SECT. VIII. The Morals of the Homeric Age.

We have now considered at some length the state and tendencies of religion, both objective and subjective, among the Greeks of the heroic age: let us proceed to attempt a sketch of their morality; which rested in part upon acknowledged relations to the Olympian deities, but which, it is clear, had likewise other supports and sanctions.

In general outline it may be thus summed up. An high spirited, energetic, adventurous, and daring people, they show themselves prone to acts of hasty violence, and their splendid courage occasionally even degenerates, under the influence of strong passion, into ferocity, while their acuteness and sagacity sometimes, though more rarely, take a decided tinge of cunning. Yet they are neither selfish, cruel, nor implacable. At the same time, self-command is scarcely less conspicuous among them than strong, and deep, and quick emotion. They are in the main a people of warm affections and high honour, commonly tender, never morbid: they respect the weak and the helpless; they hold authority in reverence; domestic purity too is cherished and esteemed among them more than elsewhere, and they have not yet fallen into the depths of sensual excess.

The Greek thanks the gods in his prosperity; witness Laertes. In his adversity he appeals to them for aid; or, if he is discontented, he complains of them; for he harbours no concealed dissatisfaction. Ready enough to take from those who have, he is at least as ready to give to those who need. He represents to the life the sentiment which another great master of manners has given to his Duke of Argyle, in the ‘Heart of Midlothian;’ ‘It is our Highland privilege to take from all what we want, and to give to all what they want[783].’ Distinctions of class are recognised, but they are mild and genial: there is no arrogance on the one side, nor any servility on the other. Reverence is paid to those in authority; and yet the Greek thinks in the spirit, and moves in the sphere, of habitual freedom. Over and above his warmth and tenacity in domestic affections, he prizes highly those other special relations between man and man, which mitigate and restrain the law of force in societies as yet imperfectly organized. He thoroughly admires the intelligence displayed in stratagem; whether among the resources of self-defence, or by way of jest upon a friend, or for the hurt or ruin of an enemy; but life in a mask he cannot away with, and holds it a prime article of his creed, that the tongue should habitually represent the man[784].

The moral sense in the heroic age.

Before proceeding, however, to examine the morality of the Greek heroic age, as to its particular sanctions, or in any of its applications to the regulation of human conduct, we are met by a preliminary question: had the Greeks any idea of a fixed and substantive rule of morals at all? were they believers in goodness as apart from strength? did they recognise a law of right as between man and man, or were their notions of relative duty entirely founded on a more or less far-sighted self-love, and on a prudential calculation of the consequences which would follow to society, and to each individual, if the rights of others were to be held in universal or in general disregard?

When we consider how hard it is to keep the moral standard high, even after religion has placed before our view a Divine pattern for man to follow, and how among the Greeks religion, first corrupted itself, had already begun to pour out its own corruption upon morals, we shall not venture to pitch our expectations very high: optimism and pessimism are here alike out of place: we want the clear, dispassionate, and direct discernment of the facts. And when we observe how, down to this day, the epithets which ought to designate virtue only, and in particular the word good, tend irresistibly to attach themselves to other gifts, such as genius, rank, wealth, skill, and power, we must not hastily conclude, from finding a similar use in Homer, that there was no idea or standard of goodness except that belonging to preeminence in the particular kind, according to which a clever thief is a good thief; good, that is, by doing effectually what he professes to do, or good, like the unjust steward of the parable, in respect of the intelligence he displays, though evil in respect of the direction which he gives to it[785].

Homer, in speaking of different classes of society, uses the line[786],

But after all we can translate this, without much verbal change, or any departure from our own idiom, ‘such services as the lower orders render to good society,’ or ‘to the better classes.’

Mr. Grote[787] says, that ‘the primitive import’ of the words ἀγαθὸς, ἐσθλὸς, and κακὸς relates ‘to power and not to worth;’ and that the ethical meaning of them is a later growth, which ‘hardly appears until the discussions raised by Socrates, and prosecuted by his disciples.’ I ask permission to protest against whatever savours of the idea that any Socrates whatever was the patentee of that sentiment of right and wrong, which is the most precious part of the patrimony of mankind. The movement of Greek morality with the lapse of time was chiefly downward, and not upward. It is admitted, that what we may call the dynamical sense of the epithets has held its ground in later times along with their ethical signification: the important question to be determined is, whether the latter signification was an improvement introduced by civilization into the code of barbarism, or whether it indicates a principle of human nature on its better, which is also its weaker side, and one which we see, all along the course of history, struggling to assert itself against the tyrannous invasion of other propensities and powers.

