The Greek View of Life Part 8

"Brave are all the Greeks who dwell in any Dorian land; but what I am about to say does not concern all, but only the Lacedaemonians. First, then, come what may, they will never accept thy terms, which would reduce Greece to slavery; and further, they are sure to join battle with thee, though all the rest of Greece should submit to thy will. As for their numbers, do not ask how many they are, that their resistance should be a possible thing; for if a thousand of them should take the field, they will meet thee in battle, and so will any number, be it less than this, or be it more.

"When they fight singly, they are as good men as any in the world, and when they fight in a body, they are the bravest of all. For though they be freemen, they are not in all respects free; Law is the master whom they own; and this master they fear more than thy subjects fear thee.

Whatever he commands they do; and his commandment is always the same: it forbids them to flee in battle, whatever the number of their foes, and requires them to stand firm, and either to conquer or die." [Footnote: Herodotus vii. 102, 4.--Translation by Rawlinson.]

The practical ill.u.s.tration of this speech is the battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans kept at bay the whole Persian host, till they were betrayed from the rear and killed fighting to a man.

The Spartan state, then, justified itself according to its own ideal; but how limited that ideal was will be clear from our sketch. The individual, if it cannot be said that he was sacrificed to the state-- for he recognised the life of the state as his own--was at any rate starved upon one side of his nature as much as he was hypertrophied upon the other. Courage, obedience, and endurance were developed in excess; but the free play of pa.s.sion and thought, the graces and arts of life, all that springs from the spontaneity of nature, were crushed out of existence under this stern and rigid rule. "None of them," says Plutarch, an enthusiastic admirer of the Spartan polity "none of them was left alone to live as he chose; but pa.s.sing their time in the city as though it were a camp, their manner of life and their avocations ordered with a view to the public good, they regarded themselves as belonging, not to themselves, but to their country." [Footnote: Plut.

Lycurgus, ch. 24.] And Plato, whose ideal republic was based so largely upon the Spartan model, has marked nevertheless as the essential defect of their polity its insistence on military virtue to the exclusion of everything else, and its excessive accentuation of the corporate aspect of life. "Your military way of life," he says, "is modelled after the camp, and is not like that of dwellers in cities; and you have your young men herding and feeding together like young colts. No one takes his own individual colt and drags him away from his fellows against his will, raging and foaming, and gives him a groom for him alone, and trains and rubs him down privately, and gives him the qualities in education which will make him not only a good soldier, but also a governor of a state and of cities. Such a one would be a greater warrior than he of whom Tyrtaeus sings; and he would honour courage everywhere, but always as the fourth, and not as the first part of virtue, either in individuals or states." [Footnote: Plato Laws, II. 666 e.--Translation by Jowett].

The Spartan state, in fact, by virtue of that excellence which was also its defect--the specialising of the individual on the side of discipline and rule--carried within it the seeds of its own destruction. The tendencies which Lycurgus had endeavoured to repress by external regulation rea.s.serted themselves in his despite. He had intended once for all both to limit and to equalise private property; but already as early as the fifth century Spartans had acc.u.mulated gold which they deposited in temples in foreign states; the land fell, by inheritance and gift, into the hands of a small minority; the number of the citizens was reduced, not only by war, but by the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt attending inability to contribute to the common mess-tables; till at last we find no more than 700 Spartan families, and of these no more than 100 possessing estates in land.

And this decline from within was hastened by external events. The const.i.tution devised for a small state encamped amidst a hostile population, broke down under the weight of imperial power. The conquest of Athens by Sparta was the signal of her own collapse. The power and wealth she had won at a stroke alienated her sons from her discipline.

Generals and statesmen who had governed like kings the wealthy cities of the east were unable to adapt themselves again to the stern and narrow rules of Lycurgus. They rushed into freedom and enjoyment, into the unfettered use of their powers, with an energy proportional to the previous restraint. The features of the human face broke through the fair but lifeless mask of ancient law; and the Spartan, ceasing to be a Spartan, both rose and fell to the level of a man.

Section 10. Athens.

In the inst.i.tutions of Sparta we see, carried to its furthest point, one side of the complex Greek nature--their capacity for discipline and law.

