Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

To the followers of Plato in the Academy, of Aristotle in the Lyceum, the Cynics of the Cynosargus, and Stoics of the Portico, Epicurus came in the decrepid effeminacy of the age at the moment of its lowest degradation, and, amid the parterres of prettiness which, with the pittance of eighty minæ, he purchased for the purpose, established the so-called philosophy of the Garden. Such was the last expression of that Ionian school which shared somewhat of the Hindoo national character, wherein it originated, and so far resembled a hot-house seed. Opening with gorgeous colors and rich perfume, it grew rapidly, and produced precocious and abundant fruit. But the more western growth was like the oak, hardened by wind and weather, striking its roots into solid earth, and stretching its branches in free air toward both sun and stars. In the Ionic school the human soul performed but a feeble part. The Italic school, on the contrary, was mathematic and astronomic, and at the same time idealistic; it was at once the brain and heart of Grecian progress and power. The former regarded the relations of phenomena as simple modifications of the same, and founded the abstract upon the concrete; whereas, the latter neglected the phenomena themselves for their relations, founding thus the concrete upon the abstract. To the Ionic school the centre of the world's system is the earth; but the centre of the universal system, according to conscious reason in the Italic school, is the sun. Ten fundamental numbers therein formed the decadal astronomy, the harmonious kosmos, whose laws of movement around the great central luminary produced the sweet music of the spheres.

Empedocles, of Agrigentum, B.C. 455, presents the most western phase of Greek character, and the one which in the clearest manner anticipated the age to come. He noted the great changes which transpired in society, and believed he saw their counterpart in the convulsions going on within and upon the earth. The war of disorganized humanity, passions against nature, and the conflict of enraged elements among themselves, were closely considered, but doubtless with a confusion of physics and ethics in his mind. Love, hatred, friendship, treason, were all recognized mixed up in the fearful warfare of earth, air, fire, and water. Great nature was no imaginary battle-field to the mind of Empedocles; the hosts which Homer had portrayed fighting for Greeks and Trojans, were still in deadly struggle, and his vivid speculations soon after became actual history. Cotemporaries called him the enchanter; because, as a zealous student of the outer world, he could not disengage himself from the perplexities which he found within his own constitution, but followed out with fervor the greatest question of our being. He not only won at the chariot race, as his father did before him, and fought for the liberties of his native Agrigentum, that last hold of freedom in the West, but as poet, as well as philosopher, he forms a curious link between Homer, Pindar, and his Roman admirer, Lucretius.

As often as the historian and philosopher speak of heroic virtues, they will mention Lycurgus, and the influence of his legislation. But when they glance at the higher objects man was made to attain, the harmonious development and adornment of all the powers in his possession, they must look to the laws of a nobler culture in Attic climes. It was there only, that all ennobling influences were blended and subordinated to the highest use by the best minds. Plato frequented the studios of artists, to acquire correct ideas of beauty; and Aristotle, in his Politics, says, that "all were taught literature, gymnastics, and music; and many also, the art of design, as being useful and abundantly available for the purposes of life." But not one beautiful flower of intellect or art sprang in Laconian soil, to acquire thereon either healthful vigor or attractive growth. No gladdening voice of the poet has thence descended, nor were the obscurities of nature, and the depths of immortal consciousness either investigated or enlightened by any of her sons.

Thus from the sublime terrace of the Acropolis, have we cast another glance over that glorious land where Homer breathed forth those songs for six and twenty centuries unexcelled; where Phidias, like his own Jupiter, sat serene on the loftiest throne of art; where Pericles ruled with sovereign grandeur in the first of cities, not by mercenary arms, but by the magic influence of mind; where Socrates first scanned the human heart, and learned to analyze its deep and mighty workings; and whence the royal pupil of Aristotle, the last and greatest of universal victors, went forth on the mission of conquest, not designedly to plunder and destroy, but to spread the literature, arts, science, philosophy, and religion of immortal Greece throughout the civilized world.

CHAPTER V.

RELIGION.

The East is the native land of religion, whence a perpetual exodus has continually advanced toward the West. As the sun in the beginning, so truth and life first shone from the orient; and the march of civilization has ever since been in the direction of that great orb.

The Assyrians were not monotheistic, but they were far from being so polytheistic as the Egyptians, who were imbued with an African fetichism such as never debased the Asiatic race. Hence, their symbolism was much simpler and less repulsive than that of the Egyptians. The ancient Persians were less superstitious than the Assyrians, and presented their paraphrase of Te Deum first among intellectual nations without temples. They have left nothing that pertains to sacred art, not even tombs. With them God was omnipresent, fire his symbol, the firmament his throne, the sun and stars his representatives, the elements his ministers, and the most acceptable worship a holy life. But a belief in the existence and exercise of supernatural powers is older than the magism or magic, whose origin belongs to that indefinite antiquity which witnessed the feuds of Ninus and Zoroaster, when the gods instructed the Indian devotee how to subordinate them to his purposes, or when Odin discovered the Runes, which could chain the elements and awake the dead. Earlier than Assyrian Chaldeans, Israelitish Levites, or Median and Persian Magi, religious sentiments were native to man, and magician and priest were synonymous terms. Then was the arbiter of weal and woe, of blessings and curses, invested with the awful privilege of invoking the gods and performing religious services. Aided by popular credulity, the inspired seer could move mountains, stir up Leviathan, govern disease, or, like Balaam, destroy foes by imprecations.

It would be a hopeless task to trace with accuracy the theology of the earliest periods, buried as it is under a mass of allegory and fable which can not now be removed. Yet there are indications of a purer morality, and a more worthy faith, than is portrayed in the anthropomorphic mythology of the Hesiodic and Homeric poems. Inachus is supposed to have migrated from the Asian shore about the same time the Israelites entered Egypt. Then, the worship prevalent among the Nomadic tribes of Asia, according to Job, was that of one almighty Creator, typified by, and already half confounded with light, either the sun or other celestial bodies. Plato speaks vaguely of the divine unity, and Aristotle more distinctly avers, that "it was an ancient saying received by all from their ancestors, that all things exist by and through the power of God, who being one, was known by many names according to his modes of manifestation."

In the opening chapter of this work, allusion was made to the Kylas mountain in Asia, from the lofty terraces of which the ancestors of the Greeks descended, bringing with them to Hellas a memento of their origin in the word koilon, which they used to designate heaven, and illustrating their hereditary theology by going for congenial worship to the loftiest shrines. The best authority tells us that they were exceedingly religious, a fact which even their grossest errors confirm. Endowed with the most acute and active sensibilities, the Greek sought to satisfy the ardent aspirations of his devout spirit; he even yearned to be himself enrolled among the deified heroes whom his valor or imagination had exalted to the dazzling halls of Olympus. This general impulse may be illustrated by particular examples, as in the subtle Themistocles and majestic Pericles, who placidly hailed in worship traditions discarded by the historic mind as transparent fictions. So powerful and all pervading was the religiousness of the cultivated Greeks, that the same judgment which so profoundly harmonized with the severe grandeur of the Olympian Jove, enthroned by Phidias amid the marshaled columns of the national temple, bowed to the legend of Aphrodite, the foam-born queen of Love. Heroism and piety were perpetually invigorated at costly fanes; and how deeply the spirit of worship and belief in retribution, were impressed upon the most powerful intellect, is shown by the awful apostrophe of Demosthenes to the heroes who fell at Marathon, and the breathless attention which then absorbed the very soul of the Athenian.