The Glory That Was Greece: a survey of Hellenic culture and civilisation

by J. C. Stobart

“The reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley.”

The truth is, of course, that he’s a king in buckram. He is only a country squire with a pedigree, dressed up as a Basileus to suit the convention of the epic. Such too are the “kings” of the Odyssey. There the story requires that Odysseus shall be King of Ithaca and that his faithful wife shall be maintaining his throne in his absence. But the poet or poets were so little accustomed to the ways of kings that they constantly forget the political importance of Penelope and speak as if it were only a question of the jointure of a comely widow. Eumæus the swineherd extols the wealth of Odysseus by saying that no other in Ithaca had so much. They were already in the habit of regarding the market-place as the political focus of the State. So in the town of Scheria “King” Alcinous goes forth daily to the council with the twelve other “renowned kings.” Odysseus their visitor prays that this “king” and his “queen” may be so blessed by the gods that they may leave to their children “the substance in their halls, and whatever dues of honour the people have rendered unto him.” And the “princess” goes out in a mule-cart with the washing. On the stage of the epic the king is, of course, a great and mighty ruler. We are often reminded how fearful is the wrath of kings. The king says, according to a quotation of Aristotle’s, that he has power of life and death. He gives away cities that do not belong to him. He inherits “his sceptre and his dooms” from Zeus and a long line of ancestors. But he cannot live up to these exalted pretensions. He debates policy in the market-place with the other kings (who are often called elders by mistake, though they are young and lusty as an eagle), and matters are settled by the acclamation of the masses. It is the orator who sways the crowds. By occasional slips of the tongue these divine kings are spoken of as a greedy class, just as they are in Hesiod. As for the “dooms” that they receive by inspiration from Zeus, they make no practical use of them. Justice, as we saw on our Shield, is really administered by the elders in the agora. A careless line of the Odyssey tells of “the hour when a man rises from the assembly and goes home to supper, a man who judges the many quarrels of the young men that go to him for judgment.” There is no single example of a king acting as judge in Homer, and though the king pretends to give away cities he sometimes humbly accepts the gift of an acre or two from the citizens for services rendered. There is, indeed, one celebrated passage of the Iliad where monarchy is apparently extolled; but the attentive reader will discern that it is in the language not of primitive patriarchal conditions, but of a partisan of aristocracy or tyranny rebuking the presumption of radical demagogy. It is in the second book of the Iliad. Agamemnon had bidden the Greeks prepare for flight from Troy. It was only a ruse to try their temper, but it succeeded all too well, for the people hastily took him at his word. Now Odysseus is bidden by the goddess Athena to hurry down and stop them.

“He went to meet Agamemnon, son of Atreus, and took from him his ancestral sceptre, ever indestructible, wherewith he went down to the ships of the brazen-shirted Achæans. Whensoever he met a king or man of mark, him he would approach and check with soft words. ‘Sir, it befits not to terrify thee like a coward; nay, sit thee down, and make the rest of the host sit also, for thou knowest not yet the mind of the son of Atreus. Now he is but trying the sons of the Achæans; soon he will smite them, and mighty is the wrath of god-nurtured kings. Honour is his from Zeus, the Zeus of counsel loves him.’

“But when he saw a man of the people shouting, him he would smite with his sceptre and chide with a word. ‘Sir, sit quiet and hear the speech of others, who are better than thou. Thou art unwarlike and cowardly, thou art of no account in war or in council. We cannot all be kings here, we Achæans; many-lordship is not good. Let one be lord, one king, to whomsoever the son of Kronos of crooked counsel has given the sceptre and the dooms that he may be king among them.’

“Thus he went through the host, lording it; and they hurried back to the meeting-place from their ships and tents with a noise as when a wave of the thundering sea crasheth on the mighty shore and the deep resounds.

“The others then sat down and took place on the benches, but Thersites alone still brawled with unmeasured words. He who was full of disorderly speech for idle and unseemly striving against kings.

“He was the ugliest man that came to Troy. He was bandy-legged and lame, and his two shoulders were humped and cramped upon his breast. Above, his head was peaked, and a scanty stubble sprouted upon it. He was the bitterest foe to Achilles and to Odysseus, and ever they were chiding him. Then too he cried out shrill words of reproach against divine Agamemnon. But the Achæans were horribly wroth with him, and hated him in their hearts....

“Thus he spake reviling Agamemnon, the shepherd of the people. But divine Odysseus quickly stood beside him, and scowling rebuked him with a grievous word. ‘Thersites, heedless of speech, shrill ranter that thou art, be still and dare not alone to strive with kings, for I say that there is no creature worse than thou, of all that came with the sons of Atreus to Ilium.’ ...

“Thus he spake, and smote him with his sceptre on the midriff and the shoulders. But he hunched himself up and a big tear fell from him, and a blood-red weal rose up from his back under the golden sceptre. So he sat down and trembled, looked helpless, and wiped away a tear in his pain, and they, for all their anger, laughed sweetly at him. And thus a man would say, looking at his neighbour, ‘Lo, now! Verily Odysseus hath done a thousand good deeds both in discovering good counsel and in leading the battle, but now this is far his best deed among the Argives, in that he hath checked this word-spattering maker of mischief from his rantings. Never again, I ween, will his ambitious heart stir him up to revile kings with words of reproof.’”

Thersites is not a product of simple undeveloped monarchy; the poet who drew this portrait had seen the mob-orator in his native agora. Thersites, it has been said, is the only private in the army. He is the only man who is named without a patronymic. And yet modern research has shown that even Thersites had an ancient cultus as a demigod in Sparta. So true is it that all the figures of the epic stage are figures of tribal ancestor-worship.