century B.C. that writing, so long known in 
 the East but scarcely emancipated from religion, 
 was widely used in Greece. Under this new 
 influence prose literature had its first beginnings. 
 Prose, like poetry, was at first a secret in the 
 possession of a few, — an art confined to a close 
 guild of craftsmen. In the joy of discovery men 
 played with the new weapon, tested its unknown 
 powers, and saw no limit to its wonder-working 
 
H WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 capacities. It was a critical and decisive moment 
 for literature. Of those who professed the new 
 art some devoted themselves to a minute cult of 
 form, treating language not as the willing servant 
 of thought, but as an independent and sovereign 
 power. ' For an instant it seemed doubtful whether 
 educated taste, following in the steps of Gorgias 
 and his school, would abandon itself to phrase- 
 making and poetic ornament ; whether literary 
 prose starting on a wrong course might worship 
 form and pursue beauty at the expense of truth 
 and seek to dazzle by means of false opposi- 
 tions and subtleties. Over-subtlety was the vice 
 to which the Greek intellect was most inclined. 
 Thought and the expression af thought were 
 always menaced by the love of formal antithesis 
 and of fine-drawn distinctions — " Graecorum ille 
 morbus " as it is called by Seneca : and a deadly 
 disease it proved, for in the sterile controversies of 
 Alexandrian critics and finally in the hair^-splitting 
 of Byzantine theologians the stream of Greek 
 literature ran dry. But for the present, and even 
 when the Greeks had ceased to produce their best 
 work, they resisted the dangerous fascination. An 
 unerring perception told them that the beautiful 
 must also be the true, and jrecalled them back into 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 15 
 
 the way. As in conduct they insisted on an 
 energy which was rational, so in art and in litera- 
 ture they required of beauty that it too should be, 
 before all things, rational. 
 
 As a luminous instance of this we may men- 
 tion their oratory. The Athenians themselves 
 knew the strange magic which gracious speech 
 exercised over them. A people of artists who 
 listened to beautiful language as to music, who 
 hissed a mispronunciation, who loved debate as 
 they did a spectacle — they were aware of their 
 own susceptibilities, and resolved beforehand to be 
 proof against the enchantment. In the presence 
 of a trained speaker their attitude was one of 
 vigilant incredulity. To guard against surprises, 
 to detect sophistries, became an intellectual luxury ; 
 and the unimpassioned calm of the normal Attic 
 peroration — the coldness, as moderns might say, 
 the apparent anti- climax — is in some sort a 
 homage that the orator pays to reason : to reason, 
 not to emotion, he addresses the final appeal. To 
 satisfy so exacting an audience no preparatory 
 pains could be too great. The idea now occurred 
 that speech as an instrument of persuasion might 
 be subjected to analysis, that its theory might be 
 unfolded, its practice illustrated, and that men 
 
i6 WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 might be taught to be eloquent. It was a new 
 and fruitful idea ; for though language as an 
 instrument of thought, language on its scientific 
 and grammatical side, had been subjected to 
 acute analysis in India, yet language as the in- 
 strument of persuasion, shaped and moulded into 
 forms that appealed alike to intellect and feeling, 
 and answered the demands both of reason and 
 beauty — from this point of view language had 
 not hitherto been treated. Such a union of 
 the artistic and scientific spirit was the work of 
 Greece. 
 
 The language of Greek authors owes its beauty 
 in no slight measure to their directness of vision. 
 They see the object they mean to describe, they 
 do not recall it through the medium of books 
 from literary reminiscence. The sharp outlines of 
 the thought stand visibly before the mind. Even 
 the" prose writers have the poetic gift of taking 
 common words and making them seem as if they 
 were newly minted, with edges unworn and their 
 superscription still plain. It was their good 
 fortune to use a language whose first freshness 
 had not yet faded ; yet it needed also finished 
 art to preserve unimpaired the primitive energy 
 of words, and to impart a kind of distinction to 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 17 
 
 what was familiar. We speak of the happy ease 
 and grace with which the Greeks wrote, but they 
 themselves thought of their own aptitude more as 
 the result of trained skill than of instinct. It is 
 remarkable how the word a-o(j)ia, " wisdom," " skill," 
 is selected by them to denote the poetic gift in 
 contexts where we should be disposed to speak of 
 inspiration. Pindar, who more than any other 
 poet insists on the need of inborn faculty, also 
 exalts to the utmost the influence of art. His 
 poetry is a subtle science, which obeys laws of 
 its own, fixed rules, transmitted by the masters 
 of the craft, by which the structure of the rhythm 
 and the handling of the theme are regulated. 
 His flights of imagination are obedient to this 
 skilled guidance. So too in each kind of literary 
 composition invented by the Greeks there are 
 certain controlling traditions, which even genius 
 cannot escape ; or rather, which it would not 
 escape even if it could, for it is within the domain 
 of law — cut servire regnare est — that genius exer- 
 cises its sway. The way to originality was felt 
 to lie through a certain self-suppression, which 
 moderns might think was a hampering of free 
 activity. The prose writers as well as the poets 
 subject themselves to the rules of a conscious art. 
 
1 8 WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 and the perfection of that art is shown in an 
 absence of exaggeration, a delicate spirit of choice, 
 an. unobtrusive propriety of diction. The tone is 
 not forced. The effects are produced with the 
 utmost economy of material and are exactly 
 adequate to the occasion. It is as if they acted 
 on the maxim, Le secret d'ennuyer est de tout dire. 
 Owing to the very wealth of right words simplicity 
 becomes possible, and the artist is not betrayed. 
 Repose and power afe equally combined, and the 
 distinctive quality of the whole composition is 
 revealed rather in the total impression than in 
 isolated felicities of phrase. 
 
 In the domain of eloquence the union of the 
 artistic spirit with technical skill was an idea 
 slowly realised. It so happens th^t Greek oratory, 
 unlike Roman, can be followed step by step 
 through a continuous development. Cicero stands 
 out the one clear figure among the shadowy forms 
 of Rornan orators — a roll of names once 
 famous, now known either through the barest 
 fragments or through the distant haze of literary 
 criticism. • Demosthenes, isolated as he is in his 
 moral grandeur, is yet, as concerns his style, the 
 orderly birth of his age and of his country. He 
 can be understood only in relation to his prede- 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 19 
 
 cessors ; his place in a series is well defined. But 
 of that series he is also the sum and the com- 
 pletion. The liiatured civic eloquence was late 
 in appearing and was comprised within a brief 
 period, between the years 354 and 324 B.C. Co- 
 incident with the last struggle for independence 
 and thence drawing its inspiration, it seemed to 
 spring in a moment into life and as suddenly to 
 become extinct. Bijt it had, in fact, passed 
 through the preparatory discipline botli of the 
 schools and of the law-courts. There it had 
 learnt its pliancy of idiom, its majestic . and har- 
 monious phrase, its skilled arrangement of the 
 thoughts, its militant energy. Its forces all stood 
 ready to respond to a great enthusiasm: A double 
 tendency had declared itself in Attic oratory from 
 the outset. Side by side had. grown up the 
 scientific and the artistic type. But hitherto there 
 had been no complete fusion. In Demosthenes 
 the two types are combined. The most business- 
 like of orators, he is also the most artistic. 
 Admitting nothing that is not strictly pertinent, 
 disdaining ornament for its own sake, he counts 
 no detail of workmanship unimportant. Practical 
 reason is the groundwork of his speeches, but it 
 is reason alive with passion. The thought, while 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 irresistible in logic, is charged with emotion. 
 Never has there been such a union of force and 
 living fire with literary finish and rhythmical per- 
 fection. He passes beyond the particular occasion 
 and the purpose of the moment, and rising above 
 the wrangling of rival politicians extracts from 
 contemporaneous events political truths which 
 human nature ratifies in every age. Few indeed 
 are the orators of modern times whose speeches 
 live as literature ; like singers their day is brief, 
 and when their voice is no longer heard they are 
 forgotten. Demosthenes survives and is still a 
 storehouse of political wisdom and a model of 
 civic eloquence. The reason is that to the gifts 
 of the statesman and the orator he added that 
 instinct of the Hellenic mind which craves durable 
 expression even for its passing utterances, and 
 stamps all its creations with the seal of art. 
 What he had to say he so said as to make it of 
 universal acceptation. 
 
 Again, in history, the Greeks were the first 
 who combined science and art, reason and imagina- 
 tion. India, till it came in contact with Greece, 
 had next to no chronology. Fable and legend 
 occupied the field, and in place of history there 
 were epics and dramas. China, on the other 
 
WlfAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 hand, knew facts and dates enough, and drew up 
 its records with painstaking exactness. The letter 
 and the written word became with them a cult in 
 which government and religion were merged, so 
 that an emperor who meditated a political revolu- 
 tion saw no expedient so good as to burn the 
 books. Chinese history reflects in a manner 
 Chinese civilisation. Their civilisation, we are told, 
 is founded upon reason ; but if so, it is a servile 
 and prosaic reason, — it is reason divorced from 
 beauty and from freedom. Their history is not 
 far different ; it is careful, encyclopaedic, and 
 unreadable. 
 
 Greece discovered another kind of history, in 
 which reason and beauty were " reconciled — one 
 which the Romans borrowed, and which has served 
 as a pattern to modern times. Thucydides, as 
 one who has observed the shaping of events 
 and seized their meaning, sets himself to dis- 
 engage the causes which produce them, and 
 traces them back to their hidden source in char- 
 acter. The shadow of semi-fatalism which rested 
 over the history of Herodotus is removed. History 
 is no longer the result of the vengeance or jealousy 
 of superhuman powers ; it becomes the expres- 
 sion of human intelligence, one of the modes in 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 which reason works out its free activity. It is 
 by this method that Thucydides is " philosophic," 
 and almost in the sense in which Aristotle 
 declares poetry to be " more philosophic than 
 history." Thucydides is philosophic, not as a 
 speculative philosopher who has a system to 
 expound, but as ■ one who looks beyond the 
 particular phenomena with which he is dealing, 
 and discerns the universal type in and through' 
 the individual. 
 
 His history has also poetic affinities. The 
 speakers tell their own tale; the historian main- 
 tains an impartial reserve ; the events arrange them- 
 selves in dramatic sequence and lead up to a tragic 
 catastrophe. Unimaginative history may contain 
 much useful material, but it is not history regarded 
 as literature. Doubtless the inroad of poetry was 
 in ancient times a standing danger to history, and 
 later Greek history was invaded, and with ruinous 
 results, by poetical and rhetorical fiction. Yet 
 history, however much it may approach to science, 
 by a necessity of its nature falls short oi science ; 
 it is on the borderland between science and poetry. 
 Thucydides with his sceptical intellect and his 
 stern resolve not to quit the ground of solid fact, 
 cannot divest himself of the imaginative genius- of 
 
WffAT W£ OWE TO GREECE 23 
 
 his race. His history is dramatic, and in a two- 
 fold way. First through the speeches, which, 
 though they were never deHvered as they stand, 
 sum up the thoughts of the representative actors 
 on each occasion. If they do not place before 
 us vivid portraits of the individual speakers, they 
 express the larger lineaments of Spartans or 
 Athenians ; they are a mirror of national char- 
 acter revealing itself at significant moments. 
 They are never ornamental accessories, but are 
 in intimate relation with the facts on which they 
 form a lucid commentary, and which through them 
 become generalised truths. The reflections that 
 occur here in the strictly imaginative portion of 
 the work, the view of the situation here unfolded, 
 the analysis of the motives that go to make events 
 — this it is which mainly gives to the history of 
 Thucydides its comprehensive wisdom. Again, 
 he is dramatic in his presentment of facts. Vol- 
 taire wished that a history might be written, in 
 which, as in a piece put_ upon the stage, there 
 should be a dramatic situation, — the unfolding of 
 a story, the tying of a knot, and the denouement. 
 Such a history Thucydides has written. The 
 period of the Peloponnesian war had a vi^ell- 
 defined unity of its own. A single great action 
 
24 WffAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 was here evolved. The facts were full of tragic 
 meaning ; all that was required to bring out their 
 inherent grandeur and pathos was that they should 
 be skilfully ordered. " Thucydides," says Professor 
 Jebb/ " is dramatic, for instance, when he places 
 the Melian dialogue immediately before the Sicilian 
 expedition. The simple juxtaposition of insolence 
 and ruin is more effective than comment." And 
 further, the Peloponnesian war presents " a definite 
 moment at which the cardinal situation is reversed. 
 . . . That moment is the Sicilian expedition. 
 The supreme test of ' dramatic ' quality in a 
 history of the Peloponnesian war must be the 
 power with which the historian has marked the 
 significance of the Sicilian expedition as the tragic 
 'revolution,' the climax of pity and terror, the 
 decisive reversal. . . . Here, at the point in his 
 story which supplies the crucial test, Thucydides 
 shows that he possesses true dramatic power. By 
 the direct presentment of the facts, not by reflec- 
 tions upon them, he makes us feel all that is tragic 
 in the Sicilian disaster itself, and also all that it 
 means in relation to the larger tragedy of the war." 
 The application of a clear and fearless intellect 
 to every domain of life was, then, one of the 
 
 ' Hellenica, p. 318. 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 25 
 
 services rendered by Greece to the world. It was 
 connected with the awal<ening of fhe lay spirit. 
 In the East the priests had generally held the 
 keys of knowledge. Even writing tended to be 
 a hieratic secret. Literature and science were 
 branches of theology, and their study belonged to 
 the priestly office. Thus, in India the Brahmins 
 had always hidden from the people the sources 
 whence their knowledge was derived. They 
 watched, indeed, the course of discovery and 
 turned it to account, but represented each new 
 discovery as part of a primitive revelation. Still 
 more marked in Egypt was the impress left by the 
 priesthood on all the arts and sciences. In Greece, 
 from the earliest time, the sacerdotal influence is 
 slight. Not that there were no priests, but the 
 priests never became a corporation, still less a 
 caste. Even women might hold the priestly 
 office, an office sometimes conferred by popular 
 election. Theano in the Iliad {w'\. 300) is appointed 
 by the Trojans to be priestess of Athene. Vows 
 of celibacy were not a necessary condition for 
 the office : personal beauty was sometimes made 
 essential. From the first sight we catch of the 
 priests in Homer, they are attached to certain 
 local worships and do not quit the temple. They 
 
26 WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 do not accompany the army to war. Even in 
 time of peace, the heroes themselves offer the 
 sacrifices which precede the family meal. The 
 priest and the diviner are generally lightly 
 accounted in Homer, and the minstrel or singer is 
 held in higher honour. Nor did the priests pene- 
 trate into private life or teach religion. They 
 were not theologians,' but sacristans and liturgical 
 functionaries. Not they, but the poets became 
 the educators of youth. 
 
 Together with intellectual enfranchisement 
 Greece found also political freedom. In the 
 East, society had fluctuated between despotism 
 and anarchy ; if it did not fall under one or 
 other of these forces, it was only, as with the 
 Jews, saved by means of a theocracy. Now, in 
 Greece, though despotisms sprang up, they were 
 never quite of the Eastern type — a single master 
 and a people of slaves ; and, moreover, they were 
 quickly followed by reactions. Being, in truth, 
 the negation of all Greek ideas, they were never 
 accepted save after a struggle, and the tyrant knew 
 the insecure tenure of his power. From the out- 
 set we see that tyrannies will find no congenial 
 soil in Greece. The king, in Homeric times, is 
 far from being an Asiatic monarch. The chief 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 27 
 
 points of difference are indicated by Aristotle,^ 
 where he tells us that heroic royalty was estab- 
 lished by the free consent of the governed, and 
 the functions attaching to it were determinate : 
 the king was a general and a judge, and presided 
 at sacrificial rites. Willing subjects and limited 
 prerogatives — here we have Western ideas. Heroic 
 royalty has in it the germ of future republics ; for 
 the Greek, city springs from the independent union 
 of independent wills, it is a self-governing com- 
 munity regulated by law and not by force. One 
 of the recorded sayings of Heraclitus runs thus : 
 "The people should fight for the law as for the 
 city rampart."^ The Spartan Demaratus thus 
 describes his countrymen to the Great King: 
 " Though free, they are not wholly free. The law 
 for them is a supreme master " (eVeo-ri 70/3 a^u 
 Se(rir6r7]<; vo/ao?).^ And the Athenian Aeschylus 
 puts into the mouth of the Eumenides the words, 
 " Praise neither the life of anarchy nor the life of 
 despotism." * " Unblest freedom from restraint " 
 (to use again the phrase of Aeschylus) was not 
 the Greek conception of a freeman ; and those 
 
 ' Aristot. Tol. iii. 14. 1285 b 4. 
 
 ^ Diog. Laert. ix. 2, fi&x'^txBai XPV "^^^ Sij/xov virkp rod vbjxov Skois 
 inrip TeLxeos. * Herod, vii. 104. * Aesch. Earn. 526. 
 
28 WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 tribes or 'idvi} who had no centres of political 
 hfe, no settled law and usage, even if of Greek 
 blood, hardly counted as forming part of the 
 Greek brotherhood ; they were only a grade 
 above wandering hordes. But still more foreign 
 to Greek sentiment were the great military mon- 
 archies which from time to time overshadowed 
 Greek civilisation. To such a monarchy Greece 
 at length succumbed. And the whole force of 
 Demosthenes' genius is spent on marking the 
 contrast between the subjects of such a state and 
 the free citizens of Greece. He is the interpreter 
 of Hellenism as against Barbarism. In the name 
 of free institutions he appeals to the sense of 
 honour and duty, to human dignity, to moral 
 responsibility, to enlightened patriotism — appeals, 
 all of them unmeaning to men who were part of a 
 mere machine, fitted into an iron framework, who 
 knew only of obedience to a master, and for whom 
 the past had no inspiring memories. 
 
 The East did not attempt to reconcile the 
 claims of the state and the individual. The pliant 
 genius of Greece first made the effort. In Greece 
 first the idea of the public good, of the free devo- 
 tion of the citizen to the state, of government in 
 the interests of the governed, of the rights of the 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 29 
 
 individual, took shape. The problem of the re- 
 lation between the state and the individual was, 
 indeed, very imperfectly solved in Greece. The 
 demands, for instance, of the state were pitched 
 too high and implied a virtue almost heroic in 
 its members. Even in Athens, where individual 
 liberty was most regarded, certain urgent public 
 needs were supplied mainly by the precarious 
 method of private generosity instead of by state 
 organisation. But though the Greeks may not have 
 solved the political problem, they saw that there 
 was a problem to solve, and set about it rationally ; 
 and they were the first to do so. They were gifted 
 with a power, peculiarly Western, of delicate 
 adjustment, of combining principles apparently 
 opposite, of harmonising conflicting claims ; they 
 possessed a sense of measure, a flexibility, a faculty 
 of compromise, opposed to the fatal simplicity 
 with which Eastern politics had been stricken. 
 Not tyranny, not anarchy, satisfied the Greek, but 
 ordered liberty. 
 
 Passing now to another side of the Greek genius 
 — their love of Art — let us go back for a few 
 minutes to that early time of which Homer and 
 Herodotus have left us a picture. By land and by 
 sea there came to Hellas the marvels of the East. 
 
30 WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 Golgos, Idalia, Curium, Larnaka, and Nimroud 
 ,have yielded to us their treasures, and all tell the 
 same story — the story of the splendour of the East 
 and the wonder of the West. The picture of Hero- 
 dotus is still fresh ; the Phoenician trader- — the 
 carrier of the ancient world — voyaging in his 
 black ship, freighting his vessel with the wares of 
 Egypt and Assyria ; the landing on the Argive 
 coast ; the five days' fare ; the throng of eager 
 Hellenes. And those very wares for which they 
 bartered are scattered now throughout the museums 
 of Europe; fantastic carved shells^ bronze idols, 
 silver bowls graven with zones of tigers and with 
 hybrid monsters — winged sphinxes, chimaeras, 
 human-headed birds — things born of an unbridled 
 Eastern imagination, and wrought with prolific 
 industry in the valleys of the Nile and the 
 Euphrates. Egyptian art, like Egyptian thought, 
 was, we know, heavy with the incubus of an all- 
 powerful priesthood ; it was an elaborate cult of 
 the dead, haunted^ half-scared with the shadows 
 of the underworld. It was the art of a people 
 who called their houses " hostelries " (/caTaXucrei?), 
 places of temporary sojourn, while their tombs they 
 called the " eternal homes." ^ Among their gods 
 ' Diodor. Sic. i. 51. 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 31 
 
 were dog-headed apes, whose animal forms, born 
 of a totemism never wholly extinct, were to later 
 days hybrid symbols, incarnate dogmas ; their 
 proportions were conventional, their individuality 
 floating and confused, and their virtue lay rather 
 in size than in symmetry. Assyrian art, on the 
 other hand, was the outcome, and bore the impress, 
 of a despotism not religious but secular. The 
 king was to the Euphrates what the priest was 
 to the Nile. With laborious detail the Assyrian 
 .artist inscribes upon the palace walls the story 
 of the monarch's prowess, of his fierce license, 
 of his inhuman courage, of the abject multitude 
 that abase themselves before him. Six thousand 
 square metres are not enough for the tedious 
 iteration. Even the kings are types, not indi- 
 viduals ; the artist works by precept, almost by 
 prescription ; he is but the lifeless mouthpiece 
 of a system, a servile chronicler, now rising to 
 bombast, now sinking to garrulity. 
 
 All this we know in the light of a mature art-criti- 
 cism ; but how is the Greek to fare when some thirty 
 centuries ago he looks on this world of fantastic 
 wonder with child-like eyes ? We might tremble 
 for the issue did we not know the sequel. It is 
 as though he said to himself : " I will borrow from 
 
32 WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 this artist of the East his technical skill ; I will 
 learn of him his sleight of hand ; he shall teach 
 me to carve and to grave, to inlay with metal and 
 to fashion with clay." That he did so learn, 
 literature and art alike tell us. The silver bowl 
 which Achilles gave as a prize at the funeral 
 of Patroclus was made by Sidonian artists, and 
 brought by Phoenicians over the sea ; Helen's 
 silver work-basket which ran on wheels was 
 fashioned in Egyptian Thebes. But against the 
 spirit of the East the spirit of the Hellene revolted. 
 To the Egyptian priest he appears to say : " I am 
 a layman ; I worship in the sunshine a god who is 
 both human and divine, who is to me a familiar 
 presence, who dwells with men, not remote and 
 inaccessible, not incarnate in the form of a beast. 
 I pray to him with upright form and uplifted 
 hands, as man to man.'' And to the Assyrian : 
 " I am a freeman, the slave of no despot ; I reject 
 your splendour for the one, your cowering misery 
 for the many. Your monarch is a tyrant, your 
 boasted magnificence is barbarism." And to both 
 he said as an artist : " Your art is monotonous 
 and lifeless, because it is priest- and tyrant-ridden, 
 because the individual artist is nothing, the pre- 
 cept he inculcates everything. Your history, that 
 
WffAT WE OWE TO GREECE 33 
 
 should live and breathe upon your sculptured walls, 
 is a bare chronicle. Your gods are not persons 
 but attributes : you tolerate the ugly for the sake 
 of dogma. You are a nation of symbols, of ab- 
 stractions, of fantastic speculation. In religion as 
 in art, at one moment licentious, at another you 
 are rigidly didactic. Because you disallow reason 
 you are forced to be chimerical." 
 
 This profession of faith was not put into words, 
 but we read it in Greek history. The drift of 
 things was not perceived in a day. For a time 
 Greece yielded in part to the dazzling temptation ; 
 to the end her handicraftsmen, as opposed to her 
 true artists, adopted a system of ornamentation 
 from the East. Hundreds of vases of all periods, 
 embodying some chance oriental conception, rise 
 up to witness to the fact. A Pegasus, a Chimaera, 
 a Sphinx, a Siren, survive to tell the story of oriental 
 influence. But such instances are comparatively 
 few and scattered. They remain, it has been well 
 said, as foreign words borrowed into a language, 
 but never wholly naturalised. The seventh and 
 the sixth century B.C. witnessed the struggle in 
 which Greece came out victorious. We see the 
 victory even in the rude naturalism of the Heracles 
 
 of Selinus ; the grinning Medusa has already 
 
 D 
 
34 WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 lost something of her oriental formalism. As in 
 matters intellectual Greece loosed her bands, and 
 with happy and gracious flexibility entered on un- 
 tried courses, so in art, too, there was emancipa- 
 tion. No longer is it sign upon sign and symbol 
 upon symbol. The early Greeks look in wonder at 
 their own plastic or sculptured creations and fancy 
 them to be things of life. " In their hearts," says 
 Homer of the golden handmaids of Hephaestus, 
 "they have understanding, they have also voice 
 and strength, and from the immortal gods they 
 have skill in handicraft" ^ Xo longer are the 
 arms welded to the sides, the eyelids fastened 
 over the eyeballs, and the whole form fixed im- 
 movably to a chair. The images of Daedalus, who 
 was the mythical author of this change, are said 
 to have been tied by chains, lest they should 
 " walk off like runaway slaves." ^ 
 
 This brief sketch may serve to indicate the 
 sense in which Greek art unites in itself the 
 qualities most distinctive of the Greek genius, — 
 the love of knowledge, the love of rational beauty, 
 the love of freedom. In their first contact with 
 the East — ^with Egypt and Assyria — during the 
 period kno^vn as the Graeco- Phoenician period 
 
 ' Iliad Tsrai. 419-20. * Plato, Meno 159 D. 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 35 
 
 of art, the Greeks had a trying ordeal to pass 
 through. They came out of it, as we have seen, 
 in a characteristic fashion. 
 
 1 . Their political instinct was alien to Assyrian 
 despotism. 
 
 2. Their lay instinct rose up against Egyptian 
 priestcraft. 
 
 3. Their instinct for beauty and reason com- 
 bined rejected in both arts — in Assyrian and 
 Egyptian alike — what was monstrous and lifeless. 
 
 4. Their instinct for knowledge, their curiosity, 
 their cosmopolitanism, led them to adopt the 
 foreign technique, and to absorb all that was 
 fruitful in the foreigners' ideas. They borrowed 
 from every source, but all that they borrowed they 
 made their own. The Phoenicians, it has been 
 said, taught the Greeks writing, but it was the 
 Greeks who wrote. In every department the 
 principle holds good. They stamped their genius 
 upon each imported product, which was to them 
 but the raw material of their art. 
 
 It was not till after the Persian invasion that 
 Greece, which had now and again shown signs of 
 backsliding, severed itself decisively from the East. 
 The barbarian, as if to make place for the new 
 order, had in his reckless havoc swept away the 
 
36 WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 artistic landmarks of the old. The dwelling-place 
 of the earth-born Erechtheus lay in ruins. The 
 ancient temple of Athene Polias was dismantled. 
 Such cults as these, local, narrow, hieratic, could 
 no longer satisfy the aspirations of the victorious 
 people. They needed a worship that should do 
 more than glorify their god, one that should give 
 utterance to themselves. It became with them 
 a national passion to find artistic expression for 
 their sense of deliverance, to write for all time 
 upon Pentelic marble the story of the triumph of 
 light over darkness, of West over East. The 
 triumph had been pan - Hellenic, their worship 
 henceforth must be pan-Olympian. In the new 
 temple of Athene Polias, with her new title of 
 Parthenos, this story took shape. No stone of 
 the fabric but tells the tale. In the eastern pedi- 
 ment is sculptured the first act of the drama, the 
 first note of the people's triumph, the birth of the 
 goddess as virgin, her kinship as Olympian. At 
 the dawn the horses of Helios are uprising, and 
 the chariot of Selene, the moon-goddess, sinks into 
 the sea ; for Athene is born, the Olympian, and 
 the shadows melt from before her. She is born 
 not of the earth but of the very brain of Zeus, 
 with all the cosmic circumstance of sea and land 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 37 
 
 and sun and moon. In the western pediment the 
 second act is rehearsed, the rivalry of Athene and 
 Poseidon, — which of these two with the better gift 
 shall dower the land. Poseidon brings his goodly- 
 horses and the sea's dominion, but Athene's gift 
 is preferred — the sea-green olive, " unconquered, 
 self-renewing." ^ In the sculptured metopes that 
 adorn the Doric frieze the contrast, nay, the conflict 
 is more clearly expressed. The Lapith ancestor 
 of many a noble Athenian, the law-abiding Greek, 
 contends with the monstrous Centaur, the man- 
 horse, the type of barbarian licence in the Giganto- 
 machia. The whole phalanx of the Olympians is 
 set in battle array against the earth-born and rebel 
 giants. The heroes of Athens prevail here over 
 the lawless womenfolk of the Amazons, there over 
 the beleaguered city of half-oriental Troy. The 
 achievement of mythical ancestors is invested with 
 new meaning, and takes fresh lustre from the late 
 victory over Persia. And if pediment and metope 
 tell of the remote past, the splendour of the present 
 is unfolded in the frieze of the cella. The body- 
 politic of Athens in its new-found_ triumph and 
 freedoni is here enrolled in sculptured procession 
 — young men, princely and proud, " slaves of no 
 
 ' Soph. O. C. 698, (pirevix d^f/pUTOJ' airowoibv. 
 
38 WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 man, servants of none " ; maidens bearing aloft 
 the sacred vessels, without sign of shame upon 
 their brows. Here we have no sin-laden devotees 
 making expiation, but godlike men worshipping 
 their human gods, gods who sit in easy fellowship 
 awaiting the homage of those who are almost 
 their peers. The spirit of the worshippers reflects 
 the spirit of the goddess; they are reasonable, 
 fearless, temperate. 
 
 Yet in this new outburst of life, this self- 
 conscious expression of freedom, the past is not 
 lightly set aside. Though in the centre of the 
 western pediment the two Olympians contend to 
 do the city honour, it is the ancient heroes and 
 gods of the land who adjudge the strife. Cecrops 
 is still there with his faithful daughter, and in 
 the pediment angle recline the two local river- 
 gods. Though a splendid image of gold and 
 ivory was upreared to Athene Polias in her new 
 aspect of Parthenos, the ancient heaven-descended 
 image was not forgotten. Another Erechtheum 
 was raised to be the home of venerable cults; 
 within its precincts were sheltered the sacred 
 serpent, the olive - tree, the trident mark, the 
 ancient leaf-covered Hermes, the altars of half- 
 forgotten priest-kings, the Butadae. Now, for a 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 39 
 
 moment at least, Athens, at this happy pause in 
 her career, unites a reverent conservatism with 
 her forward and inquiring temper. Art, science, 
 religion, have balanced their several claims. 
 Science stays her encroachments, and is not 
 wise over-much. 
 
 Such, briefly, is our debt to Greece. And 
 when we speak of Greece we think first of Athens. 
 To Greece herself Athens seemed to offer a 
 ■perpetual iravri'yvpi'i^ a feast of language and of 
 thought to which all were welcome who shared 
 in the spirit of the Hellenic brotherhood. To 
 citizens and to strangers by means of epic recita- 
 tions and dramatic spectacles she presented an 
 idealised image of life itself She was the home 
 of new ideas, the mother-city from which poetry, 
 eloquence, and philosophy spread to distant 
 lands. While the chief dialects of Greece 
 survive, each not as a mere dialect but as the 
 language of literature — a thing unknown in the 
 history of any other people — the Attic idiom, in 
 which the characteristic elements of other dialects 
 met and were harmonised, has become to us, as 
 it did to the ancients, the very type of Hellenic 
 speech. Athens was not only the " capital of 
 
 ^ Isocr. Panegyr. % 46. 
 
40 WH4T WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 Greece," ^ the " school of Greece " ; ^ it deserves 
 the name applied to it in an epitaph on Euripides : 
 " his country is Athens, Greece of Greece" ^ The 
 rays of the Greek genius here found a centre and 
 a focus. 
 
 To Greece, then, we owe the love of Science, 
 the love of Art, the love of Freedom : not Science 
 alone, Art alone, or Freedom alone, but these 
 vitally correlated with one another and brought 
 into organic union. And in this union we 
 recognise the distinctive features of the West. 
 The Greek genius is the European genius in its 
 first and brightest bloom. From a vivifying 
 contact with the Greek spirit Europe derived that 
 new and mighty impulse which we call progress. 
 Strange it is to think that these Greeks, like 
 the other members of the Indo-European family, 
 probably had their cradle in the East ; that 
 behind Greek civilisation, Greek language, Greek 
 mythology, there is that Eastern background to 
 which the comparative sciences seem to point. 
 But it is no more than a background. In spite 
 of all resemblances, in spite of common customs, 
 
 ' Isocr. Aniid. § 299, i.aTV t^s 'BXXdSos. 
 ^ Thucyd, ii. 41, t^s 'BXXdSos iraiSevciy. 
 ' Anth. Pal. vii. 45, 7ror/)!s 5' 'EXXdJos 'EXXds 'A^TJvai.. 
 
WffAT IjiE OWE TO GREECE 41 
 
 common words, common syntax, common gods, 
 the spirit of the Greeks and of their Eastern 
 kinsmen — the spirit of their civilisation, art, 
 language, and mythology — remains essentially 
 distinct. The Greeks, \yhen first they meet us in 
 history, fancy themselves to have been born on 
 the soil ; they have no memory of their Asiatic 
 origin. They were blest with the faculty of 
 forgetting — one of the happiest gifts a nation 
 can possess. And their own sense of difference 
 and distinction was at bottom true. The Greek 
 genius, with its potent originality, had transformed, 
 if not effaced, the Eastern features. The Greek 
 victories over the East at Marathon and Salamis 
 were but the earnest of a victory that had been 
 long preparing for the Western world. Much yet 
 remained to be done by Rome, and much by the 
 Teutonic nations, for Greece left many blots and 
 flaws in her political and social system. But the 
 broad lines had been already traced along which 
 there was to be forward movement. 
 
 From Greece came that first mighty impulse 
 whose far-off workings are felt by us to-day, and 
 which has brought it about that progress has been 
 accepted as the law and goal of human endeavour. 
 Greece first took up the task of equipping man 
 
42 WM^T WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 with all that fits him for civil life and promotes 
 his secular wellbeing ; of unfolding and expanding 
 every inborn faculty and energy, bodily and 
 mental ; of striving restlessly after the perfection 
 of the whole, and finding in this effort after an 
 unattainable ideal that by which man becomes 
 like to the gods. The life of the Hellenes, like 
 that of their epic hero Achilles, was brief and 
 brilliant. But they have been endowed with the 
 gift of renewing their- youth. Renan, speaking 
 of the nations that are fitted to play a part in 
 universal history, says " that they must die first ' 
 that the world may live through them " ; that " a 
 people must choose between the prolonged life, 
 the tranquil and obscure destiny of one who lives 
 for himself, and the troubled, stormy career of 
 one who lives for humanity. The nation which 
 revolves within its breast social and religious 
 problems is always weak politically. Thus it was 
 with the Jews, who in order to make the religious 
 conquest of the world must needs disappear as a 
 nation." ^ " They lost a material city, they opened 
 the reign of the spiritual Jerusalem." So too it 
 was with Greece. As a people she ceased to be. 
 When her freedom was overthrown at Chaeronea, 
 ' Conferences d'Angleterre, p. 103. 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 43 
 
 the page of her history was to aH appearance 
 closed. Yet from that moment she was to enter 
 on a larger life and on universal empire. Already, 
 during the last days of her independence it had 
 been possible to speak of a new Hellenism, which 
 rested not on ties of blood but on spiritual kinship. 
 This presentiment of Isocrates was marvellously 
 realised. As Alexander passed conquering through 
 Asia, he restored to the East, as garnered grain, 
 that Greek civilisation whose seeds had long ago 
 been received from the East. Each conqueror in 
 turn, the Macedonian and the Roman, bowed 
 before conquered Greece and learnt lessons at her 
 feet. To the modern world too Greece has been 
 the great civiliser, the ecumenical teacher, the 
 disturber and regenerator of slumbering societies. 
 She is the source of most of the quickening ideas 
 which re-make nations and renovate literature and 
 art. If we reckon up our secular possessions, the 
 wealth and heritage of the past, the larger share 
 may be traced back to Greece. One half of life 
 she has made her domain — all, or well-nigh all, 
 that belongs to the present order of things and to 
 the visible world. 
 
 " We are all Grfeeks," says Shelley ; " our laws, 
 our literature, our religion, our art, have their roots 
 
44 WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 in Greece." This is somewliat overstated : neither 
 our laws, nor our religion are derived from Greece. 
 Our religion has come to us from the East, though 
 it too has been breathed upon and, in a sense, 
 transformed by the Western spirit. Greek poly- 
 theism was doomed to sterility, on the side both 
 of speculation and of conduct. Though the poets 
 of Greece, like the Hebrew prophets, tried to 
 ennoble the popular religion ; though Pindar, 
 Aeschylus, and Sophocles, by a purifying and 
 reflective process, imported into polytheism lofty 
 religious conceptions and a grave ideal of conduct, 
 yet polytheism could not bear the strain. It 
 could not receive within it the new content. The 
 philosophers were more ruthless and clear-sighted 
 than the poets. From the beginning, philosophy 
 made war on polytheism ; it aimed not at reform, 
 but at destruction. 
 
 The tide of conquest was rolled back, and our 
 religion has come to us from the East, — but from 
 an East how different from that out of which 
 Greece emerged, or from that which she vanquished 
 at Salamis ! In those earlier ages, the victory of 
 the East over Greece would have been the triumph 
 of nature over man, of necessity over moral freedom, 
 of a caste system or of despotism over free organis- 
 
WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 45 
 
 ation and intelligence, of stagnation over progress, 
 of symbolism over beauty, of the arid plain over 
 the mountain and the sea. The actual victory of 
 East over West which took place at the triumph 
 of Christianity, had in it no such sinister meaning. 
 Greece had already won freedom in all its branches 
 — freedom for society, freedom for the individual, 
 freedom for thought. She had written her spirit 
 in books and on tables of stone, which time has 
 spared for our reading, and which record the 
 supremacy of mind over sense, of spirit over 
 matter. She had shown how the love of beauty 
 might be united with the love of truth, art with 
 science, how reason might be made imaginative. 
 She had given living history for dry chronicle, 
 oratory for rhetoric, sober imagination for Eastern 
 phantasy. This imperishable legacy she left to 
 mankind. She could now afford to give place to 
 an Eastern religion. Henceforth it is in the con- 
 fluence of the Hellenic stream of thought with the 
 waters that flow from Hebrew sources that the 
 main direction of the world's progress is to be 
 sought. The two tendencies summed up in the 
 world's Hebraism and Hellenism are often regarded 
 as opposing and irreconcilable forces ; and, indeed, 
 it is only in a few rarely gifted individuals that 
 
46 WHAT WE OWE TO GREECE 
 
 these principles have been perfectly harmonised. 
 Yet harmonised they can and must be. How to 
 do so is one of the problems of modern civilisa- 
 tion ; — how we are to unite the dominant Hebrew 
 idea of a divine law of righteousness and of a 
 supreme spiritual faculty with the Hellenic con- 
 ception of human energies, manifold and expansive, 
 each of which claims for itself unimpeded play ; 
 how life may gain unity without incurring the 
 reproach of onesidedness ; how, in a word, Religion 
 may be combined with Culture. 
 
THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 
 
 The prevailing conception of the State in our 
 own day is that of a vast mechanism for con- 
 trolling and regulating the action of Society. Tt 
 is a whole made up of government departments, 
 an army of officials, headed by the policeman and 
 the tax-collector, all set in motion by a supreme 
 legislature. To some minds it presents itself as 
 a hostile force, thwarting our natural impulses 
 and imposing checks upon individual freedom. 
 Yet it cannot be dispensed with altogether, for 
 without it Society would go to pieces. None the 
 less it is an evil. Its action must be restricted 
 to the utmost, — some would say limited to the 
 protection of life and property and to ensuring 
 the fulfilment of legal engagements. For these 
 purposes it must be armed with the authority of 
 the nation. Individuals surrender something, but 
 in return get more than they give up. Beyond this 
 
 47 
 
48 THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 
 
 point the well-intentioned but clumsy efforts of 
 the State to make men good and to make them 
 wise fare no better than those of the individual 
 busybody who in season and out of season con- 
 cerns himself with his neighbour's welfare, and 
 reforms him against his will. As for the higher 
 mental faculties they are withered and paralysed 
 under the shadow of State patronage. According 
 to this view the State is always meddling, always 
 encroaching ; it is trying to do everybody's work 
 arid does it all badly. Others, still regarding 
 the State as a great machinery, hold that the 
 machinery is only half utilised, that much benefi- 
 cent action is arrested simply because the State 
 refrains from touching the proper springs. Or, it 
 is said that the works are antiquated, and that 
 State action will only be efifectual when the 
 machinery of State is renewed. In either case 
 stress is laid on the ubiquitous and penetrating 
 influence of the State, on the vast forces at its dis- 
 posal, greater than any individuals or association 
 of individuals can ever wield. The State in this 
 view ought to undertake ampler duties — nothing 
 less than the general task of social regeneration. 
 To this end it must reorganise the whole industrial 
 and economic system, and marshal men in new 
 
THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 49 
 
 groups and combinations, assigning to each its 
 special function. It will minister to the souls as 
 well as to the bodies of its citizens. By salutary 
 restrictions it will withdraw the facilities for vice, 
 and by raising the standard of material prosperity 
 it will remove many existing temptations. 
 
 These are two extreme views between which 
 there are various tenable positions. They are 
 held by thinkers, they are in the minds of ordinary 
 men. But that which is common to all such views 
 is the conception of the State as distinct from 
 Society, taking upon itself the business of Society, 
 acting on its behalf, with more or less success or 
 bungling as the case may be. The State is a 
 thing external to the individual citizen, admin- 
 istering his affairs, claiming his obedience, pre- 
 scribing certain acts, forbidding others. Though 
 the citizen himself, under a system of popular 
 institutions, is the ultimate source of the authority 
 of the State, yet in large States he hardly recog- 
 nises as his own the delegated rule. He has 
 officials to act for him in all the details of govern- 
 ment. They hold, as it were, the seals of State. 
 The sovereign people abdicates office and only at 
 intervals resumes the reins of power, and reminds 
 itself of its rights by signing voting papers. At 
 
so THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 
 
 shorter intervals it may perhaps issue certain 
 intermediate orders — direct mandates to its repre- 
 sentatives, whom it is apt to relieve of the task 
 of thinking • for themselves. But all the hard 
 work, the everyday business of administration, it 
 leaves to be done by officials — either by permanent 
 officials, the silent men who do not talk but work, 
 or by elective Boards, much of whose work con- 
 sists in talking. The private citizen, who holds 
 no official position, almost forgets except at elec- 
 tion times that he has a share in governing as 
 well as in being governed. The call that occa- 
 sionally comes to him in this country to serve as 
 a juror is an unwelcome reminder that he is him- 
 self a vital part of the organisation of government. 
 The severance of the ordinary citizen from the 
 active business of the State, as distinct from the 
 function of talking or voting, is rendered almost 
 necessary- by the dimensions to which the modern 
 State has grown. From the City of the ancient 
 world it has expanded into the Nation ; it numbers 
 its millions where in old days there were thousands, 
 men who are connected together by links and 
 relations of ever-increasing complexity. In some 
 countries the detachment I speak of is less com- 
 plete than in others ; for local government, when 
 
THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 51 
 
 based on rational principles, can do something 
 towards restoring the unity of the body corporate. 
 But to the great majority of citizens the State is 
 an inherited system or organisation, an abstraction 
 that is outside themselves ; or else, when it acts 
 in its collective capacity and as an individual, it 
 comes to be identified with the Executive, that is, 
 with the Government of the day : in which case it 
 is to one half of the community no longer even 
 a harmless abstraction, but consists of a band 
 of political opponents whom the other party are 
 accustomed in their speech, if not in their hearts, 
 to regard as the enemies of the country. The 
 idea of the State suffers grievously from being 
 thought of, at the best, as a machinery of govern- 
 ment, at the worst, as a party organisation. \V'ith 
 such associations no emotion or living sentiment 
 can gather round it. The cause of Country is one 
 for which men will now, as of old, do great deeds 
 and sacrifice all. The interests of the State seem a 
 thing apart. There is no spell about the word. The 
 State, people say, is well able to take care of itself 
 All this forms a striking contrast with the idea 
 which, for a brief and fortunate moment in the 
 history of the world, prevailed in Greece. To the 
 common consciousness of Greece the State or the 
 
52 THE GREEK IDEA OP THE STATE 
 
 City was not an organisation but an organism, no 
 lifeless machine of government, no alien force im- 
 posing itself upon the citizen, but a living whole 
 which took up into itself all individual wills : not 
 impeding spontaneous energies or crushing indi- 
 vidual growth, but enriching and completing the 
 individualities which it embraced. Tt wa-s the 
 individual on his id eal side ; his true and spiritua l 
 self; the glorified expression and embodiment of 
 his noh lpj^t aifTjis and faculties : the higher unity 
 in whichhejBStget3.jy^^se£^ate-iB r oolfiah oolP ; 
 the entjiiri ng substance which outlived his transient 
 q^dsteng^y From it were derived and back into 
 it flowed all the currents of individual life. " The 
 !Man versus the State " was a phrase unknown ; 
 the Man was complete in the State ; apart from 
 it he was not only incomplete, he had no rational 
 existence. Only through the social organism 
 could each part, by adaptation to the others, 
 develop its inherent powers. To th e Gre eks 
 Society and the Sta te were one and indi\nsible. 
 Dinerent constitutions in various degrees approxi- 
 mated to this idea ; only under some form of 
 republic, however, could the full conception be 
 realised, for there only could each citizen be said 
 to be at once " ruler and ruled " (afr^eiv Kat, 
 
THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 53 
 
 dfj-Xea-dai) ; a member of Society, and at the same 
 time a member of the Government. At Athens a 
 citizen voted and spoke in the assembly and sat 
 on a jury on one and the same principle as that 
 on which he served in the army. It was no mere 
 right or privilegCj^Jjut a duty which the State 
 claimed from him in virtue of his citizenship. In 
 one case as in the other he might shirk the duty, 
 but if he did so he failed to fulfil his proper 
 function. Nor was it at Athens only that this 
 idea prevailed. In a fragment of Democritus, the 
 philosopher of Abdera, we find it said, that the 
 neglect of public business wins a man a bad name, 
 though he may not be guilty of thieving or dis- 
 honesty.' But the fact and the idea soon ceased 
 to correspond. In the fourth century B.C. the 
 sense of estrangement between Society and the 
 State had made itself felt, and the individual, 
 absorbed in separate interests, withdrew from the 
 service of the commonwealth. The Greek State 
 in its distinctive form and true idea was then 
 approaching its end. It was one of the fatal 
 signs and warnings of decay. The unity of Greek 
 life could not survive the growth of a conscious 
 individualism. 
 
 1 Dcmocr, I'r. 213, 
 
54 THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 
 
 We sometimes forget how memorable, how 
 original a creation the Greek State was — hardly 
 less striking in its originality than the creations of 
 Greece in art, philosophy, and literature, or than 
 her discoveries in the region of pure science. We 
 think less of it than it deserves because it had 
 not, and in the nature of things could not have, 
 the same stamp of permanence, of universality, 
 of final achievement, that belongs to those other 
 products of the Greek genius. But let us look 
 for a moment at the place it holds in universal 
 history. 
 
 In the pre-Grecian world the State and the 
 Individual had stood apart. There had been 
 despotism and there had been anarchy. Society 
 had oscillated between these two poles, the rule 
 of the one man in a world of slaves, and the 
 license of a multitude who could not be called 
 free because they obeyed only their own caprice. 
 The two principles had confronted one another 
 as irreconcilable opposites. Like any other ab- 
 stract principle when left to work itself out alone, 
 each of these ideas led to fanaticism. It seemed 
 as if Society must ever consume itself in inward 
 strife or drag out a torpid existence. Greece 
 offered the first solution of the antithesis of 
 
THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 55 
 
 Freedom and Necessity in the domain of politics, 
 a solution far from final, yet an immeasurable 
 advance upon all that had been done before : 
 for it introduced into politics a principle of 
 mediation, of rational compromise, which has 
 ever since been among the most potent instruments 
 of progress. 
 
