Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3 / I. Agorè: Polities of the Homeric Age. II. Ilios: Trojans and Greeks Compared. III. Thalassa: The Outer Geography. IV. Aoidos: Some Points of the Poetry of Homer.

by W. E. Gladstone

The sombre aspect of majestic care,

Of solitary thought, unshared resolve[2].

It was surely a healthful sign of the working of freedom, that in that early age, despite the prevalence of piracy, even that idea of political justice and public right, which is the germ of the law of nations, was not unknown to the Greeks. It would appear that war could not be made without an appropriate cause, and that the offer of redress made it the duty of the injured to come to terms. Hence the offer of Paris in the Third Iliad is at once readily accepted: and hence, even after the breach of the Pact, arises Agamemnon’s fear, at the moment when he anticipates the death of Menelaus, that by that event the claim to the restoration of Helen will be practically disposed of, and the Greeks will have to return home without reparation for a wrong, of which the corpus, as it were, will have disappeared[3].

Before proceeding to sketch the Greek institutions as they are exhibited in Homer, I will give a sketch of the interesting account of them which is supplied by Grote. I cite it more for contrast than for concurrence; but it will assist materially in bringing out into clear relief the points which are of the greatest moment.

Grote’s account of the Heroic Polities.

The Greek States of the historic ages, says Grote, always present to us something in the nature of a constitution, as the condition of popular respect towards the government, and of the sense of an obligation to obey it[4]. The man who broke down this constitution, however wisely he might exercise his ill gotten power, was branded by the name of τύραννος, or despot, “as an object of mingled fear and dislike.” But in the heroic age there is no system, still less any responsibility[5]: obedience depends on personal reverence towards the king or chief. Into those ‘great individual personalities, the race or nation is absorbed[6].’ Publicity indeed, through the means of the council and assembly, essentially pervades the whole system[7]; but it is a publicity without consequences; for the people, when they have heard, simply obey the orders of the king[8]. Either resistance or criticism is generally exhibited as odious, and is never heard of at all except from those who are at the least subaltern chiefs: though the council and assembly would in practice come to be restraints upon the king, they are not so exhibited in Homer[9], but are simple media for supplying him with information, and for promulgating his resolves[10]. The people may listen and sympathize, but no more. In the assembly of the Second Iliad, a ‘repulsive picture’ is presented to us of ‘the degradation of the mass of the people before the chiefs[11].’ For because the common soldiery, in conformity with the ‘unaccountable fancy’ which Agamemnon had propounded, made ready to go home, Ulysses belabours them with blows and covers them with scornful reproofs[12]; and the unpopularity of a presumptuous critic, even when he is in substance right, is shown, partly by the strokes that Ulysses inflicts upon Thersites, but still more by the hideous deformities with which Homer has loaded him.

It is, I think, in happy inconsistency with these representations, that the historian proceeds to say, that by means of the Βουλὴ and Ἀγορὴ we are enabled to trace the employment of public speaking, as the standing engine of government and the proximate cause of obedience, ‘up to the social infancy of the nation[13].’ But if, in order to make this sentence harmonize with what precedes and follows it, we are to understand that the Homeric poems present to us no more than the dry fact that public speaking was in use, and are to infer that it did not acquire its practical meaning and power until a later date, then I must include it in the general protest which I beg leave to record against the greater part of the foregoing propositions, in their letter and in their spirit, as being neither warranted in the way of inference from Homer, nor in any manner consistent with the undeniable facts of the poems.

Their use of Publicity and Persuasion.

Personal reverence from the people to the sovereign, associated with the duties he discharges, with the high attributes he does or should possess, and with the divine favour, or with a reputed relationship to the gods, attaching to him, constitutes the primitive form in which the relation of the prince and the subject is very commonly cast in the early stages of society elsewhere than among the Greeks. What is sentimental, romantic, archaic, or patriarchal in the Homeric polities is common to them with many other patriarchal or highland governments. But that which is beyond every thing distinctive not of Greece only, but of Homeric Greece, is, that along with an outline of sovereignty and public institutions highly patriarchal, we find the full, constant, and effective use, of two great instruments of government, since and still so extensively in abeyance among mankind; namely, publicity and persuasion. I name these two great features of the politics and institutions of the heroic age, in order to concentrate upon them the marked attention which I think they deserve. And I venture to give to this paper the name of the Ἀγορὴ, because it was the Greek Assembly of those days, which mainly imparted to the existing polities their specific spirit as well as features. Amid undeveloped ideas, rude methods, imperfect organization, and liability to the frequent intrusion of the strong hand, there lies in them the essence of a popular principle of government, which cannot, I believe, plead on its behalf any other precedent so ancient and so venerable.