What Have the Greeks Done for Modern Civilisation?

by J. P. Mahaffy

Yet this is not easy when we stand face to face with the wonderful performances of this undying race. What have the Greeks not accomplished on the stage of the world’s history since they accepted the heritage of the older and richer civilisations? First they dominated and so far absorbed the pre-existing population as to feel themselves the only possessors of the country. Some of them even boasted, and without raising any controversy, that they were indigenous to that soil. Then they spread themselves over all the Mediterranean coast, beginning with Asia Minor, where they collided with the successive empires of Mesopotamia. They went to Italy and Sicily, which became Greek lands, so far as they were civilised, and then they successfully resisted the great effort of the Persian Empire to make them a subject province. Even their Asiatic brethren, who did fall under Persian sway for several generations, never lost their nationality, nor could they be said to have resumed it again when the Persian Empire fell under Macedonian sway. When the Hellenic nationality came to dominate the kingdoms of Macedonia, hither Asia, and Egypt, and even when the Romans supervened, who treated it first with respect, presently with contempt, these arrogant conquerors could never shake off the spiritual domination of Greek literature, Greek philosophy, Greek art, and Greek urbanity. Nay, so imperishable was the Greek influence that it caused a new boundary line to be drawn between East and West, and founded on the old Greek Byzantium a new capital, where Hellenic refinement and Hellenic art were still to all the ruder Western world the acme of dignity and of splendour. Even when this magnificence had been plundered by barbarous crusaders, and again by less barbarous Turks, the fugitive handful of learned Greeks, with their immortal heritage of letters, lit up an intellectual flame in Western Europe that has never since been quenched.

This last great revival by means of the Greeks is, I think, peculiarly instructive to us to-day. For nothing can show more clearly, or in a larger example, how different is the effect of second-hand or traditional knowledge from that of direct contact with the originals. It was no doubt held in the later Roman Empire, and in the early Middle Ages, that all the value of Hellenic culture had passed into Roman life, that Roman law, Roman architecture, Roman organisation were far more perfect than those of their teachers. Even the latest bloom of Greek architecture, that Byzantine style which is still living in the unapproachable St. Sophia of Constantinople, had been carried into Italy, France, Germany, and England, where, under the name of decorated Norman, it holds its place of honour in our church architecture. St. Mark’s at Venice is the richest because it is a decadent example of that Greek style, and so other Latin adaptations of Greek were supposed to afford all the benefits of the originals; nay, in one case—that of the Latin Vulgate—Saint Jerome went so far as to compare his version, with the Greek and Hebrew originals written on each side of it, to Christ crucified between the two thieves. There were Greek statues and Greek temples in plenty to copy. Aristotle, confessedly the greatest and most encyclopedic of Greek philosophers, could be had in a Latin translation and narrowly escaped being canonised as a Latin saint. Was not Virgil far deeper and more artistic than Homer? Was not the Dies iræ far grander in sound, as well as in sense, than the trivialities of Horace or Ovid? So the Western world became Latin, and men were content with the echoes of Greek in their Roman culture.

But when the real thing came to them again, as it were by accident, mark the sudden and astonishing change. It was at once discovered that the Romanised culture of previous centuries had degenerated from the nobler types, that new influences from the north had in architecture and in art altered its purity; that the gloomy splendour of Dante, the mightiest outcome of the Middle Ages, had put out the cheerfulness and light of Greek life, even as Virgil understood them, with a cruel and relentless creed. With the return of Hellenic serenity, there was no doubt much irreligion and paganism associated, but even to that point a revolt against the spiritual tyranny of the Roman Church cannot be regretted by those who refuse to believe that men can only be kept from crime by threatening them with greater crime—I mean the infliction of eternal torture upon any sentient being. The Gothic fane was no doubt the ideal gloom wherein to worship a relentless God and his tortured Christ; the Renaissance palace was a place of light and gladness, wherein men could read with amazement the epic of Homer, the tragedy of Æschylus, the comedy of Aristophanes, and learn from them what human culture had once attained.

And so Greek studies resumed their place as the noblest part of a liberal education. We got to know and appreciate Greek letters deeply and thoroughly as no Roman had ever known them; we got to analyse and understand Greek logic and philosophy and what is still more subtle, the delicacies of Greek art. We began to add to the treasures unearthed for us by the Renaissance, by probing for buried temples in Greece, and searching the sands of Egypt for new texts. The culture of the nineteenth century may fairly be called a culture that owes its greatness largely to a thorough appreciation of the unique excellence of classical Greek work. Never was I more impressed with this fact than in visiting, three or four years ago, a little collection of old Greek fragments gathered from private owners, and exhibited by the Burlington Art Club in London. They were small things, bronze statuettes, busts, ornaments, vases, but no intelligent man could avoid the strong and instant conviction that all was essentially patrician art in the highest sense. There was not a plebeian note in the whole exhibition.

