Part 10

The tradition, of course, counts for much. Aeschylus did not invent his story. He found it already in existence, and he found it ending in a certain way. We cannot tell if it ended precisely in the way that Aeschylus represented. But we can be perfectly sure that it did not end in an unqualified victory for Prometheus. The tradition appears to be dead against him. Aeschylus therefore was so far bound by that. Then the problem presented itself to him with this further complication, that as a matter of knowledge Zeus was reigning _now_. So the justification of Zeus against the rebel Titan becomes a justification of the moral governance of the universe. Yet although Aeschylus felt the restraint of the myth and the restraint of the moral issue, it is to be believed that he submitted to them with full, and even passionate, acceptance. Like the great artist, like the great dramatic poet he is, he begins by stating the case for Prometheus as strongly as he can—more strongly, it would seem, than the existing legends quite allowed—and even in the end the Titan is not shorn of his due honour. But as against the Olympians, Aeschylus argues (with the Greek poets in general), the Titans were in the wrong. The sin of the Titans was lawlessness. Prometheus, in bringing to mortals the gift of fire, broke the law which forbade them its use. The question whether the dealings of God with man were “just” or no, was not to be decided by your feelings (as Prometheus judged), but by cool and measured reflection as to what was best in the end for mankind, or rather for the universe, of which they formed after all so small a part.

Such doctrine falls chillingly on the modern spirit. But that is largely because we realize so ill what it means. The _Prometheus_-trilogy was a dramatization of the conflict of Pity and Justice embodied in two superhuman wills. Before you condemn the solution of Aeschylus, perhaps you are bound to answer the question if this is not the conflict which the modern world is trying with blood and tears to solve. In the end (so the old poet fabled) Zeus the rigid Justicer learned mercy, while his passionate enemy came to recognize the sovereignty of Law. A compromise, if you like; but if you are sorry for it, it only means that you are sorry for human life. I daresay Aeschylus was sorry too, but then he was not going to be sentimental. Life _is_ after all governed by a compromise between Justice and Pity. And if it comes to a mere question of emotional values, does not one love Prometheus all the more because at the last he had, like any man, to give up a little of his desire?

Even so we shall not have done complete justice to the Greek position, until we have renewed in our minds the Greek emotion about law, order, measure, limitation—the things we are engaged in criticizing and, most of us, in disparaging. We must for our purpose accept the Hellenic paradox. We must see with the Greek that it was not the wilderness, but the ploughed field and the ordered vineyard that was truly romantic. And in the moral reign it was Temperance, Self-Discipline, _Sophrosyne_; in the sphere of art the strict outline, the subjugation of excess, that filled the Greek with the pleasurable excitement we find in the exotic, the crude, the violent, the bizarre. The explanation is engagingly simple. To the ancient world law and order were the exception—the wild, romantic, hardly attainable exception; while us they interest about as much as a couple of boiled potatoes. We are for the Open Road and somewhere east of Suez. But the attraction then and now is exactly the same. It is the attraction of the unfamiliar.

We could understand the Hellenic paradox better if we had to live in an unsettled country. We should then receive the thrill which words like _Nomos_ and _Thesmos_ and _Kosmos_, the watchwords of civilization, awakened in the Greek bosom. We should understand the longing for a clue in the maze of the lawless, a saving rule to guide one through the thickets of desperate and degrading confusion. But as it is we are so hedged about by the barbed-wire entanglements of Government regulations and social conventions that our desires are chiefly concentrated on breaking through—breaking through, let us admit, at but a little point and for but a little time, for we are really rather fond of our prison-house and care not to be too long out of it. Yes, I think with a little effort we can understand. We can believe that the sense of home is strongest in the wanderer. He wanders to find his home, and when he has found it, he cannot make it “home-like” and conventional enough.

So to the ancients Greek civilization had the flavour of a high and rare adventure. It was a crusade, the conquest of the Barbarian—the Barbarian without and within. Viewed in this light, the conflict between Zeus and Prometheus assumes an aspect novel enough to us. Zeus represents the Law—unjust in this instance if you will, unjust as perhaps Zeus himself came in the end partly to admit—but still the Law. Prometheus represents Anarchy. In this he shows himself truly a Titan, for the Titans embodied the lawless forces of nature and an undisciplined emotionality. Our fatigued spirits love to gamble a little with these excitements. But the Greeks had just escaped from them, and were horribly afraid of them. There is nothing their art loved to depict like the victory of the disciplined will—fairly typified in Zeus, perfectly in Athena—over unchained passion. Hence those endless pictures of Olympians warring against Titans, against Giants—of Greeks against Amazons—of Heracles, of Theseus against the monsters. They are records of a spiritual victory won at infinite cost.

