The Greek View of Life Part 4

The Greeks, then, were not without hope and fear concerning the world to come, however little these feelings may have coloured their daily life; and there was one phase of their religion, which appears to have been specially occupied with this theme. In almost every Greek city we hear of "mysteries", the most celebrated being, of course, those of Eleusis in Attica. What exactly these "mysteries" were we are very imperfectly informed; but so much, at least, is clear that by means of a scenic symbolism, representing the myth of Demeter and Kore or of Dionysus Zagreus, hopes were held out to the initiated not only of a happy life on earth, but of a happy immortality beyond. "Blessed," says Pindar, "blessed is he who has seen these things before he goes under the hollow earth. He knows the end of life, and he knows its G.o.d-given origin." And it is presumably to the initiated that the same poet promises the joys of his thoroughly Greek heaven. "For them," he says, "shineth below the strength of the sun while in our world it is night, and the s.p.a.ce of crimson-flowered meadows before their city is full of the shade of frankincense trees, and of fruits of gold. And some in horses, and in bodily feats, and some in dice, and some in harp-playing have delight; and among them thriveth all fair-flowering bliss; and fragrance streameth ever through the lovely land, as they mingle incense of every kind upon the altars of the G.o.ds." [Footnote: Pindar, Thren. I.-- Translation by E. Myers.]

The Greeks, then, were not unfamiliar with the conception of heaven and h.e.l.l: only, and that is the point to which we must return and on which we must insist, the conception did not dominate and obsess their mind.

They may have had their spasms of terror, but these they could easily relieve by the performance of some atoning ceremony; they may have had their thrills of hope, but these they would only indulge at the crisis of some imposing ritual.

The general tenor of their life does not seem to have been affected by speculations about the world beyond. Of age indeed and of death they had a horror proportional to their acute and sensitive enjoyment of life; but their natural impulse was to turn for consolation to the interests and achievements of the world they knew, and to endeavour to soothe, by memories and hopes of deeds future and past, the inevitable pains of failure and decay.

Section 12. Critical and Sceptical Opinion in Greece.

And now let us turn to a point for which perhaps some readers have long been waiting, and with which they may have expected us to begin rather than to end. So far, in considering the part played by religion in Greek Life, we have a.s.sumed the position of orthodoxy. We have endeavoured to place ourselves at the standpoint of the man who did not criticise or reflect, but accepted simply, as a matter of course, the tradition handed down to him by his fathers. Only so, if at all, was it possible for us to detach ourselves from our habitual preconceptions, and to regard the pagan mythology not as a graceful invention of the poets, but as a serious and, at the time, a natural and inevitable way of looking at the world. Now, however, it is time to turn to the other side, and to consider the Greek religion as it appeared to contemporary critics. For critics there were, and sceptics, or rather, to put it more exactly, there was a critical age succeeding an age of faith. As we trace, however imperfectly, the development of the Greek mind, we can observe their intellect and their moral sense expanding beyond the limits of their creed. Either as sympathetic, though candid, friends, or as avowed enemies, they bring to light its contradictions and defects; and as a result of the process one of two things happens. Either the ancient conception of the G.o.ds is transformed in the direction of monotheism, or it is altogether swept away, and a new system of the world built up, on the basis of natural science or of philosophy. These tendencies of thought we must now endeavour to trace; for we should have formed but an imperfect idea of the scope of the religious consciousness of the Greeks if we confined ourselves to what we may call their orthodox faith. It is in their most critical thinkers, in Euripides and Plato, that the religious sense is most fully and keenly developed; and it is in the philosophy that supervened upon the popular creed, rather than in the popular creed itself, that we shall find the highest and most spiritual reaches of their thought.

Let us endeavour, then, in the first place to realise to ourselves how the Greek religion must have appeared to one who approached it not from the side of unthinking acquiescence, but with the idea of discovering for himself how far it really met the needs and claims of the intellect and the moral sense. Let us imagine him turning to his Homer, to those poems which were the Bible of the Greek, his ultimate appeal both in religion and in ethics; which were taught in the schools, quoted in the law-courts, recited in the streets; and from which the teacher drew his moral instances, the rhetorician his allusions, the artist his models, every man his conception of the G.o.ds. Let us imagine some candid and ingenuous youth, turning to his Homer and repeating, say, the following pa.s.sage of the Iliad:--

"Among the other G.o.ds fell grievous bitter strife, and their hearts were carried diverse in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. And they clashed together with a great noise, and the wide earth groaned, and the clarion of great Heaven rang around. Zeus heard as he sate upon Olympus, and his heart within him laughed pleasantly when he beheld that strife of the G.o.ds." [Footnote: Iliad xxi. 385.--Translated by Lang, Leaf and Myers.]

