INTRODUCTION.
Many moral phenomena appear to baffle the sagacity of statesmen, because, confiding too implicitly in experience, they omit to widen the range of their contemplation so as to embrace the whole circle of the people’s existence whose fortunes and character they desire to comprehend. To be successful in such an inquiry it is requisite to lay open, as far as possible, the influence on that people of climate and geographical position, to break through the husk and shell of customs, manners, laws, religions, that we may come to the kernel of its moral nature, to that inner organization, intellectual and physical, of which the external circumstances of its civil and political life are but so many fluctuating symbols.
To accomplish this, however, even in the case of a contemporary nation, among whom we may behold in full activity all the material movements of society, is no easy task. But the difficulty must be very much augmented, when, in addition to the obstacles which necessarily under the most favourable circumstances beset every avenue to a people’s inner life, those are added arising out of the distance on the track of time at which the nation we are considering happens to stand, the scantiness and contradictory nature of the reports that reach us, and more, perhaps, than all, the atmosphere of prejudice through which we are apt to view whatever in any degree differs from our own manners and institutions. But this consideration, though it should bespeak indulgence for the unavoidable errors even of the most diligent investigator, can certainly be no reason for abstaining from all further investigation. For, notwithstanding the disadvantages under which we labour, it is still possible to extract from the fragments remaining of ancient literature materials for reconstructing something more than the skeleton of antiquity. We can invest the bones with sinews and muscles, clothe them with flesh and skin, spread over the whole colours that shall resemble life; and if we cannot steal from heaven celestial fire to kindle this image of surpassing beauty, that, at least, is the only thing which exceeds our power.
In saying this, I merely state my opinion of what is possible, not by any means what I conceive myself to have effected in the present work. I am but too sensible of how far the execution falls short of “the ample proposition that hope made,” when, many years ago, the idea suggested itself to me at that ardent and flattering season of life in which we are apt to imagine all things within our reach. But as
Every action that hath gone before
Whereof we have record, trial did draw
Bias, and thwart; not answering the aim
And that unbodied figure of the thought
That gave ’t surmised shape;
so, no doubt, in my own case, the realisation will be found to be a very imperfect embodying of the ideal plan.
Few subjects, however, abound more in interest or instruction than the one I have here ventured to treat. The inquiry turns upon the institutions and moral condition of a people to whose fortunes history affords no parallel; of a people that, like the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, which the servant of the prophet saw from the top of Carmel, contained within itself the seeds of mightiest and most momentous events. The Hellenes can never, in fact, by any but the uninformed be regarded in the same light as ordinary political communities. Their power, vast and astonishing for the age in which they flourished, arose entirely out of their national character and the spirit of their institutions. It was the power of intellect. They were in reality the sun and soul of the ancient world, and darted far into the darkness around them those vivifying rays which, reflected from land to land, have since lighted up the world.
Athens, the wisest and noblest of Grecian states,
Mother of arts
And eloquence,
was the great preceptress of mankind. The spirit of her laws, transmitted through those of Rome, still pervades the whole civilized world. Her wisdom and her arts form, in all polished communities, a principal object of study; and to comprehend and to enjoy them is to be a gentleman. Sallust, therefore, notwithstanding his genius and sagacity, took but a commonplace view of national greatness, when he considered that of Athens to be chiefly based on the splendour shed around her achievements by historians. Her triumphs, it is true, were not effected by vast military masses, such as those which many barbarous nations in different ages have put in motion for the purpose of spoil or conquest. Athens built her glory on other foundations. She could not, indeed, lead countless armies into the field, but she knew how, with a little band, to defeat those who could. In the days of her freedom no human force could subdue her. To effect this, every man within the borders of Attica must have been exterminated; for so long as an Athenian was left, the indomitable spirit of democracy would have survived in him and sufficed to kindle up fresh contests.
But the energies of Athens, how great soever, did not, like those of most other states, develope themselves chiefly in war. It is the characteristic of barbarians to destroy, but to create nothing. The delight and glory of the people of Athens consisted, on the contrary, in the exercise of creative power, in calling into existence new arts, founding colonies, widening the circle of civilisation, covering the earth with beautiful structures, sacred and civil; in producing pictures, statues, vases, and sculptured gems, of conception and delicacy of workmanship inimitable. Wherever the Athenian set his foot, the very earth appeared to grow more lovely beneath it. His genius beautified whatever it touched. His imagination vivified everything. He spread a rich mythological colouring over land and sea. Gods, at his bidding, entered the antique oak, sported in the waters of brook and fountain, scattered themselves in joyous groups over the uplands and through the umbrageous valleys, and their voices and odoriferous breath mingled with every breeze that blew.
