Problems in Greek history Part 20

I think, with Thucydides and Polybius, that the study of history is then most useful and serious when it leads us to estimate what is likely to happen by the light of what has already happened in similar cases. Mere remoteness of date or place has nothing to say to the matter. The history of Greece, as I have often said already, is intensely modern,--far more so than any mediaeval or than most recent histories. We have to deal with a people fully developed, in its mature life; nay, even in its old age and decadence. To deny a historian the privilege and the profit of illumining his subject by the light of modern parallels, or the life of to-day by parallels from Greek history, is simply to condemn him to remain an unpractical pedant, and to abandon the strongest claim to a hearing from practical men.

Above all, let us seek the truth with open mind, and speak out our convictions; and if we are wrong, instead of blaming us for appealing to the deeper interests and stirring the warmer emotions of men, let our errors be refuted. Let us save ancient history from its dreary fate in the hands of the dry antiquarian, the narrow scholar; and while we utilize all his research and all his learning, let us make the acts and lives of older men speak across the chasm of centuries, and claim kindred with the men and the motives of to-day. For this, and this only, is to write history in the full and real sense,--this is to show that the great chain of centuries is forged of h.o.m.ogeneous metal, and joined with links that all bear the great Workman's unmistakeable design.

[Sidenote: The spiritual history not closed with the Roman conquest.]

-- 85. We have come to the real close of political Greek history,--at a point upon which historians have been unanimous. And yet the Greeks would hardly have been worth all this study if the sum of what they could teach us was a political lesson. They showed indeed in politics a variety and an excellence not reached by any other ancient people. But their spiritual and intellectual wealth is not bounded by these limits; and they have left us, after the close of their independence, more to think out and to understand than other nations have done in the heyday of their greatness.

On this spiritual history I shall not say more than a few words. The earlier part of it, extending to the moment when, under Trajan, Christianity came forth from its concealment, and became a social and political power, I have recently treated in a volume ent.i.tled _The Greek World under Roman Sway_. The reader who cares to unfold this complicated and various picture of manners, of ideas, of social habits and moral principles, will find the Greek subjects of the Roman Empire full of interest, and will even find, in the authors of that age, merits which have long been unduly ignored. The crowded thoroughfares of Antioch and Alexandria; the great religious foundations of Comana, Stratoniceia, and Pessinus, each ruled by a priest no less important than the prince-bishops of Salzburg or Wurtzburg in recent centuries; the old-world fashions of Borysthenes, of Naples, of Euba; the gradual rise of Syrian and of Jewish h.e.l.lenism, the fascinating rivalries of Herod and of Cleopatra for Roman favour, the h.e.l.lenism of Cicero, of Caesar, of Claudius, and of Nero, the fluctuations of trade from Rhodes to Delos, from Delos to Puteoli and Corinth, the splendours and the dark spots in the society which Dion, Apuleius, and Plutarch saw and described--these and many other kindred topics make up a subject most fascinating, though from its complexity difficult to set in order, and impossible to handle without the occurrence of error.

[Sidenote: The great bequests of the Roman period.]

I am sure it is below the mark to say that more than half the Greek books now extant date from the period of the Roman domination. And if it be true that in style there is nothing to equal the great poets and prose-writers from aeschylus to Demosthenes, it is equally true that in matter the later writers far exceed their predecessors. All the exacter science got from the Greeks comes from that large body of Alexandrian writings which none but the specialist can understand. The history of Diodorus, embracing an immense field and telling us a vast number of facts otherwise lost; the great geographies of Strabo, of Ptolemy, and that curious collection which can be read in Carl Muller's laborious _Corpus_; the moral essays of Dion Chrysostom; the social encyclopaedia of Plutarch; the vast majority of the extant inscriptions, come to us from Roman times.

But most of these are special. Is there nothing of general interest?

a.s.suredly there is. No Greek book can compare for one moment in general importance with that collection of history and letters called the New Testament, all written in Greek, and intended to reach the civilized world through the mediation of Greek.

[Sidenote: The Anthology, Lucian, Julian,]

I will not here enter upon Christian Greek literature, but point to Plutarch, who has certainly been more read and had more influence than any other Greek writer on the literature of modern Europe. Nay, in the lighter subjects, and where the writers must trust to style to commend them to the reader, not only is there a good deal of poetry once thought cla.s.sical,--such as the Anacreontics and the Anthology--which is in great part the produce of later Greek genius, but the wit of Lucian and the seriousness of Julian found in the Greek language their appropriate vehicle.

[Sidenote: Plotinus.]

The deeper philosophy of these centuries, that attempt to fuse the metaphysics of heathendom and Christendom which is called Neo-Platonism,--this too was created and circulated by Greek writers and in Greek; so that though h.e.l.las was laid asleep, and her independence a mere tradition, her legacy to the world was still bearing interest one hundredfold.

[Sidenote: Theological Greek studies.]

