Part 7

So Themistocles felt when after Salamis he said: _It is not we who have wrought this deed, but the gods and heroes, who hated that one man should become lord both of Europe and of Asia; unholy and sinful, who held things sacred and things profane in like account, burning temples and casting down the images of the gods; who also scourged the sea and cast fetters upon it._ And it is this feeling which gives so singular a beauty and charm to the story of Dikaios. “Dikaios the son of Theokydes, an Athenian then in exile and held in reputation among the Persians, said that at this time, when Attica was being wasted by the footmen of Xerxes and was empty of its inhabitants, it befell that he was with Demaratos in the Thriasian Plain, when they espied a pillar of dust, such as thirty thousand men might raise, moving from Eleusis. And as they marvelled what men might be the cause of the dust, presently they heard the sound of voices, and it seemed to him that it was the ritual-chant to Iacchus. Demaratos was ignorant of the rites that are performed at Eleusis, and questioned him what sound was that. But he said, _Demaratos, of a certainty some great harm will befall the host of the King. For this is manifest—there being no man left in Attica—that these are immortal Voices proceeding from Eleusis to take vengeance for the Athenians and their allies. And if this wrathful thing descend on Peloponnese, the King himself and his land army will be in jeopardy; but if it turn towards the ships at Salamis, the King will be in danger of losing his fleet. This is that festival which the Athenians hold yearly in honour of the Mother and the Maid, and every Athenian, or other Greek that desires it, receives initiation; and the sound thou hearest is the chanting of the initiates._ Demaratos answered, _Hold thy peace, and tell no man else this tale. For if these thy words be reported to the King, thou wilt lose thine head, and I shall not be able to save thee, I nor any other man. But keep quiet and God will deal with this host._ Thus did he counsel him. And the dust and the cry became a cloud, and the cloud arose and moved towards Salamis to the encampment of the Greeks. So they knew that the navy of Xerxes was doomed.”

Athena, the Mother-Maid Demeter-Persephone with the mystic child Iacchus, Boreas “the son-in-law of Erechtheus,” whose breath dispersed the enemy ships under Pelion and Kaphareus—of such sort are “the gods who fight for us” and claim the love and service of Athens in return. It is well to remember attentively this religious element in ancient patriotism, so large an element that one may say with scarcely any exaggeration at all that for the ancients patriotism was a religion. Therefore is Eleutheria, the patriot’s ideal, a religion too. Such instincts and beliefs are interwoven in one sacred indissoluble bond uniting the Gods and men, the very hills and rivers of Greece against the foreign master. Call this if you will a mystical and confused emotion; but do not deny its beauty or underestimate its tremendous force.

But here (lest in discussing a sentiment which may be thought confused we ourselves fall into confusion) let us emphasize a distinction, which has indeed been already indicated. Greek patriotism was as wide as Greece; but on the other hand its intensity was in inverse ratio to its extension. Greek patriotism was primarily a local thing, and it needed the pressure of a manifest national danger to lift it to a wider outlook. That was true in the main and of the average man, although every generation produced certain superior spirits, statesmen or philosophers, whose thought was not particularist. It was this home-savour which gave to ancient patriotism its special salt and pungency. When the Athenians in the speech I quoted say that their first duty is to avenge their gods, they are thinking more of Athens than of Greece. They are thinking of all we mean by “home,” save that home for them was bounded by the ring-wall of the city, not by the four walls of a house.

The wider patriotism of the nation the Greeks openly or in their hearts ranked in the second place. Look again at the speech of the Athenians. First came Athens and her gods and heroes—their _fathers’_ gods; next _To Hellenikon_, that whereby they are not merely Athenians but Hellenes—community of race and speech, the common interest in the _national_ gods and their festivals, such as Zeus of Olympia with the Olympian Games, the Delphian Apollo with the Pythian Games. Of course this Hellenic or Panhellenic interest was always there, and in a sense the future lay with it; but never in the times when Greece was at its greatest did it supplant the old intense local loyalties. The movement of Greek civilization is from the narrower to the larger conception of patriotism, but the latter ideal is grounded in the former. Greek love of country was fed from local fires, and even Greek cosmopolitanism left one a _citizen_, albeit a citizen of the world. So it was with Eleutheria, which enlarged itself in the same sense and with an equal pace.