In the distant colonies whither he betook himself, when poverty had relaxed the chain that bound him indissolubly to the Attic soil, a few years saw a new diminutive Athens springing up. The Pnyx, the Odeion, the Theatre of Bacchos, the Prytaneion, the Virgin’s Fane, rose on a diminished scale around him, presenting an image, though faint, of his earlier home, the loveliest, undoubtedly, and, after Jerusalem, the most hallowed spot ever inhabited by man. Above all things, he was everywhere careful to enjoy the blessings of his ancestral institutions, and listened, as in the mother city, to those popular thunders which, thrice in every month, rolled from the bema over the assembled crowd, communicating pleasurable emotions to his mind, and rousing continually the passion for freedom.
It were needless to dwell at any considerable length on the naval and military achievements of the Athenians. The world is still full of the victories of Marathon, Salamis, and Platæa, and the soil, drenched in defence of liberty with Attic blood, is to this day sacred in the eyes of the most phlegmatic. I appeal in proof of this to every man’s daily experience: for does not the bare mention of any spot where the great Demos triumphed or suffered some national calamity, make the blood bound more rapidly and tingle in our veins? Even the grovelling and worldly-minded, who affect to consider nothing holy but Mammon, can have fire struck out of their cold natures by the spell of those glorious syllables; for virtue, and valour, and that religious link which binds the soul to the spot where a mother’s dust reposes, are found, and will ever be found, to kindle warm admiration in every heart. And never since society began did these great qualities develope themselves more visibly than among the people of Athens. For this reason, who can visit Syracuse, or the shores of the Hellespont, or the site of Memphis’s White Castle, without experiencing as he gazes on the scene an electrical thrill of mental anguish at the recollection of what Athenian citizens more than two thousand years ago suffered there? Even Thermopylæ, glorious as it is, scarcely stirs our nature so deeply as Marathon; for the coarser and more material genius and institutions of Sparta, the nurse of those heroes who fell at the Gates of Hellas inspire less of that fervent admiration which the great actions and great men of Athens awaken in every cultivated mind.
Of the political institutions which throughout Hellas influenced so powerfully the developement of the national character, it is not my design in the present volumes to speak. I confine myself entirely to the other causes which rendered the ancient Greeks what they were; reserving the examination of their forms of government for a separate treatise. The subject here discussed possesses sufficient interest of itself. It has been my aim to open up as far as possible a prospect into the domestic economy of a Grecian family, the arts, comforts, conveniences, regulations affecting the condition of private life, and those customs and manners which communicated a peculiar character and colour to the daily intercourse of Greek citizens. For, in all my investigations about the nature and causes of those ancient institutions which, during so many ages constituted the glory and the happiness of the most highly gifted race known to history, I found my attention constantly directed to the circumstances of their private life, from which, as from a great fountain, all their public prosperity and grandeur seemed to spring.
Indeed, the great sources of a nation’s happiness and power must always lie about the domestic hearth. There or nowhere are sown, and for many years cherished by culture, all those virtues which bloom afterwards in public, and form the best ornaments of the commonwealth. Men are everywhere exactly what their mothers make them. If these are slaves, narrow-minded, ignorant, unhappy, those in their turn will be so also. The domestic example, small and obscure though it be, will impress its image on the state; since that which individually is base and little, can never by congregating with neighbouring littleness, become great, or lead to those heroic efforts, those noble self-sacrifices, which elevate human nature to a sphere in which it appears to touch upon and partake something of the divine.
By minutely studying, as far as practicable, those small obscure sanctuaries of Greek civilisation—the private dwellings of Attica--I hoped to discover the secret of that moral alchemy by which were formed
Those dead, but sceptred sovereigns who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.
In these haunts, little familiar to our imagination, lay concealed the germs of law, good government, philosophy, the arts, and whatever else has tended to soften and render beautiful the human clay. That this was the case is certain; why it should have been so, we may perhaps be unable satisfactorily to explain; but that is what we shall at least attempt in the present work, and for this purpose, it will at the first glance be apparent, that the most elaborate delineation of the political institutions of Athens must prove altogether insufficient. These were but one among many powerful causes. The principal lay deeper in a combination of numerous circumstances:—a peculiarly perfect and beautiful physical organization; a mind fraught with enthusiasm, force, flexibility, and unrivalled quickness; a buoyancy of temper which no calamity could long depress; consequent, probably, upon this, a strong religious feeling ineradicably seated in the heart; an unerring perception of the beautiful in art and nature; and lastly, the enjoyment of a genial climate, and an atmosphere pure, brilliant, and full of sunshine as their minds.
