There was one conception common to both Greek and Jew which reacted powerfully upon the moral system of each. This was what has been called the doctrine of race election. The Jews believed themselves to be the “chosen people.” The Greeks believed the same concerning themselves. They were the intellectually elect people. All other peoples were “barbarians.” Just as the Jewish doctrine of election excluded the Gentile world from the pale of Jewish moral sympathies, so did the Greek doctrine of separateness cause the Greek to shut out from his moral sympathies the entire non-Greek world. We shall see a little further on how this race egotism dictated large sections of the Greek code of morals.
II. The Ideal
Patriotism the cardinal virtue; civic and military duties
As we have already noticed, it was out of his relations as a citizen that the primary duties of the Greek arose. His supreme duty was patriotism, devotion to his city. “Good citizen” and “good man” were interchangeable terms. And since a state of war rather than of peace was the normal relation of the Greek cities, the military virtues held the highest place in the ideal of excellence. “Their bodies,”—thus Thucydides makes one of his characters speak of the citizen soldiers of a typical Greek city—“their bodies they devote to their country as though they belonged to other men.”[437] Thus the preëminent Greek virtue, courage, was almost synonymous with valor in war. To throw away one’s shield was the last infamy with the Greeks as with the Romans.
This type of character, blending the civic and the military virtues, is presented to us with incomparable charm in Plutarch’s Lives. Here we see the ideal in actual flesh and blood. It is the altruistic element in this type of character which renders it so morally attractive.
The Greek virtue of courage a form of our virtue of self-sacrifice
For we should not fail to note that in the Greek enumeration of the virtues, the virtue of self-sacrifice, which we give the first place in our own moral ideal, is hidden under courage or fortitude.[438] With us this virtue expresses itself in a great variety of forms; with the Greeks, in one form chiefly—self-devotion on the battlefield. This altruism, it is true, was narrow; it did not look beyond one’s own city; but notwithstanding this limitation it was genuine altruism, for facing death in battle, as Aristotle says, is “the greatest and noblest of perils.”[439] This ready self-devotion of the individual to the common interests of his city was the most attractive feature of Greek morality. It formed the basis of Greek civilization. When this virtue was lost the Greek city perished, and with it Greek civilization passed away.
Among all the cities of Greece, Sparta realized most perfectly the military virtues of the Greek ideal. The great place so long held by her in the ancient world she won through the loyalty of her citizens to the soldier’s ideal of obedience, courage, and self-devotion. The conduct of Leonidas and his companions in the pass of Thermopylæ not only had a bracing effect upon Greek character for generations, but has never ceased, through the inspiration of example, to add to the sum total in the world of loyalty to duty.
The virtues of temperance and justice
To the virtue of self-sacrifice, under the guise of fortitude, or the facing of danger or the endurance of pain in a worthy cause, the Greeks added temperance, justice, and wisdom.