Athens, the home of a different stock, gives us the other extreme--their capacity for rich and spontaneous individual development. To pa.s.s from Sparta to Athens, is to pa.s.s from a barracks to a playing-field. All the beauty, all the grace, all the joy of Greece; all that chains the desire of mankind, with a yearning that is never stilled, to that one golden moment in the past, whose fair and balanced interplay of perfect flesh and soul no later gains of thought can compensate, centres about that bright and stately city of romance, the home of Pericles and all the arts, whence from generation to generation has streamed upon ages less ill.u.s.trious an influence at once the sanest and the most inspired of all that have shaped the secular history of the world. Girt by mountain and sea, by haunted fountain and sacred grove, shaped and adorned by the master hands of Pheidias and Polygnotus and filled with the breath of pa.s.sion and song by Euripides and Plato, Athens, famed alike for the legended deeds of heroes and G.o.ds and for the feats of her human sons in council, art, and war, is a name, to those who have felt her spell, more familiar and more dear than any of the few that mark with gold the sombre scroll of history. And still across the years we feel the throb of the glorious verse that broke in praise of his native land from the lips of Euripides:

"Happy of yore were the children of race divine Happy the sons of old Erechtheus' line Who in their holy state With hands inviolate Gather the flower of wisdom far-renowned, Lightly lifting their feet in the lucid air Where the sacred nine, the Pierid Muses, bare Harmonia golden-crowned.

There in the wave from fair Kephisus flowing Kupris sweetens the winds and sets them blowing Over the delicate land; And ever with joyous hand Braiding her fragrant hair with the blossom of roses, She sendeth the Love that dwelleth in Wisdom's place That every virtue may quicken and every grace In the hearts where she reposes."

[Footnote: Eurip. Medea, 825.]

And this, the Athens of poetry and art, is but another aspect of the Athens of political history. The same individuality, the same free and pa.s.sionate energy that worked in the hearts of her sculptors and her poets, moulded also and inspired her city life. In contradistinction to the stern and rigid discipline of Sparta, the Athenian citizen displayed the resource, the versatility and the zeal that only freedom and self- reliance can teach. The contrast is patent at every stage of the history of the two states, and has been acutely set forth by Thucydides in the speech which he puts into the mouths of the Corinthian allies of Sparta:

"You have never considered," they say to the Lacedaemonians, "what manner of men are these Athenians with whom you will have to fight, and how utterly unlike yourselves. They are revolutionary, equally quick in the conception and in the execution of every new plan; while you are conservative--careful only to keep what you have, originating nothing, and not acting even when action is most necessary. They are bold beyond their strength; they run risks which prudence would condemn; and in the midst of misfortunes they are full of hope. Whereas it is your nature, though strong, to act feebly; when your plans are most prudent, to distrust them; and when calamities come upon you, to think that you will never be delivered from them. They are impetuous, and you are dilatory; they are always abroad, and you are always at home. For they hope to gain something by leaving their homes; but you are afraid that any new enterprise may imperil what you have already. When conquerors, they pursue their victory to the utmost; when defeated, they fall back the least. 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. When they do not carry out an intention which they have formed, they seem to have sustained a personal bereavement; when an enterprise succeeds, they have gained a mere instalment of what is to come; but if they fail, they at once conceive new hopes and so fill up the void.

"With them alone to hope is to have, for they lose not a moment in the execution of an idea. This is the lifelong task, full of danger and toil, which they are always imposing upon themselves. None enjoy their good things less, because they are always seeking for more. To do their duty is their only holiday, and they deem the quiet of inaction to be as disagreeable as the most tiresome business. If a man should say of them, in a word, that they were born neither to have peace themselves nor to allow peace to other men, he would simply speak the truth." [Footnote: Thuc. i. 70.--Translated by Jowett.]

The qualities here set forth by Thucydides as characteristic of the Athenians, were partly the cause and partly the effect of their political const.i.tution. The history of Athens, indeed, is the very ant.i.thesis to that of Sparta. In place of a type fixed at a stroke and enduring for centuries, she presents a series of transitions through the whole range of polities, to end at last in a democracy so extreme that it refuses to be included within the limits of the general formula of the Greek state.

Seldom, indeed, has "equality" been pushed to so extreme a point as it was, politically at least, in ancient Athens. The cla.s.s of slaves, it is true, existed there as in every other state; but among the free citizens, who included persons of every rank, no political distinction at all was drawn. All of them, from the lowest to the highest, had the right to speak and vote in the great a.s.sembly of the people which was the ultimate authority; all were eligible to every administrative post; all sat in turn as jurors in the law-courts. The disabilities of poverty were minimised by payment for attendance in the a.s.sembly and the courts.