Races of men, though not in precisely the same manner as individuals, yet exhibit, at particular periods of their history, a freshness, a vigour, a disinterestedness, like that of youth; and, because this state of feeling may more than once occur in the course of their career, they seem to spring, like Æson, out of convulsions and apparent dissolution to a state of perfect rejuvenescence. Calamity and suffering purify whole communities as they do individuals. In the boiling and commotion of revolutions the impurities of the national character bubble upwards and are skimmed away by the iron hand of misfortune. These political convulsions are, in fact, so many efforts of nature to expel some disease lurking in the constitution, and which, though the race be immortal, might, if suffered to remain in the frame, produce a lethargy worse than death. This truth we should bear constantly in mind; for among the characteristics of the Athenian constitution, not the least remarkable are the many efforts it made to right itself, and adapt its framework to the changing circumstances of the times.
In the present inquiry we must, as I have already said, discover, if we can, how much Hellas owed to its climate, to its position on the globe, and to the physical organization of its inhabitants. It would be absurd to infer with some writers, that the influence of these circumstances is imaginary, because Greece seems to remain where it was of old, and the constitution and temperament of the people to be likewise unchanged. But this is not the case. Greece no longer occupies in the map of the world the position it occupied in antiquity. It has been lifted out of the centre of civilisation, to be cast upon its outskirts, or, which is the same thing, civilisation has shifted its seat. Nor are the Greeks any longer what they formerly were, though perhaps by a fortunate combination of circumstances they might still be rendered so. At present there is the same difference between them and their ancestors as between a jar of Falernian, and an empty jar. The clay, indeed, is there, beautifully moulded, and the purple hue of life is on the cheek; but tyranny from the battle of Cheronæa,
“That dishonest victory
Fatal to liberty!”
until now has been draining out the soul. In the day when Hellas was itself its children walked in light, in the first beautiful light of the morning, which long seemed to shine only upon them; and now, perhaps, after the revolution of a cycle almost equal to the Great Year, they may, probably, be approaching another dawn.
Comparing the several states of Greece together, it is customary to bestow the palm of energy and military valour upon the Spartans, who made war their sole profession, and passed their lives as it were in the camp from the cradle to the grave. But, in thus deciding, justice is scarcely done to the character of Athens; for, if the former excelled in discipline, to the latter belonged, indisputably, the superiority in native courage. Trained or not trained they faced whatever enemy presented himself, and won at least as many laurels from Sparta, on the ocean, as the Doric State, in all its wars, ever gathered on land. And, lastly, at Platæa, among which race, among Ionians or Dorians, was most activity manifested? In whose ranks was found the greatest ardour to engage? Who bore the first brunt of the Median horse, and broke the dreaded shock of that vaunted Asiatic chivalry which the Barbarian hoped would have trampled down with its innumerable hoofs the spirit of Grecian freedom? This was effected by the Athenians; by those gay and seemingly effeminate soldiers, who went forth from their beautiful city curled, perfumed, clad in purple, as to the mimic combats of the theatre. The spirit of their commonwealth, all splendour without and all energy within, urged them to the field. Their cry at the approach of the king was “Freedom or honourable graves!”—such as their countrymen had ever been wont to repose in.
In fact, the Athenians, under a free government, had learned what it was to live—had imbibed from their education the feeling, that if deprived of such a government, if reduced to bow beneath the yoke of despotism, to die, if the Apostle’s words may without blame be thus applied, would be gain. It will readily be conceived that the citizens of such a state felt an impassioned attachment to their country,—an attachment unintelligible to persons living under any other form of civil polity. Athens was the cradle of their freedom and their happiness. There was a religion in the love they bore it; they had, according to mythical traditions, which they believed, sprung on that spot from the bosom of the earth. It stood, therefore to them in the dearest of all relations, being, to sum up everything holy in one word,—their Mother; and they embodied their profound veneration for the sacred spot in every fond, every endearing, epithet their matchless language could supply. Even the gods, in their patriotic partiality, were believed to look on Athens as the most lovely, no less than the most glorious city on the broad earth,—an idea which they expressed by representing Poseidon and Athena contending for the honour of becoming their tutelar divinity.
