Such is the position of the king, in the heroic times of Greece,—the only person (if we except the heralds and priests, each both special and subordinate,) who is then presented to us as clothed with any individual authority,—the person by whom all the executive functions, then few in number, which the society requires, are either performed or directed. His personal ascendency—derived from divine countenance, bestowed both upon himself individually and upon his race, and probably from accredited divine descent—is the salient feature in the picture. The people hearken to his voice, embrace his propositions, and obey his orders: not merely resistance, but even criticism upon his acts, is generally exhibited in an odious point of view, and is, indeed, never heard of except from some one or more of the subordinate princes. To keep alive and justify such feelings in the public mind, however, the king must himself possess various accomplishments, bodily and mental, and that too in a superior degree.[88] He must be brave in the field, wise in the council, and eloquent in the agora; he must be endued with bodily strength and activity above other men, and must be an adept, not only in the use of his arms, but also in those athletic exercises which the crowd delight to witness. Even the more homely varieties of manual acquirements are an addition to his character,—such as the craft of the carpenter or shipwright, the straight furrowing of the ploughman, or the indefatigable persistence of the mower without repose or refreshment throughout the longest day.[89] The conditions of voluntary obedience, during the Grecian heroic times, are family descent with personal force and superiority mental as well as bodily, in the chief, coupled with the favor of the gods: an old chief, such as Pêleus and Laërtes, cannot retain his position.[90] But, on the other hand, where these elements of force are present, a good deal of violence, caprice, and rapacity is tolerated: the ethical judgment is not exact in scrutinizing the conduct of individuals so preëminently endowed. As in the case of the gods, the general epithets of good, just, etc., are applied to them as euphemisms arising from submission and fear, being not only not suggested, but often pointedly belied, by their particular acts. These words signify[91] the man of birth, wealth, influence, and daring, whose arm is strong to destroy or to protect, whatever may be the turn of his moral sentiments; while the opposite epithet, bad, designates the poor, lowly, and weak; from whose dispositions, be they ever so virtuous, society has little either to hope or to fear.
Aristotle, in his general theory of government,[92] lays down the position, that the earliest sources of obedience and authority among mankind are personal, exhibiting themselves most perfectly in the type of paternal supremacy; and that therefore the kingly government, as most conformable to this stage of social sentiment, became probably the first established everywhere. And in fact it still continued in his time to be generally prevalent among the non-Hellenic nations, immediately around; though the Phœnician cities and Carthage, the most civilized of all non-Hellenic states, were republics. Nevertheless, so completely were the feelings about kingship reversed among his contemporary Greeks, that he finds it difficult to enter into the voluntary obedience paid by his ancestors to their early heroic chiefs. He cannot explain to his own satisfaction how any one man should have been so much superior to the companions around him as to maintain such immense personal ascendency: he suspects that in such small communities great merit was very rare, so that the chief had few competitors.[93] Such remarks illustrate strongly the revolution which the Greek mind had undergone during the preceding centuries, in regard to the internal grounds of political submission. But the connecting link, between the Homeric and the republican schemes of government, is to be found in two adjuncts of the Homeric royalty, which are now to be mentioned,—the boulê, or council of chiefs, and the agora, or general assembly of freemen.
These two meetings, more or less frequently convoked, and interwoven with the earliest habits of the primitive Grecian communities, are exhibited in the monuments of the legendary age as opportunities for advising the king, and media for promulgating his intentions to the people, rather than as restraints upon his authority. Unquestionably, they must have conduced in practice to the latter result as well as to the former; but this is not the light in which the Homeric poems describe them. The chiefs, kings, princes, or gerontes—for the same word in Greek designates both an old man and a man of conspicuous rank and position—compose the council,[94] in which, according to the representations in the Iliad, the resolutions of Agamemnôn on the one side, and of Hectôr on the other, appear uniformly to prevail. The harshness and even contempt with which Hectôr treats respectful opposition from his ancient companion Polydamas,—the desponding tone and conscious inferiority of the latter, and the unanimous assent which the former obtains, even when quite in the wrong—all this is clearly set forth in the poem:[95] while in the Grecian camp we see Nestôr tendering his advice in the most submissive and delicate manner to Agamemnôn, to be adopted or rejected, as “the king of men” might determine.[96] The council is a purely consultative body, assembled, not with any power of peremptorily arresting mischievous resolves of the king, but solely for his information and guidance. He himself is the presiding (boulephŏrus, or) member[97] of council; the rest, collectively as well as individually, are his subordinates.
We proceed from the council to the agora: according to what seems the received custom, the king, after having talked over his intentions with the former, proceeds to announce them to the people. The heralds make the crowd sit down in order,[98] and enforce silence: any one of the chiefs or councillors—but as it seems, no one else[99]—is allowed to address them: the king first promulgates his intentions, which are then open to be commented upon by others. But in the Homeric agora, no division of affirmative or negative voices ever takes place, nor is any formal resolution ever adopted. The nullity of positive function strikes us even more in the agora than in the council. It is an assembly for talk, communication, and discussion, to a certain extent, by the chiefs, in presence of the people as listeners and sympathizers,—often for eloquence, and sometimes for quarrel,—but here its ostensible purposes end.