 For the Greek state had in it that which made 
 it akin at once to a natural unity and to a volun- 
 tary union. It rested on definite and enduring 
 relations which were above the caprice of the 
 individual ; the citizen entered at birth into the 
 common heritage of race, language, and religion ; 
 he found about him a framework of customs and 
 institutions which he had not made and as little 
 could unmake. On the other hand, he felt no 
 revolt against these fixed conditions of his civic 
 existence. Within the sphere of City life he 
 moved as in his native element. He was aware 
 indeed of newly awakened faculties and of his own 
 independent existence in the community, but un- 
 conscious as yet of antagonism as well as differ- 
 ence. Each citizen was vitally one with all the 
 rest — one with the social organism and with his 
 whole environment With the awakening of this 
 conscious life, Reason cis a self-determining and 
 
S6 THE GREEK IDEA OF THE ST'ATE 
 
 organising force had entered into secular society. 
 Reason too had its conflicts; it worked in the 
 stormy atmosphere of political debate ; in the 
 .blind struggles of parties and factions which almost 
 rent the State in twain. Yet once heard it could 
 not be silenced. In free and fierce discussion it 
 matured its powers ; tyranny and anarchy gave 
 way before it ; and it was the triumph of Greece 
 not only that it produced immortal writers and 
 immortal artists, but that it gave to human society 
 a new starting-point and a new direction. Instead 
 of obedience to a despotic will, or the unending 
 conflict of individual passions, it established Reason 
 as the arbiter and guide of civic life — Reason 
 or X0709 in its twofold supremacy as Rational 
 Thought and Rational Speech. 
 
 This Reason, as the principle which inspired 
 the social organism, was embodied in Law. Law 
 to the Greeks is Reason made articulate, the 
 public conscience of the community finding for 
 itself expression. In its severe impartiality it is 
 free from human prejudice and passion ; it is vov<; 
 avev opi^eas ^ — " Reason without desire." It has 
 on the one hand an avajKaa-TiKr) Buvafiii},^ a com- 
 
 ' Arist. Pol. iii. 16. 1287 a 32. 
 " Arist. EiA. Nic. a. 10. iiSo a 21. 
 
THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 57 
 
 pelling power more constraining than a parent's 
 autiiority. Yet the constraint is a voluntary one, 
 it is the moral compulsion or avw^Kti which only 
 freemen can impose upon themselves. Hence in 
 Greek literature Law has another side than that 
 of an impersonal authority that claims allegiance. 
 It speaks in two voices, in a voice of stern com- 
 pulsion and in accents of reasonable persuasion. 
 To each citizen it addresses itself as his own alter 
 ego, his best, his higher self. In Plato's Crito the 
 Laws are made to present themselves in person to 
 Socfates in prison not only as the guardians of his 
 liberty but as his lifelong friends, his well-wishers, 
 his equals, with whom he had of his own free-will 
 entered into binding compact. Elsewhere ^ Plato 
 puts aside the thought of the Laws as " tyrants 
 and masters who command and threaten, and 
 after writing their decrees on walls go their 
 ways." Rather do they reason with men and seek 
 to win their intelligent consent, and only in the 
 last resort do they threaten pains and penalties. 
 In the same context the exhortation of the 
 Laws is compared to that of the poets and of 
 those writers " who in metre or out of metre 
 
 ^ Plat. Laws ix. 859 A, /tari Tifavvov koX SiairliTriv, Td^avra Kal 
 i.irecMiffaJ'Ta, ypdfayTa iv Tolxois ciiniK\dx9ai. 
 
S8 THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 
 
 have recorded their notes for the guidance of 
 life." 1 
 
 In entire accordance too with the sentiment 
 of Greece, Plato ^ recognises a region between 
 admonition and positive law over which the law- 
 giver has control. Part of the office of the law- 
 giver' was to be a moral teacher, a preacher of 
 righteousness ; to prescribe the acts that ought 
 to be done and also to reveal and to inspire 
 in men the true motives of action ; to create 
 a disposition no less than to enforce outward 
 conformity ; to work into the complex web of 
 national life all the influences that may ennoble 
 and enrich it. To the great lawgivers of the past 
 the Greeks looked back as other nations do to 
 the founders or reformers of their religion. They 
 were the inspired men who had been the salvation 
 of their States. Law as promulgated by them 
 was not a code of prohibitions nor was it limited 
 to the corrective justice of the law-courts. Its 
 range was wider than that of morality itself. 
 Institutions, in the eyes of the Greeks, were the 
 
 ' Plat. Laws ix. 858 D, 3<rot i.v^v fUrptai' koX fiera fUrpiav ttjv 
 avTun fis fwrjiiriv fu/i/Soi/Xiji' repl jSiou KaTiSeyro (nr/ypaxjiarm. 
 
 2 /*. vii. 822, 823. 
 
 ^ Here and in much of what follows I am under deep obligations 
 to W. L. Newman's Politics of Aristotle, vol. i. 
 
THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 59 
 
 creations of Law. Traditions and customs rested 
 00 its sanction. Ideals of conduct, types of 
 national character, were moulded by its influence. 
 The inspirations of heroism were traced to it as 
 their source. Law blended with religion, morality, 
 and public opinion, and by its subtle operation 
 subdued society to its will. It was invested with 
 spiritual efHcacy and power. The Law of the 
 Greeks was at once the Law and the Prophets of 
 the Hebrews. 
 
 It is easy here to see how much that was 
 really due to national history and character, to 
 religion, to the force of circumstances, to the silent 
 impact and pressure of society on the individual, 
 was put down to the direct action of Law or 
 of the lawgiver. And it is equally clear that the 
 conception of Law here indicated was not one 
 on which a great fabric of jurisprudence could be 
 reared. For that we must look elsewhere. But 
 it is a point of view which presents features of 
 unique interest. We have Law not as in Judaism, 
 a system of rigid rules, a bondage to external 
 ordinances, " touch not, taste not, handle not " ; 
 not as in Rome a code of abstract rights, resting 
 on a doctrine of legal personality ; but Law as the 
 organ and collective voice of freemen and fellow- 
 
6o THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 
 
 citizens, more sacred, more binding upon the 
 conscience than any external commands ; Law 
 as a divine element immanent in human nature. 
 Reason made animate and pleading with men 
 in accents of emotion. Well might the orators 
 declare that democracy in its true idea was 
 the reign of Law. And, indeed, Aristotle notes 
 that the worst fault of an extreme or untempered 
 democracy is its lawlessness, — ^that is, the reign of 
 arbitrary will, the n^ation of Hellenic freedom. 
 When each man does what is good in his own eyes, 
 reason is dethroned and passing impulse takes 
 its place. " But this is all wrong ; men should 
 not think it slavery to live according to the rule 
 of the constitution, for it is their salvation." * The 
 service of the laws, says Plato, is also the service 
 of the gods — a service in which to obey is nobler 
 than to rule.* 
 
 The first great advance, then, made by the 
 Greeks in determining the relations of the State 
 and the Individual consisted in the voluntar y sub- 
 ordination of the individual will to the will of 
 
 ' Arist. Pol. viii. (v.) 9. 1310 a 34, toOto S' iarl ^laSXoV oi -,ip 
 Set oteiFdcu SovKcltv elrtu ri jflfi) Tpbt tV woXiTeiar, i\Xi ciimiplar. 
 
 ' Plat. Laws vi 762 E, Kokkuri^feSai -xfii Tif KoKiit SovXcurcu 
 /iSWof tj T%> Ka\Cn ip^iu, rpHroy fUr toU vifiois, us -raimp tms Sedis 
 ohsia SovXilar, l-rara k.t.X. 
 
THE CREEK IDEA OP THE STATE 6i 
 
 the community. In this act of self-surrender the 
 citizen realised his true self, he became conscious of 
 spiritual freedom. When Demosthenes ^ passion- 
 ately calls upon the Athenians to "belong to them- 
 selves," " to become their own masters," " to assert 
 their freedom," he says not a different thing from 
 Aristotle, but the same thing as when Aristotle 
 declares ^ that " no citizen belongs to himself but 
 that all belong to the State." What Demosthenes 
 desires is an emancipation from selfish aims, from 
 flattering counsellors, an assertion of the true and 
 corporate self, as exhibited in an entire devotion 
 to the public good. Absolute self-sacrifice for the 
 interests of the State, personal service for the 
 country — this he meant by freedom. He would 
 restore the old ideal of Athenian character which 
 we read of in Thucydides : ' " Their bodies they 
 devote to their country, as though they belonged 
 to other men ; their true self is their mind which 
 is most truly their own when employed in her 
 service." 
 
 ' Dem. Phil, i. 7, ib,v {inuv auTwv idtX-qatyrc y(vi<f6ai. So 
 Olynth. ii. 30. 
 
 ^ Arist. Pol. V. (viii.) I. 1337 a 27, oiik XP^ no/nll^eiv airrbv airroS 
 Tti/a ricoi Tuv TroXiTwv, iWk irivrat ttj! irb\em, 
 
 ' Thucyd. i. 70, 6 (Jowett's Translation), in bi toU fiiv ail>imatv 
 iWoTpiorrdTOi! iirkp rrit irlAem xp&VTai,, tJ yvdjiiri Si oUeioTdTij is ri 
 Tpdaffetv ri, iiirip airijs. 
 
62 THE GREEK IDEA OF TBE STATE 
 
 The Politics of Aristotle more than any other 
 single book gives an orderly and comprehensive 
 notion of what the Greeks meant by the State. 
 There, as in the Ethics, Aristotle embodies for us 
 the common sense of Greece ; raised, however, as it 
 were, to a higher power, clarified and systematised 
 in passing through a master-mind. The picture of 
 the State as it ought to be is, indeed, far enough 
 removed in its details from the State as it was. 
 Yet Aristotle is faithful to the principles that 
 inspired Greek life. His ideal is not an arbitrary 
 creation, a work of fancy. It stands in much 
 closer relation to the reality than the Republic of 
 Plato ; for though he, like Plato, sees the need of 
 reconstruction for society, he does not break so 
 sharply with the past. He had profoundly studied 
 all existing political constitutions ; he had surveyed 
 Hellenic civilisation in all its phases. In the 
 Politics he gathers up the experience of the past ; 
 he takes account of all current conceptions and 
 actual institutions ; he recombines in a larger view 
 popular opinions and lifts them into a higher plane 
 of thought. 
 
 The State, then, as he describes it, is not an 
 association for the protection of rights and nothing 
 more. Such a view had been put forward by the 
 
THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 63 
 
 Sophist Lycophron/ and was afterwards held 
 by the Epicureans. It gained acceptance in the 
 decline of Greek life, and was itself a symptom 
 of the decline. It belonged to an age when the 
 individual, severed from the State, claimed for 
 himself prior rights, and looked to the State only as 
 a means of securing for himself peace of mind and 
 personal independence. Nor, again, does the State 
 exist for the increase of wealth, for the develop- 
 ment of trade, or for the extension of empire. 
 The State, according to Aristotle, is a union or 
 brotherhood of equal men, who are able and 
 purposed to rule and to be ruled ; not brought 
 together by force or fear, but animated by a single 
 aim — to live the noblest life of which men are 
 capable, in the unimpeded exercise of the highest 
 qualities, moral and intellectual. The State exists 
 not for the sake of " life," but of a " good life " — 
 (not Tov ^rjv but Tov ev ^fjv ei/e/ca)— which is the 
 end of man. Certain external means of life are 
 necessary and presupposed, for without them the 
 play of the faculties would be impeded. But the 
 conditions of life must not be confounded with the 
 end of life. Some persons by reason of age or 
 
 ' Po/it. iii. 9. 1280 b 10, j-i/ios trvvB-fiKri Kat, Kadawep (<pr] 
 ^vKiuppwv 6 aoipKTTifSj iyyvr]Ti}S dXXiJXois twi* dtKaiojv, 
 
64 THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 
 
 sex or race or disqualifying occupations were, 
 according to Aristotle, cut off from any true 
 participation in the life of the State. They could 
 not become organic parts of the community, but 
 were fitted only for lower and ministerial functions. 
 Those only were capable of membership who could 
 live for noble ends ; whose souls and bodies were 
 not by nature incomplete and inadequate to the 
 great demands that were to be made on them, 
 or marred by sordid or engrossing occupations. 
 Aristotle, in excluding from citizenship certain 
 classes other than slaves on the ground that their 
 employments were degrading, departs from the 
 accepted usages of Greece. He is, however, merely 
 exaggerating a feeling of contempt that was enter- 
 tained for manual and industrial labour almost 
 everywhere except, perhaps, at Athens. 
 
 In the broad lines of his teaching Aristotle, as 
 we have said, falls in with the educated opinion 
 and the traditions of Greece ; but these he deepens 
 and enlarges. The State, for him, has a spiritual 
 function. It does not exist for the satisfaction of 
 bodily and material wants. Such wants it must 
 supply, but its true aim lies beyond. It must 
 look to the higher and spiritual needs of society. 
 It must build up character and intellect. It must 
 
THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 65 
 
 content itself with no one-sided type. It must 
 unfold all the powers of the individual. It must 
 train up its citizens to the full stature of the 
 perfect man. It must promote not virtue alone 
 but virtuous action, virtue flowing over into a life of 
 moral and mental activity. XloXt? avSpa SiSdaKei 
 was a saying of Simonides. The City was the 
 teacher, the guide of life, the sovereign educator, 
 ine truth of this had been feit ana acted' On 
 in Greece. Each City stood ou t as a . person, a 
 moral agent. It had its own character (^do<;) and 
 individual stamp. That character it impressed* 
 upon its members. Manifold were the agencies 
 and influences by which it worked. It spoke to the 
 citizens through its laws and constitution,^ which 
 were the truest image of itself. It spoke, as at 
 Athens, through its art and architecture, in which 
 the service of the State and of religion was united. 
 It spoke through the poets, who at the great 
 public festivals were more than, private individuals. 
 They bore, in some sort, the commission of the 
 State ; and, when in the hearing of their fellow- 
 citizens they set forth their deepest thoughts upon 
 
 ^ Cp. Plato, E^. V. 321, ^(TTL y^p 5^ ti$ tpiavij tCiv iroXLTettJJV 
 ^KdffTrjs, Ka$axepel tivQ>v t^ifav, &Wr] /ih SrifioKparlas ftXA?) S' d^iyapxias 
 7} 8' aZ iwvapx.ia$. 
 
 F 
 
66 THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 
 
 the problems of life, they did their part towards 
 harmonising ancient pieties and sacred legend with 
 the moral sense of a more reflective age. 
 
 All this the State had done. But it might do 
 yet more. So at least thought both Plato and 
 Aristotle. It might directly take on itself the 
 spiritual leadership of society. Formerly men 
 had looked to Delphi to carry out this work. 
 It was no mere curiosity about the future that 
 impelled the Greeks to inquire of Apollo. The 
 questions which they addressed to the god con- 
 cerned not only the changing fortunes of indi- 
 viduals or nations but the ordinances of divine 
 law and the conduct of life. The purpose of the 
 Delphic religion was to bear testimony to the 
 eternal moral principles of which the gods were 
 guardians, and to bring men into harmony with 
 the divine will. As the god of purity, Apollo 
 demanded not only outward ceremonial but purity 
 of heart. As Mouo-a^eTij?, he was the god of art, 
 of science, and of poetry, and aspired to organise 
 the civic and national life. From the sanctuary 
 at Delphi rules went forth for the discipline of 
 states, for the shaping of law and custom, for the 
 planting of colonies on every shore to which Greek 
 seamen had penetrated. The influence of Delphi 
 
THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 67 
 
 was in no small measure akin to that of Hebrew 
 prophecy. The many-sided culture, artistic and 
 intellectual, which proceeded from Delphi had 
 indeed no counterpart among the Jews ; yet the 
 Hebrew prophet, one part of whose office was to 
 rehearse the history of Israel, to comment on the 
 disasters and deliverances of the nation and to 
 interpret past experience, exercised a function 
 not unlike that of Delphi. In each institution, 
 too, there was an assertion of the spirit over the 
 letter ; in each the written law received a new and 
 similar interpretation. " Clean hands and a pure 
 heart'' were required of all who would approach 
 the holy hill either of Zion or of Parnassus. The 
 conception of religion was transformed when it was 
 detached from merely ritual practices and made to 
 consist in the disposition of the mind and soul. 
 When- in Greek writers of the fourth century B.C. 
 we come across such expressions as this, — that 
 justice and goodness are the best of sacrifices, and 
 prevail with the gods more than a hecatomb of 
 victims,^ we hear the echo of the teaching of 
 Delphi. The idea is the same as was proclaimed 
 in the words of the prophet : " To what purpose 
 is the multitude of your sacrifices ? . . . Bring me 
 ' Isoc. NicocUs § 20. Cp. Plat. Laws iv. 716 D. 
 
68 THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 
 
 no more vain oblations. . . . Wash you, make you 
 clean j put away the e\-il of your doings from before 
 mine eyes ; cease to do evil ; learn to do well." 
 
 Delphi proved false to the trust that had been 
 committed to her. The desire of wealth and 
 power w^as her ruin. Enriched by offerings of 
 pilgrims, by fines and confiscations, by the levy 
 of tithes, she was drawn into the arena of political 
 conflict. Xor could she hold herself aloof from 
 party intrigues in the various stat^ which looked 
 to her for guidance It was not, howev^er, till the 
 Persian wars that she finally forfeited her place, 
 and renounced her right to represent Greek nation- 
 ality and the ideal sentiment of the people In 
 aspiring to secular and material p>ower she lost 
 her spiritual dominion. Her influence did not at 
 once die out It perpetuates itself in other forms 
 throughout Greek history and literature. We 
 meet it not only in the lyrics of Pindar, but in 
 the lives and works of the men who are most 
 Hellenic among the Hellenes — in the poetry of 
 Aeschylus and Sophocles, in the art of Phidias, in 
 the philosophy of Plato, in the lives of Socrates, 
 Epaminondas, Demosthenes, Callicratidas. But 
 the int^rity of Delphi itself was lost ; and in 
 the fourth century B.C the Greek world lacked a 
 
THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 69 
 
 religious centre, and craved for some authoritative 
 voice in conduct and belief. 
 
 Society stood in deep need of moral guidance 
 and regeneration. The foundations of right and 
 wrong, of public and private morality, had been 
 questioned. The states of Greece were cut in 
 two by faction. The members of a political 
 party were a sworn brotherhood — Aristotle pre- 
 serves for us one of the forms of the oligarchical 
 oath ^ — pledged not only to be loyal to one 
 another, but to do their opponents all the harm 
 of which they were capable. Where, then, was a 
 power which could restore unity and could rest 
 morality once more on a sure basis? All Greek 
 tradition pointed to the State. It alone seemed 
 capable of the task. Alone it could speak with 
 authority and had coercive force behind it. On 
 the State, accordingly, Plato and Aristotle devolve 
 many of the functions which were afterwards 
 peculiar to the Christian Church. To the ancient 
 world it never occurred that the State was " pro- 
 fane," nor would the distinction between Church 
 and State have been intelligible to the Greeks. 
 Religious worship and ritual were inwrought into 
 
 ' Arist. Pol. viii. (v.) g. 1310 a 9, koX ti? 5i\iui/ KaKivovs Iffo/uu 
 Kal pov\€6(roi 8 ri &y Ixu KUKbv. 
 
70 THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 
 
 the texture of their political and social life. The 
 Greek city \\as invested with a sacred character 
 from the outset ; it was the chosen home of pro- 
 tecting gods, the embodiment of the moral law, 
 the visible expression of those ideal interests which 
 were symbolised by the popular religion. Hence 
 it was no startling innovation to regard each 
 City as a spiritual centre for its own citizens, an 
 authoritative exponent in matters of conscience 
 and conduct. 
 
 But the State, as conceived by the philosophers, 
 while in one aspect it resembled a Church, was 
 also something more than a Church. On its 
 secular side statesmanship had to concern itself 
 with the outward means of livelihood, to regulate 
 the production and distribution of wealth ; to lay 
 down minute rules for the guidance of the indi- 
 vidual from the cradle to the grave ; to exercise 
 supreme control over all the practical arts, assign- 
 ing to each its due rank and place.^ It had to 
 prescribe what sciences should be admitted and 
 studied by different classes within the community. 
 Above all the complete culture and education of 
 
 the citizen must be undertaken by tlie State ; for 
 this, the highest of all civic interests, was under 
 
 • Arist. Eth. Nic. i. i. 1094 a 27 sqq. 
 
THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 71 
 
 existing social arrangements most defective. It 
 must no longer be left in private hands, as at 
 Athens. The training of the citizen thus becomes 
 the chief concern of the political philosopher. Severe 
 indeed was the preparation and long and arduous 
 the self-discipline enjoined upon those who were 
 to be rulers in the State ; and if few could hope 
 to attain to such perfection, those few were the 
 men whom nature had marked out as fitted to 
 bear rule. With Aristotle as with Plato the con- 
 struction of an ideal state merges in a scheme of 
 national education. 
 
 We may note in passing certain obvious 
 defects in the general view of the State which 
 we have been considering. The State is intended 
 to wield an unlimited sway for which it is unfitted. 
 Its control over the individual, extending to the 
 details of domestic life and to thought as well as 
 action, could not but defeat the purposes of culture 
 and free self-development which it was intended 
 to promote. The vexatious rules and restrictions 
 of the ideal commonwealths outnumber those of 
 the actual Greek States. These were already 
 numerous enough. The individual freedom en- 
 joyed at Athens and extolled by Pericles was 
 plainly an exception to the common usage of 
 
72 THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 
 
 Greece, and is so regarded in the Funeral Speech. 
 The word " freedom," it should be rennembered, 
 bore an ambiguous meaning. It denoted on the 
 one hand political independence — the exercise of 
 sovereign power by the State and of political 
 rights by the citizens. In this sense every Greek 
 citizen could claim it as his birthright Even the 
 Spartans could tell the Persian Hydames that he 
 had not, like them, tasted of freedom, and did not 
 know whether it was sweet or not.^ But the word 
 also denoted personal and social liberty — freedom 
 from the excessive restraints of law, the absence 
 of a tyrannous public opinion and of intolerance 
 between man and man. Pericles claims for Athens 
 " freedom " in this double sense. Bat freedom so 
 far as it implies the absence of legal interference 
 in the private concerns of life was but little known 
 except at Athens. Even where the individual 
 was not conscious of being subject to irksome 
 regulations and did not chafe under them, yet, 
 as we can now see, the State strained its preroga- 
 tive and exceeded the limits within which its 
 control could be beneficial. The State £is sketched 
 by Plato in the Republic and in the Laws and by 
 Aristotle in the Politics is modelled largelj- on the 
 
 ' Herod, vii. 135. 
 
THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 73 
 
 constitutions of Sparta and Crete, and exhibits 
 their defects in an extreme form. 
 
 Again, in these imaginary commonwealths as 
 in the real states of Greece, a whole class, or even 
 classes, of the community are excluded from civic 
 rights. While the idea had been deeply impressed 
 upon the mind of Greece that government is for 
 the good of the governed, and that the State 
 exists for the welfare of all the citizens and not of 
 some, yet the citizens themselves constituted an 
 exclusive and privileged order. In the actual 
 states the slave class existed in order that the 
 citizen body might be free to do its proper duties. 
 The slaves formed no vital part of the city ; they 
 were not sharers in its well-being ; they were 
 merely instruments or " living tools " which nature 
 had provided. Possessing only a rudimentary 
 reason — so argued the philosophers — and being 
 therefore incapable of acquiring more than a 
 fraction of virtue and happiness, they differed 
 from the freemen as the body differs from the 
 soul or the brute from the man. It was therefore 
 better for them to be servile than to be free. 
 Aristotle, as we have seen, places not only slaves 
 but artisans, labourers, shopkeepers, among the 
 excluded classes; for manual and mercantile 
 
74 THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 
 
 labour tended, he thought, to make the minds 
 of men unfree and their bodies degraded. He 
 altogether over - estimates the effect of social 
 condition and occupation upon character. He 
 does not remember his own admission that what 
 makes a pursuit noble or ignoble is not the thing 
 done, but the spirit and motive of the action. " I 
 have known," says Burke, " merchants with the 
 sentiments and abilities of great statesmen, and I 
 have seen persons in the rank of statesmen with 
 the conceptions and characters of pedlars." The 
 " noble life," however, which it is the aim of 
 the State to realise is restricted by Aristotle to 
 politics and philosophy, and, it would seem, to 
 certain forms of art. The purpose of the State 
 being, as he held, to develop the highest and most 
 complete life possible for man, he fixes his atten- 
 tion on this to the neglect of another end, on 
 which most modem reformers lay more stress — 
 that of developing in the mass of the people the 
 highest type of life of which they are capable. 
 We observe how Aristotle is here the child of his 
 age. The aristocratic sentiment, which never has 
 been stronger than in the ancient democracies, 
 colours all his thinking. 
 
 A certain tone of contempt for what is worthy 
 
THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 75 
 
 but commonplace, a certain exclusiveness of mind, 
 pervades Greek literature up to a late date. Un- 
 interesting and obscure goodness was lightly 
 esteemed by the Greeks. They looked to the 
 dignity, the inherent distinction and excellence of 
 a man's personality. The qualities they admired 
 were hardly to be attained without the advantages 
 of birth and leisure. Their virtues were those of 
 the free man, who is master of himself, lord of 
 circumstances, above sordid anxieties, who respects 
 himself and is respected by others. Amiel in his 
 Journal d'une Vie Intitiie, attempting to elucidate 
 the English word "gentleman," "the Shibboleth 
 of England," says : " Between gentlemen, courtesy, 
 equality, social proprieties ; below that level, 
 haughtiness, disdain, coldness, indifference. . . . 
 The politeness of a gentleman is not human and 
 general, but quite individual and personal." It 
 would be an injustice to the Greek to attribute to 
 him all the features of this so-called " gentleman," 
 yet we may see a family likeness between the two 
 types. The Greek ideal of the Kd\Jb'i Kaiya96<; 
 had in it a touch of aristocratic sentiment ; it was 
 well fitted for the favoured few, for the gifted, for 
 the noble, for the strong ; but it left out of account 
 the disinherited, the fallen, the feeble of the earth. 
 
76 l^HE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 
 
 Here the Greeks present to us the opposite side 
 of the picture to that which is presented by the 
 Jews. The Hebrew prophets, filled with the hope 
 of seeing a reign of universal justice established in 
 the world, are impatient of social inequalities ; 
 they speak of " the poor," " the oppressed," as 
 almost identical in sense with the pious and the 
 good. The Greek philosophers would intensify 
 existing inequalities. They are indeed far removed 
 from the stage of thought represented by Theognis, 
 with whom " the good " meant the nobles ; but 
 their ideal conception is still that of an aristocracy 
 — an aristocracy, however, of intellect not of birth. 
 We must not, of course, forget the glimpses 
 and intuitions of humanity which are revealed 
 in Greek, authors with increasing clearness. In 
 Homer already there is a reverence for the stranger 
 and the suppliant, a tenderness towards the weak, 
 a chivalrous honour which exacts less than its 
 rights — this and much more that is contained 
 in the untranslatable word alSco<;, in which the 
 moral sentiment of the heroic age finds its most 
 delicate utterance. Later there is the altar to Pity 
 ("EXeo?) at Athens ; the Attic ^iXavSproiria or 
 human kindliness — compassion for the oppressed, 
 generosity towards the vanquished, forgiveness of 
 
THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 77 
 
 injuries — which is the pride of the poets and' 
 orators. There is, again, in Aristotle a new and 
 almost modern feeling about the poor, and special 
 provisions are made for their welfare.^ But these 
 sentiments were very partjal in their scope ; they 
 did not exist towards men as such, but towards 
 special classes and individuals. Even when the 
 sympathy appears to be more broadly human, it 
 is not yet a reasoned principle of action, but rather 
 one of the instinctive virtues of a high-born race 
 which would not shame its lineage by anything 
 mean ; and like all instincts is liable to be over- 
 borne at short notice by some mastering and 
 competing passion. On the other hand, the Jews 
 of the Old Testament, starting though they did 
 from narrow tribal prejudices, acquired a more 
 universal sympathy. They had learned by suffer- 
 ing. They had been outcasts and oppressed. By 
 sharp discipline they had come to know the mean- 
 ing of patience, of self-abnegation, of faith in the 
 unseen : and hence by right of deeper insight into 
 the moral needs of man it has been their preroga- 
 tive to be for all succeeding ages the consolers 
 and interpreters of suffering humanity. They 
 
 ' Arist. Pol. vii. (vi.) 5. 1320 a 31 sqq. ; vi. (iv.) 13. 1297 b 6-12 ; 
 viii. (v.) 8. 1309 a 20-3. 
 
78 THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 
 
 approached more nearly than the Greeks to the 
 Christianity which places perfection not in dignity, 
 nor in personal distinction, but in love. 
 
 The insufficient care for individual freedom in 
 Aristotle, and the moral effacement of certain 
 classes of the community, may be traced back to 
 an imperfect conception of human personality. 
 \\'hile Aristotle attributed to the State a more 
 complete personality than it really possessed, he 
 did not grasp the depth and nieaning of the per- 
 sonality of the individual. Like the other Greeks 
 of his time he did not appreciate the independent 
 worth and dignity of all human beings. Of man 
 in the exercise of his sovereign faculty of pure 
 reason, man akin to the divine and entering well- 
 nigh on immortality through a life of speculative 
 activity, he speaks with a glow and with an elo- 
 quence that are rare in his pages.* But to the 
 life of morality without philosophy he assigns but 
 a second place ; differing indeed there from Plato, 
 who, holding that by moral virtue a man becomes 
 like to God, exhibits a deeper insight than Aris- 
 totle into the notion of personality. Those who 
 believe that the distinctive being of a man, his 
 inmost self, resides in his moral personality, and 
 ' Arist. Eth. Nie. x. 7. 1177 b 19 sqq. 
 
THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 79 
 
 that this is a common bond which unites all human 
 beings as such, and gives to each an equal and 
 independent worth, must feel how inadequate was 
 the conception of the Greeks. To them the idea 
 of man was realised in and through the State ; 
 the idea, that is, not of man as man, but of man 
 as a citizen, in his visible relations to the world, 
 relations which varied in each case and created 
 differences that almost effaced the unity of person- 
 ality. Only here and there does Aristotle rise to 
 the conception of man as such : ^ but the phrase 
 stands apart from his general thought ; in its con- 
 text it is meaningless and illogical, nor is it pushed 
 to its conclusions. Man tends to disappear in the 
 distinctions between husbands, wives, children, 
 slaves and masters. Stoicism led the way to the ^ 
 deeper view of human brotherhood which Chris- 
 tianity revealed. Not until man was rescued out 
 of the kingdom of nature and taken up into the 
 commonwealth of God and into personal relations 
 with the Divine Being, could he be more than 
 the member of a social organism, or an instrument 
 for achieving the ends of the State. Then only 
 did a universal morality become possible and the 
 idea of personality receive its full content. 
 > Arist. Eth. Nic. viii. 11. 1161 b 8. 
 
8o THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 
 
 Against these shortcomings we must set some 
 lessons of permanent value which the Greeks have 
 taught us, and which have not lost their meaning 
 for this age. We may still learn from Greek 
 thinkers that the moral and intellectual well-being 
 of the citizens ranks first among the ends of th e 
 State, and the wealth of nations second ; that 
 
 lame, empire, trade, material diilllfUrLl! till inUsf'be 
 siftuidiiiutLd Lu Llliij pdldliluunt end. A people 
 as^wm as an individual OUght to be possessed by 
 the disinterested love of what is noble, to koXov : 
 they ought to remember that there is an intrinsic 
 excellence in one type of life as compared with 
 another, and that the relative value of goods can- 
 not be measured by their immediate social utility — 
 a standard which is dependent on the guesswork 
 of short-sighted politicians. Further, that while 
 p we should aim at nothing less comprehensive than 
 the welfare of the whole people, we should not 
 lower the level of our aim by looking only to 
 the capacities of average humanity. The basis of 
 civilisation must i>e laid broad : the mass of the 
 people must receive the best culture of which they 
 are capable. But there is a higher elevation of 
 moral and intellectual achievement, of learning 
 and science and spiritual culture, which is the 
 
THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 8i 
 
 crown of national existence, to which all nations 
 that have been eminent in history have aspired, and 
 which each in its degree has attained. This lofty 
 and ideal perfection is not to be lost sight of even 
 by the legislator, who in this age is being driven 
 to concentrate all his efforts on raising the level 
 of the lowest, on bettering their material condi- 
 tion, on mitigating the worst forms of misery and 
 distress, and on removing the outward incentives 
 to crime. It is one of the weakest points in most 
 socialistic schemes that they narrow the horizon : 
 they take a low standard of human well-being ; 
 and while they would make bad men better, and 
 the squalid comfortable, and would bring hours of 
 leisure into overworked and joyless lives, and 
 would impart to every member of the community 
 the rudiments of learning, yet they provide no 
 satisfaction for the instinct of perfection : they 
 rest content with the inferior standard, and do not 
 care to develop the rich and many-sided manhood, 
 which the Greeks prized, not excessively, but only 
 too exclusively. To the Greeks as to Burke the 
 State is " a partnership in all science, in all art, 
 in every virtue, in all perfection.'' It is just this 
 partnership in all perfection that practical poli- 
 ticians put out of sight. Not that science, art. 
 
82 THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 
 
 literature, or philosophy can be created by the 
 direct action of the Legislature. But it makes no 
 little difference how the State, in its collective and 
 corporate character, behaves towards each of these ; 
 in what honour or dishonour it holds them. The 
 State may starve them with cold neglect, or it 
 may admit its obligations towards them grudgingly 
 and of necessity ; or again it may act on the con- 
 viction that the higher culture, the quickened 
 intellectual life of the community, is the concern 
 of the whole nation. 
 
 By the Greeks, again, we are reminded that 
 the State is an organic unity ; that it is not the 
 Government of the day and that it did not come 
 into befng with an electoral contest : that its 
 action is the action of the community, and the 
 laws which it makes are the expression of the 
 people's will and claim the obedience of all. And 
 as the State is not the same thing as a party or 
 combination of parties, still less is it an aggregate 
 of diverse and conflicting interests. In- our own 
 country in addition to the two great parties 
 within the State, which are divided by momentous 
 questions of public policy, there are at present 
 various sections, cliques, and coteries, jostling 
 and struggling tt^ether for representation in the 
 
THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 83 
 
 supreme Parliament. They are technically known 
 as "interests" — the landed interest, the manu- 
 facturing interest, the shipping interest, the labour 
 interest, the liquor interest — these and many 
 more besides ; sectional interests one and all of 
 them, which do not even rise to the dignity 
 of party, because they are identified with no 
 national policy or aims. Each is concerned with 
 itself. The State is set aside. If Parliament 
 should ever come to consist in the main of 
 delegates representing these several interests, the 
 wholeness, the soundness, the corporate unity of 
 the State would be gravely imperilled. 
 
 And lastly the example and teaching of Greece 
 recall to us that the State is not an abstraction, 
 not a mechanism of government ; it is the indi- 
 viduals who compose it ; the State is the People. 
 In ancient Athens it consisted of friends and 
 neighbours, citizens who all sat together in the 
 same assembly : with us it consists of vast groups 
 of unknown fellow-countrymen, who yet have a 
 common past and common hopes for the future. 
 The City-state has grown into a nation, but it 
 is as true now as in the days of Pericles that 
 the greatness of a State lies not in the multi- 
 tude of its inhabitants, not in its machinery. 
 
84 THE GREEK IDEA OF THE STATE 
 
 not in docks and arsenals, not even in its 
 institutions ; but in the great qualities of its 
 individual citizens, in their capacity, for high 
 and unselfish effort and their devotion to the 
 public good. 
 
SOPHOCLES^ 
 
 The appearance of the first volume of a complete 
 edition of Sophocles by Professor Jebb is an 
 event of interest, not only to classical students, 
 but to all who care for literature. No living 
 English scholar unites in himself so many of the 
 qualities which, for our generation, form the ideal 
 of classical scholarship. He has the passion for 
 beauty, the feeling for style and literary expres- 
 sion, the artistic enthusiasm of the Italian Renais- 
 sance. But he is moreover a laborious worker 
 over a wide field ; he has grasped the history of 
 the ideas and usages of the ancient world, and 
 presents his learning in forms of graceful and 
 finished composition. While the distinctive move- 
 
 ^ This article was originally published as a notice of the first 
 volume {Oedipus Tyrannus) of Professor Jebb's edition of Sophocles 
 — a work which has now taken its rank among the great Editions of 
 the Classics. Detailed criticism of detached passages is omitted in 
 this reprint, and the latter portion of the paper has been enlarged. 
 
 85 
 
86 SOPBOCLES 
 
 merit of our own day in the province of classical 
 criticism has been towards the union of the literary 
 with the scientific spirit, the latter has tended to 
 preponderate. The study of language and archae- 
 ology on the technical side seems at times to kill 
 the literary sense. Professor Jebb has been largely 
 affected by the scientific movement of the age ; 
 the growing influence upon him of the new critical 
 and comparative methods may be traced in his 
 successive writings. But the scientific influence 
 has strengthened, not impaired, his literary per-^ 
 ception by broadening the basis on which an 
 appreciative judgment can be formed, and by 
 adding clearness, completeness, and precision to 
 his mode of statement and exposition. 
 
 After excursions into various domains of classi- 
 cal literature and archaeology, he has returned to 
 Sophocles, the object of his earliest afiections, 
 with his brilliant powers enriched and invigorated 
 by these wider studies. He is more erudite, more 
 scientific, than before, but not less artistic. 
 
 This volume of Sophocles ought to appeal 
 to the educated public through the fine literary 
 criticism contained in the Introduction, and even 
 more, perhaps, through the prose translation which 
 accompanies the text. The translation, as Pro- 
 
SdFHdCLMS 8? 
 
 fessor Jebb explains in his. Preface, is intended 
 primarily to be judged " from the stand-point of 
 the commentator as an indispensable instrument 
 of lucid interpretation." But he adds : — 
 
 The second object which had been proposed to this 
 edition regards educated readers generally, not classical 
 students alone. It is my hope — whether a vain one or not 
 I hardly know — that the English version facing the Greek 
 text may induce some persons to read a play of Sophocles 
 as they would read a great poem of a modern poet, — with 
 no interposing nightmare of tvtttw as at Athens came 
 between Thackeray and his instinctive sense of what was 
 admirable in the nature and art around him, — but *ith free 
 exercise of the mind and taste, thinking only of the drama 
 itself, and of its qualities as such. Surely that is, above all 
 things, what is to be desired by us just now in regard to all 
 the worthiest literature of the world— that people should 
 know some part of it at first hand, not, merely through 
 manuals of literary history or magazine articles. 
 
 . . . Any one who had read thoroughly and intelli- 
 gently a single play such as the Oedipus Tyrannus would 
 have derived far more intellectual advantage from Greek 
 literature, and would comprehend far better what it has 
 signified in the spiritual history of mankind, than if he had 
 committed to memory the names, dates, and abridged 
 contents of a hundred Greek books ranging over half a 
 dozen centuries. 
 
 It would be impossible to quote the innumer- 
 able felicities of the prose translation, or adequately 
 to illustrate a quality which the Greeks call /u,e- 
 TpioTTj^ — the reserve, the temperate strength, the 
 
88 SOPHOCLES . 
 
 harmonious perfection of the whole. A translator 
 needs constantly to bear in mind the Greek proverb, 
 " The half is greater than the 'whole " — a proverb 
 whose truth has too often been forgotten by the 
 authors of the Revised Version of the New 
 Testament. Language must not be forced to go 
 beyond its own capacities. No one else, it may 
 be safely said, could have produced a translation 
 in which the claims of the letter and the spirit are 
 so finely reconciled. 
 
 The language of Sophocles may well strike 
 despair into the translator or commentator. It is 
 a mysterious union of popular ^ and literary idiom, 
 of learning and originality. Apparently simple, 
 it is full of subtle associations,^ and charged with 
 poetic memories of the past. Over and above its 
 obvious sense it has a meaning and emotion which 
 these memories and associations waken. It is a 
 language of delicate suggestion and allusiveness, 
 resembling in some measure the language of Virgil 
 and of Milton. It means more — nay, at times 
 something other — than it seems to say. Various 
 lights and colours play about the words,' which 
 
 1 For colloquial phrases see O. T. 336, 363, 971, 1008. 
 ^ E.g.yO, T. 161, "AprefUPfS, kuk\6€vt' &yopas 6p6vov eu/cX^a Odffffet 
 930, Travre'KTis Sdfmp. See the notes on both passages. 
 « E.g. 6,p$a\ii6s 0. T. 987. 
 
SOPHOCLES 89 
 
 defy strict analysis ; when we attempt to reduce 
 them to prosaic simplicity they elude our grasp. 
 Without doing violence to Attic idiom, Sophocles 
 freely handles familiar phrases, and puts a gentle 
 pressure upon common words to extract from 
 them a fresh significance.^ 
 
 It sometimes becomes a nice question whether 
 a word can, in some one or two passages, bear a 
 meaning quite different from its current accepta- 
 tion. It is doubtless the privilege of a poet to 
 force a word back along the line of its own 
 development in the direction of its etymology or 
 of primitive usage. One of the boldest experiments 
 of this kind is to be found in Tennyson's poem, 
 " Love and Duty," where these lines occur : — 
 
 Live — yet live — 
 Shall sharpest pathos blight us, knowing all 
 Life needs for life is possible to will — 
 Live happy. 
 
 " Pathos " is here used in its old Greek sense of 
 " suffering." The general tenor and context of 
 the poem, as well as special phrases, such as 
 " apathetic end," that precede, prepare us for this 
 meaning. It remains, however, an open question 
 
 ^ See notes on 0. T. 34, ha.i\ibvwv irupaXXaYats ; 420 and 1208, 
 \ili.r\v \ 728, viroaTpaipets ; 677, ?iros. 
 
90 SOPHOCLES 
 
 whether the experiment is not too venturous. 
 Now, some distinguished Greek scholars have 
 supposed that in Oed. Tyr. 44-45 : — 
 
 dis TOtcriv kfinrtlpQuri KoX ras ^v/ji,<f)Opa'i 
 fiocras opM jxaXifTTa tu>v PovX.iv/J,dTtiiy, 
 
 the word ^vfi^opd<;, in combination with rwv 
 ^ovKevfiaTcov, has, contrary to its recognised 
 usage, the meaning of comparisons (of counsels), 
 on the analogy of the corresponding verb ^vfj,<f)epei,v. 
 Professor Jebb rightly, as I think, decides against 
 this view, and supports his opinion with equal 
 learning and humour. But, it might be asked, is 
 such a departure from usage more violent than 
 Tennyson's " pathos " ? Yes, and for this reason, — 
 that in Tennyson the context is itself a sufficient 
 guide, and places the meaning beyond all doubt, 
 while in Sophocles the unfamiliar sense is at the 
 best highly ambiguous, and cdmes on us with a 
 shock of hardly pleasurable surprise. 
 
 Plutarch^ records a striking statement made 
 by Sophocles about himself, to the effect that, 
 after he had outgrown the pompous style of 
 Aeschylus {tov Aler'^vKov StaTrcTratp^o)? oiyKov), he 
 adopted a harsh and artificial manner (to •jrCKpov 
 
 ' Plut. De Prefect, in Virt. ch. vii. 
 
SOPHOCLES 91 
 
 KoX KaTare-x^vov), which he finally exchanged for 
 that style which " is best suited for ethical 
 portraiture." Now, his dramatic activity extended 
 over sixty-two years, during which time he wrote 
 one hundred and thirteen plays. His seven extant 
 tragedies belong, it would seem, to the third of the 
 periods above indicated and represent his mature 
 style, which is equally removed from turgid 
 grandeur and affected ingenuity ; it expresses 
 with unrivalled truth and delicacy ihe play of the 
 idealised human emotions. 
 
 It requires a highly trained capacity to detect 
 the niceties of the Sophoclean language, to note 
 the deflections from ordinary usage, and to interpret 
 the pregnant expressions of the poet without 
 petrifying them into rigid forms which cannot 
 contain them. Professor Jebb is gifted with a 
 sympathetic insight into Greek idiom and the 
 latent powers of the language. He has a remark- 
 able — one might say a unique — faculty of infusing 
 poetry into grammar, of leading his readers through 
 particles, moods, and tenses, vividly to realise the 
 dramatic situation and enter into the feelings of 
 the speaker. Under his guidance we seem not so 
 much to be engaged in a work of logical analysis 
 or skilful dissection as to be following a vital 
 
92 SOPHOCLES 
 
 process of growth and construction. We are 
 admitted to watch the inner movements of the 
 poet's thought and to see the motives which, in 
 all probability, determined the choice of this or 
 that word or phrase. The style of the tragic 
 dialogue in particular has never been so justly 
 appreciated or luminously interpreted as in this 
 edition. Between the language of the dialogue 
 and of the lyrical portions of a Greek play there 
 is an important distinction to be borne in mind. 
 In writing choral songs the dramatists had well- 
 known models to follow, and employed a style 
 that was prescribed by literary tradition. A new 
 problem had to be solved when they came to the 
 dialogue. Here they were entering upon new 
 paths, and had difficulties to overcome not unlike 
 those which were encountered by the first Greek 
 historians and orators, in whose hands an artistic 
 prose was shaped. 
 
 The dramatic poet, whose province it was to 
 compress into a brief compass the portrayal of 
 character in action, to depict the conflict between 
 individual wills, to delineate the successive moments 
 in the fortunes of the actors and the corresponding 
 feelings awakened in their minds, needed a vehicle 
 of literary expression which should convey reason- 
 
SOPHOCLES 93 
 
 ings terser and more compact, thought and emotion 
 more concentrated, than could be conveyed through 
 the epic or the lyrical style. Tragedy, moreover, 
 even before it became in the hands of Euripides 
 a poetical image of public debate in the law-courts 
 and assemblies, could not but catch the tone and 
 accent of civic life. Professor Jebb tells us in his 
 Preface, that in the course of preparing his com- 
 mentaries on the Electra and the Ajax, he " had 
 been led to see more clearly the intimate relation 
 which in certain respects exists between Greek 
 tragic dialogue and Greek rhetorical prose, and to 
 feel the desire of studying more closely the whole 
 process by which Greek oratory had been de- 
 veloped." Thus it was " as a preparation in ®ne 
 department for the task of editing Sophocles that 
 the special studies embodied in the Attic Orators 
 had originally been undertaken." 
 
 These and kindred studies have supplied him 
 with a wealth of material hithertd unused in inter- 
 preting the tragic dialogue, while his powers of 
 lucid expression enable us to follow with ease the 
 reconstructive effort of the commentator, and with 
 him to trace the process by which the colloquial 
 idiom is moulded anew as it passes through the 
 imagination of the poet. None but a scholar who 
 
94 SOPHOCLES 
 
 is imbued with Greek modes of thinking and 
 feeling, and penetrated by the Greek spirit, could 
 attempt such a task without falling into fanciful 
 speculations. But not the least of Professor Jebb's 
 virtues as a commentator is his perfect sanity and 
 sobriety of judgrnent. 
 
 In discovering double meanings and construc- 
 tions in the Sophoclean language much tact and 
 caution are necessary. Conington, in his com- 
 mentary on Virgil, had got hold of a true idea 
 — -one which may be applied to Sophocles as well 
 as to Virgil — in seeking to disentangle the various 
 associations and reminiscences which are woven 
 into the texture of the Virgilian phrases, and to 
 shew the blended colours which meet in a single 
 word. But even he is sometimes led to press the 
 principle to a point at which the different mean- 
 ings are not different only but mutually incon- 
 sistent. Take, for instance, his comment on 
 Aeneid i. 748-9 : — 
 
 Nee non et vario nocteni sermorie trahebat 
 Infelix Dido. 
 
 Here he attempts to find in the phrase, trahere 
 noctem, the double sense of "to speed the night 
 along," and " to protract the night." " Perhaps," 
 
SOPHOCLES 95 
 
 he says, " Virgil intended to blend the two notions 
 in spite of their apparent inconsistency." The- 
 inconsistency, surely, is real as well as apparent. 
 
 Now the extension of a similar principle to 
 Greek syntax requires to be very carefully guarded 
 and explained, if we would avoid a confusion 
 which in this case is so far worse than in the iirst, 
 as it affects not a particular phrase only, but the 
 whole thought of a sentence. No one, indeed, 
 will deny that the Greek language admits of what 
 the grammarians call " mixed " constructions, in 
 which two modes of expressing the same thought 
 have, as it were, met and contended, and neither 
 has completely prevailed over the other. But 
 commentators are too ready to shirk rather than 
 to solve a grammatical difficulty by referring 
 in vague terms to this principle ; nay, there are 
 notes in which moods and cases are subjected to 
 a double grammatical government in such a way 
 as to imply that contradictory ideas were together 
 present in the mind of the writer.- It seems to be 
 assumed that a " mixed construction " naturally 
 produces a confused thought. But the assumption 
 is by no means true. A thought may be conveyed 
 through forms which from the grammatical point 
 of view are imperfectly fused, and yet the thought 
 
96 SOPHOCLES 
 
 itself, which results from this imperfect fusion, need 
 not be blurred or indistinct, much less self-contra- 
 dictory. A clear thought often struggles for utter- 
 ance, and fails to express itself in strict and logical 
 form, not because the speaker does not know what 
 he means, but because he is over-eager to say it. 
 
