What Have the Greeks Done for Modern Civilisation?

by J. P. Mahaffy

The two æsthetic qualities requisite for success in painting are obviously a sense of form, and a sense of colour; without a natural appreciation of the beauty inhering in each of these, the highest technical skill, however valuable, does not suffice. After what you have heard about Greek architecture and sculpture, I need not say another word to show that in the sense of form the Greeks were supreme and unapproachable. But what about their sense of colour? On this the evidence is not so clear and has given rise to divers interpretations. First of all, the Homeric poets, in their vivid pictures of old Greek life, are singularly vague and confused in their words for colour, so much so that people used to imagine that the poet, because he was blind, or the poets, because they were primitive, had no distinct colour-sense. I remember this latter view being pressed upon me by Mr. Gladstone in conversation, together with the reply he had from Charles Darwin, which he gave me to read, that as even insects are guided by a very clear sense of colour, it was absurd to say that the most primitive men should not possess it. This argument seamed both to him and to me hardly conclusive, for the faculties which are now human need not have developed at the same rate from lower forms, or kept abreast of one another in acuteness. Thus human development might not require an acute sense of colour, while that of the insect made it essential, and so lower forms of life might be infinitely more developed in some respects than those far higher in the general condition of their senses and their intelligence. I therefore took another line in my objection: that we know the Egyptians, centuries before the oldest date allowed for Homer, had at least ten distinct names for colour. And this was not because they felt the difference more distinctly, but because in their arts and crafts they produced the varied shades, and therefore found names for them. Even nowadays, it is not the poet, or even the artist, that invents names for subtle shades of colours, but the milliner or the modiste. When I was young, there were two shades of grey known in the phraseology of these people—one as gris de souris, the other as gris de souris poursuivie. This is but a more minute subdivision of our sensations of colour invented by those that produce it for trade purposes. The want of names for colours is therefore not confined to the Greeks. More important is the fact that their early painters are known to have used but a few and primary colours, and also the further fact that their temples, which they always coloured (and, to my mind, rightly) for effect, were adorned on a simple and primitive plan,—red, blue, white, yellow, being, so far as I know, the colours generally used.

Now these facts seem to me to harmonise with the small development of a sense of the picturesque in landscape, which is characteristic of the Greeks. The principles of reproducing perspective with lines and colours on a flat surface were indeed discovered in the fifth century B.C., by a certain Agatharchus, whose book on shade painting seems, however, to have been a work on scene-painting, as an aid to producing illusions on the stage. Nor does the idea of representing external nature seem to have been a want felt by Greek artists, seeing that they had adopted the very peculiar device of representing mountains and rivers by figures of the gods and nymphs which inhabited them and in which they were personified. The heads of the horses rising from the sea represented on the Parthenon the advent of the day. The graceful figures of nymphs on the pediments of the great temple at Olympia represented the scenery in which the action was laid. Looking down the whole history of Greek painting, from the rude frescoes at Tiryns to the decorations of houses at Pompeii, I cannot find that landscape as such ever occupied Greek artists, and here therefore we have one of the very few departments in which the modern world may boast itself independent of its almost universal teacher.

It is not so in the case of portrait-painting, and painting of scenes in mythical or in real life, for here even the faint echoes of Greek genius affected powerfully the artists of the Renaissance. In this field, however, the influence of Hellenistic sculpture and of relief work was so combined with that of the few specimens of actual painting from Herculaneum, Pompeii, and other sites, that the separate effect of Greek painting on the modern artists is not so easily appreciated. The mythical subjects at all events were told and glorified in countless epigrams of the Anthology, and as soon as this collection became known and popular, it was sure to dominate the fancy of sentimental artists like Botticelli. But if the direct influence of Greek on modern painting was baulked for want of models, the indirect effect of Greek art on the best of modern painters is very great. Consider for a moment the two most refined of modern English painters, the late Lord Leighton, and the still living and working Sir Edward Alma-Tadema. The latter generally calls his subjects Roman, but anyone that knows what the elegances of Roman life owe to the Greeks, sees at once that the whole spirit of the artist, and of the subjects he delights in, is Greek. The case is still more undisguised with Leighton. All his most striking pictures are from Greek life or from Greek legend; his whole conception of beauty is derived from the same models, and I well remember, when I used to visit him in his delightful studio in Kensington, seeing it all set round with copies of Greek sculpture, and his fervid utterance that to these unapproachable models he owed all his art.

In the absence of the actual paintings, great use has been made of the scenes painted on Greek vases of the best period, some of which attain to quite a high level, and we cannot but feel with Sir Alma-Tadema that from this source he has drawn not a few of his ideas. Surely the products that inspired Keats with his exquisite Ode make clear to us how the fruitfulness of Greek genius is not dead or even exhausted, but still kindles a pure light in modern minds sensitive enough to catch the flame.

It is to be observed, before we pass on to another subject, that the art of painting among the Greeks began, and long remained, a branch of decoration, and was therefore subsidiary to architecture, or stately furniture, or fine pottery. The fashion of producing easel pictures painted for their own sake, readily movable and therefore displayed in galleries, as well as upon the walls of palaces, only came in with the decadence or at least the full ripeness of other arts. The products of the painter were akin to those of the epigrammatist, whose elegance may well be called by a poorer word—finish—and is to us rather the exhibition of great cleverness than the outcome of genius. It was the day also of social decadence, when the mere artist became the idol of society, and could parade his conceit and his vulgarity without fear of censure from patrons who only valued him as the ephemeral fashion. The gossip we hear about the old painters often exhibits this painfully modern triviality.

