Women in Greek Poetry (continued 2)

The story of the Iliad is a story without a heroine, a feature which makes it well-nigh unique among national legends. This fact has struck various people, and has been accounted for in various ways, the favourite explanation, perhaps, being that the Greek imagination was severer and more self-controlled, more statuesque, one may almost say, than that of other primitive peoples, and was therefore content with a hero whose sole inspiration lay in love of glory and love of battle, apart from any gentler emotion whatever.[133] This estimate of the Greek imagination is no doubt a just one, but there is none the less a strong objection to seeking in it an explanation of the peculiarities of the Iliad. To regard the Achilles of Homer as a person animated solely by ambition and military enthusiasm, is, in face of the facts of the case, impossible. As is well known, Achilles sulks because deprived of Briseis, and is only roused again by the death of Patroclus; that is to say, his two main actions are influenced entirely by motives outside of those which are looked upon as his chief characteristics.[134] In other words, Achilles is not a military hero at all; the interest one feels in him is due almost entirely to the emotional side of his character. But while this much is clear, the question still remains: Why has this emotional hero no corresponding heroine? for, of course, one cannot regard Briseis as such.

The answer to this is one that will not please a certain class of modern minds, but that is no proof that it is not true. There is a heroine in the Iliad, and that heroine is Patroclus. The Achilleis is a story of which the main motive is the love of Achilles for Patroclus.[135] This solution is astoundingly simple, and yet it took me so long to bring myself to accept it, that I am quite ready to forgive anyone who feels a similar hesitation. But those who do accept it, cannot fail to observe, on further consideration, how thoroughly suitable a motive of this kind would be in a national Greek epic. For this is the motive running through the whole of Greek life, till that life was transmuted by the influence of Macedonia. The lover-warriors Achilles and Patroclus are the direct spiritual ancestors of the Sacred Band of Thebans, who died to a man on the field of Chaeronea.

Those who have made any study of the social life of early Greece, will hardly need to be reminded how important a part this relationship between older and younger men played there. In some states, such as Megara, it was specially patronised by the government. Among the Cretans, and to a certain extent also among the Lacedaemonians,[136] it formed the basis of the military organisation.[137] At Thespiae, the festival of the Erotidia was consecrated to this form of love.[138] At Elis there was a periodical beauty-competition among the youths, the prizes consisting of arms and armour.[139] A somewhat similar contest took place every spring at the tomb of the hero Diocles at Megara.[140] Nor was this all. In many states this relationship came to be looked upon as well-nigh an emblem of constitutional liberty;[141] so much so, that the tyrants used to regard it as a standing menace to themselves, and actually took steps to suppress it.[142] Thus Polycrates destroyed the gymnasium[143] at Samos ὥσπερ ἀντιτείχισμα τῇ ἰδίᾳ ἀκροπόλει, and others are said to have behaved in a similar way.[144]

But while the social importance of this relationship cannot be questioned, its character is equally unmistakable. In principle, and also in practice, it was pure. Its first and most striking feature, a feature specially emphasised by almost every ancient writer who alludes at all to the subject, is its perfect purity. The very idea of sensuality in connection with it is almost invariably vigorously repudiated,[145] and the author of the “Erotic Oration” of Demosthenes is but expressing the universal convictions of his predecessors when he says, δίκαιος ἐραστὴς οὔτ’ ἂν ποιήσειεν οὐδὲν αἰσχρὸν οὔτ’ ἀξιώσειεν.[146]

How entirely this was the case will be still more apparent when we come to examine the writers who dealt with the subject. Here it may suffice to remark that, apart from that main sewer, the Old Attic Comedy, there are, in all the Greek poetry extant down to the end of the fifth century, but a couple, or at most three, passages in which sensuality is so much as suggested in this connection.[147]

To trace the growth and development of this form of love—for love it was in the most modern sense of the word—would be extremely interesting; but it would be a long and difficult undertaking, which cannot be attempted here. The main outlines of its history are, however, sufficiently clear. Originating in the companionship of the battle-field, where the younger and weaker combatants would naturally look to their elders for help and support, it introduced itself also, as we have seen, into those peaceful exercises which serve to train the soldier; and hence, as soon as we find civilised communities, we find both the army and the gymnasium organised with reference to it. When a somewhat more settled condition of affairs had succeeded to the constant warfare of earlier times, we find it losing to some extent its distinctively military character, though this never entirely disappears, as is clear from the institution by Epaminondas of that “Sacred Band” of which we have had occasion to speak already. And so, in peace and war alike, it continues throughout classical times a dominating element in Greek society. Its highest development was due, of course, to Socrates and his followers; but from the end of the fifth century onwards it was beginning to lose its hold upon the Greek mind. The improved position of women, and that improved way of regarding them which was gradually springing up about this time, could not fail to affect it prejudicially, while other equally potent causes were at work to bring about its overthrow; indeed, it is not long before we find writers speaking in open disparagement of it.[148] And in all probability this contempt for the “hypocrisy of the philosophers” was now, to a great extent, justified; for there is little reason to suppose that at this period that high standard of moral purity, with which this form of love had been originally associated, was any longer a prominent feature of it. The Macedonians, in destroying the old Greek states, were destroying at once the home of its birth and the cause of its existence. It is small wonder that it failed, like so many other of the old Greek institutions, to adapt itself to its new surroundings, and that it could not survive the downfall of those virtues of patriotism and independence of which it was at once the outcome and the emblem.

