On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay Part 1

On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay.

by Hugh E. Seebohm.

PREFACE

These notes, brief as they are, owe more than can be told to my father's researches into the structure and methods of the Tribal System. They owe their existence to his inspiration and encouragement. A suitable place for them might possibly be found in an Appendix to his recently published volume on the Structure of the Tribal System in Wales.

In ascribing to the structure of Athenian Society a direct parentage amongst tribal inst.i.tutions, I am dealing with a subject which I feel to be open to considerable criticism. And I am anxious that the matters considered in this essay should be judged on their own merits, even though, in pursuing the method adopted herein, I may have quite inadequately laid the case before the reader.

My thanks are due, for their ready help, to Professor W. Ridgeway, Mr.

James W. Headlam, and Mr. Henry Lee Warner, by means of whose kind suggestions the following pages have been weeded of several of their faults.

It is impossible to say how much I have consciously or unconsciously absorbed from the works of the late M. Fustel de Coulanges. His _La Cite Antique_ and his _Nouvelles Recherches sur quelques Problemes d'Histoire_ (1891) are stores of suggestive material for the student of Greek and Roman customs. They are rendered all the more instructive by the charm of his style and method. I have merely dipped a bucket into his well.

In quoting from Homer, I have made free use of the translations of Messrs.

Lang, Leaf, and Myers of the _Iliad_, and of Messrs. Butcher and Lang of the _Odyssey_; and I wish to make full acknowledgment here of the debt that I owe to them.

Some explanation seems to be needful of the method pursued in this essay with regard to the comparison of Greek customs with those of other countries. The selection for comparison has been entirely arbitrary.

Wales has been chosen to bear the brunt of ill.u.s.tration, partly, as I have said, because of my father's work on the Welsh Tribal System, partly because the _Ancient Laws of Wales_ afford a peculiarly vivid glimpse into the inner organisation of a tribal people, such as cannot be obtained elsewhere.

The _Ordinances of Manu_, on the other hand, are constantly quoted by writers on Greek inst.i.tutions; and, I suppose, in spite of the uncertainty of their date, they can be taken as affording a very fair account of the customs of a highly developed Eastern people. It would be hard, moreover, to say where the connection of the Greeks with the East began or ended.

The use made of the _Old Testament_ in these notes hardly needs further remark. Of no people, in their true tribal condition before their settlement, have we a more graphic account than of the Israelites. Their proximity geographically to the Phnicians, and the accounts of the widespread fame of Solomon and the range of his commerce, at once suggest comparison with the parallel and contemporaneous period of Achaian history, immediately preceding the Dorian invasion, when, if we may trust the accounts of Homer, the intercourse between the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean must have been considerable.

All reference to records of Roman customs has been omitted, not because they are not related or a.n.a.logous to the Greek, but because they could not reasonably be brought within the scope of this essay. The ancestor-worship among the Romans was so complete, and the organisation of their kindreds so highly developed, that they deserve treatment on their own basis, and are sufficient to form the subject of a separate volume.

H. E. S.

THE HERMITAGE, HITCHIN.

_July, 1895._

[Transcriber's Note: This e-book contains much Greek text which is often relevant to the point of the book. In the ASCII versions of the e-book, the Greek is transliterated into Roman letters, which do not perfectly represent the Greek original; especially, accent and breathing marks do not transliterate. The HTML and PDF versions contain the true Greek text of the original book. In the ASCII e-book, the markings such as (M1) indicate marginal notes, which were printed in the margins of the original book, but in the e-book are transcribed at the end with the footnotes.]

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.

(M1) In trying to ascertain the course of social development among the Greeks, the inquirer is met by an initial difficulty. The Greeks were not one great people like the Israelites, migrating into and settling in a new country, flowing with milk and honey. Their movements were erratic and various, and took place at very different times. Several partial migrations are described in Homer, and others are referred to as having taken place only a few generations back. The continuation of unsettled life must have had the effect of giving cohesion to the individual sections into which the Greeks were divided, in proportion as the process of settlement was protracted and difficult.

But in spite of divergencies caused by natural surroundings, by the hostility or subservience of previous occupants of the soil, there are some features of the tribal system, wherever it is examined, so inherent in its structure as to seem almost indelible. A new civilisation was not formed to fit into the angles of city walls. Even modification could take place only of those customs whose roots did not strike too deeply into the essence of the composition of tribal society.

(M2) It is the object of these notes to try to put back in their true setting some of the conditions prevailing, sometimes incongruously with city life, among the Greeks in historical times, and by comparison with a.n.a.logous survivals in known tribal communities, of whose condition we have fuller records, to establish their real historical continuity from an earlier stage of habit and belief.