The true theme of the _Prometheus_-trilogy is the Reign of Law. Law in the realm of affairs, _Sophrosyne_ in morals, form in art. There is nothing tame or negative about the doctrine. The Greek spirit was not tame or negative; it would be difficult to say how much it was not that! Indeed the inspiration of their creed was just the desire of the Greeks to extract the full value of their emotions. None knew better the danger lest one

_should lose distinction in his joys As doth a battle when they charge on heaps, The enemy flying_.

And, from the point of view of art—always so important for them—the rule of “measure” becomes the art of concentration. So Law stands revealed as Beauty. As Keats says, the final condemnation of the Titans was that, compared with the Olympians, they failed in Beauty:

_For first in Beauty shall be first in Might_.

The evolution of Greek religion is thus largely an artistic process. It would be obstinate to deny that the process may have been carried, at last, too far. Greek art begins as almost a form of religion; Greek religion ends as almost a form of art. Yet it would certainly be still more obstinate to deny that more was gained than lost. There was gained, for instance, the Greek mythology. And what simplicity and sincerity that were lost were not more than made up for by that Greek religion—no longer of the State but of the individual—which we find in Plato and (as we have begun to see) in so much of the New Testament?

How much, and with what immense justification, the Greek religious spirit was a spirit of beauty transforming Barbarism, could hardly be more aptly illustrated than by a story in Herodotus. It is the tale of Atys the son of Croesus. How beautiful it is, every reader will confess. But how instructive it is, hardly any but the special student will recognize. For he finds in it the unmistakable features of an ancient myth. _Atys_, the brilliant, early-dying prince whom Herodotus, repeating the legend as he heard it, calls the son of the historical Croesus, is no other than _Attis_, brother and son and spouse—the ambiguity is in the myth—of the Mountain Mother of Phrygia. Atys, slain in hunting the boar, is Attis, who was a hunter, and scarcely distinguishable from Adonis. The matter is explained at length by Sir James Frazer in his _Attis, Adonis and Osiris._ The myth arose out of the worship of the Asiatic goddess variously named by the Greeks Kybelê, Kybêbê, Rhea, and other titles, though in reality a nameless deity, a holy Mother and Bride wedded at the right season of the year to her son, Attis, that its fruits might be renewed through the magic of that ritual. There was a temple of “Kybelê” near Sardis—still stand a column or two—where the Paktôlos rushes from its mountain gorge. That helps to explain why a prince of Sardis has entered into her myth. It is even possible that actual princes of Sardis, did anciently personate once a year the consort of the great goddess of the region. This at least accords with analogy, and best explains the origin of the story in Herodotus. For the rest it is a Phrygian tale. Olympus, where the fabled boar is hunted, was in Mysia, which was in Phrygia. Adrastos, “He from whom there is no Escape,” is certainly connected with the goddess Adrasteia, much worshipped in the Phrygian Troad. Above all it was in Phrygia that the Mountain Mother was chiefly worshipped. In spring the Phrygians fashioned an image of the young Attis, and mourned over it with ritual dirges, recalling his doom. Thus gradually we may dig down to the roots of the myth.

What we find there is a thing of horror. Nana, daughter of the River Sangarios, saw an almond-tree, which had sprung from the blood of a son of Kybelê, whom the gods in fear of his strength had mutilated. (Here is the Hesiodic _motif_ again.) She conceived and bare a child, which she exposed. At first the wild goats nurtured him; then shepherds of the mountain. At last Attis was grown so beautiful that Agdistis (who is but a form of Kybelê) loved him, and when he would not answer her love, drove him mad, so that he fled to the hills and there under a pine-tree unmanned himself. From his blood sprang violets to hang about the tree.

But for the unexpected sweetness of wild violet and mountain pine at the close, the story is curiously unlovely. But what really gives one a shudder is the reflection that the story mirrors a fact. The priests of Kybelê ... what I would say is that they behaved like Attis.

You would guess none of these things from Herodotus. What has happened to the myth that it is transmuted to the exquisite and piteous tale he has related? We can only say that it has suffered the Greek magic. The Hellenic spirit, dreaming on the old dark fantasy, robs it a little of its wild, outrageous beauty (which was to reappear later in the _Attis_ of Catullus), but keeps much of its natural magic, and by introducing the figure of the father adds overwhelmingly to the dramatic value of the story. Most of all it steeps the whole in a wonderful rightness of emotion. The gift which has achieved this is, as I have hinted, a dramatic gift; the magic is the same as that which pervades the Attic Tragedy. So much is this the case that the Tale of Atys in Herodotus reads like a Greek tragic drama in prose. The explanation is that ancient Tragedy arose out of just such a ritual as that from which sprang the Atys story. That story, so far as I know, was never made the subject of an actual drama. It seems a pity. What a subject it would have been for Euripides!