The writers who have dealt with this great and various development of later h.e.l.lenism are either the historians of the Roman Empire--especially Duruy, who has kept up the thread of his Greek History in his popular _History of Rome_--or the theologians. The latter have a field so specially their own, and the literature of the subject is so enormous, that the mere historian of Greece and the Greeks must content himself with the pagan side. To touch even in a general way, as I have hitherto done, upon the many controversies that now arise concerning Greek life and thought would here be impossible.

-- 86. But there is one important point at the very outset of the new departure into Christianity upon which I would gladly save the reader from a widely diffused error.

[Sidenote: Have the Greeks no share in our religion?]

It has been long the fashion--since the writings of Ernest Renan it has been almost a commonplace, to say: that while modern Europe owes to the Greeks all manner of wisdom and of refinement, in politics, literature, philosophy, architecture, sculpture, one thing there is which they could not impart to us,--religion. This deeper side of man, his relation to one G.o.d, his duty and his responsibilities beyond this ordinary life, we owe not to the Greeks, but to the legacy of the Semitic race. To the Jews, we are told, are due all the highest, all the most serious, all the most elevating features in modern Christianity.

[Sidenote: Or is it altogether Semitic?]

Is this true? Is it the case that the Greeks were, after all, only brilliant children, playing with life, and never awaking to the real seriousness of the world's problems? There has seldom been a plausible statement circulated which is further from the truth. However capital the fact that the first great teacher and revealer of Christianity was a Jew, however carefully the dogmas of the Old Testament were worked up into the New, Christianity, as we have it historically, would have been impossible without h.e.l.lenism.

[Sidenote: The language of the New Testament exclusively Greek.]

In the first place, the doc.u.ments of the New Testament were one and all composed in Greek, as the _lingua franca_ of the East and West; and the very first author in the list, Saint Matthew, was a tax-gatherer, whose business required him to know it[202:1]. If, therefore, the vehicle of Christianity from the first was the Greek language, this is not an unimportant factor to start with; and yet it is the smallest and most superficial contribution that Greek thought has given to Christianity.

When my later studies on the history of h.e.l.lenism under the Roman Empire see the light, I trust that the evidence for the following grave facts, already admitted by most critical theologians, will be brought before the lay reader.

[Sidenote: Saint Paul's teaching.]

[Sidenote: Stoic elements in Saint Paul.]

-- 87. When we pa.s.s by the first three, or Synoptical, Gospels, there remains a series of books by early Christian teachers, of whom Saint Paul and Saint John are by far the most prominent. To Saint Paul is due a peculiar development of the faith which brings into prominence that side of Christianity now known as Protestantism,--the doctrine of justification by faith; of the greater importance of dogma than of practice; of the predestination or election of those that will be saved.

This whole way of thinking, this mode of looking at the world, so different from anything in the Jewish books, so developed beyond the teaching of the Synoptic Gospels, was quite familiar to the most serious school of h.e.l.lenism, to the Stoic theory of life popular all over the h.e.l.lenistic world, and especially at Tarsus, where Saint Paul received his education.

[Sidenote: The Stoic sage.]

The Stoic wise man, who had adopted with faith that doctrine, forthwith rose to a condition differing _in kind_ from the rest of the world, who were set down as moral fools, whose highest efforts at doing right were mere senseless blundering, mere filthy rags, without value or merit. The wise man, on the contrary, was justified in the sight of G.o.d, and could commit no sin; the commission of one fault would be a violation of his election, and would make him guilty of all, and as subject to punishment as the vilest criminal. For all faults were equally violations of the moral law, and therefore equally proofs that the true light was not there. Whether one of the elect could fall away, was a matter of dispute, but in general was thought impossible[203:1]. Whether conversion was a gradual change of character, or a sudden inspiration, was an anxious topic of discussion. The wise man, and he alone, enjoyed absolute liberty, boundless wealth, supreme happiness; nothing could take from him the inestimable privileges he had attained.

[Sidenote: The Stoic Providence.]

Can any one fail to recognize these remarkable doctrines, not only in the spirit, but in the very letter, of Saint Paul's teaching? Does he not use even the language of the Stoic paradoxes, 'as, sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing all things'? Is not his so-called sermon at Athens a direct statement of Stoic views against the Epicureans, taking nothing away, but adding to their account of the moral world the revelation of Jesus Christ and of the Resurrection? Will any one venture to a.s.sert in the face of these facts that the most serious and religious of Greek systems was the offspring of children in morals, or that it failed to exert a powerful influence through the greatest teacher of Christianity upon all his followers? It is of course idle to weigh these things in a minute balance, and declare who did most, or what was the greatest advance made in our faith beyond the life and teaching of its Founder. But the more we compare Greek Stoicism with Pauline Christianity, the more distinctly their general connection will be felt and appreciated.

[Sidenote: Saint John's Gospel.]