The word ἐσθλὸς is found in combination with what is absolutely vicious, in the remarkable case of Autolycus:

But the meaning of ἐσθλὸς appears to be, one who excels; the application of it to Autolycus is not at all unlike the commendation of the unjust steward; and the epithet did not in the later Greek acquire any essentially different force, or any exclusive appropriation to moral excellence. Its use in Homer may be compared with his application of δῖα to Clytemnestra. Yet it leans peculiarly to moral excellence. For the ἀμύμων is opposed to the ἀπηνὴς, who is certainly a moral delinquent; and the highest honour of the ἀμύμων is, that men proclaim him ἐσθλός (Od. xix. 329–34).

Again, with respect to χείρων and its opposite κρείσσων, with other words similar to both. In searching for the signs of a standard in its own nature absolute, we can expect little from a class of terms, which by their very structure bear witness that they are simply comparative. Especially the etymology of χείρων, directing us to the word χεὶρ as its root, exhibits force as its most commanding and essential idea. Yet, when the aristocracy of Ithaca are called (Od. xxi. 325) πολὺ χείρονες ἄνδρες, must we not admit that even in this word there inheres a strong moral element?

Use of the words ἀγαθὸς and κακός.

But as to the words ἀγαθὸς and κακὸς, the case is far more clear: and here I ask, can it be shown that Homer ever applies the word ἀγαθὸς to that which is morally bad? or the word κακὸς to that which is morally good? If it can, cadit quæstio; if it cannot, then we have advanced a considerable way in proving the ethical signification. For it is on all hands admitted, that besides their proper sense, ἀγαθὸς and κακὸς, like our good and bad, have a derivative meaning, in which they are employed to denote what is agreeable, or what is preeminent in its kind, and the reverse respectively; qualities which bear an analogy to goodness on the one hand, and to badness on the other, according to the universal testimony of human speech. Now, if the use of this derivative sense stops short, in the case of ἀγαθὸς, when it comes to border on what is positively bad, and in the case of κακὸς, when it comes to touch upon what is positively good, there must be a reason for the abrupt cessation, at that point, of the function of the words; and it can be none other than that nature herself revolts from a contradiction in terms; as we never say a good villain, or a bad saint. But the contradiction would not exist, unless the ethical sense were inherent in the words.

Now, I venture to state, with as much confidence as can well exist in the case of a negative embracing such a number of instances, that we do find this limitation throughout the poems of Homer, in the secondary use both of ἀγαθὸς and of κακός. In one passage there is at first sight some obscurity in the meaning of the latter term, κακὸς δ’ αἰδοῖος ἀλήτης[789]. Here however the context plainly shows it to be, ‘it will not do for a mendicant to be shy.’

But the positive sense of both words can be clearly and indisputably made out from a number of passages, of which I will quote a portion.

Although it is true, that in Homer the word ἀγαθὸς very often refers more to the ideas of particular excellences and of power, than to that of moral worth; yet in some passages we find a latent bias, as it were, towards the last named idea, and in others we have a clear and full expression of it.

As an example of the first, I quote the description of Agamemnon[790], ἀμφότερον, βασιλεύς τ’ ἀγαθὸς κρατερός τ’ αἰχμητής, ‘A good king, and a brave warrior.’ Now the word ἀγαθὸς here evidently has a special regard to the moral element. Homer surely intends to describe, by the epithets he applies to each of the two substantives, a special excellence suitable to each character respectively. The goodness, so to speak, of a warrior consisted in bravery: the goodness of a king, partly indeed in prudence, but chiefly in justice, in mildness, and in liberality. If ἀγαθὸς in this place meant merely ‘good in the virtue of its kind,’ then it might as well stand with αἰχμητής as with βασιλεὺς, and therefore the antithesis would be a bad and pointless one.