And, what is more extraordinary, even distinctions of ability were levelled by the practice of filling all offices, except the highest, by lot.

Had the citizens been a cla.s.s apart, as was the case in Sparta, had they been subjected from the cradle to a similar discipline and training, forbidden to engage in any trade or business, and consecrated to the service of the state, there would have been nothing surprising in this uncompromising a.s.sertion of equality. But in Athens the citizenship was extended to every rank and calling; the poor man jostled the rich, the shopman the aristocrat, in the a.s.sembly; cobblers, carpenters, smiths, farmers, merchants, and retail traders met together with the ancient landed gentry, to debate and conclude on national affairs; and it was from such varied elements as these that the lot impartially chose the officials of the law, the revenue, the police, the highways, the markets, and the ports, as well as the jurors at whose mercy stood reputation, fortune, and life. The consequence was that in Athens, at least in the later period of her history, the middle and lower cla.s.ses tended to monopolise political power. Of the popular leaders, Cleon, the most notorious, was a tanner; another was a baker, another a cattle- dealer. Influence belonged to those who had the gift of leading the ma.s.s; and in that compet.i.tion the man of tongue, of energy, and of resource, was more than a match for the aristocrat of birth and intellect.

The const.i.tution of Athens, then, was one of political equality imposed upon social inequality. To ill.u.s.trate the point we may quote a pa.s.sage from Aristophanes which shows at once the influence exercised by the trading cla.s.s and the disgust with which that influence was regarded by the aristocracy whom the poet represents. The pa.s.sage is taken from the "Knights," a comedy written to discredit Cleon, and turning upon the expulsion of the notorious tanner from the good graces of Demos, by the superior impudence and address of a sausage-seller. Demosthenes, a general of the aristocratic party, is communicating to the latter the destiny that awaits him.

DEMOSTHENES (_to the_ SAUSAGE-SELLER _gravely_).

Set these poor wares aside; and now--bow down To the ground; and adore the powers of earth and heaven.

S.-S. Heigh-day! Why, what do you mean?

DEM. O happy man!

Unconscious of your glorious destiny, Now mean and unregarded; but to-morrow, The mightiest of the mighty, Lord of Athens.

S.-S. Come, master, what's the use of making game?

Why can't ye let me wash my guts and tripe, And sell my sausages in peace and quiet?

DEM. O simple mortal, cast those thoughts aside!

Bid guts and tripe farewell! Look here! Behold!

(_pointing to the audience_) The mighty a.s.sembled mult.i.tude before ye!

S.-S. (_with a grumble of indifference_).

I see 'em.

DEM. You shall be their lord and master, The sovereign and the ruler of them all, Of the a.s.semblies and tribunals, fleets and armies; You shall trample down the Senate under foot, Confound and crush the generals and commanders, Arrest, imprison, and confine in irons, And feast and fornicate in the Council House.

S.-S. Are there any means of making a great man Of a sausage-selling fellow such as I?

DEM. The very means you have, must make ye so, Low breeding, vulgar birth, and impudence, These, these must make ye, what you're meant to be.

S.-S. I can't imagine that I'm good for much.

DEM. Alas! But why do ye say so? What's the meaning Of these misgivings? I discern within ye A promise and an inward consciousness Of greatness. Tell me truly: are ye allied To the families of gentry?

S.-S. Naugh, not I; I'm come from a common ordinary kindred, Of the lower order.

DEM. What a happiness!

What a footing will it give ye! What a groundwork For confidence and favour at your outset!

S.-S. But bless ye! only consider my education!

I can but barely read.... in a kind of way.

DEM. That makes against ye!--the only thing against ye-- The being able to read, in any way: For now no lead nor influence is allowed To liberal arts or learned education, But to the brutal, base, and underbred.

Embrace then and hold fast the promises Which the oracles of the G.o.ds announce to you.

[Footnote: Aristoph. Knights. 155.--Translation by Frere.]

We have here an ill.u.s.tration, one among many that might be given, of the political equality that prevailed in Athens. It shows us how completely that distinction between the military or governing, and the productive cla.s.s, which belonged to the normal Greek conception of the state, had been broken down, on the side at least of privilege and right, though not on that of social estimation, in this most democratic of the ancient states. Politically, the Athenian trader and the Athenian artisan was the equal of the aristocrat of purest blood; and so far the government of Athens was a genuine democracy.

