Mosaics of Grecian History

by Marcius Willson; Robert Pierpont Wilson

IV. PHILOSOPHY.

ANAXAG'ORAS.

The most illustrious of the Ionic philosophers, and the first distinguished philosopher of this period of Grecian history, was Anaxagoras, who was born at Clazom'enæ in the year 499 B.C. At the age of twenty he went to Athens, where he remained thirty years, teaching philosophy, and having for his hearers Pericles, Socrates, Euripides, and other celebrated characters. While the pantheistic systems of Tha'les, Heracli'tus, and other early philosophers admitted, in accordance with the fictions of the received mythology, that the universe is full of gods, the doctrine of Anaxagoras led to the belief of but one supreme mind or intelligence, distinct from the chaos to which it imparts motion, form, and order. Hence he also taught that the sun is an inanimate, fiery mass, and therefore not a proper object of worship. He asserted that the moon shines by reflected light, and he rightly explained solar and lunar eclipses. He gave allegorical explanations of the names of the Grecian gods, and struck a blow at the popular religion by attributing the miraculous appearances at sacrifices to natural causes. For these innovations he was stoned by the populace, and, as a penalty for what was considered his impiety, he was condemned to death; but through the influence of Pericles his sentence was commuted to banishment. He retired to Lamp'sacus, on the Hellespont, where he died at the age of seventy-two.

A short time before his death the senate of Lampsacus sent to Anaxagoras to ask what commemoration of his life and character would be most acceptable to him. He answered, "Let all the boys and girls have a play-day on the anniversary of my death." The suggestion was observed, and his memory was honored by the people of Lampsacus for many centuries with a yearly festival. The amiable disposition of Anaxagoras, and the general character of his teachings, are pleasantly and very correctly set forth in the following poem, which is a supposed letter from the poet Cleon, of Lampsacus, to Pericles, giving an account of the philosopher's death:

The Death of Anaxagoras.

Cleon of Lampsacus, to Pericles:
Of him she banished now let Athens boast;
Let now th' Athenian raise to him they stoned
A statue. Anaxagoras is dead!
To you who mourn the master, called him friend,
Beat back th' Athenian wolves who fanged his throat,
And risked your own to save him—Pericles—
I now unfold the manner of his end:

The aged man, who found in sixty years
Scant cause for laughter, laughed before he died,
And died still smiling: Athens vexed him not!
Not he, but your Athenians, he would say,
Were banished in his exile!

When the dawn
First glimmers white o'er Lesser Asia,
And little birds are twittering in the grass,
And all the sea lies hollow and gray with mist,
And in the streets the ancient watchmen doze,
The master woke with cold. His feet were chill,
And reft of sense; and we who watched him knew
The fever had not wholly left his brain,
For he was wandering, seeking nests of birds,
An urchin from the green Ionian town
Where he was born. We chafed his clay-cold limbs;
And so he dozed, nor dreamed, until the sun
Laughed out—broad day—and flushed the garden gods
Who bless our fruits and vines in Lampsacus.

Feeble, but sane and cheerful, he awoke,
And took our hands and asked to feel the sun;
And where the ilex spreads a gracious shade
We placed him, wrapped and pillowed; and he heard
The charm of birds, the whisper of the vines,
The ripple of the blue Propontic sea.
Placid and pleased he lay; but we were sad
To see the snowy hair and silver beard
Like withering mosses on a fallen oak,
And feel that he, whose vast philosophy
Had cast such sacred branches o'er the fields
Where Athens pastures her dull sheep, lay fallen,
And never more should know the spring! Confess
You too had grieved to see it, Pericles!

But Anaxagoras owned no sense of wrong;
And when we called the plagues of all your gods
On your ungrateful city, he but smiled:
"Be patient, children! Where would be the gain
Of wisdom and divine astronomy,
Could we not school our fretful minds to bear
The ills all life inherits? I can smile
To think of Athens! Were they much to blame?
Had I not slain Apollo? plucked the beard
Of Jove himself? Poor rabble, who have yet
Outgrown so little the green grasshoppers
From whom they boast descent, are they to blame?
[Footnote: The Athenians claimed to be of indigenous origin—
Autoch'tho-nes, that is, Aborigines, sprung from the earth
itself. As emblematic of this origin they wore in their hair
the golden forms of the cicada, or locust, often improperly
called grasshopper, which was believed to spring from the
earth. So it was said that the Athenians boasted descent
from grasshoppers.]

