Demand who best, with soul-entrancing song,
Earned blithe your praise, and bore your hearts along?
Then answer with a warm approving smile—
“The blind old man of Chios’ rocky isle.”[[1179]]
And down to the period of the Peloponnesian war similar games and sacred rites were performed at Ephesos, at which the Ionians with their wives and children were usually present.
The Doric historian, to whom all these circumstances must be familiarly known, makes, however, no account of them, but consistently with his theory, if not with facts, remembers no well-authenticated instance in the annals of Attica of a person’s marrying for love. What he would admit to be well authenticated it were difficult to say. He rejects, whenever his particular notions seem to require it, the testimonies both of Herodotus and Thucydides, so that for a narrative resting on the authority of Polyænus, Plutarch, and Valerius Maximus, we can expect no quarter. Nevertheless, as these writers are at least faithful in their delineations of manners, the following romantic incident may be hazarded even on their authority. Thrasymedes, an Athenian youth, entertaining a strong passion for the daughter of the tyrant Peisistratos, had the hardihood one day as she walked in a religious procession to kiss her openly in the street. Her brothers, young men of a fiery temper, regarded the act as an affront almost inexpiable, and were apparently preparing to take vengeance on the offender, when the old prince allayed their anger by observing,—"If we punish men for loving us, how shall we conduct ourselves towards our enemies?" Escaping thus, Thrasymedes still cherished his love. He therefore determined on carrying away the lady by force; and gaining over a number of his associates, he seized the occasion of a sacrifice on the sea-shore in which the maiden was officiating, and rushing, attended by his followers with drawn swords, through the crowd, he succeeded in conveying her to a boat, and set sail for Ægina. Unfortunately, however, for his design, Hippias, eldest son of Peisistratos, happened at this moment to be cruising in the bay on the lookout for pirates, and perceiving a bark putting hastily out to sea, he bore down upon it, took the young men prisoners, and conducted them together with his sister back to Athens. Thrasymedes and his companions being brought before the tyrant, abated not a jot of their courage, but bade him, in determining their punishment, use his own discretion, since from the moment they resolved on the enterprise they had made light, they said, of life. Peisistratos, tyrant though he was, regarded their loftiness of soul with admiration, freely bestowed his daughter on Thrasymedes, and won them to his interest by gentleness and friendship. In this, says Polyænus, acting the part of a good father and a popular citizen rather than of a tyrant.[[1180]]
But supposing no instances remained on record, who can doubt that the heart prompted, and the hand followed its promptings, at Athens as elsewhere? Its walls, its columns, every plane-tree in the Academy, the Cerameicos, and other public walks, glowed with the language of the passions, and the names of virgins beloved for their beauty. There was, no doubt, some want of delicacy in this; but the manners of the Athenians, though they presented no insuperable bar to so much of intercourse as might serve to enkindle affection,[[1181]] opposed, nevertheless, that facility of communication which at Sparta existed, and in our own country is common. However, had the beloved been incapable of reading, to what purpose should her name, coupled with endearing epithets, have illuminated the bark of the smilax, or the marble skreens of the gymnasia? It was traced there in order that her bright eyes might peruse it, and learn who of all the youth of Athens, had singled her forth from the world to be the object of his love. Lucian, in his sarcastic humour, represents a mad lover of the goddess Aphrodite carving every tree and end of wall with her name.[[1182]] From a fragment of Callimachos it would seem too as if men had sometimes written the beloved syllables on the leaves of trees;[[1183]] which may well have been, since in our own days we have seen the English people inscribing in letters of gold the name of their youthful queen on leaves of laurel. Euripides, who lost no opportunity of venting his aversion for the sex, introduces one of his characters protesting that his opinion of women would not be bettered though every pine in Mount Ida were covered with their names.[[1184]]
Another mode of declaring love, not quite unknown in modern times, was to clothe the language of the heart in verse. Poets, we are told, often disguised their own feelings by attributing them to the actors in a feigned narrative, which they would compose as an offering to the object of their attachment who, it is very obvious, to appreciate such a gift, must have been able to read it.[[1185]] They had likewise another fashion, particularly Greek, of making known their sentiments, which was to suspend garlands of flowers, or perform sacrifice before the door where the person possessing their heart resided.[[1186]] Sometimes they repaired to the spot and poured forth libations of wine as at the entrance of a temple, a practice alluded to by the Scholiast on Aristophanes, who relates that a number of Thessalian gentlemen being in love with Laïs,[[1187]] betrayed their passion by publicly sprinkling her doors with wine. Among the symptoms which disclosed the condition of the feelings, a garland loosely thrown upon the head was one.[[1188]] Women suffered their secret to escape them by being discovered wreathing garlands for their hair.[[1189]]
But in whatever way the existence of passion was externally manifested, a more interesting question is the modification which the passion[[1190]] itself underwent in the Greek mind.[[1191]] Numerous circumstances concur to mislead our judgment on this subject. In the first place, the writers who sprang up like fungi amid the corruption and profligacy which attended the decay of Hellenic society, standing nearer to us, obstruct our view. Among them a coarse unhealthy craving after excitement led to nefarious perversions of sentiment, and to countenance their own excesses they threw back their vile polluting shadows upon the loftier and brighter moral station of their forefathers. Even so early as the age of Æschylus this culpable practice began to prevail, for this great poet scrupled not to attribute to Achilles vices, which, in the Homeric period, were evidently unknown.[[1192]]
But rightly to comprehend the spirit of an age, we must by no means confide in the interpretation of the succeeding, or even in any one class of contemporary writers. Least of all, in the authors of comedy, who seldom paint men as they are, but run into exaggeration and caricature for the sake of effect. To the imaginative, spiritual, impassioned must we have recourse, if we would learn what the impassioned, spiritual and imaginative felt, and to such only in any age or country, is love, in the poetical sense of the word, familiar or indeed intelligible.