This development can be studied best in Athens, which was “the Hellas of Hellas.” One finds in Attic literature a passionate Hellenism combined with a passionate conviction that Hellenism finds its best representative in Athens. The old local patriotism survives, but is nourished more and more with new ambitions. New claims, new ideals are advanced. One claim appears very early, if we may believe Herodotus that the Athenians used it in debate with the men of Tegea before the Battle of Plataea. The Athenians recalled how they had given shelter to the Children of Heracles when all the other Greek cities would not, for fear of Eurystheus; and how again they had rescued the slain of the Seven from the Theban king and buried them in his despite. On those two famous occasions the Athenians had shown the virtue which they held to be most characteristic of Hellenism and specially native to themselves, the virtue which they called “philanthropy” or the love of man. What Heine said of himself, the Athenians might have said: they were brave soldiers in the liberation-war of humanity.

There is a play of Euripides, called _The Suppliant Women_, which deals with the episode of the unburied dead at Thebes. The fragmentary Argument says: _The scene is Eleusis. Chorus of Argive women, mothers of the champions who have fallen at Thebes. The drama is a glorification of Athens._ The eloquent Adrastos, king of Argos, pleads the cause of the suppliant women who have come to Athens to beg the aid of its young king Theseus in procuring the burial of their dead. Theseus is at first disposed to reject their prayer, for reasons of State; he must consider the safety of his own people; when his mother Aithra breaks out indignantly: _Surely it will be said that with unvalorous hands, when thou mightest have won a crown of glory for thy city, thou didst decline the peril and match thyself, ignoble labour, with a savage swine; and when it was thy part to look to helm and spear, putting forth thy might therein, wast proven a coward. To think that son of mine—ah, do not so! Seest thou how Athens, whom mocking lips have named unwise, flashes back upon her scorners a glance of answering scorn? Danger is her element. It is the unadventurous cities doing cautious things in the dark, whose vision is thereby also darkened._ And the result is that Theseus and his men set out against the great power of Thebes, defeat it and recover the bodies, which with due observance of the appropriate rites they inter in Attic earth.

“To make the world safe for democracy” is something; but Athens never found it safe, perhaps did not believe it could be safe. _Ready to take risks, facing danger with a lifting of the heart ... their whole life a round of toils and dangers ... born neither themselves to rest nor to let other people._ In such phrases are the Athenians described by their enemies. A friend has said: _I must publish an opinion which will be displeasing to most; yet (since I think it to be true) I will not withhold it. If the Athenians in fear of the coming peril had left their land, or not leaving it but staying behind had yielded themselves to Xerxes, none would have tried to meet the King at sea._ And so all would have been lost. _But as the matter fell out, it would be the simple truth to say that the Athenians were the saviours of Greece. The balance of success was certain to turn to the side they espoused, and by choosing the cause of Hellas and the preservation of her freedom it was the Athenians and no other that roused the whole Greek world—save those who played the traitor—and under God thrust back the King._ And some generations later, Demosthenes, in what might be called the funeral oration of Eleutheria, sums up the claim of Athens in words whose undying splendour is all pride and glory transfiguring the pain of failure and defeat. _Let no man, I beseech you, imagine that there is anything of paradox or exaggeration in what I say, but sympathetically consider it. If the event had been clear to all men beforehand ... even then Athens could only have done what she did, if her fame and her future and the opinion of ages to come meant anything to her. For the moment indeed it looks as if she had failed; as man must always fail when God so wills it. But had She, who claimed to be the leader of Greece, yielded her claim to Philip and betrayed the common cause, her honour would not be clear.... Yes, men of Athens, ye did right—be very sure of that—when ye adventured yourselves for the safety and freedom of all; yes, by your fathers who fought at Marathon and Plataea and Salamis and Artemision, and many more lying in their tombs of public honour they had deserved so well, being all alike deemed worthy of this equal tribute by the State, and not only (O Aeschines) the successful, the victorious._...

