A Survey of Greek Civilization

Front matter

THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIEN TIFIC CIRCLE. Ifoun&eS in 1S78. This volume is a part of the course of home reading the essential features of which are : i. A Definite Course covering four years, and including History, Literature, Art, Science, etc. (A reader may enroll for only one year.) No examinations. 2. Specified Volumes approved by the counselors. Many of the books are specially prepared for the purpose. 3. Allotment of Time. The reading is apportioned by the week and month. 4. A Monthly Magazine, The Chautauquan, with additional readings, notes, and general literature. 5. A Membership Book, containing suggestions on reading, review outlines, and other aid. 6. Individual Readers, no matter how isolated, may have all the privileges. 7. Local Circles may be formed by three or more members for mutual aid and encouragement. 8.

The Time Required is on an average forty minutes a day for nine months. 0. Certificates are granted at the end of four years to all who complete the course. 10. Advanced Courses, for continued reading in special lines — History, Literature, etc. 11. Pedagogical Course for secular teachers. 12. Young People's Reading Course, to stimulate the reading of good literature by the young. For all information concerning the C. L. S. C. address The Chautauqua Office, Buffalo, N. Y. THE REQUIRED LITERATURE FOR 1896-7. The Growth of the French Nation (illustrated). George B. Adams, Professor of History, Yale University $1.00 French Traits. W. C. Brownell.of Scribners', New York 1.00 A Study op the Sky (illustrated). Herbert A. Howe, Professor of Astronomy, University of Denver 1.00 A Survey op Greek Civilization (illustrated).

J. P. Mahaffy, Professor of Ancient History, University of Dublin, Ireland 1.00 A History op Greek Art (illustrated). F. B. Tarbell, Professor of Archæology, University of Chicago 1.00 The Chautauquan (12 numbers, illustrated) . 2.00 Lion Gate at Mycenæ. (See page 22.) Cbautauqua TRea&tng Circle Xfterature A SURVEY OF GREEK CIVILIZATION BY J. P. MAHAFFY, D.D., D.C.L. (Oxon.) I Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin; Hon. Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, Professor of Ancient History in the University of Dublin. Author of " Social Life in Greece" "Prolegomena to Ancient History" ''Greek Life and Thought ," "History of Greek Literature" "The Greek World Under Roman Sway" etc. MEADVILLE PENNA FLOOD AND VINCENT Che <atbautauqua--(3tentur*? *pri**s**f NEW YORK 1 CINCINNATI: CHICAGO: 150 Fifth Avenue. 222 W. Fourth St. 57 Washington St. Copyright, 1896 By Flood & Vincent The Chautauqua- Century Press, Meadville, Pa., U. S. A. Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound by Flood & Vincent. Hi

Preface

. There is, I think, a strong tendency in the present day to pursue the threads of knowledge separately. It is on the whole a wholesome tendency, though it sacrifices breadth and variety of acquisition to thoroughness in each department. A herd of specialists is rising up, each master of his own subject, but absolutely ignorant and careless of all that is going on around him in kindred studies. The man who has turned his mind to various pursuits, and has endeavored to embrace in his view many fields of research, is even looked upon with suspicion, instead of respect, and presumed to be inac curate in each of the particular fields which occupy so many special students exclusively. I fear that this separation is being carried out beyond its legitimate or useful degree even in the separation of secular and religious subjects, of intellectual and moral studies.

To take the most signal example : In the Roman Catholic Church it is an avowed principle that theology is the only necessary science for the education of a priest, that this theology, far from being en lightened, is likely to be endangered by secular knowl edge. On the other hand, the scientist generally stands aloof from theology, and too often expresses his con tempt for it as a non-progressive science, or if he be of a better moral fiber, and acknowledges the weight and importance of religion, he is ready to accept, as a mere layman, what his pastor or other clerical adviser may teach. The result is a loss of breadth on the theological side, Preface. IV a loss of seriousness (in the moral sense) on the scientific side. In both there is the increasing tendency to thrust aside or forget the great unifying principle of all our life and knowledge — that all our thought, all our science, all our history, all our speculation of every kind, nay, even all the vast complex of worlds in which myriads of other beings may be prosecuting similar in quiries — these are the product or the outcome of the de sign of one Almighty God, who has created the world according to his infinite wisdom, and rules it according to his infinite goodness.