 That Greek modes of speech are too subtle 
 and flexible to be bound by the rules of gram- 
 marians, that they break loose from such rigorous 
 prescriptions and follow the ways of the living 
 voice and the spontaneous movements of thought, 
 is a fact which the coinmentator has often forgotten, 
 and qf which he needs again and again to be re- 
 minded. But some who have done good service 
 in stating and illustrating this principle, have occa- 
 sionally presented it in such a light as to suggest 
 that in the days of Thucydides and Sophocles 
 language was in so fluid a state and grammar so 
 unfixed, that words might mean almost anything, 
 and that clear thinking is as little to be looked 
 for from the Periclean age as accurate writing. 
 That Thucydides was writing in an ante-gram- 
 matical age is true only in the sense that he was 
 writing in an age previous to grammarians. But 
 there was grammar before there were grammarians, 
 and a grammar, moreover, far more precise than 
 
SOPUOCLES 97 
 
 was observed by the Elizabethan dramatists, 
 who cannot be accepted as affording a perfect 
 parallel to the Greek tragedians. The grammar of 
 Sophocles is not, indeed, as strict and systematic 
 as that of the Homeric poems ; still it is part of a 
 developed Attic idiom, whose normal usages had 
 been firmly traced, in which moods, voices, tenses 
 are in no way interchangeable, whose very irregular- 
 ities were due rather to the desire for clearness and 
 naturalness, than to confused modes of thought. 
 
 In Thucydides, and even in Sophocles, there 
 are many experiments in words and in construc- 
 tion, many tentative and some hazardous forms 
 of expression, which Aristophanes or Demosthenes 
 would have rejected, but nothing which would 
 warrant us in placing either author above the 
 genius and idiom of the language. At what 
 point neglect of grammar becomes violation of 
 idiom cannot be stated in general terms. Special 
 instances must be taken and scrutinised each on 
 its own merits, and it is one of the marked 
 features of Professor Jebb's edition that, in estimat- 
 ing the value of various readings or in justifying 
 a phrase or construction, he faces the problem 
 in each case, and lets us see how " irregular " 
 
 grammar may yet be perfectly idiomatic. The 
 
 H 
 
98 SOPHOCLES 
 
 elasticity of the Greek language is not license or 
 caprice. It arises from the desire to add life and 
 variety, to adjust new ideas to existing but in- 
 adequate forms of speech, to arrange the thought 
 in a framework supplied by nature rather than by 
 the laws of grammatical sequence and symmetry, 
 so that the general form in which a sentence is 
 cast influences the syntactical structure of the 
 parts. Attraction, false analogy, sudden changes 
 of construction — these and many other things 
 are admitted by the Greeks to a degree that is 
 unknown in Latin writers. The difficulty of the 
 commentator lies not so much in stating the prin- 
 ciple truly as in applying it correctly ; and it is 
 mainly by the application that the merits of gram- 
 matical criticism must be tested. I have heard the 
 late Mr. R. Shilleto, towards the end of his life, 
 say that the longer he lived the more reluctant 
 he was to declare anything impossible in Greek. 
 Such a saying would satisfy the most advanced 
 believers in grammatical laxity. But when he 
 came to grapple with the difficulties of the text, 
 and to discuss whether some given expression was 
 admissible in Greek, no one could more trium- 
 phantly vindicate the genius and the true idiom 
 of the language. 
 
SOPHOCLES 99 
 
 One of the first questions that meets a com- 
 mentator is, how far is it his duty to give alter- 
 native explanations. The natural bent of those 
 whom we may call ol ^eoz/re? — those who treat the 
 Attic Greek of the middle of the fifth century 
 B.C. as in a perfectly fluid and unstable condition 
 — is to multiply such alternatives without giving 
 any, or, at least, a sufficient reason for preferring 
 one alternative to another. There are, doubtless, 
 not a few passages where it would require a very 
 audacious person to pronounce confidently between 
 rival interpretations. Most scholars can recall 
 lines over which they have hesitated long, when 
 the balance seems so nicely poised that it depends 
 on some accident of the moment — a passing mood 
 or touch from without — to determine which way 
 it shall decline. But this is true of poetic diction, 
 not in Greek only, but in all languages, including 
 our own. If, however, in every third or fourth 
 line of a poem we are reduced to such honest 
 doubts and waverings, we must infer either that 
 the author writes badly, or that we have a very 
 imperfect acquaintance with the language. It is 
 to be hoped that our knowledge of Greek and 
 Latin is not really so much a matter of guess-work 
 as the numerous alternatives offered to us by 
 
lOo SOPHOCLES 
 
 classical editors would imply. Sometimes it may 
 happen that we have in our own mind a strong 
 conviction in favour of one definite interpretation, 
 but that the impression is incommunicable ; it 
 rests on a sense or instinct which cannot be justi- 
 fied by argument. In such cases the final verdict 
 must be left to the few who are acknowledged to 
 possess the surest insight and the finest tact in 
 handling language. There is no other court of 
 appeal. 
 
 But putting aside such cases, there are, as a 
 rule, valid grounds on which a decision may be 
 based. It is almost as serious an error for a com- 
 mentator to place side by side several interpreta- 
 tions without furnishing the materials for arriving 
 at a rational conclusion, as it would be for a writer 
 on etymology to give us an open choice between 
 a guess of Plato's and a scientific result of com- 
 parative philology. Many current interpretations 
 are demonstrably wrong, and the only sufficient 
 excuse for mentioning them at all is that they are 
 still current, and therefore need refutation. But 
 the mere fact that some great name is associated 
 with an absurd interpretation is hardly a plea for 
 reviving it, unless it happens to raise a point of 
 interest in the history of literary criticism. Still 
 
SOPHOCLES loi 
 
 less ought the stray fancies of obscurer critics to 
 be recorded in the notes among a series of other 
 options equally ingenious, but no less certainly 
 wrong. In nine cases out of ten the author doubt- 
 less had a single meaning, and it is the business 
 of one who interprets him to tell us what he con- 
 ceives that meaning to have been, and to show the 
 grounds of his decision. The practice observed by 
 Professor Jebb in this edition has, on the whole, 
 been to mention various interpretations only where 
 there is room for serious and legitimate doubt 
 as to the meaning of the poet. He ignores 
 such alternatives as are not commended either 
 by their intrinsic merit or by a weight of 
 authority which cannot be disregarded. Yet 
 his notes, while generally avoiding direct re- 
 futation, incidentally sweep aside a large mass 
 of rubbish which had found its way into many 
 editions. 
 
 This is not the place to discuss in detail the 
 subject of conjectural emendations. No one, 
 however, who has studied the history of textual 
 criticism, will be inclined to slight the gains that 
 scholarship has won through the labours in this 
 department, not only of past generations of scholars, 
 but m our own day of such men as Cobet (in spite 
 
102 SOPHOCLES 
 
 of rashness) and Madvig. Those who judge 
 Madvig only by his Adversaria Critica, where 
 admirable theory is united to some very dubious 
 practice, and who think of him as the author of a 
 few brilliant and of many superfluous emendations 
 of Greek prose, not to mention certain tasteless 
 and even unmetrical verse emendations, ought to 
 study him at his best in the De Finibus of Cicero 
 and in his emendations of Livy, whose pages have 
 been illuminated under his touch. In passing, it 
 may be observed that Latin prose authors, from 
 one point of view, afford the best field for the 
 exercise of an emendator's faculty, owing to the 
 very rigour and precision of Latin prose idiom. 
 But, after all, the limits within which such a second- 
 sight as Bentley claimed for himself — " a certain 
 divining tact and inspiration " — can profitably be 
 employed, are singularly narrow. Many sanguine 
 hopes would be abated if we did but reflect what 
 a small percentage of conjectures have borne the 
 test of time and received the stamp of scientific 
 certitude. 
 
 Of all authors Sophocles is one of the most 
 perilous for a critic to tamper with : — 
 
 His style (says Professor Jebb, p. Iviii) is not 
 seldom analogous to that of Virgil in this respect, that. 
 
SOPHOCLES 103 
 
 when his instinct felt a phrase to be truly and finely ex- 
 pressive he left the logical analysis of it to the discretion 
 of grammarians then unborn. I might instance vvv watri 
 \aipiii {O. T. 596). Such a skill may easily provoke the 
 heavy hand of prosaic correction ; and, if it requires sym- 
 pathy to interpret and defend it, it also requires, when it 
 has once been marred, a very tender and very temperate 
 touch in any attempt to restore it. 
 
 Nothing could be better said ; and the caution 
 was never more needed than to-day, when Greek 
 texts are being not emended but re-written. 
 Scholarship at this moment has as much to fear 
 from erudite absurdities as from almost any other 
 cause. The worst of it is that the figments of 
 emendators claim admission in the name of 
 common sense, which frequently serves only as a 
 mask for ignorance of Greek idiom. Ingenuity 
 without insight, encyclopaedic study without judg- 
 ment or perception, these are the things that 
 corrupt the classics and bring learning itself into 
 disrepute. Professor Jebb has been faithful to the 
 canons he himself has laid down about emenda- 
 tion. He deals in conjecture only where the 
 reading of the MSS. is confessedly hopeless. His 
 own emendations in the Oedipus Tyrannus are 
 fourteen in number, of which he admits nine into 
 the text. Most of these are highly plausible 
 
I04 SOPHOCLES 
 
 and two of them attain as nearly as can be to 
 certainty.^ 
 
 It is not possible here to convey any idea 
 of the interest of the commentary itself — of the 
 sagacity and discrimination with which the exact 
 force of words and phrases^ and the connexion 
 of thought are seized and elucidated. Those who 
 study the book will find it to be, in the best sense 
 of the word, original, — not by startling conjecture 
 and paradox, but in power of delicate insight and 
 interpretation, in a masterly handling of difficulties, 
 and in the apprehension of each part and every 
 detail in its bearing on the whole. 
 
 When we pass from verbal criticism to the 
 substance of this play, we find ourselves confronted 
 with a great moral question — How are suffering 
 
 ' The first and most striking occurs in line 1218, where the MSS. 
 have Sipofuu yip in ■wep'uOOui iax^w (w. II. irepiaSa, ix^uv) ix 
 aTofiATuv. Professor Jebb's brilliant restoration is dt/po/uu yip 
 Harep UXcftov xiuiv ix ittoiiA.tuv, " I wail as one who pours a dirge 
 from his lips." The second of snch corrections is in 1280, where 
 the simple change of Koxd. to Kard make perfect sense of the passage. 
 
 ^ See, for instance, the notes on 35 (J^iKvaas SaatUnr), 227 
 (vT^eKetf), 313 (ISaai ylasiM.,. 354 (S^tKivrtea^ pvf"-), 628 {dpKTior), 
 674 (^v/uiv Trep&arp], 709 (lULrTuirp exoy Tixmji), 790 {KpoiKpAvi) \iyu)v), 
 846 (oloiuvot), 978 TTpofoia,, 997 {ji Kbpa/Bot . . . irtpKetro), 1077 
 (fiovKidtfuu), 1483 rpoiiii'iiaar). The delicate use of the particles 
 is vividly interpreted in the notes to this edition 'e.^. 105, 342, 822, 
 852, 1030). 
 
SOPBOCLES los 
 
 and guilt related according to the \"iewof Sophocles? 
 We have in this play an eminent example of a 
 man, not indeed perfect, yet noble and of good 
 intentions, who is led on by a train of events that 
 baffled human foresight into unconscious crimes 
 and overwhelming calamity. Is it that the gods 
 take a wanton pleasure in smiting down, age after 
 age, a mighty house like that of the Labdacidae ? 
 Or is there between the deeds and fortunes of 
 Oedipus an inward and moral connexion such 
 that his sufferings are a pimishment for defects of 
 character, great as the disproportion maj- seem to 
 be between the penalty and the fault ? Or, again, 
 is there some other explanation, consonant with 
 Greek feeling and with what we know of the 
 religious temper of Sophocles ? 
 
 There was, no doubt, a popular idea that the 
 gods were jealous of man, in whom they saw a 
 restless and dangerous rival They watched his 
 prc^ess, they resented his achievements, and 
 delighted to overthrow him unawares. Not the 
 impious spirits only who grasped at divine privi- 
 l^es incurred their hostility. They were envious 
 even of the j>erfect happiness of man and wife. 
 Penelope, when she has made proof of Odysseus 
 and kno.vs him again for her lord, exclaims, " It is 
 
io6 SOPHOCLES 
 
 the gods that gave us trouble, the gods who were 
 jealous that we should abide together and have 
 joy of our youth and come to the threshold of old 
 age." ^ The benefactors of mankind are also 
 among their victims ; for in the triumphs of 
 civilising genius they saw an encroachment upon 
 their own rights. Kings and potentates at the 
 height of their greatness stood most in peril of 
 attack from these jealous powers, and at such 
 moments it was their wisdom to appease the gods 
 with the best thing they had. Man was per- 
 mitted to enjoy a certain limited measure of 
 prosperity ; but he must learn to know his place. 
 The distinction must not be effaced between the 
 divine and the human nature. 
 
 In the Homeric poems there are as yet but few 
 traces of the divine Jealousy. The idea gathered 
 strength during the period- of the Tyrannies ; 
 mainly, as it would seem, owing to the impressive 
 catastrophes, the warning examples, of that age. 
 Herodotus, more than any other Greek author, 
 reflects the features of the primitive belief. One 
 view under which he exhibits the gods is that of 
 privileged despots who resent all eminence in 
 others, and who take a malignant delight in level- 
 
 ' Odyss. xxiii. 210-12. 
 
SOPHOCLES 107 
 
 ling down human greatness to a safe mediocrity.' 
 It is the view expressed by Aesop, who, when 
 asked what was Zeus engaged in, answered, " In 
 humbhng the exalted and in exalting the humble.""" 
 Yet a righteous purpose is not unseldom seen to 
 govern the divine dealings. The guilty are pun- 
 ished even if the innocent share their doom ; the 
 working of moral motives modifies the capricious 
 action of the Olympian powers. Between these two 
 aspects of the government of the world Herodotus 
 wavers. On the whole he is able to discern a 
 righteous plan in the ordering of events. But the 
 popular creed held its ground long and tenaciously. 
 How persistent it was may be inferred from the 
 protests of Plato,^ of Aristotle,* — who seldom 
 meddles with such subjects, — and of Plutarch." 
 The daemonic force which appeared to be at work 
 in shaping human destiny, and which was per- 
 sonified as divine Jealousy (4>5oj/o?), always remains 
 below the surface of Greek history ; this power 
 
 ' Herod, i. 32 ; iii. 40 ; vii. 10 ; vii. 46. Cp. Thucyd. vii. 77. 4. 
 
 ^ Diog. Laert. i. 3, ra ftkv iipTJXa. ra-^eivGiv, to. 5e Ta-rava I'-^a't'. 
 
 ' Phaedr. 247 A, ipSivm yap Ifti Seiov x^P°v urraTai. 
 
 * J/g^, i. 2. 983 a 2, dX\' oiTe to 6eTov ^dovepbv ^fS^x^^at etvou, 
 dXXd Kol Kara ttji/ irapoifiiav ToXXd yei'dovraL doiSoi, oihe k.t.\. 
 
 ' Xon fosse suaviier, etc., ch. 22, i.ya.9i% yap iartv (sc. o fleos), 
 aya&i^ 5k trepl ovSevbi iyylyverai tpdovos. 
 
io8 SOPHOCLES 
 
 came to be recognised as an independent deity, 
 and received embodiment in art. Even Pindar, 
 who cast off so many of the grosser elements of 
 the received religion, is not able to rid him- 
 self of this belief In celebrating his victorious 
 athletes he is apprehensive lest such high praise 
 may bring down the envy of the immortals. 
 Visions rise before him of the great ones of the 
 earth who had mounted too high and were 
 suddenly struck low. He checks himself in his 
 course ; he utters a counsel of humility or a pious 
 prayer that envy may be averted. 
 
 It was an incomparable service that Aeschylus 
 rendered in attempting to correct and enlighten 
 this primitive belief He shared the sentiment 
 which saw in every great reverse of fortune a 
 judicial act ; but the sentence, as he read it, was 
 not pronounced by jealous or capricious powers, 
 but by a supreme and moral governor of the 
 universe. In the course of events and in all 
 human destinies he traced the righteous and over- 
 ruling hand of Zeus, " the Almighty," " King of 
 Kings," " who rewards all men according to their 
 works." Everywhere and in all cases there is 
 an inner and necessary connexion between men's 
 actions and their outward fortunes. Not only in 
 
SOPHOCLES 109 
 
 the vicissitudes of nations and families, but also 
 in the history of individuals, the same law of moral 
 retribution holds good. Each man fares accord- 
 ing to his deserving ; even the individual life, 
 viewed in its happiness and misery, is long enough 
 to justify the ways of God to man. In Aeschylus 
 Nemesis or divine Justice displaces the divine 
 Jealousy. The notion of rightness or justness is 
 never absent from the word. In the drama of 
 India the wrath of the gods is called down by the 
 trifling omission of a religious formula. In the 
 Greek drama Nemesis is the penalty of wrong- 
 doing. It punishes, above all, that Insolence or 
 i;/3/3t9 which has its root in want of reverence and 
 want of self-knowledge, which is the expression of 
 a self-centred will recognising no power outside 
 itself, and knowing no law but its own impulses. 
 Nemesis is not a caprice. 
 
 This Insolence in the Greek tragedy is the 
 deepest source of moral evil. It is the spirit of 
 blind self-reliance which does not respect eternal 
 ordinances, which seeks to overpass the bounds 
 set for mortality and ignores the conditions of 
 existence. It is opposed to both atSm? and 
 aco^poavvT]. In the sphere of religion it is mani- 
 fested not only in the irreverent deed, but in the 
 
no . . SOPHOCLES 
 
 presumptuous word or thought — in a pride that 
 is untempered by the sense of human frailty. In 
 the sphere of human relations it shows itself in 
 the arrogance of the oriental monarch, in the 
 shout of triumph over the fallen foe, in the con- 
 tempt of the suppliant, in the disregard of others' 
 rights and feelings. The Nemesis that overtakes 
 it is the retribution that follows upon sin. Nothing 
 can be more false than to confound the Nemesis 
 of Greek tragedy with the Jealousy of the gods 
 as popularly conceived, or to find the distinctive 
 difference between the classical and the modern 
 drama in the transition from the sway of jealous 
 gods to the idea of moral retribution. The tragic 
 Nemesis of the Greeks rests not on a mere feeling of 
 artistic measure or proportion, but on the convic- 
 tion of an eternal law of conduct whose violation 
 brings punishment. The motto of the Aeschylean 
 drama is, " The guilty suffers " (SpdaavTi m-aOelv) ; 
 crime it is that brings disaster and final ruin. 
 
 If some tragedies of Aeschylus seem at first 
 sight to rest under a sombre fatalism or to be 
 presided over by the vigilance of jealous gods, a 
 closer study will show that here too events are not 
 guided by blind or arbitrary forces, but are the 
 outcome of character and- subject to moral laws. 
 
SOPHOCLES III 
 
 In the Agamemnon, for example, the shadow of 
 doom throws itself forward from the first ; the 
 atmosphere is charged with sinister presentiments, 
 even in the midst of victory. The keynote of 
 suspicion and mystery is struck by the watchman. 
 Each successive song of the Chorus either calls 
 up some old and dark reminiscence, or hints at 
 some new foreboding. Throughout, there runs 
 the sense of crime committed that must needs be 
 expiated. The Chorus — here clearly the mouth- 
 piece of the poet — expressly dissents from the old 
 belief that mere prosperity produces calamity (v. 
 750). The guilt that Agamemnon had incurred 
 in slaying Iphigeneia, is visited on him now in the 
 hour of his triumph when he is flushed with pride 
 and insolence. At such a time Nemesis is most 
 to be dreaded, not because the gods are jealous, but 
 because men are then apt to become reckless. 
 
 Other popular beliefs were in like manner newly 
 interpreted by Aeschylus. The curse of a father 
 was thought to have an almost magical efficacy 
 and to carry with it a certainty of fulfilment. 
 Originally, perhaps, it was associated with the 
 exercise of certain judicial powers by the parent. 
 In any case it is as old as Homer.^ It is the 
 
 ' Iliad vn. 453, 566; Odyss. ii. 135. 
 
112 SOPHOCLES 
 
 Greek parallel to the patriarchal blessing of the 
 Hebrews. The latter idea was unfamiliar to 
 Greek thought, though Plato ^ tentatively suggests 
 that, if the imprecation of a father is divinely 
 ratified, his prayers for blessing may well have 
 in them a similar virtue. The operation of the 
 curse, as exhibited both in Aeschylus and in 
 Sophocles, is part of a moral law. It is no 
 arbitrary sentence of doom. Once it has gone 
 forth it is irrevocable, but it is not pronounced 
 except over those who are already hardened 
 offenders. On them it invokes not suffering 
 merely but fresh guilt. It is, as it were, a 
 solemn excommunication. Morally, it is based 
 on the conviction that there are some sins, such 
 as filial impiety, which leave no place for repent- 
 ance. The imprecation uttered by Oedipus upon 
 his sons in the Oedipus Coloneus is so terrible that 
 modern imitators of Sophocles prefer to make 
 Oedipus relent. But the Greek Oedipus is implac- 
 able. He speaks not merely as the aggrieved 
 father, but as the representative of outraged 
 justice, the spokesman of the Erinys ; unlike Lear, 
 whose imprecation on Goneril, in its refinement 
 of cruelty, betrays a mind maddened by the sense 
 
 ' Laws xi. 931 C, 
 
SOPHOCLES 113 
 
 of a personal wrong. The victims of the curse in 
 Aeschylus employ the language of fatalism. They 
 throw themselves with a recklessness half of 
 triumph, half of despair, into fulfilling the prophecy 
 of evil. The curse has gone forth ; let it work ; 
 they will swim with wind and stream : 
 
 eKii, TO irpS,yiJ.a Kapr iirwirepxci- 0e6s, 
 iT(o Kar ovpov KVfia Kwkdtoi) \a)(bv 
 $01/30) iTTiryrjOiv irav Tb Aatov yer/os.^ 
 
 Such is the tone of Eteocles in the Thebans. Yet 
 it is plain that though Eteocles speaks as a fatalist, 
 he acts as a free man. 
 
 The problem of fate and free-will presented 
 itself again, and in a more complex form, in the 
 received doctrine of an hereditary curse. Legend 
 told of families in which, owing to some ancestral 
 crime, the taint of guilt was transmitted in the 
 blood, and generation after generation was visited 
 by the anger of the gods. " If the criminals 
 escape," writes Solon,^ " and the doom of the gods 
 overtakes them not yet— soon or late the doom 
 comes : the guiltless children or descendants pay 
 the forfeit." The idea had its origin in primitive 
 
 1 Theh. 689-91. 
 ^ Solon xiii. 29-32 (Bergk). 
 
114 SOPHOCLES 
 
 rimes when the solidarity of tlie family was 
 strongly felt. The individual as a moral being 
 was hardly kept distinct from the community to 
 which he belonged. If one member of the com- 
 munity committed a crime all his family paid the 
 penaltj-, either as fellow-sufferers with him or as 
 suffering vicariously on his behalf. The guilt as 
 well as the punishment was supposed to be cor- 
 porate. Hence arose tlie idea of a curse bequeathed 
 through successive generations, entailing on pos- 
 terity not suffering merely but sin. The hold 
 that this doctrine had over the popular conscious- 
 ness, and its influence on practical politics, is 
 attested by repeated incidents in the history of 
 the Alcmaeonidae, who in the person of Mega- 
 cles had incurred the pollution of a sacrilegious 
 murder. 
 
 The question of corporate guilt and of long- 
 delayed punishment was one which troubled the 
 conscience of Greece down to a late period of her 
 history. Euripides, so Plutarch says,^ boldly 
 accused the gods of injustice in visiting the sins 
 of the parents upon the children (rn Twr TeKovrtov 
 a-^taXfiaTa ei? tow? eyy6i'ov<; rpewovra^y It was 
 
 1 Plut. £>e Sir. Num. Vitid. ch. 12 ; cp. Eur. Hippel. S3 1-33, 
 1378-83, Fr. 83 ^X.uick). 
 
SOPHOCLES 115 
 
 in his manner to make a seasoned protest against 
 the moral inconsistencies which he discovered in 
 the popular theology. In the argument addressed 
 by Tyndareus to Menelaus ' he denounces the 
 primitive law of vengeance, which gave religious 
 sanction to the deed of Orestes. Blood calls for 
 blood ; each crime becomes a new link in a series 
 of guilty acts ; where can an end be found ? In 
 a similar spirit he appears to have dealt with the 
 kindred doctrine here under consideration. Prose 
 writers, too, other than the philosophers, show 
 their dissatisfaction with this tenet of the popular 
 theology. Isocrates ^ praises the superior piety of 
 the Egyptians, who held that the penalty of each 
 misdeed is exacted at the moment, and not put 
 off to a later generation. In Plutarch's tract 
 De Sera 'Numinis Vindida the same [)roblem is 
 discussed on various sides. Some of the diffi- 
 culties are met that are inherent in the proverb, 
 " The mills of the gods grind slow, but they grind 
 small " (oi/re demv ciXeovcn fivXot, aXiouai Se \e7rrd). 
 Plutarch himself piously supports the prevalent 
 belief in the curse in a house. Sometimes, he 
 argues (ch. xv.-xvi. cp. ch. xxi.), it is a city, some- 
 times a race, on which the wrath of the god 
 ' Eur. Orest. 491-525. ^ Isocr. Busiris, xi. 25. 
 
ii6 SOPHOCLES 
 
 descends.^ In either case the principle of justice 
 is the same. A city is a kind of living organism, 
 it has a continuous existence, a unity, a personality 
 not unlike that of the individual. It is morally 
 responsible for its past A race, too, has a like 
 continuity of its own ; it preserves certain dominant 
 characteristics, birthmarks of the family, which, if 
 vicious, need a corrective discipline as often as they 
 reappear in successive generations. The analogy, 
 however imperfect, is interesting and worth noting, 
 though it does not go far to vindicate the view 
 that is upheld. 
 
 The personal conviction of Aeschylus as 
 to this problem is to be gathered from the 
 dramatic presentation of the facts, not from the 
 arguments of rival disputants. In one vital 
 particular he modifies the popular belief. Xot 
 actual guilt, but the tendency to guilt is in- 
 herited. A man is master of his own fate ; he 
 may foster the tendency, or he vaax resist it. An 
 act of will is necessary to wake the curse into 
 life. The chain of crime may at any point be 
 
 ' Similarlr Pansanias gives examples of pnnishment of civic guilt 
 being postponed for several generations : e.g. i. 36. 3 ; iv. 17. 3 ; 
 vii 15. 3. See an interesting article on " Hebrew and Greek Ideas 
 of Providence and Retribution," by C. G. Montefiore in i^iie Jc-jsish 
 Quarterly Review for July 1893. 
 
SOPHOCLES 117 
 
 broken, though the poet rather exhibits, for the 
 most part, the natural continuity of guilt ; that as 
 crime engenders crime in the individual heart, so 
 in a house the guilt of the fathers tends to lead 
 the children into new guilt and to extend itself 
 over a whole race. There is a striking resemblance 
 between the language in which Aeschylus and 
 George Eliot describe the self-productive energy 
 of evil. In the words of Aeschylus^: "The im- 
 pious deed leaves after it a larger progeny, all in 
 the likeness of the parent stock." In the more 
 elaborated phrase of George Eliot: " Our deeds are 
 like children that are born to us ; they live and act 
 apart from our will: nay, children may be strangled, 
 but deeds never ; they have an indestructible life 
 both in and out of our consciousness." 
 
 Still Aeschylus never allows human freedom to 
 be obliterated, even in the members of a tainted 
 race. By an initial act of man's free-will the 
 latent guilt is evoked. In this he departs from 
 the popular theology and saves morality. He 
 handles those myths which deal with the domestic 
 curse in much the same spirit as he treats the 
 doctrine of divine Infatuation. The popular form 
 of that doctrine is expressed, for instance, by 
 
 ' Again. 758-60. 
 
ii8 SOPHOCLES 
 
 Theognis/ — that a man of good intentions is often 
 misled by some supernatural power into grievous 
 transgressions, so that evil appears to him good 
 and good evil. Aeschylus, too, recognises in 
 certain forms of mental blindness a divine influ- 
 ence. There is a malady of the mind (i/oo-o? 
 ^pevMv) a heaven-sent hurt (deo^Xd^eia), which 
 drives the sinner to destruction. This infatuation 
 or Ate is a clouding both of heart and of intellect; 
 it is also both the penalty and the parent of crime. 
 But only when a man has wilfully set his face 
 towards evil, when, like Xerxes in the Persae, or 
 Ajax in the play of Sophocles, he has striven to 
 rise above human limits, or like Creon in the 
 Antigone has been guilty of obdurate impiety, is a 
 moral darkening inflicted on him in judicial anger. 
 Here Aeschylus and Sophocles agree. As we 
 read in the Old Testament that " the Lord 
 hardened Pharaoh's heart," so in Aeschylus, " when 
 a man is hasting to his ruin the god helps him on." ^ 
 It is the dark converse of " God helps those who 
 help themselves." " With wisdom," says Sophocles, 
 
 ' Theogn. 402-406. 
 
 ^ Pers. 742, dXV &Ta.v inreiS-ri tls airbs, ^u Seis (JvviirTeTaL. Cp. 
 Aesch. Fr. 386 (Nauck) ipiXei Si ti? Kd/xpovn amweiSeiv Oeds : and 
 294, dirirris SiKalat oiiK diroffraTeX Beds. See also Lycurg. Itt Leocr. 
 § 9i> 92. 
 
SOPHOCLES 119 
 
 " hath some one given forth the famous saying, 
 that evil seems good soon or late to him whose 
 mind the god draws to mischief" ^ 
 
 The doctrine of an inherited tendency towards 
 guilt in a house reminds us, on one side, of the 
 doctrine of original sin as the consequence of 
 Adam's sin ; and, on another, of modern theories 
 of inherited qualities. If neither of these can be 
 called fatalism, equally inapplicable is the word 
 to the teaching of the Greek poets. 
 
 Much misconception has prevailed as to the 
 place of Fate in the Greek drama. We are apt 
 to confuse the meaning of the Greek word Moira, 
 of which " Destiny " is in general the nearest 
 equivalent, by associations derived from later con- 
 troversies about free-will. Viewed etymologically 
 its primary idea is that of distribution ; and its 
 usage suggests not so much that which is pre- 
 destined, as that which is appointed as part of the 
 moral order of the universe ; and in this sense we 
 find the corresponding adjective /idpo-j/tos applied 
 even to the marriage tie as ordained between man 
 and wife.^ There is nothing in the normal use of 
 the word to give prominence to the thought that 
 the details of the individual life are mapped out 
 
 1 Antig. 621-24 (J ebb's trans.). - Aesch. Eum. 217. 
 
I20 SOPBOCLES 
 
 according to a predetermined plan and sequence. 
 Already in Homer it has a twofold usage. On 
 the one hand it is u:hat is decreed — a poetic ex- 
 pression for that fiindamental order of things which 
 later prose writers would call ^uo-ts. On the other 
 hand, it is the power that regulates the couree o: 
 human aSairs, allotting to all their proper place. 
 This power is supreme over gods as well as men, 
 though in more than one instance Zeus thinks of 
 attempting to defeat it in the interests of some 
 favourite. But as the stream of Greek thought 
 ran clearer such discord between the ruling powers 
 of the universe became an offence. In the Pro- 
 nutJuus, indeed, of Aeschylus there is still a con- 
 flict between Zeus and Necessity — Necessity as 
 guided by " the triple Moirai and the mindful 
 Erinyes"* — ^and so long as it lasts Zeus cannot 
 be at one with Justice. But the Zeus of the 
 Pronutheus is not the great Omnipotent, the 
 highest impersonation of godhead. At the time 
 at which the dramatic action is laid he is still the 
 god of a passing epoch, when the turmoil of con- 
 tending dynasties was hardly subdued, and might 
 was the only right His will comes into collision 
 with an inscrutable power against which he car. not 
 • Pnm. 5i6t 
 
SOPHOCLES 121 
 
 prevail. Elsewhere in Aeschylus the course of 
 events is under the ordered and developed rule of 
 Zeus. The decrees of Destiny are in Aeschylus, 
 as they already were in Pindar,^ identified with 
 his will. A perfect harmony has been established. 
 " That which is destined will surely be accom- 
 plished ; the great purposes of Zeus may not be 
 transgressed." ^ But the more abstract conception 
 of Moira was not superseded : it was the sum of 
 those mysterious forces which limit human life 
 and act on it from outside. In obedience to a 
 Greek instinct the poets generally attribute to the 
 Olympian gods the happy events of life, while 
 they ascribe misfortune to the more impersonal 
 and darker power, Moira. 
 
 In all this, however, the will of man is not, as 
 we are sometimes told, paralysed by Destiny, by 
 an overhanging doom which " does not leave him 
 even an illusion of liberty " (Mazzini). Man com- 
 bats his destiny ; if he falls, he does so after 
 exhibiting an almost Titanic energy of will. How 
 different this is from the dramas of genuine fatalism ! 
 
 ^ Find. Nem. iv. 6l, to fibpaiiwv ALdOef Treirpajfi^vov ^Kipepev. 
 
 ^ Aesch. Suppl. 1047 ; cp. Eurn. 1045, Zeis 6 TtavbiTTa^ oiha 
 Moipd re (TvyKo-Ti^a. Choeph. 306, dXX' Siifi.i'^iXa.i. Moipai, t^Mev 
 T-jSe reXevTav. Pausanias mentions Moipay^Tiis as an epithet of 
 Zeus (v. 15 ; viii. 37, etc.). 
 
122 SOPHOCLES 
 
 In the dramas of India the actors -in no sense 
 rely on their own efforts ; their virtue is passive 
 resignation and self-effacement : it is for the gods 
 to cut the knots of the tragedy. In the Greek 
 drama the power of an overruling Destiny is no 
 more subversive of liberty in the case of men than 
 the similar power in Homer is of the liberty of 
 the gods. They are both free, men and gods, but 
 free within certain limits. Outside this circle of 
 freedom there are great unknown forces which 
 hem in man's life and assail it. The more these 
 powers of outward circumstance are magnified, the 
 more impressive is the assertion of human free- 
 will in the struggle against them. This is just 
 what we find in Aeschylus. He is haunted by 
 the feeling of the strange forces which play upon 
 man from without ; of the tendencies which per- 
 petuate themselves in the blood and link tc^ether 
 the generations as if they were a living whole. 
 All the framework in which life was set belonged 
 to a supernatural order, and such facts were 
 together classed as Destiny. It is the element of 
 mystery and the sense of the supernatural that 
 has made Aeschylus sometimes appear more fatal- 
 istic than the other Greek poets. The religious 
 view pervades his tragedies ; he is a theologian as 
 
SOPHOCLES 123 
 
 much as he Ls an artist But his craaias 50 far 
 from being fatalistic are in truth from end to end 
 a vindicatio" ci human ireedor::. 
 
 Returning now to our main point we notice an 
 important distinction between suffering for another 
 and bein^ punished for another. The first is a 
 natural and physical process, a fact proved bj'- ex- 
 perience: The second implies a judicial act — one 
 which, when ascribed to the Deit}-, is an unauthor- 
 ised inference from, or interpretation of, a fact 
 Punishment impiies guilt, and the noticm o:' an 
 innocent man being punished for the gi;iit\- is a 
 ~. :ra. contradiction. The innocent man may and 
 does inner for the guilty ; that he should be pun- 
 ished for the guilty is inconceivable, for guilt and 
 with it moral condemnation are intransferable. 
 To speak, therefore, of Vicarious Sufcrir.r fcas 
 nothing in it to shock morality : J 'icariius Punish- 
 7)i£r,t (if the full meaning of the idea is realised^ is 
 immoraL The tragedians show a conscicusness of 
 this distinction. The popular view was that guilt 
 was inherited, — that is, that the children are pun- 
 ished for their fathers' sins. The view of Ae= th^lus 
 — and of Sophocles also, so far as he touches the 
 problem on this side — ^r* as that a tendency t:~. arcs 
 guOt is inherited, but this tendencj- does not 
 
124 SOPHOCLES 
 
 annihilate man's free-will. If, therefore, the chil- 
 dren are punished, they are punished for their own 
 sins. But Sophocles saw the further truth, that 
 innocent children may suffer for their fathers' sins. 
 The purification of this special doctrine of the 
 popular religion, which was effected in Greece by 
 the poets, was effected among the Jews by the 
 prophets. The phrase, " visiting the sins of the 
 fathers upon the children," was 9pen to a double 
 interpretation, — either that the children were 
 punished judicially for their fathers' sins, or that 
 the children suffered in the course of nature for 
 their fathers' sins. The Jews for a long time 
 interpreted the words of the second command- 
 ment in the first sense, just as the Greeks so 
 interpreted the idea of a curse in the house. But 
 Ezekiel (ch. xviii.), in clearer tones even than the 
 Greek poets, rejected the first interpretation, and 
 freed the notion of moral responsibility from all 
 ties of blood relationship. " What mean ye, that 
 ye use this proverb, The fathers have eaten sour 
 grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge ? 
 . . . The soul that sinneth it shall die. The 
 son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, 
 neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the 
 son.'' The same truth had occurred early to the 
 
SOPHOCLES 125 
 
 mind of India. In the Ramayana these striking 
 words occur : " A father, a mother, a son, whether 
 in this world or the next, eats only the fruit of 
 his own works ; a father is not recompensed or 
 punished for his son, neither a son for his father. 
 Each of these by his own actions gives birth to 
 good or evil." 
 
 The doctrine, then, of the hereditary curse, as 
 it is exhibited in the Greek poets, is not one of 
 fatalism. Remembering the distinction between 
 Vicarious Suffering, which is a natural process, 
 and Vicarious Punishment, which is a penal 
 sentence, we observe that the second of these ideas, 
 which alone is fatalistic and immoral, is nowhere 
 to be found, — not in Sophocles any more than in 
 Aeschylus. It was part of the popular creed of 
 Greece which was discarded by the tragedians. 
 
 So long as divine justice was believed to 
 assert itself in the earthly life of the individual, 
 it was natural that moral character should be 
 judged by outward happiness, and that guilt and 
 suffering should be inseparably associated. But 
 there comes a time in the history of every people 
 when the old theory of life, that the good always 
 prosper and the bad are punished, has to yield 
 before the stress of facts. Sophocles is the first 
 
126 SOPHOCLES 
 
 of the Greeks who has clearly realised that 
 suffering is not always penal, that it has other 
 functions to discharge in the divine economy. 
 The suffering of innocent children for the sins of 
 the fathers, which Sophocles touches lightly, is 
 comprised under the wider law of Jiuman suffer- 
 ing, in interpreting which he has made a great 
 step in advance upon Aeschylus. He has pene- 
 trated into many aspects and meanings of suffer- 
 ing which were hitherto undiscerned. He stands 
 midway between Aeschylus, who sees in it nothing 
 but the working of retributive justice, and the 
 sceptical theory of the succeeding age, that un- 
 merited suffering is due to carelessness on the 
 part of the gods. Having seized the central truth 
 of the sufferings of the righteous — god - sent 
 visitations, Qeiai, Tv-^ai, not the penalties of sin — 
 he was able to accept many of the popular 
 legends almost as they stood, and to breathe into 
 them a moral meaning. It is not that there is in 
 him, as some have thought^ an incipient severance 
 between morality and religion ; that he has 
 receded from the higher ground occupied by 
 Aeschylus and lapsed into popular superstition. 
 Aeschylus, for whom suffering was penal in inten- 
 tion, found in the legends a more intractable 
 
SOPHOCLES 127 
 
 material ; he was often obliged to remould and 
 transform where Sophocles had merely to interpret 
 anew. Of the primitive elements which Sophocles 
 retains, those only can be held still to savour of 
 popular superstition which are outside the action 
 of the drama and among the supposed ante- 
 cedents of the plot. These extraneous parts he 
 is not always at pains to bring under the laws 
 either of morality or of probability. 
 
 Undeserved suffering, while it is exhibited in 
 Sophocles under various lights, always appears as 
 part of the permitted evil which is a condition of 
 a just and harmoniously ordered universe. It is 
 foreseen in the counsels of the gods. It may,^ as 
 in the Antigone, serve to vindicate the higher 
 laws by which the moral government of the world 
 is maintained ; or, as in the Philoctetes and Tra- 
 chiniae, to advance a preordained and divine 
 purpose ; or, as in the PJtilocietes and Oedipus 
 Coloneits, to educate character. Sophocles deepens 
 the meaning of the Greek proverb, " Man learns 
 by suffering" (jraOrifiaTa fiaOrjixara). He raises 
 it from a prudential or a moral maxim into 
 a religious mystery. He anticipates the faith of 
 
 1 See Mr. E. Abbott's "Essay on Sophocles" in Hellcnica 
 (Rivingtons, 1880), pp. 58, 59. 
 
128 SOPHOCLES 
 
 Plato/ that when a man is beloved of the gods, 
 even poverty, sickness, and other sufferings can 
 turn out only for his good. The Oedipus Coloneus 
 affords the most perfect instance of the man 
 whom adversity has sorely tried, and on whom it 
 has had not indeed a softening, but a chastening 
 and enlightening influence. Though this play was 
 probably composed at a considerably later date 
 than the Oedipus Tyrannus, and though each play 
 is dramatically complete in itself, yet if we would 
 learn the maturest thought of Sophocles upon the 
 whole theme, we must study the Oedipus Tyrannus 
 in the light of the sequel. Oedipus, it is true, is 
 not a perfect character ; he has flaws of temper 
 and judgment ; but not in these must we seek the 
 explanation of his history. The poet indicates 
 clearly that his calamities are to be traced to the 
 inherent feebleness and short-sightedness of man, 
 the obverse side of which is the divine foreknow- 
 ledge ; that his suffe;;jngs are in truth unmerited, 
 and for that very reason have no power to subdue 
 the soul. Oedipus has, of his own free-will, com- 
 mitted deeds which would be the most heinous 
 of crimes had they been done with knowledge. 
 Popular sentiment would have ascribed them 
 1 Rep. A. 613 A. 
 
SOPHOCLES 129 
 
 to a divine Infatuation, which though inflicted 
 arbitrarily and not as a judicial sentence, yet was 
 supposed to leave the agent responsible for what 
 he did. 
 
 Here, as in other plays, Sophocles fixes our 
 attention on the difference between crime and 
 involuntary error. The old belief of the Greeks, 
 as of the Jews, was that an outward act could in 
 itself constitute a crime ; the guilt did not depend 
 on the knowledge or intention of the agent. If 
 pollution was incurred, some ritual expiation was 
 necessary to wipe out the stain. Accidental 
 homicide needed such a cleansing rite no less 
 than voluntary murder. Even the lifeless instru- 
 ments of a crime, stones or other weapons, had 
 to pass through a purificatjory process. Sophocles 
 in the Oedipus Coloneus distinguishes between the 
 inward and the outward quality of an act, between 
 moral and ceremonial purity. In harmony with 
 the religion of Apollo,^ he discovers that the heart 
 may be pure even where the hands have not been 
 clean. As it is expressed in a fragment of his 
 own : " The unwitting sin makes no man bad." ^ 
 In the eye of religion Oedipus, in the Oedipus 
 
 ' See p. 67. 
 '^ Soph. Fr. 599 (Nauck), i,Kwv d' afiapriiv of rit iivdpthiruv KaKbs. 
 
 K 
 
130 SOPHOCLES 
 
 Coloneus, is still a guilty man. The breach of the 
 divine law leaves a stain, though the offender 
 may have been the unconscious agent of a higher 
 power. But whatever the ritual defilement, there 
 is here moral innocence, and Oedipus himself 
 asserts it. We hardly recognise him now as the 
 man from whom we parted in the Oedipus Tyrannus 
 in the first transport of horror and remorse. His 
 old fiery temper is indeed still ready to blaze 
 forth. But suffering has wrought on him far 
 otherwise than on Lear, whose weak and passion- 
 ate nature it unhinged, and with whom the 
 thought that he himself was mainly to blame 
 embittered his anger and turned grief into 
 despair. Oedipus has disencumbered himself of 
 a past which is not truly part of himself. In the 
 school of suffering his inborn nobleness of char- 
 acter has come out. The long years have taught 
 him resignation.^ In spite of troubled memories 
 he is at peace with himself and reconciled to 
 heaven. He has read the facts of his past life 
 in another light. He has pondered the ancient 
 oracles of Apollo, which predicted to him at once 
 his doom and his final rest. His inward eye has 
 
 • 0. C. 7, aripyeiv ykp oi iriBai. fie x<i XP^""^ ^vviiv \ naKpis dt- 
 SiffKei. Cp. Soph. Fr. 595 (Nauck), ttiSW' in KaKoiai. Ovfibs e6jir)dels ip^. 
 
SOPHOCLES 131 
 
 been purged, and with newly won spiritual insight 
 he thinks of himself as a man set apart by the 
 gods for their own mysterious purposes. He 
 bears himself with the calm and dignity of one 
 who knows that he is obeying their express 
 summons and has a high destiny to fulfil. The 
 unconscious sin is expiated ; and he who was the 
 victim of divine anger, the accursed thing that 
 polluted the city, is now the vehicle of blessing 
 to the land that receives him. A sufferer not a 
 sinner, restored to the favour of the gods, he finds 
 in that favour and in the honours that await him, 
 an ample recompense for all he has endured — 
 
 Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail. 
 Or knock the breast ; no weakness, no contempt, 
 Dispraise or blame ; nothing but well and fair. 
 And what may quiet us in a death so noble. 
 
 Both Aeschylus and Sophocles attained to the 
 conception of a righteous order of the world under 
 the sovereign rule of Zeus. Sophocles had not, 
 indeed, the speculative insight of Aeschylus, nor 
 did he grapple so strenuously with the deepest 
 problems of existence. Yet he did not yield 
 the ground won by Aeschylus, or renounce the 
 moral gains that had been bequeathed by him. 
 In one religious idea, as we have seen — in his 
 
132 SOPHOCLES 
 
 interpretation of human suffering — he even ad- 
 vanced beyond his predecessor. Aeschylus be- 
 lieved in an unseen and guiding Power,, that 
 dispenses rewards and punishments to individuals 
 and communities, on principles of unerring justice. 
 In Sophocles the divine righteousness asserts it- 
 self not in the award of happiness or misery to 
 the individual, but in the providential wisdom 
 which assigns to each individual his place and 
 function in a universal moral order. Unmerited 
 suffering here receives at least a partial ex- 
 planation. 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 We are commonly inclined to think of the Greeks 
 as a people, and the only people, who for a brief 
 space in the history of mankind looked on the 
 universe with a clear and untroubled spirit ; who 
 in the freshness of their powers, and with a finely 
 gifted nature, in which mind and body, heart and 
 intellect, reason and imagination perfectly con- 
 spired together, seized life in its wholeness, and 
 drew from it the full measure of rational delight 
 which it is capable of affording. The world of 
 the unseen, though very near to them, did not 
 oppress their imagination. Their gods were not 
 unknown and dimly felt forces, dwelling in forests, 
 or in solitary places. Through the race of demi- 
 gods the people traced back their lineage to the 
 Immortals, who mingled in the open ways of the 
 city, in the streets and market-places, and joined 
 in their feasts and graced their solemn meetings. 
 133 
 
134 THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 The companions of their sports, the partners of 
 their revels, these gods accepted the homage of 
 dance and song. They were members of the 
 same family, elder brothers, who inspired a grave 
 reverence, but no servile fear. 
 