At this point, let us suppose, the reader pauses to reflect; and is struck, for the first time, with a shock of surprise by the fact that the G.o.ds should be not only many but opposed; and opposed on what issue?

a purely human one! a war between Greeks and Trojans for the possession of a beautiful woman! Into such a contest the immortal G.o.ds descend, fight with human weapons, and dispute in human terms! Where is the single purpose that should mark the divine will? where the repose of the wisdom that foreordained and knows the end? Not, it is clear, in this motley array of capricious and pa.s.sionate wills! Then, perhaps, in Zeus, Zeus, who is lord of all? He, at least, will impose upon this mob of recalcitrant deities the harmony which the pious soul demands. He, whose rod shakes the sky, will arise and a.s.sert the law. He, in his majesty, will speak the words--alas! what words! Let us take them straight from the lips of the King of G.o.ds and men:--

"Hearken to me, all G.o.ds and all ye G.o.ddesses, that I may tell you that my heart within my breast commandeth me. One thing let none essay, be it G.o.ddess or be it G.o.d, to wit, to thwart my saying; approve ye it all together, that with all speed I may accomplish these things. Whomsoever I shall perceive minded to go, apart from the G.o.ds, to succour Trojans or Danaans, chastened in no seemly wise shall he return to Olympus, or I will take and cast him into misty Tartaros, right far away, where is the deepest gulf beneath the earth; there are the gate of iron and threshold of bronze, as far beneath Hades as heaven is high above the earth: then shall ye know how far I am mightiest of all G.o.ds. Go to now, ye G.o.ds, make trial that ye all may know. Fasten ye a rope of gold from heaven, and all ye G.o.ds lay hold thereof and all G.o.ddesses; yet could ye not drag from heaven to earth Zeus, counsellor supreme, not though ye toiled sore. But once I likewise were minded to draw with all my heart, then should I draw ye up with very earth and sea withal. Thereafter would I bind the rope about a pinnacle of Olympus, and so should all those things be hung in air. By so much am I beyond G.o.ds and beyond men."

[Footnote: Iliad viii. 5.--Translated by Lang, Leaf and Myers.]

And is that all? In the divine tug of war Zeus is more than a match for all the other G.o.ds together! Is it on this that the lordship of heaven and earth depends? This that we are to worship as highest, we of the brain and heart and soul? And even so, even admitting the ground of supremacy, with what providence or consistency of purpose is it exercised? Why, Zeus himself is as capricious as the rest! Because Thetis comes whining to him about an insult put upon Achilles, he interferes to change the whole course of the war, and that too by means of a lying dream! Even his own direct decrees he can hardly be induced to observe. His son Sarpedon, for example, who is "fated," as he says himself, to die, he is yet at the last moment in half a mind to save alive! How is such division possible in the will of the supreme G.o.d? Or is the "fate" of which he speaks something outside himself? But if so, then above him! and if above him, what is he? Not, after all, the highest, not the supreme at all! What then _are_ we to worship?

What _is_ this higher "fate?"

Such would be the kind of questions that would vex our candid youth when he approached his Homer from the side of theology. Nor would he fare any better if he took the ethical point of view. The G.o.ds, he would find, who should surely at least attain to the human standard, not only are capable of every phase of pa.s.sion, anger, fear, jealousy and, above all, love, but indulge them all with a verve and an abandonment that might make the boldest libertine pause. Zeus himself, for example, expends upon the mere catalogue of his amours a good twelve lines of hexameter verse. No wonder that Hera is jealous, and that her lord is driven to put her down in terms better suited to the lips of mortal husbands:

"Lady, ever art thou imagining, nor can I escape thee; yet shalt thou in no wise have power to fulfil, but wilt be the further from my heart; that shall be even the worse for thee. Hide thou in silence and hearken to my bidding, lest all the G.o.ds that are in Olympus keep not off from thee my visitation, when I put forth my hands unapproachable against thee." [Footnote: Iliad i. 560.--Translated by Leaf, Lang and Myers.]

Section 13. Ethical Criticism.

