In Hellas music was held to be an efficacious medicine for the ills alike of body, soul, and mind. Even the grave and learned philosopher Theophrastos, the pupil of Aristotle, asserted that the Phrygian “harmony” on the flute was the proper means of curing lumbago.[687] Pindar states that Apollo “gives to men and women cures for grievous sickness, and invented the harp, and gives the Muse to whom he will, bringing warless peace into the heart”:[688] the god of medicine is the son of the god of the harp. The Pythagorean philosopher Kleinias, when he was in a bad temper, used to take up his harp, saying, “I am calming myself.”[689] He and his school regarded the harp as the true means of attaining that peace and solemn orderliness of soul which as true Dorian musicians they desired. Lukourgos produced at Sparta the state of mind necessary to enable his reforms to be carried, by sending from Crete a lyric poet named Thales, whose songs, by their calm and orderly tune and rhythm, were an incentive to discipline and concord: by this means the Spartans were imperceptibly calmed in character.[690] The Arcadians, according to their compatriot Polubios, from ancient times onwards “made music their foster-brother” from their cradles till they were thirty years of age, in order to counteract the brutalising tendencies of their rough life and harsh climate; and the inhabitants of one district, Kunaitha, which neglected this preventive, were notorious for their wickedness.[691]
Thus music came to be regarded as the best means of forming character. It was only necessary to apply the right sort of “harmony” to the young and susceptible personality, and the right “ethos” would be produced. The Dorian was most in request for educational purposes: its merits were universally recognised. For it “suitably represented the notes and accents of a brave man in the presence of war or of any other violent action, going to meet wounds or death or fallen into any other misfortune, facing his fate with unflinching resolution.”[692] Of the others, as has been said, Plato preferred the Phrygian and Aristotle the Lydian.
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Not only beautiful music, but beautiful art also, was believed to produce, by an unconscious but irresistible influence, beautiful characters in those who came into contact with it; while, on the other hand, bad art, as well as bad music, was the cause of vice and low moral ideals.[693] This, they naturally thought, was particularly true in the case of children, who are so sensitive to all external influences; moreover, it is the early impressions that make most difference in a man’s life. To serve this educational end, the Hellenes expected every statue and painting, as well as every poem and tune, to have ἦθος, that is, according to Aristotle’s definition,[694] to be such that its moral purpose was manifest to the average man. For this purpose Hellenic art had to become impersonal: the great statues represent a single trait of character. The smaller individualising traits are omitted: the single trait chosen is then idealised and carried to its utmost possible development. This produced a single and easily intelligible effect. The frieze on the Parthenon represented the perfect knight in various attitudes, not So-and-so and Somebody-else. The same idealised abstractions can be traced in the “Theseus” of the Pediment, and in most of the dramas of Sophocles.
The realisation of this artistic ideal was made possible by the fusion of the two currents, Doric and Ionic. At the end of the sixth century a wave of Doricism passes over Athens, and the first competent athlete-sculptors arise there. A second wave came in the middle of the next century, in the period of Perikles. The Dorian characteristics now dominate Attic artists alike in poetry, sculpture, and vase-painting. Aeschylus had possessed the best traits of the Ionic temperament, chastened by the great crisis of the Persian wars: his imagination is half oriental, and he has often been compared to a Hebrew prophet. But the canons of Sophocles are purely Doric, as are those of Pheidias. The mixture of Doric ethics with Ionic imagination produces the great age of Hellenic art and literature. With art in such an educative condition, the effect of the great public buildings and temples, which adorned even quite humble villages, and of the glorious statues of which every temple, agora, and gymnasium formed a perfect treasure-house, must have been very great upon the Hellenes, who were probably the most susceptible of all peoples to artistic influences. Moderns vaguely realise that a great Gothic Cathedral does direct the emotions quite perceptibly. The more susceptible Athenians must have been much more strongly influenced by the Parthenon and the Propulaia. In fact, it is related that Epaminondas declared that his countrymen could never become great unless they removed these buildings bodily to Thebes. Strangers visiting Athens were so overcome by her architectural glories that they thought her the natural capital of the world—an effect which Perikles may well have intended. Great works of art produce great effects: it is not unnatural to suppose that smaller works produce a not inconsiderable, if smaller, effect. Modern theorists often declare that the pictures and wall-paper of the nursery ought to be in the best taste. Plato and Aristotle ruled that everything, however humble, which surrounds the growing child should be in accordance with the best canons of art, since art influenced morality so strongly. “Ought we not to keep an eye,” says Plato,[695] “on the craftsmen also, and prevent them from representing moral evil or disorderliness or bad taste or lack of grace or lack of harmony either in their imitations of animals or in their buildings or in any other object of their craft? If they are unable to carry out our directions in this matter, ought we not to expel them from the community, lest boys who are brought up in the bad pasture of these bad representations may pluck poison daily from everything around them, and little by little insensibly accumulate a large amount of evil in their souls? Must we not rather search for such craftsmen as are able, by their native genius, to discover what is beautiful and graceful? For in this way our children, dwelling in a region of health, will be influenced for good by every sound and every sight of these works of beauty, inhaling as it were a healthy breeze that blows to them from a goodly land.” Every article of furniture, every detail of architecture, is to take its part in educating the citizens. But if art and music are so potent a factor in education, they require to be carefully regulated: a depravation of popular taste, which will cause a depravation of the dependent artists, will by its educating influence increase the national decadence both of taste and of morals, in an ever-widening degree.
