Studies in Life from Jewish Proverbs

by W. A. L. Elmslie

Surely no one can fail to hear in those words and in the spirit of this Greek life the music of familiar things, things which we have taken to our heart. That is because the thoughts of Hellas are the source from which our own intellectual and social ideas have been derived.

But Hellenic life was not sunshine without shadow. For all its power and brilliance Greek society was exposed to many perils and was guilty of serious mistakes. These, however, we have here no need to discuss in full. It is enough to note that, when-and-where-soever the necessity for ardent patriotism was absent or unfelt the Greek conception of life lacked adequate moral incentive, and sinister conditions which were a very black shadow in a fair world could and did arise. Much might also be said regarding the jealousies of the petty cities, whence came warfare constant, embittered, and suicidal. Nevertheless it remains absolutely true, that compared with the stagnation of Eastern civilisation, Hellenism was life and health. Judge from one token, the epitaphs just quoted. Men could not write like that in Palestine or Babylon, because they never died for such a cause.

In the years between 359 and 338 B.C. the independent Greek cities were all forced to admit the suzerainty, first of Philip II., king of Macedon, and, after his assassination in 336, of his son Alexander, who was to be remembered throughout history as Alexander the Great. The humiliation was not in any way a crushing blow to the spirit of Greece. To the yoke of Philip and Alexander the city-states could submit with a good grace, for the Macedonians were of the same ancestry as the Greeks, and for years had been to all intents and purposes a part of the Greek world; and Alexander was wholly Hellenic in his upbringing and his ideas. Had he not been educated by the great philosopher, Aristotle? In 334 B.C., the young king organised an army of Macedonians and Greeks and set forth to make a grand assault upon the nations of the East: a stupendous task, but the enterprise appealed to the Greeks as a poetic requital of the awful peril one hundred and fifty years before when Xerxes of Persia at the head of a horde of Orientals had crossed to Greece and almost blotted out its rising life. If the task was colossal and the force to achieve it tiny, the results staggered the imagination of the world. The huge Persian Empire crumbled at the touch of Greek military prowess, directed by the genius of Alexander. In three years the young Macedonian had become absolute master of Western Asia Minor, of Egypt, Syria, Babylonia, and Persia. In 326 B.C. he pushed his conquests to the Punjab, and in 325 he died; but Hellenism did not die with him. The East had seen many conquerors rise and sweep through its lands in triumph, and had continued to dream its long dreams. But the military achievements of Alexander were only the beginning of his work. What stirred the East to its depths was the fascination of the ideas that had accompanied him and that he deliberately sought to establish among the conquered peoples; with what measure of success it now remains to consider.

3. A stormy period followed Alexander’s death. Eventually his Eastern dominions were divided between two of his generals; Ptolemy, who took possession of Egypt, and Seleucus, who became ruler of Syria and the Mesopotamian territories. Happily it is not necessary to follow the confused struggles that ensued between them and their successors—struggles in which Palestine, situated between the rival kingdoms, was continually involved. The point to be observed is that both Ptolemy and Seleucus were Hellenes, as also were most of their leading men, and both they and their successors prosecuted, with all possible energy, Alexander’s policy, the Hellenising of the East. Consider the forces directed to the attainment of that object.

The powerful influences of the royal courts in Egypt and Syria saw to it that throughout the length and breadth of their kingdoms places of honour were reserved for Greeks and such Orientals as might show themselves capable of appreciating and adopting Hellenic culture. To be a Greek, if not by race, then by imitation, became the only avenue to wealth or fame or royal favour.

Alexander, however, had seen that if Hellenism was permanently to subdue and recreate the East it must touch not only the interests of such as are clothed in soft raiment and in kings’ courts live delicately, it must be made a reality daily affecting the life of common folk; and with the foresight of genius he himself pointed the way to secure that end. Realising the organic connection between the Greek ideals and the Greek city, he established at strategic points of his Empire new cities planned on the Hellenic model. The Ptolemaic and Seleucid kings persevered in this scheme. New cities of the Grecian type were founded in their realms, and the old towns were conformed to the new order of things so far as might be. In all important centres the essential accompaniments of Hellenic life were introduced: new political organisation for the election of magistrates, and buildings to meet the system; a hall for the Senate, shady pillared galleries where the free citizens might gather to lounge and talk, baths and gymnasia, a stadium and a hippodrome for the games, and for the drama a theatre. With such interests and amusements the imagination of the common folk was stirred and pleased. The youth of the cities became enthusiastic for the gaieties and glories of the competitive games. Guilds of athletes were formed and received the privilege of wearing a special dress, “a broad-brimmed hat, a fluttering cloak broached about the shoulders, and high laced boots.”[42] In great public processions these young men marched as a special class, wearing crowns of gold, and bearing witness to the wealth and pride of their respective cities by the colours and rich embroideries of their attire. But staider folk than the young and fashionable were also caught in the wide-spread nets of Hellenism. The wealth of the Greek cities and the royal favour shown them attracted commerce, and sleepy Eastern merchants discovered that if they wished to do business they must conform to the prevailing tastes; so that Greek became the language of the market-place as well as of the Court. Finally, the learning and skill of the East confessed its conqueror. Greek art and Greek literature, Greek science and philosophy made the older Eastern styles seem worthless in comparison. Within two centuries following the death of Alexander the near East had been transformed. Hellenism had cast its spell over the whole of life.

