These lines from the first canto of the Odyssey were imagined by a generation which could still afford to err, but as Greece approached her hour of destiny, her prophetic inspiration grew clearer. The poets of the sixth century were haunted more insistently than the Homeridai by the possibilities of disaster inherent in success of every kind—in personal prosperity, in military victory, and in the social triumph of civilization. They traced the mischief to an aberration of the human spirit under the shock of sudden, unexpected attainment, and they realized that both the accumulated achievement of generations and the greater promise of the future might be lost irretrievably by failure at this critical moment. ‘Surfeit (κορος) breeds sin ὑβρις when prosperity visits unbalanced minds.’ In slightly different words, the proverb recurs in the collections of verses attributed to Theognis and to Solon. Its maker refrained from adding what was in his and his hearers’ thoughts, that ὑβρις, once engendered, breeds αιη—the complete and certain destruction into which the sinner walks with unseeing eyes. But the whole moral mystery, to its remorseless end, was uttered again and again in passionate words by Aeschylus, who consciously discarded the primitive magical determinism in which Herodotus afterwards vainly sought relief.
Φιλει δε τικτειν ὑβρις
μεν παλαια νεα—
ζουσαν εν κακοις βροτων
ὑβρις τοτ’ η τóθ’, ὁτε το κυριον μολη
φαος τοκου,
δαιμονα τ’ εταν, αμαχον, απολεμον,
ανιερον θρασος, μελαι—
νας μελαθροισιν Ατας,
ειδομενας τοκευσιν.
{Philei de tiktein hubris
men palaia nea—
zousan en kakois brotôn
hubris tot’ ê tóth’, hote to kyrion molê
phaos tokou,
daimona t’ etan, amachon, apolemon,
anieron thrasos, melai—
nas melathroisin Atas,
eidomenas tokeusin.}
But Old Sin loves, when comes the hour again,
To bring forth New,
Which laugheth lusty amid the tears of men;
Yea, and Unruth, his comrade, wherewith none
May plead nor strive, which dareth on and on,
Knowing not fear nor any holy thing;
Two fires of darkness in a house, born true,
Like to their ancient spring.
(Agamemnon, vv. 763-71, Murray’s transl.)
The poet of the crowning victory over Persia was filled with awe, as well as exultation, at the possibilities for good or evil which his triumphant generation held in their hands. Were they true metal or base? The times would test them, but he had no doubt about the inexorable law.
Ου γαρ εστιν επαλξις
πλουτου προς κορον ανδρι
λακτισαντι μεγαν δικης
βωμον εις αφανειαν.
{Ou gar estin epalxis
ploutou pros koron andri
laktisanti megan dikês
bômon eis aphaneian.}
Never shall state nor gold
Shelter his heart from aching
Whoso the Altar of Justice old
Spurneth to night unwaking.
(Agamemnon, vv. 381-4, Murray’s transl.)
The Agamemnon was written when Athens stood at the height of her glory and her power, and before her sons, following the devices of their hearts, ‘like a boy chasing a wingèd bird’, had set a fatal stumbling-block in the way of their city, or smirched her with an intolerable stain. The generation of Marathon foreboded the catastrophe of the Peloponnesian War, yet the shock, when it came, was beyond their powers of imagination, and the effect of it on the mind of Greece was first expressed by the generation which was smitten by the war in early manhood. This is how it was felt by Thucydides (iii. 82):
‘So the class-war at Korkyra grew more and more savage, and it made a particular impression because it was the first outbreak of an upheaval that spread in time through almost the whole of Greek society. In every state there were conflicts of class, and the leaders of the respective parties now procured the intervention of the Athenians or the Lakedaimonians on their side. In peace-time they would have had neither the opportunity nor the inclination to call in the foreigner, but now there was the war, and it was easy for any party of violence to get their opponents crushed and themselves into power by an alliance with one of the belligerents. This recrudescence of class-war brought one calamity after another upon the states of Greece—calamities that occur and will continue to occur as long as human nature remains what it is, however they may be modified or occasionally mitigated by changes of circumstance. Under the favourable conditions of peace-time, communities and individuals do not have their hands forced by the logic of events, and can therefore act up to a higher standard. But war strips away all the margins of ordinary life and breaks in character to circumstance by its brutal training. So the states were torn by the class-war, and the sensation made by each outbreak had a sinister effect on the next—in fact, there was something like a competition in perfecting the fine art of conspiracies and atrocities....