To persons so thinking no calamity short of the entire extinction of their race could appear so intolerable as beholding that sacred city, with the tombs of their ancestors, the sanctuaries of their gods, the venerable but immoveable symbols of their faith and mythological history, delivered over to be trodden down or obliterated with sword and fire by barbarian slaves, strong only from their countless numbers. Yet even to this did the love of freedom reconcile the Athenian people. They abandoned their holy place, and, embarking on board the fleet with their wives and children, took refuge in Trœzen and Salamis. History has described in touching language the circumstances of this event, than which it has nothing more pathetic to record save, peradventure, the carrying away of Judea and her children into captivity. I will not disturb its archaic simplicity. No eloquence could heighten its effect. It goes at once to the heart and rouses our noblest sympathies. “The embarkation of the people of Athens was a very affecting scene. What pity, what admiration of the firmness of those men who, sending their parents and families to a distant place, unmoved with their cries and embraces, had the fortitude to leave the city and embark for Salamis! What greatly heightened the distress was the number of citizens whom, on account of their extreme old age, they were forced to leave behind. And some emotions of tenderness were due even to the tame domestic animals which, running to the shore with lamentable howlings, expressed their affection and regret for the persons by whom they had been fed. One of these, a dog belonging to Xanthippos, the father of Pericles, unwilling to be left, is said to have leaped into the sea and to have swam by the side of the galley till it reached Salamis, where, quite spent with toil, it immediately died. And they show, to this day, a place called Cynossema—‘the dog’s grave’—where they tell us it was buried.”[[1]]
The Athenian people, on this and similar occasions, were enabled to resolve and perform boldly from the generous spirit inspired by their national system of education. Their institutions, also, were eminently calculated to bring into play the energies of every individual citizen, and to diffuse in consequence through the whole community a grandeur of sentiment and an heroic enthusiasm peculiar to free states. At Athens whoever possessed the means of serving his country could easily, whatever might be his rank, make those means known, and bring them into operation. If he were virtuous his virtue was remarked and placed him on the road to promotion. If genius constituted his title to distinction, if nature had gifted him with the power to serve the state, the state, without inquiry whether he were poor or rich, readily availed itself of his capacity, rewarded him during his life with political honours and authority, and, after his death, with imperishable glory. If in war he performed any act of superior conduct or courage, a general’s name was his reward; if he received wounds that name, or the hope of it, healed them; if in the achieving of any heroic deed he perished, his country, he knew, would honour his ashes, watch over his memory, and, with words powerfully soothing because embodying a nation’s sympathy, dry up the tears of his parents and beloved children. He knew that his glory, heightened by matchless masters of eloquence, would flash like lightning from the bema; that lovely bosoms would beat high at his name; that hands, the fairest in Greece, would yearly wreath his tomb with garlands; and that tears would be shed for ever on the spot by the brave.
If children remained behind him, the state would become their parent; every Athenian would share with them his salt; would impart to them their best inheritance—the feeling of patriotism and an inextinguishable hatred of tyranny; would repeat to them with unenvious pride the eulogy of their father, and point daily to the laurels which kept his grave ever green. The Athenian was taught, from the cradle, to consider death beautiful when met on the red battle-field in defence of his home. And, according to the creed of his country, he believed that his spirit would in such an event be numbered among the objects of public worship. Hence the sublimity, the thrilling power of that oath in Demosthenes, who, in swearing by the souls of those that fell at Marathon, accomplished their apotheosis and placed them among the gods of Athens.
That such were the habitual feelings of this most gallant and generous-minded people appears even from the admission of their bitterest enemies. “They,” observe, in Thucydides, the Corinthian ambassadors, when urging Sparta into the Peloponnesian war,—"they push victory to the utmost, and are least of all men dejected by defeat; exposing their bodies for their country as if they had no interest in them, yet applying their minds in the public service as if that and their private interest were one. Disappointment of a proposed acquisition they consider as a loss of what already belonged to them; success in any pursuit they esteem only as a step towards farther advantages; and, defeated in any attempt, they turn immediately to some new project by which to make themselves amends: insomuch, that, through their celerity in executing whatever they propose, they seem to have the peculiar faculty of at the same time hoping and possessing. Thus they continue ever amid labours and dangers, enjoying nothing through sedulity to acquire; esteeming that only a time of festival in which they are prosecuting their projects; and holding rest as a greater evil than the most laborious business. To sum up their character, it may be truly said, that they were born neither to enjoy quiet themselves, nor to suffer others to enjoy it."[[2]]
The feeling that what they fought for was their own, which accounts for the heroism of Hellenic armies, likewise led, particularly at Athens, to the beautifying and adorning of the city, and the perfection of public taste. The people saw among them no palaces devoted to the private luxuries of a despotic court, where persons maintained at the public expense learn to look with contempt on the honest hands that support them. There, whatever was magnificent belonged to the people at large, no private individuals, during the best ages of the commonwealth, presuming, how great soever might be their talents or their influence, to arrogate to themselves more than can be due to individuals, or to enshrine their perishable bodies in buildings suited only to the worship of God. Yet, in genuine grandeur, no monarch, with the wealth of half a world at the disposal of his caprice, ever rivalled the Athenian people. True taste, the genuine sense of the beautiful and the sublime, will, while the world endures, refuse to be the subject of a tyrant, or to inhabit the same city with him; because no patronage, pensions, or lavish expenditure, can create in one state of society what belongs to another; and pure taste being nothing more than the cultivated popular feeling spontaneously expanding, can nowhere exist but in a free state. A prince may, doubtless, know what pleases him; but the people only can tell what pleases the people, which nothing certainly will unless it be produced expressly for them, without the slightest reference to any other person.