The period is one of profound interest for the study of humanity. On the one hand it did much to secure the perpetuation of the intellectual methods of the Greeks, which might have perished had they not been extended beyond the frontiers of the small Greek States in Europe; and on the other hand it showed that the East can change. Human nature is not, as some would have us believe, divided for ever into irreconcilable sections. There are no unbridgeable gulfs between the Eastern and the Western mind. If the modern Westernising movements in China or India should fully succeed, they will but demonstrate anew what was proved long ago in Asia Minor during the three critical centuries before Christ. The challenge these facts present to those who suppose that Christianity cannot become a universal faith is obvious. We must not attempt to give a detailed picture of Hellenism. But even these outlines are enough to show how thoroughly and dramatically the immemorial fashions of the East had been upset and new ambitions kindled, so that men must have felt as if they had been emancipated from the dead past and told to make trial of a new form of life, one that was already brilliant and delightful, but was most of all thrilling in its unknown possibilities. The peoples that walked in darkness thought they had seen a great light.

One fact, however, and that of prime importance, has been left out of count in this description of the situation. Hellenism in the East had a fatal deficiency; it lacked the keen patriotism that inspired the life of the old Greek cities. In Athens men had known that only by the maintenance of their best ideals could Athens lead the intellect of Greece, only by discipline and self-sacrifice could the foe be driven from Athenian fields, could Athens rule the seas, could Athens be free and Athens glorious. But citizens of some Hellenised city of Syria experienced no such sentiments. Their politics were urban not imperial, academic not matter of life and death. To be a captain in the armies of Ptolemy or Seleucus might be a convenient way of gaining a livelihood and might lead to fame, fortune and favour; but after all, to fight in those ranks was to fight for kings’ glories, not for hearth and home. The ambitions of the petty states of Greece had had certain evil aspects; strifes, jealousies, envyings were ever present among them, bleeding the higher interests of their common civilisation. Nevertheless the need for passionate devotion to one’s city had been the root of Hellenic virtue, and that not even Alexander’s genius could transplant to Asiatic soil.

Moreover, even such faint assistance as Greek religion gave to morality failed the Hellenism of the East. By Alexander’s time the early conceptions of the gods had been riddled by criticism, and as yet neither philosophy nor mysticism had discovered for morality a basis intelligible and acceptable to ordinary men. The earnest spirits of the day were aware of the danger ahead. They foresaw that, if society continued on its present course unchecked, its moral bankruptcy must bring disaster. For not all the Greeks were eating, drinking, and making money: some were asking questions about life to which a demoralised Hellenism could give no satisfying answer. And the problem was more than merely intellectual. The perils and pains of actual life made the enigma a personal agony for many men, who saw that “they were being carried onward into a future of unknown possibilities, and whatever might lie on the other side of death, the possibilities on the hither side were disquieting enough. Even in our firmly ordered and peaceful society, hideous accidents may befall the individual, but in those days when the world showed only despotic monarchies and warring city-states, one must remember that slavery and torture were contingencies which no one could be sure that the future did not contain for him.” In the old days it had been possible to appeal for succour to deities not wholly inhuman in their ways and thoughts. “If now that hope faded into an empty dream, man found himself left naked to fortune. With the mass of passionate desires and loves he carried in his heart, the unknown chances of the future meant ever-present fear.”[43] The situation called for remedy. Hellenism itself evolved the Stoic philosophy as a possible solution for its urgent problems.[44] Our contention is that in their own sphere and in their own fashion the Jewish proverbs, as used at this period by the Wise in Jerusalem, were, like Stoicism, an answer to the moral instability which contemporary Hellenism had spread abroad.

But even if Hellenism could have entered Syria in its purest form, it would have needed all its nobility to overcome the vices ingrained in the East. When it came to the task with faith in the high gods shaken and falling, with the spur of patriotism left behind in Greece, no wonder that the ugly elements hitherto held in check in the city-states fed themselves fat amid the ancient evils of the Oriental world. Particularly in Syria did the baser tendencies of Hellenism run riot. Life there did indeed become richer, richer in iniquity. If facts have any meaning, then the history of Syria and Egypt in the Hellenic age cries aloud in witness of the futility of a civilisation, however brilliant, that lacks a basis of moral idealism: “Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid.” The fine culture of the Hellenised lands was dependent on the wrongs and miseries of countless slaves; the cities were filled with glittering, venal women; and the general population sank deeper and deeper in corruption, gluttony, and license. Even the games in Syria were made to pander to the base side of human nature; and, although ideally the cult of athletics might be an excellent thing, “in its actual embodiment it could show all degrees of degradation.” Life in the Syrian towns became for the most part a studied gratification of the grosser senses. Here is the accusation of an eye-witness, a Syrian Greek named Poseidonius, who lived about 100 B.C.: “The people of these cities are relieved by the fertility of their soil from a laborious struggle for existence. Life is a continual series of social festivities. Their gymnasiums they use as baths, where they anoint themselves with costly oils and myrrhs. In the public banqueting halls they practically live, filling themselves there for the better part of the day with rich foods and wines; much that they cannot eat they carry away home. They feast to the prevailing music of strings. The cities are filled from end to end with the noise of harp-playing.”