 On another side, the Greek, combining the 
 gaiety, the insatiable curiosity of the child with 
 the keen intellect of the grown man, went forth 
 fearlessly to explore each undiscovered region 
 that lay around him and within. The joy of 
 adventure carried him over unknown seas ; the 
 spirit of daring speculation led him to investigate 
 the world both of matter and of mind, and to 
 embrace in his theories the ultimate constitution 
 of things. The spectacle of the universe with 
 its puzzles and contradictions, and of human life 
 with its mingled pleasures and pains, to each of 
 which appeals his quick sympathies readily re- 
 sponded, left the balance of his faculties undis- 
 turbed. From his flights of speculation and 
 fancy he came back to the world of action and 
 lived in it as though he had never left it — shrewd 
 in business, fond of enjoyment, but temperate in 
 his pleasures, scrupulous in the performance of 
 domestic pieties, meeting danger with courage 
 and defeat with resignation. Even in exile he 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 135 
 
 could find a retreat in the serenity of his 
 own thought. " No Hellene is old," said the 
 Egyptian priest in Plato/ " in mind you are all 
 young " : and we willingly apply the words to the 
 Greeks in a somewhat different sense from what 
 was intended, and think of them as of their 
 own victorious athletes, endowed with perpetual 
 youth and gaiety of heart, with radiant limbs 
 and brows unclouded, the inward and outward 
 man being one in the gracious union of intellect 
 and beauty. 
 
 But however true this picture may be if 
 regarded in its main outlines, there is another 
 side to' it of which we ought to be reminded. 
 It is not difficult to picture to ourselves some 
 of the sombre facts which dashed the joyousness 
 of Greek life in the periods with which we are 
 best acquainted — the hard and narrow selfish- 
 ness of the ruling class, the fierce bigotry, the 
 wild revenge of political faction, the sudden 
 reversals of fortune, and the instability of all 
 human affairs. But even if we confine ourselves 
 to literature, and note only the moods and senti- 
 ments which are there reflected, we may catch 
 many plaintive tones and some accents even of 
 
 ' Plato, Tim. 22 B. 
 
136 THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 despair, which contrast strangely with what is 
 called Hellenic serenity. 
 
 A peculiar vein of constitutional sadness 
 belongs to the Greek temperament. We find it 
 already in Homer. In Achilles himself, as in 
 most of the heroes of poetry, there is a tinge of 
 melancholy. His early death is the burden of 
 the Iliad. "j)oomed art thou to swift death, yea 
 and piteous art thou above all men ; in an evil 
 hour I bare thee in our halls " ; ^ — so cries Thetis, 
 when at the opening of the Iliad she comes at 
 the call of her son ; and the same word, oiKviJ,opo<;, 
 is on her lips when, after the death of Patroclus, 
 she again answers the same call ; ^ and once more 
 in her prayer to Hephaestu s to forge new armour 
 for Achilles sl^_plgads for a son that is " doomed 
 to swift death." ^ From his mother Achilles had 
 learnt that he had the choice between two fates. 
 " If I abide here and besiege the Trojans' city, 
 then my returning home is taken from me, but 
 my fame shall be imperishable ; but if I go home 
 to my dear native land, my high fame is taken 
 from me, but my life shall endure long while, 
 neither shall the issue of death soon reach me."* 
 
 ' //. i. 417. ^ //. xviii. 95. ' //. xviii. 458. 
 
 * II. ix. 412-16. Trans, by Leaf, Lang, and Myers. 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 137 
 
 Before the opening of the Iliad the choice has 
 been made. Achilles already knows his doom 
 and accepts it. His one wish is, that seeing that 
 his span of life is brief {fj.ivvv0dBi6v irep iovra), 
 it might not be without honour.^ It is with 
 him as with Hector— The shadow of early death 
 falls across both their paths. " Of a surety," says 
 Hector, " I know this in heart and soul ; the day 
 shall come for holy Ilios to be laid low, and 
 Priam and the folk of Priam of the good ashen 
 spear." ^ But not the love of wife or child can 
 make him shrink like a coward from the battle ; 
 " seeing I have learnt ever to be valiant and 
 fight in the forefront of the Trojans, winning 
 my father's great glory and mine own." ^ 
 
 Still more clearly does Achilles know what 
 is in store for him ; and the foreknowledge lends 
 a peculiar pathos to all he says and does. Yet 
 no word escapes him of querulous lament. In 
 his anguish over the death of Patroclus he 
 exclaims : " But bygones will we let be, for all 
 our pain, curbing the heart in our breasts under 
 necessit)'. Now go I forth, that I may light 
 on the destroyer of him I loved, on Hector : 
 then will 1 accept my death whensoever Zeus 
 
 ' //. i. 352. ^ //. vi. 447-49. ^ //. vi. 444-46. 
 
138 THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 willeth to accomplish it and the other immortal 
 gods."^ One line sums up the spirit of the 
 man : " When I am dead I shall lie low ; let 
 me now win high renown." ^ To the horse 
 Xanthus, who being endowed with human speech 
 told him of his death-day nigh at hand, he 
 answered : " Xanthus, why prophesiest thou my 
 death ? no wise behoveth it thee. Well know 
 I of myself that it is appointed me to perish 
 here, far from my father dear and mother ; 
 howbeit anywise I will not refrain till I give the 
 Trojans surfeit of war." ^ Finally ^ in the great 
 scene, where Priam comes to his tent at night 
 and entreats of him the body of Hector, Axjiilles 
 is softened by the old man's grief and by his 
 own. He thinks too of his father Peleus to 
 whom the gods gave fortune and wealth, and a 
 bride from among the daughters of the sea. 
 Trouble too they gave, for he " begat one son 
 to an untimely death " {eva iralha teksv irav- 
 ampiov),^ a son who may not tend him in old 
 age, but abides far off in Troy land. In this 
 memorable speech,^ however, he rises above the 
 
 • //. xviii. 1 14-16. 
 ^ II. xviii. 121, KelaoiJ.' ivel K€ diva' vSv Si kX^os iaffKiv Apd/iriv. 
 ' //. xix. 420-23. * //. xxiv. 540. 
 
 ^ II. xxiv. 518-51. 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 139 
 
 personal sorrow to the height of human pity, 
 and draws a picture never yet surpassed of 
 human destiny, of the " lot the gods have spun 
 for miserable men.'' 
 
 The strain of sadness in Achilles that here 
 finds its fullest utterance, is a characteristic 
 example of Homer's melancholy. It is large, 
 human, universal. " Even as are the generations 
 of leaves such are those likewise of men ; the 
 leaves that the wind scattereth to earth, and the 
 forest budding putteth forth another growth, and 
 the new leaves come on in the spring-tide ; so of 
 the generations of men one putteth forth its bloom 
 and another passeth away." ' These words, the 
 first conscious sigh over the mortality of man that 
 is found in Greek poetry, were spoken b y Gla ucus 
 to Diomede when the two warriors met in single 
 combat ; and again and again in Home^_j^ove 
 the din of battle and the triumph of the victor, is 
 heard the voice of human tenderness, the pathos 
 of suffering. All distinctions are effaced ; Greeks 
 and Trojans, friends and foes, are confounded in 
 the deep compassion which the poet feels for the 
 woes and tears of humanity. 
 
 ^ //. vi. 146-49. Cp. Ecclesiasticus xiv. iS, "As of the green 
 leaves on a thick tree, some fall, artd some grow ; so is the generation 
 of flesh and blood, one cometh to an end, and another is born." 
 
I40 THE MELANCHOLY OF THE CREEKS 
 
 But the melancholy of Homer is more akin 
 to the melancholy of youth than of mature age. 
 The mood of sadness follows close upon other 
 moments when the pleasure of existence and the 
 vision of the world's beauty have penetrated and 
 possessed the mind. The two moods are in their 
 nature not so far apart, and by natural reaction 
 pass each into the other. Both spring out of 
 unlimited aspiration, out of a deep thirst and 
 capacity for joy, \\'ith riper years the discovery 
 of the disproportion which must always exist 
 between desire and achievement, brings with it 
 a kindly acquiescence in much that is imperfect 
 The heroic aim of the Homeric men has not yet 
 been brought down to the level of the actual. 
 Still farther are we from the period of middle- 
 aged pessimism when ideals are shattered and all 
 that life offers has been found wanting. But while 
 the poetic melancholy of the early Greek world is 
 not unconnected with the high hopes of youth, to 
 whose untried faculties every effort is in itself a 
 delight, the similarity between the two forms of 
 melancholy is only partial Youthful melancholy 
 is fantastic and egoistic It lives in a world of its 
 own and everywhere sees its own image reflected. 
 It is a world of bright day-dreams which melt 
 
THE MELAXCHLV OF THE GREEKS 141 
 
 av, ay and again re-form. \\'hen the fabric of hope 
 is dissolved, youth is apt to rebel against the con- 
 ditions of existence. And even apart from such 
 disappointment, there are seasons when the pain of 
 living becomes almost too keen to be borne ; r.o 
 precise reason can be assigned ; it is an instinctive 
 feeling. The melancholy of Homer :s free fix>m 
 these fantastic elements. lUnsion and disillusion do 
 not succeed one another. With the freshness of 
 youthful life and its boundless capacity of action is 
 combined the quiet and calm gaze of long exf>erience, 
 the " eye that hath kept watch o'er man's morta'jt)-." 
 But however great is the pathos and tenderness 
 of Homer, he is free from the feeling that death 
 after all is better than life. In th e description of 
 the future life in the eleventh Odyssey it is the 
 sugg^rtion of lost happiness that throws into high 
 relief the pathos of earthly existence. The under- 
 world of Homer is a meagre and iU-fiimished 
 world situated at the limits of the far west in 
 a region of perpetual twilight. The life 01 its 
 inhabitants is a pale image of what they did on 
 earth. Orion, a phantom hunter, chases fdiantom 
 beasts — ^the ghosts of " the very beasts that he 
 himself had slain on the lonely hills." ^linos 
 still sits in judgment and holds a spectral tribunal. 
 
142 THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 There is an automatic mimicry of the activities 
 of the upper world. The one reality is the reality 
 of torment. A few great criminals, who have 
 attempted to overpass the limits of existence and 
 to encroach on the divine prerogative, are visited 
 with a punishment consisting in aimless effort or 
 unsatisfied desire. Hg/ies himself is the " hated 
 of the gods," and the souls go down to him 
 lamenting. His land is desolate of joy, tenanted 
 by " strengthless heads," " phantoms of men out- 
 worn." " Rather," says Achilles, '' would I live 
 above ground as the hireling of another, with a 
 landless man who had no great livelihood, than 
 bear sway among all the dead that be departed." ^ 
 The contrast between the bliss of the gods 
 'who " live at ease " and the troublous lot they have 
 ordained for man, constitutes part of the pathos 
 of human life in Homer. In like manner in the 
 Homeric Hymn to the Pythian Apollo, the listening 
 assembly of Olympus is charmed by the voice 
 of the Muses who " sing of the deathless gifts of 
 the gods and the sorrows of men, even all that 
 they endure by the will of the Immortals, living 
 heedless and helpless, nor can they find a cure for 
 death nor a defence against old age." ^ Again, in 
 
 • Od. xi. 489-91. '^ Homeric Hymn ii. 11 ff. [189 ff.]. 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 143 
 
 the Hymn to Demeter, when Metanira by a blind act 
 of motherly love rescues her son, as she thinks, from 
 death, but in truth robs him of the immortality 
 which he would otherwise have won, the goddess 
 cries out : " O foolish children of men, that have 
 no wit to discern the doom of coming good or 
 evil."^ The ignorance, the short-sightedness of 
 men — this note of later tragedy is struck in Greek 
 poetry from the outset. Nor is it bare ignorance 
 that is so pitiful, it is the blindness of a being 
 who seeing sees not, who mistakes the things that 
 should have been for his good. The irony of 
 fancied knowledge is a recurring motive in Greek 
 literature. It is a thought that is made prominent 
 in the Hesiodic version of the legend of Prometheus. 
 The sentence pronounced by Zeus after the theft 
 of fire was that men should henceforth " delight 
 their soul in cherishing that which was their 
 bane." ^ The skill and intelligence they had 
 gained through the Titan was theirs inalienably, but 
 illusion was to follow knowledge as its shadow. 
 In Hesiod the discord between intention and 
 
 ' Homeric Hymn v. 256 : 
 
 i/TJl'Ses &vdp(aT0ij d^pdSfioves oUt* dyddoto 
 aTcra» iTepx^h^""^ irpoyi/ili/iei'M oSre KaKolo. 
 
 ^ Hesiod, Works and Days, 58 : 
 
 T^piruivTai Karct dvfidi^ ebt/ KaK^v df/.(payaTUifT€S. 
 
144 THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 result is but the final pain added to the misery 
 of man's lot. The whole spectacle of human life 
 is unutterably wretched. The poet has fallen on 
 evil days, on the last and worst age of a world 
 that is degenerating. Diseases, silent and voice- 
 less,^ hover round mortals and assail them : " never 
 by day shall they cease from toil and sorrow, or 
 in the night-time from destruction." ^ In one 
 comprehensive lament the immense wretchedness 
 of humanity is summed up : " The earth is full of 
 woes, and full also the sea."^ Yet he asserts the 
 moral government of the universe ; there is no 
 accent of revolt against the gods. He bows to 
 their decree, simply because it is inevitable, and 
 preaches the lesson of work. Work is the one road 
 to excellence : the way is long and steep, and at 
 first is hard ; but it grows easier as you gain the 
 summit.* " There is no shame in labour : idleness 
 is shame." ^ The inducements to work are frankly 
 
 ' Hesiod, Works and Days, 104: 
 
 aiy%, eirei <pwvr[V i^oKero firirleTa Zeis. 
 ' lb. 173 : 
 
 obii irar' ^/uip 
 
 iraOaovTai KafiArov Kai dX^ios oiSi tl vTjKTtap 
 
 •pdeipS/ievoi. 
 ^ lb. lOI, TrXe/i; pJh yap yaia KaKtav, TrKeirj S^ 6d\aaaa. 
 * lb. 287-90. 
 ' lb. 309, ipyoii S' oiiiv 6yei5os, iepytri di t" BvetSos. 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 145 
 
 stated ; they are merely the satisfaction of material 
 wants, and the need of escaping from the intolerable 
 conditions of an effortless existence. But the spirit 
 and tone in which Hesiod develops his precepts 
 rise to a higher level ; as he unfolds them one by 
 one labour becomes more than a sad necessity : 
 it adds dignity to life ; nay, it yields a pleasure of 
 its own. Hesiod is not at heart one of those to 
 whom existence is a burden. He feels the glow 
 that comes from obstacles vanquished and from 
 energy of will. His deep compassion for mankind 
 does not prevent him from clinging fondly to the 
 few simple joys that are within the reach of 
 man. 
 
 Another and more modern phase of melancholy 
 is not slow to find expression in Greek poetry. 
 In Mimnermus, who wrote in the middle of the 
 seventh century B.C., we see the Greek spirit aged, 
 as it were, before its day. The few fragments of 
 him that have been preserved are all written in 
 one strain. His theme is the fleeting delights of 
 youth that passes away like a dream, and old 
 age, loveless and joyless, "hateful to children, 
 scorned by women,'' which " makes beauty and 
 ugliness to be alike," and "in the sunlight find 
 no pleasure," He moralises sadly upon life ; and 
 
 I. 
 
146 THE MELAXCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 while his tone is one of reflective resignation, the 
 conclusion to which he points is that man's wisdom 
 is to snatch the pleasures of the hour. He takes 
 as his text the Homeric lines quoted above ' — 
 
 oirfirep tjivXX.mv yevc^, tooj St ko« a>-Sp<i>v k.t.X. 
 
 lines which are among the favourite reminiscences 
 of the el^ac poets — and expands the idea ; but 
 how far has he travelled from the simple thought 
 of Homer ! " ^^'e are like leaves which the 
 flowering spring-time brings forth, when of a 
 sudden they grt)w beneath the rays of the sun ; for a 
 span so brief do we rejoice in the flowers of youth, 
 knowing nothing, neither good nor evil, from the 
 gods. But the black fates stand bj-, the one 
 with the doom of doleful age, the other with the 
 doom of death ; and for a little space the fruit of 
 youth continues, during one day's sunshine on the 
 earth. But when once the appointed time of 
 youth is passed, better to die forthwith than to 
 live."^ 
 
 Thepgnis, too, who lived nearly a century later, 
 is, like Mimnermus, a practical Epicurean : " I 
 rejoice and disport me in mj- youth ; long enough 
 beneath the earth shall I lie, bereft of life, voice- 
 
 » Sti/r. p. 139. a Mimnemi. Fr. 2. 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 147 
 
 less as a stone, and shall leave the loved sunlight ; 
 good man though I am, then shall I see nothing 
 any more." ^ " Rejoice, O my soul, in thy youth ; 
 soon shall other men be in life, and I shall be 
 black earth in death." ^ " After my death I crave 
 not to be laid upon a royal couch ; nay, in life 
 may some luck be mine. Briars for the dead 
 man are as coverlets strewn over him. What if 
 the bed be hard or soft ? " * Life has not gone so 
 smoothly with Theognis as with Mimnermus. He 
 has been engaged in the political struggles of his 
 own city Megara, and is the victim of social 
 revolution ; he has been in exile, has lost his 
 fortune, has been deserted by friends : he knows 
 what it is to have the spirit tongue-tied, to be 
 broken and enslaved by poverty.* And, though 
 now again he is restored to his country, an accent 
 of personal emotion, a sharp sense of wrong, 
 vibrates through his verses, and with it there is a 
 passionate longing to be avenged and " to drink 
 the black blood " of his enemies.^ He looks out 
 upon the world and sees everywhere a reign of 
 lawlessness and violence : " Shame has perished ; 
 shamelessness and outrage have conquered justice, 
 
 1 Theogn. 567-70. ' lb. 877-7S. ^ lb. 1 191-94. 
 
 * lb. 177-78. 5 ji, j^g 
 
148 THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 and prevail throughout the world." ^ The greed 
 
 of wealth has levelled all distinctions of birth and 
 
 blood ; ^ " those who once were noble now are 
 
 base, and the base in turn are noble." ' Seeing 
 
 that it avails nothing to be just, let a man be 
 
 cunning and shifty, and imitate the polypus which 
 
 takes the colour of the rock to which it clings.* 
 
 The cry which escapes him — 
 
 oXPuK ovSets 
 dvOpioabiv, oirofrovs ^Xtos KaOopa — ^ 
 
 ■' No mortal is happy of all on whom the sun 
 looks down," is a more genuine lamentation than 
 is often conveyed by these well-worn words in the 
 Greek poets. His despair reaches its height in 
 the famous lines whose echoes lived long in Greek 
 literature J " It is best of all things for the children 
 of men not to be bom, nor to see the rays of the 
 keen sunlight ; but if bom, to pass as soon as 
 may be the gates of Hades, and to lie beneath a 
 vesture of much earth." O 
 
 1 Theogn. 291-92. * /*. 190. ' 76. 1109-ia 
 
 * lb. 215-16. tb. 167-68. 
 
 • lb. 425-28 : 
 
 larrtav §i£r /i^ tpvrtu irixBowiouftr ipurror, 
 
 tpi'TTo. 5\ &wtai &KurnL r6\as *AtSao repijeaiy 
 Kai Keur0ai toXXt^ y^r ewap.7fffdfiLEwaf. 
 Cp. Soph. O. C. 1225 : 
 
THE MELANCHOL Y OF THE GREEKS 149 
 
 Yet Theognis with studied self-control teaches 
 the wisdom which he has learnt as a child,' and 
 endeavours to guide the friend whom he addresses 
 in the ancient ways. The thoughts of man's heart 
 are vain ; he knows nothing of the issue whether 
 for good or evil, for the gods ordain all things as 
 they will.* Man must humble himself before the 
 gods and take cheerfully the evil things of life as 
 well as the good.' Yet now and again while re- 
 peating the maxims of piety he suddenly breaks 
 off, overcome by the thought of the sufferings of 
 the righteous ; he turns to Zeus and charges him 
 with injustice in his government of the world in 
 language almost as bold as that of the Prometheus 
 of Aeschylus, or of the Book of Job: "Zeus, lord 
 beloved, I marvel at thee ; for thou reignest over 
 all ; thine is honour and great power, and thou 
 knowest the very heart and spirit of each man, 
 
 /at; tpvvat rhy S.TravTo. vtKq, \byov * rb 5', ^Trei ^vij^ 
 /S^i^ai K£t0£y Sffevirep tjkcl ttoXiJ dfvrepov ws TaxtffTa, 
 
 Eur. Fr. 900 (Nauck) : 
 
 t6 fiTj yeviadai Kpeurffov ^ tpvvat ^poToit, 
 
 Cp. also Bacchyl. Fr. 3. So Ecclesiastes iv. 2, 3, "I praised the 
 
 dead which are already dead, more than the living which are yet 
 
 alive. Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been." 
 
 1 Theogn. 27-28. ^ /^ 133-42. = I». 335-38. 
 
ISO THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 for thy might, O king, is supreme. How then, sort 
 of Cronos, can thy soul endure to hold in like 
 regard the sinner and the righteous ? . . . Heaven 
 has given to mortals no clear token, nor shown the 
 way by which if a man walk he may please the 
 Immortals. Howbeit the wicked prosper and are 
 free from trouble, while those who keep their soul 
 from base deeds, although they love justice have 
 for their portion poverty, poverty mother of help- 
 lessness, which tempts the mind of man to trans- 
 gression, and by a cruel constraint mars the reason 
 in his breast." ^ 
 
 Solon had consoled himself with the reflection 
 that the works of outrage are not lasting ; that 
 Zeus surveys the end, and that of a sudden his 
 vengeance bursts forth, like a wind in spring-time 
 scattering the clouds. Sooner or later it falls, if 
 not on the guilty man himself, on his children and 
 on their posterity after them.^ Theognis finds no 
 comfort in this thought ; rather it heightens the 
 wrong of which he complains. He prays to Zeus 
 that it may be the will of the blessed gods to 
 redress this, injustice, that the guilty one may not 
 escape while another bears the penalty, and that 
 the sins of the father may not be visited on the 
 
 1 Theogn. 373-86. ^ Solon, Fr. 13. [4.] 14.32. 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 151 
 
 sons. As it is, he asks, how can any one, who 
 beholds the afflictions of the righteous and the 
 prosperity of the unjust, henceforth revere the 
 Immortals?^ Theognis corner as near as a Greek 
 of the earlier time well can come to being a 
 pessimist. At bottom he has a profound convic- 
 tion, born probably of bitter and personal dis- 
 appointment, that the world as now ordered is 
 all wrong. He appeals to Zeus to right it ; he 
 does not indeed discard the moral precepts and 
 traditional beliefs of his countrymen, but behind 
 these phrases there is no real assurance that 
 the goodness of Zeus is equal to his power : 
 there is little hope that the contradictions which 
 present themselves to the reason will ever be 
 removed. 
 
 We pass from Theognis to another and 
 immeasurably greater poet, Pindar, who also felt 
 profoundly the sadness of human destiny, but ex- 
 pressed the feeling in a truly Hellenic spirit. The 
 mortality of man, which to us has become a com- 
 monplace of religion or morality, inspired some of 
 the simplest and noblest verses in Greek literature. 
 " Creatures of a day, what are we, what are we 
 not ? Man is but a dream of a shadow " (cr/cia? 
 ' Theogn. 731-52. 
 
1 52 THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 ovap avBpaiTos), says Pindar^ in an ode which a 
 scholiast calls " a lamentation upon human life." 
 " The dream of a shadow " — that is the starting- 
 point of Pindar's meditations upon man and his 
 destiny. Man, a thing of naught, is not of the 
 lineage of the gods,^ who know neither \yeari- 
 ness nor sickness nor old age ; ^ who can speedily 
 accomplish all that they resolve, who can turn 
 darkness to light and light to darkness ; "* from 
 whom no mortal deed is hidden.® But as for men, 
 the gods deal to them two evils for one good ; * 
 their delight grows up apace, but as quickly it 
 falls again to earth.^ Errors unnumbered float 
 around their thought.^ 
 
 Yet man, frail and feeble, has a light that 
 springs from him in the darkness. " When a glory 
 from God hath shined on him a clear light abideth 
 upon him, and serene life." ® He wins to his side 
 Fortune — not the fickle goddess, who with closed 
 eyes distributes her bounties, and raises men up 
 only to cast them down, but Fortune, the Saviour 
 (j^V ScflTet/ja),^" who works in harmony with the 
 
 ' Pyih. viii. 95. Trans, by E. Myers. ^ Nem. vi. 1-4. 
 ' Fr. Inc. 120 [127], Bergk. * 16. 119 [106]. 
 
 = 01. i. 64. " Pyth. iii. 81. ' lb. »iii. 92-94. 
 
 ^ 01. vii. 24-25. ' Pylh. viii. 96-97. " 01. xiL 2. 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 153 
 
 moral powers which sustain the world. Thus the 
 " short-lived race of pian " (to Tw^iroT^iov dvipmv 
 e0vo<;) ^ may struggle and do battle for what is 
 noble.^ " Never indeed shall man climb the 
 brazen heaven," * yet he has in him some likeness 
 to the Immortals.* Youth, beauty, victorious 
 strength, fair deeds made immortal by song — 
 these are god-given gifts and in these the crown 
 of human glory is attained. But the just man 
 only is beloved of the gods ; in lif e he is under 
 their protection, and in death too a new hope is 
 given him. Perpetual sunlight has arisen upon 
 the realm of the shades ; fair meadow-lands bloom 
 where Homer knew only of barren trees that shed 
 their fruit. A more full and conscious existence 
 opens out after death, and the world below is 
 brought into moral relation with the life on earth.' 
 Pindar's vein of meditation is free from despair or 
 pessimism. His grave melancholy has nothing 
 in it that is unmanly. He remains a Hellene 
 of the Hellenea The singer of the games, the 
 poet of a privileged race of athletes, who by- 
 birth and wealth and native faculty were able 
 
 ' 0/. i. 66. ' 7J. V. 15 ; cp. Nem. r. 47. 
 
 ' Py/A. X. 27. * JVem. vi 4. 
 
 5 O/. ii. 53-83, Fr. 106 [95], 108 [96]. 
 
154 THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 to rise to the level of heroic achievement, he is not 
 forgetful of the vanity of human hopes, of man's 
 nothingness and entire dependence on the gods. 
 
 The impressions made on the greater poets by 
 the contemplation of life have their counterpart in 
 the thought, prematurely aged, of the " weeping 
 philosopher " of Greece. Heraclitus, the lofty and 
 disdainful spirit,^ who stood aloof from the vulgar, 
 wrote over the passing phenomena of existence the 
 words, iravra %&)/3et koli ovSev fievet," " all things 
 give place ; nothing is permanent." He was the 
 first, by a sad philosophy, to break up the solid 
 foundations of the universe, and to see everywhere 
 an endless tide of change, a perpetually dissolving 
 view. The same sense of instability and vicissitude 
 is manifest in the writings of the historians, and 
 in them becomes penetrated with poetic feeling. 
 For, in truth, the facts of Greek history were 
 instinct with poetry. As the poetry of Greece 
 was more historical than that of any other people, 
 so too its history was more poetical. Already to 
 a Greek of the fifth century B.C. the law of moral 
 retribution was written legibly on the page of 
 the past. Events had unfolded themselves with 
 
 ^ Diog. Laert. ix. i, iieyaXbtpptav 5^ 7^701^6 irfip ovrtvaovv Kal 
 iirepdiTTTii. ' Plat. Crat. 402 A. 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 155 
 
 startling rapidity ; signal catastrophes gave em- 
 phasis to what was happening ; causes and effects, 
 which in a more complicated modern society are 
 hard to disentangle, stood out in their clear 
 meaning and their inevitable issues. In a single 
 century, 620 to 520 B.C., five great empires — 
 Assyria, Media, Babylonia, Lydia, Egypt — had 
 passed away with every circumstance of dramatic 
 impressiveness ; a still shorter period had wit- 
 nessed the rise and fall of the Tyrannies in 
 Greece. In an age when the despot of to-day 
 might to-morrow be an exile, when the triumph 
 of political party meant frequently not only loss 
 of power and place, but of home and property, 
 and, it might be, of life for the vanquished — at 
 such a time the poet and the historian could 
 draw from a common inspiration. Greek history 
 was a living witness to the deeper laws which 
 govern human action : Greek tragedy became 
 an epitome of the lessons of Greek history, the 
 facts of the mythical past being read in the light 
 of contemporary reflection. 
 
 Dramatic surprises and a Divine Irony in the 
 ordering of events — these were the great ideas 
 common to Herodotus (in some measure even to 
 Thucydides) and the tragedians. In applying 
 
IS6 THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 these ideas to life marked discrepancies of thought 
 and treatment are apparent. But in all alike 
 great disasters are seen to follow close upon 
 insolent success ; man's fancied security is the 
 prelude to his fall. LikeAeschylus, Herodotus 
 looks behind the natural causes of events and finds 
 a divine hand that guides them. The gods are 
 guardians of right : crime brings its sure penal- 
 ties : its consequences extend to generations yet 
 unborn. The connexion between sin and suffer- 
 ing, which in Aeschylus is exhibited in the 
 hereditary doom of certain families, Herodotus 
 traces on the larger stage of the world's history 
 and in the life of nations. While he thus re- 
 sembles Aeschylus as the exponent of the law 
 of Nemesis, he also recalls Soph ocles in the 
 recurring thought of the briefness of the indi- 
 vidual life and the insecurity of mortal happiness. 
 P'ew and evil are the days of man's existence, 
 he lives in a vain shadow, unable to forecast his 
 future, and feeding upon idle hopes. Jn -the 
 hour when he seems to have attained, failure 
 and catastrophe are already at hand. One last 
 pain there is even worse than ignorance — to unite 
 perfect knowledge with perfect helplessness.' 
 
 ^ Her. ix. l6, TroXXa ippoviovTa fifjSevbi Kpar^etv. 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 157 
 
 It may appear a paradox to speak of the 
 melancholy of Herodotus ; and indeed it would 
 be so if the word is taken to imply a gloomy 
 or pessimistic temperament. His history over- 
 flows with natural gaiety. He has moreover a 
 reasoned confidence in the general ordering of 
 human affairs ; and as he relates the great deeds 
 of his race in the overthrow of the armies of 
 Persia, his heart, as a Hellene, glows with pride. 
 Still there is in him a strain of manly and 
 resigned melancholy, a side of his character which 
 is not out of keeping with his joy-loving nature. 
 Almost at the opening of his history he writes 
 as one who has read the story of human vicissi- 
 tudes and has been a close spectator of existence. 
 There is a tone of grave reflection in the words : 
 " I will tell of the cities of men, small as well as 
 great ; for those which once were great have for 
 the most part become small ; and those which in 
 my time were great were small of old. Knowing 
 then that human prosperity never continues in 
 one stay, I shall make mention of things small 
 and great alike." ^ When he tells of the tears 
 of Xerxes, as from his throne at Abydos he 
 watched his countless hosts passing into Europe, 
 
 » Her. i. J. 
 
IS8 THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 and reflected that in a hundred years not one 
 of those multitudes would be living, we feel that 
 these are the very tears that Greek tragedy 
 evokes : this is the tragic pity or eXeo?, which in 
 the woes of the individual laments the universal 
 human destiny. In a similar strain of profound 
 compassion the chorus in the Oedipus Tyrannus, 
 on finding out the secret of Oedipus' birth, 
 exclaims, "^A^s, ye generations of men, how 
 mere a shadow do I count your life. Where, 
 where is the mortal who wins more of happiness' 
 than just the seeming, and after the semblance 
 a falling away ? " ^ 
 
 This, which is the dominant mood of Sophocles, 
 is heard as an undertone throughout the narrative 
 of Herodotus. It is but rarely put into so many 
 words, but when it does find utterance it is in 
 accents that betray a profound disquiet of which 
 Sophocles knows nothing. Sophocles was able 
 to look on the world in the resigned temper of 
 religious faith, and to see its contradictions re- 
 conciled in a moral harmony by a supreme and 
 righteous will, which has regard even for the 
 individual life. Herodotus trusts .indeed in the 
 general course of providence, but for him there 
 } Soph. 0. T. 1186-92. Trans, by R. C. Jebb. 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 159 
 
 are still unharmonised forces in the universe, which 
 assail human happiness. A jealous power gives 
 to man a taste of the sweets of life only to with- 
 draw the cup from his lips. So full of trouble 
 is life that death is the most acceptable refuge 
 from its ills. " Short as our life is," said the 
 Persian Artabanus to Xerxes, " there is no mortal 
 so happy that he will not many times, and not 
 once only, have occasion to wish that he were 
 dead rather than alive." ^ ■ • 
 
 Yet Herodotus is neither despairing nor de- 
 fiant. His attitude of practical piety is not very 
 different from that of Sophocles. From the facts 
 of life poet and historian alike draw the same 
 lesson, that a mortal man must not strive to rise 
 above mortal estate, but must bear humbly the 
 lot that is decreed for him. In Herodotus too 
 there are already hints of the thought concisely 
 expressed in the saying of Heraclitus, " It is not 
 well for man to win all that he desires " {av6p<o- 
 TTOKTi yifVecrOai oKoaa diXovat ovk a/ieivov), — a 
 thought more fully developed by Sophocles. Man 
 does not know his own true good ; what seems to 
 be his ruin may be his saving ; for there are 
 divine-sent visitations which reveal a providential 
 ' Her. vii. 46. 
 
l6o THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 purpose. Croesus, the deposed monarch, learns 
 a wisdom hidden from him in prosperity: not 
 Oedipus, the king, who solved the riddle of the 
 Sphinx, but Oedipus, the blind man and the 
 wanderer, is admitted to the secrets of the gods. 
 Of all boons death itself may be the best ; as for 
 the two Argive youths^ Cleobis and Biton, who 
 drew their mother to the temple of Hera, and 
 when in sight of all the people she had prayed to 
 the goddess to "grant them the best thing which 
 man can receive, they fell asleep and rose no more.^ 
 The abiding sense of man's helplessness and of 
 the mystery of his fate accounts for the peculiar 
 tone in which Hope is spoken of in Greek 
 literature. There is one notable exception in the 
 Prometheus of Aeschylus. The " blind hopes " 
 which Prometheus planted in men's minds helped 
 them to emerge out of a feeble and grovelling 
 life, and to rise above the thought of death.^ 
 Many minor examples may be found of Hope in 
 this happier aspect.^ But it is more commonly 
 pictured as a flattering phantom, an illusion 
 born of an uncertain future. It is a mocking 
 
 1 Her. 1. 31. 2 Prom. 248-51. 
 
 ^ E.g. Find. Isth. vii. 16, Fr. 198 [233]. Eur. Here. Fur. 105- 
 106. Theogn. 1143-46. Dem. de Cor. § 97. The phrase d7a9^ or 
 ■^Seta ^Xffis has often a special reference to hopes after death. 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS i6i 
 
 goddess who tempts men to forget the limits of 
 the possible. It is the consolation of the weak, 
 whom it lures to folly ; it is not a spur to 
 progress nor the sustenance of the strong. In 
 Hesiod, when the lid was removed from Pandora's 
 jar, and the other myriad evils which it contained 
 flew abroad, Hope alone remained at the 
 bottom — itself, too, part of the deadly gift of the 
 goddess. In Theognis, Hope and Peril stand 
 near to one another, both of them dangerous 
 deities to man.' In Pindar '' up and down the 
 hopes of men are tossed, as they cleave the waves 
 of baffling falsity." ^ " By hope unconscionable our 
 bodies are enthralled ; but the tides of foresight 
 lie afar."^ To Pindar also the saying is by some 
 ascribed : " Hopes are the dreams of waking men." * 
 In Simonides of Amorgos it is Hope that supports 
 man in his vain endeavours after the unattainable ; 
 meanwhile old age, disease, and death overtake 
 him.^ In Thucydides, Hope is the strength of the 
 desperate and is contrasted with the foresight 
 which comes of reason." Once more, it is the 
 
 1 Theogn. 637-38. 2 01. xii. 5. 
 
 2 Nem. xi. 45. * Stob. iii. 12. 
 ° Simon. Atnorg. Fr. i (Bergk). 
 
 * Thuc. ii. 62, 5, iXirlii. re f/aaov Ticreiei, ^s ^v Tifi airbpif t] 
 hxM, yi'iif'V Si divi tui/ inrapxii''''ioi', ^s /SejSoior^pa i] irphvoia. 
 
 M 
 
i62 THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 ruinous adviser, the spendthrift counsellor who 
 prompts men to stake their all, and is detected 
 only when all has been lost ; ^ a sentiment placed 
 with characteristic dramatic effect in the mouth 
 of the Athenians just before the Sicilian expedi- 
 tion, in which the contrast between the hope and 
 the fulfilment reaches to the height of tragic 
 irony. In the Greek Anthology, Hope and 
 Fortune are two companion goddesses who make 
 a sport of human life.^ The future indeed hung 
 like a heavy cloud over the ancient world, charged 
 with catastrophes, reversals of fortune, the wreck of 
 states, the breaking up of homes, exile and death. 
 In the face of these uncertainties the virtue of 
 the Greeks was Resignation rather than Hope, a 
 cheerful acceptance {aTepr^eiv) of the gods' will, 
 without any joyful or assured anticipations. 
 
 In Greek authors of classical times there is no 
 trace of the thought that the^ human race as a 
 whole, or any^single people, is advancing towards 
 a divinely appointed goal ; there is nothing of 
 
 ^ Thuc. V. ro3, Tois 5' is Hirav rd Owapxov AvappiirTovai [doLiravos 
 yhp tpiaei) S,ii,a re yiyvibiTKeTai a<t>a\hTOiv, koL k.t.X. 
 ^ Anth. Pal. ix. 49 : 
 
 'ENiris Kal ai TixVi M^T" X'^^P^'f' '''^'' '"j"^"' f^poV 
 oidh iiJ,ol x' vfuV wal^ere Tois fier' i/j,i, 
 So ix. 134, 172 ; X. 70, 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 163 
 
 what the moderns mean by the " Education of 
 the World," "the Progress of the Race," "the 
 Divine guidance of Nations." The first germ of the 
 thought is in Polybius {circ. 204-122 B.C.), whose 
 work illustrates the idea of a providential destiny 
 presiding over the march of Roman history, and 
 building up the imperial power of Rome for the 
 good of mankind. Diodorus Siculus {circ. 59 
 B.C.), again, speaks of the gratitude due to those 
 historians who, seeing men bound together by 
 natural kinship but separated in place and time, 
 have attempted to bring them together in one 
 ordered whole {viro jxiav koI ryv avTrjv avvra^iv 
 dyayeiv), therein making themselves the ministers 
 of Divine Providence {axnrep rcvh virovpyoi t^? 
 Oeia'i irpovoiaii yevrjOivTe';)-^ The notion of a 
 universal history is here based on the sentiment 
 of the unity of the human race and of its hopes 
 for the future. 
 
 Greek thought turned mainly to the past. 
 The Greek orators and political writers drew 
 their inspiration either from mythical heroes or 
 from the achievements of their ancestors. The 
 Utopias sketched in the comic fragments — the ySto? 
 d^^ato? or primitive hfe of innocence — were 
 
 J Diodor, Sic, i, i. 
 
i64 THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 placed in a far-off golden age, and consisted in 
 the simple bliss of barbarism. Philosophy, too, 
 was in Aristotle's phrase " fond of myth " ; ^ it 
 sought out ancient traditions, the fragments of 
 forgotten learning ; ^ for, as he maintained, all 
 the arts and sciences have been found and lost 
 again not once but an infinite number of times 
 already.^ Greek political ideals reflect the 
 prevalent distrust of the future. Plato indeed 
 did not share Aristotle's disbelief in continuous 
 progress; none the less he is well-nigh hopeless 
 for the mass of mankind. Deeply corrupt in all 
 its parts, society does what it can to debase the 
 noblest' of its members. The only chance of 
 regenerating it lies in subjecting it to the 
 - rule of the philosophers, but hitherto it has 
 listened only to those who have humoured its 
 appetites. 
 
 In the absence of Hope and of an ideal of 
 progress, we strike upon one great difference 
 
 1 Arist. Met. i. 2. 982 b 18. 
 
 ^ Met. xi. 8. 1074 b 10-13, '^"' Karct t6 e/kos ttoXViIkis eipTiiiivris 
 els rb dwarbv eKdcTTTjs Kal T^xvri^ Kal <pL\offo(f>ias Kal irdXtv tpdeipoixivtiiv 
 KoX rairas ris 56|as {sc. vofd&ei,ev dv ns) ohv \dij/ava Tepi(reaSa$aL 
 
 fi.iXP'- '■"'' "''''■ 
 
 ' de Caelo i. 3. 270 b 16-20 . . . oi yiip SiraJ oiSi Sis dXV 
 airapiKis deT vofdfeiv rhs airras aipiKveCffBai. S6fos ds i]fia.s, Cp. Tol. 
 ii. 5. 1264 a 1-5. iv. (vii.) 10. 1329 b 25-27. 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 165 
 
 between the classical Greeks and the Hebrews. 
 Not that the history of the Hebrews was one of 
 progressive expansion and orderly development. 
 It was so in a far less degree than that of the 
 Hellenes, being in truth a long record of ever- 
 recurring rebellions and late repentances. The 
 nation was of all others the most full of inner 
 contradictions ; the higher and the lower self were 
 never reconciled. Yet in the darkest, hour of 
 adversity the Prophets did not despair of Israel. 
 When Jerusalem was desolate, when the people 
 was in captivity, and national existence had 
 been crushed, the voice of prophecy speaks out 
 the more confidently. It recalls the divine 
 guidance that had watched over the race, and 
 tells of the mighty destiny that was in store 
 for Israel. Through the prophets an ideal and 
 glorified national sentiment was created, tran- 
 scending local limits, and intertwined with the 
 highest hopes that could be conceived for 
 humanity. They looked to a spiritual restora- 
 tion and triumph, which should be for the 
 world at large the beginning of a glorious future. 
 This ideal, ardently desired, possessed the mind 
 of the pious Jew ': it fed in him a .sacred fund of 
 joy, and kept alive a spark of hope in a world of 
 
1 66 THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 spiritual despair against the day wiien He who 
 was " the Desire of all nations " should come. 
 
 I shall not attempt to touch, even briefly, on all 
 the phases of melancholy that may be discovered 
 in Greek literature ; we are dealing merely with a 
 few typical authors. But Euripides is a poet who 
 ought not to be passed over even in this rapid 
 survey. All tradition represents him as one who 
 took a sombre view of life. His G reek biographer 
 describes him as an austere man (crTpv^vos;), 
 hating laughter {fuaoyeXws;), and hating women 
 {fiia-oyvvTjt;). It is never indeed very safe to take 
 isolated quotations from a play, and argue from 
 them to the writer's own beliefs. Even such im- 
 pressive lines as that of Sophocles : 
 
 ovSev yap aAyos oiov ■^ ttoXXtj ^oyj — ' 
 
 and of Menander : 
 
 Sp' ecrrl o'vyycvh ti X.vTrrj Kal jSios ; — ^ 
 
 might not, if taken in their context, carry the full 
 weight of sad and personal conviction which we 
 read in them when they stand alone. Euripides, 
 however, holds a somewhat exceptional position. 
 His tendency is to disregard dramatic proprieties, 
 
 •> Soph. Fr. 509 (Nauck). 
 ^ Menand. KiSapiar. Fr. I. 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 167 
 
 and to let his own voice be heard behind that of his 
 characters. By the mouth even of women, slaves, 
 and peasants he utters those sententious sayings in 
 which we recognise the poet's generalised experi- 
 ence. We must be careful, of course, not to find 
 too much significance in such individual utter- 
 ances, or to lose sight of the necessary one-sided- 
 ness inherent in all compendious maxims about 
 life. We have no need, however, in this instance 
 to rely on particular expressions : t he p oetic 
 thought of Euripides is saturated with a profound 
 feeling for human suffering, human ignorance, 
 human infirmity. In him, if anywhere in Greek 
 ti-agedy. Sunt lacriniae rerum. The total impres- 
 sion left on us by his plays is that the tempera- 
 ment of the writer is as far as possible removed 
 from " Greek gaiety of heart." The fragments of 
 Euripides, remarkable, in spite of their variety, 
 for a pervading unity of tone, reinforce this 
 general impression. At the best " the life of 
 wretched mortals is not wholly fortunate or 
 wholly luckless, but blessed and then again 
 unblessed." ^ It is chequered with sunshine and 
 
 1 Eur. Fr. 196 (Nauck) : 
 
 TofoffSe OvtitCji' tCov Ta\aiirtiip(t)v /3tof' 
 oUt' evTVX^^ Tb TrdfjLTaif oUre SvffTVX^^j 
 
i68 THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 shade, as changing as the seasons of the year.^ 
 In past happiness there is no pledge of the 
 future : " For somehow the god, if god he must be 
 called, grows weary of consorting always with the 
 same folk." ^ Yet mortals, burdened with count- 
 less ills, still love life ; they long for each coming 
 day, glad to bear the thing they know rather 
 than face death, the unknown.^ 
 
 There is little doubt that at one time at least 
 Euripides was profoundly troubled as to the 
 moral ordering of the world. In later years, 
 however, he seems to have attained a speculative 
 calm. The injustice we ascribe to the. gods is, 
 he thinks, rather the confusion wrought by man.* 
 There is a divine justice which works itself out : 
 yet not, it may be, ijj the individual life, but 
 
 ' Eur. Fr. 3.32 (Nauck). 
 
 2 lb. 1058 : 
 
 6 7a/) ffE6s TTWS, ei Behv a<f>e XP^ KaXetv, 
 KdfiveL ^vvijv TO. ToXKa toIs aiiToU dei. 
 
 s /6. 813 : 
 
 (S ^tX6fwot ^poTolf 
 ot T^v iiriarelxovaav ■fjiiipai' ISeiv 
 TroSetr', Ix""'''^^ iwpidiv dx^"^ Kaxuv. 
 oCtms ipas PpoToiaiv iyKeirai piov. 
 rb ^T}y ykp to-fiev* Tou Oaveiv 5* dTeipig, 
 ttSs Tis 0o/3errai 0ffls Xnreiv rdS' ijXiov. 
 
 ■> /i. 609 : 
 
 ovK ^ffTi rb. de&v &StK\ h dv8pd}T0Lai d^ 
 KaKots voaovvTO, (riyxvciv TroWiiv ^x^'- 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 169 
 
 slowly, and in the long course of human destiny.^ 
 Towards this conclusion his reason tends ; but it 
 never acquires the force of a living conviction ; 
 and the religious consolations, therefore, which 
 supported the older tragedians are not to be 
 looked for in him. The end of the Hercules 
 Furens presents an interesting contrast to that of 
 the Oedipus Coloneus. In both plays the hero 
 has held out to him the promise of consecration 
 after death ; but while Oedipus accepts it as full 
 amends for all he has suffered, Hercules rejects 
 with disdain the similar offer of Theseus. Aga in, 
 in Aeschylus and Sophocles it may fairly be said 
 that the most tragic endings leave a sense of 
 final triumph, or at least of justice vindicated ; 
 but even the happy endings of Euripides stir 
 anxious questionings and reveal some inward 
 conflict or misgiving. We must be on our guard, 
 however, not unduly to deepen the shadows 
 which are cast across his tragedies. The tangled 
 skein of existence perplexes him, it is true ; but 
 no settled gloom, much less despair, broods over 
 his spirit. He looks out upon the heights of a 
 serene wisdom that may be won by human 
 reason ; above all, he has faith in the efficacy of 
 
 1 Cp. Bacch. 882. Fr. 969. 
 
170 THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 human fortitude. High courage (ev'^v^la) is 
 with him the primary virtue in as real a sense 
 as piety {eixri^eia) is with Sophocles. 
 
 A word remains to be said about those ex- 
 quisite gems of verse which are contained in the 
 Greek Anthology. Many moods are there re- 
 flected. The lines are sometimes bright and 
 playful, sometimes pathetic, sometimes cynical, 
 always graceful. But the motto which is written 
 on the pages as a whole is the same as that of 
 the book of Ecclesiastes, " Vanity of Vanities " — 
 fiaTai6rr)<; jjbaTaioTrjTwv — and the dominant note 
 of sadness deepens the farther we follow the 
 poems into Roman times. " All is laughter, all 
 is ashes, all is nothingness." ' " Weeping I was 
 born, having wept my fill I die : tears in plenty 
 have I found through life." ^ " Naked I came 
 upon earth, naked shall I go below; why then 
 do I toil in vain ; seeing that the end is naked- 
 ness ? " * " Life is the plaything of Fortune, 
 
 ' Anth. Pal. x. 124 : 
 
 Trdi'Ta 7AWS KoX irdvTa, Kbvis KoX iravTO. t4 fiijSh. 
 