Such, in the best periods of Grecian history, were the Athenians. Among them Nature generally was allowed to make herself heard; from the cradle upwards it was their guide. A pure religion they had not, or pure morality. Far from it; they barely caught indistinct glimpses of what in faith and practice is true and beautiful. Nor could it be otherwise; for the sun had not then risen, and men but felt their way uncertainly and timidly amid the obscurities of the dawn. Nevertheless, the light vouchsafed them they did not spurn. According to the best notions then prevailing, they were of all men the most pious; and though of this piety much, nay, the greater part, was superstition, yet, doubtless, God, according to the saying of the Apostle, accounted it unto them for righteousness, that, having not the law, they were a law unto themselves.
The Spartans, on the other hand, were mere monastic soldiers, brave, indeed, and true as their swords, but ungifted with those loftier and more exquisite sympathies which properly constitute the beauty of human character, and are alone the parents of love. Few, perhaps, were all things within their reach, would choose to be citizens of Sparta; while no one, for whom the poetry of life has any charms, would hesitate, after his own country, perhaps, to select Athens for his home. And that this is no scholastic fancy created by literary preferences is clear from the practice of antiquity. Every man possessing superior genius, whether sprung from Ionic or Doric race, betook himself to Athens, as to the Greece of Greece—the common country of letters, sciences, and arts. Thither, too, as now to London, fled the oppressed and persecuted of all lands, and there they found welcome and encouragement. It was the great asylum, the common city of refuge to all men. Strangers who could be content with hospitality and generous protection were never driven from thence. There every man might live as he pleased, think as he pleased, and utter freely what he thought. The recorded instances of persecution are barely sufficiently numerous to serve as exceptions to the general rule; and in Gorgias of Leontium, Polos, Protagoras, Prodicos, Hippias, “and what the Cynic impudence uttered,” we discover to how great an extent the spirit of toleration was carried at Athens. It would be absurd to object the examples of Anaxagoras, Aspasia, and Socrates; for these were merely instances of the rage of party spirit, from which, while men continue men, no state will ever be free, and can no more be imputed to the Athenian people, or to the spirit of their government, than the execution of Sir Thomas More, or Cranmer, or Fisher, can be laid to the charge of the English Constitution.
CONTENTS
OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
| BOOK I. | ||
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| I. | Original Inhabitants of Hellas | [1] |
| II. | Character of the Greeks | [29] |
| III. | Geographical Outline | [51] |
| IV. | Capital Cities of Greece—Athens | [70] |
| V. | Capital Cities of Greece—Sparta | [92] |
| BOOK II. | ||
| EDUCATION. | ||
| I. | Theory of Education.—Birth of Children.—Infanticide | [107] |
| II. | Birth-feast.—Naming the Child.—Nursery.—Nursery Tales.—Spartan Festivals | [128] |
| III. | Toys, Sports, and Pastimes | [144] |
| IV. | Elementary Instruction | [164] |
| V. | Exercises of Youth | [189] |
| VI. | Hunting and Fowling | [206] |
| VII. | Schools of the Philosophers and Sophists | [233] |
| VIII. | Education of the Spartans, Cretans, Arcadians,&c. | [265] |
| IX. | Influence of the Fine Arts on Education | [289] |
| X. | Hellenic Literature | [314] |
| XI. | Spirit of the Grecian Religion | [349] |
| BOOK III. | ||
| WOMEN. | ||
| I. | Women in Heroic Ages | [369] |
| II. | Women of Doric States | [382] |
| III. | Condition of unmarried Women.—Love. | [401] |
THE HISTORY
OF THE
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
OF
ANCIENT GREECE.