The most influential teachers among the Greeks declared the inutility of profuse legislation, and taught that "the halls should not be filled with legal tablets, but the soul with the image of righteousness." They sought less to guard the citizen by force and fear than to fortify him with a sense of his duty and its dignity. Parental authority was sustained by legislative sanction, as well as by popular customs, and even up to the first steps of public life was constantly guarded by the elders; but the principal intent was ever to kindle filial esteem into the potency of living law, to illuminate progressive youth in the path of virtue and of fame. Sound morals were recognized as the only sure foundation of republican freedom, and the general watchfulness over this constituted the spirit of ancient religion, and the origin of free states. To such an extent did parental influence and pious example, rather than arbitrary statutes and severe punishments, prevail at Athens, that the youth generally were moral and temperate; despite their national inflammability, the most authentic records affirm, that both in domestic and public life they remained sober and moral, until broken down by the interference of hostile power. Following the defeat of Cheronea, the change in the Greek character was rapid. The guiding stars of literature and art were lost in clouds; and morals, which had attained a splendid maturity, lost both strength and hue.
Sacred ceremonies at Athens were the most luminous that prevailed in Greece, and were most characteristic of the city of intelligence. In the great Panathenean rites, there was carried in solemn procession to the Acropolis a symbolical vessel covered with a vail upon which were figured the triumph of Pallas over the Titans, children of earth who undertook to scale Olympus and dethrone Jove. The conflict between physical and moral force was therein represented, that triumph above mere natural religion which exists in mental supremacy and the civilization of law. Moreover, Athenian coins preserve to us allusions to impressive rites which were performed three times a year in honor of Vulcan and Prometheus. The votaries assembled at night, and at the altar of the deity, upon which a fire continually burned, at a given signal lighted a torch and ran with the blazing symbol to the city's outer bound. If the lights of some became extinguished, the more fortunate still pursued with greater zeal, and he was most honored who first reached the goal with his torch a-light. But the religion of Greece was not characterized by ritual splendor only; on the contrary, their public worship was marked by the simplicity of devout fervor, as well as by the chasteness of fine taste and that unadorned solemnity which had been inherited from the patriarchal ages. They were much less inclined to pomp and finery connected with their devotion, than are the moderns. Rude emblems were sometimes borne at sacred solemnities, but they were in the hands of honorable women, and all offense to religious feeling was arrested in their being first hallowed by the dignity of the festival.
It was a doctrine of immemorial antiquity, that death is far better than life; that the worst mortality belongs to those who are immersed in the Lethe passions and fascinations of earth, and that the true life begins only when the soul is emancipated for its return. All initiation was but introductory to the great change at death. Many regarded water as the source and purifier of all things—efficacious to renew both body and mind, as the virginity of Juno was restored when she bathed in the fountain Parthenion. Baptism, anointing, embalming, burying, or burning, were preparatory symbols, like the initiation of Hercules before descending to the shades, pointing out the moral change which should precede the renewal of existence. The funeral ceremonies of the Greeks were in harmony with that feeling which through all antiquity paid marked respect to the dead, whose eyes were closed by relatives most nearly allied. The funeral robe was often woven by the prospective piety of filial hands, as the web of Penelope was destined to shroud her husband's father. The body, washed, anointed, and swathed, was placed with its feet toward the door, and as the train of mourners went forth, women and bards raised a funeral chant, interrupted by nearest kindred, who eulogized the departed, and bewailed their own loss. Reaching the pyre of wood, the corpse was burned and the ashes collected in a golden vase. While the body lay in state, the chief mourners supported the head. Dark garments, and long abstinence from convivial gatherings, were the outward signs of sorrow. The excessive grief of Achilles showed itself by his throwing dust on his head; torn habiliments and lacerated cheeks were the offerings made to Agamemnon; and a single lock of hair was the touching tribute to his memory by the filial affection of Orestes. The lifeless form was covered and crowned with flowers, a piece of money placed in its mouth, as a fee to Charon for being ferried over the Styx, and a cake of honeyed flour to appease Cerberus. Bust, statue, and mausoleum, grassy mound, inscribed marble, and monumental brass, attested the universal desire of sepulchral honors. The immortality of affectionate remembrances and of public renown was a profound aspiration in their breasts. If the dead were ever insulted, it was the rare instance of momentary rage toward a stubborn foe, and soon gave place to worthier emotions. Achilles dragged behind his chariot the corpse of Hector thrice round the tomb of his beloved Patroclus; but, after the first burst of passion, he ordered his own slaves to wash and anoint the mutilated remains, himself assisting to raise them to a litter, swathed in costly garments, that the eye of a broken-hearted father might bear the sight.
The statesmen of Greece, superior as they were in universality of accomplishment, were incomplete personages compared with the pure theocratic natures of antiquity, of whom Moses is the most familiar and accurate type. Many of them were not only priest and magistrate, but also philosopher, artist, engineer, and physician; such a combination for intensity, regularity, and permanence of human power, never was found elsewhere. Pericles, through the whole tenor of his administration, seemed to have had the permanent welfare of his fellow-countrymen at heart, and is said to have boasted, with the benevolence of a true patriot, that he never caused a citizen to put on mourning.
The Greek was by no means insensible to high destinies, as he majestically assumed the moral dominion on earth to which he was born; but he formed no idea of future happiness, nor of intellectual dignity vaster than his own. He girded himself for the fearful contest which was his inheritance, bravely struggling against the terrible powers of destiny and the certainty of death. Amazed at his temerity, the sun started back in his course; opposing deities, wounded by his spear, fled howling to Olympus; and the dread abodes of Tartarus yielded up the departed to his triumphant call. Concentrating in the present the intensity of immortal aspirations, he sought to link them forever to the perishable body. Earthly as was his spirit, he yet supremely coveted eternal life, and labored through transcendent genius and fortitude to unite himself immediately with the gods, and ultimately soar amid the splendid hierarchy of the upper skies.
The worship of Greece was the Beautiful, and Athens was its most magnificent Shrine. One of her latest and fairest altars was dedicated to the Unknown God. Would that the plinth of artistic beauty had also been the memento of spiritual prayer. Alas! that after all the fine imaginings and glorious achievements of the wondrous Greeks, we must still feel that their loftiest conceptions of divine worship were really as void of true consolation as the empty urn which Electra washed with her tears.
AUGUSTUS;
OR,
THE AGE OF MARTIAL FORCE.