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Poetry had at least an equally potent influence upon contemporary ethics. The works of the great poets were the chief medium of education, and large quantities of them were learned by heart in all the elementary schools.[696] What the boys learned, they then recited, with as much dramatic action as they were capable of: the rhapsodes provided them with models. Thus the boys really acted the poets as far as they could. Acting was a new thing in Hellas in Solon’s time, and it was received with apprehension. When Thespis first acted one of his plays, Solon asked him if he was not ashamed to tell such lies in public, making himself out to be what he was not. Thespis replied that it was only in fun. Then Solon struck the ground with his stick and said, “We shall soon find this fun of yours invading our commercial transactions.” Later, when Peisistratos obtained the bodyguard, to which he owed his tyranny, by pretending to have been wounded by his enemies, Solon said the stratagem was a case of acting.[697] This objection was echoed by Plato, and is not wholly unjustified by the course of history. For the great vice of Hellenic life was its insincerity: it is impossible to tell how far a Hellene is in earnest. It is this vice which ruins their oratory; it is this which, in later times, made the “hungry little Greek” the type of a fawning liar in Roman opinion. It was not only in recitations that acting played a great part. The dances were essentially dramatic: it was this quality which enabled them to give birth to the drama. In the war-dance all the gestures and attitudes of attack and defence in actual battle were represented. The Dionysiac dances were originally the acts of devotees trying to assimilate themselves to the god in his sufferings and triumphs.
How vividly a Hellene entered into the dramatisation may be seen from the case of the rhapsode Ion. When he recited Homer, his eyes filled with water and his hair stood on end; and his audience were in much the same condition. The effect in the “Mimetic” dances, where music, gestures, rhythm, and poetry all combined to produce a single impression, must have been greater still; the audience, as well as the performers, must often have been quite carried away. Such performances were very frequent. Is it unnatural to suppose that such frequent assimilation had an important effect on the Hellenes, with their artistic temperament and great susceptibility? At any rate, Plato, Aristotle, and Aristophanes, not to mention lesser names, believed that it had.
Among these potent poetic influences, the drama must certainly not be forgotten. Sokrates regarded the Clouds of Aristophanes as a far more deadly attack upon his career than anything that Anutos and Meletos could say. To Plato, the theatre plays the part of the “Great Sophist,” the educating influence which forms the opinion and the character of the young.
It must be remembered that Hellenic poetry enshrined the religion of the race: this fact gave it an enormous influence. The characters in Aeschylus and Sophocles are divine or semi-divine; many of the audience in the theatre were wont to revere Agamemnon or Theseus; all paid worship to Athena and Apollo. The Athenian drama was sacred to a Hellene as is the play at Oberammergau to a Christian. Had Shakespeare dramatised the Bible, modern children might have recited his speeches and acted his plays with somewhat similar feelings to those with which Hellenic boys recited Homer or Aeschylus. Suppose Shakespeare had thus dramatised the story of Esau and Jacob, and an imaginative child was set to learn Jacob’s speeches and repeat them; suppose he was also in the habit of hearing them recited by a first-class actor who knew how to bring out the minuter traits of character.[698] Is it not, at any rate, quite rational to argue that the child would gradually absorb some of these traits of character, just as children often pick up the peculiarities of nurses and others with whom they have no hereditary connection? Might not underhand habits be reasonably attributed to frequent acting of the part of Jacob? Yet in ancient Hellas the influence was much stronger, for the people were more susceptible and the characters were believed to be half-divine.