The incongruity of all this with any adequate conception of deity is patent, if once the critical att.i.tude be adopted; and it was adopted by some of the clearest and most religious minds of Greece. Nay, even orthodoxy itself did not refrain from a genial and sympathetic criticism. Aristophanes, for example, who, if there had been an established church, would certainly have been described as one of its main pillars, does not scruple to represent his Birds as issuing--

"A warning and notices, formally given, To Jove, and all others residing in heaven, Forbidding them ever to venture again To trespa.s.s on our atmospheric domain, With scandalous journeys, to visit a list Of Alcmenas and Semeles; if they persist, We warn them that means will be taken moreover To stop their gallanting and acting the lover,"

[Footnote: Aristophanes, "Birds" 556.--Translation by Frere.]

and Heracles the glutton, and Dionysus, the dandy and the coward, are familiar figures of his comic stage. The att.i.tude of Aristophanes, it is true, is not really critical, but sympathetic; it was no more his intention to injure the popular creed by his fun than it is the intention of the cartoons of Punch to undermine the reputation of our leading statesmen. On the contrary, nothing popularises like genial ridicule; and of this Aristophanes was well aware. But the same characteristics of the G.o.d which suggested the friendly burlesque of the comedian were also those which provoked the indignation and the disgust of more serious minds. The poet Pindar, for example, after referring to the story of a battle, in which it was said G.o.ds had fought against G.o.ds, breaks out into protest against a legend so little creditable to the divine nature:--" O my mouth, fling this tale from thee, for to speak evil of G.o.ds is a hateful wisdom, and loud and unmeasured words strike a note that trembleth upon madness. Of such things talk thou not; leave war and all strife of immortals aside." [Footnote: Pind. Ol. IX 54.--Translation by E. Myers.] And the same note is taken up with emphasis, and reiterated in every quality of tone, by such writers as Euripides and Plato.

The att.i.tude of Euripides towards the popular religion is so clearly and frankly critical that a recent writer has even gone so far as to maintain that his main object in the construction of his dramas was to discredit the myths he selected for his theme. However that may have been, it is beyond controversy true that the deep religious sense of this most modern of the Greeks was puzzled and repelled by the tales he was bound by tradition to dramatize; and that he put into the mouth of his characters reflexions upon the conduct of the G.o.ds which if they may not be taken as his own deliberate opinions, are at least expressions of one aspect of his thought. It was, in fact, impossible to reconcile with a profound and philosophic view of the divine nature the intrigues and amours, partialities, antipathies, actions and counter-actions of these anthropomorphic deities. Consider, for example, the most famous of all the myths, that of Orestes, to which we have already referred. Orestes, it will be remembered, was the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.

Agamemnon, on his return from Troy, was murdered by Clytemnestra.

Orestes escapes; but returns later, at the instigation of Apollo, and kills his mother to avenge his father. Thereupon, in punishment for his crime, he is persecuted by the Furies. Now the point which Euripides seizes here is the conduct of Apollo. Either it was right for Orestes to kill his mother, or it was wrong. If wrong, why did Apollo command it?

If right, why was Orestes punished? Or are there, as Aeschylus would have it, two "rights", one of Apollo, the other of the Furies? If so, what becomes of that unity of the divine law after which every religious nature seeks? "Phoebus," cries the Orestes of Euripides, "prophet though he be, deceived me. I gave him my all, I killed my mother in obedience to his command; and in return I am undone myself." [Footnote: Euripides, Iph. Taur. 711] The dilemma is patent; and Euripides makes no serious attempt to meet it.

Or again, to take another example, less familiar, but even more to the point--the tale of Ion and Creusa. Creusa has been seduced by Apollo and has borne him a child, the Ion of the story. This child she exposes, and it is conveyed by Hermes to Delphi, where at last it is found, and recognised by the mother, and a conventionally happy ending is patched up. But the point on which the poet has insisted throughout is, once more, the conduct of Apollo. What is to be made of a G.o.d who seduces and deserts a mortal woman; who suffers her to expose her child, and leaves her in ignorance of its fate? Does he not deserve the reproaches heaped upon him by his victim?--

"Child of Latona, I cry to the sun--I will publish thy shame!

Thou with thy tresses a-shimmer with gold, through the flowers as I came Plucking the crocuses, heaping my veil with their gold- litten flame, Cam'st on me, caughtest the poor pallid wrists of mine hands, and didst hale Unto thy couch in the cave. 'Mother! mother!' I shrieked out my wail-- Wroughtest the pleasure of Kypris; no shame made the G.o.d-lover quail.

Wretched I bare thee a child, and I cast him with shuddering throe Forth on thy couch where thou forcedst thy victim, a bride-bed of woe.

Lost--my poor baby and thine! for the eagles devoured him: and lo!

Victory-songs to thy lyre dost thou chant!--Ho, I call to thee, son Born to Latona, Dispenser of boding, on gold-gleaming throne Midmost of earth who art sitting:--thine ears shall be pierced with my moan!

