Part 19 (1/2)
And now, after having suggested a reading of the plot, it is time to let the actors speak for themselves. There is only s.p.a.ce to quote half a dozen pa.s.sages, but they have been chosen to ill.u.s.trate the critical scenes and situations in the drama as it has been sketched out, and they may persuade the reader that there is something to be said for the present interpretation.
We shall not dwell on the period I have called the first act--that is, the period before 431 B. C. But the reader is recommended, again, not to lay aside the Greek poets when he takes up the Greek historians. Homer will reveal more of the opening scenes than Herodotus; and the exaltation of spirit produced by the repulse of the Persians, and expressed inst.i.tutionally in the foundation of the Delian League, can hardly be realized emotionally without the poetry of Aeschylus. But the philosophers and scientists are indispensable too. Professor Burnet's _Early Greek Philosophy_, or his _Greek Philosophy from Thales to Plato_, throws light on history and not merely on the Greek theory of knowledge. And the reader should make acquaintance with the little work on 'Atmospheres, Waters, and Localities' emanating from the Hippokratean school of medicine. It is only thirty-eight pages in the Teubner text (Hippocratis _Opera_, vol. i), and it gives clearer expression than Herodotus to the fifth-century scientific point of view. Here is one pa.s.sage which might have been written in Victorian England. The writer is describing a peculiar disease prevalent among the nomads of southern Russia. 'The natives', he remarks, 'believe that this disease is sent by G.o.d, and they reverence and wors.h.i.+p its victims, in fear of being stricken by it themselves. I too am quite ready to admit that these phenomena are caused by G.o.d, but I take the same view about all phenomena and hold that no single phenomenon is more or less divine in origin than any other. All are uniform and all may be divine, but each phenomenon obeys a law, and natural law knows no exceptions.'
It is hard to leave this first act of the tragedy. It is a triumph of youth, and the phrase in which Herodotus sums up the early history of Sparta expresses the prevailing spirit of early h.e.l.lenic civilization.
??a te ed?a?? ?a? e??e????sa? {Ana te edramon kai euthenethesan}: 'They shot up and throve.' But there is another phrase in Herodotus which announces the second act--an ominous phrase which came so natural to him that one may notice about a dozen instances of it in his history. ?de?
?a? t? de??? ?e?es?a? ?a??? {Edei gar to deini genesthai kakos}: 'Evil had to befall so-and-so, and therefore'--the story of a catastrophe follows in each case. The thought behind the phrase is expressed in Solon's words to Croesus (Herodotus, Bk. I, ch. 32): 'Croesus, I know that G.o.d is ever envious and disordering' (ta?a??de? {tarachodes}), 'and you ask me about the destiny of man!'
Note the epithet translated 'disordering'; we shall meet the word ta?a??
{tarache} again. It is the bitter phrase of a man who lived on from the great age into the war, but not so bitter as the truth which the writer could not bring himself wholly to express. 'No single phenomenon', as contemporary Greek science realized, 'is more or less divine than any other', and the 'envious and disordering' power, which wrecked Greek civilization, was not an external force, but the very spirit of man by which that civilization had been created. There is a puzzling line in Homer which is applied once or twice to features in a landscape--for instance, to a river: 'The G.o.ds call it Xanthos, mankind Skamandros.' So we might say of the downfall of Greece: the Greeks attributed it to the malignity of G.o.d, but the divine oracles gave a different answer.
Why did the Confederacy of Delos break down and Greece lose her youth in a ruinous war? Because of the evil in the hearts of men--the envy aroused by the political and commercial greatness of Athens in the governing cla.s.ses of Sparta and Corinth; and the covetousness aroused by sudden greatness in the Athenians, tempting their statesmen to degrade the presidency of a free confederacy into a dominion of Athens over Greece, and tempting the Athenian proletariat, and the proletariat in the confederate states, to misuse democracy for the exploitation of the rich by the poor. Envy and covetousness begat injustice, and injustice disloyalty. The city-states, in their rivalry for dominion or their resentment against the domineering of one state over another, forgot their loyalty to the common weal of Greece and fought each other for empire or liberty. And the wealthy and well-born citizens forgot their loyalty to the city in their blind, rancorous feud against the proletariat that was stripping them of property and power, and betrayed their community to foreign enemies.
'Strange how mortals blame the G.o.ds. They say that evil is our handiwork, when in truth they bring their sufferings on themselves. By their own folly they force the hand of fate. See, now, how Aigisthos forced it in taking the wedded wife of Atreides and slaying her lord when he returned, yet he had sheer destruction before his eyes, for we ourselves had forewarned him not to slay the king nor wed his wife, or vengeance would come by Atreides' son Orestes, whene'er he should grow to manhood and long for his home. So spake our messenger, but with all his wisdom he did not soften the heart of Aigisthos, and now he has paid in full' (_Odyssey_, _a_ 32-43).
