Part 9

That is a large matter. There is, to be sure, no need of accumulated detail to prove that the Agon was the most characteristic institution of ancient life; it only requires to be pointed out; everywhere we find these competitions. What may chiefly interest us for the moment is that the Agon was simply the outward expression of the characteristic Greek outlook upon life and upon the whole human scene. For the Greek looked upon life itself as a struggle, an Agon, an opportunity for the production of Nikê. Mr. Wells gives to one of his essays the title of “The Human Adventure.” Life as the Human Adventure very well expresses the Greek feeling about it. Only let us not forget that the Nikê which is the object and justification of every Agon is—I have already remarked it—something utterly, qualitatively different from mere success. It is the triumph of the Cause. “Success”—“the successful business man”—not that kind of success.

The most successful man in Greece, every one remembers, was rewarded with a little garland of wild olive. _God help us, Mardonios_, said a noble Persian when he heard this, _what men are these thou hast brought us to fight against!—men that contend not for money but for merit_. The individual Greek could want money badly enough, as may be gathered from the amusing, but satirical, _Characters_ of Theophrastus. Yet in the soul of Hellas, for all its strong sense of reality and despite some inclination to avarice, one finds at last something you might almost call quixotic. Is there not some element of quixotry in every high adventure? And what adventure could be higher than to fight for “the beautiful things,” _Ta Kala_, against the outnumbering Barbarian?

Sophrosyne is the virtue that “saves” in this battle. Understand it so, and you must share some part of the ardour this word inspired. It means the steady control and direction of the total energy of a man. It means discipline. It means concentration. It is the angel riding the whirlwind, the charioteer driving the wild horses. There is no word for it in English, and we must coldly translate “moderation,” “temperance,” “self-restraint.” “Moderation” as a name for this strong-pulsed, triumphant thing! Why even the late-born, unromantic Aristotle, even while he is describing Sophrosyne as a “mean” between excessive and deficient emotionality, turns aside to remark, as a thing almost too obvious to need pointing out, that “there is a sense in which Sophrosyne is an _extreme_.” This is She whom Dante beheld on the Mountain of Purgatory such that “never were seen in furnace glasses or metals so glowing and red”:

_giammai non si videro in fornace vetri o metalli sì lucenti e rossi_.

VI

GODS AND TITANS

It was an ancient hypothesis that the Gods are only deified men. A certain Euêmeros suggested this. His favourite illustration was Zeus; that greatest of the Gods, he said, was a prehistoric king in Crete, as the Cretan legends about him proved. This theory has received a fresh life from the investigations of modern scholars. Historically, it seems to be largely true; psychologically, it explains nothing at all. _All men have need of the Gods_, says Homer; the religious instinct, that is the important thing, or rather (since the other is important too) that is the fundamental thing. It is also the prior thing, the spring of the religious act. If I want to know why primitive men make a god of one of their number, it seems no answer to assure me that they do so. Yet the historical inquiry has great interest too, and throws a dim and rather lurid light on the development of religion and religious thought. And I could not leave untouched an aspect of the old Greek life so vital as its belief about the gods without illustrating how here also the conflict of Greek and Barbarian worked itself out.

It is almost the other day that we rediscovered the old Aegean religion—the immemorially ancient religion of the non-Greek peoples, the Barbarians, who lived about the Aegean Sea. It is now clear that the Hittites, the Phrygians, the ancient peoples of Anatolia generally, worshipped a kind of triad or trinity of Father, Son and Consort. Sometimes, as in the Hittite sculptures, the Father and the Son seem the important members of the group; sometimes, as in the Phrygian religion, the emphasis is chiefly on the Mother and Consort, and the Son. But the third member can always be discovered too, standing pretty obviously in the background. In prehistoric Crete (which, of course, became Greek in historical times) we again recognize the divine Three in the persons of those native divinities whom the Greeks learned to call Kronos, Rhea and Zeus. That is the skeleton of the old religion; the living flesh in which it was clothed was begotten in tribal custom. Primitive peoples fashion their gods after their own image. Their chief god they think of as a greater and more worshipful “king,” swayed by the passions, observing the etiquette, and wearing the regalia of their earthly rulers. Now the primitive king held his place by force or craft or the terror of his rages (his _menos_)—and by no other tenure. He lived in constant dread of the rival who, younger and stronger, would one day rise against him and seize his throne. The rival might be a stranger, but more frequently he was the king’s own son, who, for one thing, would be thought likely to inherit the magical virtue of his sire. Accordingly, when the Young King was born, the Old King would seek his life. But there he would be apt to meet the opposition of the Queen, who would seek to convey the child to a safe retreat. Then, grown at last to manhood, suddenly the Prince would return to challenge the Old King to mortal combat. The Gods behave exactly like that.

