Part 10

With regard to the gods Protagoras was naturally agnostic. He began his “Treatise on the Gods” with the words: “So far as the gods are concerned, I cannot know whether they exist or do not exist; or what their nature is. Many things prevent our knowing. The matter is obscure and life is short.”[162] One may be curious to know what large matter Protagoras found for his discussion when he began with this frank confession of ignorance; but it should be observed that in this confession there is nothing necessarily antagonistic to the popular theology of his day. It only shows what the words plainly declare, that a belief in the gods cannot depend upon knowledge. Another Sophist, Prodicus, maintained that the divinities were nothing but the kindly powers of nature which man had deified;[163] and the “Gentle Critias,” one of the worst of the Thirty Tyrants, and a ready pupil of the earlier Sophists, is said to have set forth in a satyric drama the theory that the gods were the clever invention of someone who wished to scare men out of their desire to do evil.[164] The effect of such scepticism and agnosticism we can easily imagine.

Many things had been wrongly laid at the door of the Sophists, but it is small wonder that the conservative Athenian citizens came to look with distrust and alarm on these new-fangled subversive notions; that they banished Protagoras and burned his books in the market place; or finally that they should have put Socrates to death.

Into this age of intellectual ferment and readjustment, of scepticism and eager inquiry, the age of Anaxagoras and the Sophists, Socrates entered. He was at once the child of his time and the greatest fecundator of men’s minds that Europe had yet known. He was born in 469 B.C. and was forced to drink the hemlock in March, 399, so that he had completed the allotted span of life. The son of a sculptor, we are told that he followed his father’s profession in his youth, but apparently he did not continue this long. Whence he derived the means of livelihood we do not know. He received the regular Athenian education, was interested especially in geometry and astronomy; the works of the philosophers he had read, but professed that he gained little from them. One is tempted to dwell on the picturesque characteristics of this man—his refusal to teach for pay, as did the ordinary teachers, his profession of complete ignorance—his only claim to wisdom, he said himself,—his ugliness of feature, and his beauty of soul, his omnivorous interest in the work of the humble craftsmen, above all on his belief that he had a warning spirit, a daemon, which checked him when his course was wrong. Although in obedience to this inward monitor Socrates refrained from politics, he fulfilled all his civic duties in peace and in war. He conformed to the traditional religion, sacrificing and praying to the traditional gods, although he undoubtedly did not hold that they were the limited and sensual creatures of the popular belief. When he prayed he asked not for gold or silver or power, but for what the gods knew was good for him. At the close of Plato’s Phaedrus he offers this appeal: “Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, grant me beauty of the inward soul, and make the outward and the inward man to be but one.” This was the man who was charged with corrupting the youth of Athens.

Socrates had much in common with the Sophists. Although it is evident that in his earlier years he had been interested in physical science, we know that he turned away from that in the course of time, convinced that man alone was more than man could understand. He rather confined his attention to man himself, and made man and his conduct the center of philosophic inquiry. With the Sophists Socrates held that the cultivation of excellence, of virtue, whatever that might be, was the chief thing. He also identified virtue and knowledge, and like the Sophists was sceptical as to man’s ability to attain absolute knowledge. Practicability was the test he applied to various opinions. If one notion as to the state or society or anything else worked better than another, it was, therefore, in his view the better; and according to him it was by the adoption of such useful opinions that the individual became the wiser man. He held that education does not consist in putting things into people’s heads, but in leading them to discover the truths which they already possess. He therefore employed discussion as to the validity of hypotheses to bring out the latent knowledge in the minds of his young friends. This method of his—dialectic—was not identical with that of the Sophists apparently, but was not unlike theirs. It was, therefore, natural that his own time should have reckoned him as one of the professional class.

How then was he distinguished from these Sophists? Externally, first of all, by the fact that he did not teach for pay, that his purpose was unselfish, his interest being solely the elucidation of truth and so the establishment of virtue. He himself believed that he had a divine commission to serve the Athenians as a missionary. Plato makes him declare in his defence before his judges: “Men of Athens, I should be guilty of a crime indeed if through fear of death or anything else I should desert the post to which I am assigned by the god. For the god ordains ... that I should follow after wisdom and examine myself and others.”[165] He conceived of himself as the physician of the soul, and maintained that his whole business was “to persuade all, both young and old, not to care about the body or riches, but first and foremost about the soul—how to make the soul as good as possible.”[166]

As I have already said, he believed that if men could only know what justice, goodness, and temperance were they would naturally and inevitably be just and good and temperate. Vice he thought was due to a lack of knowledge; therefore he employed his questioning, dialectic, to endeavor to secure clear definitions of these and other virtues, for he was convinced that if only he and his associates could discover what virtue was, they would at once pursue virtue and flee from all wrongdoing. We may smile at the naïveté of this belief, that virtue is something that can be taught, that to be practised it needs only to be seen; but we must remind ourselves that his confidence was based on another belief, which was that virtue is the best and the most profitable for the individual; and that since each man desires the best for himself, if he sees what is right, he will follow that course unswervingly to the end. It may be said with reason that this is a utilitarian view, and so it is; but in Socrates it was combined with a power of will which enabled him to translate his convictions into reality, for it was in obedience to this conviction that the great teacher gave up his life.