 2 Li. X. 84 : 
 
 SuKpvx^t^i' yevo/MTjv, Kal SaKpOiras ^TToBvijffKW 
 ddKpvai d' ijf iroWois rhv §lov eipov SKov, 
 
 3 lb. A. 58 : 
 
 7^s ^ivi^'i]v yvfiv6st yvfivds 6' v-jrh yatav &T€ifi.i' 
 Kal rl p.6.rrjv /aox^w, yvfj-pdv bpdov rb t^\os ; 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 171 
 
 a piteous thing, a wanderer, tossed to and fro 
 between poverty and wealth." ^ Herodotus (v. 4) 
 tells us of a Thracian tribe, whose custom it was 
 to wail over the birth of a child, and to bury the 
 dead with festive joy, as being released from their 
 troubles. " Let us praise the Thracians," says a 
 writer in the Anthology,^ " in that they mourn for 
 their sons as they come forth from their mother's 
 womb into the sunlight, while those again they 
 count blessed who have left life, snatched away by 
 Doom unseen, the servant of the Fates." One 
 who had looked upon the course of the world and 
 the treacherous ways of fortune is forced to ex- 
 claim : " I hate the world for its mystery." ^ 
 
 In such a world how should man order his 
 life ? The answers are various, but may be re- 
 solved mainly into two — the choice being tersely 
 
 ' An'h. Pal. x. 80 : 
 
 ■waiyvvliv ian Tiixi)! )),if(>itwv ^ios, olKTp6s, dXiirrjs, 
 TrXoiSrou Kal Tevlrj^ fieffcrSdt ^e^i^h^evos. 
 ' III. ix. III. Cp. Eur. Fr. 452 (Nauck) : 
 
 ^XPV^ 7ctp ij^as (T^Woyov iroiov/jiivovs 
 rbv (pOvTa dp-qveiv els Sa^ ^pxerat Ka/cci, 
 rbv 6' aS 0o.vbvTa. Kal irhvmv ireTrcLVjihov 
 X^ipovras eii^i/^uoupras iKir^fiTreiV bbfiwv. 
 Also Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 2 : 
 
 "With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage." 
 3 lb. X. 96 : 
 
 luaSi t4 Tdyra, ttjs aST]\las X^P^"- 
 
172 THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 put thus : " The world is all a stage, life is a sport : 
 away with earnest and learn to play the game, or 
 bear thy pains." ^ " To play the game " means to 
 drain the cup of pleasure, though death, lurking 
 in the chalice, embitters the dregs. " Nay, come 
 prepare me the joyous stream of Bacchus, for that 
 is the antidote of ills " — forms the conclusion to 
 an epigram which begins by asking, " How was I 
 born ? whence am I ? wherefore came I hither ? 
 To go hence again." ^ On the other hand, to 
 refuse to play the game is to rebel against life, 
 either by way of cynical protest or of sullen sub- 
 mission ; and the end should be an early escape 
 from life, if only there might be an escape without 
 dying. To be and not to be, however, are both 
 equally distasteful to the true pessimist ; he hates 
 the one, he shrinks from the other. Accordingly 
 we find many exhortations in the Anthology {e.g. 
 X. 69) not to fear death, which gives peace, which 
 brings release from sickness and the pains of 
 poverty, which comes once and never comes again. 
 The minds of nobler temper in the Anthology 
 suffer from something akin to the modern " Welt- 
 
 ' Anth. Pal. x. 72 : 
 
 aK'^vri irSs plos Kal iralyvtov f) fiiffe Tra/feic 
 Ti]v aTOvSTjV fjL€Ta6eis, ij 0^pe rhs dSiivas. 
 2 /3. A. 118. 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 173 
 
 schmerz," a feeling in which the mystery of life 
 and the sense of the infinite mingle with personal 
 weariness or satiety. Such poets console them- 
 selves by singing in charming verse of graves and 
 ruins ; of the fallen grandeur of ancient cities — 
 Troy, Mycenae, Argos, Sparta, Corinth ; they 
 dwell on the sorrow of remembered happiness, 
 and linger over an ideal or vanished past. In the 
 outer world they find a counterpart to their own 
 moods, or more often still they hear a discord. 
 The placid existence of the cicala or some 
 other member of the animal creation is set off 
 against the restless discontent of man. The senti- 
 ment of melancholy blends with a new and almost 
 modern appreciation of nature. Her unchanging 
 majesty is contrasted with man's transient and 
 unquiet energies ; to nature the poet turns for 
 support and sympathy. The only sights worth 
 seeing are the larger aspects of the universe 
 around us. " Pleasant are the fair things 01 
 nature — earth, sea, stars, the orbs of moon 
 and sun. All else is fearfulness and pain." ^ 
 
 ' Anth. Pal. ix. 123 : 
 
 ^5^a ftkv y&p (Tov ri ^iJcret icaXci, 7ata, ^aXafftra, 
 
 dfTTpa, (re\TjvaiT]S KvK\a Kal ijeXiou, 
 TiJXXa 5^ Tivra <j>bpoi re KoX SXyea' Kiji' Ti TiSy rts 
 
 icrS\bv, A/aoi^alriv ^vS^X"""' N^/xeiri;'. 
 
174 THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 If it is true, as Aristotle says,^ that men of 
 genius are of a melancholy temperament, it is 
 but natural that the most highly gifted nation 
 of antiquity should have had in it a vein of this 
 sentiment. But it would leave a wholly false 
 impression if the word " melancholy," as applied 
 to the representative poets of the Hellenic race, 
 were understood to suggest that for the Greeks 
 there was a keener pleasure to be won from sights 
 and thoughts of gloom than from anything else ; 
 that the "sweetest songs are those that tell of 
 saddest thought." We must not lose sight of the 
 distinction between the sadness, which runs as an 
 under-current of thought through the great Greek 
 writers, and the weariness of living which proclaims 
 itself in the graceful and fugitive utterances of the 
 Anthology. Of the various forms of pessimism 
 which we know from literature or life, one form is 
 resigned, so long as its daily allowance of pleasure 
 
 Cp. the splendid lines of Menander, 'Vwo^o^i/jiaios, Fr. 2 : 
 
 6<jTt,s deojp^ffas dXiiTrojs, XlapfjUvuv^ 
 rh ffe/ivd, TaCr' d,TrTJ\8ey, &dev ^"KBev, Taxi, 
 t6v ^Xiop rbv kolvSv, &(rTp\ ijdup, v^<pr], 
 TTvp' Tavra, Khv ^Karbv ^ttj jSt^s, del 
 S^ei irapbvTa, k&v ivtavTois (T<p6Sp' d\lyovs, 
 aefivijrepa. to6tu3v ^TfEpa 5' ovk 6^€i ttot^, 
 1 Arist. L'rM XXX. 953 a iq sj^. 
 
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 175 
 
 is not withheld. There is another kind that is 
 scornful, rebellious, imperious in' its demands. 
 Examples of both may be found in the Anthology. 
 The older writers with rare exceptions are strangers 
 to both moods. They wait indeed " to see the 
 end " ; they will " call no man happy before he 
 dies." Their melancholy is very real, but there is 
 no parade of melancholy. They are not like the 
 " young gentlemen of France,'' of whom Shake- 
 speare tells, " as sad as night only for wantonness." 
 Theirs is the same stately and reserved pathos 
 which is depicted on Attic tombstones ; the same 
 sadness which penetrates us, when we read in their 
 austere simplicity the last greetings addressed by 
 the tragic heroes to the sunlight and to their 
 homes. The genuine Hellene was touched with a 
 profound pity for the wretchedness of man. Death 
 and fate formed a dark background to his brilliant 
 vision of the universe. Yet there is no trace of 
 weakness or querulous egotism. Without consola- 
 tion here or hope hereafter he could face his 
 inexorable doom, and by great thoughts and deeds 
 conquer destiny. In the modern world the con- 
 tradiction between boundless aspiration and limited 
 powers is apt to paralyse high effort. In classical 
 Greek antiquity the sense of man's feebleness 
 
176 THE MELANCHOLY OF THE GREEKS 
 
 heightens his energy of will. The impression left 
 on us is altogether unique in character ; and, as a 
 result, the pathetic in Greek poetry is often not 
 far removed from the sublime. " There is nothing, 
 methinks, more piteous than a man, of all things 
 that creep and breathe upon the earth " ^ — these 
 words are uttered by Zeus in the Iliad, and the 
 thought is typically Hellenic. But no less 
 Hellenic is the rousing call of Sarpedon to 
 Glaucus : " Ah^ friend, if once escaped from this 
 battle we were for ever to be ageless and immortal, 
 neither would I fight myself in the foremost ranks, 
 nor would I send thee into the war that giveth 
 men renown, but now — for assuredly ten thousand 
 fates of death do every way beset us, and these no 
 mortal may escape nor avoid — now let us go for- 
 ward, whether we shall give glory to other men, 
 or others to us." ^ The dark destiny of man is 
 here the very motive which prompts to heroism. 
 The thought is the same as that of Pindar : " For- 
 asmuch as men must die, wherefore should one sit 
 vainly in the dark through a dull and nameless 
 age, and without lot in noble deeds ? " ^ 
 
 1 //. xvii. 446-47. ^ //. xii. 322-28. 
 
 3 Find. 01. i. 82-84. 
 
THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN 
 WORD 
 
 The people who of all others have done most 
 for the intellectual progress of the race, whose 
 literature more than once has roused the Western 
 world by the shock of new ideas from lethargy 
 to mental activity, knew but little of books, and 
 looked with some suspicion on writing as of 
 doubtful value for awakening thought. Almost 
 everything, indeed, was to the Greeks worth know- 
 ing, but the things most worth knowing they 
 could get best, as they imagined, from the lips 
 of their fellow-men. Of none of them was the 
 remark true which one modern scholar made 
 about another, " that he had read himself into 
 ignorance." In our own day protests have now 
 and then been heard against the mere reading 
 man, the book-worm who values books as such, 
 not so far as they express and interpret to us 
 177 N 
 
178 THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 
 
 the truth of life and the thought of men, but 
 with a superstitious reverence for the printed 
 page. Such a protest was tacitly entertained, 
 though not so often expressed, in ancient Greece 
 against the lifeless symbols of writing, the dead 
 letter as opposed to the quickening and responsive 
 energy of oral intercourse, where each sense and 
 faculty — eye and ear and brain — are acting 
 together in busy co-operation and rivalry, each 
 eliciting, stimulating, and supplementing the other. 
 With us silent reading has superseded many 
 of the social gatherings of friends, and the art 
 of conversation has been falling into disuse. 
 Political speeches from the platform, which, while 
 they fulfil their proper purpose, serve also as a 
 dramatic entertainment and satisfy the combative 
 instincts of mankind, are an influence which, so 
 far from decreasing, gathers fresh force every day.^ 
 But the influence of speech in other forms is on 
 the decline compared with that of writing. We 
 accept it as a commonplace that in the modern 
 world the invention whose effects have been most 
 far-reaching is the invention of printing. But 
 we sometimes forget that the ancient world made 
 a still greater discovery — the art of writing. 
 The transition from the Spoken to the Written 
 
THE WR/TTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 179 
 
 Word was more startling to the imagination, 
 more revolutionary in its consequences, than the 
 transition from the Written Word to the Printed 
 Page. 
 
 Let us for a moment look at the reception 
 which the Greeks, the most keen-witted and 
 original people of antiquity, gave to this great 
 discovery. It was indeed a cold reception, very 
 unlike what might have been expected. Curious 
 as they were to find out and to tell all that their 
 neighbours knew or did, quick to borrow and 
 adapt the ideas of others, they were yet slow to 
 appreciate the full value and significance of this 
 one art. For centuries they employed it, not 
 as a vehicle of thought, but almost wholly for 
 memorial purposes, such as registering treaties 
 and commercial contracts, preserving the names 
 of Olympian victors, fixing boundaries, and the 
 like. Engrossed in poetic legend and mythology, 
 they evinced little desire to transmit the memory 
 of passing events even when these events were 
 of commanding interest. It was the opening of 
 a new era both for historical research and for 
 literature, when Herodotus wrote a history whose 
 inspiring motive was the desire " that neither the 
 deeds of men may fade from memory by lapse 
 
i8o THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 
 
 of time, nor the mighty and marvellous works 
 wrought partly by Hellenes, partly by Barbarians, 
 may lose their renown."'' Nor did the early 
 Hellenes trouble themselves with strict chrono- 
 logy. Their historical records were drawn up 
 by the temple-priests, and, in the edifying lessons 
 they contained, bore the impress of their origin. 
 A historic sense was slowly developed. Even 
 after writing had come into general use, the 
 Greeks still thought of it as imported from 
 abroad, and spoke of the alphabet as " Phoenician 
 symbols." They had, in short, no natural turn, 
 for learning their letters ; and their early inapti- 
 tude for reading and writing may be traced down 
 to a late period in their ignorance of foreign 
 alphabets and neglect of foreign literature. 
 
 A large measure of the suspicion with which 
 they regarded the written word was, perhaps, due 
 to the manner in which written symbols came to 
 them. The contrast is notable between their case 
 and that of the Egyptians. The signs that the 
 Egyptians employed on their monuments were not 
 mere symbols of sounds, but the images of the 
 
 ^ Herod, i. I, ws /x^re ra •^^vbii^vtx i^ dvdpunruv ry XP^'^V ^^t.T7j\a. 
 yivtiTOXj liifre ^pyct fxeyiXa re Kal QavfiacTTd, ra ^h ''E\X7;o-t rd 5^ 
 Pap^dpoiffi. AiroSex^ivTa, aKkeS, yivriTai.. 
 
THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD i8i 
 
 objects for which they stood. If the Greeks, like 
 the Egyptians, had gone through this process of 
 ideography, writing would, like speaking, have been 
 a sort of art, and therefore held in reverence : it 
 would have been natural, not conventional ; and 
 the connexion and even equivalence of the word 
 spoken and the word written would have been 
 manifest. Between words and ideas a necessary 
 connexion was held to exist by one school of 
 Greek thinkers. Names were supposed to be the 
 exact counterpart, vocal imitations, of the things 
 they represented : the correspondence was com- 
 plete between sound and sense. But though 
 the theory of picture -sounds as an expression 
 of thought was often discussed, it never occurred 
 to the Greeks that writing itself might have 
 come from picture-signs, which were originally 
 an artistic imitation of the objects. They had 
 received from the Phoenicians a set of ready- 
 made symbols, a conventionalised script, whose 
 meaning was not easily discerned, whose use was 
 mechanical, and whose associations were at first 
 almost purely commercial. Written characters 
 were therefore for them stamped from the outset 
 with the mark of utilitarianism, and were as far 
 removed from art as possible. 
 
i82 THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 
 
 The severance, however, between writing and 
 the fine arts — beneficent as it was from the 
 artistic point of view, and no less so from the 
 point of view of convenience — was unhappy for 
 the prestige of writing, which was long regarded 
 by the Greeks as mechanical, symbolic, almost 
 cabalistic. They dissociated from it the notion 
 of organic beauty and artistic form. Now, as 
 artists they disliked all mere routine, all work 
 that was purely mechanical. The free inspiration 
 of the poet was checked by the use of conven- 
 tional symbols : the epic and the drama de- 
 pended, if not for their very existence, at least for 
 their vitality, on the living voice and on listening 
 crowds. Add to this the fact that poetry, with 
 its musical accompaniments, could be carried in 
 the memory without external aids and appliances. 
 
 But it was not alone the artistic instinct of 
 the Greeks that made them look with some sus- 
 picion upon writing. In conduct, too, they shrank 
 from formulae. Unvarying rules petrified action ; 
 the need of flexibility, of perpetual adjustment, 
 was strongly felt. The attitude of the Greek mind 
 towards the laws is a conspicuous case in point.^ 
 
 ' This idea is brought out in a similar connexion by E. Curtius, 
 Alterthum und Gegenivart, i. 254 sqq. 
 
THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 1S3 
 
 • ■ 
 
 Most Eastern nations had religious codes in 
 writing, which were supposed to have come direct 
 from the mind or the hand of God, and were 
 invested wi'th a peculiar sanctity. With the 
 Greeks, however, writing never acquired the con- 
 secration of religion. Certain rules of outward 
 and ceremonial worship were preserved in the 
 sanctuaries on inscribed tablets " under priestly 
 guardianship; but -no system of religious doc- 
 trine and observance, no manuals containing 
 authoritative rules of morality, were ever trans- 
 mitted in documentary form. The laws, which 
 were of divine authorship and origin, whose " life 
 was not of to-day or yesterday," " the day of whose 
 appearing no man knew," were the unwritten laws. 
 In the- domain of secular .life and of politics 
 there was a similar reluctance to reduce laws to 
 writing. Great weight was attached to continuous 
 oral traditions, but these traditions were not em- 
 bodied in formal enactments. The states of 
 Greece proper long remained without written 
 constitutions : these were for the most part 
 framed in the decay of civic life. The earliest 
 written laws of Greece were penal codes ; but 
 even in the forensic sphere, the bent of the Greek 
 mind — or at least of Athenian jurymen — was to 
 
i84 THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 
 
 9 
 
 make light of written technicalities, to think more 
 of what the lawgiver meant than of what the laws 
 said, to make the spirit supreme over the letter. 
 To spiritualise law, however, is a dangerous pro- 
 cess. The law is carnal, and law spiritualised is 
 apt to become illegality. 
 
 The attempt to infuse into the laws warmth, 
 animation, moral character, and individuality is 
 distinctively Greek. The laws for them are not 
 cold principles once for all embodied in the 
 statute-book. They come forward as living and 
 speaking personalities — questioning, reasoning, 
 appealing, exhorting — and that not only in an 
 imaginative composition, such as the famous pass- 
 age in the Crito of Plato, when the Laws address 
 Socrates in prison, but also in the orators. To 
 Demosthenes the laws of Athens are the per- 
 manent and expressive counterpart of Athenian 
 character ; and they can speak to all who know 
 how to question them. Law, as conceived by 
 the Greeks, was not an alien force, a constraint 
 externally imposed, but, like the state itself, part 
 of their being ; the representative of their true, 
 their rational, self, the image of their moral life ; 
 not the denial of individual freedom, but the 
 realisation of freedom. 
 
THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 1S5 
 
 The sense, then, that the laws represented a 
 personal intelligence probably caused a disinclina- 
 tion to reduce them to written and stereotyped 
 commands. The most ancient Greek traditions 
 concerning the origin of law confirmed this feeling. 
 The inspired decisions {Qkfiiarei) of the king, as 
 judge, were the foundation of customary- law. 
 The earliest law-givers had revelations from the 
 gods in whose confidence they were ; Minos was 
 the familiar friend of Zeus, Lycurgus of the Del- 
 phic god. When law no longer flowed in inspired 
 words from the lips of the prince, it was still a 
 living voice, the voice of the community, the 
 public reason and conscience expressing itself in 
 articulate form. The laws were in certain states 
 (as in Crete and Sparta) promulgated and conveyed 
 to the people in forms of music and poetry ; we 
 read, too, of laws arranged as catches and sung 
 after dinner. The custom of singing the laws is 
 explained by Aristotle^ as an aid to memory 
 before the invention of writing : we must remem- 
 ber, however, that long after writing was well 
 known in Greece the laws still remained unwritten. 
 That they should have been set to music and 
 associated with festive occasions is fully in accord 
 
 ' Arist. Probl. xix. 28. 
 
1 86 THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 
 
 with the Greek sentiment, which saw in them not 
 stern task-masters, but the companions of social 
 life, friendly and intelligent advisers. 
 
 The objection to written laws was presented in 
 this form — that " the endless and irregular move- 
 ment of human things does not admit of a uni- 
 versal and simple rule " : ^ whereas the law aims at 
 a fatal simplicity which neglects individual pecu- 
 liarities and shifting circumstances. The analogy 
 of medicine was here urged. Written codes were 
 compared to unvarying medical prescriptions.^ 
 It is a mistake, it was said, to be doctored by 
 formulae. Even in Egypt where a fixed treatment 
 is laid down by law, a doctor may deviate from it 
 after three days if it proves ineffectual. Now, the 
 language of the laws resembles an official medical 
 prescription ; it is general and does not meet the 
 particular case. The inference drawn was that 
 the supremacy of the best man is to be preferred 
 to that of the law. Aristotle in noticing the 
 argument rejects the analogy with medicine, and 
 replies that the ruler is liable to self-interested 
 motives from which the physician is free. If the 
 
 * Plat. Polit. 294 B, oX ykp &vofioi6T7yres riov re AvSpdrirutv Kal 
 Tufv TTpd^eiov Kal rh fiTjS^irore fiTiS^v, o)S ^iros elirelvj Ticvx^av AycLf 
 ruv dvffpiiyjrivuv ovSiv iuffiv airXovv iv otiSevl irepl a/wdvTuv, 
 
 2 Arist. Pol. iii. 15. 1286 a 10 sqq. and iii. 16. 1287 a 32 sqq. 
 
THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 187 
 
 patient suspected his physician of being bribed to 
 poison him, he would prefer to be doctored by 
 formulae. The written law is indeed a mere for- 
 mula, but as a formula it has the advantage of being 
 unemotional ; law is " reason without impulse." 
 
 The need of flexibility felt in conduct was 
 felt no less strongly in the region of philosophy. 
 Truth was a Proteus ever taking new shapes,' 
 a manifold and shifting thing, whose secret 
 must be extorted by skill and patience, by the 
 close grappling of dialectic, by the give and take 
 of argument. No written exposition could repro- 
 duce the free play and infinite elasticity of thought. 
 The historian Diodorus ^ contrasts unfavourably 
 the restless movement of Greek speculation with 
 the unchanging philosophy transmitted from father 
 to son by the Chaldeans. The Greeks, he says, are 
 always innovating ; they do not follow those who 
 have gone before ; every day they found new sects ; 
 whereas the barbarians hold faithfully to their tra- 
 ditional doctrines. The Greeks of the great period 
 of literature would not have spoken thus. They 
 would not have acquiesced in the praise of philo- 
 sophic immobility. Plato — except possibly in old 
 age, when he became dogmatic — would have cited 
 
 > Cp. Plat. Euthyd. 288.B. 2 Diodor. Sic. ii. 29. 
 
:88 THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 
 
 this as a salient example of the baneful influence 
 of the written word, of those arjiiaTa Xvypd which 
 arrest and petrify life. 
 
 In him is to be found the most outspoken dis- 
 paragement of writing, as compared with speech, 
 that occurs in Greek literature. I allude to the 
 passage of the Phaedrus where Socrates says that 
 writing is the mere image or phantom of the living 
 and animated word.^ It does not teach what was 
 not known before ; it serves only to remind the 
 reader of something that he already knew.^ It 
 enfeebles the power of thought. It is delusive 
 even as an aid to memory, for it weakens and 
 supersedes this faculty by providing an artificial 
 substitute. Moreover, it has no power of adapta- 
 tion ; it speaks in one voice to all ; it cannot 
 answer questions, meet objections, correct mis- 
 understandings, or supplement its own omissions. 
 
 The same idea is repeated and expanded in 
 two of the letters which have come down to us 
 unde'r Plato's name {Ep. ii. and vii.). These letters 
 
 ^ Plat. Phaedr. 276 A, XiSyoj' ^Sana KaX iix,i^\r)(ov 06 6 yeypafi/iipos 
 eUdioXov &v TL \iyoiTO dtKaiws. 
 
 ^ On books as a mere record of learning and starting-point oi 
 research compare the remarkable sentence of Varro {Sat Menipp. 
 Reliq.): "Libri nonnisi scientiarum paupercula monumenta sunt : 
 principia inquirendorum continent, ut ab his negotiandi principia 
 sumat animus," 
 
THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 189 
 
 profess to be written by Plato to the tyrant 
 Dionysius II., and contain advice as to the proper 
 method of studying philosophy. The view is here 
 enforced that continuous written exposition is use- 
 less as a means for arriving at philosophic truth. 
 Some other branches of learning may perhaps be 
 communicated in this way, but not so philosophy. 
 Only by painful effort and self-questioning, by 
 the friction of mind with mind, and by friendly 
 cross-examination, can true knowledge be attained. 
 Thus " by close intercourse with the subject and 
 living familiarity with it, a light is of a sudden 
 kindled in the mind, as from a fire that leaps forth, 
 which when once generated keeps itself alive." ^ 
 Philosophical knowledge breaks in upon the mind 
 as a mental illumination. Such is the metaphor 
 employed, and such the general idea that runs 
 through these letters. 
 
 The publication of a systematic treatise on 
 philosophy is here strongly condemned, — Plato's 
 own writings being exempted from this general 
 censure on the ground (by no means a convincing 
 one) that they are purely dramatic compositions 
 
 ^ Plat. Ep, vii. 341 c, iK ttoXX^s (fvvovaias yr,vofi(VTjs wept to 
 irpay^a. avrb sal toD av^v i^aiiptnjs olov diro -jrvpos Tn^d-qaavTos 
 i^ai^dkv ^tSs iv Tg ^vxv yev6fievov avrb eairri ijSTj rpetpet. 
 
1 90 THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 
 
 and convey no formal doctrine. " It is for this 
 reason," says Plato, or the writer speaking in his 
 name,^ " that I have never myself written anything 
 upon these subjects. There neither is nor ever 
 shall be a treatise of Plato's. What goes by his 
 name are the words of Socrates." There is, how- 
 ever, in these letters more than the mere dislike 
 of dogmatical exposition. The author's prejudice 
 against publishing a book for the benefit of general 
 readers is expressed in a tone which suggests a 
 feeling of freemasonry in the higher learning. He 
 goes so far as to say ^ that when you see any 
 published writings, either promulgated laws or 
 other compositions, you may be sure that the 
 author, if he was worth anything, did not himself 
 regard these as matters of serious importance : 
 if he did he would not have published them, — 
 unless in a moment of infatuation. The mystery 
 of learning was similarly guarded in the middle 
 ages, and even Bacon inherited the dislike of 
 allowing newly discovered truth to pass beyond an 
 inner circle of disciples. 
 
 We have now seen the general line of objection 
 taken by the Greeks to the written and formulated 
 word. An analogy of modern science may serve 
 1 Plat. Ep. ii. 314 c. " lb. vii. 344 c, d. 
 
THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 191 
 
 further to explain the precise reason of this. One 
 of the most recent definitions of life attempted by 
 the science of biology is " the continuous adjust- 
 ment of internal relations to external relations " 
 (Herbert Spencer). Death, on the other hand, is 
 " the non-correspondence of the organism with its 
 environment." In a word, vitality is not absolute, 
 t)ut consists in relation ; death is the snapping 
 of a connexion, the suspension of a relation. 
 " The most distinctive peculiarity," says Dr. 
 Burdon Sanderson,^ " of living matter as com- 
 pared with non-living is that it is ever changing 
 while ever the same ; that is, that life is a state 
 of ceaseless change. . . . The word life is used in 
 physiology in what, if you like, may be called a 
 technical sense, and denotes only that state of 
 change with permanence which I have endeavoured 
 to set forth to you." 
 
 The Greeks had advanced to no such defini- 
 tion, but they forestalled it by instinct. They felt 
 and expressed it in all that they say of the 
 spoken as opposed to the written word, though 
 they could not enunciate it as a scientific principle. 
 If life be the " continuous adjustment of internal 
 
 ^ At the meeting of the British Association as reported in the 
 Times, Sept. 13, 188^. 
 
192 THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 
 
 to external relations," that man is most alive who 
 most surely and with the greatest facility adapts 
 himself to an altered environment : that word is 
 most vital which can best transfoi'm and trans- 
 mute itself according to the needs of its surround- 
 ings, thereby maintaining with , them the most 
 intimate connexion. The written word — so it 
 may be argued — is not self-adjusting and respou- 
 sive to the changes of its environment ; even the 
 spoken word, once formulated, is no less immobile. 
 Both are dead with the first change of external 
 relations. The chain is snapped, the correspond- 
 ence broken. They have no capacity for " con- 
 tinuous adjustment," no power to enter into new 
 and vital connexions under altered circumstances. 
 Only the living speaker can do this ; in him only 
 can truth live ; it most lives in him who is most 
 alive. In biological language the best teacher is 
 he who is in most vivid correspondence with his 
 environment — that is, his pupils ; who influences 
 them, and in turn is influenced by them. If the 
 environment change, he will most surely readjust 
 himself; he will never suffer that death which is 
 " want of correspondence." 
 
 We may push the analogy a little further. 
 The organism may be a fine one, but the faculty 
 
THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 193 
 
 of correspondence weak ; then the word is 
 partially dead. The man is richly stored with 
 wisdoiii, but it is devitalised, because uncom- 
 municated. Or the environment may be poor, 
 but the organism and the faculty of correspond- 
 ence, fine. Only when all these factors are of 
 high excellence — organism, environment, corre- 
 spondence — is the word entirely vital. 
 
 It is easy to see how this truth would be in- 
 stinctive in the Greek mind. They were a people 
 highly gifted as individuals, keenly sociable as a 
 community ; they were therefore not likely to 
 leave out of their conception of the living word 
 the notion of correspondence, of continuous adjust- 
 ment. Indeed this is precisely the point on which 
 Plato lays stress in the well-known passage of the 
 Phaedrus. " There is one inconvenience in written 
 speech, which is in fact incident to painting also. 
 The creations of the painter have the attitude of 
 life, and yet if you ask them a question they pre- 
 serve a solemn silence. And the same may be 
 said of written speeches. You might fancy that 
 they had some intelligence of the meaning of what 
 they say, but if you want to know anything and 
 put a question to one of them, they give the same 
 
 unvarying answer. And when they have been 
 
 o 
 
194 THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 
 
 once written down they are tossed about anywhere 
 among those who do and among those who do not 
 understand them. And they have no reticences 
 or proprieties towards different classes of persons ; 
 and if they are unjustly assailed or abused, their 
 parent is needed to defend his offspring, for they 
 cannot protect or defend themselves." ^ This dead 
 letter is contrasted with the word of knowledge — 
 the " intelligent writing which is graven in the 
 soul of him who has learned, and can defend 
 itself, and knows when to speak and when to 
 be silent." ^ 
 
 No doubt — partly owing to the early prejudice 
 against written mechanical symbols — they added 
 to the notion of the living word some thought of 
 its organic beauty. They suspected in the written 
 language of plain prose an indifference to form, a 
 dulness, an ugliness which was in their minds 
 associated with death, and hence with sterility. 
 Beauty alone (as with Plato) was fecund and 
 creative. Here, perhaps, is one consideration 
 which may partially explain>why it was that the 
 Greeks bestowed such minute and unsparing 
 labour on their written compositions — why Plato, 
 the depreciator of literature, was not satisfied till 
 
 ' Plat. Phaedr. 275 D. 2 p, 276 A. 
 
* THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 195 
 
 he had written out the first eight words of the 
 Republic (as was said to have been discovered 
 after his death) in several diiiferent orders ; why 
 Demosthenes, whose face was set towards action, 
 wrote and rewrote his speeches, would not trust 
 to premeditation, neglected no detail of language 
 or rhythm. Prose, it was felt, in order to be vital, 
 must have the coherence, the perfection, of a living 
 organism. A newly found art, it must employ 
 every resource which could secure its perman- 
 ence. Dionysius of Halicarnassus observes that 
 Herodotus was the first who showed that prose 
 could rival the highest poetry in persuasive power, 
 in charm of expression and a capacity of ex- 
 quisite delight.^ In itself prose had a low vitality. 
 Its existence was precarious. It was not like 
 poetry, which was wedded to musical strains and 
 lived on the lips of men. Raised as it had been 
 out of the sphere of the inorganic, and resting on 
 lifeless symbols, it might fall back into extinction. 
 It must be clothed upon with beauty, it must learn 
 a music of its own, and so become imperishable. 
 All spoken words, however, are not vital any 
 
 ' Dionys. Halic. de Thucyd. ch. 23, p. 865, Tape(rKeija<re tj 
 KpaWoTTj TTOiiiff" ''■V "■^fl" 0piio'i<' o/uoltt;' yev4ff8ai, TreiSovs re Kal 
 Xaplrav Kal rijs eis S,Kpov i]Koi(ry)S i)5ovrjs IvcKa. 
 
196 THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 
 
 more than all written words are dead. This did 
 not escape the observation of the Greeks. One 
 test of life is the capacity to impart life. No 
 speech is vital which does not engender thought 
 in those to whom it is addressed. Is it not a 
 distinguishing feature of the highest eloquence 
 that it stimulates and promotes reflection ? it is 
 not content with gratifying the ear, with eliciting 
 applause, with ministering to the vanity of the 
 speaker or the prejudices and passions of the 
 audience. It awakens the reasoning faculty, it 
 stirs it into active and sympathetic movement ; 
 it has in it the virtue of a creative act ; in a word, 
 it sets men thinking. We remember the keynote 
 of the appeals of Demosthenes : " In God's name, 
 I beg of you to think." The spoken word does 
 not always set men thinking. The object of some 
 speeches — of many political speeches — is to pre- 
 vent men from thinking, to administer a narcotic 
 to the reason. The living voice can be at least 
 as lifeless as the written page. Without the 
 interchange of dialogue — whether oral conversa- 
 tion, or the dialogue that the listener's mind holds 
 with itself, that is, the inward reflection which 
 is kindled by the breath of genuine eloquence — 
 without this, a spoken speech may be as much 
 
THE WRITTEX AND THE SPOKEX WORD 197 
 
 devitalised as the same speech when committed 
 to paper. One is, in fact, the mere transcript of 
 the other. There is a p£issage^ in which Plato 
 describes the harangues, the set speeches of the 
 public men of his day. They are as bad, he 
 says, as books. They go on interminabl}-, but 
 they promote no interchange of thought ; they 
 neither ask nor answer questions ; they are like 
 brazen pots or pans, which, when once struck, 
 continue to resound till a hand is placed upon 
 them. 
 
 Plato had a clear apprehension of what was 
 vital in spoken speech. But he does not appear 
 to have seen in how true a sense a book may be 
 said to be alive. To return to our illustration : the 
 life of a great work of literature consists precisely 
 in its faculty of " continuous adjustment " to a 
 changing environment. Plus ca change plus ccst 
 la menie chose. There are books, poems in par- 
 ticular, whose vitality is inexhaustible, which have 
 fresh meanings for every age. "The author," we 
 are sometimes reminded, " was not conscious of 
 all these meanings ; your interpretation of him is 
 fanciful ; you are reading into him the ideas of 
 other times ; you find in him more than was 
 
 1 Plat. Protag. 329 A. 
 
1 98 THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 
 
 intended." Yes, but this is the very evidence that 
 the book has life, that it is a living organism of a 
 high and complex character, mobile and sensitive 
 to its surroundings. It has latent correspondences 
 w^ith human nature, which time alone discovers ; 
 it has the spontaneous activity, the unconscious 
 self-adapting power of genius. The greater the 
 genius of the writer the more responsive will the 
 book be to its environment, the greater will be the 
 area over which its relations extend, the more far- 
 reaching, both in time and space, the range of its 
 correspondences. For genius is, in fact, life and 
 the faculty of engendering life in others. " A good 
 book," says Milton, " is the precious life-blood of 
 a master-spirit embalmed and treasured up on 
 purpose to a life beyond life " ; or, as Bacon puts 
 it, " neither are they (books) fitly to be called 
 images, because they generate still, and cast their 
 seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing 
 infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages." 
 
 Yet when we speak of life, whether actual, or, 
 as in literature and art, metaphorical, we must 
 remember that it is always a mystery. We can 
 analyse its results, we can declare its conditions, 
 we can never seize its essence. As in genius 
 itself there is something of the wind that bloweth 
 
THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 199 
 
 where it listeth, so in the productions of genius 
 the secret of their vitality still eludes us. But we 
 feel that the vitality is there and can test it by 
 the life which it communicates to others. Some 
 literature possesses this life-giving virtue in a 
 surpassing degree. " One of the arguments," says 
 Lowell, " against the compulsory study of Greek, 
 namely, that it is wise to give our time to modern 
 languages and ancient history, involves, I think, a 
 verbal fallacy. Only those languages can properly 
 be called dead in which nothing living has been 
 written. If. the classic languages are dead, they 
 yet speak to us, and with a clearer voice than that 
 of any living tongue. If their language is dead, 
 yet the literature it enshrines is rammed with life 
 as perhaps no other writing, except Shakespeare's, 
 ever was or will be. It is as contemporary with 
 to-day as with the ears it first enraptured, for it 
 appeals not to the man of then or now, but to the 
 entire round of human nature itself . . . We know 
 not whither other studies will lead us, especially 
 if dissociated from this ; we do know to what 
 summits, far above our lower region of turmoil, 
 this has led, and what the many-sided outlook 
 thence." 
 
 What we have been saying is applicable in a 
 
200 THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 
 
 unique sense to the Bible, which, as a vital growth, 
 has nourished the spiritual life of successive genera- 
 tions, and has seen the death of creeds and sects, 
 the crumbling away of systems of theology which 
 are mere abstracts and digests of truth, not the 
 living food. It is the one book which appears to 
 have the capacity of eternal self-adjustment, of 
 uninterrupted correspondence with an ever shift- 
 ing and ever widening environment. 
 
 Another reason for Plato's distrust of books — in 
 addition to their incapacity for continuous adjust- 
 ment — attaches itself to the high conception he 
 had formed of the dignity of knowledge. True 
 knowledge is not among marketable wares, that 
 can be dealt in retail or wholesale at the pleasure 
 of the consumer, that can be provided ready- 
 made, carried about in a portable shape in books, 
 and . emptied from them into the mind of the 
 learner, as from vessel to vessel. The tendency 
 of language is to describe knowledge in terms of 
 property, as so much wealth acquired or trans- 
 mitted. But, as the Greeks felt, true knowledge 
 is not an extrinsic advantage, but a hard-won 
 possession, personal and inalienable ; it is an 
 inheritance which we must earn in order to 
 possess it. We can enter on it only when we 
 
THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 201 
 
 make it our own. It is not mere acquisition, but 
 mental enlargement, inward illumination. Know- 
 ledge, as a mere bundle of facts, is not power. 
 Knowledge becomes Power only when it is vitalised 
 by Reason. 
 
 " Much learning does not teach wisdom," ^ was a 
 saying of Heraclitus ; and Aristotle, whose house 
 was known, as "the house of the reader," declared 
 that '' much learning produces much confusion." ^ 
 This is not the sigh of intellectual disillusion which 
 we overhear in the words of the author of the book 
 of Ecclesiastes, " He that increaseth knowledge 
 increaseth sorrow," " Much study is a weariness of 
 the flesh." It is the demand for a science which 
 will enable us to organise what we learn. A multi- 
 farious learning, for which the Greeks had a single 
 distinctive word, does not imply any connected 
 view of knowledge as a whole, or of the relation 
 in which any one branch of learning stands to 
 other departments. A mass of facts held in 
 the memory may still remain unpenetrated by 
 the light of reason. The subject-matter of know- 
 ledge must not be passively received, but sub- 
 
 • iroXvfiaStri viov oi SiSdaKei. Cp. Plat. Laws vii. 81 1 B, KirSv- 
 v6v <t>r)lJu- (Ivai tpipovaav rots iraiffl Hiv iroXvfi.aBlai' : and 819 A, i) 
 TToXinrEipJo Kal iroKvfiaOia k.t.A. 
 
 * Arist. Fr. 51. 1484 a 59, TroXvjidSeia jroXXds Tapax^^' woiei. 
 
202 THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 
 
 mitted to the action of a formative mind, which 
 works upon the impressions, invests them with a 
 meaning, adjusts their relations, reduces them to 
 order and coherence. Then only does knowledge 
 become luminous and philosophic. 
 
 The Greeks in their desire to find uniformity 
 in nature and a rational meaning in history, 
 imposed their own thought upon the universe, and 
 anticipated the slow results of science. Yet it was 
 well for the world that they had this passionate 
 trust in the power of reason : it would have 
 been a calamity if, baffled in their first ardour for 
 knowledge, they had become " misologists " — to 
 use Plato's term ^ — or haters of reason, as others 
 become misanthropists or haters of mankind, when 
 they have been deceived in those whom they have 
 trusted. As it was, they conceived the exercise 
 of Logos as Rational Thought to be inseparable 
 from the use of Logos as Rational Speech. The 
 action of a formative mind upon the material of 
 knowledge could hardly, they thought, fully operate 
 without the collision of two personal intelligences, 
 without the play of mind upon mind, the inter- 
 change of question and answer, the colloquial 
 commerce of thought. One great charm of Greek 
 
 ' Plat. Phaedo 89 D. 
 
THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 203 
 
 literature is, that in reading it we seem to be 
 present at the first awakening of the universal 
 human reason ; we seem to watch and overhear 
 it as it becomes conscious of itself. It does not 
 yet speak quite like a book. It is thinking aloud. 
 It debates with itself as with an antagonist ; as 
 soon as it becomes articulate it puts the dialectical 
 process before us in vivid and dramatic form. 
 Philosophy shapes itself into a dramatic conver- 
 sation. History is not a chronicle or bare narra- 
 tive of events : a running comment of speech 
 accompanies action, as the chorus does the action 
 of the drama ; the actors themselves discuss and 
 explain their own motives ; thought passes into 
 words which interpret the inner conflicts and make 
 the deeds intelligible. 
 
 Now, the Greeks were talkers, whereas we are 
 readers. We read, or else we gossip — both very 
 good things in their way, but they are not all. 
 Speech and writing admit of other combinations 
 than this ; and in a University, if anywhere, 
 ought to be the meeting-point and place of recon- 
 ciliation of these two factors of our intellectual life. 
 Books we have, of course ; and speech too there 
 is, or ought to be, in every one of its many forms. 
 We have oral teaching, for example. Some tell us 
 
204 THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 
 
 that a University which teaches is an anachronism 
 and a survival ; that Universities of this type came 
 into existence at a time when learning could only 
 be had through teachers, but that the invention of 
 printing has superseded oral instruction, and trans- 
 formed the idea of a University; that the true 
 University is now a library; and the old Uni- 
 versities, if they continue to exist, - should exist 
 only for the discovery of truth, not for the diffusion 
 of knowledge — for research, not for education. 
 
 This might be a tempting view to hold if it 
 were not for certain facts of our experience. 
 Most of us have observed, and often with much 
 surprise, the mysterious virtue that resides in the 
 living voice of the teacher — or shall we call it a 
 strange weakness in the mind of the student? — ^ 
 which causes a lecture of very moderate merit 
 (provided it is clear and fairly well arranged) to 
 arrest the attention of the listener, when the same 
 thing, expressed in a more finished and complete 
 form, if read in a book awakens the most languid 
 interest. This often happens even where the 
 lecturer has no remarkable personality, and no 
 special attractions of voice and manner. The 
 reason, perhaps, is partly to be found in this — 
 that the speaker is human. That is a fact of 
 
THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 205 
 
 ceaseless interest to his fellow-creatures. Most 
 books are in a sense unhuman. How few men 
 write like themselves and give us a true impres- 
 sion of what they are ! Once on paper, men are 
 apt to lose their own character, and either to 
 become neutral and impersonal, or to take — 
 unconsciously-^— a fictitious personality. When 
 we meet the writer afterwards we are tantalised, 
 almost angry with him, for having led us astray. 
 Now, the speaker, or at least the tsacher, cannot 
 long wear a mask. He cannot keep up the 
 neutrality of a book. You get to know him at 
 the same time that you learn the subject he is 
 talking about. To come into contact with learn- 
 ing in a human and embodied form has a peculiar 
 mental stimulus of its own. 
 
 I do not propose to enter here upon any 
 formal defence of oral instruction. It will be 
 enough to quote some words of Newman's,^ which 
 sum up admirably rnost of what can be said upon 
 this topic : — 
 
 " If the actions of men may be taken as any 
 test of their conviction, then we have reason for 
 saying this, viz., that the prpvince and the in- 
 estimable benefit of the littera scripta is that of 
 
 ^ Historical Sketches, i. 8, 9. 
 
2o6 THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 
 
 being a record of truth, and an authority of 
 appeal, and an instrument of teaching in the 
 hands of a teacher ; bu]t that, if we wish to be- 
 come exact and fully furnished in any branch of 
 knowledge which is diversified and complicated, 
 we must consult the living man and listen to his 
 living voice. I am not bound to investigate the 
 cause of this, and anything I may say will, I am 
 conscious, be short of its full analysis ; — perhaps 
 we may suggest that no books can get through 
 the number of minute questions which it is 
 possible to ask on any extended subject, or can 
 hit upon the very difficulties which are severally 
 felt by each reader in succession. Or, again, that 
 no book can convey the special spirit and delicate 
 peculiarities of its subject with that rapidity and 
 certainty which attend on the sympathy of mind 
 with mind, through the eyes, the look, the accent 
 and the manner, in casual expressions thrown off 
 at the moment, and the unstudied turns of familiar 
 conversation. 
 
 " Whatever be the cause the fact is undeniable. 
 The general principles of any study you may learn 
 by books at home ; but the detail, the colour, the 
 tone, the air, the life which makes it live in us, 
 you must catch all those from those in whom it 
 
THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 207 
 
 lives already. You must imitate the student in 
 French or German, who is not content with his 
 grammar, but goes to Paris- or Dresden : you 
 must take example from the young artist who 
 aspires to visit the great masters in Florence and 
 in Rome. Till we have discovered some intel- 
 lectual daguerreotype which takes off the course 
 of thought, and the form, lineaments, and features 
 of truth as completely and minutely as the optical 
 instrument reproduces the sensible object, we must 
 come to the teachers of wisdom to learn wisdom, 
 we must repair to the fountain, and drink there. 
 Portions of it may go from thence to the ends of 
 the earth by means of books ; but the fulness is 
 in one place alone. It is in such assemblages and 
 congregations of intellect that books themselves, 
 the masterpieces of human genius, are written, or 
 at least originated." 
 
 In its literary aspect the union of the two 
 principles we have been considering — the Spoken 
 and the Written Word — is vital to the well- 
 being of each. In some nations the literary 
 language is out of all relation to the spoken. 
 In China writing has existed from time im- 
 memorial, but chiefly as an official art, a means 
 of government, not an expression of the mind 
 
2o8 THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 
 
 and thought of the people. Even in Latin 
 the spoken and the written language stood far 
 apartj and the breach continued to widen till 
 classical Latin lost the vitality necessary to make 
 it a medium of conversation. In modern Italy 
 literature has by custom come to be written in 
 a single dialect, the 'Tuscan. A true national 
 literature seldom exists under such conditions. 
 Greek writers on the other hand combined the 
 popular and the literary idiom with a felicity to 
 which there is no parallel except perhaps in 
 English literature. The Greek language had 
 reached maturity before it came under the in- 
 fluence of writing ; and the literature retained 
 the freshness, the directness, the simplicity of 
 the best speaking — that charm which so quickly 
 vanishes when style comes to be an art cultivated 
 for its own sake. In the classical age .there was 
 no severance between literature and life ; writers 
 and thinkers were citizens and men of action. 
 Later, they lost touch of popular sentiment, and 
 literature was sensitive to the change. The 
 divorce between speech and writing led to 
 pedantry, bookishness, and unreality. 
 
 It is for the interest of thought as well as of 
 literature to combine the habit of speech with 
 
THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 209 
 
 that of writing. Seme of us are perhaps inclined 
 to become mere absorbers, of books, or possessors 
 of note-books ; — I say " possessors," for one knows 
 of men whose thinking is all in their note-books, 
 not in their heads, there put by for future use 
 against a day that probably never comes ; know- 
 ledge not in hand but in store. Speech is indeed 
 the indispensable supplement to reading and 
 writing ; we are aware how often conversation 
 clears the mind, and dispels difficulties which on 
 paper seemed insoluble : nor can this old, this 
 rival method of oral discussion ever be superseded. 
 Some of us look back in after-life to evenings 
 spent in college — in which we talked things out 
 up to late hours of the night, till our brains 
 glowed with excitement and sleep became almost 
 impossible — as among the keenest enjoyments 
 we have ever known. It is one of the distinctive 
 merits of a University that study and social inter- 
 course here go hand in hand ; men and books are 
 being learnt together. At the moment when 
 the powers of the mind are ripening and expand- 
 ing under the influence of systematic learning, we 
 are taking also our first lessons in life and char- 
 acter. Knowledge is humanised ; it is brought 
 home to us through the affections and the 
 
 P 
 
210 THE WRITTEN AND THE SPOKEN WORD 
 
 imagination as well as through the reason ; we and 
 it are more nearly identified ; it is ehriched and 
 elevated by the associations of friendship, by the 
 joy of free and fearless discussion among equals, 
 by ennobling rivalries, and by still more ennobling 
 intellectual partnerships. In the meeting and 
 collision of mind and mind, in the ready sym- 
 pathy of friends, in the quick movements of 
 kindred intelligences which outstrip and correct 
 and interpret one another's reasonings, we have 
 thought produced on principles that are unknown 
 to workshops and factories. It is more like 
 creation than production. The original material 
 is found to have grown and multiplied. Know- 
 ledge thus humanised is already half-way to 
 Wisdom ; for Knowledge becomes Wisdom only 
 when it has been brought into contact with life. 
 