The chief depositary in ancient Greece of popular beliefs about the Gods is the curious poem attributed to Hesiod, called the _Theogony_. Along with certain parts of Homer, it formed what might be called the handbook of orthodoxy, and it tells us with an incomparable authoritativeness what the sacred tradition was. Eldest of all, says the _Theogony_, was Gaia or Mother Earth, a goddess. Now she _bare first starry Ouranos, equal to herself, that he might cover her on every side ... and afterward she lay with him, and bare the deep coil of Okeanos, and Koios, and Krios, and Hyperîon, and Iapetos, and Thea, and Rhea, and Themis, and Mnemosyne, and Phoibe with the gold upon her head, and lovely Tethys. And, after these, youngest was born Kronos the Crooked-Thinker, most dangerous of her sons, who loathed his lusty begetter._ There is a fuller account in another place. _Next, of Gaia and Ouranos were born three sons, huge and violent, ill to name, Kottos and Briareos and Gyes, the haughty ones. From their shoulders swang an hundred arms invincible, and on their shoulders, upon their rude bodies, grew heads a fifty upon each; irresistible strength crowned the giant forms. Of all the children of Gaia and Ouranos most to be feared were these, and they were hated of their Sire from the first; yea, soon as one was born, he would not let them into the light, but would hide them all away in a hiding-place of Earth, and Ouranos gloried in the bad work. And, being straitened, huge Gaia groaned inwardly; and she thought of a cruel device. Hastily she created the grey flint, and of it fashioned a mighty Sickle, and expounded her thought to her Sons, speaking burning words from an anguished heart. “Sons of me and of an unrighteous Father, if ye will hearken to me, on your Father ye may take vengeance for his sinful outrage, for it was He began the devising of shameful deeds!”_

_So spake she, but fear seized them all, I ween, neither did one of them utter a word. But mighty Kronos the Cunning took heart of grace, and made answer again to his good Mother. “Mother, I will undertake and will perform this thing, since of our Father (‘Father!’) I reck not; for it was He began the devising of shameful deeds!” So spake he, and mighty Gaia rejoiced greatly in her heart, and hid him in an ambush, and put in his hands the sharp-fanged Sickle, and taught him all the plot._

_Great Ouranos came with falling night and cast him broadly over Gaia, desiring her, and outstretched him at large upon her. But that other, his Son, reached out with his left hand from the place of his hiding ... and with his right grasping the monstrous fanged Sickle, he swiftly reaped the privy parts of his Father and cast them to fall behind him._

In calling this story Barbarian, I feel as if I ought to apologize to the Barbarians. Nevertheless it is clearly more in their way than in the way of the Greeks. It excellently illustrates the kind of stuff from which Greek religion refined itself. You will see that it is the old savage stuff of the battle between the Kings. On this occasion it is the Young King who prevails and pushes the Old King from his throne—not to die (for he was a God), but to live a shadowy, elemental life. But neither was Kronos able to escape his destiny. For _Rhea, subdued unto Kronos, bare shining children, even Hestia, and Demeter, and gold-shod Hera, and strong Hades, that pitiless heart, dwelling under ground, and the roaring Earth-Shaker, and Zeus the Many-Counselled, the Father of Gods and men, by whose thunder the broad earth is shaken. They also—great Kronos was used to swallow them down, as each came from the womb to his holy Mother’s knees, with intent that none other of the proud race of Ouranos should hold the lordship among the Everliving. For he knew from Gaia and starry Ouranos that he was fated to be overcome of his own child.... Therefore no blind man’s watch he kept, but looked for his children and swallowed them; but Rhea grieved and would not be comforted. But when she was at point to bring forth Zeus, then she prayed her own dear parents, Gaia and starry Ouranos, to devise a plan whereby she might bear her Son in secret, and retribution be paid by Kronos the Crafty Thinker for his father’s sake and his children that he gorged. And they truly gave ear to their daughter and obeyed her, and told her all things that were fated to befall concerning Kronos the King and his strong-hearted Son. And they conveyed her to Luktos in the fat land of Crete, when she was about to bring forth the youngest of her sons, great Zeus. Him gigantic Gaia received from her in broad Crete to nurture and to nurse. Thither came Gaia bearing him through the swift black night, to Luktos first; and she took him in her arms and hid him in a lonely cave, withdrawn beneath the goodly land, there where the wild-wood is thick upon the hills of Aigaion. But she wrapped a great Stone in swaddlingclouts, and gave it to the Son of Ouranos so mightily ruling, the Old King of the Gods. And Kronos seized it then with his hands, and put it down in his belly without ruth, nor knew in his own mind that for a Stone his Son was left to him unvanquished and unharmed, that was soon to overcome him by main strength of his hands, and drive him from the sovranty, and be King himself among the Everliving._