-- 88. Let us now come to the more obvious and better acknowledged case of Saint John. It has been the stock argument of those who reject the early date and alleged authorship of the Fourth Gospel that the writer is imbued with h.e.l.lenistic philosophy; that he is intimate with that fusion of Jewish and Platonic thought which distinguished the schools of Alexandria; that in particular the doctrine of the _Word_, with which the book opens, is quite strange to Semite thought, doubly strange to Old Testament theology, not even hinted at in the early apocryphal books. In other words, the Greek elements in the Fourth Gospel are so strong that many critics think them impossible of attainment for a man of Saint John's birth and education!

[Sidenote: Neo-Platonic doctrine of the Logos.]

For my purpose this is more than enough. I need not turn, to refute these sceptics, to show how the author of the book of Revelation, if he be the same, made great strides in Greek letters before he wrote the Gospel, thus showing the importance he attached not only to Greek thought, but to Greek expression. The Alexandrian tone of Saint John's Gospel, derived from the same sources as those which gave birth to Neo-Platonism, is as evident as the Stoical tone in Saint Paul, derived from the schools of Tarsus and Cilicia.

Here is a chapter of deeper Greek history yet to be written from the Greek side, not as an appendage to Roman history, or as an interlude in theological controversy.

[Sidenote: The Cynic independence of all men;]

[Sidenote: the Epicurean dependence upon friends.]

-- 89. So much for the influence of the highest and most serious forms of Greek thinking upon the religion of the Roman Empire. But even from the inferior developments of philosophy, its parodies of strength and its exaggerations of weakness, elements pa.s.sed into this faith which is a.s.serted to be wholly foreign to h.e.l.lenism. The Cynic ostentation of independence, of living apart from the world, free from all cares and responsibilities, found its echo in the Christian anchorite, who chose solitude and poverty from higher but kindred motives. The sentimental display of personal affection, by which the Epicurean endeavoured to subst.i.tute the love of friends for the love of principle or devotion to the State, had its echo in those personal ties among early Christians which replaced their civic attachments and consoled them when outlawed by the State. Indeed, there is much in Epicureanism which has pa.s.sed into Christianity,--an unsuspected fact till it was brought out by very recent writers[206:1].

[Sidenote: The university of Athens.]

What shall we say too of the culture of this age? Is not the eloquence of the early Christian Fathers, of John Chrysostom, of Basil, worthy of admiration; and was not all their culture derived from the old Greek schools and universities, which had lasted with unbroken though changing traditions from the earliest h.e.l.lenistic days? One must read Libanius, a writer of the fourth century after Christ, to understand how thoroughly Athens was still old Greek in temper, in tone, in type, and how it had become the university of the civilized world[206:2]. The traditions of this h.e.l.lenistic university life and system pa.s.sed silently, but not less certainly, into the oldest mediaeval Italian universities, and thence to Paris and to England,--just as the Greek tones or scales pa.s.sed into the chants of Saint Ambrose at Milan, and thence into the n.o.ble music of Palestrina and of Tallis, which our own degenerate age has laid aside for weaker and more sentimental measures.

[Sidenote: Greece indestructible.]

-- 90. It is indeed difficult to overrate the amount and the variety of the many hidden threads that unite our modern culture to that of ancient Greece, not to speak of the conscious return of our own century to the golden age of h.e.l.lenic life as the only human epoch in art, literature, and eloquence which ever approached perfection. As the Greek language has lasted in that wonderful country in spite of long domination by Romans, of huge invasion by Celts and Slavs, of feudal occupation by Frankish knights, of raid and rapine by Catalans and Venetians, ending with the cruel tyranny of the Turk, so the Greek spirit has lasted through all manner of metamorphose and modification, till the return wave has in our day made it the highest aspiration of our worldly perfection.

[Sidenote: Greek political history almost the private property of the English writers,]

-- 91. I said at the opening of this essay that I should endeavour to indicate the princ.i.p.al problems to be solved by future historians of Greece,--at least by those who have not the genius to recast the whole subject by the light of some great new idea; and in so doing, particular stress has been laid on the political side, not without deliberate intention. For, in the first place, this aspect of Greek affairs is the peculiar province of English historians. They, with their own experiences and traditions of const.i.tutional struggles, cannot but feel the strongest attraction towards similar pa.s.sages in the life of the Greeks, so that even the professional scholar in his study feels the excitement of the contested election, the glow of the public debate, when he finds them distracting Athens or aegion. The practical insight of a Grote or a Freeman leads him to interpret facts which may be inexplicable or misleading to a foreign student. Even with Grote before him, Ernst Curtius or Duruy is sometimes unable to grasp the true political situation.

[Sidenote: who have themselves lived in practical politics.]

I say this in the higher and more delicate sense; for of course many recent histories give an adequate account of the large political changes to the general student. Perhaps, indeed, the remoteness of foreign writers from political conflicts such as ours gives them a calmness and fairness which is of advantage, while the English writer can hardly avoid a certain amount of partisanship, however carefully he may strive to be scrupulously impartial. For in all these things we are compelled unconsciously to reflect not only our century, but our nation, and colour the acts and the motives of other days with the hues our imagination has taken from surrounding circ.u.mstances.