But the fragrance of its early purity and beauty was never quite lost, as long as the classical world remained. In well-nigh all the poetry dealing with it there is a tone of dignity and chivalry to which the poetry addressed to women never, perhaps, wholly attained. The charming grace of the 12th Idyll of Theocritus is unsurpassed in any of his other works; the passionate despair of the 23rd is unequalled. The contrast in tone between the 12th and the 5th books of the Anthology is one of the most remarkable features of that remarkable collection of poems.[149] Even Catullus, when striving to give expression to a love purer and more intense than any Roman had ever known, still feels the spell of early Greece upon him.

he exclaims. “I loved you, not as a man loves a woman, but as a man loves a youth!”[150]

We have hitherto been speaking chiefly of the social aspect of this form of love; we can now proceed to examine somewhat more in detail its influence upon literature. And here two striking facts will at once present themselves to us, the exact converse of those which met us when examining the early literary treatment of woman-love. From the earliest period onwards we shall find the love of man for man taking a prominent place in poetry, while at the same time this love as there depicted is remarkable for its chivalrous and unsensual character. In other words, while the love of man to woman was among the early Greeks a love of the senses, the love of man to man was a love of the soul.

Of the Iliad we have spoken already, and we need not speak further, for though, as we have already pointed out, the relations between various of the Greek heroes there described are strong presumptive evidence of a state of affairs parallel to that which we know to have existed in historical times,[151] it is in the nature of an epic to be unable to supply proof of so positive a kind as is to be found in lyric poetry, which is generally, anyhow in early times, the expression of the writer’s actual feelings with reference to actual surrounding circumstances.

In dealing with the lyric writers we shall therefore be on firmer ground.

Here, in the fragments of Archilochus already we find very strong evidence of the existence of love-poems addressed to men; indeed, it is impossible satisfactorily to explain Fr. 85—

on any other supposition. This being so, and there being no evidence of any erotic poems addressed to women, it is justifiable to consider that Fr. 84 also belonged to this same class of poetry[152]; while there is further no reason to believe that these two passages were unique in the works of Archilochus. In other words, love-poems addressed to men are among the earliest known forms of subjective Greek poetry.

But while both Archilochus and Alcman[153] produced works of this kind, the fragments of these which remain are too scanty for it to be possible to feel any real certainty as to their exact nature; nor again was either of these two authors particularly celebrated in ancient times for this class of composition.

It is different with Alcaeus. Alcaeus was recognised throughout antiquity as the master par excellence of this form of poetry, and though the actual fragments of his works on this subject which remain are not much more satisfactory than is the case with his predecessors, we have most valuable evidence as to their nature in two poems of Theocritus, the one professedly and the other evidently imitated from them.[154] These poems contain certain evidently Alexandrian elements,[155] and, consequently, it would be unjustifiable to press any particular detail of them as illustrating Alcaeus, but, at the same time, there seems every reason to believe that in their general tone they reflect the spirit of their originals, and it is to their general tone that I wish to draw the reader’s attention.

To take the first of them (Idyll xxix.). The speaker is about to tell some unpleasant truths, but he feels constrained to apologise for so doing (1-4). After a passionate but dignified protestation of his love (5-8), he appeals to his friend’s better feelings (9), and urges him to be constant in his affections (10-20).

“If you do so,” he continues—

and Love will deal kindly with you, and save you from such pangs as I have suffered (21-24). For we grow older every day, and youth is the season for forming those friendships which last a lifetime (25-34). Now, I would readily do anything for your sake, but if you disregard my words, the time may come when even if you call me I will not answer” (35-40).

But anyone who has ever read this charming little poem will not need to have its character further forced upon him. The manliness, the dignity, the courtesy of it, are patent in every line; more striking still to those who know Greek literature is the spirit of self-negation which pervades the whole; and all this, combined with a passion which is none the less real because it is kept rigorously under control. Even in Alexandrian times it would be hard to find a poem addressed to a woman which can equal this in its chivalrous tone; to look for such a poem in early Greek literature would be vain indeed.

In the second of these two pieces (Idyll xxx.), also in all probability modelled on Alcaeus, the purely erotic side of the matter comes more to the front than in the one we have just been discussing, but here, too, one cannot fail to be struck by the quiet earnestness of the tone, which is as far removed from the good-humoured banter of Asclepiades as it is from the outspoken brutality of Archilochus.

