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Thus in ancient Hellas music, art, and poetry had an immense effect on the characters and morals of the race. This influence may well have been exaggerated by Hellenic thinkers. Damon the musician declared that every change in artistic standards produced a change in the tone and constitution of a State; and Plato agreed with him.[699] The danger of such innovations is a large part of the theme of the Laws, and, in a less degree, of the Republic. Sparta accepted this attitude and forbade all change. The opinion was certainly widely held, and must have rested on experience.
Just as the thinkers were beginning to realise this principle, it happened that a very great change in the artistic canons did take place. Sophocles is succeeded by Euripides, Pheidias by Praxiteles: music suffers a similar transformation. Idealism gives way to realism: Sophocles and Pheidias had represented men as they ought to be, Euripides and Praxiteles represent them as they are. Poets and sculptors still pretend to be delineating deities, but in reality they are delineating contemporary life.[700] Their creations not only cease to be idealised, they cease to have only a single trait. The “Hermes” of Praxiteles is a dreamy but vigorous young Athenian who might have been met in the Akademeia or Lukeion; the “Herakles” of Euripides is now a homicidal maniac, now a reckless mercenary.[701] The characters become human by losing their divineness. In the next generation the divine names are dropped, and Menander can depict contemporary life without having to call his characters Orestes or Phaidra. Music also ceased to be so severely separated off into types. All manner of musical innovations arise, which it is very hard for a modern to grasp. But the result is clear enough. It became no longer possible to detect the ethical meaning of a tune: music was becoming complex, just as characters in drama and sculpture were becoming complex. It was also more homely in subject. It became daringly “mimetic” also, imitating all the sounds of nature. This was an age of daring experiments, and musicians shared the general movement.
To the Conservative party in Hellas and to the educational theorists these changes naturally appeared ruinous. In their opinion, Euripides was practically parodying the Bible and making divine characters share all the follies and weaknesses, and use the homely language, of mere men. Boys, learning such poetry by heart, would cease to have ideals: everything would be commonplace to them. They would recite the most homely language, and act the most homely parts, under the idea that they were half-divine. Moreover, with the attack of the new school upon the old religion, the more immoral parts of Hellenic mythology were brought into undue prominence. Euripides seems to have chosen some questionable subjects; the dithyrambic poets were worse, and chose themes quite unsuitable for children to act or hear. And music ceased to have any ethical value; it was all trills and onomatopœia. Such changes meant a revolution in the results of education.
The poet Aristophanes is the first to raise his voice against the change. A few months before the utter ruin of Athens, he produces the Frogs, which really repeats the attack of the Clouds, with Euripides instead of Sokrates for the defendant. The poet is attacked as at once the prophet of the new culture of the Sophists and of the new artistic standards. The following are some of the chief faults which Aristophanes finds with the new school represented by Euripides:[702] (1) an undignified style of music, worthy only of the bones as an accompaniment; (2) its habit of mixing all sorts of incongruous musical rubbish together, “lewd love-songs, drinking catches of Meletos, Karian flute-music, dirges, and dances”; (3) its trills or shakes, as in εἰειειειειλίσσετε; (4) its mixture of incongruous pictures, “dolphins, spiders, halcyons, prophet-chambers, and race-courses,” pathos and bathos, commonplace and solemnity; (5) bad metre, licenses of every sort, and frequent “resolved” feet. As a parody of its habitual incongruity Aristophanes gives:
“O God of the sea, that’s what it is. O ye neighbours, behold yon monstrous deed: Gluke’s gone off with my cock. Nymphs, ye daughters of the hills! Mary Ann, lend a hand.”
