Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

Socrates was the first to turn speculation from physical nature to man; and his celebrated "demon" announced the birth of conscience into the Grecian world. It was a divine teacher ever present, taking cognizance of the most secret movements of mind and will, and who reproved, restrained, warned him as to all things everywhere. So far from wondering at his martyrdom, in view of the purity and boldness of his teaching, Mr. Grote very reasonably wonders how such a man should have been allowed to go on teaching so long. No state, he adds, ever showed so much tolerance for differences of opinion as Athens. According to his various writings, we infer that the god of Plato was not an idea simply, but a real being, endowed with supreme intelligence, movement, and life. He was beauty without mixture, and went out of himself to produce man and the world by the effusion of his own goodness. This great pupil of Socratic wisdom was profoundly imbued with that religious sentiment which is the lofty distinction of humanity, and which neither superstition can utterly debase, nor worldliness extinguish. But a feeling alone, however refined, can never constitute safety in religion. The Republic terminates with a noble discussion on immortality, and if it has been less popular than the Phœdo, it is because the scenery of it is less startling; but for intrinsic worth, it is doubtless entitled to the greatest consideration.

Gross polytheism was the creed of the multitude, but this was much refined by the moralists. The graces and perfections of the great intelligences that rule the world, under the controlling wisdom and care of the one omnipotent, were so described in the dialogues of Plato, and by Pythagoreans, as to furnish not only models of perfect beauty to art, but also the most attractive traits of person and character to the various orders of the Grecian hierarchy.

The Greeks felt that the origin of art was divine, since it was the offspring of religion. The first rhythmical expression was a hymn, and the first creations of plastic genius were dedicated to the worship of the Godhead. Jupiter, whose awful nod shook the poles, was yet benignant in his majesty, and could smile with bewitching fascination on his daughter Venus. Beauty was universally expressed, whether in the gorgeous sanctuary of their religious worship, or the simplest implement of ordinary use; the heart-rending anguish of the priest Laocoon and his sons, or in the sculptured deity of day himself. In the opinion of Visconti, the Apollo Belvidere is the Deliverer from Evil as well as God of Light, and was made by Calamis, to be set up at Athens in memory of a plague which had desolated that city. In life, the consecrated champion was greeted with the praises of appreciative countrymen, and divine honors followed his decease.

The idea of divine omniscience seems to have profoundly actuated the Greeks in the execution of all their great religious works. It gave perfection to every part of their edifices, essential and ornamental, and impressed upon each part alike a feeling purely devotional. What escaped the human eye, the Deity beheld, and therefore every mass and molding, frieze and pediment, bas-relief and statue, should be rendered equally worthy of that immortal Being to whom the edifice was consecrated. As fine a finish was bestowed upon the hidden portions as upon the exposed, as is proved by the fragmentary masterpieces we still possess, the most elaborated features of which were never seen from below when in their original positions. The material which Athens employed to eternize her mental conceptions was happily adapted in texture and tone to the end desired. On one side lay the quarries of sparkling Phenolic and veined Carystian, and, on the other side, the pearl-like beauty of Megarean; all of which, impregnated by the creative genius of the poets, and obedient to the talismanic touch of the sculptors, came forth from the marble tomb of Attica a new-born progeny stamped with all the lineaments of their noble parent. Thus, as the thought of Homer coalesced with the executive might of Phidias and his associates, the awful gods of his country spread an invincible palladium over the patriotic citizen, and rendered their terror ever present to the eyes of treachery and guilt. If the Sphinx, the Centaur, and Satyr were sometimes demanded by the legendary element of the ancestral East yet lingering in the national faith, the effort to subjugate the grotesque to the laws of beauty was no less successful than it was difficult, and twenty centuries have admired the result. The corporate religious crafts of India and Egypt were abandoned, but the divinest element therein was still preserved, and made to cast a hallowed spell over country and home, making each father the high priest of his domestic temple, and planting household gods round every hearth. An all-pervading religious influence was stamped on every rank of character, every region of nature, every type of art, and every department of enterprise. It exalted the dauntless courage of Miltiades, and added energy to the lofty daring of Themistocles, as they were conscious that the gods from Olympus gazed upon them in the fight, and were their guardians, as of old they had been to their ancestors on the plains of Troy.