The agora in Ithaka, in the second book of the Odyssey, is convened by the youthful Telemachus, at the instigation of Athênê, not for the purpose of submitting any proposition, but in order to give formal and public notice to the suitors to desist from their iniquitous intrusion and pillage of his substance, and to absolve himself farther, before gods and men, from all obligations towards them, if they refuse to comply. For the slaughter of the suitors, in all the security of the festive hall and banquet (which forms the catastrophe of the Odyssey), was a proceeding involving much that was shocking to Grecian feeling,[100] and therefore required to be preceded by such ample formalities, as would leave both the delinquents themselves without the shadow of excuse, and their surviving relatives without any claim to the customary satisfaction. For this special purpose, Telemachus directs the heralds to summon an agora: but what seems most of all surprising is, that none had ever been summoned or held since the departure of Odysseus himself,—an interval of twenty years. “No agora or session has taken place amongst us (says the gray-headed Ægyptius, who opens the proceedings) since Odysseus went on shipboard: and now, who is he that has called us together? what man, young or old, has felt such a strong necessity? Has he received intelligence from our absent warriors, or has he other public news to communicate? He is our good friend for doing this: whatever his projects may be, I pray Zeus to grant him success.”[101] Telemachus, answering the appeal forthwith, proceeds to tell the assembled Ithakans that he has no public news to communicate, but that he has convoked them upon his own private necessities. Next, he sets forth, pathetically, the wickedness of the suitors, calls upon them personally to desist, and upon the people to restrain them, and concludes by solemnly warning them, that, being henceforward free from all obligation towards them, he will invoke the avenging aid of Zeus, so “that they may be slain in the interior of his own house, without bringing upon him any subsequent penalty.”[102]
We are not of course to construe the Homeric description as anything more than an idéal, approximating to actual reality. But, allowing all that can be required for such a limitation, it exhibits the agora more as a special medium of publicity and intercommunication,[103] from the king to the body of the people, than as including any idea of responsibility on the part of the former or restraining force on the part of the latter, however such consequences may indirectly grow out of it. The primitive Grecian government is essentially monarchical, reposing on personal feeling and divine right: the memorable dictum in the Iliad is borne out by all that we hear of the actual practice; “The ruler of many is not a good thing: let us have one ruler only,—one king,—him to whom Zeus has given the sceptre and the tutelary sanctions.”[104]
The second book of the Iliad, full as it is of beauty and vivacity, not only confirms our idea of the passive, recipient, and listening character of the agora, but even presents a repulsive picture of the degradation of the mass of the people before the chiefs. Agamemnôn convokes the agora for the purpose of immediately arming the Grecian host, under a full impression that the gods have at last determined forthwith to crown his arms with complete victory. Such impression has been created by a special visit of Oneirus (the Dream-god), sent by Zeus during his sleep,—being, indeed, an intentional fraud on the part of Zeus, though Agamemnôn does not suspect its deceitful character. At this precise moment, when he may be conceived to be more than usually anxious to get his army into the field and snatch the prize, an unaccountable fancy seizes him, that, instead of inviting the troops to do what he really wishes, and encouraging their spirits for this one last effort, he will adopt a course directly contrary: he will try their courage by professing to believe that the siege had become desperate, and that there was no choice except to go on shipboard and flee. Announcing to Nestôr and Odysseus, in preliminary council, his intention to hold this strange language, he at the same time tells them that he relies upon them to oppose it and counterwork its effect upon the multitude.[105] The agora is presently assembled, and the king of men pours forth a speech full of dismay and despair, concluding by a distinct exhortation to all present to go aboard and return home at once. Immediately the whole army, chiefs as well as people, break up and proceed to execute his orders: every one rushes off to get his ship afloat, except Odysseus, who looks on in mournful silence and astonishment. The army would have been quickly on its voyage home, had not the goddesses Hêrê and Athênê stimulated Odysseus to an instantaneous interference. He hastens among the dispersing crowd and diverts them from their purpose of retreat: to the chiefs he addresses flattering words, trying to shame them by gentle expostulation: but the people he visits with harsh reprimand and blows from his sceptre,[106] thus driving them back to their seats in the agora.
Amidst the dissatisfied crowd thus unwillingly brought back, the voice of Thersitês is heard the longest and the loudest,—a man ugly, deformed, and unwarlike, but fluent in speech, and especially severe and unsparing in his censure of the chiefs, Agamemnôn, Achilles, and Odysseus. Upon this occasion, he addresses to the people a speech denouncing Agamemnôn for selfish and greedy exaction generally, but particularly for his recent ill-treatment of Achilles,—and he endeavors, moreover, to induce them to persist in their scheme of departure. In reply, Odysseus not only rebukes Thersitês sharply for his impudence in abusing the commander-in-chief, but threatens that, if ever such behavior is repeated, he will strip him naked, and thrash him out of the assembly with disgraceful blows; as an earnest of which, he administers to him at once a smart stroke with the studded sceptre, imprinting its painful mark in a bloody weal across his back. Thersitês, terrified and subdued, sits down weeping; while the surrounding crowd deride him, and express the warmest approbation of Odysseus for having thus by force put the reviler to silence.[107]
Both Odysseus and Nestôr then address the agora, sympathizing with Agamemnôn for the shame which the retreat of the Greeks is about to inflict upon him, and urging emphatically upon every one present the obligation of persevering until the siege shall be successfully consummated. Neither of them animadverts at all upon Agamemnôn, either for his conduct towards Achilles, or for his childish freak of trying the temper of the army.[108]
There cannot be a clearer indication than this description—so graphic in the original poem—of the true character of the Homeric agora. The multitude who compose it are listening and acquiescent, not often hesitating, and never refractory[109] to the chief. The fate which awaits a presumptuous critic, even where his virulent reproaches are substantially well-founded, is plainly set forth in the treatment of Thersitês; while the unpopularity of such a character is attested even more by the excessive pains which Homer takes to heap upon him repulsive personal deformities, than by the chastisement of Odysseus;—he is lame, bald, crook-backed, of misshapen head, and squinting vision.