CHAPTER II.
CHARACTER OF THE GREEKS.
Having in the foregoing chapter endeavoured to ascertain by what races Greece was originally peopled, we shall next speak of the character and physical organization of its inhabitants. In doing this it may be useful to consider them in three different stages of their progress: first, in the heroic and poetical times; secondly, in the historical and flourishing ages of the Hellenic commonwealth; thirdly, in their corrupt and degenerate state under the dominion of the Macedonians and Romans.
The most distinguishing characteristic of the Hellenes, when poetry first places them before us, is a profound veneration for the divinity and every thing connected with the service of religion. By the force of imagination heaven and earth were brought near each other, not so much, indeed, by elevating the latter, as by bringing down the former within the sphere of humanity. Gods and men moved together over the earth, cooperated in bringing about events, keeping up a constant interchange of beneficence; the god aiding, the mortal repaying his aid with gratitude;[[140]] the god guiding, the mortal submitting to be directed, until, sometimes, as in the case of Odysseus and Athena, the feeling of grace and favour on the one side, and of veneration and gratitude on the other, ripened into something like friendship and affection.
No man entered on any important enterprise without first consulting the gods, and throwing himself upon their protection, by sacrifice, divination, and prayer.[[141]] They conceived, according to the best lights afforded them by their rude creed, that although means existed of warping the judgment, perverting the affections, and vitiating the decisions of their divinities, yet upon the whole and in the natural order of things they were just and beneficent, mercifully caring for the poor and the stranger, the guardians of friendship and hospitality, and avenging severely the offences committed against their laws. Habitually, when not provoked to vengeance by impiety or crimes, the gods they believed were not only beneficent towards mankind, but given among themselves to cheerfulness and mirth, loving music, songs, and laughter, feasting jovially together in a joy serene and almost imperturbable, save when interrupted by solicitude for some favoured mortal. Philosophy, in more intellectual times, condemned this rude conception of divine things; but men’s ideas, like their offerings, belong to the state of society in which they live, and the Greeks of the heroic ages unquestionably attributed to their gods the qualities most in esteem among themselves.
Next to religion the most prominent feeling in the mind of the early Greeks was filial piety.[[142]] Nowhere among men were parents held in higher honour. The reverence paid to them partook largely of the religious sentiment. Regarded as the instruments by which God had communicated the mysterious and sacred gift of life, they were supposed by their children to be for ever invested with a high degree of sanctity as ministers and representatives of the Creator. Hence the anxiety experienced to obtain a father’s blessing and the indescribable dread of his curse. A peculiar set of divinities, the terrible Erinnyes, all but implacable and unsparing, were entrusted with the guardianship of a parent’s rights, and indescribable were the pangs and anguish supposed to seize upon transgressors. These were the powers who tracked about the matricides Orestes and Alcmæon, scaring them with spectral terrors and filling their palaces with the alarms and agonies of Tartaros. On the other hand, nothing can be more beautiful than the pictures of filial piety exhibited by the nobler characters of heroic times. The examples are innumerable, but none is so striking or complete as that of Achilles towards his father Peleus. Fierce, vehement, stern in the ordinary relations of life, towards his aged father he is gentle as a child. His heart yearns to him with a strength of feeling incomprehensible to a meaner nature. He submits to his sway and authority not from any apprehension of his power, not even from the fear of offending him, but from the fulness of his love, from the natural excellence and purity of his heart. He would erect his valour and the might of his arm into a rampart round the old man, to protect him from injury and insult; and even in the cold region of shadows beyond the grave this feeling is represented as still alive, so that in death, as in life, the uppermost anxiety of the hero’s soul is for the happiness of his father. Even in the government of his impetuous passions during his mortal career, in the choice of the object of his love, Achilles expresses a desire to render his feelings subordinate to those of his parent, thus verging on the utmost limits of self-denial and self-control conceivable in a state of nature. Homer understood his countrymen well when he gave these qualities to his hero. Without them, he knew that no degree of courage or wisdom would have sufficed to render him popular, and, therefore, we find him not only pre-eminent for his piety towards the gods, but at the same time the most affectionate and dutiful of sons, the warmest, most disinterested, and unchangeable of friends.