These lines from the first canto of the _Odyssey_ were imagined by a generation which could still afford to err, but as Greece approached her hour of destiny, her prophetic inspiration grew clearer. The poets of the sixth century were haunted more insistently than the Homeridai by the possibilities of disaster inherent in success of every kind--in personal prosperity, in military victory, and in the social triumph of civilization. They traced the mischief to an aberration of the human spirit under the shock of sudden, unexpected attainment, and they realized that both the acc.u.mulated achievement of generations and the greater promise of the future might be lost irretrievably by failure at this critical moment. 'Surfeit (????? {koros}) breeds sin ???? {hubris} when prosperity visits unbalanced minds.' In slightly different words, the proverb recurs in the collections of verses attributed to Theognis and to Solon. Its maker refrained from adding what was in his and his hearers' thoughts, that ???? {hubris}, once engendered, breeds a??
{aie}--the complete and certain destruction into which the sinner walks with unseeing eyes. But the whole moral mystery, to its remorseless end, was uttered again and again in pa.s.sionate words by Aeschylus, who consciously discarded the primitive magical determinism in which Herodotus afterwards vainly sought relief.
F??e? de t??te?? ????
e? pa?a?a ?ea-- ???sa? e? ?a???? ??t??
???? t?t' ? to?', ?te t? ?????? ???
fa?? t????, da???a t' eta?, aa???, ap??e??, a??e??? ??as??, e?a?-- ?a? e?a????s?? ?ta?, e?d?e?a? t??e?s??.
{Philei de tiktein hubris men palaia nea-- zousan en kakois broton hubris tot' e toth', hote to kyrion mole phaos tokou, daimona t' etan, amachon, apolemon, anieron thrasos, melai-- nas melathroisin Atas, eidomenas tokeusin.}
But Old Sin loves, when comes the hour again, To bring forth New, Which laugheth l.u.s.ty amid the tears of men; Yea, and Unruth, his comrade, wherewith none May plead nor strive, which dareth on and on, Knowing not fear nor any holy thing; Two fires of darkness in a house, born true, Like to their ancient spring.
(_Agamemnon_, vv. 763-71, Murray's transl.)
The poet of the crowning victory over Persia was filled with awe, as well as exultation, at the possibilities for good or evil which his triumphant generation held in their hands. Were they true metal or base?
The times would test them, but he had no doubt about the inexorable law.
?? ?a? est?? epa????
p???t?? p??? ????? a?d??
?a?t?sa?t? e?a? d????
??? e?? afa?e?a?.
{Ou gar estin epalxis ploutou pros koron andri laktisanti megan dikes bomon eis aphaneian.}
Never shall state nor gold Shelter his heart from aching Whoso the Altar of Justice old Spurneth to night unwaking.
(_Agamemnon_, vv. 381-4, Murray's transl.)
The _Agamemnon_ was written when Athens stood at the height of her glory and her power, and before her sons, following the devices of their hearts, 'like a boy chasing a winged bird', had set a fatal stumbling-block in the way of their city, or smirched her with an intolerable stain. The generation of Marathon foreboded the catastrophe of the Peloponnesian War, yet the shock, when it came, was beyond their powers of imagination, and the effect of it on the mind of Greece was first expressed by the generation which was smitten by the war in early manhood. This is how it was felt by Thucydides (iii. 82):
'So the cla.s.s-war at Korkyra grew more and more savage, and it made a particular impression because it was the first outbreak of an upheaval that spread in time through almost the whole of Greek society. In every state there were conflicts of cla.s.s, and the leaders of the respective parties now procured the intervention of the Athenians or the Lakedaimonians on their side. In peace-time they would have had neither the opportunity nor the inclination to call in the foreigner, but now there was the war, and it was easy for any party of violence to get their opponents crushed and themselves into power by an alliance with one of the belligerents. This recrudescence of cla.s.s-war brought one calamity after another upon the states of Greece--calamities that occur and will continue to occur as long as human nature remains what it is, however they may be modified or occasionally mitigated by changes of circ.u.mstance. Under the favourable conditions of peace-time, communities and individuals do not have their hands forced by the logic of events, and can therefore act up to a higher standard. But war strips away all the margins of ordinary life and breaks in character to circ.u.mstance by its brutal training. So the states were torn by the cla.s.s-war, and the sensation made by each outbreak had a sinister effect on the next--in fact, there was something like a compet.i.tion in perfecting the fine art of conspiracies and atrocities....
(iii. 83) 'Thus the cla.s.s-war plunged Greek society into every kind of moral evil, and honesty, which is the chief const.i.tuent of idealism, was laughed out of existence in the prevailing atmosphere of hostility and suspicion. No argument was cogent enough and no pledge solemn enough to reconcile opponents. The only argument that appealed to the party momentarily in power was the unlikelihood of their remaining there long and the consequent advisability of taking no risks with their enemies.
And the stupider the combatants, the greater their chances of survival, just because they were terrified at their deficiencies, expected to be outwitted and outmanuvred, and therefore plunged recklessly into action, while their superiors in intellect, who trusted to their wits to protect them and disdained practical precautions, were often caught defenceless and brought to destruction.'