With a very few exceptional cases, the art of the Greeks is never voluptuous, even in its earthly matter and shape. Under the pious feelings of the maker, as he breathed into it the soul of a lofty enthusiasm, dead material shaped itself into a nature as elevated as the source from which its strength was derived. And this moral dignity and grace which were born from the artist in his process of creation, communicated themselves in turn to the beholder; and the consecrated feeling in which the godlike conception was developed, generated an atmosphere of sanctity around it, as manifested divinity is supposed to drive demons away. It was fitting that in the groves of Delphi, Lycurgus should conceive the idea of his laws, and from the mouth of Apollo receive their ratification. All the great and wise legislators of antiquity cultivated an intercourse with the gods, and continued to covet the privilege of their society. The excellence of great works of religious art consists in the principle, that the purity and nobleness with which they were imbued pass into their admirers; and thus the serene repose and celestial fervor in which they are conceived are perpetually reproduced so long as the original qualities endure. The earliest poetry was religious, and its spirit migrated through succeeding generations; and, even down to the most degenerate age, perpetuated a delicate moral sense in the judgment, and mostly, also, in the works of the Greek nation. The refined taste, for which they have always been extolled, was produced entirely by this. Even the wit-intoxicated muse of Aristophanes perpetually maintains a chaste demeanor, and shows on her earnest countenance the moral meaning of her gayety.

Although the system of Athenian life was deformed by many imperfections, yet never at an earlier period had so much energy, virtue, and beauty, been developed; never was blind force and obdurate will so disciplined and ennobled, as during the century which preceded the death of Socrates. If the early Pythian and Dodonean oracles tended to consolidate national union, the improved wisdom of later philosophers did much to cultivate the citizens. Many a Grecian, engarlanded with laurel, then adorned the various walks of secular and moral life. It is probable that some were self-deceived, when no unworthy fraud was intended. Vividly conscious of a calling to some great vocation, and seeking, in the depths of their own imperfect religiousness, for the means of fulfilling it, they felt what seemed to be veritable inspiration, and accepted as the voices of supernatural beings what was in fact only the promptings of their own minds. To this influence, in great part, must be accredited much of the sublimity of Homer, patriotism of Tyrtæus, enthusiasm of Pindar, terror of Æschylus, and tenderness of Sophocles. The presence of divinity was indeed so palpable and enduring, that many nations, invulnerable to Grecian arms, received her beautiful system of mythology, and crowded her temples with eagerness to listen to her sacred instruction. Lightning strikes only kindred matter, which it seeks and salutes in the vividness of its own flash; and thus do great and effulgent examples glow into genial hearts, strengthen their illuminating power as they extend, and burn with greater splendor the wider they are diffused.

The more reflecting among the ancients seem to have keenly felt that earth and time are not ample enough to admit the full unfolding of the human soul. In man, the microcosm, they recognized the universe and its Maker, but it was by a very imperfect vision. They needed a clearer light, even that of the true God, to fill the profundity within them, and to reveal eternity unto them, that they might in reality know the vastness of their spiritual being. The vital seeds which the Almighty cast with a bountiful hand into the new-made earth, and which have not yet produced all their fruits, in Attica sprang up with a wonderful profusion, but the harvest was that of beauty, and not holiness. The dew of Hermon, the eternal sunshine of Zion, the transforming and tempering breath of Jehovah, are ever requisite to develop the higher capabilities of the soul, and elicit sanctified fruit from those mighty powers which, for bliss or bane, germinate in every mortal breast, and can never die. The poetical idolatry of Greece is often invested with a magical beauty to classical enthusiasts; but the thoughtful reader of history will often stumble upon most disenchanting facts, such as, for instance, that Themistocles, the deliverer of his country, offered up three youths, to propitiate the favor of his gods. A supreme Being was nominally recognized; and, though this doctrine was practically destroyed by the admission of subordinate deities to share in the offices of praise and prayer, still it was better than absolute atheism. The pillar of cloud by day, and of fire by night, clearly or dimly seen, has never ceased to lead the vanguard of advancing humanity. It was something that the voice of praise, humiliation, and prayer, was raised to some object in public worship, and thus the feelings of religion kept alive in aspiring souls. It is to be deplored that the most cultivated of ancient nations did not possess and appreciate purer religious light; and most of all is it a grief and a warning that, if in the time of Homer, social morality was bad, in the age of Pericles it was worse. When Athenian life had received the most exquisite polish, and human intellect the richest discipline, then it was that public fanes were most abandoned, and private virtue was most debased.