These things being so, it seemed to men brought up as I have been, that the supremacy of Greek studies, especially for the education of the rising generation, was a fact that no man could contest.

Yet, strange to say, within the last twenty years, and possibly due to the reaction of American influences upon Europe, the tide has turned and the great flow of Greek studies is being succeeded by an ebb. Higher education—formerly and indeed in the truest sense always—an aristocratic privilege, is now to be the right of the democracy, which has no time for it, and all of us, poor and rich, workers for our bread and those whose bread is provided, are to pursue the same ends, and attain the same cultivation. Need I add that the domain of modern science is so enlarged as to demand a high place in the instruction of those who will presently earn their living by some of its applications? Thus the program has been enlarged and diversified beyond the capacity of any learner, and we begin to think what can best be sacrificed in order to save the rest. The advocates of modern science naturally set themselves against what they are pleased to call the dead languages, and so, as Greek seemed more remote to them, because of its strange alphabet, they have so far prevailed as to get rid, from a vast number of schools, of the study of that language. Even in the universities of Europe there is an irresistible tendency to make it a voluntary subject of study. The innovators, most of whom are ignorant in any proper sense both of Greek and Latin, still profess a great respect for Latin and loudly assert its importance even in modern education. But do not be deceived. The day will come shortly when the same attack will be directed against the second “dead language,” as they call it, and we shall be expected to throw out another member of our spiritual family to the wolves. For the attack is made in total ignorance of the relative value of the topics assailed. Anyone with the smallest insight into the matter knows full well that the loss of Latin is as nothing compared to that of Greek. I am not going to argue that question before the present audience. If at least three quarters of the good we get from Latin is because Latin civilisation is based on Greek, is it not infinitely better to study the great original than any copy, however successful? And this brings us to the point for the sake of which I have made an apparent digression.

Quite apart from the scientists (a very plebeian, but expressive, modern term) who pretend that Latin is sufficient for the department of language or the study of grammar, or of ancient history, we hear a great many, both in England and in America, who are really fond of higher cultivation, who feel obscurely that it is from Greek that such cultivation comes, and who long to obtain from it what they find lacking in modern refinement. But they strive to do this merely through second-hand sources. They have recourse to English translations and English commentaries and to lectures like the present, in order to fill up the gap which they feel in their own early training. Now I will not deny that modern translations are far more faithful than those of more independent imitators, who were not afraid to colour Greek art with hues from their own palette. I will not deny that the skill of the photographer has reproduced for us the outlines of buildings and statues far more accurately than the best of painters, albeit Turner’s conception of Pæstum (for example) is truer in its own way than all the photographs ever taken of that temple. But this brings me to state a somewhat subtle truth, of the greatest import in the present context; a great original is generally susceptible of divers interpretations, whereas a copy, however excellent, seldom gives us more than one; so that, while the former is eminently suggestive, the latter limits our appreciation. The copy of a copy, in law worthless, is so also in matters of art. In each reproduction something is lost, and remember that the more minutely careful the copying, the more slavish is the work likely to be. I know that there are such things as copies greater than their originals. That is true of the Gospels in our English Bible; it is also true of those portions of Virgil’s Georgics which are translated from Aratus. But these rare exceptions do not invalidate the general truth of the principle I have enounced. And when even Virgil, probably the most competent translator that ever lived, came to deal with a master like Theocritus, how feeble the result! I may safely say that if we had no knowledge of Theocritus save through Virgil’s Eclogues, he would never have ranked as more than a third-rate poet with us.