Thus far we have seen that in the ferment of the last part of the fifth century in Athens there were two forces which were in a sense opposed to each other, the Sophists with their inevitable scepticism, who taught that all truth was subjective, that justice and goodness were only that which seemed just and good to the individual; opposed to them in reality was Socrates, not only in spirit but also by the doctrine which he endeavored to establish; for his search was always directed at finding the reality, was always aimed at knowledge in opposition to opinion. These objective truths, the universals, which to him were the only real things in the world, he endeavored to obtain by a process of definition which was not wholly adequate; but he turned men away from mere observation, from what seemed to be true, to search for permanent objective reality. How fruitful his teaching was, was shown by many schools, but above all by his greatest pupil, Plato. His followers have lasted to the present day.

The last third of the fifth century was a new era for Greece. The Peloponnesian War broke out in the year 431, and lasted until 404. On the one side was Athens with the empire which she had boldly built and somewhat ruthlessly held; on the other was a large number of allied states of Greece with Sparta at their head. The war ended with the complete humiliation of Athens. She lost her empire, her wealth, and a large part of her population. These disasters gave opportunity and occasion for new forces to come to the front. Early in the war the mercurial Athenians had shown themselves impatient of the leadership which had made Athens great, and they rejected Pericles. They were easily led astray by wild schemes, as when they followed the imperialistic party headed by Alcibiades and sent out the Sicilian expedition in 415, which was to meet irreparable disaster two years later. In time of distress, under the burden of political and economic misfortune, men often turn to reconsider the bases of their beliefs and actions, to test the validity of the doctrines which have hitherto guided them. This was the case at Athens. The old beliefs went by the board; society, government, and religion all became subjects of doubt and of reexamination.

The greatest spokesman of this time was Euripides. Although he was the younger contemporary of Sophocles, who outlived him by a few months, Euripides belongs to a new age. The former represents imperial Athens of the age of Pericles, the latter the Athens of the Peloponnesian War. Born of a family apparently well-to-do he certainly received a liberal education. Politics and society seem never to have attracted him to

## active participation in them, but the intellectual life of his time

he shared to the full; and more than any extant writer of his day, he shows that he felt the force of the movements which were transforming Athenian thought. It has been aptly said that in Sophocles the poetical course of traditional religion culminated; in Euripides we have for the first time the poetic and philosophical development fully combined. He was a profound thinker, troubled by the most difficult problems of humanity, and approaching tradition with the liberal frankness of the new age. Yet we must always bear in mind that he was a dramatic poet, not a systematic theologian or moral teacher. Again and again fidelity to his art made him put sentiments into the mouths of his characters which must have been abhorrent to him. Nor have we any right to search for some hidden meaning in his plays. Yet after all allowances have been made, we cannot doubt that in his dramas he frequently expresses his personal views on politics, morals, and religion, which were quite at variance with the views of tradition.

Toward the gods of the current mythology no one could have been more frankly sceptical or scornful than he. As Nestle, a German critic, has pointed out, the basic principle of his attacks is found in his verse:

εἰ θεοί τι δρωσιν αἰσχρόν, οὐκ εἰσὶν θεοί.[167]

If the gods do aught that is base, then they are not gods.

That is, as the same critic says, for Euripides “God and sin are mutually exclusive terms.” Sophocles held the same belief, yet his point of view was wholly different, as is shown by his verse:

αἰσχρὸν μὲν οὐδὲν ὧν ὑφηγοῦνται θεοί.[168]

Nothing to which the gods lead men is base.

That is, whatever the gods do is good no matter how it may seem to man. There is then a fundamental difference between the two tragedians: the elder has faith to believe in the righteousness of the traditional gods, the younger is ready to throw tradition over. The unreasonableness and immorality of popular beliefs and the baffling existence of evil in the world Euripides could not reconcile with a faith in the existence of all powerful and just beings such as he held the gods must be, if they exist at all. His firm conviction that divinity, if it have any existence, must be absolutely just, explains the poet’s boldness in holding up to scorn the popular notions. In the Hippolytus he exhibits the goddess of love in a shameful light, and makes Artemis join with the innocent hero of the play in condemning her.