But perhaps the most striking commentary on this state of feeling is that furnished by the other section of the Lesbian school of poets. It has troubled the minds of many modern commentators to think why Sappho should have addressed love-poems to Anactoria; for those who have formed a true idea of what “love” between a man and a woman meant in Greece of the seventh century, and compared this with the love then existing among men for one another, the question answers itself. Sappho, in addressing love-poems to Anactoria, was but adapting to her own circumstances and sex the universal contemporary principles of love-poetry. It seemed so unnatural then, and so impossible, to connect the sexual instinct with any pure or noble feeling, that Sappho, because her love was pure and its ideal a noble one, instinctively and inevitably chose as the object of this love her fellow-women, just as the men of her time chose their fellow-men.[156] To the Greek of the period the association of the sexes inevitably suggested sensuality; Sappho loved Anactoria, just as Alcaeus loved Lycus, in order that this suggestion might be as far as possible excluded. Sappho loved a woman because her love was too pure to allow her to love a man. All this sounds strange—monstrous almost—to modern ears; and yet, of all the scandal of the centuries which has heaped itself up around the name of Lesbos, what Sappho herself would have resented most would perhaps have been the story that she was in love with Phaon.

We have already had occasion to notice that Anacreon, while he was the originator of love-poetry addressed to women, at the same time addressed a large number of his poems, in fact, the majority, to boys. In his case, therefore, it is possible for the first time to compare the two forms of “love” in the same individual. The comparison is not much to the advantage of the newer feeling. While the outspoken sensuality of the poems devoted to women cannot be matter of dispute, even judging from such fragments of them as remain, the chaste and sober nature of Anacreon’s relation to his boy-lovers is not only a feature of the extant fragments, but is also alluded to more than once by ancient writers, who had his complete works from which to draw their inferences. Thus Aelian (Var. Hist. ix. 4), speaking of the love of Anacreon for Smerdias (cp. Anacreon, Fr. 48) says—

εἶτα ἥσθη τὸ μειράκιον τῷ ἐπαίνῳ καὶ τὸν Ἀνακρέοντα ἠσπάζετο σεμνῶς εὖ μάλα, ἐρῶντα τῆς ψυχῆς, ἀλλ’ οὐ τοῦ σώματος. μὴ γάρ τις ἡμῖν διαβαλλέτω, πρὸς θεῶν, τὸν ποιητὴν τὸν Τήϊον, μηδ’ ἀκόλαστον εἶναι λεγέτω.

Maximus Tyrius again, who several times alludes to Anacreon (and always under the title of ὁ σοφός or ὁ σοφιστής), expressly compares his love to that of Socrates (xxiv. 9)—

ἡ δὲ τοῦ Τηΐου σοφιστοῦ τέχνη τοῦ αὐτοῦ ἤθους καὶ τρόπου, καὶ γὰρ πάντων ἐρᾷ τῶν καλῶν καὶ ἐπαινεῖ πάντας. μεστὰ δὲ αὐτοῦ τὰ ᾄσματα τής Σμερδίου κόμης καὶ τῶν Κλεοβούλου ὀφθαλμῶν καὶ τῆς Βαθύλλου ὥρας· ἀλλὰ κὰν τούτοις τὴν σωφροσύνην ὅρα. ἔραμαι δέ τοι κ.τ.λ. (Fr. 44) καὶ αὖθις, καλὸν εἶναι τῷ ἐρῶντι τὰ δίκαια φησί.

A similar compliment to Anacreon seems to glimmer through Athenaeus’ account of Polycrates, (xii. 540 E.)

How deep the difference really went, it is of course impossible, in the absence of the poet’s complete works, to show, but, as already remarked, even in the few fragments we have, the distinction between the strong passion with which he speaks of his boy-loves and the frivolous tone of his addresses to women is very noticeable.

On the deep significance of the attempt of Ibycus to introduce personal erotic poetry into the choral hymns, we have also dwelt,[157] so that we can proceed without further delay to the works which bear the name of Theognis, a body of poems which, in the present connection, are perhaps the most interesting in all early Greek literature.

The great mass of these poems are in the form of short pieces addressed by the writer to his youthful friend Cyrnus, and, as such, are one long commentary on the subject we are discussing. Regarded from this point of view, several features at once force themselves upon the attention. Notwithstanding the fact that many of them are thorough love-poems, yet not only is the sensual side of the matter entirely ignored, but even the erotic, as far as that is subjective, is kept rigorously in the background. The counsel Theognis gives is such as a father might give to his son—[158]

Indeed, he is afraid lest Cyrnus’ eagerness may lead him into temptation, and so even urges him not to be over-loving.

He will not thrust himself upon his friend if the latter is unwilling; he will rather himself bear the pang of parting—

Yet he is always ready to sympathise with him when in trouble—

Though Cyrnus does not heed him, he will yet make him immortal by his songs.[160]

Much more there is, similar in tone, chiefly advice as to the choice of friends and the like, but it would be an endless task to examine all this in detail. The reader may open the collection at random, and at once find further proof of what has been said here. Whatever the subject of the poems and whatever their occasion, they are all well-nigh equally remarkable for their dignity, their temperance, their manliness, and for their most un-Greek virtue of unselfishness, and remarkable, no less, for the absence from them of that meanness and spitefulness which even in modern times so often mark the unfortunate lover. It does one good to read these poems; they are keen and clear like a mouthful of mountain air; and it does one good, too, to think of the θοῖναι καὶ εἰλάπιναι where they were sung and where the spirit of them was understood. After all, modern writers may decry and defame these amantes contra naturam as much as they please, but they cannot deny that they were the first to teach that the mission of love was to make men better.[161]

The intimate connection between the poems that bear the name of Theognis and the Scolia has already been noticed; it will not therefore be surprising to find that the latter are almost as full as the former of references to our present subject, though, as it is in their nature to be commonplace, they need not detain us long.