The plain deduction is this: get at the originals at all cost. Do not be satisfied with essays, or dissertations, or commentaries. Go and see the originals, unlock the secrets of the tongue in which they were first presented, and then there will open upon you such a Renaissance as dawned upon the astonied humanists of the 15th century. The main use of such a lecture as that which I am now delivering is that you should be discontented with it, and should desire to pass from the illustration, the commentary, the appreciation, to a direct study of the great originals. Such a course may indeed be impracticable for many of you, who in middle life cannot turn aside to the labour of acquiring another language; for the mastering of a language is always an arduous task, and all the more so as we advance in years. But if we cannot ourselves learn, this generation ought at least to stimulate and direct the next. For I fear that the present knowledge of Greek in this country is confined to a small minority, while there is still a great majority who have some ambition to be really cultivated. I remember some years ago undertaking to teach a class at Chautauqua the Alcestis of Euripides. The difficulty that confronted me was that a score of Greek texts of the play were not forthcoming, and that even in New York they were not found without search and delay. The Greek masterpieces share indeed this quality with other examples of perfect art, that even a copy is well worth having, and so the many excellent translations from the Greek which you have in all your libraries, are by no means to be despised. But if you can attain the originals, and master them, the translations, even if they have helped you in this task, lose all their value. I remember seeing in Mr. Gladstone’s library at Hawarden a whole section of his great accommodation for books devoted to translations of the Iliad into many languages. There were scores, perhaps hundreds, of versions in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Norwegian, Russian, Hindustani, and many other tongues, sent to him by the translators as tributes of esteem for his own Homeric studies. I asked him did he ever open any of them? He said, “No; all the time I can spare I devote to studying the great originals.” But was there ever a clearer demonstration than these myriad translations of the greatness of a literary masterpiece? Even when there are many excellent versions already published in their own language men will not be content with these efforts, but will ever attempt again the fascinating, never ending, never convincing task. You could tell, without knowing any tongue but English, that there are four supreme poems which have exercised a fascination over men that never grows old. They are the Iliad of Homer, the Agamemnon of Æschylus, the Inferno of Dante, the Faust of Goethe. Two of these are Greek; but note also that, while we could find in Greek several rivals[3] which are of hardly less importance and by various poets, there is neither in German nor in Italian any poem that can for one moment compare with the supreme pieces I have named. So pre-eminent are the Greeks in literature. Their other art has not survived save in ruins or fragments. But ask any real specialist, such as the late Mr. Penrose, or Dr. Dörpfeld, what place the best Greek architecture holds in the buildings of the world, and he will tell you that never again can anything equal to the Parthenon at Athens be constructed. The huge temple at Karnak in Egypt, the marvellous church of Justinian at Constantinople, the lovely cathedral of Rheims are probably the best specimens of perfection in building which we possess, yet the Parthenon, with its apparent simplicity, shows a subtle depth of artistic knowledge which justifies us in calling it the finest of earthly buildings. Need I say one word of Greek supremacy in other arts here, seeing that the details must form the subject of subsequent lectures?

The danger I see before this generation is that which came upon the Roman world insensibly and which resulted in a decadence not arrested till it sank into the night of the dark ages. The later empire was content to take Greek art and Greek letters at second hand, and to substitute Latin culture for the models which had educated their greatest masters. But as I have already told you the copy had not the life of the original. So we too, with all our science, with our increase of material knowledge and our restless running to and fro, may sink into an ugly, tame, joyless conglomeration of societies, for whom new discoveries supply hosts of new conveniences, but no return to the happiness and the contentment of a simpler age. Our purblind toothless children may have their congenital defects vamped up by science, and without it we should indeed be stranded upon the reefs of despair. But happiness does not lie here, no, nor in motors, nor in turbines, nor in wireless messages across the globe, nor in daily newspapers full of inextricable fact and falsehood.

I cannot believe that the civilised world will remain satisfied with this dark outlook,—the monopoly of these factories of material discovery, where furnace and electric light replace the glorious rays of the Sun-God worshipped by the Greeks. There has generally been a great power of recovery in our race at large; and periods of decay have been followed by periods not only of renascence but of rejuvenescence. At all epochs when the world grew dull and desponding and the times were out of joint, we have the mystical tendency, the inclination to brush aside human joys and cares and to fix the mind on the Eternal, on the ineffable delights of communion with the Spirit of the Universe. That this tendency is alive even in modern America, cannot but be obvious to those who have studied the pathology of so-called Christian Science. The other tendency is the humanist, that which seeks to recover for us the joys and beauties of life, enhanced by art and protected by the refinement of a sound education. This was the aspect of human happiness which is most perfectly represented, so far as the world has yet run, by the Greeks, and hence the careful and minute study of their life must always appeal to those who desire the æsthetic reformation of modern society. Once and again the Greeks have exercised this vast and beneficent influence; is it vain to hope that even still it is not exhausted, but potent to cure the ills of man? Peradventure, the prophecy of our great and most Hellenic of poets may yet come true, with a fulfilment wider and deeper than even his large vision could compass:—