"How could they dream—or how believe when taught—
The sun a red-hot iron ball, in bulk
Not less than Peloponnesus? How believe
The moon no silver goddess girt for chase,
But earth and stones, with caverns, hills, and vales?
Poor grasshoppers! who deem the gods absorbed
In all their babble, shrilling in the grass!
What wonder if they rage, should one but hint
That thunder and lightning, born of clashing clouds,
Might happen even with Jove in pleasant mood,
Not thinking of Athenians at all!"

He paused; and, blowing softly from the sea,
The fresh wind stirred the ilex, shaking down
Through chinks of sunny leaves blue gems of sky;
And lying in the shadow, all his mind
O'ershadowed by our grief, once more he spoke:
"Let not your hearts be troubled! All my days
Hath all my care been fixed on this vast blue,
So still above us; now my days are done,
Let it have care of me! Be patient, meek,
Not puffed with doctrine! Nothing can be known;
Naught grasped for certain: sense is circumscribed;
The intellect is weak, and life is short!"

He ceased, and mused a little while we wept.
"And yet be nowise downcast; seek, pursue!
The lover's rapture and the sage's gain
Less in attainment lie than in approach.
Look forward to the time which is to come!
All things are mutable, and change alone
Unchangeable. But knowledge grows! The gods
Are drifting from the earth like morning mist;
The days are surely at the doors when men
Shall see but human actions in the world!
Yea, even these hills of Lampsacus shall be
The isles of some new sea, if time fail not!"

And now the reverend fathers of our town
Had heard the master's end was very near,
And come to do him homage at the close,
And ask what wish of his they might fulfil.
But he, divining that they thought his heart
Might yearn to Athens for a resting-place,
Said gently, "Nay; from everywhere the way
To that dark land you wot of is the same.
I feel no care; I have no wish. The Greeks
Will never quite forget my Pericles,
And when they think of him will say of me,
'Twas Anaxagoras taught him!"

Loath to go,
No kindly office done, yet once again
The reverend fathers pressed him for a wish.
Then laughed the master: "Nay, if still you urge,
And since 'twere churlish to reject good-will,
I pray you, every year, when time brings back
The day on which I left you, let the boys—
All boys and girls in this your happy town—
Be free of task and school for that one day."

He lay back smiling, and the reverend men
Departed, heavy at heart. He spoke no more,
But, haply musing on his truant days,
Passed from us, and was smiling when he died.
—WILLIAM CANTON, in The Contemporary Review.

The teachings of Anaxagoras were destined to attain to wide-spread power over the Grecian mind. As auguries, omens, and prodigies exercised a great influence on the public affairs of Greece, a philosophical explanation of natural phenomena had a tendency to diminish respect for the popular religion in the eyes of the multitude, and to leave the minds of rulers and statesmen open to the influences of reason, and to the rejection of the follies of superstition. The doctrines taught by Anaxagoras were the commencement of the contest between the old philosophy and the new; and the varying phases of the struggle appear throughout all subsequent Grecian history.

THE SOPHISTS.

In the fifth century there sprang up in Greece a set of teachers who traveled about from city to city, giving instruction (for money) in philosophy and rhetoric; under which heads were included political and moral education. These men were called "Sophists" (a term early applied to wise men, such as the seven sages), and though they did not form a sect or school, they resembled one another in many respects, exerting an important, and, barring their skeptical tendencies, a healthful influence in the formation of character. Among the most eminent of these teachers were Protag'oras of Abde'ra, Gor'gias of Leontini, and Prod'icus of Ce'os. That great philosopher of a later age, Plato, while condemning the superficiality of their philosophy, characterized these men as important and respectable thinkers; but their successors, by their ignorance, brought reproach upon their calling, and, in the time of Socrates, the Sophists—so-called—had lost their influence and had fallen into contempt. "Before Plato had composed his later Dialogues," says MAHAFFY, "they had become too insignificant to merit refutation; and in the following generation they completely disappear as a class." This author thus proceeds to give the causes of their fall:

"It is, of course, to be attributed not only to the opposition of Socrates at Athens, but to the subdivision of the profession of education. Its most popular and prominent branch—that of Rhetoric—was taken up by special men, like the orator An'tiphon, and developed into a strictly defined science. The Philosophy which they had touched without sounding its depths was taken up by the Socratic schools, and made the rule and practice of a life. The Politics which they had taught were found too general; nor were these wandering men, without fixed home, or familiarity with the intricacies of special constitutions, likely to give practical lessons to Greece citizens in the art of state-craft. Thus they disappear almost as rapidly as they rose—a sudden phase of spiritual awakening in Greece, like the Encyclopædists of the French." [Footnote: "History of Classical Greek literature," vol. ii., p. 63.]

SOCRATES.

The greatest teacher of this age was Socrates, who was born near Athens in 469 B.C. His father was a sculptor, and the son for some time practiced the same profession at Athens, meanwhile aspiring toward higher things, and pursuing the study of philosophy under Anaxagoras and others. He served his country in the field in the severe struggle between Sparta and Athens, where he was distinguished for his bravery and endurance; and when upward of sixty years of age he was chosen to represent his district in the Senate of Five Hundred. Here, and under the subsequent tyranny, his integrity remained unshaken; and his boldness in denouncing the cruelties of the Thirty Tyrants nearly cost him his life. As a teacher, Socrates assumed the character of a moral philosopher, and he seized every occasion to communicate moral wisdom to his fellow-citizens. Although often classed with the Sophists, and unjustly selected by Aristophanes as their representative, the whole spirit of his teachings was directly opposed to that class. Says MAHAFFY, "The Sophists were brilliant and superficial, he was homely and thorough; they rested in skepticism, he advanced through it to deeper and sounder faith; they were wandering and irresponsible, he was fixed at Athens, and showed forth by his life the doctrines he preached." GROTE, however, while denying that the Sophists were intellectual and moral corrupters, as generally charged, also denies that the reputation of Socrates properly rests upon his having rescued the Athenian mind from their influences. He admires Socrates for "combining with the qualities of a good man a force of character and an originality of speculation as well as of method, and a power of intellectually working on others, generically different from that of any professional teacher, without parallel either among contemporaries or successors." [Footnote: "History of Greece," Chap. lxviii.]

Socrates taught without fee or reward, and communicated his instructions freely to high and low, rich and poor. His chief method of instruction was derived from the style of Zeno, of the Eleatic school, and consisted of attacking the opinions of his opponents and pulling them to pieces by a series of questions and answers. [Footnote: A fine example of the Socratic mode of disputation may be seen In "Alciphron; or, the Minute Philosopher," by George Berkeley, D.D., Bishop of Cloyne, Ireland. It is a defence of the Christian religion, and an exposé of the weakness of infidelity and skepticism, and is considered one of the most ingenious and excellent performances of the kind in the English tongue.] He made this system "the most powerful instrument of philosophic teaching ever known in the history of the human intellect." The philosopher was an enthusiastic lover of Athens, and he looked upon the whole city as his school. There alone he found instruction and occupation, and through its streets he would wander, standing motionless for hours in deep meditation, or charming all classes and ages by his conversation. Alcibiades declared of him that, "as he talks, the hearts of all who hear leap up, and their tears are poured out." The poet THOMSON, musing over the sages of ancient time, thus describes him:

O'er all shone out the great Athenian sage,
And father of Philosophy!
Tutor of Athens! he, in every street,
Dealt priceless treasure; goodness his delight,
Wisdom his wealth, and glory his reward.
Deep through the human heart, with playful art,
His simple question stole, as into truth
And serious deeds he led the laughing race;
Taught moral life; and what he taught he was.