THE UNITY OF LEARNING 
 
 In the Vicar of Wakefield the Principal of the 
 University of Louvain makes the following observa- 
 tions : — " You see me, young man.T never learned 
 Greek, and don't find that I have ever missed it. 
 I have had a doctor's cap and gown without 
 Greek; I have 10,000 florins a year without 
 Greek ; I eat heartily without Greek ; and in 
 short," continued he, " as I don't know Greek, I 
 do not believe there is any good in it." We 
 will not now discuss whether any one ever got 
 any good out of Greek. But the words I have 
 just quoted undoubtedly express the attitude of 
 mind with which University training is still pretty 
 widely regarded. 
 
 If we were to ask the average citizen who 
 had never happened to pay special attention to 
 the subject, what was taught in Colleges and 
 Universities, he would probably answer, useless 
 
THE UNITY OF LEARNING 
 
 f. And it is perhaps not such a bad 
 answer after all ; in a certain sense we may even 
 make it our own, and claim it as a distinction 
 that, in the seats of Academic learning, little or 
 nothing " useful " is taught. Their aim is not to 
 turn out doctors, clergy, lawyers, merchants, but 
 men — and now women also — with thoroughly 
 trained minds, minds fortified and enlarged by 
 various disciplines, and fitted not for this or 
 that profession but for the conduct of life. To 
 teach people how to think is perhaps the highest 
 end of education, and to learn to think the most 
 difficult thing a man is ever called on to do. A 
 democratic society is inclined to do its thinking 
 by deputy, if only it is permitted to do its voting 
 individually. It is so easy to think in herds 
 through Committees and sub -Committees and 
 party organisations. To exercise the thinking 
 power for its own sake is the central idea of 
 Academic studies. Suppress thinking and you 
 will be able to suppress freedom itself. 
 
 Voltaire, in a paper on the " Horrible Danger 
 of Reading," imagines an edict of the Sublime 
 Porte condemning, proscribing, anathematising 
 the infernal invention of printing for reasons 
 which are then enumerated. " For these and 
 
THE UNITY OF LEARNING 213 
 
 Other causes," the edict proceeds, "for the edifi- 
 cation of the faithful and for the good of their 
 souls we forbid them ever to read a book under 
 pain of eternal damnation. . . . And to prevent 
 any infringement of our ordinance we expressly 
 forbid them to think under the same penalties ; 
 and we enjoin on all true believers the duty of 
 informing us of any one who shall have pro- 
 nounced four connected phrases, from which any 
 clear and distinct sense can be extracted. We 
 therefore ordain that in all conversation terms 
 must be used that signify nothing according to 
 the ancient usage of the Sublime Porte. Given 
 in our Palace of Stupidity, etc." 
 
 The growth of Academic learning and the 
 foundation of new Colleges in this country is 
 plain proof that the younger generation has re- 
 fused to take the Vow of Ignorance. Here we 
 have their public confession that they are not 
 content with intellectual livelihood, they ask for 
 intellectual life. What is desired is to broaden 
 the basis of our education, to make it truly 
 liberal, in the sense that it shall emancipate the 
 mind from what is narrow, local, partial. Not 
 learning only is to be acquired, but, if possible, 
 also that wisdom which is the last result of 
 
214 TE[E VSITY OF LEARXIKG 
 
 mature knowledge. The wish to get on in the 
 wm^Id, to win success, is doubtless {xesent, but 
 the success to be aimed at is of a durable kind. 
 It is not to be achieved by the cast of a die or 
 by a Incky hit A fortune, as it is understood in 
 the mercantile wcH'ld, may som^imes be made by 
 a stroke c^ business ; on the other hand it may 
 be lost as quickly as it was gained. The fortune 
 which belongs to the things of the mind is out- 
 side the r^on of luck. It is not a specnlatioa, 
 it is a fortune slowly buflt up ; every step is won 
 by toil ; but once ours it is ours for ever. We 
 may increase our intellectual wealth by labour, 
 but we cannot lose it extsept by repeated acts 
 of wilful surrender. It may or may not bring 
 financial success : it is pretty certain not to make 
 millionaires : but it is a possession which those 
 who have acquired will not exchange for any 
 lower kind of wealth. 
 
 In its oi^jinal and proper function a Univer- 
 sity is a place for the training of the human 
 mind as such, without reference to the special 
 vocations of after-life: The motive, the govemii^ 
 principle; is the disinterested love of knowledge — 
 knowledge, not as a means to an end but as in 
 itself a good. Literature; Art, and Science — 
 
THE UNITY OF LEARNING 
 
 these are the three chief disciplines by which man 
 seeks to attain truth or strives after beauty ; and 
 these departments are so inherently connected 
 together as to form an ideal unity. They are 
 the nucleus of University learning, they embody 
 the idea that underlies a University ; nor is it 
 any disparagement to the other studies to say 
 that we have here the core and heart of the 
 system, the common source from which profes- 
 sional studies and faculties derive their theoretic 
 principles, and apart from which they cannot 
 attain their specific ends. 
 
 The Sciences of Medicine, Law, and Theo- 
 logy — practical sciences as they may be called, 
 — do not aim at scientific knowledge as such, 
 though scientific knowledge is a condition of 
 their success. To pursue knowledge for its own 
 sake and apart from practical applications is 
 strictly speaking the purpose and idea of a Uni- 
 versity discipline in Arts and Science. What 
 is in some Universities of our country known 
 as the Faculty of Arts, and in Germany as 
 the Philosophical Faculty, in which language, 
 philosophy, literature, and the pure sciences — 
 mathematical, physical, and natural sciences — 
 all meet, is the connecting link which unites 
 
2i6 THE UNITY OF LEARNING 
 
 Academical learning with professional study. It 
 reaches out into border territories and everywhere 
 finds common ground. So long as the idea on 
 which it rests is operative a University cannot 
 become a mere group of departmental schools, or 
 a Anic institute. The historical and the 
 
 phiu ;jphical group of subjects stands in close 
 relation to the Faculties of Law and of Theo- 
 logy j they supply, or ought to supply, the 
 theoretic basis on which the latter rest ; while the 
 department of Mathematics, in its intimate union 
 with the physical and to some extent with the 
 natural sciences, allies itself with Medicine. 
 
 The Arts and Sciences, then, as taught in a 
 University are the pledge of the Unity of Learn- 
 ing, — that old Greek idea embodied in the word 
 Philosophy, which is in danger of being lost in 
 the growing specialism of our age. Socrates in 
 the Phaedo^ speaks of his delight at the first 
 utterance of the word " Mind." He who uttered 
 it, says Aristotle,^ stood out as a sober man 
 among random talkers.'' It must be owned that 
 the Greeks were sometimes carried away by this 
 
 ' Plat. Phaed. 97 c. 
 
 ^ Arist. Met. i. 3. 984 b 17, olov v-ficfiwv 4<f>dv7i Tap' eiKTJ X^oxras 
 Toil's TTpOTepOP. 
 
THE UNITY OF LEARNING 217 
 
 discovery. They were misled by their own in- 
 tellectual ardour, by their indomitable impulse 
 to know. They saw that there must be an 
 intelligible law of things, and impatiently they 
 anticipated it. They could not always wait to 
 read the " long and difficult language oi^i > j"^ 
 Their unifying instinct tyrannised over'ishfem. 
 Not only was this so in natural science and in 
 the philosophy of mind ; their early historical 
 records and popular traditions also suffer from a 
 premature attempt to make the course of events 
 rational, to import order and symmetry into his- 
 tory, to trace the action and method of divine 
 government without a sufficient basis of facts. 
 
 Yet for all this it was a fruitful and inspiring 
 passion — this belief in a constructive reason, in 
 an order of things which the human mind can 
 discover, in a Philosophy that was " the knowledge 
 of all things human and divine." In the course 
 of centuries the authority of such a Philosophy 
 has been challenged ; it has been divested of its 
 prerogatives ; its functions have been parcelled 
 out among specialised sciences ; its separate de- 
 partments have become independent branches of 
 
 ' Plat. Polit. 278 D, rhs rdv irpayix&Tav /xaKpas Kal liT] ^qSiovs 
 ffvXKa^ds. 
 
2i8 THE UNITY OF LEARNING 
 
 knowledge, each following its own method and 
 obeying laws of its own. Philosophy, as many 
 would contend, has been dethroned, and is no 
 longer the Science among the Sciences ; some 
 would deny that it ha^ any scientific claims what- 
 ever. Philosophy, it is said, must be content 
 with the dream-land of the Absolute: it may 
 amuse itself with solving the insoluble problems. 
 
 Now it may be observed that the principle 
 of specialisation which is supposed to have de- 
 throned Philosophy, not only rules, as it ought 
 in some sense to rule, in the intellectual and 
 industrial domains, but is beginning also to claim 
 sway over the life of the individual. I have heard 
 of an organisation which pledges its members 
 to read a solid book for one half-hoiir a day. 
 Whether the half-hour may be taken in separate 
 dosesof so many minutes each, I do not know. 
 But at any rate the half-hour's reading must be 
 got through under penalty of paying a fine ; and 
 it is said that as midnight draws near there is 
 sometimes in festive gatherings a flutter and a 
 stir among those who have barely left themselves 
 time to retrieve the day. As this is a highly 
 specialised association for the promotion of cul- 
 ture, so there are other similar associations for 
 
THE UNITY OF LEARNING 219 
 
 the supervision of morals^ Every part of a man's 
 nature has a Vigilance Committee or Society 
 appointed to superintend it. MoraUty is divided 
 into its component elements ; in Plato's phrase, 
 Virtue is " broken up into small change." ' The 
 danger of such piecemeal morality is a very real 
 one, — that these several departments each im- 
 pressed with its own primary importance may 
 aspire to constitute the whole of virtue, or may 
 even set up separate and unauthorised codes of 
 their own. Now if such external props and aids 
 to virtue are needed, if departmental supervision 
 must be exercised over morality in its various 
 aspects, at least let it be borne in mind that there 
 still exists a connected scheme of virtues and 
 duties, a law of right conduct that is supreme over 
 all forms and phases of individual life ; that there 
 are many virtues, yet that Virtue is one ; that 
 though there are ten commandments in the deca- 
 logue, there is still one Righteousness. 
 
 We cannot indeed wonder that specialisation 
 should sometimes be pushed beyond its proper 
 limits when we see the vast fields of knowledge 
 that have been opened up by this method. Yet 
 it is none the less true that excessive specialisa- 
 
 ^ Plat. Metio 79 A, KefiUkH^vv t^v aperriv. 
 
THE UNITY OF LEARNING 
 
 tion is the death of Science. It is so even in 
 the case of a single science. In ancient Egypt, 
 we are told, there was a special class of physicians 
 for each part of the human body and for each 
 kind of illness. None of these doctors treated the 
 body as a whole. Scientific medicine was there- 
 fore impossible. Excessive specialisation would 
 moreover ultimately involve the dissolution of 
 society. Gjnceive, if you can, a world of special- 
 ists, in which each man's vision and labour are 
 concentrated on some microscopic point in the 
 field of human activity, and the very idea of a 
 political and social organism disappears. There 
 is a point at which the subdivision of labour in 
 the intellectual sphere must be checked, and some 
 unifying principle introduced, if we are to retain 
 any rational conception of man, or of the world, 
 or of human life. 
 
 The commonwealth of learning is at present 
 endangered by disintegrating tendencies. A 
 single science in the course of a few years is 
 multiplied into half a dozen sciences : mere 
 disiecta membra of knowledge they will be unless 
 they are reunited by constructive thought and 
 held tc^ether by some regulative and master 
 principle. Here, then, comes in the function of 
 
THE L'XITY OF LEARXiXG 
 
 Philosophy — ^to snrvey the whole field of labour 
 even to its farthest limits ; to exhibit the common 
 prindples underlying the several sciences, the laws 
 of thought which govem their methods ; to har- 
 monise their results and reduce to unity their 
 highest generalisations : in a word, to bind 
 tc^ether the many domains and ontlj-ing pro- 
 vinces of learning and to form them into a 
 system. Plato formed a grand idea of Philosophy, 
 as that comprehensive science which embraces 
 not only logic and ethics and metaph\"3ics, but 
 also the study of politics, of religion, of fine art, 
 of social science, of language, and of education. 
 It was an idea impossible to realise in the 
 infancy of the sciences, but it was a vision from 
 the mount of prophecy : it is still a vision, but 
 a waking vision, and no mere dream. Philo- 
 sophy may hope to be restored to something like 
 her old supremacy through the agency of those 
 ver>- sciences which have dethroned her. Their 
 highest generalisations are for her the points of 
 departure ; they are the materials on which she 
 works. Philosophy should aspire to become the 
 Science of the Sciences, the unity and meeting- 
 point of all, including all and yet distinct from 
 each. 
 
THE UKITY OF LEARNING 
 
 It is precisely this ideal Unity of the Sciences 
 that is represented by a University as a place 
 of learning and research. Not that every student 
 must necessarily be trained in technical philo- 
 sophy ; still all ought to be initiated into the 
 principles of knowledge, taught not only how 
 to know this or that, but how to know. All 
 should acquire a certain habit of mind, an enlarge* 
 ment of view and breadth of judgment This 
 expansion of the mind is what we need in the 
 professions as well as in the pursuits of liberal 
 learning. The saying of Galen, apnTTo<; iaTfHt<; kcu 
 ^CKoao^>o<;, '' the best physician is also a philo- 
 sopher " — a man of philosophic mind — is still true, 
 though medicine has become one of the most 
 specialised of the sciences. In a similar spirit 
 Aristotle^ distinguishes the technical knowledge 
 of a science from the knowledge of scientific 
 method. A man of general philosophic culture 
 will, he says, Be able to form a competent judg- 
 ment on the specialist's treatment of his own 
 branch of study. Such a critical faculty, which 
 
 ' Arist. de Part. Anim. i. i. 639 a I-IO: it is the mark of tow 
 SXtiK werauSevfjL^ow to be able xp^ai eivrixf^ t^ jraXws ^ fi^ aroSi- 
 Sumw 6 \^ytap. He niay be r^arded as -repl rdrrur ws eirur KpiTiK&v 
 Tira. Similarly Met. a 3. 995 a 12-14 the knowledge of an 
 eiruniiii.li and of the Tplnrm (" method ") ewurrruap are distingnished. 
 
THE UNITY OF LEARNING 223 
 
 can be applied to almost any subject, he looks on 
 as the highest and most characteristic result of a 
 liberal education. 
 
 Though the methods of the sciences may differ, 
 the method of learning is one ; and in all educa- 
 tion the method is at least as important as the 
 instruction conveyed. Every people that has set 
 a value upon the things of the mind has recognised 
 this fact. Socrates pressed it home upon his own 
 generation. Vital knowledge cannot, like common 
 wares, be passed from hand to hand : it cannot be 
 mechanically conveyed into the mind as so much 
 mental furniture. " How I wish," said Socrates, 
 in the Symposiujn} as he took his seat by his friend 
 the poet Agathon, " that wisdom could be infused 
 through the medium of touch, out of the full into 
 the empty man, like the water which the wool 
 sucks out of the full vessel into an empty one j in 
 that case how much I should prize sitting by you ! " 
 But Socrates knew that this was just what could 
 not be. No teacher that ever lived has. shown 
 with such compelling force as Socrates himself 
 
 ' Plat. Symp. 175 D (Jowett's Trans.), eB hv lx<", ^axai, & 
 ' X-^^tBiav, cl ToiovTov cXij if (rotftla, &aT €k tov rXifpeaT^pov eU tov 
 Kevilrrepoi' peiv thjlSiv, iav aTrrJiixeda. oKKijKuv^ Hmrep to h> rats KiKi^iv 
 ^dtap TO Std. TOV 4plov p4ov iK r^s Tr\ijp€iTT^pas eis ttjv KevoiT^pav. et 
 yap oStu^ ^e« Kai rj trotpia^ ttoXXoO Tifiufiai ttjv irapa aol KaTaKXtatv. 
 
how unlike learning is to mechanical acquisition. 
 
 • 
 
 One reason for his bitter hostility to the methods 
 and pretensions of the Sophists was that they 
 encouraged, as he believed, the delusion that 
 mental culture may be externally received and 
 acquired,^ that ready-made intellectual results 
 can be supplied, if only the market \-alue of the 
 commodity is fixed. 
 
 Aristotle,' too, speaks of the "rapid but un- 
 scientific ° method of the teaching of the Sophists. 
 They fancied they were imparting education when 
 they were only imparting results (ov yap re\ft!v 
 aXXa ra teg-o rifi Teyvip BtBoirre; vatBevetv {~7re\a^- 
 ffatfop) : and he illustrates their method by the 
 example of a shoemaker, who, professing to teach 
 the art of making painless shoes, put into the 
 apprentice's hand a large assortment of shoes 
 ready-made (Soti; Se iroXXa 76j»ij uravroSa-s^v 
 {nroStiftaTtav}. There are no tricky short cuts to 
 knowledge. " Learning," Aristotle elsewhere saj-s. 
 " is painful," ' and teaching too is difficult. To 
 evoke the thinking process in another, to guide 
 
 1 CpL riat. Xep. 51S c, ^«uri S^ r«- «« cmtVfS e» tj -.t-vf 
 nwninfs r^ea eV-:^^?^., where the ntvnl emfifimi suggests what 
 we call the "cnun system. See also TVWIig. 514 A-K. 
 
 * Arist. Si-/i. E/ok-Jk. 33. 1S4 a 2^. 
 
 ' Arist. fld. \. ,vui. 1330 a ;S. /«ct4 XtVfS 7*^ ^ ;«»*»*«. 
 
THE UNITY OF LEARNING 225 
 
 the mind without forcing it, to follow and under- 
 stand a pupil's thought even when it is mis- 
 directed — this is, in its highest perfection, the gift 
 of a Socrates and of a few born teachers, yet 
 it is also the ideal at which all teachers ought 
 to aim. 
 
 If we would gain any orderly conception of 
 knowledge as a whole, we should each begin by 
 seeking after unity in his own department. Some 
 one or two branches of study within our department 
 are probably more familiar to us than the others ; 
 they form a solid tract of land which we have 
 reclaimed from the waste and made our own. 
 But we ought to know enough of all branches of 
 our subject to think out their connexions, and to 
 bring them into organic relation with one another. 
 We shall then be the better prepared to pass on to 
 the other sciences where different methods and new 
 intellectual processes are involved, and to fit them 
 into the general system of our thought. The guid- 
 ance of a good teacher here becomes a matter of 
 the first moment to the pupil. 
 
 The same subject may be taught, the same 
 book read, the same information given, but the 
 whole difference to the pupil is in the way it is 
 done. It is not the result that is of value, but 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE UNITY OF LEARNING 
 
 how you get the result. The method it is that 
 makes the teacher. A man of large and liberal 
 culture will treat even the rudiments of his subject 
 differently from one who has, so to speak, just 
 learnt his own lesson, or has an eye only to the 
 coming examination. The true teacher cannot 
 forget that his subject is a unity. He will not 
 neglect the whole in the part. At each stage of 
 progress he will give glimpses into something 
 beyond. Beginning with particulars, he will in 
 and through them lead up to principles. He will 
 interpret the details, and make them orderly and 
 intelligible by the illuminating force of reason. 
 At the same time he will be aware that his own 
 department is related to a larger whole, to that 
 which constitutes the unity of knowledge itself. 
 He will not deal with his subject in the narrow 
 spirit of one who has acquired some technical 
 aptitude and seeks to make his own craft usurp 
 the whole universe. The craftsman looks to one 
 thing only ; he has not the time or training 
 to see the relations in which his own special 
 subject stands to oth^r pursuits. It is enough 
 for him if he can make that one field of human 
 activity his own, though it may be infinitesimally 
 small. 
 
THE UNITY OF LEARNING 227 
 
 Now the teacher and the student should 
 imitate the craftsman in thoroughness, minute- 
 ness, and precision. He must not be led away 
 by the charlatan's view that thoroughness means 
 pedantry. Pedantry is not accuracy, precision of 
 thought, mastery of detail. It means dispropor- 
 tion and loss of perspective ; a lingering over 
 minutiae till all the sense of the whole is lost. 
 It means the learning which cannot organise what 
 we know even in a single department, much less 
 take a survey of any wider field. The pedant 
 becomes a slave to rules which are made by the 
 abstract understanding, working within too limited 
 a sphere and divorced from real insight. Pedantry 
 is rigid and lifeless not so much because it draws 
 too' fine distinctions ; rather, the pedant's distinc- 
 tions are not fine enough, he does not allow for 
 the variety which is to be found in the concrete 
 world ; he ^eeks to bring the contents of his 
 thought under the bondage of the letter. The 
 living truths of nature, art, literature escape the 
 apprehension of one who moves in the atmosphere 
 of intellectual abstraction. Not less but greater 
 grasp of detail is needed ; of a kind, however, 
 which implies wider horizons, an enlargement 
 of the whole mental outlook. It is the dis- 
 
228 THE UNITY OF LEARNING 
 
 tinctive mark of a University education to give 
 a thoroughness which is not pedantry, and an 
 enlargement of mind which does not lose itself 
 in generalities. 
 
 Such an attitude and quality of mind is not, of 
 course, the exclusive gift of University training. 
 It is not the privilege of the few, an aristocratic 
 freemasonry from which common men are shut 
 out. It is found in some who have but little 
 book knowledge, and who have got their chief 
 learning from life — in the market-place, in the 
 counting-house, in the workshop, and in the camp. 
 Still, whatever failures have to be recorded against 
 University education, it is the distinctive aim and 
 office of a University, as the home of the undivided 
 sciences, to bestow this grasp of mind, this sureness 
 of insight, this comprehensive judgment. And if 
 it is of supreme importance to a community to 
 keep its men of intellect in touch with the people 
 and with their mental life, it devolves on all who 
 are trained in Academic learning to do their 
 utmost to foster that philosophic breadth and 
 largeness of view which rests on moral no less 
 than on intellectual sympathy. 
 
 Excessive specialism tends to divorce Learning 
 from Life ; the men of Thought from the men of 
 
THE UNITY OF LEARNING 229 
 
 Action ; the Scholar from the Citizen ; to place a 
 great gulf between the world of the Learned and 
 the world of the Unlearned. That gulf it is the 
 duty of men of learning to bridge over. Those 
 who have the clearest consciousness of the unity 
 of knowledge ought also most vividly to realise 
 the unity of civic life ; for the human reason 
 which lays down the regulative principles of 
 thought is one and the same as that reason 
 which has worked in history, imposing its dictates 
 upon men and upon nations, directing their blind 
 instincts and moulding their institutions. The 
 same force of reason which is at the basis of 
 science is at the basis also of society. It is the 
 principle of unity which knits us together into an 
 intellectual and civic community. Thought and 
 action, knowing and doing, are not opposing and 
 conflicting principles. Their harmony and equili- 
 brium are essential to the sanity of a people. 
 , Where the balance and due correspondence be- 
 tween the principles are lost, a nation runs into 
 fanaticism or sinks into sloth. 
 
 No one will deny that there are in every 
 generation and in every people some solitary 
 thinkers, who best fulfil the purpose of their life 
 by standing aloof from the activities of ordinary 
 
230 THE UNITY OF LEARNING 
 
 men, devoting themselves in the study or the 
 laboratory to that wherein the bent of their genius 
 lies. All action does not consist in external acts ; 
 there are men whose knowing is their doing, and 
 whose inward and silent energy may work upon 
 the world at large with a force greater than that 
 of conquerors or of statesmen. Nor would we 
 suggest that the less distinguished men, whose . 
 path still lies in the field of intellect — in literature 
 or science or education — must of necessity become 
 party politicians if they are to do their duty as 
 citizens. It is surely no great harm that there 
 should be a few who are detached from the service 
 of party, ■ especially if they are able thereby to 
 take a clearer and larger outlook over politics 
 and to see beyond the party triumphs of the 
 hour. 
 
 Still the learned world has not, perhaps, 
 always been mindful of what is due from it to 
 the society of which it forms a part. It has too 
 often fancied itself to be in possession of some 
 enchanted ground, and to hold the key to mys- 
 teries which none else may open. The very 
 dialect of learning has often been enough to 
 frighten off intruders. You required a special 
 noviciate to understand it. In order to be pro- 
 
THE UmVY OF LEARNING 231 
 
 found it was thought necessary to be obscure. 
 Learned exposition must needs be unintelligible 
 to men of culture who had not acquired the 
 formulae and mannerisms of the craft. Learned 
 men, we may hope, are ceasing to think of them- 
 selves as a guild or exclusive fraternity. The 
 great scientific discoverers of our age — a Darwin 
 and a Pasteur — are models of good writing. 
 They are bent on saying what they mean and 
 on saying it clearly — the first secret of style- — and 
 the words are exactly adequate to the thought 
 that is to be expressed. Even the philosophers 
 who have long been the worst offenders are 
 following the example of the leaders of science 
 and learning to write with a view to be under- 
 stood. Nothing is so hard but that it can be 
 said clearly as well as obscurely. What is in- 
 trinsically hard cannot, of course, be made easy ; 
 but it is capable of being made clear to a trained 
 intelligence. 
 
 This single fact, that learned men are acquiring 
 the use of their mother tongue, is already pro- 
 ducing a remarkable influence on the diffusion of 
 knowledge, and doing much to efface the sharp 
 distinction between the learned and the unlearned. 
 The distinction can, indeed, never be completely 
 
232 THE UNITY OF LEAlfNlNG 
 
 effaced. There are whole departments of know- 
 ledge whose processes can only be followed by a 
 few, though their leading principles and methods • 
 may be made intelligible to others besides experts. 
 To many it seems a contradiction in terms to 
 speak of popularising knowledge. A witty 
 Frenchman classes together under one description 
 those who would " make science popular, meta- 
 physics intelligible, and vice respectable." Any- 
 how we may freely admit the dangers of what is 
 called " popularisation." So far as it has led 
 people to believe that they can take over the 
 intellectual results of others, and appropriate them 
 without an effort ; so far as it has encouraged the 
 acceptance of showy paradoxes instead of sober 
 criticism, to that extent it is mischievous delusion. 
 But this is in truth the vulgarising rather than the 
 popularising of knowledge. 
 
 There is a genuine sense in which knowledge 
 may be popularised ; but it can only be done by 
 one who has not merely accumulated but has 
 assimilated knowledge ; who is filled with its 
 spirit, with whom it has become a living force, 
 taking possession of the whole man, penetrating to 
 the recesses of his personality, laying hold of him 
 by his affections no less than by his intellect ; 
 
THE UNITY OF LEARNING 233 
 
 whose mental being is not divided into two halves, 
 one of which resides, in his books and a wholly 
 different one in the outer world ; who keeps before 
 his eyes the relation in which his own department 
 stands to the whole fabric of scientific thought ; 
 who can expound and utter what he knows in 
 such vital form that it shall touch others with the 
 inspiration of life. Books alone may give in- 
 formation, but not one in a thousand can in this 
 sense popularise knowledge. You must fall back 
 on the old Socratic principle, the method of human 
 intercourse and the converse between minds. The 
 teacher ought to be the subject vitalised and 
 humanised in the presence of the student ; the 
 science kindled into warmth and touching with its 
 glow the expectant sympathies of the listeners. 
 The electricity of thought ought to be abroad in 
 the air of the class-room. 
 
 How widely different a thing this is from the 
 false kind of popularised teaching which has 
 brought it into disrepute among the learned ! 
 We can easily account fpr the instinctive dread 
 which the genuine Dryasdust feels on being told 
 that he must bring the results of his learning 
 before the popular mind. He cannot do so. His 
 learning is a dead weight of facts. It is unin- 
 
234 THE UNITY OF LEARNING 
 
 formed by reason, and uninspired by sympathy. 
 " You must be above yogr knowledge," says 
 Newman, " not under it, or it will oppress you ; 
 the more you have of it, the greater will be the 
 load. The learning of a Salmasius or a Bur- 
 man, unless you are its masters, will be your 
 tyrant. ' Imperat aut servit ' ; if you wield it 
 with a strong arm it is a great weapon ; otherwise 
 
 ' Vis consili expers mole ruit sua.' 
 
 You will be overwhelmed like Tarpeia, by the 
 heavy*wealth which you have exacted from tribu- 
 tary generations." 
 
 True learning being such as we have described, 
 it is evident that many subjects which, if seized in 
 their true relations, rank highest as instruments of 
 culture, are least fitted to be brought to the sole 
 test of examination. Such, for instance, is the 
 department of classical literature. It is a subject 
 that is many-sided, and whose value depends upon 
 its scope and comprehensiveness, and on the wide 
 horizons which open out of it. The classical 
 languages, from one point of view, fall within the 
 sphere of the exact sciences. The general laws of 
 their growth and decay can be stated with scien- 
 tific precision. On another side they are as free 
 
THE UNITY OF LEARNING 235 
 
 as thought itself, they look out over the whole 
 field of human endeavour and imagination. We 
 may come to them as grammarians, as historians, 
 as archaeologists, as anthropologists ; and to each 
 class of inquirer they will yield results of the 
 highest interest. But if we are to apprehend 
 classical literature in its full spirit and power, we 
 shall not approach it in the first instance in the 
 attitude of speciaHsts, We shall study it simply 
 as containing imperishable thought in noble lan- 
 guage. We shall not sever the language and the 
 thought ; they are not accidentally related. Most 
 of the failures of classical education may be set 
 down to the attempt to treat these two elements 
 apart. To know the words without the sense, and 
 to know the sense without the words — this sums 
 up the character of the bad scholar and the shallow 
 thinker. No : the language is the key, the one 
 master-key, to unlock the thought. 
 
 But, you -say, we may read the classics in 
 translations, and thence get at the spirit and 
 essence of antiquity, discarding what is outward 
 and accidental. Well, one may no doubt learn 
 much about antiquity by this means ; and if one 
 has a peculiar genius, one may even divine some- 
 thing of its inmost spirit, as has been done by a 
 
235 THE UNITY OF LEARNING 
 
 few men of rare imagination and insight, such as 
 Schiller and Keats, whose knowledge has either 
 been very imperfect or derived mainly from second- 
 hand sources. But translations, the very best, are 
 but shadows of the original. You cannot trans- 
 fuse the life-blood of a poem into any translation. 
 One language, moreover, differs from another — 
 above all an ancient language differs from a 
 modern — not only in outward form, but in inward 
 and essential character. It is not that they ex- 
 press the same thing in different ways. They 
 express a different thing, wholly or partially 
 different, each in its own way. 
 
 Words are not coins which have an interchange- 
 able value. A scientific term is capable of inter- 
 national exchange. The idea that it conveys can 
 be passed from land to land, uncoI6ured by 
 emotion, untouched by association. Each people 
 can express it in exactly equivalent form. A cube 
 root is the same thing to an Englishman as to a 
 Russian. But the language of literature is totally 
 distinct. The words stand rooted in the soil of 
 national life, they are nourished from a people's 
 history. Around them have gathered the accre- 
 tions of thought of successive generations. The 
 associations of poetry and eloquence cling about 
 
THE UNITY OF LEARNING 237 
 
 them. Words whose nearest equivalents are for 
 us dead and prosaic stirred the pulses of a Greek 
 and vibrated with memories of Troy and Salamis. 
 How different, again, is the same word when it 
 meets us in Homer and in the New Testament ! 
 To the student of language, one such word is in 
 itself the epitome of a vast chapter in the history 
 of thought, or represents, it may be, a revolution 
 in our ideas of morals and religion. The abstract 
 words which express intellectual moods and pro- 
 cesses, moral sentiments, religious aspirations, are 
 essentially untranslatable. They have no exact, 
 often no approximate, equivalents in other lan- 
 guages. Classical literature may, therefore, be 
 taught either from the narrow point of view of a 
 grammarian who sees nothing beyond ; or, starting 
 from the basis of language and grammar, we may 
 penetrate into philosophy, art, and religion — into 
 all that throws light on the genius and institutions 
 of a people, and fixes its place in civilisation. 
 
 None who have not themselves used and tried 
 the exatnination test are aware how ill adapted it 
 is to gauge the value of classical education in these 
 its larger aspects. Facts that in the process of 
 being communicated by the teacher had become 
 vital knowledge ; which had taken the colour of 
 
238 THE UNITY OF LEARNING 
 
 the pupil's mind as he advanced by tentative steps 
 and slow stages and by frequent repetition of the 
 idea, reappear on paper as so many ready-made 
 results. They are artificially produced from a 
 note-book by an effort of memory, and with the 
 conscious intention of scoring marks. The 
 candidate believes that these will be more paying 
 than his own authentic ideas, which are probably 
 immature and somewhat imperfect in expression. 
 And he is unfortunately too often right ; for 
 examiners have to judge of answers by their 
 actual worth' and quality ; and, unless they can 
 detect a rote-like and unintelligent repetition of 
 phrases, they cannot safely go behind the answers 
 and speculate as to their source, taking off marks 
 because they think that the ideas, or the form in 
 which they are expressed, are too good to be the 
 product of the candidate's own mind. We may 
 here l^ave out of account the rare instances in 
 which an original force of mind makes itself felt 
 even under the artificial conditions of examination. 
 But, speaking broadly, we may say that the 
 formative process of thought is arrested as soon as 
 a candidate sits down to an examination on litera- 
 ture, or even studies with a view to it. Second- 
 hand generalisations and stereotyped judgments 
 
THE UNITY OF LEARNING 239 
 
 are put on paper. It is an inherent defect of 
 examinations, that in certain branches of study 
 they can do little more than lay bare results. 
 They do not help us to trace the stages and 
 steps of mental growth, to follow processes of 
 thought, and to distinguish such as are vital from 
 such as are mechanical. 
 
 A University, however, has other means besides 
 examination of ensuring genuine work and of 
 tracing progress along systematic lines of study. 
 The Lecturer who is in daily contact with his 
 classes, and who not only lectures but keeps 
 to the good old custom of oral questioning, dis- 
 cerns the intellectual needs of his pupils, and 
 knows of what stuff they are made better than he 
 can ever learn from written examinations. The 
 popular conception of a teacher's office is, some 
 one has said, to help a candidate to play 
 with a straight bat the most artful twisters of an 
 examiner ; and there is no doubt that the domin- 
 ance of the examination system has tended to 
 create a wrong conception of the teacher even in 
 Universities whose function is recognised to be 
 other than that of an examining Board. An 
 Oxford undergraduate, a Scholar of his College, 
 was about to go in for his final examination. He 
 
240 THE UNITY OF LEARNING 
 
 went to his tutor to talk over with him a difficult 
 metaphysical problem. The tutor discussed it on 
 various sides, but produced no definite solution. 
 The pupil at last told him plainly that this wcis 
 not what he wanted. " What I want is the ex- 
 amination answer to the question ; give it me in a 
 precise form." " I really can't," was the reply ; " it 
 is a point on which nobody can speak dogmatic- 
 ally. Honestly, I don't know." "Come now, 
 
 Mr. ," said the other, " but you are paid to 
 
 know." Yes, paid to know, and to put our 
 knowledge in cheap and handy form for ready use 
 and distribution, — that is the theory of those who 
 regard University teaching as a commercial in- 
 dustry, and a University Degree as a " hall-mark " 
 which ought to be easily purchased with the 
 minimum expenditure of intellectual effort. To 
 such persons knowledge is of value only if it leads 
 directly to material advancement ; and the different 
 branches of University study, pursued without any 
 sense of their vital interdependence, are only the 
 means to a professional end. 
 
 But liberal studies followed in an illiberal spirit 
 fall below the mechanical arts in dignity and worth. 
 Arithmetic, says Plato, is an excellent prelimin- 
 ary to philosophic study " if pursued for the love 
 
THE UNITY OF LEARNING 241 
 
 of knowledge and not in the spirit of a shop- 
 keeper."^ The proviso here contained presents 
 the Greek ideal of education. Intellectual training 
 is an end in itself and not a mere preparation fpr 
 a trade or a profession. The history of the word 
 (T')(p'\.ri in its transition from " leisure " to " school," 
 through the intermediate stage of "philosophical 
 discussion," is the unconscious testimony of the 
 Greek genius to the pure and disinterested love of 
 learning. Greek " leisure " is sometimes spoken 
 of slightingly as if it were the luxury of the rich or 
 the dilettanti, an easy sauntering through life and 
 avoidance of painful effort. But in truth it is 
 not the opposite of activity, but a special form of 
 activity, the strenuous exercise of the intellectual 
 or artistic faculties. It is no state of blissful indol- 
 ence, which is the ideal of some Orientals ; no life 
 of feasting, which is the ideal of the savage ; no 
 round of trivial amusement, which is the ideal of 
 the man of fashion. It is work, genuine work ; 
 not, however, to satisfy bodily wants and the needs 
 of animal existence, but to appease a pressing 
 mental appetite — the desire for knowledge or the 
 desire for beauty. 
 
 ' I'lat. Kep. vii. 525 D, ih.v toC ypupl'^eiv lycxd Tis avri (inTrj- 
 
 R 
 
242 THE UNITY OF LEARNING 
 
 Leisure and Work — the two ideas are to some 
 minds inconsistent, but here is their point of meet- 
 ing. " To do their duty is their only holiday," ^ 
 is a description we read of Athenian character in 
 Thucydides. To work their minds, that too is 
 their holiday, their true (T'^oXtj, the leisure that is 
 worthy of one who is at heart more than a mere 
 mechanic, whose energies are not all spent upon 
 task-work done to order, with quick returns of 
 profit as his reward, but who has free activities of 
 mind which claim scope and play, energies which 
 are voluntary, self-imposed, delightful ; which 
 result in the discipline, the quickening of every 
 human faculty ; useless, it may be, in the estima- 
 tion of those who believe only in machinery, but 
 for all who would not sacrifice the ends of life to 
 the means, to be counted among the first condi- 
 tions of existence. 
 
 A University is not an industrial association 
 but in some sense a spiritual community. In 
 the spiritual and intellectual life the distinctions 
 of mine and thine disappear. We are rich not 
 by what we have and keep, but by what we share. 
 " Friends have all things in common " {kolvo, to, 
 
 ^ Thucyd. i. 70. 9, /x^Te eopTT]v 6X\o n riyetaBai. ij rb rh Siovra 
 
THE UNITY OF LEARNING 243 
 
 Twv ^iKwv) was the proverb which the Pytha- 
 goreans took for the motto of their school. They 
 extended their idea of common property to em- 
 brace ownership in the spiritual and intellectual 
 sphere no less than in the outward goods of life ; 
 and a far truer doctrine it is than the principle 
 of unlimited competition in matters intellectual. 
 There is no such thing as intellectual isolation. 
 The worker in each domain should cultivate the 
 power of viewing knowledge as a whole, and of 
 discovering the bond of unity between the several 
 parts. From one department of learning, light is 
 flashed back in unexpected ways upon another, 
 and studies which have long seemed unrelated 
 recognise one another on a sudden as sister 
 sciences. 
 
 New subjects will constan'tly gain entrance into 
 an Academic scheme of study, and the labour 
 of teachers and students will become more highly 
 specialised. And it is well it should be so. That 
 is for us, in our day, the road of progress. Only 
 we must strive in the multiplicity of the sciences 
 to apprehend the common principles of know- 
 ledge, and to keep the parts 'in just subordina- 
 tion to the conception of the whole ; and this 
 needs intelligent sympathy no less than grasp 
 
244 THE UNITY OP LEARNING 
 
 of intellect The inspiring principle of University 
 study is the sense that learning is not a dead 
 tradition but living and growing trutL Never let 
 us lose the idea of a Universitas Litteraruni, of a 
 community of letters — that indivisible kingdom 
 of thought, whose several parts are not discon- 
 nected fragments, but are linked together in organic 
 union, each essential to the joint action of the 
 whole ; which should be animated by one spirit, 
 and understand one another's aims and methods. 
 Only in this way can we hope with the growing 
 subdivision of intellectual labour to combine the 
 singleness of Truth, the real Unity of Learning. 
 
THE DAWN OF ROMANTICISM IX 
 GREEK POETRY 
 
 The terms ancient and modem, classical and 
 romantic, are generally used to distinguish tn-o 
 great periods, two phases of thought and senti- 
 ment in the historj- of European literature. True 
 and expressive as the antithesis is if properly 
 limited and interpreted, the distir.ction has never- 
 theless often been too sharply drawn, without 
 due regard either to the literary affinities which 
 are unexpectedly revealed between epochs of 
 history separated by a wide interval of time, or 
 to the fine gradations by which the transition 
 from one age to another is frequently marked. 
 Many critics appear to have assumed that in 
 the classical world of Greece and Rome the 
 individual was not yet aware of a divid»l self; 
 the harmony of consciousness remained unbroken ; 
 there was a frank and unquestiraiing enjoyment 
 -45 
 
246 DAWN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 of existence. The breach between nature and 
 spirit is supposed to date only from the definite 
 triumph of Christianity over Paganism. From 
 that time forth there is conflict and disturbance 
 in the soul, manifesting itself in vague longings, 
 visions, doubts, disillusions ; hearts and eyes are 
 full of regret for something lost or unattainable. 
 The tone of feeling grows more inward and 
 intense, the accent more individual. Poets be- 
 come self-scrutinising and self-pitying. The reign 
 of reverie and melancholy begins. A perplexed 
 twilight has succeeded to the glad surprise of 
 morning. 
 
 The great change, however, which passed over 
 imaginative literature under the influence of Chris- 
 tianity was not without preparation. Within the 
 limits of Greek literature itself there are many pre- 
 monitory symptoms of the new direction in which 
 feeling was tending, of a new attitude towards the 
 things of the heart, and another mode of contem- 
 plating the universe without. An exclusive atten- 
 tion to the earlier epochs of Greek literature has 
 obscured the gradual stages of this process. The 
 well-known essay of Schiller on " Simple and 
 Sentimental Poetry '' {iiber naive und sentimenta- 
 liche Dichtung) contributed in no slight measure 
 
IN GREEK POETR Y 247 
 
 towards establishing the contrast between the old 
 world and the new under the form of too absolute 
 an antagonism. He points especially to the 
 altered feeling for external nature as one of the 
 most significant points of difference between Greek 
 and modern literature. It is " a strange fact," he 
 says, " that so few traces are found among the 
 Greeks of that sentimental interest that we moderns 
 take in the scenes of nature and in natural char- 
 acters. I admit that the Greeks are in a higher 
 degree exact and faithful in their descriptions of 
 nature. They reproduce their details with care, 
 but we see that they take no more interest in 
 them than in describing a vestment, a shield, a 
 piece of furniture, armour, or any production of the 
 mechanical arts. . . . They do not attach themselves 
 to nature with that depth of feeling, with that 
 gentle melancholy, that characterises the moderns. 
 . . . Their impatient imagination only traverses 
 nature to pass beyond it to the drama of human 
 life. ... It only takes pleasure in the spectacle 
 of what is living and free." 
 
 The difference here is somewhat overstated. 
 The generalisation, while true in the main of 
 certain periods — and these the most distinctive 
 periods of Greek literature — needs correction and 
 
248 DAWN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 modification if we extend the range of our survey. 
 It ignores a process of real development that can 
 be followed in the later course of the literature. 
 Schiller knowing Homer better than he did any 
 other Greek poet, and taking him as the purest 
 type of Hellenism, has no difficulty in showing 
 that the ancient or " simple " poet, living in un- 
 conscious harmony with the world outside, " is 
 nature," while the modern or " sentimental " poet 
 " seeks nature " — seeks to regain a " lost paradise " 
 which has been forfeited through civilisation. 
 The great period indeed of the Attic drama,^ when 
 the dialectic movement of thought was in full 
 operation, can hardly be called " simple " in 
 Schiller's sense ; yet even then, as in Homer, 
 nature is but the background of the picture, the 
 scene on which man's activity is displayed. The 
 change of sentiment, of which there are many 
 premonitions in Euripides, becomes more marked 
 from the time of Alexander onward. Nature is 
 then sought for her own sake ; artists and poets 
 turn to her with disinterested love ; her moods 
 are lovingly noted, and she is brought into close 
 
 1 The Attitude of the Greek Tragedians toward Nature, by 
 H. Rushton Fairclough, Toronto, 1897, contains a well-classified 
 collection of passages bearing on this subject, and many interesting 
 observations. 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 249 
 
 companionship with man. The growth of the 
 new feehng may be assigned to various causes ; 
 two or three of these, however, stand out with 
 particular significance. 
 
 First, the old polytheistic beliefs of Greece had 
 been slowly dying. The poetic instinct of the 
 Hellenic race had from the outset given plastic 
 form to natural objects ; the visible world was 
 broken up into separate divine personalities ; round 
 these beings grew myth and legend ; as immortal 
 men and women they had histories of their own 
 modelled on the human type. The primitive 
 myths, with a spontaneous sympathy which no 
 later poetry has ever rivalled, express the sense 
 of the resemblance between human emotions and 
 natural processes : or rather, it is more than mere 
 resemblance to which the myth -making faculty 
 points ; >vhat is ultimately implied is the oneness 
 of man with the larger life surrounding him. Not 
 only wood and stream and hill are brought into 
 human relations through the deity who dwells in 
 each, but in the world of plants and animals also 
 there is a manifestation of spirit life. Legends 
 such as those of Adonis, Hylas, Narcissus, 
 Procne, are the unconscious embodiment of im- 
 pressions which, when translated into the reflective 
 
250 DAWN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 language of modern poetry, at once take the colour 
 of romanticism. The Greeks were not, as is 
 sometimes said, less sensitive than we are to the 
 influences of external nature ; but rather their 
 sensibility, though keener, was less reflective. The 
 feeling for nature is one thing ; the utterance of it 
 is another ; and distinct again from either of these 
 is the taste for landscape. No people has ever 
 received such profound impressions from the beauty 
 of the world around as the early Greeks. But 
 the humanised forms into which outward phe- 
 nomena were resolved intercepted their view of 
 nature as a whole. The gods absorbed in them- 
 selves the landscape. The spirit of Greek mytho- 
 logy was in truth the precise opposite of the spirit 
 of landscape-painting. As in poetry it tended not 
 to the description of the outer world, but to the 
 narrative of heroic thought and action, so in art 
 it created not painting but sculpture. The river 
 or the grove took the plastic form of the personal 
 presence which dwelt in it. 
 
 In the representation of the higher Olympian 
 gods the effort of the best Greek art was to efface, 
 as far as might be, all traces of an elemental origin, 
 to humanise the features, and bring them within 
 the domain of ethical portraiture. But it was 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 251 
 
 otherwise with those lesser deities who in the 
 popular mind were still associated with the material 
 world. The shape they assumed in art at once 
 suggested their elemental substance. They became 
 the embodied expression of nature itself. The 
 river-god is known by the flowing outlines of his 
 form. The breath of mountain and woodland 
 follows in the train of Dionysus and his Satyrs, 
 with their gnarled and knotted muscles and leafy 
 locks. During the period comprised between 400 
 and 300 B.C., art, keeping pace with poetry, seeks 
 to find fuller utterance for the impressions borne 
 in on it from the world without. The vase- 
 painter, while conscious of the limitations of his 
 art in respect of pictorial capacity, does not rest 
 satisfied with the abbreviated method of repre- 
 sentation found on the earlier vases, where a fish 
 signifies water, and a bird following the ship, air. 
 He draws freely on popular mythology to express 
 the anthroporhorphic feeling for nature, the scene 
 of the action being symbolised by the bodily form 
 of the spirit who inhabits the spot. The sea is 
 indicated by deities with scaly bodies and wavy 
 hair, by Nereids holding a fish in their hands, by 
 dolphins and other sea animals. The life and 
 energy of the waves is depicted by winged sea- 
 
25? DA WN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 horses and quick-moving Nereids. The splendour 
 of the sunrise is portrayed in the personified 
 Dawn rising from the waves wath winged steeds, 
 whose bridle-reins are of dark red, while on each 
 side of the Dawn are stars. 
 
