ὃς ῥ’ ᾔδη νέμεσίν τε καὶ αἴσχεα πόλλ’ ἀνθρώπων.
But upon characters less frivolous and less corrupt, this power acts with great efficacy: so much so, that Phœnix says he was restrained, when in his passion, from killing his father by some benevolent deity, whose mode of proceeding was, we shall perceive, very remarkable: for the suggestion he made to Phœnix with such good effect was, not that he would be punished by the gods for the offence, but that he would become an offence and scandal among men[813]:
ἀλλά τις ἀθανάτων παῦσεν χόλον, ὅς ῥ’ ἐνὶ θυμῷ
δήμου θῆκε φάτιν, καὶ ὀνείδεα πόλλ’ ἀνθρώπων,
ὡς μὴ πατροφόνος μετ’ Ἀχαιοῖσιν καλεοίμην.
The δήμου φάτις, or public opinion, weighs even with the matron Penelope among the motives to her virtuous and heroic conduct; and the maid Nausicaa, no less circumspect than artless, finds in the φῆμις ἀδευκὴς, the bitter gossip, of Scheria, an apology for desiring Ulysses not to enter the city in her company[814].
But the sentiment of regard to general opinion comes out in other and yet finer forms as a practical regulator of conduct in the heroic age.
Perhaps we might venture to rely upon the uses of the single word αἰδὼς, with the cognate verb and adjective, in Homer, for proof that the condition of the Greeks of his age was a condition of high civilization, in that which constitutes its most essential part, namely, that which relates to the affections and passions of man; the expansion by moral forces of the one, and the compression of the other.
Shame, in all its many forms, has more than one pervading characteristic to mark it as an agent alike powerful and delicate in its influence upon human conduct.
First, it essentially involves this idea: that while it refers to an external standard, independent of ourselves though able to act upon us, still the power thus invoked is one altogether distinct from the idea of force. So sensitive indeed is the feeling of shame, that at the first moment when force comes into view, it alters its nature, and passes into fear. That which it apprehends is something, which dwells only in the ethereal region of opinion; and yet this, by the fineness of its appreciation, it converts into an agent effective both to excite and to restrain. Thus it exhibits to us the human spirit guided by silken reins, and in this way bears emphatic witness to the high training, by which alone it can become susceptible of so gentle a guidance.