Gazing thence on Delos on the Cyclades, and on those straits and channels of purple sea, I felt that nowise could I come closer still; never more intimately than thus could embrace that vanished beauty. Alas for an ideal which roots itself in the past! That longing cannot be allayed.
F. W. H. Myers (Fragments of Prose and Poetry).
The wonderful record of Myers in classical study will first be observed. If we did not know him to be absolutely trustworthy, we would find it practically impossible to believe his statement. Imagine, for instance, a boy of sixteen learning by heart the whole of Virgil for his own pleasure! However, anything vouched for by Myers must be accepted as literally true.
Extraordinary as this is, the above quotations introduce us to a subject quite as extraordinary and far more interesting and important, namely, the distortion of truth caused by extreme classical enthusiasm.[52] It is perfectly easy to see how such enthusiasm arises. Greek art and literature are not only intrinsically wonderful and valuable but, seeing that they were produced by a comparatively small population in a barbaric age, they constitute the greatest (secular) marvel in the history of the world. Everything tends to excite enthusiasm for this remote, alien, primitive, but most remarkable people. I need not speak of the art in which they stand unrivalled throughout the ages. As regards their literature, apart from its intrinsic excellence and the beauty of the language in which it is written, it has an additional fascination and charm, because it is the speech and song of the infancy of the world. Through it we see into the mind and realize the life of the most interesting race that ever lived. Possessing astounding intellect and intense originality, they were nevertheless the children of nature. Their earth was peopled with fauns and nymphs, their gods lived and moved and had their being in every natural object—and they had very little of our ideas of right and wrong. They had nothing of our wide knowledge and experience, yet they constructed a world of life and thought for themselves. It is absorbingly interesting to read their beautiful poetry, fine literature, and philosophic thought, bearing in mind that it was produced in the ignorant childhood and paganism of the human race, over two thousand years ago. And one of the most astonishing things about them is that essential product of civilization, a keen sense of humour. So curiously “modern” is their literature that the writers speak to us across the ages with as vivid a voice as if they were still alive. No other primitive race has been able to leave us any such adequate conception of its life and thought. Moreover, we can never forget how the Greek arose out of the tomb, where he had slept for many centuries, to preside at the re-birth of our own modern world—that emergence of Europe from medieval darkness which we call the Renaissance. It was largely Greek art and literature that stimulated the mental activity of the world and made us what we are to-day.
Very great enthusiasm is, therefore, warranted in the Greek student—but there comes a point where enthusiasm may become pure fanaticism, and lead to that most deadly of all things, the perversion of the truth.
In the above quotations two Greek poems are quoted, and another is referred to in the lines I have italicized. The first two[53] refer to vice, which to us is revolting and criminal, but to the whole Greek nation was natural, and recognised by law. The third expresses even more revolting passion. It will be seen, therefore, that Myers, in order to illustrate the “departed loveliness” of Greek life made a strange choice of quotations (which also, standing alone, would give a very false notion of classic Greek poetry).
Seeing that Myers was one of the purest-minded of men, what is the explanation of this very remarkable fact? The explanation is simply that Myers was a classical enthusiast. He had forgotten the warning he himself gave in the first quotation. It is absolutely amazing how such an enthusiast, however brilliant a scholar and capable a man in other respects, can blind himself to the most obvious facts where anything Greek is concerned. It is very certain that Myers read into each poem a perfectly innocent meaning—and he would not be alone in that respect. Take, for instance, the third quotation which is from Sappho. In my youth the great majority of classical men appeared to have convinced themselves that a poem of terribly fierce passion was an expression of mere friendship! Even our leading reference-book, Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, gave the same absurd view until about 1877.[54] However, we must get away from this ugly subject and seek further illustrations elsewhere.
This perverted enthusiasm seems to permeate all books of the last fifty or sixty years dealing with Greek life, art and literature that I have met with. This is a very large statement to make, and, of course, I do not mean that such flagrant instances as those above referred to are the rule. But to me there seems always to be some bias which tends to exaggerate or falsify the facts to some extent. We can trace this tendency back more than eighteen hundred years to Plutarch. (On the Malice of Herodotus). He, as Mr. Livingstone[55] says, “took the view that the Greeks of the great age could do no wrong, and rates the historian for ‘needlessly describing evil actions.’” And it is largely in this way that the enthusiast works—by omitting facts. I should think few readers unfamiliar with the classics will have known all the facts already put before them in these notes—because such facts, although known to all classical scholars, are kept in the background as much as possible. Again the tendency is to judge the Greeks by their greatest men—to imagine every Greek to have been a Plato!