Indeed throughout the tragedy the traditional beliefs are treated with powerful irony. When Phaedra is filled with shame at the passion for her step-son with which Aphrodite has inspired her, the nurse tempts her to yield, quoting ancient tales of the celestials’ amours as examples:

Whoso have scrolls writ in the ancient days, And wander still themselves by paths of song, They know how Zeus of yore desired the embrace Of Semele; they know how radiant Dawn Up to the gods snatched Cephalus of yore, And all for love; yet these in Heaven their home Dwell, neither do they flee the face of Gods, Content, I trow, to be love’s vanquished ones. Thou—wilt not yield?[169]

* * * * *

Nay, darling, from thy deadly thoughts refrain, And from presumption—sheer presumption this, That one should wish to be more strong than Gods. In love flinch not; a God hath willed this thing.[170]

But Phaedra dies by her own hand rather than yield to the goddess’s design. The innocent Hippolytus, second victim of divine injustice, cries out as he dies:

Innocent I, ever fearing the Gods, who was wholly heart-clean Above all men beside,— Lo, how am I thrust Unto Hades, to hide My life in the dust! All vainly I reverenced God, and in vain unto man was I just.[171]

What greater condemnation of the traditional gods could there be than this!

In the Hercules Hera drives the hero mad and makes him the slayer of his own innocent children, all because of the goddess’s jealousy of Zeus. Small wonder that Hercules cries when the truth is brought home to him:

To such a Goddess Who shall pray now? who, for a woman’s sake Jealous of Zeus, from Hellas hath cut off Her benefactors, guiltless though they were.[172]

The hero refuses to find any consolation for his woes in the suggestion that the gods too have sinned and suffered for their wrongs—“if minstrel legends be not false.” Whereat he exclaims:

I deem not that the Gods for spousals crave Unhallowed: tales of Gods’ hands manacled Ever I scorned nor ever will believe, Nor that one God is born another’s lord. For God hath need, if God indeed he be, Of naught: these be the minstrels’ sorry tales.[173]

This play then like the Hippolytus is a condemnation through Hera and Zeus of the whole system of gods.

In these sentiments there is something more than direct defiance of tradition. Euripides does not, like Pindar, refine away the baser elements of legends; or, like Aeschylus and Sophocles, obscure the uglier features of the ancient mythology. On the contrary, constrained by his profession as dramatic poet to draw his themes from the dark tales of gods and heroes in a mythological age—tales whose immorality was wholly hateful to him—he accomplishes his purpose by showing these gods and heroes on his stage engaged in actions and prompted by motives which are so base as to destroy the spectator’s regard for beings of such a sort, and to win the onlooker’s sympathy for the mortal victim against the higher power. To the shameless natures of the gods the poet bluntly gives fitting characterizations: he names them cruel, vengeful, treacherous, licentious.

Euripides is no less iconoclastic in dealing with current religious practices; there is none that escapes his scorn. Sacrifices and votive offerings seem to him unworthy of true gods. The folly of popular wonder at the riches of temples is brought out in a fragment of the lost Philoctetes, in which the hero sarcastically bids his hearers see how even the gods prize gain, and therefore men should not hesitate to get profit and thereby make themselves equal to the gods.[174] That it is not the size of the gift, but piety which secures the favor of just Heaven, is the lesson of another couplet.[175] Temples and statues, and all the sacred privileges attached thereto are treated with equal disregard for tradition; and the sacred institution of blood-vengeance is most emphatically condemned. For the common trust in omens given by dreams and the flight of birds he has only ridicule. So in the Tauric Iphigenia when Iphigenia learns from Orestes that her brother lives, she cries:

False dreams, avaunt! So then ye were but naught.[176]

To which Orestes answers:

Ay, and not even Gods, whom men call wise, Are less deceitful than be fleeting dreams. Utter confusion is in things divine And human. Wise men grieve at this alone When—rashness?—no, but faith in oracles Brings ruin—how deep, they that prove it know.[177]

The condemnation of the interpreter of signs given by birds is made the more effective in the Phoenissae by putting it into the mouth of the seer Tirisias:

Who useth the diviner’s art Is foolish. If he heraldeth ill things, He is loathed of those to whom he prophesies. If pitying them that seek to him, he lie, He wrongs the Gods.[178]

In the Iphigenia at Aulis Achilles bitterly asks, “What is a seer?” and answers his own question, “A man who speaks few truths and many lies.”[179] Even prayer is sometimes regarded as of doubtful aid, although naturally Euripides’ characters often appeal to the Gods.