Of the 25 Scolia preserved by Athenaeus,[162] 15 deal with friendships of this kind;[163] these may be roughly divided into two classes: those which sing the praises of famous pairs of friends, and those which contain general remarks on the subject. A striking instance of the first class is, of course, the well-known Scolion of Callistratus (9-12), in which it may be observed that in the second verse, where Harmodius is promised immortality among the celebrated heroes of antiquity, the two of these specially mentioned are Achilles, the lover of Patroclus, and Diomed, the lover of Sthenelus. Other examples are Scol. 21, referring to Admetus, and Scol. 17, 18 referring to Ajax, the latter of whom is a hero in the Scolia as early as the time of Alcaeus. In the second class, perhaps the most interesting are Scol. 23, with its very Theognis-like advice, and Scol. 19, of which we have already spoken.[164]

As is, of course, only to be expected, these poems do not add much to our knowledge of the subject or its treatment; but it was none the less worth while to call attention to them, owing to the fact that verse or doggerel of this kind, though it may not be of much importance itself, is yet able to furnish important evidence as to the nature of the popular feeling to which it owes its origin. The views expressed in these poems are not those of individual authors, they are the views of the whole community; and it is this fact which gives to the Scolia a far deeper significance than would at first sight appear to belong to them.

So far, the examination of such fragments of the early Greek literature as have survived, has resulted in the discovery of a body of evidence which, if not very voluminous, is yet remarkably unanimous. It remains to be seen in how far it is possible to supplement this from the works of the Attic tragedians, which have been preserved in a more perfect condition. At the first glance the prospect is not very promising; love altogether, as we have seen, plays a very subordinate part in the Attic drama, while that form of love which we are immediately considering, seems at first sight to be especially neglected. And indeed, to a certain extent, this is really the case, for very obvious reasons. In the early days of tragedy, when the love-element was well-nigh entirely excluded, in obedience to the then artistic canons, it was not to be expected that exception would be made in favour of this particular form of it;[165] later, when the love-element was gradually forcing itself into the drama, the playwrights were all, whether they cared to confess it or not, under the influence of Euripides, who, as we know, was a special student of feminine nature, and as such, felt only a qualified interest in the mutual relations of men.[166] But at the same time, a closer examination of the Attic tragedians will perhaps reveal that this characteristically Greek emotion has had a greater influence on their work than one would, at the first moment, be disposed to believe.

Two plays, the Myrmidones of Aeschylus and the Niobe of Sophocles, are specially mentioned by Athenaeus[167] as introducing ἀρσενικοὶ ἔρωτες; unfortunately, however, in neither case are the fragments preserved of a kind to throw much light on the method of treatment adopted.

The Myrmidones, which seems to have been the first play of a trilogy, treated of the death of Patroclus and Achilles’ lament for him,[168] which seems, to judge by such expressions as those preserved in Fr. 135,[169] 138, to have been of a passionate character; but whether the erotic element was the only interest in the play, and whether it was in any way developed in the latter part of the trilogy, it is impossible now to say. The Niobe recounted the misfortunes of that heroine, with her subsequent grief and exile from Thebes, the scene of the tragedy, to Lydia. But a striking feature, the most striking, perhaps, if we may draw any inference from the statement in Athenaeus[170] that this play was commonly known as ἡ τραγῳδία ἡ παιδεράστρια, was the relation represented as existing among Niobe’s sons.[171] This would appear to have been especially emphasised in the account of the death-scene[172]—a passage which we can gather indirectly to have been the most popular in the play;[173] whether it was at all prominent in the previous action we cannot tell; and, indeed, the fragments of the Niobe are of a quite particularly meagre description.

To these two plays mentioned by Athenaeus must be added a third, the Chrysippus of Euripides, a work which is peculiarly interesting for two reasons—its author and its subject. The Myrmidones and the Niobe, of which we have just spoken, seem, as far as can be judged by the little of them that remains, to have dealt with what may be called simple straightforward love-stories. Men are introduced as in love with other men, and this love is brought to a climax by the most usual of expedients—the death of the loved object. Euripides, on the other hand, was, as we have seen, above all things a student of the emotions in their more complex phases, and a dénouement of so ordinary a kind could not have failed to appear commonplace to a writer who took such an interest in the pathology of the senses, even when he for once abandoned his favourite field of the feminine passions, and undertook the examination of a form of love, the symptoms of which are notoriously more easily capable of diagnosis. And, as a matter of fact, the Chrysippus introduces us to a novel and most interesting side of the question. The story on which the play is founded is, to quote the words of the Argument to the Phoenissae, as follows:

οὗτος (ὁ Λάϊος) ἀφικόμενός ποτε εἰς Ἦλιν καὶ τὸν τοῦ Πέλοπος υἱὸν Χρύσιππον ἰδών, ὃς ἦν ἐξ ἄλλης αὐτῷ γυναικὸς καὶ οὐκ ἐκ τῆς θυγατρὸς Οἰνομάου Ἱπποδαμείας, καὶ ἁλοὺς τούτου κατάκρας τῷ ἔρωτι, ἁρπάσας εἰς Θήβας ἤνεγκεν. καὶ συνῆν αὐτῷ τὰ ἐρωτικὰ πρῶτος ἐν ἀνθρώποις τὴν ἀρρενοφθορίαν εὑρών, καθὼς δὴ καὶ ὁ Ζεὺς ἐν θεοῖς τὸν Γανυμήδην ἁρπάσας. ὁ δὲ Πέλοψ μαθὼν τοῦτο κατηράσατο Λάϊῳ μηδέποτε μὲν παῖδα τεκεῖν, εἰ δ’ ἄρα καὶ συμβαίη, ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τοῦτον ἀναιρεθήσεσθαι.

Or, according to a slightly different version found in “Peisander”:

ἱστορεῖ Πείσανδρος, ὅτι κατὰ χόλον τῆς Ἥρας ἐπέμφθη ἡ Σφὶγξ τοῖς Θηβαίοις ἀπὸ τῶν ἐσχάτων μερῶν τῆς Αἰθιοπίας, ὅτι τὸν Λάϊον ἀσεβήσαντα εἰς τὸν παράνομον ἔρωτα τοῦ Χρυσίππου, ὃν ἥρπασεν ἀπὸ τῆς Πίσης, οὐκ ἐτιμωρήσαντο ... πρῶτος δὲ ὁ Λάϊος τὸν ἀθέμιστον ἔρωτα τοῦτον ἔσχεν. ὁ δὲ Χρύσιππος ὑπὸ αἰσχύνης ἑαυτὸν διεχρήσατο τῷ ξίφει. (Schol. ad Eur. Phoen. 1760.)

The moral of both these stories is obvious. The behaviour of Laius towards Chrysippus was a crime deserving the most exemplary punishment.

Now this fact at once affords us a clue as to the real nature of Laius’ conduct. It seems impossible that the statement that Laius πρῶτος τὸν ἀθέμιστον ἔρωτα τοῦτον ἔσχεν can be taken to mean that he was the founder of love as between man and man in the same way as this is related of, for instance, Orpheus. It seems impossible to believe that any legend should have described the originator of that form of love with which, as we know, the highest thoughts and ideals of the early Greeks were so intimately associated, as a criminal worthy of divine punishment. Euripides himself might not have shrunk from such a course, but it does not seem conceivable that he should have found any existing legend on which to begin to work;[174] and it seems, therefore, unquestionable that the meaning of the story cannot have been this. As a matter of fact, a careful examination of such evidence as we have, affords every reason for believing that its meaning was a very different one.

The true meaning of the legend is this. Laius was the first to violate the universal law that the love between man and man must be pure; and it was this transgression that involved himself, his family, and his country in such universal ruin.

That this meaning is in itself a more likely one than the other, will probably not be disputed by anyone who has formed a true conception of early Greek feeling on the subject; more than this one cannot expect. But while actual proof on the point is impossible, it may not be inapposite to draw attention to the way in which the sensuality and unreasoning animalism of Laius are emphasised at every turn, with the view doubtless, in the first case, of preventing any conceivable misunderstanding of the true purport of the tradition.

In the play itself, the nature of his passion is shown only too clearly by the famous distichs (Fr. 840, 841):

Cicero says as much (Tusc. iv. 33, 71): Quis ... non intellegit quid apud Euripidem et loquatur et cupiat Laius? Aelian, too (N. H. vi. 15), draws an unconscious comparison between this play and the pure old-Greek Niobe of Sophocles when, after describing how the dolphin that loved a boy ἐπιβιῶναι τοῖς παιδικοῖς οὐκ ἐτόλμησεν, he adds, Λάϊος δὲ ἐπὶ Χρυσίππῳ, ὦ καλὲ Εὐριπίδη, τοῦτο οὐκ ἔδρασεν.

The sensuality of the passion is clearly shown, too, by various features of the legend as recorded by various writers, above all by the fact that Hera is the goddess outraged, and by the peculiar nature of the curse of Pelops. The actual words, moreover, of the Scholiast of the Phoenissae (τὸν Λάϊον ἀσεβήσαντα ἐς τὸν παράνομον ἔρωτα τοῦ Χρυσίππου) and of the argument of that play (καὶ συνῆν αὐτῷ τὰ ἐρωτικὰ πρῶτος ἐν ἀνθρώποις τὴν ἀρρενοφθορίαν εὑρών), seem all to point the same way.[175]

In fact, the sensuality of Laius is made such a feature of the story in every case in which it is narrated, that it cannot well be doubted that this sensuality was a feature of the story in its earliest form; and if this be granted, there can be very little question as to the meaning of the story itself, as originally current.

