LECTURE VIII.
Variety of Grecian life and intellect.—State of education and of the fine arts among the Greeks.—The origin of their philosophy and natural science.—Their political degeneracy.
It would be difficult to point out a more striking difference, a more decided opposition in the whole circle of the intellectual and moral character and habits of nations, as far at least as the sphere of known history extends, than that which exists between the seclusive and monotonous character of Asiatic intellect—the generally unchangeable uniformity of oriental manners and oriental society, and the manifold activity—the varied life of the Greeks, in the first flourishing ages of their history. This amazing diversity in the moral and intellectual habits of the Greeks appears not only in their legislation, their forms of government, their manners, occupations, and usages of life, but in their various and widely dispersed settlements and colonies, in their descent, which was composed of so many heterogeneous elements, in the first seeds of their civilization—as well as their distribution into hostile tribes and great and petty states, and even in their traditions, their history, and the arts and forms of art to which those gave rise—finally in a science, engaged in incessant strife, and marching from system to system, amid the noise and tumult of opposition. In Asia, even in those countries such as India, where the poetry, the views of life, and the systems of philosophy were extremely various, and bore in this respect an external resemblance to those of Greece; where even the country in ancient times was never permanently united into one compact empire; yet the whole way of thinking, the prevalent feeling was entirely monarchical, proceeding from, and returning again to, unchangeable unity. On the other hand, in Greece, science, like life itself, was thoroughly republican—and if we meet with particular thinkers, who leaned to this Asiatic doctrine of unity, we must regard this as only an exception—a system adopted from a love of change, or out of a spirit of opposition to the vulgar and generally received opinion that all in nature and the world, as well as in man, was in a state of perpetual movement, constant change, and freedom of life. Even the fabulous world of Grecian divinities, as it has been painted by their poets, has a republican cast; for there every thing is in a state of change, of successive renovation, and of mutual collision in the war of Nature's elements, in the hostility of old and new deities of the superior and inferior Gods—of giants and of heroes—presenting, as it does, a state of poetical anarchy. Hence, even the historical traditions of the Greeks, and the first accounts of their early seats, settlements, and the migrations of their different races, present to the eye of the historical enquirer a dense forest of truth and fiction, of fanciful conjecture, absolute fable, and ancient and venerable knowledge—a labyrinth of poetry and of history, in whose various and intricate mazes it is often difficult for the critic to find the true outlet, and to hold fast by the guiding clue of Ariadne, when he wishes to adopt a lucid arrangement, and assign to each part its due place in the system of the whole. The Greek tribes and nations inhabited not only the proper Greece, the Peninsula Peloponnesian, the contiguous islands, the Southern plains of the Continent (on whose Northern frontiers it is often difficult to draw the line of demarcation between the tribes of Greek and foreign extraction); and also the Western coasts of Asia Minor; but they had founded a number of small states and planted many flourishing colonies in the remotest corners of the Euxine, in the Lower Egypt, where, long prior to the Persian wars, many Greek settlements existed—along the Northern shore of Africa, where the flourishing Cyrene was situated, on the Southern coasts of Spain and Gaul, in Sicily, and throughout the whole of Southern Italy. Their navigation extended even to the Baltic, as the voyage of Pytheas evinces; and, though they did not circumnavigate Africa,—a thing which it is still doubtful whether the Phœnicians accomplished,—they rather surpassed than yielded to the latter nation in the activity of their trade, and the wealth and extent of their Colonies. The stupendous monuments and edifices of the Egyptians are indeed of more colossal dimensions; yet the works of Grecian sculpture and architecture, while some of them are on a very large scale, are incomparably more various, more rich in ornament, more animated, and beautiful, than those of Egypt. The Greeks were not a mere sea-faring and commercial people, like the Phœnicians; nor did they compete with the Egyptians in those proud monuments of architecture whose erection required such thousands of human hands; but they were from their earliest period a martial people, well trained to war. Independently of every feeling of patriotic enthusiasm and national defence, they looked on war as a trade and a living, and they loved it accordingly. This is proved by the fact that, in the age preceding the Persian conquest, and long before the Persians waged war with Greece, the Kings of Egypt had not only Greek squadrons in their service, but that the whole Egyptian army was for the most part composed of Grecian mercenaries. Such, too, was the case in Carthage, and, at a later period, in Persia, where whole legions and armies of Greeks were engaged in the service of the great king. This old custom among the Greeks of enlisting in the military service of foreign states, may have been indeed an excellent preparation for their great national wars, though in these the first great exploits were achieved by small companies of troops from Athens, Sparta, and other free states, as well as by a select body of free citizens. But this custom could have had no very favourable influence on national opinions and feelings, and the mutual relations of the Greek tribes and states.
