MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
The Trojan war gives a great shock to Greece and hurls it for the first time against Asia. Herodotus saw very well in this war, still mixed with fables, but certain in its principal events and in its issue, the first act of this long struggle between Greece and Asia, which will have for end the expedition of Alexander.
The Eastern armies are richer, the habits more slack, the spirit less active and less enterprising. Greece already lived its own life, it was conscious of itself and practised in its own centre that military and intellectual activity of which the Trojan War was the first development.
Marriage is no longer, as in the East, a sale, where the woman is considered as a thing; an exchange of presents between the two families seems to indicate a certain equality between the husband and wife. The legitimate wife, in this society where the scourge of polygamy has not passed, has a dignity and influence unknown in Greece. Penelope is the companion of Ulysses. The nobleness of her sorrow, her authority, are signs of the new destiny of women. The wife of Alcinous rules the domestic affairs. Helen herself, after her return to family life, will come and sit down, free and respected by the hearth of her spouse. Lastly, Andromache is the true companion of Hector, and seems worthy of sharing in all his fortune. But the woman is still far from being the equal of man. Favourite slaves frequently take from her her influence, and slavery, which the chances of war can bring down on the noblest, vilifies her at every instant. That tripod, given to a victor in a contest, is worth twelve oxen. We see the princes Iphitus and Ulysses, labourers and shepherds, Anchises, who is shepherd and hunter. The shield of Achilles shows us a king harvesting. Neleus gives his daughter in marriage for a flock; Andromache herself takes care of Hector’s horses; and Nausicaa, at a later and more civilised period than the Odyssey, is depicted to us washing the linen of the royal family.
The guest almost makes part of the family; it is the gods who send him, a touching and wholesome belief in that time of brigandage and of difficult communications. You are going to spurn this guest; take care! perhaps it is Jupiter himself. How many times have the gods not come thus to try mortals? Also hospitality formed a sacred link which united, in the most distant tribes, those who had received it to those who had given it. This gave rise to duties of gratitude and friendship that nothing could efface, and which kept their sway even to the encounters on the battle-field. Glaucus and Diomedes met in the midst of the conflict and exchanged weapons, which they would have a horror of staining with the blood of a guest. It is not in vain that Hercules and Theseus travelled over Greece, punishing the violators of hospitality. There were no castes in the Grecian society, but slavery from the most ancient times, with the right of life and death for sanction. War was the most ordinary cause of servitude. The enemy spared became the slave of the victor; it is thus that Briseis fell to the power of Achilles. There was no town taken without slaves, and the inhabitants formed part of the booty. Hector predicted slavery for his wife and his sons, and depicts Andromache as fetching water from the fountain, and spinning wool in the house of a Greek. The carrying off of children by pirates, who made a regular trade of them, already maintained slavery; it is thus that Eumæus was sold at Ithaca. This custom of taking away children from the inhabitants of the coasts, lasted as long as the ancient world. The Greek comedy, and after it Roman comedy, made of this carrying off the most ordinary source of their intrigues. But if servitude was already rooted in Greek civilisation, it was at least then singularly softened by the simplicity of the customs, and above all by the rural and agricultural life, which brought together in common works master and slave.
Poetry was already a fashion in these rising societies, and in the middle of these hard wars the pleasures of the mind had their place. The warriors, seated in circles, listened with an eagerness, full of patience, to the interminable recitals of the ædes or singers. Competitions of music and religious poetry are already instituted in the small towns, which call the rising art to their ceremonies. These poetries were sung with the accompaniment of the lyre, and there was no king who had not his singer. Agamemnon treated his with honour, and in leaving, entrusted to him his wife and his treasures. This religious and heroic poetry preceded Homer, who found established rules and fixed types. As to the beauty of this primitive poetry, it must be judged by the immortal creations of its most illustrious representative. Certainly there were not many Homers, but he was not the only poet, and the imposing simplicity of his poetry could not be a unique fact in this age of chanted legends. Art and sciences were in infancy, but the curiosity and admiration that the poets testify for the still imperfect work of the artists, and for the fabulous tales of travellers, remind us that we see at its beginning the most industrious and the most inventive race of antiquity.[i]
FOOTNOTES
[6] [This estimate must not be taken too literally. The “Heroic Age” is more a racial memory than a chronological epoch.]