_For swiftly thereafter mightiness was increased to the Young King and his shining limbs waxed greater, and, as the seasons rounded to their close, great Kronos the Cunning was beguiled by the subtile suggestions of Gaia, and cast up again his offspring; and first he spewed forth the Stone, that he had swallowed last. Zeus planted it where meet the roads of the world in goodly Pytho under the rock-wall of Parnassus, to be a sign and to be a marvel to men in the days to come._

The Stone was there all right, for the French excavators have found it, looking highly indigestible. But it is unfair to treat Hesiod in this spirit. In fact, to read in him such passages as I have quoted is to give oneself quite a different emotion. There is the most curious conflict between one’s moral and one’s æsthetic reactions to them. You have a matter which it is poor to call savage, which is more like some atavistic resurrection of the beast in man; and you find it told in a style which is like some obsolescent litany full of half-understood words and immemorial refrains. The most primitive-minded is also the most literary poet in Greek, if by “literary” one means influenced by a tradition in style. He is full of the epic _clichés_, and he repeats them in a helpless, joyless way, as if he had no choice in the matter. If you wish to be unkind, you may describe his style as the epic jargon. But you will be unjust if you do not admit a certain grandeur arising (it would almost seem) out of its very formalism. Even in its decay the epic style is a magnificent thing. The singing-robes of Homer have faded and stiffened, but they are still dimly gorgeous, and it is with gold that they are stiff. The poet of the _Theogony_—I call him Hesiod without prejudice—wears them almost like a priest. But if you have to tell a story like those I have quoted, what other manner is possible than just such a conventional, half-ritualistic style, which acts like a spell to move the religious emotions and suspend the critical judgment? I am not quite finished with Hesiod, and I want the reader to have a little more patience with him and with me.

Before he was cast out of his throne, Ouranos, having conceived a hatred of his Sons, Briareos and Kottos and Gyes, _strongly bound them, being jealous of their overbearing valour, their beauty and stature, and fixed their habitation under the wide-wayed earth, where they were seated at the world’s end and utmost marge, in great grief and indignation of mind. Natheless the Son of Kronos, and the rest of the immortal Gods that deep-haired Rhea bare in wedlock with Kronos, brought them up to the light again by the counsels of Gaia, who told them all the tale, how they would gain the victory and bright glory with the aid of those._ In another place we read that Briareos and Kottos and Gyes _were grateful for that good service, and gave Zeus the thunder and the burning bolt and the lightning-flash, that aforetime vast Gaia concealed; in them he puts his trust as he rules over mortals and immortals_. He required them almost at once in his battle with the Titans. The word “Titans” seems to mean nothing more or less than “Kings.” They were the Old Kings at war with the Young Kings (who, because they lived on Mount Olympus in Thessaly, came to be called the “Olympians”) with Zeus at their head. Naturally the Old Kings took the side of Kronos, but after a ten years’ war they were beaten in a terrific battle, and Zeus reigned supreme. And then how do we find him behaving? Like this. _And Zeus King of the Gods took to wife first Metis, that was wisest of Gods and men. And when indeed she was about to bring forth the blue-eyed Goddess Athena, he beguiled her with cunning words, and put her down into his belly, by the counsels of Gaia and starry Ouranos, who counselled him so, lest some other of the ever-living Gods should hold the sovranty in the stead of Zeus, for of her it was fated that most wise children should be born, first the bright-eyed Maid Tritogeneia, of equal might with her Sire and of a wise understanding, and after her I ween she was to bear a high-hearted Son, that would be King of Gods and men. So he clutched her and put her down in his belly, in fear that she would bear a stronger thing than the Thunderbolt._