Thy Delos doth hate thee, thy bay-boughs abhor thee, By the palm-tree of feathery frondage that rose Where in sacred travail Latona bore thee In Zeus's garden close."

[Footnote: Euripid. Ion, 885.--Translated by A. S. Way.]

This is a typical example of the kind of criticism which Euripides conveys through the lips of his characters on the stage. And the points which he can only dramatically suggest, Plato expounds directly in his own person. The quarrel of the philosopher with the myths is not that they are not true, but that they are not edifying. They represent the son in rebellion against the father--Zeus against Kronos, Kronos against Uranos; they describe the G.o.ds as intriguing and fighting one against the other; they depict them as changing their form divine into the semblance of mortal men; lastly--culmination of horror!--they represent them as laughing, positively laughing!--Or again, to turn to a more metaphysical point, if G.o.d be good, it is argued by Plato, he cannot be the author of evil. What then, are we to make of the pa.s.sage in Homer where he says, "two urns stand upon the floor of Zeus filled with his evil gifts, and one with blessings. To whomsoever Zeus whose joy is in the lightning dealeth a mingled lot, that man chanceth now upon ill and now again on good, but to whom he giveth but of the bad kind, him he bringeth to scorn, and evil famine chaseth him over the goodly earth, and he is a wanderer honoured of neither G.o.ds nor men." [Footnote: Il.

xxiv. 527--Translated by Lang, Leaf and Myers.]

And again, if G.o.d be true, he cannot be the author of lies. How then could he have sent, as we are told he did, lying dreams to men?-- Clearly, concludes the philosopher, our current legends need revision; in the interest of religion itself we must destroy the myths of the popular creed.

Section 14. Transition to Monotheism.

The myths, but not religion! The criticism certainly of Plato and probably of Euripides was prompted by the desire not to discredit altogether the belief in the G.o.ds, but to bring it into harmony with the requirements of a more fully developed consciousness. The philosopher and the poet came not to destroy, but to fulfil; not to annihilate but to transform the popular theology. Such an intention, strange as it may appear to us with our rigid creeds, we shall see to be natural enough to the Greek mind, when we remember that the material of their religion was not a set of propositions, but a more or less indeterminate body of traditions capable of being presented in the most various forms as the genius and taste of individual poets might direct. And we find, in fact, that the most religious poets of Greece, those even who were most innocent of any intention to innovate on popular beliefs, did nevertheless unconsciously tend to transform, in accordance with their own conceptions, the whole structure of the Homeric theology. Taking over the legends of G.o.ds and heroes, as narrated in poetry and tradition, the earlier tragedians, Aeschylus and Sophocles, as they shaped and reshaped their material for the stage, were evolving for themselves, not in opposition to but as it were on the top of the polytheistic view, the idea of a single supreme and righteous G.o.d. The Zeus of Homer, whose superiority, as we saw, was based on physical force, grows, under the hands of Aeschylus, into something akin to the Jewish Jehovah. The inner experience of the poet drives him inevitably to this transformation. Born into the great age of Greece, coming to maturity at the crisis of her fate, he had witnessed with his own eyes, and a.s.sisted with his own hands the defeat of the Persian host at Marathon. The event struck home to him like a judgment from heaven. The Nemesis that attends upon human pride, the vengeance that follows crime, henceforth were the thoughts that haunted and possessed his brain; and under their influence he evolved for himself out of the popular idea of Zeus the conception of a G.o.d of justice who marks and avenges crime.

Read for example the following pa.s.sage from the "Agamemnon" and contrast it with the lines of Homer quoted on page 42. Nothing could ill.u.s.trate more strikingly the transformation that could be effected, under the conditions of the Greek religion, in the whole conception of the divine power by one whose conscious intention, nevertheless, was not to innovate but to conserve.

"Zeus the high G.o.d! Whate'er be dim in doubt, This can our thought track out-- The blow that fells the sinner is of G.o.d, And as he wills, the rod Of vengeance smiteth sore. One said of old 'The G.o.ds list not to hold A reckoning with him whose feet oppress The grace of holiness'-- An impious word! for whensoe'er the sire Breathed forth rebellious fire-- What time his household overflows the measure Of bliss and health and treasure-- His children's children read the reckoning plain, At last, in tears and pain.

Who spurns the shrine of Right, nor wealth nor power Shall be to him a tower, To guard him from the gulf: there lies his lot, Where all things are forgot.

l.u.s.t drives him on--l.u.s.t, desperate and wild Fate's sin-contriving child-- And cure is none; beyond concealment clear Kindles sin's baleful glare.