We thus have three plays, one by each of the great dramatists, dealing with this subject, two of them dwelling upon the intense and unselfish nature of the passion in its true form, the third emphasising the disastrous consequences of any transgression of that purity which was so integral a part of it; but are these three the only ones of their kind? They are the only three, perhaps, that dealt with the purely erotic side of the matter; but its general influence evidently extended over a far wider field. This influence makes itself felt in various ways and in varying degrees, and it would be a lengthy task, and one beside the present purpose, to endeavour to trace its workings wherever they are visible in Attic tragedy; but a few noticeable instances of it are well worthy of attention.

One of these is the Ajax of Sophocles. It is a common complaint against this play that the second half of it is inferior in interest to the first. The admirers of Sophocles, however, contend that, to an Athenian audience, the details of funeral arrangements were matters of such paramount importance that, in a play intended for the Athenian stage, a second act dealing entirely with this subject would not by any means be of the nature of an anti-climax. I am no great admirer of Sophocles, and still less am I an admirer of the mob that pelted Aeschylus and hooted Euripides, but yet I should be disposed to give the Athenians credit for rather higher tastes than this would seem to imply; while, even had the predilections of his audience been so strongly those of the undertaker, it might surely have been hoped that a poet of Sophocles’ genius would have had the courage to ignore them. Indeed, as long as the interest of the second half of the Ajax is considered as centred on the dead body of the hero, it is impossible successfully to refute the charge of bathos; but a more careful consideration of this part of the play will, perhaps, show that the interest is by no means intended to be attached in this Mezentius-like manner to a corpse. The interest is meant to centre on Teucer, the amasius of the dead Ajax,[176] and on his efforts to prove himself worthy of his heroic lover; for his lover’s sake, in spite of every obstacle, and in the face of what looks like certain death, he insists that due respect shall be paid to the dead; in fact, there are in this situation the germs of the situation which excites such general interest in the Antigone.[177] There the character whose weakness is made strength through love, is a woman, and so we moderns admire; here it is a man, and so we misunderstand; but it does not follow that the Greeks were equally narrow in their sympathies.

Another instance, less obvious at first sight, but equally convincing on nearer examination, is the Alcestis. The Alcestis is a very difficult play to understand, as far as the motives of its leading figures are concerned; nor is it enough to say that, because the play has been described as “something of a satyric drama,” therefore all its characters are meant to be grotesque. The self-concentration of Admetus and the complete acquiescence therein of Alcestis, must surely be capable of some more satisfactory explanation.[178] This explanation is, perhaps, to be found in the relation existing between Admetus and Apollo. The story of the love of Apollo for Admetus is sufficiently familiar,[179] and has been alluded to on various occasions in the preceding pages. Both at Athens and Sparta the legend seems to have been well known,[180] and there can be no doubt that an audience, when called upon to listen to a play dealing with Admetus, would instinctively call to mind this incident in his life.[181] Granted this, it is not, perhaps, too bold to say that it is equally unquestionable that this recollection on their part must have influenced their view of the hero’s character. He was unwilling to die; for any Greek to be unwilling to die was excusable in a way which we who live in English fogs can never understand; but for Admetus, the beloved of the Sun-god! If he, who for nine years had met Apollo face to face, shrank from the mould and the mud of Hades, what reason to wonder at it? To a Greek, to live was to see the sun; surely then, to one whom the Sun-god loved, life must be doubly precious, precious to a degree that less happy mortals could never comprehend.[182] Then, again, if one thought of who Admetus was. Surely the man whom the Sun-god loved was a man whom the world could not spare, a man for whom it was a privilege to be considered worthy to die. Patriotism, too, no less than personal affection, would seem to compel a sacrifice on behalf of the man in whose kingdom a god took such a special interest;[183] nor, again, was the gift of a divine lover a thing that it was safe lightly to put aside. All this, and much more of a kindred nature, must have been present in the minds of those who first saw this strange play, and must have served in part to mitigate its strangeness. It could not, perhaps, explain the central mystery; but then, the mystery of self-sacrifice has never been explained yet.

Another striking instance is the persistent way in which Orestes and Pylades figure in the Athenian drama. They play a prominent part in no fewer than five tragedies, in one of which, the Iphigeneia in Tauris, the scene between them became proverbial;[184] and thus we get repeated again and again the, to modern minds, almost grotesque situation of the intense affection between Orestes and Pylades, and the intense affection between Orestes and Electra,[185] and the supreme indifference between Pylades and Electra, the two lovers who are going to marry one another as soon as the curtain comes down. And yet, those who have read what has gone before will know that not only did this situation seem natural to the Athenian audience, but any other situation under the circumstances would have seemed to them monstrous or absurd.