Demosthenes was right in thinking that Eleutheria was most at home in Athens. Now Athens, as all men know, was a “democracy”; that is, the general body of the citizens (excluding the slaves and “resident aliens”) personally made and interpreted their laws. Such a constitution was characterized by two elements which between them practically exhausted its meaning; namely, _autonomy_ or freedom to govern oneself by one’s own laws, and _isonomy_ or equality of all citizens before the law. Thus Eleutheria, defined as the Reign of Law, may be regarded as synonymous with Democracy. “The basis of the democratical constitution is Eleutheria,” says Aristotle. This is common ground with all Greek writers, whether they write to praise or to condemn. Thus Plato humorously, but not quite good-humouredly, complains that in Athens the very horses and donkeys knocked you out of their way, so exhilarated were they by the atmosphere of Eleutheria. But at the worst he only means that you may have too much of a good thing. Eleutheria translated as unlimited democracy you may object to; Eleutheria as an ideal or a watchword never fails to win the homage of Greek men. Very early begins that sentimental republicanism which is the inspiration of Plutarch, and through Plutarch has had so vast an influence on the practical affairs of mankind. It appears in the famous drinking-catch beginning _I will bear the sword in the myrtle-branch like Harmodios and Aristogeiton_. It appears in Herodotus. Otanes the Persian (talking Greek political philosophy), after recounting all the evils of a tyrant’s reign, is made to say: _But what I am about to tell are his greatest crimes: he breaks ancestral customs, and forces women, and puts men to death without trial. But the rule of the people in the first place has the fairest name in the world, “isonomy,” and in the second place it does none of those things a despot doeth._ In his own person Herodotus writes: _It is clear not merely in one but in every instance how excellent a thing is “equality.” When the Athenians were under their tyrants they fought no better than their neighbours, but after they had got rid of their masters they were easily superior. Now this proves that when they were held down they fought without spirit, because they were toiling for a master, but when they had been liberated every man was stimulated to his utmost efforts in his own behalf._ The same morning confidence in democracy shines in the reply of the constitutional king, Theseus, to the herald in Euripides’ play asking for the “tyrant” of Athens. _You have made a false step in the beginning of your speech, O stranger, in seeking a tyrant here. Athens is not ruled by one man, but is free. The people govern by turns in yearly succession, not favouring the rich but giving him equal measure with the poor._

The _naïveté_ of this provokes a smile, but it should provoke some reflection too. Why does the rhetoric of liberty move us so little?

## Partly, I think, because the meaning of the word has changed, and

## partly because of this new “liberty” we have a super-abundance. No

longer does Liberty mean in the first place the Reign of Law, but something like its opposite. Let us recover the Greek attitude, and we recapture, or at least understand, the Greek emotion concerning Eleutheria. Jason says to Medea in Euripides’ play, _Thou dwellest in a Greek instead of a Barbarian land, and hast come to know Justice and the use of Law without favour to the strong_. The most “romantic” hero in Greek legend recommending the conventions!

This, however, is admirably and characteristically Greek. The typical heroes of ancient story are alike in their championship of law and order. I suppose the two most popular and representative were Heracles and Theseus. Each goes up and down Greece and Barbary destroying _hybristai_, local robber-kings, strong savages, devouring monsters, ill customs and every manner of “lawlessness” and “injustice.” In their place each introduces Greek manners and government, Law and Justice. It was this which so attracted Greek sympathy to them and so excited the Greek imagination. For the Greeks were surrounded by dangers like those which Heracles or Theseus encountered. If they had not to contend with supernatural hydras and triple-bodied giants and half-human animals, they had endless pioneering work to do which made such imaginings real enough to them; and men who had fought with the wild Thracian tribes could vividly sympathize with Heracles in his battle with the Thracian “king,” Diomedes, who fed his fire-breathing horses with the flesh of strangers. Nor was this preference of the Greeks for heroes of such a type merely instinctive; it was reasoned and conscious. The “mission” of Heracles, for example, is largely the theme of Euripides’ play which we usually call _Hercules Furens_. A contemporary of Euripides, the sophist Hippias of Elis, was the author of a too famous apologue, _The Choice of Heracles_, representing the youthful hero making the correct choice between Laborious Virtue and Luxurious Vice. Another Euripidean play, _The Suppliant Women_, as we have seen, reveals Theseus in the character of a conventional, almost painfully constitutional, sovereign talking the language of Lord John Russell. As for us, our sympathies are ready to flow out to the picturesque defeated monsters—the free Centaurs galloping on Pelion—the cannibal Minotaur lurking in his Labyrinth. But then our bridals are not liable to be disturbed by raids of wild horsemen from the mountains, nor are our children carried off to be dealt with at the pleasure of a foreign monarch. People who meet with such experiences get surprisingly tired of them. There is a figure known to mythologists as a Culture Hero. He it is who is believed to have introduced law and order and useful arts into the rude community in which he arose. Such heroes were specially regarded, and the reverence felt for them measures the need of them. Thus in ancient Greece we read of Prometheus and Palamêdes, the Finns had their Wainomoinen, the Indians of North America their Hiawatha. Think again of historical figures like Charlemagne and Alfred, like Solon and Numa Pompilius, even Alexander the Great. A peculiar romance clings about their names. Why? Only because to people fighting what must often have seemed a losing battle against chaos and night the institution and defence of law and order seemed the most romantic thing a man could do. And so it was.