Aristophanes’ voice comes with a certain pathos, for the play is the last utterance of Periclean Athens, just at the point of falling and trying to find a scapegoat on whom to lay the responsibility of its ruin: and the scapegoat chosen is the new artistic and musical standard. The Ionic temperament had, in fact, broken away from all restraint. The Doric canons of order, symmetry, regularity, and solidity were thrown aside. Everything antique was treated with disdain; all authority was rejected with scorn. No standards, ethical or artistic, were tolerated. Perpetual change, daily novelty, became the one desire of Athens. The foundations of belief, the bases of the moral code, were broken down. The whole world seemed to be crumbling away, and nothing was arising to take its place. Spectators became dizzy with the eternal fluctuations. What wonder if they turned longing eyes towards the one centre of gravity in Hellas, towards the one place where politics, art, and ethics retained their old stability, towards Sparta? So Sparta becomes the philosopher’s ideal, and it is the Spartan canon that Plato tries to reimpose on Ionicism running riot.[703] The fault which he finds with contemporary art and music is that they simply try to please and amuse the audience, not to educate and improve it.[704] They are like parents who try to soothe a fractious child with sweetmeats when his health requires castor oil. But the poets and artists are the slaves of the mob which pays them. They must be freed from this control, and made the servants of the government. Strict canons must be drawn up, which they must follow on pain of being expelled from the State. The canons must be drawn up by a select body of experts; the mob is incapable of judging in such matters; the critic must guide their taste, not follow it.[705] Good music and art must bear the stamp of a good “ethos,” and, since men appreciate the character most which most resembles their own, it will be the good man who will most appreciate good music:[706] so the good man becomes the standard. In order to point his moral, Plato sketches the history of the Athenian drama, showing how its dependence on popular opinion ruined it[707]:—
“At the time of the Persian wars Athens was a limited democracy, with the magistracies arranged according to a property qualification. The spirit of obedience and discipline prevailed in those days, and was strengthened by the dread of Persia. The populace willingly obeyed the laws that fixed the artistic and musical standards. By these regulations the different types of song and accompaniment, hymns or prayers to the gods, lamentations, pæans, dithyrambs, and so forth were kept quite distinct, no one being allowed to mix them together; the standard, too, was not fixed, as now, by the shouts and stampings and confused applause of the mob, but every one listened in silence until the end of the play, the educated classes from preference, and boys and their paidagogoi, and the mob generally, under the direction of the rod. Thus the mass of the citizens were ready to obey in an orderly manner, not venturing to make noisy criticisms. In course of time some poets, who ought to have known better, led the way in breaking down these laws. Frenzied and distracted by their desire for pleasure, they mixed lamentations with hymns and pæans with dithyrambs, they imitated the flute on the lyre, they confused everything with everything else. Blinded by ignorance, they lied and said that there was no question of accuracy of representation in music: the only standard was the pleasure of the hearer, whatever sort of man he might be. With such style of poetry, and arguments to match, they inspired the many with contempt for the laws of Art, and gave them the idea that they were capable of criticising it. So the audience was no longer silent but noisy, since it supposed that it knew what was good and what was bad. Art was no longer governed by good taste, but by the bad taste of the mob. Nor was this the worst of it. From Art the infection spread to other spheres, and every one began to think that he knew everything, and consequently to break the laws. For, thinking themselves wiser than the laws, they no longer feared them.… Next comes a refusal to obey the Archons, then contempt for the orders of parents and elders, then a desire to be free from the restraints of a constitution. The end is utter contempt for oaths and covenants and the gods.”
It is the lack of order and system in contemporary music which Plato dislikes.[708] In modern dances, he complains, manly words are set to effeminate tunes or gestures, and the voices of men and beasts and instruments are mixed together into a confused and unintelligible hodgepodge.[709] Music without words is equally detestable. Music that runs on without the proper pauses and loves mere speed and meaningless clamour, using flutes and harps without words, is in the worst taste. The meaning must be quite plain.
Music must also be good. Poets say much that is good, much that is bad: they are irresponsible beings.[710] The State ought to appoint censors who will reject all unsuitable poems and tunes and dances. Those which are already in existence must be selected and expurgated. If this ruins the poetry, never mind: moral tone is far more important than poetical skill. In fact, poetry ought to be written by moral citizens without any regard being paid to their poetical talents: it would also be well if they did not compose till they were fifty![711] A sketch of a Platonic Censor re-editing Homer is given in Books ii. and iii. of the Republic: his methods are drastic.