(M3) There were three important public places necessary to every Greek community and symbolical to the Greek mind of the very foundations of their inst.i.tutions. These were:-the _Agora_ or place of a.s.sembly, the place of justice, and the place of religious sacrifice. From these three sacred precincts the man who stirred up civil strife, who was at war with his own people, cut himself off. Such an one is described in Homer as being, by his very act, "clanless" (?f??t??), "out-law" (????st??), and "hearthless" (???st???).(1) In the camp of the Greeks before Troy the ships and huts of his followers were congregated by the hut of their chief or leader. Each sacrificed or poured libation to his favourite or familiar G.o.d at his own hut door.(2) But in front of Odysseus' ships, which, we are told, were drawn up at the very centre of the camp, stood the great altar of Zeus Panomphaios-lord of _all_ oracles-"exceeding fair."(3) "Here,"

says the poet, "were _Agora_, _Themis_, and the altars of the G.o.ds."

The Trojans held _agora_ at Priam's doors,(4) and it is noticeable that the s.p.a.ce in front of the chief's hut or palace was generally considered available for such purposes as a.s.sembly, games, and so forth, just as it was with the ancient Irish.

(M4) In the centre of most towns of Greece(5) stood the Prytaneum or magistrates' hall, and in the Prytaneum was the sacred hearth to which attached such reverence that in the most solemn oaths the name of Hestia was invoked even before that of Zeus.(6) Thucydides states that each ???

or village of Attica had its hearth or Prytaneum of its own, but looked up to the Hestia and Prytaneum in the city of Athens as the great centre of their larger polity. In just the same way the lesser kindreds of a tribe would have their sacred hearths and rites, but would look to the hearth and person of their chief as symbolical of their tribal unity. Thucydides also mentions how great a wrench it seemed to the Athenians to be compelled to leave their "sacred" homes, to take refuge within the walls of Athens from the impending invasion by the Spartans.(7)

The word _Prytanis_ means "chieftain." It is probable that, as the duties sacred and magisterial of the chief became disseminated among the other officers of later civilisation, the chief's dwelling, called the Prytaneum, acquiring vitality from the indelible superst.i.tion attaching to the hearth within its precincts, maintained thereby its political importance, when nothing but certain religious functions remained to its lord and master in the office of Archon Basileus.

(M5) Mr. Frazer, in his article in the _Journal of Philology_(8) upon the resemblance of the Prytaneum in Greece to the Temple of Vesta in Rome, shows that both had a direct connection with, if not an absolute origin in the domestic hearth of the chieftain. The Lares and Penates worshipped in the Temple of Vesta, he says, were originally the Lares and Penates of the king, and were worshipped at his hearth, the only difference between the hearth in the temple and the hearth in the king's house being the absence of the royal householder.(9)

Mr. Frazer also maintains that the reverence for the hearth and the concentration of such reverence on the hearth of the chieftain was the result of the difficulty of kindling a fire from rubbing sticks together, and of the responsibility thus devolving upon the chieftain unfailingly to provide fire for his people. Whether this was the origin or not, before the times that come within the scope of this inquiry, the hearth had acquired a real sanct.i.ty which had become involved in the larger idea of it as the centre of a kindred, including on occasion the mysterious presence also of long dead ancestors.

(M6) The basis of tribal coherence was community of blood, actual or supposed; the visible evidence of the possession of tribal blood was the undisputed partic.i.p.ation, as _one of a kindred_, in the common religious ceremonies, from which the blood-polluted and the stranger-in-blood were so strictly shut out.(10) It is therefore in the incidence of religious duties, and in the qualifications of the partic.i.p.ants, that it is reasonable to seek survivals of true tribal sentiment.

Although the religious life of the Greeks was always complex, there is not to be found in Homer the broad distinction drawn afterwards between public and private G.o.ds. It is noticeable that the later Greeks sought to draw into their homes the beneficent influence of one or other of the greater G.o.ds, whose protection and guidance were claimed in times of need by all members of the household. Secondary influences, though none the less strongly felt, were those of the past heroes of the house, sometimes only just dead, to be propitiated at the family tombs or hearth. Anxiety on this head, and the deeply-rooted belief in the real need to the dead of attentions from the living, were, it will be seen, most powerful factors in the development of Greek society.

