Still another reason for the feeling that the retail trades were unworthy of citizens was the conviction that this kind of business had “a strong tendency to make men bad.” The small merchants and traders in Greece certainly bore a very bad reputation,[456] and it is probable that the public disesteem of their occupation and the contempt in which they themselves were held had the same sinister influence upon them that the similar feeling in Old Japan had upon the petty trader there.[457]
Revenge reckoned as a virtue
In nothing did the ordinary Greek moral consciousness differ more widely from the Christian than in the matter of forgiving injuries. This was one of the virtues brought in by Christianity which to the Greek mind was foolishness. To the Greek the taking of revenge upon an enemy was a duty. A man should render himself useful to his friends and dangerous to his enemies. The Greek orator, in order to justify his resentment toward any one, always took pains to show that he had been injured in some way by the person, and hence had good ground for wishing to do him evil. Indeed, one who neglected to take revenge upon his personal enemy was looked upon as a weak, pusillanimous creature.[458]
But out of this virtue of revenge, paradoxically enough, arose the virtue of forgiveness; for revenge was limited by the requirements of the virtue of moderation or self-restraint. The person seeking revenge for an injury must set reasonable bounds to his thirst for vengeance. Hence when the age of reflection came there were teachers of spiritual insight who, regarding the matter from this point of view, saw forgiveness to be a virtue because it required in the one forgiving great self-conquest and self-control.[459]
Low estimation of truthfulness
Another serious defect in the ordinary Greek moral standard was the low place assigned to the virtue of veracity. The Greeks, in marked contrast to the ancient Persians, had only a very feeble sense of the sanctity of the plighted word. Untruthfulness was ingrained in the nation. The Homeric heroes were full of guile and deceit, and the historic Greeks were little better. They had throughout the ancient world a well-earned reputation for disregard of promises and oaths. When it seemed to them necessary to lie in order to gain a desired end, then lying appeared to them justifiable. Scythas, tyrant of Zancle, if we may judge from a story told by Herodotus, was the only Greek who kept his word to Darius. This man was in exile at Susa. He obtained from the king permission, presumably on parole, to visit Sicily, and honorably returned to Persia. The conduct of Scythas in this matter must have been exceptional, for, in the words of Herodotus, “him Darius regarded the most upright of all the Greeks to whom he afforded a refuge.”[460]
The great moral teachers of Greece recognized this defect in the moral character of their countrymen and sought to correct it by extolling the virtue of truthfulness. After the Persian war a class of men arose, historians and philosophers, whom Schmidt, because of their reverence for truth, calls the ancestors of the modern men of science.[461] Thucydides had the same sense of the sanctity of exactness in statement of fact as has the historian of to-day. Socrates died rather than cloak the truth before his judges. Aristotle said, “Friends and truth are both dear to us, but it is a sacred duty to prefer the truth.”[462]
IV. The Moral Evolution
The morality of the Homeric Age
The historical starting point of the moral evolution in Greece is the morality of the Homeric Age. This morality we find incarnated in the heroes of the time, Achilles and Odysseus, for, as Wundt observes, “the inmost moral convictions of a people are shown far more plainly in the character of its heroes than in its gods.”[463]