In other cases the moral colouring of the term is full and indubitable. Bellerophon[791], when he resists the seduction of the wife of Prœtus, is ἀγαθὰ φρονέων. Jupiter, when incensed, is described by Minerva thus, φρεσὶ μαίνεται οὐκ ἀγαθῇσιν[792]. To follow good advice is ὁ δὲ πείσεται εἰς ἀγαθόν περ[793]. A man who is ἀγαθὸς καὶ ἐχέφρων, is also the one who must necessarily have regard and affection for his wife[794]. And Clytemnestra, before she was corrupted, had good dispositions; φρεσὶ γὰρ κέχρητ’ ἀγαθῇσιν[795].

The word κακὸς again, in a majority of cases, refers to defect or calamity in things, or to poltroonery, or other baseness of that kind, in persons: but it directly indicates moral badness in such passages as the following. Leiodes pleads that he tried to keep the Suitors from doing wrong, κακῶν ἄπο χεῖρας ἔχεσθαι[796]. Telemachus warns the Suitors that the gods will turn upon them in wrath, ἀγασσάμενοι κακὰ ἔργα[797]. Jupiter views such deeds with indignation, νεμεσσᾷται κακὰ ἔργα[798]. And Juno reproaches Apollo for giving countenance to the Trojans, as κακῶν ἕταρ’ αἰὲν ἄπιστε, where our finding faithlessness in the immediate context, points to moral depravity as the signification of the word κακῶν[799].

Use of the word δίκαιος.

In the word δίκαιος, however, we have an instance of an epithet never employed except in order to signify a moral or a religious idea. Like the word righteous among ourselves, it is derived from a source which would make it immediately designate duty as between man and man, and also as it arises out of civil relations. But it is applied in Homer to both the great branches of duty. And surely there cannot be a stronger proof of the existence of definite moral ideas among a people, than the very fact that they employ a word founded on the observance of relative rights to describe also the religious character. It is when religion and morality are torn asunder, that the existence of moral ideas is endangered.

Minerva, in the form of Mentor, is pleased with Telemachus for handing the cup first to her at the festival in Pylos, because it is a tribute of reverence to superior age. For this he is called πεπνυμένος ἀνὴρ[800] δίκαιος, and the idea is that of relative duty. Again, when she advises him for a while to let the Suitors alone, it is ἐπεὶ οὔτι νοήμονες οὐδὲ δίκαιοι[801]; and they do not know the retribution that hangs over them. In this case the meaning must be either ‘just’ or ‘pious.’

In another case, where the very same phrase is employed, δίκαιος can only mean ‘pious.’ ‘Jupiter,’ says Nestor, ‘ordained calamities for the Greeks on their return, because they were not all either intelligent or righteous[802]:

‘Wherefore many of them perished’ (he continues) ‘through the wrath of Minerva, who set the two Atridæ at variance.’ Now here it appears that the original offence of the Greeks could only have consisted in the omission of the usual sacrifices, while the passage has no reference whatever to relative duties: δίκαιος therefore must refer simply to duty towards the gods. And, however imperfect may be that notion of divine duty which made it consist in sacrifice wholly or mainly, yet plainly the neglect to sacrifice was for the Greeks of the heroic age a moral offence, although it consisted only in the breach of a law of the class termed positive. A passage yet more fatally adverse to the position of Mr. Grote is, I think, that where Homer describes the Ἄβιοι[803] as δικαιότατοι ἀνθρώπων. For there he appears to be speaking of persons clearly less advanced in civilization, more rude, less wealthy and intelligent, than the Greeks; and yet he applies to them an epithet which proclaims them to have been, in his opinion, either the most just, or the most pious of mankind.

Religion and morals not dissociated.