Now, of course, the Greeks once believed this sort of thing; otherwise you would not have Hesiod solemnly repeating it. But they very early repudiated it; and it is just the earliness and the thoroughness of their repudiation wherein they show themselves Greek. For the surrounding Barbarians kept on believing myths hardly less damnable, and kept acting on their faith; whereas as early as Homer you find the Greek protest. In Homer it is silent; he simply leaves Hesiod’s rubbish out. But the Ionian philosophers were not silent; indeed they included in their condemnation Homer himself. Heraclitus said that Homer deserved to be scourged out of the assemblies of men, and Archilochus likewise. Xenophanês said, _Homer and Hesiod attribute to the Gods all things that are scandals and reproach among men—to thieve, to be adulterers, and to deceive one another._ Pindar (a very moral poet) is indignant at the suggestion that an immortal god would eat boiled baby. Naturally, however, the poets and the philosophers approached the myths in a different spirit, which led to what in Plato’s time was already “a standing quarrel.” The philosophers objected to them altogether; the poets made them so beautiful in the telling that they passed beyond the sphere of the moralist. Even the _Theogony_ in parts achieves nobility; even in the _Theogony_ the Hellenizing process is at work on the Barbarian matter.

We shall be better instructed, however, if we observe the process in a later poet and a much greater artist. It so happens that the _Prometheus Bound_ of Aeschylus, like the _Theogony_, deals with the relations between the Old King and the New. The drama which we know as the _Prometheus Bound_ is only a part of what ancient scholars called a trilogy, which is a series of three plays developing a single theme; and we cannot even be certain whether it is the first part or the second. Of the other members of the trilogy we possess little more than the titles, which are _Prometheus Unbound_ and _Prometheus the Fire-Carrier_. Most students are now strongly disposed to believe that the _Fire-Carrier_ received its name from the circumstance that the play had for its theme, or part of its theme, the foundation of the Prometheia or Festival of Prometheus at Athens, the culmination of which was a torch-race engaged in by youthful fire-carriers. Every year the Athenian ephêbi, running with lit torches in relays of competitors, contended which should be the first to kindle anew the fire upon the common altar of Prometheus and Hephaistos in the Academy. If this conjecture regarding the theme of the _Fire-Carrier_ is just, then we may be sure that this play came last in the series, because it celebrates the triumph of the hero. Accordingly it is usual to arrange the trilogy in the order: _Prometheus Bound_, _Prometheus Unbound_, _Prometheus the Fire-Carrier_.

The _Prometheus Bound_ deals with the punishment of Prometheus by Zeus. It is commonly said that the hero of the play is punished because he had stolen fire, which Zeus had hidden away, and bestowed it upon mortals, who are represented as hitherto uncivilized. There is a certain amount of truth in this view, for in the opening scene of the play, when Prometheus is nailed to his rock, the fiend Kratos repeats that the reason for this torture is the theft of fire. But the proper theme of the _Prometheus Bound_ is not so much the binding of the Titan as the keeping him in bonds; and the reason for the prolongation of his torture is quite different from the reason for beginning it. The new reason is the refusal of Prometheus to reveal a secret, known to him but not to Zeus. All that Zeus knows is that one day he is fated to be superseded by his own son. What he does not, and what Prometheus does know, is who must be the mother of that son. On the withholding and the final revelation of this secret revolves the whole plot, not only of the _Prometheus Bound_, but also of the lost plays of the trilogy. To get the truth Zeus patiently tortures his immortal victim for three myriads of years, himself tortured by the old dynastic terror. It is the recurring situation of the _Theogony_ renewing itself once more.

Such crude material lay before Aeschylus. But his genius and his time alike required from him a different treatment from that which does not dissatisfy us in the archaic chronicle of Hesiod. The genius of the Athenian poet is of course essentially dramatic, and he lived in an age which had woken to the need for what I will simply call a better religion. Therefore he chose the subject of Prometheus, and therefore he treated it dramatically. Now for the poet and his audience what is most dramatic is, or ought to be, what is felt by them as most human; and what is most human is simply what is most alive and real to them; for drama aims at the illusion of reality. So Aeschylus could not handle his matter with the hieratic simplicity of the _Theogony_. The issues could not be so simple for the dramatist, because they are never so simple in actual life. If Aeschylus was to make Prometheus his hero, he would have to make him “sympathetic.” And so, in _Prometheus Bound_, he does; Prometheus engages all our sympathy, while Zeus appears a tyrant in the modern, and not merely the ancient, sense of the word. But that is not the conclusion of the matter. We know that in the last play of the trilogy the tormentor and the tormented were reconciled. To the uncompromising Shelley this was intolerable; and so he wrote his “Prometheus Unbound.” And nearly every one who in modern times has written on the subject, whatever explanation or apology he may have put forward in behalf of Aeschylus, has wished in his heart that the Greek had felt like the Englishman.

That he did not, is just the curious and disconcerting thing we should like explained.