As an ill coin beneath the wearing touch Betrays by stain and s.m.u.tch Its metal false--such is the sinful wight.

Before, on pinions light, Fair pleasure flits, and lures him childlike on, While home and kin make moan Beneath the grinding burden of his crime; Till, in the end of time, Cast down of heaven, he pours forth fruitless prayer To powers that will not hear."

[Footnote: Aesch. Agamem. 367.--Translated by E. D. A.

Morshead ("The House of Atreus").]

And Sophocles follows in the same path. For him too Zeus is no longer the G.o.d of physical strength; he is the creator and sustainer of the moral law--of "those laws of range sublime, called into life throughout the high clear heaven, whose father is Olympus alone; their parent was no race of mortal men, no, nor shall oblivion ever lay them to sleep; a mighty G.o.d is in them, and he grows not old." [Footnote: Soph. O.T.

865.--Translated by Dr. Jebb.] Such words imply a complete transformation of the Homeric conception of Divinity; a transformation made indeed in the interests of religion, but involving nevertheless, and contrary, no doubt, to the intention of its authors, a complete subversion of the popular creed. Once grant the idea of G.o.d as an eternal and moral Power and the whole fabric of polytheism falls away.

The religion of the Greeks, as interpreted by their best minds, annihilates itself. Zeus indeed is saved, but only at the cost of all Olympus.

Section 15. Metaphysical Criticism.

While thus, on the one hand, the Greek religion by its inner evolution, was tending to destroy itself, on the other hand it was threatened from without by the attack of what we should call the "scientific spirit." A system so frankly anthropomorphic was bound to be weak on the speculative side. Its appeal, as we have seen, was rather to the imagination than to the intellect, by the presentation of a series of beautiful images, whose contemplation might offer to the mind if not satisfaction, at least acquiescence and repose. A Greek who was not too inquisitive was thus enabled to move through the calendar of splendid festivals and fasts, charmed by the beauty of the ritual, inspired by the chorus and the dance, and drawing from the familiar legends the moral and aesthetic significance with which he had been accustomed from his boyhood to connect them, but without ever raising the question, Is all this true? Does it really account for the existence and nature of the world? Once, however, the spell was broken, once the intellect was aroused, the inadequacy of the popular faith, on the speculative side, became apparent; and the mind turned aside altogether from religion to work out its problems on its own lines. We find accordingly, from early times, physical philosophers in Greece free from all theological preconceptions, raising from the very beginning the question of the origin of the world, and offering solutions, various indeed but all alike in this, that they frankly accept a materialistic basis. One derives all things from water, another from air, another from fire; one insists upon unity, another on a plurality of elements; but all alike reject the supernatural, and proceed on the lines of physical causation.

The opposition, to use the modern phrase, between science and religion, was thus developed early in ancient Greece; and by the fifth century it is clear that it had become acute. The philosopher Anaxagoras was driven from Athens as an atheist; the same charge, absurdly enough, was one of the counts in the indictment of Socrates; and the physical speculations of the time are a favourite b.u.t.t of that champion of orthodoxy, Aristophanes. To follow up these speculations in detail would be to wander too far from our present purpose; but it may be worth while to quote a pa.s.sage from the great comedian, to ill.u.s.trate not indeed the value of the theories ridiculed, but their generally materialistic character, and their antagonism to the popular faith. The pa.s.sage selected is part of a dialogue between Socrates and Strepsiades, one of his pupils; and it is introduced by an address from the chorus of "Clouds", the new divinities of the physicist:

CHORUS OF CLOUDS.

Our welcome to thee, old man, who would see the marvels that science can show: And thou, the high-priest of this subtlety feast, say what would you have us bestow?

Since there is not a sage for whom we'd engage our wonders more freely to do, Except, it may be, for Prodicus: he for his knowledge may claim them, but you, Because as you go, you glance to and fro, and in dignified arrogance float; And think shoes a disgrace, and put on a grave face, your acquaintance with us to denote.

STREPSIADES. Oh earth! what a sound, how august and profound! It fills me with wonder and awe.

SOCRATES. These, these then alone, for true Deities own, the rest are all G.o.d-ships of straw.

STREPS. Let Zeus be left out: He's a G.o.d beyond doubt; come, that you can scarcely deny.

SOCR. Zeus indeed! there's no Zeus: don't you be so obtuse.

STREPS. No Zeus up above in the sky?

Then you first must explain, who it is sends the rain; or I really must think you are wrong.