 A time came when the belief in the old mytho- 
 logy began to crumble away. The plastic forms 
 of haunting and indwelling spirits, of Oreads, Satyrs, 
 Tritons, Nereids, no longer stood between man and 
 the world without. The traditional gods were 
 hardening into symbols ; they were becoming con- 
 ventional types ; and art and poetry, while they 
 never ceased to employ them as the adjuncts of a 
 story or as a decorative framework, sought their true 
 inspiration elsewhere. As the mythological vesture 
 fell off, the lineaments of nature herself were again 
 manifest ; the human form no longer projected 
 itself across the whole field of vision. The eye could 
 gaze once more directly on the visible universe ; 
 and though it never again could catch the same 
 undisturbed and glad image that presented itself 
 to an earlier world, yet there was in some sense a 
 " Return to Nature " ; there was the conscious 
 desire to know her at first hand and to interpret 
 her aright. 
 
 And now, in the period subsequent to Alex- 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 253 
 
 ander the Great, with the increasing feeling for 
 landscape arose an independent art of landscape- 
 painting. Even in the fourth century, when stage- 
 painting had made great progress, when the laws 
 of perspective were studied, and colours graded 
 according to light and shade, the conception of 
 landscape-painting as a serious art was unfamiliar 
 to the Greeks. This is shown by a curious 
 passage in the Critias of Plato.^ " For if we con- 
 sider how the works of the painter represent 
 bodies divine and heavenly, and the different 
 degrees of gratification with which the eye of 
 the spectator receives them, we shall see that we 
 are satisfied with the artist who is able in any 
 degree to imitate the earth and its mountains, 
 and the rivers, and the woods, and the universe, 
 and the things that are and move therein, and 
 further, that knowing nothing precise about such 
 matters, we do not examine or analyse the painting ■ 
 all that is required is a sort of indistinct and 
 deceptive mode of shadowing them forth {aKia- 
 'ypa<f)ia 8e aaa^ei kul airaTTfkS '^pa)/j,e6a irepi avTo). 
 But when a person endeavours to paint the human 
 form we are quick at finding out defects, and our 
 familiar knowledge makes us severe judges of any 
 
 ^ Plat. Critias, p. 107 B, Jowett's Trans. 
 
254 DAWN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 one who does not render every point of similarity." 
 The history of Greek vase-painting in the Attic 
 period tells a similar tale. The separate elements 
 which form a landscape — trees, rocks, water, 
 buildings — are, if indicated otherwise than symbol- 
 ically, indicated in a sketchy fashion, whether singly 
 or in simple combinations. The several parts are 
 present, but the idea of composing a picture is 
 wanting; Not until we come to the vases of the 
 Hellenistic period, especially those of Lower Italy, 
 do we find a continuous background of landscape, 
 and an effort to give breadth and freedom to the 
 natural features of the scene, which are now at last 
 combined into a pictorial unity. 
 
 The first cause, then, which prepared the way 
 for a new view of nature was the dissolution of the 
 ancient polytheistic creed. Foreign travel and 
 scientific research contributed to the same result. 
 By the conquests of Alexander a large intercourse 
 had been opened up between east and west ; com- 
 merce carried forward the work begun by war, and 
 the qualities and characteristic products of distant 
 lands roused the curiosity of naturalists. Even China 
 and India yielded their treasures to the scrutiny of 
 the western world. Collections too were made of 
 plants and animals.and the specialised studyof Geo- 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 255 
 
 graphy, Botany, and Zoology received a powerful 
 impulse. The Greeks indeed had always united 
 the love of science with the love of the marvellous, 
 and their poetry in turn was quick to absorb the 
 results of scientific discovery. The taste for geo- 
 graphical description, blending the latest learning 
 with fantastic tales of wonder, meets us already in 
 Aeschylus — in the Prometheus Bound, and if we 
 may argue from certain fragments, also in the 
 Prometheus Unbound — and even there it seems a 
 little wearisome. A sirhilar disposition betrays 
 itself after the lapse of centuries in those laborious 
 Alexandrian poems on astronomical and other 
 kindred subjects, which appear to have had all 
 the tediousness of a scientific manual without its 
 accuracy. Still, the larger outlook upon nature, 
 afforded by the discovery of a new world, combined 
 with the patient study of natural objects, served a 
 poetic purpose. The eye was trained by close 
 observation to appreciate beauties which before 
 had passed unnoticed ; a hidden feeling, which had 
 long existed below the surface, was disengaged, 
 and once conscious of itself, found imaginative 
 expression in poetry and painting. 
 
 The influence of travel and research on the 
 aesthetic sense admits of illustration from various 
 
2S6 DA WN OF ROMANTICIS!\r 
 
 epochs of modern history. But the nearest parallel 
 to the movement of the Hellenistic period is that 
 of the Renaissance in Italy. The Crusades had 
 produced effects strikingly similar to those of 
 Alexander's expedition to Asia. Remote countries 
 were opened up. Collections were formed of birds 
 and beasts and reptiles, and of every variety of 
 botanical specimens. It was an age of naturalists. 
 The earliest Zoological gardens were established 
 at Palermo, and at the end of the fifteenth century 
 it was not uncommon to find private menageries 
 at the courts of princes.^ In the sixteenth century 
 Padua, Pisa, Bologna had each their own Botanical 
 gardens. The scientific movement of the age 
 carried with it artists and poets — Petrarch, for 
 example, who was not only a poet but a skilled 
 geographer, and is said to have drawn the first 
 map of Italy. So closely interwoven were his 
 poetic and scientific interests that from lonely 
 intercourse with nature he derived the needed 
 stimulus to intellectual labour. It is a noteworthy 
 fact that the Italians of the Renaissance were the 
 first people who felt again the charm of land- 
 scape as it had impressed itself on the sentiment 
 of late antiquity, and that the conditions under 
 
 ' Burckhardt, Die Cultur der Kenaissance, ii. lo, II. 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 257 
 
 which the feeling was revived reproduced in many- 
 respects those of the older world. 
 
 Of all the influences, however, which contributed 
 to modify the classical Greek feeling for nature, 
 none probably operated with such force as the rise 
 of great cities in the Alexandrian age. The love 
 of country life was one of the most original of 
 Greek instincts. In the small city - state the 
 citizen passed almost imperceptibly, and in the 
 space of a few minutes, from town to country ; 
 his activities, public and private, kept him continu- 
 ally in the open air ; and, even if as a politician 
 he spent a great part of his life in the town, he 
 had generally some rural interests or attachments. 
 The long continuance of the Peloponnesian war 
 broke in upon this quiet existence. The complaint 
 of the countryman shut up within the city walls 
 is heard in the Acharnians of Aristophanes. 
 Dicaeopolis hates the town and is home-sick for 
 his farm.^ The commercial expansion too of 
 states such as Athens and Corinth created a town 
 life distinct from a country life. But the sense 
 of distinction did not till the Hellenistic age 
 widen into a full consciousness of opposition 
 
 ' Arist. Acharn. 32 : 
 
 arv^wv phi dsTV rbv S ifibv Stjiiov iroSSiv. 
 
258 DAWN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 between the two modes of existence. Then at 
 last man finds himself estranged and parted from 
 nature, and a tone of sentimental regret mingles 
 with the praise of rustic life, 
 
 Greek civilisation having been transplanted to 
 the populous centres of the East — Alexandria, 
 Antioch on the Orontes, Seleucia — the inhabitant 
 of these overgrown cities hardly catches a glimpse 
 of field and tree and sky, save in so far as gardens 
 and promenades, laid out at enormous cost and 
 with no slight artistic skill, restore to him some 
 semblance of the works of nature. At home the 
 Greek philosopher. Academic, Peripatetic, and 
 Epicurean alike, has sought shelter from the out- 
 side world in the contemplative calm of gardens, 
 which have become the property of the school. 
 How far removed from the Greek of the Homeric 
 age to whom nature was so close that he was 
 hardly conscious of her presence ; he did not seek 
 her society, he did not avow his love, Political 
 despair intensifies the pervading sense of weariness. 
 The cosmopolitan Greek, detached from country 
 and religion, is indeed free to gratify his own 
 tastes, to develop his character, to be as individual 
 as he pleases. But, though relieved from the 
 demands, often so exacting, of the city-state, he 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 259 
 
 cannot find a genuine satisfaction elsewhere. The 
 feeling of loss comes over him. He longs for 
 the ideal life of primitive simplicity, placing it 
 sometimes in a legendary past, sometimes in a 
 golden future, sometimes again among far-off and 
 innocent barbarians, but always remote from the 
 turmoil of the town. The fragments of the New 
 Comedy contain many lines in praise of country 
 life, its quiet and solitude,^ and the tone of regret 
 which may be detected there becomes more audible 
 as we approach the Greek literature of the Roman 
 empire. Dio Chrysostom (first century A.D.), 
 oppressed by the sense of an outworn civilisation, 
 throws into idyllic form the hopes and regrets 
 which are of frequent occurrence in the later Greek 
 rhetoricians, in his speech {Or. vii.) entitled 
 ^v^o'CKO'i rj K-vvrjiyoi;. He describes how hap- 
 pening once to be stranded on the coast of 
 Euboea he was entertained at a hunter's cottage, 
 where he discovered the repose and perfect 
 simplicity for which poets and philosophers were 
 sighing. 
 
 The meditative enjoyment of nature, fostered 
 
 ' E.ff, Menander, "TSpta, Fr. i. (Meineke iv. 207) : 
 
 tijs rjdir Ty fUffovvTi ToifS tf}a6\ovs rpSrovs 
 ^fnjfUa, Kal t^ fuKeTiavTi fLTjdi iif 
 TTOVTjpov iKdvhv KTTJfi dypbs Tp^tptof KaXws, 
 
26o DAWN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 by the new conditions of life in the Hellenistic 
 period, affected forms of activity which might seem 
 most remote from its influence. Hunting was a 
 sport of the heroic age which had died out in most 
 parts of Greece, but had always survived in 
 Macedon. Alexander on his invasion of Asia 
 found it already established there and pursued 
 with the pomp peculiar to oriental monarchs. He 
 and his generals joined in it eagerly. From 
 Asia it was re-introduced into Greece proper, and 
 soon it spread over the Hellenic world. It became 
 the favourite relaxation of townsmen who, escaping 
 from the city into the open air, roamed over free 
 spaces of wood and mountain, and enjoyed the 
 beauty of the scenery. Little was left of a sports- 
 manlike pleasure in the chase. Later, the Romans 
 adopted it as a fashionable pastime, and cultivated it 
 in the Alexandrian spirit, being themselves a nation 
 whose instincts for sport (as Varro suggests) found 
 fuller satisfaction in the circus. The extreme length 
 to which this meditative temper of mind was 
 sometimes carried may be inferred from a letter 
 of Pliny's to Tacitus.^ One day out hunting he 
 fell into a mood of reflection — for though he 
 killed three boars it was little more than an accident 
 
 ' Pliny, Ep. i. 6. 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 261 
 
 — and by way of commentary on the fact observes 
 that the motion of the body stirs the mind to 
 activity ; thus " the woods and the solitude, and 
 even the silence which hunting demands, are 
 mighty stimulants to thought." 
 
 In Paradise Lost Milton compares Satan as he 
 enters Eden to one who has just escaped from the 
 city into the country : 
 
 As one who, long in populous city pent, 
 Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air 
 Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe 
 Among the pleasant villages and farms 
 Adjoin'd, from each thing met conceives delight — 
 The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine. 
 Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound. 
 
 Some such impressions of delight must the pastoral 
 poems of Theocritus, wafted as a fresh breath 
 to the townsmen of Alexandria, have made upon 
 them among their scorching sands. The idyllic 
 scenes which he delineates are not mere pictures 
 of everyday life, which charm us by the minute 
 fidelity with which they render the happiness 
 attainable within the sphere of a limited existence. 
 True to the proper character of the idyll his poems 
 pass beyond common reality. They re-establish 
 a harmony between man and his environment. 
 
262 DA WN OP ROMANTICISM 
 
 The external features of the landscape are in 
 inward correspondence with the action portrayed ; 
 and this harmonious relation of itself creates in 
 the mind of the poetic characters, those passing 
 emotions, sentiments, determinations of the will, 
 which spring up in them without reflective effort. 
 The dramatic situation and the dramatic move- 
 ment flow, as in due course, from the influences of 
 the place, whether the interlocutors be, as they 
 commonly are in Greek idyllic poetry, simple beings 
 who still live in unbroken union with nature, or 
 more complex personalities, who in the revolt 
 against the civilisation of the city have, at least 
 for one happy moment, achieved the simplicity 
 which is their ideal. 
 
 In either case the surrounding landscape is 
 more than an artistic accessory : it is the soil 
 in which the human sentiments are rooted ; it 
 nurtures and sustains the imaginative life of those 
 who move upon the scene.^ The Theocritean 
 shepherds are aware that a perfect adaptation of 
 outward surroundings is not only the condition of 
 their placid well-being, but that on it too depends 
 
 ^ Euripides, as Fairclough observes, is in this respect the fore- 
 runner of Theocritus : cf. Cyd. 41 fif. ; Iph. Aul. 574 ff. ; Fr. [Pkaethon) 
 773 (an early n:)orning scene). 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 263 
 
 the inspiration of their song. They dispute in 
 verse as to the spot best fitted for their rustic 
 competition. Is it where the wild olive tree 
 grows and chill waters fall, or where the oak trees 
 and pines cast a deeper shade and there is the 
 sweet hum of bees about the hives ? ^ A similar 
 idyllic rendering of nature is found in late Greek 
 art. Even in vase-painting the progress of this 
 sentiment may be traced from the fourth century 
 B.C. onwards. It has reached a further develop- 
 ment in the Pompeian wall-paintings, whose 
 general characteristics, in all probability, repro- 
 duce the landscape-painting of the Alexandrian 
 period.^ The scenes by preference there depicted 
 are not those which exhibit much outward move- 
 ment, nor those again in which a dramatic 
 conflict of motives points to an approaching 
 catastrophe : rather, they are scenes suggestive of 
 idyllic life — Paris on Ida feeding his flocks and 
 declaring his love to Oenone ; Apollo serving his 
 time with Admetus ; Polyphemus making love to 
 Galatea. Sometimes the gods and heroes, of 
 mythology are represented as engaged in country 
 sports or occupations — Aphrodite fishing, or 
 
 ' Theocr. Td. v. 31-34, 45-59. 
 ^ See Helbig, Campanische Wandmalerei. 
 
264 -O^ WN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 Ganymede and Endymion following the chase. 
 The background is in keeping with the mood 
 of the actors ; it is designed to maintain that 
 primary correspondence, without which the 
 idyllic note of restful satisfaction would be 
 wanting. 
 
 Thus the breach between man and nature has 
 led to the desire for reunion ; to nature man goes 
 for refreshment and repose ; and the conscious 
 longing to put an end to the artificial estrange- 
 ment finds utterance in prose and verse and in 
 artistic representation. 
 
 Alexandrian and later Greek literature, touched 
 though it is with modern sentiment, retains one 
 marked feature of ancient Hellenism. The writer, 
 whether of poetry or prose fiction, in his effort to 
 draw closer to nature and imbibe her influences, 
 does not, like the oriental or the modern poet, 
 surrender himself unreservedly to the dominion of 
 the outer world. He does not feel the pulsation 
 of a larger life of which the human soul is but 
 a fragment, or strive to catch in the grander or 
 more solitary scenes of nature mysterious voices 
 and intimations of something higher than man. 
 The purely idyllic spirit extends to compositions 
 other than the idyll. Nature and man hold con- 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 265 
 
 verse, but only under favouring conditions, when 
 nature is in one of her quiet moods. Nothing 
 must be present to jar the senses or disturb 
 the harmony. 
 
 The Greek of the Alexandrian age, like 
 Rousseau, sought in nature an escape from the 
 complicated rules of life and art, and a free 
 satisfaction for the needs of the individual. He 
 gladly welcomed the profound repose of nature 
 in exchange for the discord, the turmoil, the 
 pettiness of the world of humanity. But there 
 the resemblance ceases. Nature did not for 
 him, as for Rousseau, exercise her perfect spell 
 in places where there is no conscious life, on the 
 tops of mountains, in the depths of forests, in 
 uninhabited islands, where man has never in- 
 truded. " Now," says Rousseau, " you know what 
 I mean by beautiful country. No level land, no 
 matter how beautiful, ever seemed such in my 
 eyes. I need torrents, rocks, fir-trees, black 
 forests, mountains, rugged paths up and down, 
 precipices alongside of me which inspire fear." ' 
 Set against this the saying of Quintilian — as 
 Greek as it is Roman in its spirit — that "natural 
 beauty is found on the sea-shore, in level country, 
 
 ^ Rousseau, Confessions iv. 
 
266 DA II'N OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 and in a smiling landscape," ^ and we have two 
 typical utterances of the ancient and the modern 
 world ; or rather, it may be, of the Northern and 
 Southern nations of Europe. Mountains and 
 lonely woods and angry seas, in all periods of 
 Greek literature, so far from calling out a sublime 
 sense of mystery or awe, raise images of terror 
 and repulsion, of power divorced from beauty, and 
 alien to art. Homer, when for the moment he 
 pauses to describe a place, chooses one in which 
 the hand of man is visible ; which he has re- 
 claimed from the wild, made orderly, subdued to 
 his own use.^ Or if uncultivated, it is one which 
 bears the traces of nature's instinctive art, an art 
 which needs no human correction. Such is 
 Calypso's isle, with its harmonious wealth of life 
 and vegetation ; " such are the Elysian fields,* Such 
 the harbour of Ithaca, with the grotto of the 
 Nymphs." Up to the last days of Greek antiquity 
 man has not yet learnt so to lose himself in the 
 
 ' Quintil. Insl. Or. iii. 7, 27, " speciem in maritimis, planis, 
 amoenis." 
 
 * /i'.,!,'. the gardens of Aloinous, Odyss. vii. 112-132. In llic 
 
 descriptions of nature by Greek sophists in the Christian era the 
 garden, symmetrically laid out, is still the ideal type of beauty. 
 
 ' Odyss. •!. 55-75. ^ Odyss. iv. 563-69. 
 
 ° Odyss, xiii. 96-112. 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 267 
 
 boundless life of nature, as to find a contemplative 
 pleasure in her wilder and more majestic scenes. 
 
 There are traces indeed, even in the classical 
 age, of a peculiar impression of dreamy melan- 
 choly with which the Greeks were affected by the 
 spectacle of the sea. In literature the sea gener- 
 ally stands as an image of the inhuman indifference 
 »of nature, a type of all that is hard and unfeeling, 
 from the time when Patroclus exclaims to Achilles,^ 
 " Pitiless that thou art, the knight Peleus was not 
 thy father, nor Thetis thy mother, but the grey 
 sea bare thee, and the sheer cliffs, so untoward is 
 thy spirit," — down to the days of the Greek 
 Anthology, whose pages are full of laments over 
 the unknown graves of shipwrecked mariners. 
 But a seafaring and poetic race could not remain 
 altogether a stranger to other emotions ; and 
 plastic art, in one of those less direct utterances 
 which distinguish it from literature, records an 
 impression which hardly perhaps came to the 
 surface of consciousness. In the Tritons and sea- 
 gods of Scopas there is a far-off" and wistful look 
 which seems to signify at once desire and regret, 
 and is characteristic of beings whose life is that of 
 the shifting, baffling, intangible element of water. 
 
 ^ Iliad xvi. 34. 
 
268 DAWN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 Alexandrian poetry, less expressive here than sculp- 
 ture, tells us of the alluring charm of the calm sea, 
 as you watch it from the land. Such is the mood 
 described in Moschus ; ^ so too the Daphnis of 
 Theocritus ^ sings beneath the rocks, " looking out 
 upon Sicilian waters." On the other hand, when 
 Achilles, in the Iliadf turns aside from his com- 
 rades and sits by the shore of the grey sea, " look-, 
 ing over the boundless deep," he is smarting with 
 grief at the loss of Briseis, and stretches forth his 
 hands in prayer to his mother, the sea-goddess. 
 Odysseus again,* prisoned in the island of Calypso, 
 sits gazing over the sea ; for across it is his 
 home, and thereby only can deliverance come. 
 There is nothing in this at all resembling the 
 pleasant reverie of the Theocritean shepherd, a 
 reverie, however, which passes easily into the 
 pensive sadness reflected in the appealing mouth 
 and eyes of those deities of Scopas. 
 
 In the long interval which separates Homer 
 from the Hellenistic poets, the visible universe 
 exercised an ever-increasing pressure and influence 
 on the human spirit. Already in Homer the 
 analogies between the world of nature and of man 
 
 ' Moschus, Id. V. " Theoc. Id. viii. 56. 
 
 ' Iliad i. 349. * Odyss. v. 156. 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 269 
 
 have stamped themselves on poetic modes of 
 thought and speech. But the poet, absorbed in a 
 strong human interest, is pressing forward with 
 his story ; he seldom delays to describe sur- 
 rounding objects,^ except indeed by one of those 
 illuminating epithets which are flashed on us 
 with the vividness of a sensation. Yet the 
 profound feeling for nature discloses itself almost 
 unconsciously in the simile, which serves as the 
 connecting link between the spheres of the out- 
 ward and the inward. The materials are drawn 
 from heaven and earth, from land and sea, from 
 the habits and ways of the whole animal crea- 
 tion, down to the minutest creeping or winged 
 thing ; from the delicate life of plants and trees, 
 which are the immediate emblems of gracious 
 youth. ^ Every object, every process and appear- 
 
 ' Homer maintains a similar reserve in his descriptions of human 
 beauty. This characteristic is noticed by Die Chrysostom, Or. xxi. 
 (Trepi KdXXous), pp. 508, 509 R. Nothing, he observes, is told us of 
 Hector's beauty till after his death in the words — o£ koX diy/iaavro 
 (pviiv Kal etSos dyrirbv \ "BicTopos. He adds, irepi Si toO 'AxiXX^us dSovs 
 oidku X^ei Ka8' iKaarov i) rfi^ Kdiuis, Stl ^avBlis ijv, . . . Kal irepl tuv 
 SXKav iuKp6v tl vepl CKaaTov Kal avdpSv Kal ywaiKdv tQv KoKKlaTav. 
 Something of the same reticence is a mark of all Greek writers till 
 the Byzantine age, when the custom came in of describing exhaust- 
 ively and with pictorial detail the various parts of the body. 
 
 ^ There are few more beautiful lines in Greek poetry than those 
 in which Nausicaa is compared to the young sapling of the palm-tree 
 
270 DA WN' OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 ance of nature, which can throw light on human 
 activity, is noted with a sympathetic touch. For, 
 after all, the purpose of the simile is to explain 
 man's doings, to give definiteness and precision to 
 the story, to present the image in sharp outlines. 
 
 Homer's similes, while unique in range and 
 variety, agree almost without exception in this 
 respect, that the picture of outward nature, animate 
 or inanimate, is introduced to illustrate the action 
 only on its external side. A direct parallel is 
 very rarely drawn between the world of nature 
 and of spirit.^ The inward and deeper emotions 
 
 seen by Odysseus at Delos, Odyss. vi. 162 ff. Two fragments also 
 of Sappho may be quoted in this connexion — Fr. 93 (Bergk) de- 
 scribing, apparently, a girl tenderly nurtured and destined to be 
 a bride, under the image of the apple out of reach on the topmost 
 bough of the tree r 
 
 olov rb yXvKi/idXov ipei$eTai &Kpifi iw' taSif 
 &Kpov iiv' AKpoT6,T(f • XcXddovTo Si iiaXoSpiirties, 
 01) /liiv iKXeXiOovr' , dW oix iiivavr' itplK^aBiu — 
 
 and Fr. 94 where the unmarried maiden, it would seem, is like the 
 hyacinth, reared not in the sheltered garden but on the mountain 
 slopes, trodden under foot by the shepherds : 
 
 oKoK rhv iiiuvBov iv oUpeat, iroliiefcs /LuSpes 
 irb(r(n KaraaTel^oun, xii/""' ^^ ''"« trbptjivpov &v8oi , . . 
 ' The exceptions are two. In I/iad ix. 4-8, the divided mind of 
 the Achaean host is likened to two winds contending for mastery at 
 > sea. Again in Odyisey xix. JlS ff. Penelope compares the move- 
 ment of her troubled soul to the turns and trills in the nightingale's 
 lament. 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 271 
 
 are interpreted not by the facts of nature or by 
 the Hfe of animals, but by other and kindred 
 human experiences. Thus the joy of the comrades 
 of Odysseus on his return to the ships from the 
 house of the enchantress Circe, is indicated by- a 
 double comparison.^ They flock about him as 
 calves of the homestead flock about their dams 
 with ceaseless lowing when they have returned to 
 the yard. That is the external point of resem- 
 blance ; the sounds and movements which accom- 
 pany feeling have their counterpart in the animal 
 creation. The emotion itself in its central essence 
 and quality is expressed in other terms : " To 
 their spirit it was as though they had got to their 
 dear country, and the very city of rugged Ithaca 
 where they were born and reared." 
 
 In the Hellenistic poets who watch and analyse 
 feeling the simile is put to other uses. The inner 
 workings of the soul have now become an interest- 
 ing psychological study, and are brought into direct 
 comparison with physical phenomena. Apollonius 
 Rhodius, after contrasting the silence of the night 
 and the slumber which had fallen on men and 
 animals, with the tumult in the mind of Medea,^ 
 
 ' Odyssey x. 410 ff. 
 ^ Apoll. Rhod. iii. 743 ff., cp. Virg. Aen. iv. 522 ff. 
 
272 DAWN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 compares the passionate movements of her heart 
 to the rapid and flickering gleam of sunlight 
 cast on the walls from a vessel full of water.^ 
 Here we have a direct parallel between the 
 world of nature and of spirit, a kind of parallel 
 as familiar to the poets of the decadence as it is 
 rare in Homer. Such analogies had indeed already 
 found occasional expression in the lyrical verse of 
 an early date. In a fragment of Ibycus — to take 
 but a single instance — the picture of spring-time, 
 of the apple-trees by the river streams and the 
 tender vine leaves growing in shelter, is set off 
 against the storm of passion, as of an elemental 
 force, in the poet's breast.^ Euripides too affords 
 a few similar examples, but these are as yet 
 
 ' ApoU. Rhod. iii. 755 ff., cp, Virg. Aen. viii. 20 ff. 
 ^ Ibycus, Fr. i (Bergk) : 
 
 *Hpi yJkv aX re ^vSdjviai 
 
 firj\ide$ dpddfievac fioav 
 
 iK TorafjUJjVj Iva irapBiviav 
 
 Kriiros dK-^pUTOSf a'i t' olav$ldes 
 
 ai^Sfievai aKtepoiffiv vtp^ ^pveaiv 
 
 olvapiots BoKiBoiaiv ■ 4/Jiol S' Ipos 
 
 oi^efilav KardKOLTOs ihpav, &&' virb aTepoTras ip\iyu}v 
 
 QfrqiKLos ^op^as, 
 
 ^(raiav iraph K.iTpi$os d^aX^acs ixavlaiaiv ipefivbs dBa/x^ijs 
 
 iyKpariat vaiSSffev <j>v\dairei 
 
 Tjfieripas fppha.s — 
 where TraMffev seems to mean " from the days of boyhood." 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 273 
 
 isolated utterances : not till the Alexandrian era 
 are the hidden correspondences between the human 
 heart and the aspects of nature more fully dis- 
 covered. 
 
 Some stages in this transition can be traced 
 and certain phases of the sentiment distinguished. 
 In Homer, as we have seen, and, more generally, 
 in the earlier Greek poetry, the simile is the 
 typical form under which the likeness is indicated 
 between human action and outward things. Meta- 
 phors are seldom employed for this purpose, and, 
 when they do occur, they are of the simplest kind. 
 The followers of the two sons of Ajax are spoken 
 of under the figure of a " cloud of footmen," ^ 
 and then, as if the image were still wanting in 
 clearness, it is expanded in the next line into a 
 simile. Grief, again, is a " black cloud " that en- 
 compasses a man ; ^ comfort or joy is identified 
 with light.^ Whereas in the simile man and 
 nature are brought into direct comparison, but still 
 stand apart, neither being merged in the other, 
 metaphor, by the bolder process of identification, 
 fuses together the two terms of the comparison — 
 the two answering worlds, the inner and the outer 
 
 ' Iliad iy. 274. ^ I/iaif wii. 591 ; Odyss, xxiv. 315. 
 
 ^ Iliad yix. 95. 
 
 T 
 
274 DA IVN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 — SO that the human action or emotion is blended 
 with the material phenomenon which it resembles. 
 As Greek poetry becomes more reflective, more 
 observant of the analogies which run through 
 nature, the range of metaphor is enlarged ; it 
 shows new capacities for revealing the manifold 
 similitudes between man and his surroundings. 
 The lyric poets pass beyond the narrow limits 
 within which Homer confines this function of 
 metaphor, and freely transmute the thought into 
 the image. The tragedians, while they do not 
 hesitate to employ metaphorical expressions such 
 as a " sea of troubles," ^ yet restrict themselves to 
 such metaphors as are expressive of the simpler 
 modes of correspondence. Hellenistic poetry, in 
 its search for what is recondite in language, strikes 
 out novel combinations. The description of the 
 maiden Nycheia in Theocritus " with spring in her 
 eyes," ^ is one of the first of many phrases with a 
 romantic ring and charm, which are* freely coined 
 in the Greek Anthology. 
 
 In the instances just given terms properly 
 applicable to nature are transferred to man. But 
 
 1 Aesch. Supp. 470 ; Pers. 433 ; Prom. 746 ; Eur. Hipp. 822 ; 
 Supp. 824 ; H. F. 1088. 
 
 ^ Theocr. Id. xiii. 45, iap $' ipduira ^ix^ia. 
 
IN GREEK rOETR V 275 
 
 there is also the converse process by which nature 
 is described in language drawn from human life 
 or from the larger life of the universe.^ The most 
 frequent example of such a metaphor is the trans- 
 ference of the word " sleep " to the repose of 
 things inanimate. It is unknown in Homer ; it 
 occurs first in a fragment of Alcman : " Now sleep 
 the mountain -peaks and clefts, headlands and 
 ravines, and the tribes of all creeping things which 
 the black earth nurtures, and the wild beasts bred 
 upon the hills, and the race of bees, and the 
 monsters in the depths of the dark sea, and the 
 tribes of all birds that stretch the wing now 
 sleep." '' In modern poetry the feelings awakened 
 by such a scene are placed before us in explicit 
 
 ' //. xiv. 17, (of the sea) ivabiievov ("foreboding ") \i7^wi' i-vifiuv 
 \aifr]pk Ki\ev9a. Only once in Homer is inanimate nature clearly 
 endowed with human emotion, //. xiii. 29, yriBoaivxi Si 0d\a.(r(ra 
 SUffTaTO, In //. xix. 362 yiXajcre SI iraira vepl xSibi/ | xi^koO virb 
 o-Te/JOTT^s, the word yiXaace may mean merely '.'grew bright." 
 " Alcman, Fr. 60 (Bergk) : 
 
 ECSoutrii' i' ipiav Kopv<pal re Kal ^dpayyes, 
 
 irpihovii re Kal xoptl^/'At, 
 
 (j>0\d re (pirtB' baa Tp{(l>u fj.i'Ka.i.va yaXa, 
 
 B9jph t' ipeiTK(fi>i, Kal yivoi jxeKiaaav 
 
 Kal KvibSaV iv ^ivdtai. Toptpvpiai aXis ■ 
 
 eiSovaiv S' S'Cwv&v 
 
 ipffKa rawTTTepiyuv . 
 In line 3 the reading of Schneidewin is adopted for MSS. 
 0OX(i re Hpireri 6' &aa, Bergk reads <t>iWa 6' (pireri 9' iaaa. 
 
2/6 D4WN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 language : the ancient poet merely strikes the 
 keynote which asserts the harmony between 
 creation in all its parts, and leaves the rest to the 
 suggestion of the hearer. The same metaphor 
 recurs in the well-known lines of the Agamemnon : 
 " When on his noontide windless couch the wave- 
 less sea sank to sleep." ^ And again, but with 
 deeper suggestion, in the famous fragment of 
 Simonides, where Danae in the ark speaks to her 
 infant child, whose profound slumber is not broken 
 by the passing waves or the voices of the wind : 
 " Sleep, I say, my babe, and sleep thou sea, and 
 sleep my immeasurable woe." " Here a chord of 
 feeling is touched which is rare in early Greek verse. 
 It recalls to us the passionate wail of Simaetha in 
 Theocritus : " Lo, silent is the deep and silent the 
 winds, but never silent the torment in my breast." ^ 
 Conscious sympathy between man and nature 
 is unknown in Homer. In this respect he is 
 
 ^ Aesch. Again. 565 : 
 
 ^ SiiXiros, 63te t6i>tos iv tiecrrifi^pivais 
 Kohais dKinav vriviixois eiSoi Trecriliv. 
 
 2 Simonides, Fr. 37 (Bergk) : 
 
 KiXofiai S', eSSe Ppiijios, ■ eiSira Si irbvTOS, 
 evS^TU 5' &jX€Tpov KaKbv. 
 
 3 Theocr. Id. ii. 38 : 
 
 i]vlSe ffiy^ fih t6vtos, avyCivTi, 8' dijTai, 
 a 5' iiih, 01) aiyq. (rripvoiv (vroirBev avla. 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 277 
 
 utterly unlike the poets of India, whose characters 
 love to describe the landscape and mark the 
 harmony between their own souls and the world 
 around. Nature there becomes the- witness and 
 confidante of man's passions, the partner of his 
 sorrows and joys. In Greek poetry, broadly 
 speaking, we may say that the Pathetic Fallacy, 
 as it is called by Mr. Ruskin, rarely meets us till 
 the Alexandrian age. Some anticipations of the 
 later sentiment occur in the dramatists, the most 
 remarkable instance being in the chorus of the 
 Prometheus} where all nature, animate and in- 
 animate, joins in a lamentation for the suffering 
 god. We might fancy that we were listening to 
 an old Indian hymn or a pantheistic lyric of the 
 nineteenth century : 
 
 All the land is moaning 
 With a murmured plaint to-day ; 
 
 All the mortal nations 
 
 Having habitations 
 In the holy Asia 
 
 Are a dirge entoning 
 For thine honour and thy brother's. 
 Once majestic beyond others, 
 
 In the old belief, — 
 Now are groaning in the groaning 
 
 Of thy deep-voiced grief. 
 
 ^ Aesch. Prom. 406-435. 
 
278 DA WN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 Mourn the maids inhabitant 
 
 Of the Colchian land 
 Who with white, calm bosoms stand 
 
 In the battle's roar : 
 Mourn the Scythian tribes that haunt 
 The verge of earth, Maeotis' shore. 
 
 Yea ! Arabia's battle crown. 
 And dwellers in the beetling town 
 Mount Caucasus sublimely nears, — 
 An iron squadron, thundering down 
 With the sharp-prowed spears. 
 
 And the tides of the ocean wail bursting their bars, — 
 
 Murmurs still the profound. 
 And black Hades roars up through the chasm of the ground, 
 And the fountains of pure-running rivers moan low 
 
 In a pathos of woe.^ 
 
 Another and less obvious case is in the Oedipus 
 Tyrannus^ where the scene of Laius' murder is 
 impregnated with the speaker's own emotion, the 
 place being regarded as at once an accomplice 
 and a horror-stricken witness of the deed. The 
 intimate sense of union between man and the 
 world outside him, which is so often disguised 
 under the veil of mythology, becomes more out- 
 spoken in Euripides. Numerous are his touches 
 of modern and romantic sentiment. He feels an 
 
 ' Mrs. E. B. Browning's Translation. 
 
 ^ Soph. 0. T. 1398 ff. Observe the subjective colouring of 
 jjiifivriffSe and i/ui/. 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 279 
 
 indwelling mystery in nature, and employs a 
 notable variety of epithets ^ to suggest this in- 
 tangible power that resides in earth and sky, in 
 light and darkness, in mountains and streams, in 
 fire and rain, in favoured places haunted by some 
 divine presence. His descriptions frequently call 
 up by immediate association the natural harmony 
 or discord between man and his surroundings.^ 
 He catches the poetic symbolism of nature's 
 moods. He notes the effects of atmosphere and 
 shifting lights. He infuses a new wealth of colour 
 into his landscapes, and their picturesque quality is 
 heightened by colour contrasts.' His interest too 
 in the animal and bird kingdom is tender and 
 observant. The common bond of suffering draws 
 them within the circle of human fellowship. " What 
 bird," cries Antigone, " reft of her mother, perched 
 in the topmost foliage of the oak or pine, will 
 chime in with my grief?"* The halcyon^ is 
 
 ' ie/)6s, arjvlsi, Bia-wiai.0%, ai)s,vh%, 5ios, fdSeos, d/i^piirios, 5i07ep^s. 
 See Fairclough, p. 52. 
 
 ^ E.g. Iph. Aul. 573 ff. ; Ion 112 ff. ; Iph. Tatir. 134, 1097 ff. ; 
 Phoen. l57off. 
 
 ' E.g. Heracl. 854-5; ^ec. 152-4; Hel. 179 ff-; Iph. Taur. 1245-6. 
 ■* Phoen. 1515-18. 
 5 Iph. Taur. 1089 ff. 
 
 k'yth aoL wapa^dWofiat 
 
 6p7}vov5j dTrrepos 6pvis. IO94-5. 
 
28o DA WN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 addressed as a companion in bereavement, and the 
 tearful nightingale^ is summoned to mingle her 
 dirge with that of lonely womanhood. Helen in 
 Egypt calls on the stream Eurotas to tell her 
 whether the tale of her husband's death is true.^ 
 In the Heraclidae earth and sun and moon are 
 bidden shout for joy over the coming victory.^ 
 Nor is nature unresponsive to her votaries. In 
 the Bacchae the whole woodland thrills with a 
 strange sympathy. The sombre and romantic set- 
 ting of the play, its unearthly terror and beauty, 
 form a background in keeping with the wild 
 ecstasy of the worshippers ; and when the 
 Bacchants raise the mystic cry to their god — 
 
 all the mountain felt 
 And worshipped with them, and the wild things knelt. 
 And ramped and gloried, and the wilderness 
 Was filled with moving voices and dim stress.* 
 
 But the idea of nature as a sympathising 
 spectator finds unreserved expression first in Greek 
 
 ^ Hd. 1 107 ff. {i\ff ffl . . ep-qvois i/ioU ^vpepy6s). 
 2 Ilei. 348 ff. s Beracl. 748. 
 
 * Bacch. 726-7, trans, by Gilbert Murray, an expansion of the 
 OTJginal — 
 
 irSi' hi crwepdKXfva-' ipos 
 Kal 9ypes, ovdiv 5' 9iv aKivTjTov dp6fitf! — 
 but true to the spirit of the context. 
 
IN GREEK POETR Y 28 1 
 
 pastoral poetry. Theocritus tells of the herds- 
 man Daphnis, " how the oaks sang his dirge — the 
 oaks that grow by the banks of the river Himeras 
 — while he was wasting like any snow under high 
 Haemus." ^ Then comes Bion with his lament 
 for Adonis : " Woe, woe for Cypris, the mountains 
 all are saying, and the oak trees answer, woe for 
 Adonis. And the rivers bewail the sorrows of 
 Aphrodite, and the wells are weeping Adonis on 
 the mountains." ^ Moschus in turn follows with 
 his lament for Bion : " Wail, let me hear you wail, 
 ye woodland glades, and thou Dorian water ; and 
 weep, ye rivers, for Bion the well-beloved ! Now 
 all ye green things mourn, and now ye groves 
 lament him, ye flowers now in sad clusters breathe 
 yourselves away." ^ The echo of these pastoral 
 dirges is heard in Virgil's Eclogues and Milton's 
 Lycidas, and in every later elegy in which nature 
 has mourned her poet or her worshipper. Even 
 Greek painting is not untouched by this peculiar 
 vein of elegiac sentiment : by a bold symbolism 
 it sometimes shadows forth nature's sympathetic 
 emotion. In a picture representing the death of 
 
 1 Theocr. Id. vii. 72 ff. (Trans. Lang) ; cp. the song of Daphnis, 
 i. 71 ff. 
 
 2 Bion i. 31 ff. 3 Moschus iii. i ff. 
 
282 DAWN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 Hippolytus described by the elder Philostratus,^ 
 the mountain peaks (tKoircai), over which Hippo- 
 lytus had so often hunted in company with 
 Artemis, appear in human embodiment under the 
 form of women rending their cheeks ; and the 
 meadows (Aet/xwi^e?) as young men, who let fall 
 their faded flowers in token of grief. This abstract 
 manner of personifying scenes and localities, without 
 the aid of mythological legend or suggestion, might 
 be further illustrated from post-Alexandrian art. 
 
 The passionate farewell of Ajax to his native 
 Salamis,^ of Antigone to the streams of Dirc^ and 
 the grove of Thebes,^, of Philoctetes to his rocky 
 island -home,* might at first sight be thought 
 already to betoken in Sophocles the modern sympa- 
 thetic interest in nature. But the feeling of these 
 passages, when read aright, is something different. 
 For lack of human companionship Ajax appeals 
 to the soil which nursed him ; in the bitterness of 
 his heart he calls even upon the hostile plains of 
 Troy ; it is the cry wrung from a lonely spirit. 
 Antigone too speaks as one friendless and deserted : 
 " Ah, fount of Dirc^, and thou holy ground of 
 Thebe whose chariots are many ; ye, at least, will 
 
 1 Philostr. Ima^. ii, 4. ^ Soph. Aj. 859 ff. 
 
 3 Ant. 844 ff. * Phil. 936 ff. 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 283 
 
 bear me witness in what sort, unwept of friends, 
 and by what laws I pass to the rock-closed prison 
 of my strange tomb." ^ Most decisive of all is 
 the passage in the Philoctetes : " O ye creeks and 
 headlands, O ye wild creatures of the hills with 
 whom I dwell, O ye steep cliffs ! to you — for to 
 whom ilse can I speak ? — to you, my wonted 
 listeners, I bewail my treatment by the son of 
 Achilles." ^ This personal converse with the world 
 outside is for Philoctetes an enforced intercourse. A 
 kindly sentiment has indeed sprung up in his mind 
 towards the unhuman companions of his solitude ; 
 but the long years he has spent alone with nature 
 have wrought no healing, they have not caused 
 forgetfulness of the sweet society of man. 
 
 In the Indian epic, the hero Rama being 
 exiled from court and cut off from the hope of his 
 kingdom retires to a lonely mountain and dwells 
 in the depth of a forest. His wife Sita and his 
 brother accompany him. The vast and manifold 
 life of the place finds gradual entrance into his 
 soul, till on that delectable mountain, as he tells 
 his wife, he no longer remembers his lost kingdom. 
 But Sita is carried away and Rama plunged in 
 despai/ " The earth," he says, " seems to weep as 
 ' Trans. Jebb. 
 
284 DAWN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 if it shared in the grief of Sita. . . . The dark 
 clouds and. nights without moon or stars suit well 
 the sorrows of love. The sun, veiled in mists, 
 seems overpowered as I am with grief." Then as 
 the seasons pass, the intimate communion he holds 
 with nature, and the mingling of his soul with the 
 universal soul, bring some solace and the calm of 
 resignation. In the Greek drama we are still far 
 from the love of nature for her own sake, or from 
 the thought of her as an unconscious consoler. 
 
 The desire for solitude and wild places was for 
 the Greeks of classical times a craving natural to 
 a Satyr or Dryad or some other half-human thing ; 
 but in man it denotes mental malady — either 
 religious frenzy, or a gloomy misanthropy which 
 seeks solitude rather as an escape from fellow-men 
 than out of love for nature. In Euripides, indeed, 
 there is a feeling for the open spaces of sea and 
 air and wild woodland scenery, which is almost 
 romantic in character. But neither he nor any 
 Greek of his age could have entered into the spirit 
 of Byron's lines : 
 
 There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 
 There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 
 There is society where none intrudes 
 By the deep Sea, and music in its roar. 
 
m GREEK POETR V 285 
 
 Near the opening of the Hippolytus a dialogue 
 occurs between the love-sicl< Phaedra and her 
 nurse. Phaedra wishes ^ that she may be taken 
 to the high mountains and the pine forests, that 
 she may lift to her lips the stream of running 
 water, that she may be couched beneath the 
 poplars in the deep meadow grass. At the first 
 utterance of the wish the nurse detects in it a 
 touch of madness. This becomes more evident as 
 Phaedra proceeds in her ravings. Soon the access 
 passes off; she returns to her senses, and cries 
 out : " O woe is me, what can I have done ? 
 Whither have I strayed from a sober mind ? 
 Madness came over me, I fell by some god's 
 undoing." ^ The passion for solitude, associated 
 with the imaginative love of nature, takes us back 
 in thought to the far East on the one hand, and 
 on the other carries us forward to the Middle 
 Ages. In either case the sentiment rested on a 
 religious basis — on the belief that the divine and the 
 infinite could best be contemplated far from the stir 
 of human life, on the lonely hills and in deep forests. 
 
 ^ Eur. Hippol. 209 ff. 
 "^ Eur. Hippol. 239 : 
 
 SOffravos iy(*J, ri tot* elpyaa-dfiav ; 
 
 Trot TapeTT\6/yxSyiv yvibfias d7a^as ; 
 
 ifidvrjVj ^Tveffov Saifj.ovos &Tq„ 
 
286 DAWN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 Alexandrian poetry introduces us to another 
 phase of the sentiment. It is no longer the out- 
 come of frenzy or morbid enthusiasm ; yet neither 
 is it a feeling to which man in his normal mood 
 is liable. It arises under the influence of love, 
 which, if not a madness, is akin to madness. 
 Love drives forth its unhappy victim, into soli- 
 tary places, where all around him he finds sym- 
 pathetic listeners and spectators — trees, plants, 
 birds, creeping things ; a miniature world which 
 is the counterpart of his own soul, whose life in 
 it's most trivial accidents has a meaning and a 
 message for him. Among the most interesting 
 remains of Alexandrian literature is the love 
 story of Cydippe and Acontius, which has been 
 reconstructed ^ in detail from three sources — the 
 fragments of the original poem (the Aitid) of 
 Callimachus, the imitation by Ovid {Ep. [Her.] xx., 
 xxi.), and the prose version by Aristaenetus (E/>. 
 i. I o) in the sixth century a.d., which appears, to 
 be a singularly close paraphrase of the poem. 
 Acontius one . day saw Cydippe at a festival at 
 Delos ; as in most Greek love stories, the first meet- 
 ing is at a temple ; he falls in love at first sight — 
 here again in accordance with the usage which after- 
 
 ' Dilthey de Callimachi Cydippa. Leipzig, 1863. 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 287 
 
 wards became established in the Greek romance.^ 
 The parents of the girl do not favour the suit. 
 Acontius flies from the society of friends and 
 relatives and withdraws into solitude. He wanders 
 through the woods, and sits beneath the trees. 
 He cuts the name of the loved one on the bark. 
 To the trees he cries : " O trees, I would that ye 
 had intelligence and voice, just enough to say the 
 words ' Fair Cydippe,' and that graven on each 
 leaf ye had the letters which make up the name 
 of ' Cydippe the fair.' " Each passing mood of 
 his love is noted and analysed. In his lonely 
 hours Acontius makes friendships with the trees 
 and enters into communion with their secret life ; 
 he speculates whether he may ascribe to them 
 feelings like his own. The language in which he 
 addresses them is indeed a little unreal and far- 
 fetched : " Dear trees, the homes of melodious 
 birds, do ye too feel this love? When the 
 cypress meets the pine tree does it grow enam- 
 oured ? " and so on with other conceits. 
 
 ' In Heliodorus, iV. 84, the fixed gaze which accompanies love 
 at first sight is compared to an act of recognition : " For a long 
 time they fixed their eyes intently on one another as if they were 
 old acquaintances or had met before, and were attempting to recall 
 the occasion " {Hifftrep ei irov yvtapl^ovres ^ tSdj/res Trpbrepov, rats 
 
288 DAWN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 Strained though the sentiment is, and not un- 
 influenced by the courtly gallantry of the age, 
 we should, however, remember that to trees and 
 plants and flowers ancient legend had ascribed 
 almost human susceptibilities to love, and that 
 some of the most charming popular love tales in 
 Greece are those in which the hero or heroine 
 was at last transformed into some natural object. 
 In any case the lover's flight from the world ^ and 
 his colloquy with nature are in keeping with the 
 prevailing tone of the period. So too is the 
 specimen of the lover's dialect — that newly 
 created vocabulary of fancy and hopeless passion 
 which was bequeathed to Roman literature and 
 then, at the Renaissance, to the modern world. 
 
