History of Human Society

by Frank W. Blackmar

The family was closely organized in Greece. Monogamic marriage and the exclusive home life prevailed at an early time. The patriarchal family, in which the oldest male member was chief and ruler, was the unit of society. Within this group were the house families, formed whenever a separate marriage took place and a separate altar was erected. The house religion was one of the characteristic features of Greek life. Each family had its own household gods, its own worship, its private shrine. This tended to unify the family and promote a sacred family life. A special form of ancestral worship, from the early Aryan house-spirit worship, prevailed to a certain extent. The worship of the family expanded with the expansion of social life. Thus the gens, and the tribe, and the city when founded, had each its separate worship. Religion formed a strong cement to bind the different social units of a tribe together. The worship of the Greeks was associated with the common meal and the pouring of libations to the gods.

As religion became more general, it united to make a more common social practice, and in the later period of Greek life was made the basis of the games and general social gatherings. Religion brought the Greeks together in a social way, and finally led to the mutual advantage of members of society. Later, mutual advantage superseded religion in its practice. The Greeks, at an early period, attempted to explain the origin of the earth and unknown phenomena by referring it to the supernatural powers. Every island had its myth, every phenomenon its god, and every mountain was the residence of some deity. They sought to find out the causes of the creation of the universe, and developed a theogony. There was the origin of the Greeks to be accounted for, and then the origin of the earth, and the relation of man to the deities. Everything must be explained, but as the imagination was especially strong, it was easier to create a god as a first cause than to ascertain the development of the earth by scientific study.

Influence of Old Greek Life.—In all of the traditions and writings descriptive of the old Greek social life, with the exception of the Works and Days of Hesiod, the aristocratic class appears uppermost. Hesiod "pictures a hopeless and miserable existence, in which care and the despair of better things tended to make men hard and selfish and to blot out those fairer features which cannot be denied to the courts and palaces of the Iliad and Odyssey." It appears that the foundation of aristocracy—living in comparative luxury, in devotion to art and the culture of life—was early laid by the side of the foundation of poverty and wretchedness of the great mass of the people. While, then, the Greeks derived from their ancestry the beautiful pictures of heroic Greece, they inherited the evils of imperfect social conditions. As we pass to the historical period of Greece, these different phases of life appear and reappear in changeable forms. If to the nobleman life was full of inspiration; if poetry, religion, art, and politics gave him lofty thoughts and noble aspirations; to the peasant and the slave, life was full of misery and degradation. If one picture is to be drawn in glowing colors, let not the other be omitted.

The freedom from great centralized government, the development of the individual life, the influences of the early ideas of art and life, and the religious conceptions, were of great importance in shaping the Greek philosophy and the Greek national character. They had a tendency to develop men who could think and act. It is not surprising, therefore, that the first real historical period was characterized by struggles of citizens within the town for supremacy. Fierce quarrels between the upper and the lower classes prevailed everywhere, and resulted in developing an intense hatred of the former for the latter. This hatred and selfishness became the uppermost causes of action in the development of Greek social polity. Strife led to compromise, and this in turn to the recognition of the rights and privileges of different classes.

SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY

1. The Aegean culture.

2. The relation of Greek to Egyptian culture.

3. What were the great Greek masterpieces of (a) Literature, (b) Sculpture, (c) Architecture, (d) Art, (e) Philosophy?

4. Compare Greek democracy with American democracy.

5. What historical significance have Thermopylae, Marathon, Alexandria, Crete, and Delphi?