(M7) The worship of ancestors or household G.o.ds as such is not evident in the visible religious exercises of the Homeric poems. But this can hardly be a matter of surprise. The Greek chieftains mentioned in the poems are so nearly descended from the G.o.ds themselves, are in such immediate relation each with his guardian deity, and are so indefatigable in their attentions thereto, that it would surely be extremely irrelevant if any of the libations or hecatombs were perverted to any intermediate, however heroic, ancestor from the all-powerful and ever ready divinity who was so often also himself the boasted founder of the family.(11)

(M8) The libations and hecatombs themselves, however, seem to serve much the same purpose as the offerings to the _manes_ or household G.o.ds, and relieved the luxurious craving for sustenance in the immortals, left unsatisfied by their ethereal diet of nectar and ambrosia.(12)

(M9) Yet it is strange that if libations and sacrifices were paid to the dead _periodically_ at their tombs, no mention of the occurrence is to be found in Homer. That the dead were believed to appreciate such attentions may be gathered from the directions given by Circe to Odysseus.

"Then pour a drink-offering to all the dead, first with mead (e?????t?), and thereafter with sweet wine, and for the third time with water, and sprinkle white meal thereon.... and promise thou wilt offer _in thy halls_(13) a barren heifer, the best thou hast, and fill the pyre with treasure, and wilt sacrifice apart to Teiresias alone a black sheep without spot, the fairest of your flock."

(M10) This done, the ghosts flock up to drink of the blood of the victim.

But the ghost of Elpenor, who met his death at the house of Circe by falling from the roof in his drunken haste to join his already departed comrades, and who had therefore received no burial at their hands, demands no libations or sacrifices for the refreshment of his thirsty soul, but merely burial with tears and a barrow upon the sh.o.r.e of the gray sea, that his name may be remembered by men to come.

Nestor's son elsewhere is made to remark that one must not grudge the dead their meed of tears; for the times are so out of joint, "this is now the only due we pay to miserable men, to cut the hair and let the tear fall from the cheek."(14)

Is the right conclusion then that the Homeric Greeks did not sacrifice at the tombs of their fathers, and that the so-called ancestor-worship prevalent later was introduced or revived under their successors? Or is it that the aristocratic tone of the poet did not permit him to bear witness to the intercourse with any deity besides the one great family of Olympic G.o.ds, less venerable than a river or other personification of nature?(15)

There exists such close family relationship amongst Homer's G.o.ds, extended as it is also to most of his chieftains, that taking into account the conspicuous reverence displayed towards the hearth and the respect for seniority in age, it may perhaps be justifiable to suppose that domestic religious observances, other than those directed to the Olympic G.o.ds, were thought by the poet to be as much beneath his notice as the swarms of common tribesmen who shrink and shudder in the background of the poems.

(M11) Ancestor-worship would be as much out of place in the Old Testament; and yet there are references in the Bible to offerings to the dead which, unless they are held to refer only to importations from outside religions and not to relapses in the Israelites themselves to former superst.i.tions of their own people, imply that the great tribal religion of the Israelites had superseded pre-existing ceremonies of ancestor-worship.

Deut. xxvi. 13. "And thou shalt say before the Lord thy G.o.d, I have brought away the hallowed things out of mine house, and also have given them unto the Levite and the stranger, to the fatherless and to the widow, according to all thy commandments which thou hast commanded me: I have not transgressed thy commandments, neither have I forgotten them: I have not eaten thereof in my mourning, neither have I taken away ought thereof for any unclean use, nor _given ought thereof for the dead_."

The transgressions of the Israelites in the wilderness are described in the Psalms:-"They joined themselves also unto Baalpeor and _ate the sacrifices of the dead_."(16)

It was not necessary for an ancestor to become a G.o.d to be worthy of worship, or to need the attentions of the living. If he was thought to haunt tomb or hearth, and to keep his connection thus with his family in the upper world, he required nourishment on his visits. He was also considered to keep a jealous watch on the continuance of his fair fame among the living.

(M12) A close resemblance in this point lies between the Homeric poems and the Old Testament. Though actual food and drink is not provided for the dead, yet the stress laid on the permanence of the family, _lest the name of the dead be cut off from his place_, is quite in keeping with the request of Elpenor to Odysseus to insure the continuance of his name in the memory of living men.

It is quite possible that, as the story of the interview of Odysseus with the dead reveals that the idea of the dead enjoying sacrifices of food and drink was familiar at that time, even though the periodical supply of such is not mentioned, so the existence of Laban's household G.o.ds and the gathering of the kindred of Jesse to their family ceremony(17) may bear witness to the presence of a survival of ancestor-worship in some equivalent form, underlying the all-absorbing religion of the Israelites.