 Alexandrian literature marks the transition 
 from the poetry of action and of passion to that 
 of sentiment Literature in undergoing this 
 change is but reflecting the change that had 
 passed over the national life. The fervid youth 
 of the Greek race was over, and with it the love 
 of heroic deeds, the belief in great causes, the 
 ardour of devotion with which the citizen sur- 
 
 ' Cf. Phanocles Fr. i. 3, 4 (on the death of Orpheus) : 
 TToWd/ct hk ffKiepoitriv h &\ae(rtv ^fer' aeiSoiv 
 
IN GREEK POETR Y 289 
 
 rendered himself to the service of the community. 
 It is the age of individual interests, individual 
 culture, individual aims ; philosophy is busy in 
 working out the problem of the individual life ; 
 poetry takes the prevailing colour of the time. 
 Its tone is that of reflection and heightened sen- 
 sibility. ,It is on the look-out for emotional ex- 
 periences ; over these it lingers : it weighs and 
 compares them. The sentiments themselves seldom 
 have the energy or depth requisite to make them 
 issue in action. They form a new kingdom of 
 their own, alien to the instincts of the older 
 Hellenes, one of hopes and regrets, of aspirations 
 and delicate susceptibilities. Even where poetry 
 takes the narrative form, as in the epic and often 
 in the elegy, it passes rapidly from the action to 
 the description of a pathetic situation. The out- 
 ward deed is little more than a pretext for 
 psychological analysis. What is presented to us 
 is not so much the feeling itself, or the direct 
 image of an object, as the reflection of the poet on 
 what has been felt or seen. Of his own emotions 
 he becomes the appreciative spectator. The 
 emotions of others, even the most trivial, elicit a 
 kind of sympathy : he enters into them more 
 
 perhaps for the sake of tasting their quality than 
 
 u 
 
290 DA WN Of ROMANTICISM 
 
 of participating in them. In a word sentiment 
 is passing into sentimentalism. Theocritus is the^ 
 last who retains the old Hellenic balance, the 
 sanity of mind and body. His successors in the 
 Alexandrian school soon fall away from the 
 simplicity of the Greek gertius, their delineation 
 of feeling being often cold just because it is 
 exaggerated. 
 
 A poetic sensibility such as we have described, 
 always on the alert for the discovery of new sensa- 
 tions, becomes attentive to the moods of nature, 
 quick to mark her passing appearances and to 
 overhear in the world around the language of the 
 heart. And now, love which in the more severe 
 literature of earlier times had been held in abey- 
 ance appears as an idealised sentiment, and takes 
 the first rank as a theme of song. It forms an 
 integral part of the feeling for nature and blends 
 with almost every landscape. The movement so 
 begun perpetuated itself for centuries in the 
 Greek romance, whose extant remains cover a 
 period extending from the first century A.D. to 
 late Byzantine times, the chief representative 
 names being those of Heliodorus, Xenophon of 
 Ephesus, Longus the reputed author of Daphnis 
 and Chloe, and Achilles Tatius. These prose 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 291 
 
 fictions have not merely a general literary kinship 
 with the Alexandrian love elegies ; they are 
 lineally descended from them.^ It was thence 
 that they received their originating impulse, and a 
 direct imitation of the Alexandrian models can 
 sometimes be traced. The romances, indeed, 
 brought a new and alien element into the poetic 
 stories, — the element of fabulous travel and strange 
 adventures by land and sea ; incidents which were 
 strung together loosely, and not woven into the 
 tissue of the tale. The poems and the romances, 
 however, agree in artistic structure and in the 
 main features of the narrative. In each case love 
 is the central motive, the soul of the story. There 
 is the absence of a firm and sharp touch alike 
 in the outward incidents and in the delineation 
 of character. The real conditions of life are 
 studiously ignored ; the fundamental tone, the 
 atmosphere of sentiment, is the same ; the 
 breath of a fantastic idealism floats over the 
 whole. 
 
 As in other sentimental periods of literature, 
 the hapless lover of the Alexandrian poets closely 
 observes his own symptoms, and seeks a sym- 
 pathising ear into which to pour his troubles. His 
 ' See Rohde, Der ^riechische Roman. 
 
j^.-: nrx OF xcMAXnc'SJf 
 
 passioa feeds not so mucii on silenoe as on 
 scJiloqay : die Ivcony of vroe^ &niniar enon^ 
 eren to the Homenc Giedcs in moments of genome 
 sorrow, is induced on slight occasion, and the 
 words used cease to be any true index of the 
 fe^i^. Antimaditts the degiac poet (arc. i^5 
 KCX v^Kise Ij-rical nSnatives had an appieciabie 
 influence on wiitas such as Calliroachus and 
 Phil^as, sov^t comfort \re are to'.d by Plutarch,* 
 for the death <rf^ his bdoved Lyde in roses which 
 recounted Ae loves fd others thnx^i a loi^ 
 series (rf" disastets reaching back to the heroic age. 
 In a similar tempo- of mind the Alexandruun 
 lover narrates the sorrows of his own heart witii 
 as mucii enjoyment as if th^^ were those of 
 another. He is one of those who " live in wilful 
 sadness." It is d>e kind of love melandmljr with 
 which we are f.^miifar ex^er since the Renatsancc; 
 and of whidi Petrarch offers one of the earliest 
 modem example Petrardi revels in his own 
 sensibilities ; he lingers over his passion with pain 
 aiui d^ghL Like the Alexandrian he enters into 
 dose converse widi nature ; he desires siditude : 
 
 riataicii. Cats, mi .-; "■.■.-, o. nfup/ttmr r^ X.tts ci-v 
 
IN G/<EEK POETR Y 293 
 
 he invokes the hills, the woods, the valleys, as 
 witnesses of his grief; in the murmur of the trees, 
 in the song of the nightingale, he hears the echo 
 of his own heart ; to nature he looks to be 
 consoled and tranquillised. 
 
 The emotional overflow which is apparent in 
 the fragmentary remains of the elegiac poetry of 
 the Alexandrian period and the imitations of the 
 Roman poets, is in marked contrast with the 
 austere reserve of ancient Greece. According to 
 old Greek feeling love was a disorder or malady 
 of the soul, apt to become an overmastering 
 emotion, robbing man of his power of free initiative. 
 Lyrical poetry being in its essence the expression 
 of individual passion, could not suppress the 
 supreme passion of love, its ardour and its languor, 
 its doubts, its hopes, its longings, its outward and 
 physical symptoms. But love was not held fitted 
 to be the theme of heroic song, either as the main 
 motive of the epic, or the central interest of the 
 drama. It forms indeed the background of the 
 Iliad, but the Iliad is not a love tale ; it is the 
 story of Achilles, of his wrath and reconciliation. 
 Achilles is no Teutonic Siegfried whom a romantic 
 love impels to do noble deeds. His is the 
 spontaneous heroism of the Hellenic people in 
 
294 ^A WN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 their chivalrous youth ; he is animated by the 
 instinctive desire for glory, intensified by the 
 knowledge of an early doom impending. Similarly, 
 the drama, in its proper Greek conception, could 
 not rest on so egoistic a basis as the passion 
 of love. The struggle it depicts . involves, no 
 doubt, the destiny of an individual ; round the 
 individual the interest centres ; nor, as so often in 
 the epic, does the tide of events sweep into its 
 current the fortunes of a nation. Yet the forces 
 brought into play, those' out of which the dramatic 
 collision arises, are not individual caprices, they 
 are no self-absorbed or personal sentiments, but 
 the enduring interests of state and family, of 
 country and religion. 
 
 The keen civic life of Greece, however, showed 
 signs of premature decay ; its turbulent liberty 
 spent itself in faction ; and when once the public 
 interest ceased to be the first and chief concern 
 of the citizen, no great impersonal motives re- 
 mained to serve as an inspiration for poetry. The 
 first tokens of the change are manifest in Euri- 
 pides. The centre of the tragic interest is already 
 shifting, and the drama is becoming the history of 
 the human heart, as of a world divided against 
 itself : it records the internal struggles, the claims, 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 295 
 
 the imperious demands of the individual. When 
 Euripides brought upon the stage womanly passion, 
 with its conflicts and self-questionings — a love 
 that was at once a blind impulse and a mood of 
 searching introspection — his tragedy was criti- 
 cised, and in a measure justly, as being a patho- 
 logical study rather than a dramatic representation 
 of life. He was in fact the first of the sentimental 
 poets and the forerunner of modern romanticism. 
 Love, that had hitherto been little more than an 
 episode or by-play in a piece, now tends ^o be the 
 soul of the tragedy. It is a new and independent 
 power, asserting as it were personal rights, and 
 claiming to compete with the established forces of 
 the moral world, with the voice of law, with posi- 
 tive duties. Later tragedy, so far as we can 
 judge of it, followed on the lines laid down in 
 Euripides ; it dealt largely with what Plutarch 
 calls " the dark and insoluble riddle of love," ^ 
 selecting in particular such legends as easily lent 
 themselves to a sentimental treatment. 
 
 If we looked only to extant literature, we 
 should be tempted to imagine that romantic love 
 stories were an entirely new growth at a particular 
 
 ^ Plut. irepj 'E/jtBTOs in Stob. Flor. Ixiv. 32, atyiy/xa ivGeip^TOv Kal 
 
296 DAWN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 epoch in Greece. But it is evident that rich 
 stores of such material had been from an early 
 date treasured in the popular imagination ; and 
 already in the sixth century B.C. Stesichorus had 
 embodied some of these tales in poetic form,^ 
 thus anticipating by several centuries the love 
 elegy of the Alexandrian poets. We read eJso 
 of love stories associated with local legends at 
 Miletus, Ephesus, Nicaea in Bithynia, Rhodes, and 
 in other parts of the Greek world ; many of these 
 we now possess in outline, thanks to the industry 
 of late Greek collectors. It is a matter of some 
 surprise that the Greeks were so slow to perceive 
 the literary value of this neglected material, be- 
 coming aware of it first, apparently, through the 
 comparison of similar oriental tales, which had 
 been previously collected, some as early as 400 
 B.C. by Ctesias. These native tales attracted the 
 interest of antiquarians and poets in the Alex- 
 andrian age, and for centuries afterwards were 
 largely drawn upon by writers of prose and verse. 
 Pausanias who in the second century A.D. picked 
 up in his travels many love stories from the lips 
 of the people, concludes one of them with an 
 observation which shows that the archaeologist 
 ' Athenaeus xiii. 601 ; xiv. 619. 
 
IN GREEK POETRf 297 
 
 was fully alive to the force of the new motive 
 which had subdued to itself almost the whole 
 domain of imaginative literature. " Man is the 
 only being for whom the prosperous issue of his 
 love weighs in the scale against life itself" ^ Among 
 the most beautiful of these popular tales are those 
 of Paris and Oenone, of Hero and Leander, both of 
 which were derived from current tradition or local 
 legend, and almost certainly took artistic shape 
 for the first time under the hands of Alexandrian , 
 poets. In their extant literary form, however, 
 both belong to a later age, the first being the 
 work of Quintus Smyrnaeus (probably in the. fifth 
 century A.D.), the second of Musaeus (probably 
 at the end of the same century). In the case of 
 the Paris and Oenone legend, we are able, as it 
 happens, to compare the poem with the popular 
 version on which it was based, and to see how the 
 romantic interest now awakening added an accent 
 of deeper tenderness and pathos to the original tale. 
 Even into the old mythology of gods and 
 heroes the same spirit was infused. Poets who 
 brought Olympus into the familiar circle of bucolic 
 poetry, who represented Hermes as blackening 
 
 ' I'ausan. vii. 19. 5, /linfj 7^ h't\ avBpdrifi 'pvxv^ iarlv avrd^ioii 
 KaropduKrai ipaaO^vra. 
 
298 DA WN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 his face to frighten the naughty children of the 
 gods,i who described Aphrodite hastily completing 
 her toilette on the occasion of a visit from Hera,^ 
 and Artemis as a child of three years old 
 sitting on the knees of the giant Brontes, and 
 pulling handfuls of hair out of his breast *— such 
 poets did not hesitate to transform many of the 
 heroic myths into love tales. Achilles, who in 
 the popular imagination had come to be the 
 pattern of knightly love, is involved in a series of 
 sentimental adventures out of keeping with his 
 Homeric character. Here, indeed, it was possible 
 to work on hints supplied in the older legends. 
 The Antiopis of the Epic Cycle had recorded the , 
 rush of tender feeling which came over AchjUes 
 at the sight of his slain foe, Penthesilea. This 
 was developed with romantic additions in later 
 tragedy and in Alexandrian literature. Odysseus 
 too, the love passages of whose career had been 
 so lightly touched on by Homer, becomes a hero 
 of romance : in one poem — the Hermes of Philetas 
 — he forms a liaison with Polymele, the daughter of 
 Aeolus, while staying at the palace of the king ; 
 an episode suggested, it would seem, by the story 
 
 1 Callim. Hymn to Artein. 68 ff. ■' Apoll. Rhod. iii. 47 ff. 
 
 " Callim. Hymn to Artem. 72 ff. 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 299 
 
 of Nausicaa in the Odyssey, but conceived in a 
 spirit the very opposite of the Homeric. 
 
 The ancient epic materials being thus handled 
 in an idyllic manner, it was inevitable that they 
 should be strongly tinctured with the prevailing 
 sentimentalism. It was, however, a bolder experi- 
 ment to introduce love into the epic itself as the 
 main interest of the poem. This is the dis- 
 tinguishing feature of the Argonautica of Apol- 
 lonius Rhodius. The love of Medea for Jason, as 
 portrayed' in the third book, is not a fantastic 
 sentiment or the mere gallantry into which the 
 Alexandrian delineation of love tends to de- 
 generate. The account of the first meeting with 
 Jason, of Medea's nascent passion, of the inward 
 conflict carried on in the girl's mind between love 
 and honour through a sleepless night, of her final 
 resolve to quit her parents and her country, — this 
 alone would prove that a new and mighty impulse 
 had entered into poetry, and that an Alexandrian 
 writer could touch at least one human chord in a 
 manner in which it had never quite been touched 
 before. It is not too much to say that the Dido 
 of the Aeneid would probably never have been 
 drawn as she is but for the Medea of Apollonius 
 Rhodius — an imaginative creation sufificient to 
 
300 DA WN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 make amends for the weary spaces over which the 
 reader is compelled to travel, for the outworn 
 mythology, the tedious and absurd geography, and 
 the dry and antiquarian learning with which the 
 poet vainly endeavours to relieve the flagging 
 interest of an action which is wanting in unity. 
 
 In another respect too, apart from the delinea- 
 tion of love, Apollonius Rhodius shows a modern 
 spirit in his descriptive art. He is profoundly 
 sensitive to the effects of air and light. The 
 literature of the time was advancing on the road 
 of realism ; its heightened subjectivity made it 
 more inclined to minute observation, and, instead 
 of using the larger brush with which the classical 
 writers give the impression of a scene, it attempted 
 a rendering more detailed and exact. Above all 
 poetry had come under the powerful influence of 
 painting, and began to view nature through the 
 eyes of art. Of all the poets of the time Apol- 
 lonius is most observant of the diverse pheno- 
 mena of light, of its pictorial effects, its broken 
 and reflected images. In this particular he, among 
 the ancients, approaches in a measure, and how- 
 ever remotely, to what Dante is among the 
 moderns. In Homer the sun rises simply to 
 " give light to gods and men." An epithet of the 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 301 
 
 Dawn, " saffron-clad " {KpoKoireifKo';), or " rosy- 
 fingered " (poSo8dKTvXo<;), may suggest the illumina- 
 tion of the landscape, but that is all ; the secondary 
 effects of light are not described. Apollonius 
 Rhodius seldom mentions the sunrise without 
 some pictorial touch. For instance : — 
 
 ^pjs 8' ovpavodev \apo7rr) UTroAa/iirerai 'Hws 
 €K Trepdrrji oivLov<Ta, ScayKaxrcrovcri S' aTapnroi, 
 Kol ireSia Spococvra <j>aeivg Xd/MTreTai aiyXrj — ^ 
 
 "When the gleaming Dawn shines faintly in heaven, 
 rising from the far east, and the foot-tracks are streaked 
 with light and the dewy lands shine with her bright ray " — 
 
 again : 
 
 avrap or alyX^iircra (f>aeivois ofx/juuriv 'Hws 
 TlriXiov atireivas iSev aKpias, ck S' dveiM>io 
 • ivSioi €k\v^ovto TivouTcrojXfvrjs dXbi aKpai — ^ 
 
 "When radiant Dawn with her bright eyes looked on 
 the steep heights of Pelion, and the crests of the salt sea 
 waves were washed clear in the wind " — 
 
 or again : 
 
 ^/xos S' ■qiXio'S Spocrepas lirkXafiAJje KoXcovas — ^ 
 " When the sun shone over the dewy slopes " — 
 
 or again : 
 
 ij8)j Se <^oa)S vitjioevTos vrrepde 
 KavKoxrov rjpLyivyf<; 'Hws fidkev avTeXXovcra — * 
 
 1 Apoll. Rhod. i. 1280 S. 
 2 Id. i. 519 ff. ' 16. ii. 164. * lb. iii. 1222-23. 
 
302 DA WN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 "And now .new-born Dawn at her rising cast her light 
 high over snowy Caucasus '' — 
 
 and lastly : 
 
 'Hm 5' d/iPpoo-iouTiv dvip^o/uvr) c^afccrt 
 
 Xve KeXaiv^v vvKTa 8i' ijepos' al 8' eyekacr(Tav 
 
 ^idi/cs vtjcroio koi epfrrjia-crai diroidev 
 
 aTpaTriTol TreStMV • ev Si 6p6o% e(TK€v dyviats — 1 
 
 "And Dawn came up with her immortal lights, and 
 dissolved the dai-k night in the sky, and the island shores 
 smiled brightly, and the field-tracks afar glittering with 
 dew, and there was a hum of voices in the streets." 
 
 Further he pictures for us the glimmering of 
 stars ; ^ the clouded moon as it appears in morning 
 twilight ; ' the youthful form of Hylas as he was 
 seen in the moonbeams by a fountain nymph ; * 
 the golden ray shot from the eyes of the children 
 of Helios so that none cati mistake their lineage ;* 
 the wavelets of dancing light cast on the walls 
 from a vessel of water.^ When Jason bears the 
 Fleece through the night, his face is lit up with a 
 ruddy glow reflected from its golden tufts.' In 
 
 » ApoU. Rhod. iv. 1170 ff. ^ li. ii. 40 ff.; iii. 1376 ff. 
 
 5 /*. iv. 1479-80 ff. : 
 
 (Ss tIs re vi<fi ivl ijiian ynijvijv 
 
 ^ ISiv 9i eSiicijffey iirwx)i'liov(rav iSiaOai. 
 
 Cp. Aen. vi. 453 ; 
 
 qualem primo qui surgere mense 
 
 aiit uidet aut uidisse putat per nubila liinam. 
 
 ■* 16. i. 1231 ff. " 11). iv. 727 ff. 
 
 s 16. iii. 755 ff. ' /*, iv. 172-73. 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 303 
 
 the same passage the joy of the hero as he handles 
 the Fleece is compared to that of a maiden who 
 from her upper chamber sees the full moon rising, 
 and catches it in the folds of her fine-woven dress.^ 
 In another simile the magical effect is described 
 of a radiant star, just seen above the horizon, on 
 the fancy of a girl pining for her lover in a distant 
 land.2 
 
 The art of this period runs a course parallel to 
 that of its literature.^ The feature of Apollonius 
 Rhodius just noticed may be illustrated by the 
 marked preference of the later vase-painters for 
 representations of the stars, of Helios and other 
 gods of the world of light, for images of objects 
 as they appear through a shining or transparent 
 medium, and in general for a new order of atmo- 
 spheric effects. On one vase is depicted the rescue 
 of Alcmena from a fiery death ; the clear air is 
 shot through with a rainbow gleam, denoting the 
 rain shower sent from Zeus. On another vase, of 
 Lower Italy, Helios is driving through a thunder- 
 storm ; the god stands on his chariot crowned with 
 sunbeams, while on his left a thunderbolt is winging 
 its way. Painting proper also occupied itself with 
 
 1 ApoU. Rhod. iv. 167 ff. ^ lb. i. 774 ff. 
 
 ' See Helbig, Campanische Watidmalerei, p. 351 ff. 
 
304 DAWN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 similar phenomena. In the pictures described by 
 Philostratus the effects of light appear to have been 
 artistically elaborated. In the repre.sentation of 
 Comus ^ and of Cassandra ^ there is a play of 
 torch-light over the scene ; in the picture of 
 Antigone ' she is bending over the body of Poly- 
 neices, under a. faint moon, repressing the cry that 
 is on her lips. In another painting, the subject 
 being Semele,* the figures of Bronte and Astrape 
 appear, symbolising the fire cloud that broke over 
 the house of Cadmus ; the dark form of Semele is 
 seen ascending to heaven ; while the vision of the 
 new-born Dionysus shines out against the murky 
 flame. Not to multiply instances, the picture of 
 the river Meles^ had in it a wave arched by a 
 light breeze into the fashion of a grotto, shimmering 
 in varied lights beneath the rays of the sun. 
 
 It is, however, a notable peculiarity of (jreek 
 painting that while it learnt to delight in repre- 
 senting all manner of rare and luminous appear- 
 ances, rainbows and strange cloud-forms and broken 
 or deflected lights, it did not seek to render hazy 
 and distant effects : the mountains that form the 
 background do not melt into the atmosphere ; the 
 
 ' Philostr. Imag. i. 2. ^ lb. ii. lo. 
 
 3 lb. ii. 29. * lb. i. 13. ^ /*. ii. 8. 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 305 
 
 outlines are not blurred ; each object stands out 
 in plastic isolation and distinctness. Helbig, who 
 calls attention to the fact, observes the kindred 
 phenomenon, — that the Greek language has hardly 
 any words to denote the general tone and 
 atmosphere of a landscape, rich and expressive 
 as the vocabulary is in describing sounds and 
 scents and play of light. It would seem, indeed 
 as if Greek literature as well as Greek landscape- 
 painting, in its mode of feeling and expressing the 
 natural beauty of things, was conditioned by the 
 clear sky and the full light of a southern land ; 
 just as, conversely, romanticism in its original and 
 native force implies a northern air, in which outlines 
 are less sharply chiselled, colours are more dim, 
 where objects pass into one another by impercep- 
 tible gradations of light and shade — a world of 
 half lights, of reverie, of mystery. 
 
 Not unconnected with this primary difference 
 between the Greek and the romantic manner of 
 seeing things may be the fact, that the Greeks of 
 the classical age do not appear to have been 
 imaginatively impressed with the distant prospect 
 of objects viewed from a height : indeed it is worth 
 observing that we have no record either in history 
 or poetry prior to the Alexandrian period of any 
 
3o6 DAWN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 one except the Persian Darius climbing a mountain 
 and surveying the landscape.^ Aeschylus no 
 doubt gives us in the Prometheus the sense of vast 
 perspectives and v/ide horizons ; and still more 
 does Aristophanes in the Birds open up aerial 
 spaces and convey the idea of far-off lands, of lakes 
 and woods and mountains, from which the birds 
 congregate.^ But the first actual description of a 
 distant view seen from a mountain is in Apollonius 
 Rhodius. He tells ' how the Argonauts made the 
 ascent of Dindymon to do honour to the great 
 Mother of the gods, and in a few brief touches he 
 spreads before us the prospect that met the eye — 
 the mouth of the Bosphorus, the hills of Mysia, the 
 course of the Aisepus, the plain of Nepeia. There 
 is but one phrase in this description which suggests 
 the idea of atmosphere — the word riepoev, denoting 
 the haze of distance through which the Bosphorus 
 is dimly discerned. It may be compared with the 
 ■^epoeiSea ttovtov, the misty or hazy deep, of Homer ; 
 it is again employed by Apollonius * to give the 
 impression made by the long stretch of Libyan 
 sand, that monotone of colour in which earth and 
 air blend confusedly. One other bird's-eye view 
 
 ' Herod, iv. 85. " Aristoph. Birds, 228 ff. 
 
 •'"Apoll. Rhod. i. IJ12 ff, * Ih, iv. 1239, 1245-47. 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 307 
 
 there is in ApoUonius, that of the world as seen 
 from the celestial gates of Olympus — the life-giving 
 earth, the cities of men, the sacred rivers, the 
 mountain peaks, the encircling ocean.* Both pass- 
 ages imply something of a new pictorial sense of 
 landscape in the larger outlook and the inclu- 
 sion of a distant horizon. Otherwise they hardly 
 depart from the characteristic manner of Greek 
 description, its precision, its reserve, its brevity, the 
 sculptural clearness of the image. 
 
 The vein of modern sentiment which lends a 
 tender grace of its own to so many of the latest 
 productions of Hellenism is nowhere more dis- 
 cernible than in the Greek Anthology.^ In these, 
 the fairest relics of expiring antiquity, there is a 
 touch of intenser feeling in the appreciation of 
 nature than can be discovered in any previous 
 period of Greek literature. Strict limits indeed 
 are imposed on the expression of this sentiment, 
 partly by the artistic laws of the epigram itself, 
 partly by the instinctive self-restraint practised by 
 the writers, with whom the human interest was 
 paramount over every other. Still we may recog- 
 
 ' Apoll. Rhod. iii. 159 IT. 
 
 ^ In the quotations made in the text I have frequently adopted 
 Mr. Mackail's rendering of the epigrams in liis Select Epigrams 
 from the Greek Anthology. (Longmans and Co. 1890.) 
 
3o8 DAWN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 nise the various new sources, already indicated, of 
 emotional interest which the outer world afiForded. 
 The citizen escapes from the town to keep festival 
 in the country, where he lies on a couch of strewn 
 willows and osiers, enjoying the breath of the 
 west wind.^ The quiet delight, too, with which 
 Thyrsis in Theocritus looked out over the Sicilian 
 waters is repeated in the Anthology. The 
 Cyprian goddess loves to gaze on the gleaming 
 deep from her shrine on land.^ The dweller in 
 the palace gardens on the Asiatic shore of the 
 Propontis is filled with the "gladness of the 
 bordering sea." ^ As in the idyllic poets, not the 
 Muses only bewail the harp-player, but the river 
 " Asopus stays his stream, hearing the cry from 
 their wailing lips."* So too the pastoral dells 
 lament the old bee-keeper on the hills, "the 
 neighbour of the mountain peak," who was lost 
 on a winter's night.^ 
 
 Everywhere we apprehend the sense of natural 
 beauty heightened by the alliance with art. 
 
 ' Athen, xv. 673. ' ArUh. Pal. ix. 144. 
 
 ' Anth. Pal. ix. 667 : 
 
 KaX Trbvrov ir\-t}$w ye'iTovoi eO^fMHT^vg. 
 * It. viL 412. 
 
 ' lb. vii. 717 : aX Zi Thv SKpr/s 
 
 yehora roifUvuu jroWi woSmiai firai,. 
 
IN CREEK POETRY 309 
 
 But- the manner of presenting a scene retains 
 on the whole its antique characteristics. An ex- 
 pressive epithet gives at one stroke some salient 
 feature of the individual object, its shape or sound 
 or colour, its appearance in movement or at rest ; 
 and such epithets bear the unmistakable mint- 
 mark of classical Greece, differing only in the 
 more decorative touch, or in the greater prodi- 
 gality with which they are scattered. But the 
 epigrams do not merely present a vivid image to 
 the senses. The affinity of man with the visible 
 creation is not obscurely felt, one of its manifesta- 
 tions being the enlarged sympathy which brings 
 all living things within the range of the human 
 affections. Still, so far as the inanimate universe 
 is concerned, the perception of such correspond- 
 ences in general eludes direct utterance. The 
 old mythology is skilfully adapted to convey the 
 impression ; it is not yet emptied of poetic mean- 
 ing. Pan and Hermes, Demeter and Dionysus, 
 Nymphs and Naiads constitute the secret links 
 between the outer and the inner world ; in them is 
 embodied the spirit of universal life, and in their 
 movements we can discern the responsive attitude 
 of nature towards man. In a few instances only, 
 as in those already quoted, are external things 
 
3IO DA WN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 brought into conscious partnership with human 
 joys and sorrows., or the harmonies between 
 nature and spirit suggested without the aid of 
 mythical personification or other symbolism. 
 
 The love epigrams in the Anthology disclose 
 another and more inward tone, as fascinating as it 
 is surprising to thp reader who has been accus- 
 tomed to make a sharp distinction between classical 
 and romantic literature. In Meleager, a native 
 of Gadara in Palestine (early in the first 
 century B.C.), whose temperament and genius are 
 not without some Asiatic quality, love becomes a 
 new and almost mystical ardour. In glow and 
 intensity his verses sometimes approach to the 
 early Aeolian poetry, though the antique simplicity 
 is wanting. The colouring is richer, the imagery 
 is often fantastic ; the fragrance of oriental spices, 
 the scents of lilies and roses are shed over the 
 things of the heart. There is a subtlety that 
 reminds one of the modern sonnet. All that is 
 most inward and mobile in the passion or senti- 
 ment of love finds expression in him — the sweet- 
 ness and the sting,^ the honey that burns, hot 
 tears to drink,^ the gusts of jealousy,^ the fire 
 
 ^ Antk. Pal. V. 163. 2 lb. xii. 132. 
 
 ^ lb. V. 190. 
 
IN GREEK POE TRY 311 
 
 and snow wherewith love pays for his nurture/ 
 the wounds lately closed that are inflamed afresh.'-' 
 Love is a bitter wave ; ^ the fire that scorches the 
 wings of the fluttering spirit ; * he is the artist 
 that moulds souls ; * the nriaster who tortures the 
 Runaway soul ; " and, again, he is himself the 
 Runaway, for whom hue and cry is raised ; ^ he 
 is the Manslayer,^ the conquering Deity that 
 tramples on the neck of the fallen.' Love the 
 Ball-player tosses human hearts for balls ; '" Love 
 the Dice-player, a child in his mother's arms, 
 plays away the lives of men." Love is the un- 
 explored sea to which all men are lured by the 
 sparkling calm of Asclepias' eyes.^^ Love's draught 
 is in the cup ; the lover's wish is that the maiden 
 at one breath may drink in his whole soul.^^ 
 
 The attractive and compelling power of beauty 
 is set forth under many images in the Anthology. 
 Myiscus is the sun before whom the stars quench 
 
 1 Anth. Pal. 
 
 xii. 
 
 132. ^ lb. xii. 80. ■* 7*^ V-. 190. 
 
 ^ lb. V. 57. 
 
 
 5 lb. V. 155. « lb. xii. 80. 
 
 ' lb. V. 177, 
 
 
 8 Ib^ V. 215. 9 lb. xii. 48. 
 
 '» /*. -i. 214. 
 
 
 " lb. xii. 47. 
 
 12 lb. V. 156 : 
 
 
 
 'A <pi\4pus xt'/'OTOis 'AtrkXtyirias oTa TaX-fii'iis 
 
 6fifj.a<7t 
 
 (TV/iweWei irdvTas ipUTOir'KoeTv. 
 
 " lb. V. 171, 
 
 cp. 
 
 V. 261, the lines by Agathias, which are the 
 
 original of Ben Jonson's " Drink to me only with thine eyes." 
 
312 DA WN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 their light ; ^ his frown is winter, the sunshine of 
 his glance the first burst of spring.^' Rash are 
 the eyes that dare to drink in the strong wine of 
 beauty untempered.' The grace of youth is as 
 the unblown flower, still folded in the bud ; it is 
 the grape that has not yet grown purple.* Zeno- 
 phile, " a spring flower among the flowers, the 
 sweet rose of Persuasion, has burst into bloom." ^ 
 As in the myth and poetry of early Greece, the 
 feeling of sympathy with the animal world still 
 exists : it is now more vivid and outspoken : 
 there is a deepening sense that each living thing 
 is a sharer in a common life. " To the toiling 
 working ant " a memorial clod is raised near the 
 threshing-floor.® The tame partridge that has 
 helped thd hunter as a decoy, is not left without 
 an epitaph, when he has " gone on Acheron's last 
 road." '' A line of singular pathos tells of the 
 voice of the singing bird for ever hushed : " Thy 
 ways and -sweet breath are prisoned in the silent 
 
 1 Anth. Pal. xu. 59 (Meleager). 
 
 2 lb. xii. 159 (Meleager). 
 
 ^ lb. V. 226, * lb. V. 124. 
 
 ^ lb. V. 144 (Meleager) : 
 
 if &vBe(ri,v &piijt,ov dvdos, 
 ZijKo^fta lieiBoOs TjSijriSrfKe fidSov. 
 
 8 lb. vii. 209. 7 lb. vii. 203. 
 
IN GREEK POETR Y 313 
 
 paths of night." ' But no member of the animal 
 creation is addressed with more intimate affection 
 than the cicala, the singer who "' drunk with dew- 
 drops" babbles in the solitude;^ whose "evening 
 hymn " {jravicnrepov ij/ivov) made the halls ever to 
 ring with glad sound ; ^ the musician who, when 
 the string was snapped in the contest of the lyre, 
 took up the lost chord " before the tune had 
 halted " ; * the comforter whose wandering voice 
 brings sleep to the lover ; ° the pet in the house, 
 who at death has flown to the meadows of the 
 world below and the "dewy flowers of golden 
 Persephone." ° 
 
 Family life, which in the Attic period had 
 fallen into the background under the overshadow- 
 ing interest of the city, is dwelt on with loving 
 repetition by the poets of the Anthology. A 
 romantic touch now glorifies the common things 
 of the home. The prayer of the wife is summed 
 up in two words, avSpo<i oftocjjpoa-vva, " a mind at 
 
 ^ Ant A. Pal. vii. 199 : 
 
 ffi 5' -^Bea Kal t6 ahv ij50 
 Tvevfia ffiojTujpal vvicrbs ^ovffiv oSoi, Cp. vii. 212. 
 ^ 76. vii. 196 : 
 
 ctxi^ets t4tti^ SfiOffepais araydvetrffi fieBotrdeis^ 
 dypoydfiav fi4\Treis /ioOcav ^p7jfio\A\ov. 
 = 16. vii. 194. ■• 16. vi. 54. 
 
 " 16. vii. 195. " /i. vii. 189. 
 
314 DA IVN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 one with her husband," ^ a far-off echo of the 
 unapproachable language of the sixth Odyssey? 
 The retrospect of wedded happiness could not be 
 more simply given than in the line 
 
 del 8e <T^i,v X&iov tts €T0s ?]V^ 
 
 " ever was it better for them year by year " ; or 
 the attainment of earthly felicity be told more 
 touchingly than in the Words of the dead husband 
 who speaking from the tomb recalls his undivided 
 home, the " wife that grew old with him," and the 
 children 
 
 0? yiiE KaTacTTreKTai'Tes aTTij/iova, rov "^Xvkvv vtzvov 
 
 Admirable again in depth of feeling and direct- 
 ness of expression is the^epitaph on husband and 
 wife, who died within an hour of one another, 
 and whose common tomb is also their bridal 
 chamber : 
 
 a,fji<f)(i) S' (i)S (Tvuevaiov VTrh TrAaxt rvfifieuovTai 
 ^vvhv dyaXXofievoi /cat rdi^ov (os OaXafwy.^ 
 
 No topic is more tenderly touched than sorrow 
 
 ' Anth. Pal. vi. 209. 
 
 ^ Odyss. vi. 180 ff., the wish of Odysseus for Nausicaa! 
 
 ^ An/A. Pal. vi. 340. 
 
 * lb. vii. 260. ^ lb. vii. 378. 
 
IN GREEK POETR Y 
 
 315 
 
 for the young wife who passes from the bride- 
 chamber to the grave : 
 
 who in a moment becomes the bride of death, 
 the same torches lighting her wedding arid her 
 funeral : 
 
 ai S avTal kal (f)iyyos cS^Sa^ouv irapa ttoxttw 
 TrevKai Kal <^6tyU6V{i vepOev ((fiaivov 6S6v.'^ 
 
 The gracious ways of children, and the pathos of 
 their early death are a recurrent motive in the 
 Anthology and in sepulchral inscriptions. On a 
 tomb found near Naples, Hades is addressed in 
 accents of bitter pleading, and asked, " Are 
 not all mortal spirits thy due ? Why dost thou 
 gather the unripe grapes of youth ? " ^ A little 
 girl of seven pines away for her. baby brother, who 
 at twenty months old " tasted of loveless death " : 
 
 Seikaia irodeovfra tov ilKOiTajj,y^vov dSeX.<fibv 
 vrjiTLOV daropyov yevcra-jxivov davdrov.* 
 
 The boy Callaeschrus goes hence to be " a play- 
 thing in the palace of Persephone " : 
 
 OTTat iJ.av o ye Trai's Iv Sd/xaa-i Ilejoo-t^ovfiois 
 Trat-yciov.' 
 
 1 jinf/i. Pal. vii. 600. ^ lb. vii. 182. 
 
 3 C.I.G. 5816. •* Anth. Pal. vii. 662. ^ lb. vii. 483. 
 
3i6 DAWN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 A father and mother clasp the coffin of Cleudicus, 
 a child not yet three years of age, who, '' on an 
 unknown Acheron " shall renew the youth he may 
 never spend on earth : 
 
 rj^dcreii rifiav, KA.euSiK, 6,vo(TTord.Tav?- 
 
 In the sepulchral epigrams of the Anthology, 
 forming in themselves a rich literature, more perhaps 
 than in any other part of the collection, a strange 
 and romantic music lingers in the rhythm and 
 phrases of the verse, even where the substance of 
 the thought is not essentially modern. We catch 
 this magical power of sound in such lines as those 
 of Meleager : 
 
 SaKpva SvaSaKpvTa • 7roAiiKA.ai;T<j) S' iirl rvfxjiii^ 
 (TTrevSii) vafia Trd^iov, ixvafia <j>L\o<j>pO(rvvai,^ 
 
 or in the single line, with its untranslatable 
 epithet : 
 
 Kehai aLii,trprqrii>v ^eivos ktr alyidXdiv,^ 
 
 or in the epitaph of a sailor lost at sea, whose 
 grave is known only to the sea-gulls : 
 
 tiiA.ETO yap <rvv vqt' Toi 8' dcTTta irov jtot cKeivov 
 TTvOerai, aWvian yvtoo-ra p.ovaii evtTreiv,^ 
 
 1 AntA. Pal. vii. 482. ^ lb. vii. 476. 
 
 ' •' lb. vii. 376. ■* lb. vii. 285, 
 
m GREEK POETR Y 317 
 
 or lastly in the epigram on Echo, the mountain 
 
 nymph, beloved of Pan, whose voice as it dies 
 
 awdy is itself an emblem of the spirit of 
 romanticism : 
 
 TTOLfjLevLav ayXoxTfTO's dv opydSa ixiXtrfrai, 'A;^U) 
 dvTidpovv TTTtti/ois vcmp6(j)<avov oira.^ 
 
 In a previous chapter we commented on the 
 tone of melancholy that is heard in the Anthology. 
 Even over the mind of youth there steals a 
 romantic sadness. In Sophocles the young life 
 " grows in those sheltered regions of its own, and 
 the Sun-god's heat vexes it not, nor rain nor any 
 wind ; but it rejoices in its sweet untroubled 
 being." ^ In the Anthology we find in the mouth 
 of a boy the words : 
 
 OVK et/i ovS' ereiDV Svo xttKocri, /cat kottlw fwv,^ 
 
 " not two and twenty am I, and I am weary of 
 living " : and the boy goes on to tell that he was in 
 love. In another epigram a girl reflects on the 
 happier lot of the young men who wander where 
 they will, who can tell to their companions all that 
 is in their hearts, and have games to beguile their 
 
 ' Ap^. Plait. 153. 
 2 Soph. Track. 144 ff. (Trans. R. C. Jebb.) " 
 ^ Anth. Pal. xii. 46. 
 
3i8 DAWN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 sorrows, while the maidens of the house are hidden 
 indoors, " wasting away with dim thoughts." ^ 
 The experience of age merely brings a more 
 complete disenchantment, except indeed for the 
 happy few who have found within the circle of the 
 family affections the one pure spring of enjoy- 
 ment left. After sixty years of wandering in 
 many lands " from the sunset to the dawn," the last 
 word in which the wisdom of the traveller utters 
 itself is this : " I know both the grace of Fortune 
 and the bitterness of life." ^ In reading the 
 Anthology we become aware that the occasional 
 voices which speak to us out of successive centuries 
 grow sadder in tone ; the eye is turned with a more 
 regretful longing to the past ; the future projects 
 itself through a troubled medium of disillusion and 
 of hope that knows itself to be hopeless. Life 
 cannot again be a complete, a rounded whole, the 
 Si'o? TiXeto<; of the Periclean age and of philosophic 
 thought. It is a point in space between two 
 eternities, between infinite time past and the time 
 to come.^ It is a perilous voyage in which chance 
 holds the helm ; the one certainty that awaits us 
 
 ' Anth. Pal. v. 297, ^o(pepais ^povrlffi TijKSfievai. 
 
 ^ Kaibel, £pi^. Gr. 640, nal Ka.\bv t6 t6xV^ ""■^ Tnxpbv otSa plov. 
 
 ' Anth, Pal. vii. 472. 
 
IN GREEK POETR Y 319 
 
 is the last anchorage below.^ The firm reality 
 of things seems to be slipping from men's grasp. 
 Each day we have a different self; the self of 
 to-day has no share in the things of yesterday." 
 All we know is that we were not and came to be : 
 we are, and in death are not, nor shall we be again.^ 
 Nor is death itself the worse calamity, but to live 
 ever with death before our eyes.* Life becomes 
 a vision of men being borne out to burial.* The 
 presentiment of evil, which casts a gloom even 
 across the bright spaces of ancient Hellenic 
 thought and art, is deepening into night. There 
 remains by way of consolation, on the one 
 hand the sombre philosophy of silence and 
 patience,^ on the other the imaginative satisfaction 
 derived from contemplating dissolution,, ruin, and 
 decay. 
 
 Pater in speaking of the modern sentiment 
 of ruins observes that it is already found in 
 Joachim du Bellay in the sixteenth centijry. 
 
 ^ Anth. Pal. x. 65, ^h ^va rbv Kara yijs Spfiov dwepx^fjxda. 
 2 /i. X. 79. 
 
 * Kaibel, £^i^. Gr. 1117 A : 
 
 oi5k iif^i7f , yevbfi'qv ■ '^fiTjv o^k clfii ' TOffavra • 
 el Si Tis dXX' ipiei, ^eiyo-erai • oiK laoiiai. 
 
 * Anth. Pal. X. 59 ; xi. 282. 
 ° Jb. ix. 412. 
 
 " lb. xi. 300; X. 77. 
 
320 DA IVN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 " The duration of the hard sharp outlines of things 
 is a grief to him, and passing his wearisome days 
 among the ruins of ancient Rome, he is consoled 
 by the thought that all must one day end, by 
 the sentiment of the grandeur of nothingness, la 
 grandeur du rien. With a strange touch of far-off 
 mysticism, he thinks that le grand tout itself, into 
 which all other things pass and lose themselves, 
 ought, itself sometimes to perish and pass away. 
 Nothing less can relieve his weariness."^ The 
 feeling is in its essence as old as the book of Job. 
 Job in a mood of quiet despair consoles himself 
 for the perishableness of man by reflecting on the 
 slow destruction wrought in nature — the moun- 
 tain slipping away, the rock removed from its 
 place, the waters wearing the stones.^ The later 
 philosophy of the ancient world taught the same 
 lesson. Sulpicius in the well-known letter to 
 Cicero on the loss of his daughter tells how he 
 himself was comforted in a similar bereavement. 
 He was on his voyage from Greece. " Behind me 
 was Aegina, in front Megara ; on the right the 
 Piraeus, on the left Corinth : all of these towns 
 that in former days were so magnificent are now 
 
 ' Pater, The Renaissaiice, p. i6o. 
 ^ Job xiv. 18-20. 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 321 
 
 lying prostrate and in ruins before one's eyes. 
 ' Alas ! ' I began to reflect to myself, ' we poor feeble 
 mortals, who can claim but a short life in com- 
 parison, complain as though a wrong was done us if 
 one of us dies in the course of nature, or has fallen 
 on the field of battle ; and here in one spot are lying 
 stretched before me the corpses of so many cities ! ' " 
 ..." Believe me," he adds, " I found myself in no 
 small degree strengthened by these reflections." ^ 
 
 The same train of sentiment is repeatedly 
 suggested in the Anthology. Antipater of Sidon, 
 who wrote at an earlier date {circ. 100 B.C.) than 
 that of the letter just quoted, sings of the past 
 splendour of Corinth, its towers, its halls, its 
 temples, all silent but for the wailing cry of the 
 halcyons which fly over them.^ Other poets in 
 like manner celebrate Troy,^ Mycenae,* Delos — 
 once the centre of Hellenic worship, now unvisited 
 by the passing ship,^ — Amphipolis, the city much 
 coveted of old on the waters of the Strymon,^ 
 Sparta where the birds now nest on the ground, 
 and there are no sheep for the wolves to make 
 their prey.'^ In one or two epigrams a wholly new 
 
 1 Cic. ad Fam. iv. 5. (Trans. G. E. Jeans. ) 
 
 2 Anth. Pal. ix. 151. ^ E.g. ib. ix. 152, 154, 155. 
 * E.g. ib. ix. 28, loi, 103. 5 Ib. ix. 408. 
 
 ^ Ib. vii. 705. ' Ib. vii. 723. 
 
322 DAWN OF ROMANTICISM 
 
 note is struck. The spectacle of nature in her 
 permanence and sublimity carries a deep solemnity 
 into the heart of man.^ The most impressive 
 example is the epigram by the astronomer 
 Claudius Ptolemaeus (second century A.D.) de- 
 scribing how he, a mortal man, the creature of a 
 day, as he traces the orbits of the stars, is lifted 
 above earth and admitted to fellowship with the 
 divine : 
 
 ojS' oTi Si/aTOS eyo) Kat e(j>dfj,epos " aA.A,' orav aiTTpiov 
 )ia.(nev<x> irvKivas a,fji,<l>iSp6fwvi e'AiKas, 
 
 ovKCT iwiipavia yaiijs TTocrtV, aAAa Trap' ainp 
 Zavl deOTpe<jieoi Trlp.irXap,ai a.jxjipo(Tvr)%.^ 
 
 Enough has been said to indicate some of the 
 many anticipations in later Greek literature of a 
 mode of feeling that is often regarded as distinct- 
 ively modern — the taste for picturesque beauty 
 in landscape and for subtle effects of air and light ; 
 the attitude of mind that hears in the outer world 
 the echo, the response, to human emotion ; a 
 peculiar vein of love and melancholy, often fostered 
 by solitude or by congenial influences from with- 
 out, but growing into an independent kingdom of 
 feeling, and absorbing in itself well-nigh every 
 other sentiment ; a pity and sense of tenderness 
 
 > Cp. supra, p. 173. ^ Anth. Pal. ix. 577. 
 
IN GREEK POETRY 323 
 
 towards the animal creation that reacts upon 
 man, deepening his natural sympathies. These 
 poetic utterances have not indeed the mystic 
 depth of emotion, the strangeness, the intensity 
 which belongs to modern romanticism. Nor in 
 the poetic interpretation of nature have the more 
 hidden analogies between the visible and invisible 
 world been seized by the Greeks. There is no 
 suggestion of a spiritual reality that lies behind 
 the fabric of material things. The universe is 
 not yet an emblem which the poet may decipher. 
 It is not the garment in which the infinite Being 
 clothes himself, the body which bears witness to a 
 soul behind, the open scroll on which something 
 of the divine thought is written. Still an entry 
 has been made into a country previously undis- 
 covered, which, the modern mind has since ex- 
 plored and occupied. That poetry and life have 
 been incalculably enriched by these later and pro- 
 founder inte'rpretations of the universe no one will 
 be inclined to doubt. Yet there are probably 
 many of us (need we be ashamed to confess it .') 
 who turn back with fresh delight — not merely 
 from Greek literature in its decline, but even from 
 the great poets of nature in our own century — 
 to Homer's simpler world, where nature and man 
 
324 I>.^II'X OF ROMAA^TICISM IX GREEK POETRY 
 
 Stand out in clearer outlines, where there is no 
 reverie, no vanishing perspectives, but " every 
 peak appears, and the tall headlands and glades, 
 and from heaven breaketh open the infinite 
 air." » 
 
 ^ Iliad \m. 557-55. 
 
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