Nature is most perfect in her forms the higher she ascends; and man, standing at the apex of her wonders, is appointed to partake of the divine nature, through the homogeneous medium who bends from a celestial height for his relief; when so reached and renovated, the godlike part of the redeemed is molded to a whole of the purest, holiest, and, therefore, most enchanting harmony. The Greeks had their idealization of beneficence and atonement set forth in Hercules and Prometheus. The genealogy of the first was connected with Egypt and Persia. He was lineally descended from Perseus, whose mortal mother claimed connection with an Egyptian emigrant. He was the great epic subject of the poets before Homer, the model chief of those who fought at Thebes or Troy, and, at a later period, was the allegory of human effort ascending through rugged valor to the highest virtue. He was the ideal perfection of the ordinary life of the Greeks, as the higher exaggeration of heroes, invested with immortality, became gods. Every pagan nation has had such a mythical being, whose strength or weakness, victories or defeats, measurably describe the career of the sun through the seasons. A Scythian, an Etruscan, and a Lydian Hercules existed, whose legends all became tributary to those of the Greek hero. His name is supposed to mean rover and perambulator of earth, as well as hyperion of the sky, and he was the patronizing model of those famous navigators who spread his altars from coast to coast through the Mediterranean, to the extreme West, where Arkaleus built the city of Gades (Cadiz), on which perpetual fire burned at his shrine. So deep and pervading were religious sentiments in that wonderful people at the best epoch, that not only in lowland towns, and on metropolitan eminences, were temples erected to the national deities, but also on lofty promontories; near the sea, beneficent zeal provided fanes exclusively for the casual worship of the passing mariner. The notion of a suffering deity, of one who, tortured, blinded, or imprisoned, might represent the earthly speculations of his worshipers, and, as a penitent, their religious emotions, was widely spread, from India westward, and by the Greeks was fixed forever in Prometheus, the ever dying and yet deathless Titan. Ancient sages taught that the discord of stormy elements would be dissolved and reduced to peace by the power of love, and the magic of beauty in the renovated soul would eventually curb its passions with a gentle rein; but how the infinite should coalesce with the finite, God with man, and thus transform the soul by planting therein the germ of almighty blessedness, they never by uninspired wisdom could comprehend. A mediator of unearthly excellence was indeed requisite; one who would realize in his person the loftiest ideas of beauty and sublimity, whose wisdom would be competent to elevate beyond mere morality, and whose grace would forever unfold the revelation of heavenly life. Not only, like the son of Tydeus, ought that luminary to come forth, with glory blazing round it, and kindling admiration, as well as emulous delight, in the outward world, but his beauty must specially pervade within, and transfigure every secret impulse with the splendors of his imparted Godhead.

Such a divine need was generally felt, and this was the cause of that high estimation in the common mind which the devout moralists enjoyed. Homer inculcated the idea that life is a contest; and Plato directed his hearers to the search after unity as the source of truth and beauty; Æschylus to power; Euripides to the law of expiation. The contempt of life and pleasure, the superiority of the intellectual over the physical nature, are expressed by these and kindred writers in great thoughts which are almost identical with the light of faith. Heraclitus taught Hesiod, Pythagoras, Zenophanes, and Hecateus, that the sole wisdom consists in knowing the will according to which all things in the world are governed. Marsilius Ficinus says that Socrates was raised up by heaven to pacify minds; and St. John Chrysostom proposes him as an example of Christian poverty and monastic profession. St. Augustine entertained equal admiration for one who preferred eternal to temporal things, fearing to act unjustly more than death, and for conscience sake was ready to undergo labor, penury, insult, and death. In the Enthypro of Platonician wisdom, Socrates disengages ideas from words; in the Apology, he shows that the wisest are the most humble, and that we must bear our witness to truth, even at the risk of our lives; in the Laws, that the soul has need of a celestial light to be able to see; in the Crito, that the least duty is to be preferred to the greatest advantage; in the Phædo, that life should be employed in elevating the soul—that there is a future existence—and that the soul should be disengaged from the body; in the Theætetus, that, the germ of truth resides in all men, but that no individual has the full measure of truth; in the Gorgias, that it is better to suffer than to commit injustice; that it is useful to the soul to be chastised, and that he who suffers punishment is delivered from the evil of his soul; in the Euthydemus, that the science of the Sophists is empty and vain; in the second Alcibiades, that it is better to be ignorant than to have false knowledge; in the Theages, that the only true wisdom is love; in the Phædrus, that it is love, or, as Socrates defines it, the desire of something that is wanting, which gives wings to the soul, and enables it to mount to heaven; in the Meno, that virtue is the gift of God, not of nature, but an infusion by a divine influence; in the Banquet, that love leads us to contemplate the supreme beauty, the universal type, the Creator, from which vision we derive virtue and immortality. In view of such focal beamings at the heart of pagan night, we need not wonder that Thomas of Villanova should exclaim with enthusiasm, "Let philosophers know, that faith is not without wisdom; the evangelist does not Platonize, but Plato evangelized."

The mythical beings of Grecian theology display in their beautiful but ineffectual imagery the first efforts of cultivated minds to communicate with nature and her God. They resemble the flowers which fancy strewed before the youthful steps of Psyche when she first set out in pursuit of the immortal object of her love. The parable of the Syrens teems with valuable moral instruction. They dwelt in fair and lovely islands, full of beauty, and through whose leafy alcoves moved a perpetual loveliness. On the tops of tall rocks sat the enchantresses, pouring their tender and ravishing music on the ears of passing mortals, till they turned their prows thitherward, and rushed into the destruction to which the deceitful song was a fatal prelude. Two by their wisdom and piety escaped. Ulysses caused his arms to be bound to the mast, and the ears of his company to be filled with wax, with special orders to his mariners that they should not loose him even though he desired it. But Orpheus, disdaining to be so bound, with sweet melody went by, singing praises to the gods, thus outsounding the melody of the Syrens, and so escaped.