The youth of high birth, not then so widely as now separated from the low, is educated under tutors in reverence for his parents, and in desire to emulate their fame: he shares in manly and in graceful sports, acquires the use of arms, hardens himself in the pursuit, then, of all others the most indispensable, the hunting down of wild beasts, gains the knowledge of medicine, probably also of the lyre. Sometimes, with many-sided intelligence, he even sets himself to learn how to build his own house or ship, or how to drive the plough firm and straight down the furrow, as well as to reap the standing corn[897]. And when scarcely a man, he bears arms for his country or his tribe, takes part in its government, learns by direct instruction and by practice how to rule mankind through the use of reasoning and persuasive power in political assemblies, attends and assists in sacrifices to the gods. For all this time he has been in kindly and free relations, not only with his parents, his family, his equals of his own age, but with the attendants, although they are but serfs, who have known him from infancy on his father’s domain.
He is indeed mistaught with reference to the use of the strong hand. Human life is cheap; so cheap that even a mild and gentle youth may be betrayed, upon a casual quarrel over some childish game with his friend, into taking it away. And even so throughout his life, should some occasion come that stirs up his passions from their depths, a wild beast, as it were, awakes within him, and he loses his humanity for the time until reason has re-established her control. Short, however, of such a desperate crisis, though he could not for the world rob his friend or his neighbour, yet he might be not unwilling to triumph over him to his cost, for the sake of some exercise of signal ingenuity: while, from a hostile tribe or a foreign shore, or from the individual who has become his enemy, he will acquire by main force what he can, nor will he scruple to inflict on him by stratagem even deadly injury[898]. He must, however, give liberally to those who are in need; to the wayfarer, the poor, the suppliant who begs from him shelter and protection. On the other hand, should his own goods be wasted, the liberal and open-handed contributions of his neighbours will not be wanting to replace them.
His early youth is not solicited into vice by finding sensual excess in vogue, or the opportunities of it staring in his eye and sounding in his ear. Gluttony is hardly known; drunkenness is marked only by its degrading character and the evil consequences that flow so straight from it, and is abhorred. But he loves the genial use of meals, and rejoices in the hour when the guests, gathered in his father’s hall, enjoy a liberal hospitality, and the wine mantles in the cup[899]. For then they listen to the strains of the minstrel, who celebrates before them the newest and the dearest of the heroic tales that stir their blood, and rouse their manly resolution to be worthy, in their turn, of their country and their country’s heroes. He joins the dance in the festivals of religion; the maiden’s hand upon his wrist, and the gilded knife glancing from his belt, as they course from point to point, or wheel in round on round[900]. That maiden, some Nausicaa or some Hermione of a neighbouring district, in due time he weds, amidst the rejoicings of their families, and brings her home to cherish her, ‘from the flower to the ripeness of the grape,’ with respect, fidelity, and love.
Whether as a governor or as governed, politics bring him, in ordinary circumstances, no great share of trouble. Government is a machine, of which the wheels move easily; for they are well oiled by simplicity of usages, ideas, and desires; by unity of interest; by respect for authority, and for those in whose hands it is reposed; by love of the common country, the common altar, the common festivals and games, to which already there is large resort. In peace he settles the disputes of his people, in war he lends them the precious example of heroic daring. He consults them, and advises with them, on all grave affairs; and his wakeful care for their interests is rewarded by the ample domains which are set apart for the prince by the people[901]. Finally, he closes his eyes, delivering over the sceptre to his son, and leaving much peace and happiness around him[902].
Such was, probably, the state of society amidst the concluding phase of which Homer’s youth, at least, was passed. But a dark and deep social revolution seems to have followed the Trojan war: we have its workings already become visible in the Odyssey. Scarcely could even Ulysses cope with it, contracted though it was for him within the narrow bounds of Ithaca. On the mainland, the bands of the elder society are soon wholly broken. The Pelopid, Neleid, Œneid houses are a wreck: disorganization invites the entry of new forces to control it: the Dorian lances bristle on the Ætolian beach, and the primitive Greece, the patriarchal Greece, the Greece of Homer, is no more.
Ethics of earlier and later Paganism.
When we take a general survey of the practical morality of the Heroic age, and compare it with that of later times, we must at once be struck with the great superiority of the former, in all that most nearly touches the moral being of man. The mere police of society, indeed, improves with the advance of civilization. The law of determinate rights to property, which we rather dangerously call the law of meum and tuum, whereas it is but a limited part of that great ordinance, comes to be better understood in later times, and better defended by penal sanctions. A clearer ideal, as well as actual, distinction, is gradually established between force and civil right. But who will venture to say that the duties of man to the Deity, or the larger claims of man upon man, were better understood in the age of Pericles or Alexander, of Sylla or of Augustus, than in the days of Homer?
It is to be expected that, when the elements of wealth are for the most part such as nature offers, when man has hardly left the mark of his hand upon the earth, when little has been appropriated, and that little indeterminately, then the description of right which is least understood should also be least respected; namely, the law which withdraws things from original community of use into individual dominion. To this day we dispute, what was the pristine foundation of the law of property. Why do we not perceive that this is equivalent to an admission, that in the first periods of political society, the whole idea of property must of necessity have been more or less vague? And consequently, that even plunder in primitive times is a different thing from plunder in later times, not only as to public estimation, but as to the moral colour of the act, and that it should be judged accordingly?
Points of superiority in the former.