The Republican form of government mostly prevailed in the various Greek settlements and Colonies, established round the shores of the Mediterranean; for it is to this species of government that maritime nations, commercial cities, and petty states almost always incline, as long as their territories remain circumscribed. Yet in these states, we find a great variety of political constitutions; for along with that multitude of small commercial Republics, there were many, like Sparta and others, that depended exclusively, or for the most part, on agriculture and the riches of the soil. In these, the hereditary nobility, the proprietors of the soil, formed the principal class; for in general the Greeks attached a very high importance to the noble races and princely families that deduced their descent from the old heroic times. The original constitution of many, of almost the greater part of these small Greek Republics, was a tolerably mild aristocracy, headed by an hereditary Prince, or chieftain. In some states, as for instance in Athens, the transition from this old aristocratical government, headed by an hereditary prince, to a thoroughly democratic constitution, was but slow and gradual; as the memory of their ancient kings, for example, of Codrus, who fell in the defence of his country, was ever cherished by the Athenian people with love and reverence. The popular hatred in Athens was directed only against those leaders of the state who, like Pisistratus, after having obtained their power by means of popular influence, sought to stretch and perpetuate it by force of arms and the use of foreign mercenaries. Yet even Pisistratus possessed great qualities, and his sway was in general mild, and conformable to the laws of Solon;—it cannot be denied, however, that his was an usurped authority, and one founded on illegitimate force. At a later period, and when the Athenian state became more and more democratic—as there is not a more thankless being in all nature than the sovereign people, in its lawless and capricious rule, the people of Athens, jealous of their freedom, and too easily deluded by the arts of oratorical sophistry, pointed their hatred at all the great men and deserving citizens of the state. The general Miltiades perished in prison; Aristides the just, Cimon and many others fell the victims of ostracism, and died in exile, as did the great historians, Herodotus and Thucydides. Themistocles himself, who had been the liberator of Athens and of Greece, was obliged to take refuge at the court of the Persian monarch, from whom he received protection and hospitality. The wisest of the Athenians, the master of Plato, who had ever proved himself an honest citizen and a valiant defender of his country, received the cup of poison for his recompence.
But we no where discover in the early ages of Athens, and of the other Greek Republics, that hatred to kings and to royalty in general, which even the primitive history of Rome displays. Nay, in Sparta, amid a Republican constitution, the kingly power and dignity were preserved inviolate down to the latest period; while in Macedon a new monarchy grew up, which at first asserted a sort of Protectorate over the other states, and at last established a very despotic ascendancy over all Greece. Even in those states where the constitution was more democratical, that is to say, where it was founded, not on an hereditary nobility and the possession of the soil, but chiefly on moveable property, on trade, and manufactures, we must not look for that sort of arithmetical freedom and equality which exists in some modern Republics, for instance, in the United States of America. The number of citizens really free, eligible, and possessed of the right of suffrage, was exceedingly small when compared with the bulk of the population—by far the greater part were not so, and a multitude of bought slaves, especially in the commercial states, was employed in manufactures, and in the tillage of the land. This universally prevalent custom—the harsh treatment and oppression of slaves—forms a very painful contrast in the ancient Republics, little corresponding to our own ideal of social happiness, and in itself very degrading to humanity. In the interior and more aristocratic states, slavery assumed another shape—the remnant of the original inhabitants of the soil, that had survived the conquest of their country, such as the Helots of Sparta, and the Penestæ of Thessaly, were not merely reduced by the conquerors in their newly-founded governments to the condition of vassals, as we should term them, or even of serfs; but were degraded to a state of absolute slavery, and generally treated with great severity. If we except this one circumstance, the aristocracy, that ruled in most of the ancient Republics of Greece, was on the whole, tolerably well constituted; a number of accessory circumstances had tended to soften its sway, and even, in some instances, it was ennobled by high worth. Ancestral manners and customs—the very smallness of the states—all tended to mitigate its rule—a wise legislation, like that of Solon, and of other law-givers animated by the same spirit, had at once consolidated and tempered its power; while it was adorned by republican virtues and many personal qualities in those elder and better times, ere the ancient simplicity of manners was yet totally corrupted.
In most of the Greek Republics, besides, commerce daily acquired greater influence and importance, and it was impossible in such a state of things that any rigidly exclusive aristocracy could have been formed, or could have long maintained its ascendancy. Even the priesthood in Greece (for there there was no danger of the political predominance of an hereditary sacerdotal caste, as in Egypt), even the priesthood, by maintaining ancient manners, customs and laws, on which indeed their own existence depended, exerted a mild and beneficial influence in the state; for they at least formed a counterpoise to a mere selfish aristocracy, and sometimes opposed the last barrier to democratic tyranny.
