Πεντήκοντα δέ οἱ δμωαὶ κατὰ δῶμα γυναίκες, κ. τ. λ.
Full fifty handmaids form the household train;
Some turn the mill, or sift the golden grain;
Some ply the loom; their busy fingers move
Like poplar-trees when Zephyr fans the grove.
Indeed, throughout his whole description of the palace and gardens of Alcinous, the poet seems, to have expended all his ideas of luxury and magnificence. The colouring of the picture must of course be supposed to be much heightened by the graces of fiction and ornament; but nevertheless the objects of it must certainly have been sketched from the manners and usages which were before the eyes of the designer. Upon the first of these passages it is to be observed that the Greeks of those days were ignorant of[Pg 186] any contrivance in the way of lamps: they banqueted or deliberated by the light of fires or the blaze of torches—rude even in their refinements and barbarous in their most surpassing splendour. As to the fifty housemaids, we must recollect that it was necessary to retain a great number of female attendants, where the women had the charge of almost every menial employment, and the males seemed to live for little else but pleasure and war.
One example we may derive from the rude manners of that age, which it would be well if the more polished society of this would remember and imitate: we allude to the constant reliance which was placed upon religion in affairs of every kind. No voyage was commenced—no war undertaken—no treaty concluded—without a recurrence of sacrifice and ceremony. Hence the extraordinary sanctity which was always attached to the persons of their priests; hence also the veneration which was paid to their poets; for as the themes of their earliest songs were generally the praise or the actions of some member of their multifarious mythology, the celebrators partook of the honours which were paid to those whom they celebrated; and the verse which flowed in the name of any of their divinities was supposed to proceed from their immediate inspiration. Princes therefore generally retained in their household a bard or sage (for the terms were nearly synonymous), though we are not so wicked as to suppose that the office of fool, among the ancient Saxons, bore any analogy to that of bard among the ancient Greeks. There is an example of this custom in the opening of the “Odyssey” which has always pleased us very much. The poet has been describing the debauchery and insolence of the suitors of Penelope—
A brutal crowd,
With insolence, and wine, elate and loud.
And when his readers are disgusted by the extravagance and luxury which revels in the property of another, he introduces, by way of relief to the glaring colouring of the rest of the picture, the person of an old man, who still retains the post which he had held under Ulysses, and is compelled reluctantly to sweep the strings of his lyre by the mandate of the dissolute usurpers:[Pg 187]
Κήρυξ δ’ ὲν χερσὶν κίθαριν περικαλλέα θῆκε
Φημίῳ, ὄς ῥ’ ἤειδε παρὰ μνηστῆρσιν ἀνάγκῃ·
Ἦτοι ὂ φορμίζων άνεβάλλετο καλὸν ἀείδειν·
To Phemius was consigned the chorded lyre,
Whose hand reluctant touched the warbling wire;
Phemius, whose voice divine could sweetest sing
High strains, responsive to the vocal string.
This, however, is a custom by no means peculiar to the Greeks. We know that each of the Highland clans retained a bard expressly for the purpose of celebrating the clan and its chief. We imagine we have seen something of the same kind mentioned relative to the American and Indian tribes.
The subject of the “Iliad” of course calls forth long and spirited descriptions of the mode of warfare in use among the ancient Greeks. This appears to us to exhibit plainer marks of barbarism than any other part of their character. They had all the untutored ferocity, the dependence on personal strength or courage, which is characteristic of the earliest ages, without the studied manœuvres and the laboured machines which malicious invention afterwards introduced. The greatest quality inherent in a commander was not skill of head, but strength of limb; few seemed to lay claim to any nobler distinctions than those which were to be found in the space between their shoulders. We know not whether the rude struggling of these uncultivated warriors is not a more interesting spectacle than the cold-blooded massacres of modern days. In the hand-to-hand conflict of two princes there is passion, and fury, and enthusiasm, for which we look in vain to the cold and calculating tactics of l’art militaire.