It is hardly necessary to follow this subject further, for enough has been said already to make its main features perfectly clear. Still less is it necessary, for our present purpose, to study the history of this emotion during the succeeding centuries. As we have already pointed out, from the end of the fifth century onwards it begins to lose its hold on the popular imagination, and ceases to be a national institution; and when next we find traces of it in literature, we see at once that its nature has entirely altered. Paederastic poetry there is enough and to spare among the Alexandrians, but it is poetry which looks strange indeed by the side of Theognis.[186] What were the causes that led to this change, a change as great as that which about this time came over the relation between man and woman—how far it was due to Persian influence, how far to the employment of professional soldiers instead of the citizen-armies of an earlier period—all these are questions of the greatest interest in themselves, but they cannot be discussed here. The fact remains that that purity and self-devotion which had been the rule in one generation became the exception in the next, and that the downward course was never again fully arrested throughout classical times.

And yet, even the most sensual of the later poets, somehow, sometimes, when speaking of this, rise to strange heights of beauty. Listen to Rhianus:

Listen to Meleager, the last of the Greek poets:

The foregoing discussion has covered a quantity of ground and dealt with a large variety of topics, some of which may have appeared but remotely connected with our immediate subject; but in the end it has succeeded in establishing certain facts very clearly. We have learnt from an examination of such parts of the early Greek literature as have survived, and from a consideration of the probable nature of the rest, that

(1) Love in the modern sense, as existing between men and women, was unknown in early Greece.

(2) Such love on the part of men for men was not only a fact, but was generally recognised as a social, and in some cases a national, institution.

From this it would seem inevitably to follow, that the change which we find at a later period to have come over the way of regarding women, was due to a transference to the sexual instinct, and an amalgamation with it, of that form of emotion which had previously been confined to the mutual relations of men. In other words, men first began to look upon women as fit objects of pure and chivalrous devotion, when they began (to quote the expression of Alcman)[187] to look upon them as “female boy-friends.”

Now, my reason for calling attention to this point is the following: If one regards the origin of what, for briefness’ sake, we have called the romantic feeling, as entirely a new growth of the fourth century, unconnected with anything that had gone before, it is obvious that such a growth, if indeed possible at all, can only have been made possible by a simultaneous movement on the part of a large number of persons; for it is inconceivable that any one man, however great his influence, could invent and popularise an entirely new emotion. But if, on the other hand, we regard the romantic feeling as simply due to the readjustment of an already existing emotion, it is no longer absurd to suppose that the original suggestion of this readjustment may have been due to some single individual. Indeed, the probabilities rather point in that direction, for it is a commonplace that revolutions of thought are generally due to the discovery, on the part of some individual, of the apparently obvious formula for which the rest of mankind have long been seeking in vain. This being so, it will be justifiable to apply the general principle to the case before us, and it will no longer seem a fruitless task to look about among the literary names of the close of the fifth century and the beginning of the fourth, for the man who gave the first impulse to that remarkable movement with which we are at present concerned.

The great obstacle which here confronts us at the outset, and, indeed, makes this whole investigation one of exceptional difficulty, is the fact that, of all the periods of Greek poetry, that which covers the first part of the fourth century—in other words, that which forms the transition from the classical to the so-called Alexandrian era—is just that of which the fewest monuments of importance have been preserved. From the death of Aristophanes to the time when Asclepiades began to write is pretty well 70 years,[188] but all the poetry which has come down to us from this whole period consists of a few fragments of comedy,[189] most of which it is impossible even approximately to date, and a few epigrams, the history of which is often more obscure still. There is thus a great gap in our knowledge, and it is just during this interval of darkness that the romantic feeling must first have found expression, for while in Euripides, confessedly the most “modern” of the classical poets, no real trace of it is to be found,[190] in Asclepiades and his immediate contemporaries and followers we find it already so thoroughly established as a noteworthy factor in their work, that it is impossible to doubt that its origin must belong to a considerably earlier period. This being so, it is impossible to speak with any certainty. It seems, however, most probable that the initiation of the movement was due to Antimachus of Colophon.

Antimachus was a distinguished man in various ways. The author of an important critical edition of the text of the Homeric poems, he was himself an epic poet second only in the general estimation to Homer, and his Thebaid was still read and admired more than 500 years after his death.[191] But the work on which his present claim rests is his elegiac poem, Lyde. It may not be amiss briefly to recall the circumstances and nature of this poem.[192]

Antimachus, falling in love with some Lydian lady, married her, and went to live with her in her native country. Afterwards, on her death, he returned to Colophon, where he composed, in her memory, the elegy Lyde, a poem containing, in the form of digressions, accounts of most of the unhappy lovers of tradition or mythology.[193]