Moreover, it does not appear that anywhere among the Greeks were religion and morals as yet effectually dissociated. It is true that the language of mere mythology treats the religious character of man as established by bounty in sacrifice. But this is one of the points, and a very vital one, in which the theistic system of the Greeks was worse than their ethical instinct, and became, therefore, a positive source of corruption. While the Scriptures of the Old Testament rigidly controlled the propensity of man to substitute perfunctory observances for the service of the heart, by saying, ‘to obey is better than sacrifice,’ the Jupiter of the Greeks tells them, that to sacrifice is better than to obey. And it is only in the mouth of a traditive deity that we find any more elevated sentiment. To a certain extent, indeed, yet not effectually, this representation may be qualified, if we recollect that in these passages the deities of Olympus, conceived according to the laws of anthropophuism, when they have occasion to speak of human piety, speak of it in that aspect under which it was peculiarly beneficial to themselves, but do not on that account intend wholly to set aside its other parts, while they undoubtedly disturb the scale of relative importance in the moral order.

But man, the handiwork of God, was less depraved than the idols which were the handiwork of man. Among the Greeks, the pious man is nowhere separated from the just or moral man. Not in words, for the question of a stranger always is, whether men are, on the one hand, insolent, fierce, and unrighteous, or, on the other, hospitable and pious to the gods[804];

Nor are they in any instance separated in deeds. We hear of no religious observances by the Suitors in Ithaca; but Nestor and Menelaus are both found engaged in them. The wicked Ægisthus, having corrupted Clytemnestra and gained the throne, then offered many sacrifices to the gods in the hope of keeping it, and suspended many decorations in their honour[805]; but he is not on this account spoken of with less horror, nor indeed did this extorted profession save him from divine vengeance, sent by the hand of Orestes. Nor does it appear that he had ever been liberal in sacrifice before. The persons who are extolled, obviously or expressly, on this ground in the Odyssey are, the illustrious Ulysses[806], and the trusty Eumæus in his humble cottage[807]. So that on the whole, as between Greek and Greek, regularity in divine worship by sacrifice was neither taken for the substance of morality, nor allowed as a substitute for it, but was a test of it, and was habitually found in union with it. The connection is clearly set out in the case of Eumæus[808]:

Moral elements in Sacrifice.

Nor must we forget that, had it been otherwise, a constant moral profanation, abhorred by the feeling of the time, would have been involved. For sacrifice, as ought to be the case with all ritual, had a moral character and adjuncts. It was either ordinary, as at the common meal, or solemn. In the former case the surrender by man of a portion of his food was a witness to God as the giver, and an expression of thankfulness intelligible to an unsophisticated age. In the latter case, and even in the former[809], prayer or thanksgiving were commonly combined with the rite. The spirit of man, when he approached the altar, was bowed down before the powers of heaven; and though it was a heavy sin in nations who had a clear knowledge of God to lapse into the practices of those who could but feebly grope (to use the language of saint Paul[810]) for Him, yet the use of religious observances, when it is ordinarily combined, as we find it combined in Greece, with the possession in other respects of virtuous character, is in effect one of the strongest testimonies to the existence of a substantive standard of morals, which it associates at once with the unseen world, and not with any mere reckoning of results, drawn from the life and experience of man.

If then the Greeks of the heroic age recognised a real type of good and evil in human action, the next question is, what were the motive powers by which they were drawn towards the practice of virtue?

These powers proceeded from three sources.

One was a regard to the gods; to their rewarding the good, and punishing the bad. Of this we have already treated in regard to some of the most important points. The general proof rests upon almost every page of the poems, especially as regards the punishment of the unkind, unjust, and cruel. The Homeric representations of a future state obscurely, but sensibly, add strength to the same class of sanctions.

The second was the voice of conscience, speaking for each man within his own breast[811].

The third was a sentiment ranging between reverence and fear, which led to the performance of duty, and to the avoidance of crime, in consideration of the general authority and established opinion of mankind.

We may consider those examples from bygone days, which are so often adduced either for warning or for imitation, as belonging to this third division of moral powers.

The finer forms of this third class of sentiments pass by imperceptible shades into the second.

The principle of conscience.