At times, too, the poet is more openly atheistic or agnostic with reference to the popular religion. The most striking illustration is found in the prayer which he puts into the mouth of Hecuba, the Trojan queen:

O Earth’s Upbearer, thou whose throne is Earth, Whoe’er thou be, O past our finding out, Zeus, be thou Nature’s Law, or Mind of Man, To thee I pray; for treading soundless paths, In justice dost thou guide all mortal things.[180]

You will observe that although this prayer rejects all current polytheism, it is far from denying the existence of a divine power—rather it maintains in poetic language the existence of such a principle—the reason of the universe which shows itself in nature as law and in the mind of man as reason. This pantheism finds expression elsewhere in his poetry. In illustration I will quote two fragments. The first identifies divinity with all embracing ether:

Seest thou the boundless ether there on high, That folds the earth around with dewy arms? This deem thou Zeus, this reckon one with God.[181]

The second identifies god with the intelligence which pervades the world:

Thee, self-begotten, who in ether rolled Ceaselessly round, by mystic links dost blend The nature of all things, whom veils enfold Of light, of dark night flecked with gleams of gold, Of star-hosts dancing round thee without end.[182]

The last three passages show how the poet’s mind was filled with the philosophic thought of the day. In identifying divinity with the ether he was apparently giving poetic expression to the views of his contemporary, the philosopher Diogenes of Apollonia, whom he must have known at Athens. Diogenes followed Anaximenes in making “Air” (or the “Ether”) the basic element of the world, but advanced beyond his predecessor in attributing to “Air” intelligence and movement—indeed he held that it could only be conceived as intelligent; and he further said that this intelligent “Air,” which was the cause and, by virtue of its intelligence, the director of all things, seemed to him to be god. In the mind of man therefore the divine principle shows itself as intellect, in nature it is law. But in Hecuba’s prayer there is a higher conception of god than even this—the divine reason is also world-ruling Justice: Justice and God are one. This identification in a sense is as old as Hesiod, but Euripides conceives of Justice not as the daughter of Zeus but as identical with the cosmic reason, immanent in all things, forming and directing all things. When the poet speaks of Justice in ways more natural to the ordinary man, he combats the current notion that Justice dwells in heaven where men’s sins are recorded in a book; rather, he says, she is here on earth with men, unseen but seeing all.[183] Yet he never carried out this idea and reconciled it with the actual moral condition of the world and the undeserved sufferings of mankind. The problem of evil and doubt constantly vexed him; neither faith nor reason gave him rest:

When faith overfloweth my mind, God’s providence all-embracing Banisheth griefs: but when doubt whispereth ‘Ah but to _know_!’ No clue through the tangle I find of fate and of life for my tracing: There is ever a change and many a change, And the mutable fortune of men evermore sways to and fro Over limitless range.[184]

On death and the possibility of a future life Euripides again gives us no consistent views. He thought that men fear the great transition from inexperience with it; but he found some comfort in the fact that death comes in obedience to nature’s universal law, and therefore should cause no alarm.[185] Still he felt that the possibility of life beyond the grave gave no certainty of joy, for many, like Macaria in the Heraclidae, might say:

If in the grave aught be: But ah that naught might be!—for if there too We mortals who must die shall yet have cares, I know not whither one shall turn; since death For sorrow is accounted chiefest balm.[186]

Sometimes he expresses or hints at the view that our souls return to the air or ether from which they sprang.[187] Again he uses the Homeric pictures of a cheerless other world. Once he refers to the Orphic doctrine in the cryptic utterance, “Who knows but life be death, and death be reckoned life below?”—verses which Plato and other philosophers were to interpret after him.

If space allowed, we might gladly dwell on Euripides’ sympathy with human poverty and suffering, on the hints he gives that he perceived the common brotherhood of man. In his noble ideals of womanhood he surpasses his contemporaries. Above all these matters it is important for us with our present interest to note that more than once the tragedian seems to wish to inculcate the truth that the standard of morality among men was far superior to that of the traditional pantheon. No other poet of his age sets forth the true nobility of man so perfectly as Euripides.

The last play of the long list he wrote was the Bacchae. Composed in Macedonia, it was first produced at Athens after the poet’s death. As was fitting for a tragedy written in the home of Dionysus, the drama deals with the Dionysiac possession, enthusiasm, the “divine madness,” on which the Greeks ever set high store. No play has so baffled interpretation. Some scholars think it a recantation; others vigorously deny it. Personally I am inclined to hold with Adam that Dionysus in the play “stands for the spirit of enthusiasm in the ancient Greek meaning of the word,” and that the principal lesson of the drama is to be found in the verse, “Not with knowledge is wisdom bought”[188]—that is, reason is not all in man, but there is something greater—enthusiasm, inspiration.[189]