Now, in this there are two features which it is impossible to parallel in any previous Greek poem. The Lyde of Antimachus was a love-poem addressed to his wife, and written after her death. In these two facts we recognise, on the part of the writer, a view both of married life and of women in general, which is entirely new. Mimnermus had said that life without love was not worth living, but his was hardly the love to last after his lady’s death. Simonides had sung the charms of the ideal housekeeper, but one would not expect to find emotional poetry addressed even to the most perfect housekeeper, as such. Euripides had expatiated on the powers and the capabilities of women; but there is a difference between regarding a woman as a particularly cunning and dangerous sort of beast, and regarding her as a fit object for a life’s devotion. In Antimachus, for the first time, we meet with the new spirit which animates the new literature and forms the foundation of the Greek romantic conception; for it is respect for women and, above all, for marriage, that constitutes the fundamental principle of the romantic feeling throughout the later Greek poetry.[194] It was this spirit which rendered possible the artistic treatment of the story of Acontius and Cydippe, and the growth of the novel, with its one inviolable canon that, whatever trials or temptations might befall them, the two lovers must throughout remain pure and faithful to one another.[195] It was this that rendered possible the New Comedy, with its endless variations on the ever-fresh theme of the unhappy lover, made happy at the last by marriage with his lady.[196] It was this that rendered possible the Battis of Philetas and the Leontium of Hermesianax, just as it rendered possible the Delia and the Lycoris of a later time. Under the old régime none of these things could have been. When Antimachus first sat down in his empty house at Colophon to write an elegy to his dead wife, consciously or unconsciously, he was initiating the greatest artistic revolution that the world has ever seen.

The circumstances under which the Lyde was produced were thus in themselves sufficiently unusual to have made a deep impression, and there is reason to believe further that the way in which Antimachus there treated his subject was also strikingly original. Not only was the actual literary form a novel one, and one that subsequently became very popular, but the general tone evidently differed in a marked manner from that of any love-poetry which had gone before. It was, above all things, noticeable for its seriousness, its gravity, and its self-restraint, characteristics entirely foreign to any previous love-poetry addressed to women. Thus Poseidippus expressly contrasts the temperate Antimachus with the licentious Mimnermus.[197] Something similar seems equally implied by the epithet σεμνοτέρη in the epigram of Asclepiades (Anth. Pal. ix. 63, 2). Indirect evidence of the same nature is to be found in the remark of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who refers to Antimachus as an instance τῆς αὐστηρᾶς ἁρμονίας.[198] Lastly, it is not, perhaps, too far-fetched to suppose that in Catullus xcv. the contrast between the Smyrna and the Lyde is not intended to be confined merely to the literary form, but is meant to further imply the poet’s preference for the story of Myrrha over the less highly spiced anecdotes in Antimachus. Very interesting too, from this point of view, are the relations of mutual admiration which are known to have existed between Antimachus and his younger contemporary Plato, an admiration illustrated by several striking anecdotes.[199] That the philosopher’s views on love were directly influenced by the poet cannot, of course, be absolutely proved. At the same time, the well-authenticated story of this intimacy, coupled with all that we know of the Lyde, is very suggestive of this, and might well furnish the subject for more elaborate research on the part of some Platonist. In spite therefore of the very scanty references to the Lyde, and the still scantier remains of the poem itself, it seems to be clear beyond doubt that, both in its circumstances of origin and its style, it was entirely different from any love-poem which had preceded it; and, further, that both circumstances and style may justly be described as romantic. In other words, the Lyde was a romantic love-poem.

But this is not in itself enough to show that the origin of the romantic feeling which appears in Alexandrian literature was due to its influence. It is further necessary to prove that those writers in whose works this feeling first appeals—viz. Asclepiades and Philetas—were actually readers and admirers of Antimachus.

This it is, perhaps, possible to do more conclusively than the general absence of evidence on the whole subject would have led one to expect. It is just Asclepiades and his particular followers who speak with the greatest enthusiasm of Antimachus. Very noteworthy are the words of Asclepiades himself—

And the passage in Poseidippus, where Antimachus and Mimnermus, coupled but contrasted, are spoken of as the first two love-poets, is scarcely less emphatic.[200]

In the case of Philetas, the evidence is also strong. His elegies addressed to Battis are generally admitted to have been modelled, in form, at any rate, on the Lyde of Antimachus; and it does not seem unjustifiable to infer from this that their spirit and their general character were also, in the main, similar. The way in which the two poets are coupled by Ovid (Trist. i. 6, 1) seems to support this view, and, as we have already seen, there is no evidence to the contrary.[201] To sum up, then: the conclusions arrived at are briefly as follows:

(1) In extant Greek poetry there is no trace of romantic love-poetry addressed to women, prior to the time of Asclepiades and Philetas.

(2) In the works of these writers this element suddenly appears, not in the nature of an experiment, but as a leading motive—an almost sure proof that they were not the originators of it.

(3) The Lyde of Antimachus was a work of such a kind, both in nature and in circumstances of production, that there is every reason to believe that it was a romantic love-poem.

(4) Philetas and Asclepiades were notoriously admirers of the Lyde of Antimachus.

(5) Therefore there is reason to believe that the romantic element appearing in their poems was due to the influence of Antimachus, who may thus be regarded as the originator of the romantic element in literature.

Vale, lector benevole, si quidem huc usque mecum perveneris.