I now turn to the topic of music, in interest second to none, but one in which I must endeavour to make my discussion intelligible to those who have only a practical knowledge of this subject. In most histories of Greek art, music is simply omitted; in the special works upon it, there is much that is not only so difficult, but so dry and technical that the average student of Greek life can hardly be expected to approach it.

As regards existing specimens, we are just as miserably provided as we are in the case of painting. We have recovered a few scraps of the musical notation accompanying poetical words; and as we understand this notation, it is an easy task to reproduce the so-called melody. We have also a scrap or two in the notation of instrumental music (apparently an accompaniment), a notation, strange to say, differing from the oral. But here the melody is missing. And let me tell you at once that no living musician could attempt to supply it with the smallest verisimilitude. The same is the case with our texts of melody. There was a much lauded hymn found a few years ago on the wall of one of the houses uncovered at Delphi. In some places the surface of the stone was broken; so that there were gaps here and there of a bar or two in the music. No living musician who knows his business would undertake to supply any one of these gaps.[30] Were it a modern composition, we could with certainty offer two or three alternatives, and we could exclude a vast number of restorations as absolutely impossible. Such is not the case with the Greek specimens we know, neither do they appeal to our modern taste. To say that these specimens, when played for us, are hideous, is merely the expression of that violated taste. There are many, perhaps even some in this audience, who would say the same thing of the plain song which the present Pope has ordered to be used in Roman Catholic churches to the exclusion of more modern music.

The real conclusion is that so far Greek music is to us unintelligible; and yet in all the other arts nothing is more intelligible to modern minds than the products of Greek taste which are our best and clearest models. Is it that a highly artistic nation may be wanting in one particular department? We have before us the case of the modern Japanese, whose artistic work in most directions is of great excellence and fully appreciated by the world, but who confess (at least I have heard one most intelligent native confess) that their music is far below the level of European compositions. But here we probably start from a difference of scale, whereas the Greek scales (or at least the diatonic) are the parents of all modern European scales.

And now that you have before you the actual problem raised by the extant remnants of Greek music, let us turn to the Greeks themselves, and see what light their writings throw upon the matter. In the first place music was not only popular but universal among the Greeks. Those who did not cultivate it were worse than Shakspere’s “man that has not music in his soul.” All Greek poetry, even the epic of Homer, was recited musically; the lyric poets were as much musicians as poets; great tragedians composed the music for their choral odes, and indeed a Greek tragedy when performed must have far more resembled an Italian opera than a play in our sense. This is the combination which Richard Wagner strove to realise. But to be gifted in two directions of art is indeed very rare. The music of Æschylus and Sophocles was probably as inferior to their text as Wagner’s text is inferior to his music. All Greek educators imply that every boy can learn music; we never hear a word about want of ear, a want of musical faculty. This was to me in former years a great puzzle, for, like all of you, I was brought up in a society where a few had gifts for music, and the remainder were incapable of singing in time or in tune, or of learning to play an instrument with intelligence—and so we drifted away from the older fashion of making at least every girl play or sing as an inevitable infliction on society, and now only those who show a keen desire for it spend their time at music. But in the new schools, where choirs are taught on the tonic sol-fa system, I am informed by the most competent teachers that an inability to appreciate music, or to sing in tune, is quite rare, and that the great body of our children can be taught to make and to appreciate good music. If this be so, the Greeks were again right, and we in our older generation less wise than they.

In their opinion, this general possibility of learning music was a necessary condition of another settled conviction among educators, which is foreign to us—I mean the conviction that the practice of music has a direct and powerful effect upon the morals of average men. On this point the Greek educators were very explicit, and it is of great practical importance to us nowadays to consider what they say. It was not at all identical with a very widespread belief among modern parents that the pursuit of music generally is a refined pleasure, and will save the young from some lower or more mischievous recreation. That view was quite familiar to the Greeks. But their distinctive theory was this: that the performing or hearing of certain kinds of music had a direct effect, either moral or immoral, upon the mind, and that therefore wise educators must encourage the right sort of music only, and banish the rest from their pupils. I know very well that there were stray voices, especially from the Epicurean philosophers, saying that this is all nonsense, that music can have no such effect, and that the only moral or immoral part of the performance lies in the words.[31] But this only shows that the opinion of the vast majority and of the wisest men was not adopted without criticism, and without the other side of the question being clearly before them. The modern world is under mental conditions such as the Epicureans. We have generally assumed that music as such had no influence in moulding morals. We feel that it may be so in the accessories—that the constant singing of love duets and the associating with theatrical company may do harm and the associating with serious musicians may do good—but modern people seem hardly to dream that music such as Wagner’s, apart from the words, may have a direct effect upon morals. And yet it is here that we might have incurred a great and honourable debt to the Greeks, and have used their wisdom to save our youth from serious danger. This is a conviction of mine, not of to-day or yesterday, but of forty years’ standing, derived indeed from the suggestions of Plato, but verified by frequent contact with music and musicians. I will here give you one striking illustration. Anyone at first hearing of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde would perceive that it was a most immoral subject, expressed in highly emotional music. It is an artistic glorification of adultery, palliated by the old and vulgar excuse of a magical love-potion. All this is so obvious that I wonder sober people would not keep their children from witnessing the work just as they endeavour to keep them from reading immoral novels. To me it seemed even worse, for I could not but perceive, and had often and long since asserted, that the composer himself wrote the music under the influence of some such moral aberration, and that, apart from the words, it was intended to express his criminal longings and disappointments. It is only a year or two since the correspondence of a lady, published after her death, showed that this anticipation was literally true, that these phrases of love-sickness were actually composed and sent to her because she had awakened in him a passion which she was not wicked enough to satisfy.