A recognition of this great fact on our part is the proper link or common ground of all the various and minute special researches we may make into the laws of the universe, or the history of any part of it. Nay, more, it is the proper defense, the only defense we can make, if we are checked by the warning that in the few years vouchsafed to us on this earth we have no right to spend one moment of our precious time upon things of no eternal import ; that the study of religion and our future condition under the providence of God is our only proper employment. We can reply in the most thorough earnest that the exclusive study of what we have separated and called moral or religious science is not the best way to promote that very science. The most remarkable illustrations, the most powerful vindications of God's providence, are found in probing the secrets of the laws of nature, the varieties in the course of human history.

Here we may see working in practice what we learn from our theology in theory, and if in our feebleness and blindness we are unable to accommodate all the phenomena of science or of history to these laws, surely the worst way out of the difficulty is to ignore it, to shut our eyes to the facts, instead of using them to correct or enlarge our theory. Preface. V It is for these reasons that what may be called the Chautauqua idea of starting from the knowledge and love of God as a great first principle, and passing from it into the broadest and most various survey of human knowledge as such, is not only the highest, but the only true method of general education. But it is part and parcel of this method that the student need not perpetu ally be reminded of it. He must have his hours of special and absorbing study when he is engrossed in the special branch he has in hand, and when he need not, and cannot, be constantly dwelling upon the great idea which underlies all his life and work.

Just as a dili gent man of business, whose faith and trust in God are strong and clear, must nevertheless plunge into daily affairs and do worldly work which absorbs him for hours in the day, while the thought of God retires into the depths of his soul — the silent influence which, without being constantly recalled into consciousness, nevertheless orders his thoughts and protects him from temptations to fraud or selfishness — so the student of this history or any other branch of knowledge ought to pursue it with all his heart and search it out as such, secure if he reverts to the first basis of all knowledge and concludes that all the phenomena he has examined are instances of laws established by the great Creator of the world. For the God revealed to us is no oriental despot, who is content to see his slaves perpetually occupied in watching and praising their master, thus neglecting all other duties.

He has rather set them to gain more knowledge with the talents intrusted to them, to push their way into the secrets of his wisdom with all the diligence, all the accuracy, all the devotion to this work of which they are capable ; and if such a servant, intent upon his lawful work, fails to look up and Preface. VI see that the Master is present, may not such a fault be pardoned by him who has ordained that labor is honor able and zeal a moral duty? " Whatsoever thine hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might." These considerations justify a very common feeling among literary men, who do not regard the question be fore us so seriously. Even in works of fiction, they say, it is a defect and an injury to the intentions of the teacher if his moral be drawn too plainly ; if he not only shows his characters and their adventures to the reader, but also tells him what lessons that reader is expected to draw from the narrative.

The greatest moral teachers even in fiction are those who give us the truest and most striking pictures of human life and have left all moral inferences to work their own way with the reader. Such is the subtle but powerful teaching in Æschylus, Shakes peare, Scott, in fiction, and in true history there is no more signal example than the Gospel narratives of our Lord's passion, where not a single reflection or ad vice from the writer mars the dignity and the pathos of the narrative. The same great principle may be applied in smaller and less important work. It is on the whole better for me to draw a picture of Greek civilization as it was, and as it aspired to be, without laying stress, during our progress, on the contrasts of the culture of intellect with out moral forces to balance it, to that which has received the powerful support of Christianity.

It is not easy even to guess what changes this great moral force would have made in Greek culture had it been applied during its most brilliant days. Christianity has hitherto been powerless to affect some brilliant societies, though it has worked a great reformation in the world. The Italian states in the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth Preface. VII centuries were torn by all the vices and crimes which Thucydides describes as rife in the warring Greek republics. Machiavelli's idea of politics seems to have advanced in no way upon Aristotle's, from a moral point of view. Nay, even in the present day, on the very skirts of civilization and in countries once en dowed with humanity and culture, there are atrocities committed such as we might only expect from the savages of Central Africa.

In the very center, in the very forefront of civilization do we not see greed, ambition, international jealousy urging neighbor nations to cast aside every moral, every Christian consideration, and to draw the sword in support of national objects, which every honest man in either nation would disavow as base and unworthy in any private transaction ? So far one might be tempted to say that the teaching of Christianity has made, alas ! but little difference. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that, in this century at least, there is a moderation in the practice of war among Christian nations, which did not exist in old Greek days. Not that there were then wanting men quite modern in their humanity ; but the average has been raised; the opinion of the majority, of common men and women, is more humane since the preaching of the Gospel.

On the other hand, it is quite possible that an earlier diffusion of Christianity might have stopped the great artistic development which has left so many per manent traces upon our life. Polytheism, with Greeks living under it, produced far finer results in art than Christianity, with Italians striving to glorify it on canvas and in stone. At all events, we should never have learned what was possible for the human intellect apart from revelation, and what flaws and faults adhere to the highest manifestations of that intellect, had we not be- Preface. VIII fore us the example of both the greatness and the small ness of Greek civilization. But it is indeed an idle speculation to consider what would or would not have happened had God ordered the world's history otherwise than he has done. One weighty utterance is sufficient for us : " When the full ness of time was cotne God sent forth His Son."