It seems to me a legitimate procedure, in an essay of this kind, to indicate the affinity between the tale in Herodotus and the normal structure and method of Attic Tragedy by treating the narrative portions of the tale as so many stage-directions, and the dialogue as we treat the dialogue in a play, assigning every speech to its proper speaker. Let me only add that all the dialogue, and practically all of the stage-directions, are literally translated.

_THE DEATH OF ATYS_

[_The scene is Sardis in Lydia. It is a populous settlement of reed-thatched houses clustering about a wonderful, sheer, enormous rock crowned by the great walls of the Citadel. Over against it, to the south, rises the neighbouring range of Tmôlos, whence issues the famous little stream of the Paktôlos, which, emerging from a gorge, rolls its gold-grained sand actually through the market-place of Sardis into the Hermos. Some miles away, by the margin of a lake, appear the vast grave-mounds of the Lydian kings. Within the Citadel is the ancestral Palace of_ CROESUS. _Any one entering the palace would observe its unwonted splendour—silver and gold and electrum everywhere. He would also be struck by the circumstance that the walls of the great Hall are bare of the swords and spears and quivers, which it was customary to hang there. At present the weapons are piled in the women’s chambers._

CROESUS _is seen clad in a great purple-red mantle, and carrying a long golden sceptre tipped with a little eagle in gold. He is surrounded by his bodyguard of spearmen, who wear greaves and breastplates of bronze, and helmets crested with the tails of horses._

_A_ STRANGER _in the peaked cap, embroidered dress, and tall boots of a Phrygian noble enters with drawn sword, and with looks of haste and horror. Seeing_ CROESUS, _he utters no word, but, running forward, sits down by the central hearth of the house, strikes his sword into the floor, and covers his face. By this proceeding he confesses at once that he is a homicide, and that he desires absolution from his sin. In silence also the_ KING _approaches and gazes on the man. Then he goes through the elaborate and displeasing ritual of purification from bloodshed, calling aloud on the God of Suppliants to sanctify the rite. At last he is free to question the_ STRANGER.]

CROESUS. Man sitting at my hearth, who art thou and whence comest thou out of Phrygia? What man or what woman hast thou slain?

STRANGER. O King, I am the son of Gordias the son of Midas, and my name is Adrastos. Behold here one that by unhappiness hath slain his own brother, and my father hath driven me out, and all hath been taken from me.

CROESUS. Now art thou among friends, for there is friendship between our houses. Here wilt thou lack nothing, so long as thou abidest in my house. Strive to forget thy mischance; that will be best for thee.

[_The man_ ADRASTOS _enters the Palace with_ CROESUS. _Meanwhile arrive certain messengers. They are mountaineers, dressed in skins and carrying staves hardened at the point by fire. They come from Mount Olympus in Mysia._]

MYSIANS. Lord, a very mighty boar hath revealed himself in our land, the which layeth waste our tillage, neither can we by any means slay him. Now therefore we beseech thee, send thy son with us, and chosen young men, and dogs, that we may destroy him out of the land.

CROESUS. As for my son, make ye no mention of him hereafter; I will not send him with you; for he hath lately married a wife, and is occupied with this. Yet will I send chosen men of the Lydians, and all the hunt, and straitly charge them very zealously to aid you in destroying the beast out of the land.

_[Enters now the young man_, ATYS, _the son of_ CROESUS. _He is dressed much in the Greek fashion, but with such ornaments of gold and embroidery of flowers upon him as beseem a prince of the House of the Mermnadae. He has heard of the prayer of the_ MYSIANS, _and now pleads with his father that he may be permitted to go with them._]

ATYS. Father, aforetime when I would be going to battle and the chase and winning honour therein, that was brave and beautiful. But now hast thou shut me out alike from war and from the hunt, albeit thou hast not espied in me any cowardice or weakness of spirit. And now with what countenance must I show myself either entering or departing from the assembly of the people? What shall be deemed of me by the folk of this city and my newly married wife? What manner of husband will she suppose is hers? Therefore either suffer me to go upon this hunting, or else persuade me that thy course is better.

CROESUS. O son, I do not this because I have espied cowardice or any unlovely thing in thee at all. But the vision of a dream came to me in sleep, and said that thy life was not for long; by an iron edge thou wouldest perish. Therefore I was urgent for thy marrying, because I had regard unto this vision, and therefore I will not send thee upon this emprise, being careful if by any means I may steal thee from death, while I am living. For thou art mine only son, not counting the other, the dumb.