Such a view was natural for them. Whether it shall seem natural to us depends on the fortunes of our civilization. On that subject we may leave the prophets to rave, and content ourselves with the observation that there are parts of Europe to-day in which many a man must feel himself in the position of Roland fighting the Saracens or Aëtius against the Huns. As for ourselves, however confident we may feel, we shall be foolish to be over-confident; for we are fighting a battle that has no end. The Barbarian we shall have always with us, on our frontiers or in our own breasts. There is also the danger that the prize of victory may, like Angelica, escape the strivers’ hands. Already perhaps the vision which inspires us is changing. I am not concerned to attack the character of that change but to interpret the Greek conception of civilization, merely as a contribution to the problem. To the Greeks, then, civilization is the slow result of a certain immemorial way of living. You cannot get it up from books, or acquire it by imitation; you must absorb it and let it form your spirit, you must live in it and live through it; and it will be hard for you to do this, unless you have been born into it and received it as a birth-right, as a mould in which you are cast as your fathers were. “Oh, but we must be more progressive than that.” Well, we are not; on the contrary the Greeks were very much the most progressive people that ever existed—intellectually progressive, I mean of course; for are we not talking about civilization?

The Greek conception, therefore, seems to work. I think it works, and worked, because the tradition, so cherished as it is, is not regarded as stationary. It is no more stationary to the Greeks than a tree, and a tree whose growth they stimulated in every way. It seems a fairly common error, into which Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton sometimes fall, for modern champions of tradition to over-emphasize its stability. There has always been the type of “vinous, loudly singing, unsanitary men,” which Mr. Wells has called the ideal of these two writers; he is the foundational type of European civilization. But it almost looks as if Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton were entirely satisfied with him. They want him to stay on his small holding, and eat quantities of ham and cheese, and drink quarts of ale, and hate rich men and politicians, and be perfectly parochial and illiterate. But Hellenism means, simply an effort to work on this sound and solid stuff; it is not content to leave him as he is; it strives to develope him, but to develope him within the tradition; to transform him from an Aristophanic demesman into an Athenian citizen. But Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton are Greek in this, that they have constantly the sense of fighting an endless and doubtful battle against strong enemies that would destroy whatever is most necessary to the soul of civilized men. _Well I know in my heart and soul that sacred Ilium must fall, and Priam, and the folk of Priam with the good ashen spear ... yet before I die will I do a deed for after ages to hear of!_

V

SOPHROSYNE

It needs imagination for the modern man to live into the atmosphere of ancient Greece. It ought not now to be so hard for us who have seen the lives and sanctities of free peoples crushed and stained. It should be easier for us to reoccupy the spiritual ground of Hellas, to feel a new thrill in her seemingly too simple formulas, a new value in her seemingly cold ideals. It is opportune to write about her now, and justifiable to write with a quickened hope. For all that, mental habits are the last we lose, and the habit of regarding our civilization as secure has had time to work itself deep into our minds. It has coloured our outlook, directed our tastes, altered our souls.

That last expression may appear overstrained. Yet reflect if it really be so. These many ages we have felt so safe. If fear came on us, it was not fear for the fabric itself of civilization. We grew delicately weary of our inevitably clasping and penetrating culture. We called it our “old” civilization, with some implication of senility; and we were restive under its restraints and conventions. We were affected in different ways, but we were all affected, we were all tired of our security. To escape it some of us fled to the open road and a picturesque gipsyism, some hunted big game in Africa. One or two of us actually did these things, a greater number did them in imagination, reading about them in books. Others, not caring to fatigue their bodies, or too fastidious or sincere or morbid to find relief in personal or vicarious adventures—for this reason or that—pursued “spiritual adventures” or flamed out into rebellion against what they felt insulted their souls. It seems clear enough that our bohemianism of the city and the field is not two things but one, and I am not put from this opinion by the consciousness of temperamental gulfs between typical moderns such as (not to come too near ourselves) Whitman and Poe in America. The symptoms are different, but the malady is the same.