If, therefore, the world required preparation for that cardi nal turning point, if a certain condition of ripeness was required for the proper acceptance of the Gospel by man, then the history which I have written in this volume is probably a most vital and important step in that preparation, perhaps hardly less important than that Law " which was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ." For that Law affected only the chosen people, whereas Hellenic culture affected the world. The reader will find this topic discussed in my final chapter, so that I need not enlarge upon it here. It is enough to remind him that he is not about to study a work of mere secular import, and only of use or inter est to a worldly man ; the whole of these rich and varied antecedents to the establishment of that Christian culture which is the highest ideal we possess of life upon this earth are well worth the study of every intelligent man and woman.

To such it is not only a privilege, but a duty, "to search all things, to try all things," in order that they may ' ' hold fast that which is good. ' ' Trinity College, Dublin, March, 1896. CONTENTS. CHAPTER. PAGE I. Introductory 13 II. The Homeric Age 41 III. The First Two Centuries of Historical Development in Greece, 700- 500 B. C 68 IV. The Passage from Sporadic to Systematic Culture. The Great Struggle with the East .... 106 V. The Life of the Nation from the Defeat of the Persians (479 B. C. ) till the Fall of Imperial Athens (404 B. C.) 133 VI. The Fourth Century B. C 165 VII. The Fourth Century B. C. {Continued') 205 VIII. The Time of Alexander the Great and His Early Successors . . . 223 IX. The Hellenistic World, 250-150 B. C. 254 X. Greek Culture under the Romans . 292 Postscript The required books of the C. L. S. C. are recommended by a Council of six.

It must, however, be understood that recommendation does not involve an approval by the Council, or by any member of it, of every principle or doctrine contained in the book recommended. ILLUSTRATIONS. Lion Gate at Mycenæ Frontispiece. PAGE. Bee-hive Tomb Excavated by Mrs. Schliemann . . 36 Temple at Pæstum S5 Theseus with the Marathonian Bull 129 Tanagra Figurines 186 Sculpture of the Period of Phidias 207 Sculpture on the Sarcophagus of a Sidonian King 238 Gold Cup from Mycenæ 285 General View of Olympia 304 Olympia after Excavations Italian revival of interest in Greek civilization. Art, Politics. Letters. 13 A SURVEY OF GREEK CIVILIZATION.

Chapter I

introductory. It were quite idle now, in the closing nineteenth century, to waste many words in setting forth the importance or interest of Greek history and civilization. Since the days when Lascaris and his fellows brought from Constantinople Greek books and Greek tastes, the remnant of the sack of the Turks, fugitive and needy, was the seed which grew up in one generation's sowing into the magnificent early Renaissance of Italy. It seduced popes from their piety, princes from their poli tics, and again made letters and art one of the first considerations of civilized men. Raphael and Michael Angelo steeped themselves in Greek art ; they searched for it with eagerness under the ruins of Roman palaces, and copied it with the faithfulness of genius. The builders of the matchless Certosa (near Pavia) almost make us condone the ruffian Visconti's vices ; the sol emn art of Borgognone seems almost incompatible with the crimes of his patron.

Then comes Machiavelli with his reflex of Aristotle's intricacies in politics, Cellini with his revival of the Alexandrian toreutic, not to speak of the new creation of literary style by the long-for gotten masterpieces of Plato, Isocrates, and Demos thenes. All these things are now commonplace, but what never can be commonplace is to contemplate the permanence of this revival. Waxing indeed and waning, Modern appreciation of the Greek genius. No feudalism in Greek political life Difficulty of giving a general presentation. misunderstood and travestied by the builders, the sculptors, and the poets, of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was reserved for us in the nineteenth to turn from the muddy stream and seek again at the pure source the real freshness and glory of what the Greeks had produced.

And so in our day we have not only laid aside the patch and powder with which our grandfathers had thought to improve the natural com plexion of Greek art, we have even advanced to new discoveries in analyzing the subtleties of Greek genius. The builders of the Madeleine in Paris thought it a simple thing to copy the Parthenon. It was reserved for the marvelous investigations of M. Penrose * to show us that these builders had not the smallest inkling of the recondite art by which Ictinus designed his masterpiece. In like manner, it was not till yesterday that the art of Demosthenes, the artifices of Theocritus and his fellows, received their proper appreciation. It was not till the immortal work of Grote that we came to understand how Greek politics are not like the politics of medieval Europe — the cunning of the priest, the violence of the baron, the cunning violence of the king — but in theory at least the reasonable discussion of the public, the final decision of the majority, the submission of magistrates and rulers to the will of the sovereign people.