After his conquest of Hypoplacian Thebes, Achilles would not despoil the body of the slain Eetion, σεβάσσατο γὰρ τόγε θυμῷ: accordingly he burnt him, with his precious armour on. Now it would have been no crime to strip him of this valuable booty, and therefore would have drawn down no vengeance: but the high standard of his own chivalrous feelings would not suffer the act. We have no reason to suppose that in this instance he had any regard to the general opinion of the Greeks. For as when they gathered round the corpse of Hector, every one of them inflicted a wound upon it, and as it was the common custom of the war to strip the dead of their arms, nothing can be more unlikely than that the army would have resented a similar proceeding on the part of Achilles towards Eetion. It was therefore to his own mind that he deferred. Here there was a conscience not only taking notice of the broader and, so to speak, coarser, outlines of duty, but likewise exhibiting a refined and tender sense of it.

Again, Telemachus says, by way of appeal to the good feeling of the Suitors themselves (Od. ii. 138.),

In this place he seems to refer to the sense of right within each man, and by no means to their regard for appearances as before each other; while that, from which he exhorts them to abstain, is a purely moral wrong. So Glaucus appears to aim at the individual conscience, when he impresses on Hector and the Trojans the duty of recovering the body of Sarpedon, lest the Myrmidons should deface his remains (Il. xvi. 544–6). Again, Menelaus addresses a similar exhortation to the Greeks, and here expressly exhorts each person to feel and act for himself (Il. xvii. 254),

In one passage particularly, Telemachus distinguishes with great clearness the three kinds of motive by the terms proper to them respectively (Od. ii. 64–7);

That is νέμεσις, for the self-judging conscience: αἰδὼς, for human opinion: and lastly, fear, in regard to the divine wrath.

The existence of the moral standard within a man is also, I think, very strongly implied in the word ἀτασθαλίη, which is applied to deep, deliberate, habitual, or audacious wickedness. For when it is intended to let in any allowance for mere weakness, or for solicitation from without, or for a foolish blindness, then the word ἄτη is used. And I doubt whether, in any one instance throughout the poems, these two designations are ever applied to one and the same misconduct. It is certainly contrary to the general and almost universal rule. The ἀτασθαλίη is something done with clear sight and knowledge, with the full and conscious action of the will: it is something regarded as wholly without excuse, as tending to an entire moral deadness, and as entailing final punishment alike without notice and without mercy. Nothing can account for the introduction into a moral code of a form of offence conceived with such intensity, and ranked so high, except the belief that the man committing it had deliberately set aside that inward witness to truth and righteousness, supplied by the law of our nature, in the repudiation of which the universal and consentient voice of mankind has always placed the most awful responsibility, the extremest degree of guilt that the human being can incur.

Regard for general opinion.

The high place assigned throughout the poems to public opinion as a moral check is visible at every turn. And this check applies variously to various classes. With the most abandoned, like the Suitors, it is feeble; and is only invoked on special occasions, as when Telemachus combines it, in the passage lately cited, with the other moral sanctions. Even Paris is represented as quite beyond the reach of it: and Helen meekly wishes, that if the gods had determined she should live, she could have been the husband of a man more open to the influence of the public sentiment[812]:

But upon characters less frivolous and less corrupt, this power acts with great efficacy: so much so, that Phœnix says he was restrained, when in his passion, from killing his father by some benevolent deity, whose mode of proceeding was, we shall perceive, very remarkable: for the suggestion he made to Phœnix with such good effect was, not that he would be punished by the gods for the offence, but that he would become an offence and scandal among men[813]:

The δήμου φάτις, or public opinion, weighs even with the matron Penelope among the motives to her virtuous and heroic conduct; and the maid Nausicaa, no less circumspect than artless, finds in the φῆμις ἀδευκὴς, the bitter gossip, of Scheria, an apology for desiring Ulysses not to enter the city in her company[814].

But the sentiment of regard to general opinion comes out in other and yet finer forms as a practical regulator of conduct in the heroic age.

Perhaps we might venture to rely upon the uses of the single word αἰδὼς, with the cognate verb and adjective, in Homer, for proof that the condition of the Greeks of his age was a condition of high civilization, in that which constitutes its most essential part, namely, that which relates to the affections and passions of man; the expansion by moral forces of the one, and the compression of the other.

Shame, in all its many forms, has more than one pervading characteristic to mark it as an agent alike powerful and delicate in its influence upon human conduct.