But so far only. For in Athens, as in every Greek state, the greater part of the population was unfree; and the government which was a democracy from the point of view of the freeman, was an oligarchy from the point of view of the slave. For the slaves, by the nature of their position, had no political rights; and they were more than half of the population. It is noticeable, however, that the freedom and individuality which was characteristic of the Athenian citizen, appears to have reacted favourably on the position of the slaves. Not only had they, to a certain extent, the protection of the law against the worst excesses of their masters, but they were allowed a license of bearing and costume which would not have been tolerated in any other state. A contemporary writer notes that in dress and general appearance Athenian slaves were not to be distinguished from citizens; that they were permitted perfect freedom of speech; and that it was open to them to acquire a fortune and to live in ease and luxury. In Sparta, he says, the slave stands in fear of the freeman, but in Athens this is not the case; and certainly the bearing of the slaves introduced into the Athenian comedy does not indicate any undue subservience. Slavery at the best is an undemocratic inst.i.tution; but in Athens it appears to have been made as democratic as its nature would admit.

We find then, in the Athenian state, the conception of equality pushed to the farthest extreme at all compatible with Greek ideas; pushed, we may fairly say, at last to an undue excess; for the great days of Athens were those when she was still under the influence of her aristocracy, and when the popular zeal evoked by her free inst.i.tutions was directed by members of the leisured and cultivated cla.s.s. The most glorious age of Athenian history closes with the death of Pericles; and Pericles was a man of n.o.ble family, freely chosen, year after year, by virtue of his personal qualities, to exercise over this democratic nation a dictatorship of character and brain. It is into his mouth that Thucydides has put that great panegyric of Athens, which sets forth to all time the type of an ideal state and the record of what was at least partially achieved in the greatest of the Greek cities:

"Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the inst.i.tutions of others. We do not copy our neighbours, but are an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognised; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but a man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private intercourse we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbour if he does what he likes; we do not put on sour looks at him, which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained in our private intercourse, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for authority and for the laws, having an especial regard for those which are ordained for the protection of the injured, as well as for those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment.

"And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary spirits many relaxations from toil; we have regular games and sacrifices throughout the year; at home the style of our life is refined; and the delight which we daily feel in all these things helps to banish melancholy.

Because of the greatness of our city the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us, so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as of our own.

"Then again, our military training is in many respects superior to that of our adversaries. Our city is thrown open to the world, and we never expel a foreigner or prevent him from seeing or learning anything of which the secret if revealed to an enemy might profit him. We rely not upon management and trickery, but upon our own hearts and hands. And in the matter of education, whereas they from early youth are always undergoing laborious exercises which are to make them brave, we live at ease, and yet are ready to face the perils which they face.

"If then we prefer to meet danger with a light heart but without laborious training, and with a courage which is gained by habit and not enforced by law, are we not greatly the gainers? Since we do not antic.i.p.ate the pain, although when the hour comes, we can be as brave as those who never allow themselves to rest; and thus too our city is equally admirable in peace and in war. For we are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness.

"Wealth we employ, not for talk and ostentation, but when there is a real use for it. To avow poverty with us is no disgrace; the true disgrace is in doing nothing to avoid it. An Athenian citizen does not neglect the state because he takes care of his own household; and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless, but as a useless character; and if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges of a policy. The great impediment to action is, in our opinion, not discussion but the want of that knowledge which is gained by discussion preparatory to action. For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection. And they are surely to be esteemed the bravest spirits who have the clearest sense both of the pains and pleasures of life, but do not on that account shrink from danger.

"To sum up, I say that Athens is the school of h.e.l.las, and that the individual Athenian in his own person seems to have the power of adapting himself to the most varied forms of action with the utmost versatility and grace. This is no pa.s.sing and idle word, but truth and fact; and the a.s.sertion is verified by the position to which these qualities have raised the state. For in the hour of trial Athens alone among her contemporaries is superior to the report of her. No enemy who comes against her is indignant at the reverses which he sustains at the hands of such a city; no subject complains that his masters are unworthy of him. And we shall a.s.suredly not be without witnesses; there are mighty monuments of our power which will make us the wonder of this and of succeeding ages: we shall not need the praises of Homer or of any other panegyrist, whose poetry may please for the moment, although his representation of the facts will not bear the light of day. For we have compelled every land, every sea, to open a path for our valour, and have everywhere planted eternal memorials of our friendship and of our enmity." [Footnote: Thuc. ii. 37.--Translated by Jowett.]