Modern inquiry has sought out along many paths the myriad developments of Greek intellect, and there is a great library of special researches in every European language recording the results. To gather up the sum of these researches into one broad view, within the limits of one volume, is indeed a task of great fascination, but is due rather to the publishers' * In his " Principles of Athenian Architecture," written for the Society of Dilettanti. Beginnings of Greek civilization ; date uncertain Homeric monarchy not absolute. Introductory. ■5 boldness than to the author's ambition. In such a task any man may fail. No one has a right to attempt it who cannot conscientiously say that he has lived the long summer of his life in daily contact with all in turn of the many remains still extant of Greek art, politics, letters, life, speculation.

Such an one may even come to regard it as an act of duty, in the autumn of his days, to stand like Homer's royal husbandman at the head of the furrows, resting on his staff, surveying with great contentment the rich harvest gathered by a host of will ing toilers. With sweeping stroke the mowers strew the lands ; The gatherers follow and collect in bands. The rustic monarch of the field descries, With thankful glee, the heaps around him rise. Our own generation has seen a great revolution of opinion regarding the epoch when the earliest civilized life in Greece began. It used to be perfectly agreed upon that Homer gave us the earliest picture. In him certainly do we find all those distinctive excellencies which are only found in Greek life and in Greek letters. There was no subsequent generation of Greeks which did not find Homer congenial, Homer natural, Homer ancestral.

The society which he described was indeed in many respects different from the societies of historical days ; but Grote and others took pains to show that the changes arose from natural development ; that the agora of free men and the voice of public opinion * were already known and felt. Though Agamemnon asserted in a line known to Aristotle, but since ex punged by offended editors, that he had the power of life and death, his sovereignty was evidently not abso lute but, according to Thucydides' s words, an hereditary * Described as " some one said," when citing a general feeling. Date of Homer. Early Greek history formerly taken from Homer. monarchy with defined privileges.* Accordingly both ancients and moderns were agreed to accept Homer as the commencement of Greek history. But what age does this imply?

It used to be the fashion to put back Homer to a very early date. The fall of Troy was set down according to the chronology of Eratosthenes — the highest Greek authority — at 1104 B. C, and Homer was supposed to have been not far removed in date from this event, for did he not know all about it perfectly, and had he not a living conception of all the heroes before him ? Besides, the whole Homeric society went to pieces in consequence of the war, and had not the poet lived close to the time, all the intimate knowledge he shows would have been lost or dissipated into fragments all over Greece. We may add that the whole society described in the poems differs so considerably from the earliest historical Greeks shown us in the poems of Archilochus and the elder Simonides, that a long gap must have intervened be tween the days of Agamemnon and the days of Gyges the Lydian, with his Greek friends the lyric poets.

It used therefore to be maintained that we had at least a semi-historical knowledge of Greek society and Greek manners as far back as 1000 B. C. in the Iliad and Odyssey. All the earlier histories, even down to Thirlwall's and Grote's, began by giving a picture of Homeric society from this point of view. Grote also gave an explicit account of the mythology of the people, all the histories and adventures of their gods, as evi dence of what the beliefs of the nation were, and what their notions of things spiritual and things unseen. He refused, indeed, to allow any historical value to these stories. He would not even admit that we had in them * This is the description given by Aristotle in his " Politics." Introductory. 17 Homer as a theologist. Homer and Hesiod no longer taken as historical.

Iliad not by a single author. a distorted account of early physical facts. If there were physical or historical facts there, no man could separate them from the fictions which surrounded them. They were therefore merely evidences of the people's imagination. He might very well have added, what he did not appreciate, that even the stories as we have them are made up by later and artificial processes, and by later and theoretical writers, who strove to harmonize legends which were various and inconsistent in the hearts of the isolated communities that made up the Hellenic nation. Herodotus knew this so well that he asserted Homer and Hesiod to be the originators of the theology of the nation. They harmonized the legends, fixed the names and attributes of the gods, and made some sort of sys tem out of the scattered beliefs of the people.

But it need hardly be stated that theology only as old as Homer and Hesiod was no primitive faith, and could give us no picture of really ancient Greece. Most of our legends come from sources far later even than these. And as regards what Homer and Hesiod had to say, were they really as old as they had been represented ? Had they really any direct or close knowledge of the society of the tenth century before Christ ? The general drift of modern criticism has led us to deny to them this position ; nay, even as regards Homer, we have come to deny the unity of authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey ; we have even come to deny the unity of authorship of the Iliad, and see in both poems the work of a school or succession of bards, enlarging, expanding, adorning a nucleus originally short and simple, and so gradually producing, under the heads of some master arranger, at the close of a long development, these two great poems, whose unity is only artistic.