The Mysteries too, in particular, which, although they did not at a later period, as in their origin, diffuse a sounder morality than the popular mythology, yet certainly inculcated more serious doctrines, and more spiritual views of life, exerted, together with the Olympic and Isthmian games, a gentle, and on the whole, a very beneficial, influence, and served as a bond of connection between the variously divided and discordant nations of Greece. Nay these public and gymnastic games, which were celebrated in the festive poetry of the Greeks, served to knit more firmly the bond of national union, so exceedingly loose among this people; and many times, in a moment of danger, has the oracle of Delphi roused and united all the sons of Hellas. These political decisions of the oracle were not false, so far at least as in these critical moments they gave no other counsel to the Greeks, but that of patriotic courage, prudent firmness, and national concord.
Widely dissimilar as were the Greek tribes and nations in their original seats and settlements, their occupations and modes of living, their manners and political institutions, they differed not less in the primitive elements of their civilization. The Phœnician Cadmus, according to tradition, brought the alphabet, and with it, undoubtedly, many other elements of knowledge to the city of Thebes—the Egyptian Cecrops laid the ground-work of the old Athenian manners and government—the Thracian Orpheus, though his doctrines had much analogy to those of Egypt, founded the widely diffused Mysteries that bore his name, while he sought by song to mitigate the terrors of the lower world, and to overcome the powers of darkness. To these many other names might be added; and among them many which did not deduce their descent, like most indeed, from Phœnicia and Egypt, but are clearly to be traced, as well as the doctrines and sacred customs they introduced, to the North; and, though they sprang more immediately from Asiatics on the northern side of the Caucasus, they were nearly allied to the nations dwelling further towards the North and West. The profound and concurrent researches of many modern scholars have adduced such numerous and repeated proofs from antiquity, of the existence of this Northern stratum in Greek antiquities, that this branch of Grecian history, formerly neglected, must no longer pass unobserved. The Greeks were of very various extraction; and in the different countries of Greece we may distinguish, along with the Hellenes, two if not more, principal nations, clearly distinct from the former. These were the Thracians in the Northern provinces, or at least in those immediately contiguous—a race for the most part of Northern descent, and, together with the Indian, the most numerous on the earth according to Herodotus—perhaps of the same origin with the nations on the banks of the Danube, or even those further northward. There were, next, the Pelasgi, the real aborigines of Greece, the authors of those gigantic walls and constructions, which are known in Italy by the name of Cyclopean, and in Greece by that of Pelasgic, and some of which still exist, besides several others that existed in the Peloponnesus, and which are mentioned by the ancients. These Aborigines, or this primitive race of people, occur in many countries under the same, or at least very similar, traits—to them we must ascribe those monuments of architecture we have just spoken of, a certain knowledge of metals, some rude religious rites, without any mythology, which was only of later origin, nay without any names of specific divinities;—human sacrifices—manners and customs, if not absolutely savage, still very rude and barbarous, and a constant restlessness and a disposition to roam. Deucalion alone is to be considered as the ancestor of the Hellenes, as all the noble families of kings and heroes derived their descent from him, and the later tribes of Greece, the Æolians, the Dorians, and Ionians, took their names from his sons. According to every indication, this people would appear to be a Caucasian race of Asiatics, of Indian, or at least of a cognate, origin. When these Hellenes, Æolians and Dorians, had taken possession of Thessaly, of the adjacent countries, and the Peloponnesus, and had there formed settlements, the Pelasgi were every where dispossessed, or oppressed, and thrown into the back-ground. But they certainly were not entirely extirpated, nor did they emigrate in full numbers; and it is beyond a doubt that various causes contributed to unite the old and new inhabitants of Greece; for here intermarriages were not entirely prohibited and rigidly prevented, as in India or Egypt, by the institution of castes; and the two nations were gradually formed into one race and one people, according as the circumstances or situation of one country or the other favoured such an union. And hence we can understand why Herodotus, for example, should have attributed to the Ionians in particular much that was Pelasgic, as if under this new denomination they were in all essential points the ancient Pelasgi, or had mingled more with the latter, and were not of such a pure Hellenic race as the Dorians: for in other respects, the Pelasgi and Hellenes are represented as being originally two perfectly distinct nations. The people of Thrace, too, although they continued as a separate nation to a much later period, undoubtedly mingled considerably with the Hellenic tribes that inhabited the borders of Thrace, or that lived among the inhabitants of that country.