ATYS. I blame thee not, father, that having beheld such a vision thou keepest ward over me. But what thou perceivest not neither understandest the significance thereof in thy dream, meet is it that I tell thee. Thou sayest that the dream told that I should be slain by an iron edge. But a boar—what hands hath it, or what manner of iron edge which thou fearest? Had the dream made mention of a tusk or the like, needs must thou do as now thou doest; but it said an edge. Seeing therefore that it is not against men that I go to fight, let me go.

CROESUS. My son, herein thou dost convince my judgement by thine interpretation of the dream. Wherefore being thus persuaded by thee I do now change my thought and suffer thee to go to the hunting.

[_The_ KING _now sends for_ ADRASTOS _and they speak as follows._]

CROESUS. Adrastos, when a foul mischance smote thee (I reproach thee not therewith), I cleansed thee of thy sin, and received thee in my house, and have furnished thee with abundance of all things. Now therefore (for thou owest me a kindness) keep ward over my son that goeth forth to the chase, lest evil thieves appear to your hurt. Moreover for thyself also it is right that thou go where thou shalt win glory by thy mighty deeds; for so did thy fathers before thee; and moreover thou art a mighty man.

ADRASTOS. For another reason, O King, I would not have gone on such a venture. For neither is it seemly, nor do I wish, that one so afflicted mingle among his fortunate peers; yea, for manifold reasons I would have refrained. But now, since thou art urgent thereto and I am bound to perform thy pleasure—for I owe thee return of kindness—I am ready to do this thing: thy son, whom thou straitly chargest me to guard, expect thou to return home without hurt, so far as I am able to guard him.

_In this manner_, continues Herodotus, _did he then make answer to Croesus. And after that they set forth with service of chosen young men and of dogs. And when they had come to the mountain Olympus, they began to quest for the beast; and having found him they stood round about him, and cast their javelins at him. Then the stranger, the man that had been purged of the stains of blood, even he that was named Adrastos, cast his spear at the boar, and missed him, and smote the son of Croesus instead. And he so smitten by the edge of the spear fulfilled the saying of the nightly vision. But one ran to tell Croesus that which had befallen; and when he was come to Sardis he declared to him the manner of the fight and the slaying of his son. And Croesus being mightily troubled by the death of the young man complained the more vehemently for that he had been killed by that very one whom he had purified of a manslaying. And in the passion of his grief he cried aloud with a great and terrible voice on Zeus of Purification, calling him to bear witness what recompense he had received at the hands of the stranger; and he named him moreover God of the Hearth and God of Companionship, naming him by the former name because receiving the stranger into his house he had unwittingly given meat and drink to the slayer of his child, and by the latter name because having sent him with his son to guard him he now found him his greatest enemy._

_And now the Lydians came bearing the dead body, and behind them followed the slayer. And he standing before the dead yielded himself up to Croesus, stretching forth his hands, bidding him slay him over the body, making mention of his former calamity, and how now he had besides brought destruction upon the man that had purified him, neither was it meet that he should live. Croesus hearing has pity on Adrastos, albeit in so great sorrow of his own, and says to him_: Guest, I have all I may claim of thee, since thou dost adjudge thyself to death. Not thee I blame for this ill, save as thou wert the unwilling doer thereof; nay but some god methinks is the cause, who even aforetime showed me that which should come to pass.

_Then did Croesus honourably bury his son. But Adrastos the son of Gordias the son of Midas, even the man that had killed his own brother, and had killed the son of him that washed away his offence, after the people had left the tomb and there was silence, deeming in his own heart that of all men that he knew himself was most calamitous, slew himself upon the grave._

VII

CLASSICAL AND ROMANTIC

I

When Alexander the Great invaded India, that pupil of Aristotle interested himself in questions to the Gymnosophists, or native philosophers. To the eldest of these Gymnosophists (says Plutarch) he addressed the following conundrum: _Which is older—the night or the day?_ The ancient man promptly replied, _The day—by the length of one day._ When Alexander demanded what he meant by such an answer, the sage remarked that he always gave that sort of answer to people who asked that kind of question. I think this must be one of the best retorts ever made, but I have an uncomfortable feeling that it applies rather exactly to the subject of this essay. The difference between the Classical and the Romantic! It is indeed an apparently insoluble problem. Nor can I imagine anything more disheartening or more inimical to human happiness than blowing upon the embers of a half-extinct controversy. That, it will be gathered, is not my intention. I merely intend to let my discourse eddy about a familiar topic, in the hope that some accretions may be washed away, and at least the true outline of the subject revealed. We have been trying to build up an impression of Hellenism as an _Agon_, or Struggle with Barbarism. The material being so vast, it has been necessary to be somewhat meagrely selective and illustrative, or else to fritter away the point in details. But the most general survey would be incomplete, unless we attain some view of how Greek literature, so much the most important witness left us of the old Greek spirit, reflects the situation.