For in the Iliad especially, as can easily be shown, inconsistencies are frequent, sutures obvious, and the traces of older and shorter lays worked into a plot are not to be mis taken. Traces of combination of earlier and later lays. It follows at once that some parts at least of the Homeric poems are the work of later hands, who had no living knowledge even of the society which produced the earliest and simplest lays. These later bards may have written as antiquarians, drawing upon their imagi nations for their facts. They did not live at any very remote age, for they must have known and used writing in the composition of these long, elaborate epics ; and they show not a few signs of artificiality. Thus modern criticism has reduced the historical significance of the Homeric poems even below the skeptical position adopted by Grote.

There arose also a school of thinkers in Germany, of whom Professor Max Mtiller was the most eminent representative in England, who were led by their speculations on comparative mythology to deny any historical basis whatever to the story of the siege of Troy, or the adventures of Ulysses. The human tragedies ascribed to the heroes were only travesties or misunderstandings of something far older and more universal, the phenomena of day and night, of the rising and setting sun, or of tempest and clear weather. Though this theory is now out of favor, it can hardly be said to be yet extinct, so I may here quote the words in which I criticised it more than twenty years ago, when it threatened, like the rod of Aaron, to swallow up the rods of the other magicians with whom it came in con flict: The skeptical school of Homeric critics.

There is a fallacy, called by Archbishop Whately the thau matrope fallacy, in which the illusion is produced by rap idly presenting to our minds a series of separate ideas, and ringing the changes on them till we are confused and believe Fanciful inter pretation of mythology. Introductory. 19 Theory of identity of character. Psychological interpretation of myths. Personification by the primitive mind. them all identical or connected. A logical reader is strongly reminded of this fallacy when he finds the sun, the dawn, the storm-clouds, and the gloaming, kept going like a number of balls in a juggler's hand. Any hero can play any part. If he is spoken well of he must be the sun, if not, he is the night. Whether he murders or marries or deserts a maiden or a widow, she is the dawn. What is still more unscientific, if he have two or three letters of his name identical with any other mythical name, identity of character is asserted.

This is a habit which our comparative mythologers ought not to acquire, see ing that even the most advanced comparative mythologers of Germany cannot forget the difficulties before them. Even Professor Max Miiller cannot develop his theory without much hesitation. Far from being satisfied with any random simi larity, he professedly requires complete identity of letters, a knowledge of the etymology, and even an identity of accent, before he is satisfied. Thus, he hesitates about Septemtriones* He hesitates about Paris, as we have seen. He hesitates (though little) about Hermes, because the form Heremeias does not occur. He hesitates concerning Aditi having the meaning of the Infinite. t We pass to the psychological argument, which bases the whole system of interpretation by the sun and dawn alone on an analysis of the mental condition of savages, or of primitive races ; and I would draw special attention to this side of the theory, which has hitherto been very slightly examined by careful critics.

Comparative mythologers draw very poetical and very detailed pictures of these historical infants, and give us to understand that they have studied their habits closely. "His mental condition % determined the character of his language, and that condition exhibits in him, as in children now, the working of a feeling which endows all outward things with a life not unlike his own. Of the several objects * " Lectures," II.. page 365. Though, in matters of the kind, it is impossible to speak very positively, it seems xwt improbable that the name triones may be an old name for star in general. f Cf. ibid., II., 500, note. " This is doubtful, but I know no better etymol ogy." The reader will find similar caution used in " Chips," II., page 133. I may add, however, that the greatest of Greek etymologists, G. Curtius, rejects many of the derivations which even M. Max Miiller considers sound.

So far are we still removed from the judicial inquiry stage. X That is, of the primitive Aryan. The quotation is from Cox's "Aryan Mythology," I., pages 42 sq. Primitive attitude to natural phenomena, Attributes life to every aspect of the material world. Imagery. which met his eye he had no positive knowledge, whether of their origin, their nature, or their properties. But he had life, and therefore all things else must have life also. He was under no necessity of personifying them, for he had for him self no distinctions between consciousness and personality. He knew nothing of the conditions of his own life or of any other, and therefore all things on the earth or in the heavens were in vested with the same vague idea of existence. The sun, the moon, the stars, the ground on which he trod, the clouds, storms, and lightnings were all living beings ; could he help thinking that, like himself, they were conscious beings also ?