Of the unjust attack made upon Socrates by the poet Aristophanes we have already spoken. That occurred in 423 B.C., and, as a writer has well said, "evaporated with the laugh"—having nothing to do with the sad fate of the guiltless philosopher twenty-four years after. Soon after the restoration of the democracy in Athens (403 B.C.) Socrates was tried for his life on the absurd charges of impiety and of corrupting the morals of the young. His accusers appear to have been instigated by personal resentment, which he had innocently provoked, and by envy of his many virtues; and the result shows not only the instability but the moral obliquity of the Athenian character. He approached his trial with no special preparation for defence, as he had no expectation of an acquittal; but he maintained a calm, brave, and haughty bearing, and addressed the court in a bold and uncompromising tone, demanding rewards instead of punishment. It was the strong religious persuasion (or belief) of Socrates that he was acting under a divine mission. This consciousness had been the controlling principle of his life; and in the following extracts which we have taken from his Apology, or Defence, in which he explains his conduct, we see plain evidences of this striking characteristic of the great philosopher:

The Defence of Socrates.

[Footnote: From the translation by Professor Jowett, of Oxford University.]

"Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens, if now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfil the philosopher's mission of searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear: that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle because I was afraid of death: then I should be fancying I was wise when I was not wise. For this fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which he in his fear apprehends to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is there not here conceit of knowledge which is a disgraceful sort of ignorance? And this is the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, and in which I might, perhaps, fancy myself wiser than other men—that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know; but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil. And therefore should you say to me, 'Socrates, this time we will not mind An'ytus, and will let you off, but upon one condition, that you are not to inquire and speculate in this way any more, and that if you are caught doing this again you shall die'—if this were the condition on which you let me go, I should reply, 'Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, and exhorting, after my manner, any one whom I meet.' I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue come money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching; and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, my influence is ruinous indeed. But if anyone says that this is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not; but whatever you do, know that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times."

Socrates next refers to the indignation that he may have occasioned because he has not wept, begged, and entreated for his life, and has not brought forward his children and relatives to plead for him, as others would have done on so serious an occasion. He says that he has relatives, and three children; but he declares that not one of them shall appear in court for any such purpose —not from any insolent disposition on his part, but because he believes that such a course would be degrading to the reputation which he enjoys, as well as a disgrace to the state. He then closes his defence as follows:

"But, setting aside the question of dishonor, there seems to be something wrong in petitioning a judge, and thus procuring an acquittal, instead of informing and convincing him. For his duty is not to make a present of justice, but to give judgment; and he has Sworn that he will adjudge according to the law, and not according to his own good pleasure; and neither he nor we should get into the habit of perjuring ourselves—there can be no piety in that. Do not, then, require me to do what I consider dishonorable, and impious, and wrong, especially now, when I am being tried for impiety. For if, O men of Athens, by force of persuasion and entreaty, I could overpower your oaths, then I should be teaching you to believe that there are no gods, and convict myself, in my own defence, of not believing in them. But that is not the case; for I do believe that there are gods, and in a far higher sense than that in which any of my accusers believe in them. And to you and to God I commit my cause, to be determined by you as is best for you and me."

As he had expected, and as the tenor of his speech had assured his friends would be the case, Socrates was found guilty—but by a majority of only five or six in a body of over five hundred. He would make no proposition, as was his right, for a mitigation of punishment; and after sentence of death had been passed upon him he spent the remaining thirty days of his life in impressing on the minds of his friends the most sublime lessons in philosophy and virtue. Many of these lessons have been preserved to us in the works of Plato, in whose Phoe'do, which pictures the last hours of the prison life of Socrates, we find a sublime conversation on the immortality of the soul. The following is an extract from this work:

Socrates' Views of a Future State.

"When the dead arrive at the place to which their demon leads them severally, first of all they are judged, as well those who have lived well and piously as those who have not. And those who appear to have passed a middle kind of life, proceeding to Ach'eron, and embarking in the vessels they have, on these arrive at the lake, and there dwell; and when they are purified, and have suffered punishment for the iniquities they may have committed, they are set free, and each receives the reward of his good deeds according to his deserts; but those who appear to be incurable, through the magnitude of their offences, either from having committed many and great sacrileges, or many unjust and lawless murders, or other similar crimes, these a suitable destiny hurls into Tartarus, whence they never come forth. But those who appear to have been guilty of curable yet great offences, such as those who through anger have committed any violence against father or mother, and have lived the remainder of their life in a state of penitence, or they who have become homicides in a similar manner—these must, of necessity, fall into Tartarus; but after they have fallen, and have been there a year, the wave casts them forth, the homicide into Cocy'tus, [Footnote: Co-cy'tus] but the parricides and matricides into Pyriphleg'ethon; [Footnote: Pyr-i-phlege-thon, "fire-blazing;" one of the rivers of hell] but when, being borne along, they arrive at the Acheru'sian lake, [Footnote: Ach'e-ron. Cocytus signifies the river of wailing; Pyriphlegethon, the river that burns with fire; Acheron, the river of woe; and the Styx, another river of the lower world, the river of hatred. Thus Homer, in describing "Pluto's murky abode," says:

There, into Acheron runs not alone
Dread Pyriphlegethon, but Cocytus loud,
From Styx derived; there also stands a rock,
At whose broad base the roaring rivers meet.
Odyssey. B. X.]

there they cry out to and invoke, some, those whom they slew, others, those whom they injured; and, invoking them, they entreat and implore them to suffer them to go out into the lake and to receive them; and if they persuade them, they go out, and are freed from their sufferings; but if not, they are borne back to Tartarus, and thence again to the rivers, and they do not cease from suffering this until they have persuaded those whom they have injured—for this sentence was imposed on them by the judges. But those who are found to have lived an eminently holy life—these are they who, being freed and set at large from these regions in the earth as from a prison—arrive at the pure abode above, and dwell on the upper parts of the earth. And among these, those who have sufficiently purified themselves by philosophy shall live without bodies throughout all future time, and shall arrive at habitations yet more beautiful than these, which it is neither easy to describe, nor at present is there sufficient time for the purpose.

"For the sake of these things which we have described we should use every endeavor to acquire virtue and wisdom in this life, for the reward is noble and the hope great. To affirm positively, however, that these things are exactly as I have described them, does not become a man of sense; but that either this, or something of the kind, takes place with respect to our souls and their habitations—since our soul is certainly immortal—appears to me most fitting to be believed, and worthy the hazard for one who trusts in its reality; for the hazard is noble, and it is right to allure ourselves with such things, as with enchantments; for which reason I have prolonged my story to such length. On account of these things, then, a man ought to be confident about his soul, who during this life has disregarded all the pleasures and ornaments of the body as foreign from his nature, and who, having thought that they do more harm than good, has zealously applied himself to the acquirement of knowledge, and who, having adorned his soul not with a foreign but with its own proper ornaments—temperance, justice, fortitude, freedom, and truth— thus waits for his passage to Hades as one who is ready to depart whenever destiny shall summon him."

After some farther conversation with his friends respecting the disposition to be made of his body, and having said farewell to his family, Socrates drank the fatal hemlock with as much composure as if it had been the last draught at a cheerful banquet, and quietly laid himself down and died. "Thus perished," says DR. SMITH, "the greatest and most original of Grecian philosophers, whose uninspired wisdom made the nearest approach to the divine morality of the Gospel." As observed by PROFESSOR TYLER of Amherst College, "The consciousness of a divine mission was the leading trait in his character and the main secret of his power. This directed his conversations, shaped his philosophy, imbued his very person, and controlled his life. This was the power that sustained him in view of approaching death, inspired him with more that human fortitude in his last days, and invested his dying words with a moral grandeur that 'has less of earth in it than heaven.'" [Footnote: Preface to "Plato's Apology and Crito.">[ There was a more special and personal influence, however, to which Socrates deemed himself subject through life, and which probably moved him to view death with such calmness.

With all his practical wisdom, the great philosopher was not free from the control of superstitious fancies. He not only always gave careful heed to divinations, dreams, and oracular intimations, but he believed that he was warned and restrained, from childhood, by a familiar spirit, or demon, which he was accustomed to speak of familiarly and to obey implicitly. A writer, in alluding to this subject, says: "There is no more curious chapter in Grecian biography than the story of Socrates and his familiar demon, which, sometimes unseen, and at other times, as he asserted, assuming human shape, acted as his mentor; which preserved his life after the disastrous battle of De'lium, by pointing out to him the only secure line of retreat, while the lives of his friends, who disregarded his entreaties to accompany him, were sacrificed; and which, again, when the crisis of his fate approached, twice dissuaded him from defending himself before his accusers, and in the end encouraged him to quaff the poisoned cup presented to his lips by an ungrateful people."