And this leads us to consider another remarkable feature of the Greek character,—its peculiar aptitude for friendship. No country’s history and traditions abound with so many examples of this virtue as those of Greece. In truth, it was there regarded as the most unequivocal mark of an heroic and generous nature, being wholly inconsistent with anything base, sordid, or ignoble, and flourishing only in company with virtues rarest and most difficult of acquisition. Poetry, no doubt, has clad the friendship of heroic times with a splendour scarcely belonging to real life, but the experience of history warrants us in making but slight deductions. Nature in those ages appeared to delight in producing men in pairs, each suited to be the ornament and solace of the other, possessing different qualities, imperfect when apart, but complete, united. Men thus constituted were a sort of moral twins, an extension, if we may so speak, of unity, the same yet different, bringing two souls under the yoke of one will, desiring the same, hating the same, possessing the same, valuing life and the gifts of life only as they were shared in common, seeking adventures, facing dangers together, conforming their thoughts, opinions, feelings, each to the other, having no distinct interest, no distinct hope, but engrafting two lives on the chances of one man’s fortune, and both perishing by the same blow.
This feeling has by some been supposed to have owed its strength, in part at least, to the degraded position of women in society; a subject on which I shall have more to say hereafter, but may here remark that such an opinion is wholly incompatible with an impartial interpretation of the Homeric poems and the older traditions of Greece. Throughout fabulous times women are the prime movers in all great events; and the respect which as mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters they received, though expressed in uncourtly language, was perhaps as great as has ever been paid them in any age or country. Every distinguished woman in Homer is the centre of a circle of tender and touching associations. We behold them beloved by their relatives, honoured by their dependants, enjoying every decent freedom, every becoming pleasure, with all the influence and authority appertaining to their sex. Thus Helen, both before and after her fall, is entire mistress of her house, and treated with all possible deference and delicacy: so Hecuba, Andromache, Penelope, Arete, Nausicaa, and Iphigeneia in their respective positions, are held in the highest esteem, and command as great a share of love from those whose duty it was to love and honour them, as any other women in history or fiction. Nor were due respect and tenderness confined to the high and the noble; for innumerable proofs occur in Homer that even among the humblest ranks, that delicate self-respect which is shown by respect to our other self, and may be regarded as the pivot of civilisation, was already in that age very generally diffused.
But if the Greeks of heroic times possessed the good qualities we have attributed to them, they were still more, perhaps, distinguished for others, which often obliterated the footsteps of their virtues, and appeared to be the guiding principles of their lives. Chief among these was their passion for war and violence,[[143]] which engaged them in everlasting struggles with their neighbours, developed overmuch their fierce and destructive qualities, and threw into comparative shade such of their propensities as were gentler and more humane. War by land, piracy by sea, filled the whole country with incessant alarms. Commerce was checked and confined within very narrow channels, both travelling and navigation being exceedingly unsafe, while bands of marauders traversed land and sea in quest of rapine and plunder. In some states no other mode was known of arriving at opulence, and the humbler classes of society were wholly subsisted by it.[[144]] The laws of war, too, were proportionably savage. It was customary either to give no quarter, or to devote all prisoners taken to servitude; and, accordingly, every petty state was filled with unfortunate captives, many of them of illustrious birth and qualities, reduced to the humblest conditions, being compelled to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. In peace, too, and in their own homes their warlike habits led frequently to the perpetration of violence; their passions being strong and unbridled they resented insults on the spot, and numerous homicides were, in consequence, found flying from the country whose infant institutions their passions had sought to overthrow.
But in all stages of society it has been ordained by Providence that out of the wickedness of man some compensating good shall flow: thus, from the dangers and difficulties surrounding the stranger the virtue of hospitality[[145]] sprang up in generous minds. From the distress and misery of the passionate or accidental slayer of man arose the merciful rites of expiation, and all the friendly ties which subsisted between the purifier and the purified. Wanderers driven from their home often found a better in a foreign land; and thus even the transgressions and misfortunes of men, by breaking down the narrow enclosures of families and clans, and connecting persons of distant tribes together by benefits and gratitude, hastened the progress of refinement and paved the way for the greatness and glory of succeeding ages.
It will, from what has been said, be seen that among the elements of the Greek character passion greatly predominated; but, even from the earliest times, the existence was apparent of other powerful principles, by the influence of which the nation was led to emerge rapidly from its period of barbarism. These were an innate love of magnificence, and a striking inclination towards all social enjoyments; the former leading to the cultivation of commerce and industry, the latter communicating an extraordinary impetus to the natural desire common to mankind for companionship and society. But in developing these principles nature pursued in Greece a peculiar route. Instead of establishing a common centre, towards which the energies of the whole nation might tend, society was broken up into numerous parts, each forming, when considered separately, a whole, but united with its neighbours by identity of origin, language, religion, and national character.