First, it essentially involves this idea: that while it refers to an external standard, independent of ourselves though able to act upon us, still the power thus invoked is one altogether distinct from the idea of force. So sensitive indeed is the feeling of shame, that at the first moment when force comes into view, it alters its nature, and passes into fear. That which it apprehends is something, which dwells only in the ethereal region of opinion; and yet this, by the fineness of its appreciation, it converts into an agent effective both to excite and to restrain. Thus it exhibits to us the human spirit guided by silken reins, and in this way bears emphatic witness to the high training, by which alone it can become susceptible of so gentle a guidance.

Secondly, it embraces not only the character of acts as they are in themselves or appear to us, but also the aspect which they will naturally present to others. It therefore essentially involves the recognition of a high form of relative duty: it obliges us, in regulating the whole tenour of our conduct, to make the feelings of others an element in our own decisions. This principle of a mutual regard, not confined to certain positive acts of relative duty, but pervading the whole course of moral action, lies at the root of all genuine and high civilization.

Shame must have reference to some standard exterior to ourselves, and it therefore tends towards uprooting the law of selfishness. In one of its highest forms, the one perhaps most familiar to us in Homer, it is termed self-respect. But self-respect does not mean a regard to self: it means a virtuous regard to a standard established by adequate consent and authority, and owned, not set up, by the individual conscience; together with a determination that ‘self’ shall be made to conform to it.

The φθορὰ of this sentiment is what we term false shame: which does evil, or refrains from good, in submission to a depraved standard of opinion external to us, and in defiance of our own knowledge of right. This kind of shame is treated with no respect in Homer: for examples of it we must look to Amphimachus and Leiodes, two better-minded but complying Suitors, who end by perishing with the rest.

The force and forms of αἰδώς.

The numerous forms of the sentiment of αἰδὼς in the heroic age are a proof of the large and varied development to which it had already attained.

How fine a feeling is that according to which, as with Homer, the bold men are also the shamefaced ones! as in his line,

This line, as it is repeated, seems to have the character of a γνώμη in the poems[815].

The most marked and frequent use of αἰδὼς is in the sense of self-respect as applied to military honour and bravery. The words αἰδὼς, Ἀργεῖοι, which are employed as an exhortation to fight, constitute one of the Homeric formulæ. Homer does not permit this use of the word to the Trojans: but once it is employed for his gallant favourites, the Lycians. (Il. xvi. 422. xvii. 336.)

Once, indeed, the term is applied to Trojans, but this is in the converse of the usual sense. It would be αἰδὼς, a disgrace, says Æneas, were we to let Troy be taken through our want of manhood. This is a lower signification. And again, as we shall see, the established formula of military incitement for the Trojans is different and less refined[816].

Sometimes αἰδὼς is an excess of deference, or what we might call scrupulosity; the feeling which carries the fastidious observance of some right sentiment towards others up to the point where it threatens to interfere with a public or other clear duty. So Telemachus begs of Nestor, ‘tell me the truth,’

In the Doloneia, Agamemnon, fearful that Diomed will choose Menelaus as a companion out of deference, says, ‘Do not let αἰδὼς influence you: choose the best man.’ Sometimes it is compassion, or ruth; as when Achilles, before the ransom, is said to show no αἰδὼς towards the body of Hector. But here αἰδὼς includes the idea of shame and self-respect. Sometimes it is reverence towards a superior, as in Od. xiv. 505, and in αἰδοῖος applied by Helen to Priam in Il. iii. 172. In this manner it becomes applicable to the sentiments a man should entertain towards the gods,

And this is a very remarkable use of the term, because Priam certainly does not mean to urge upon Achilles a dread of the gods, but something quite distinct. Sometimes it is applied by a superior to an inferior; and means ‘his or her dues,’ as among the Immortals, where Jupiter says to Thetis, that he reserves the honour of the ransom for Achilles,

It may also be felt towards an inferior among men: Agamemnon is exhorted to feel it towards Chryses[820], for it is not a personal sentiment, but implies an object, outside the mere person who is the immediate occasion of it. So Achilles is intreated to revere (αἴδεσθαι) Lycaon, a vanquished and suppliant enemy[821].

Sometimes it signifies the constitution of a special relation, over and above the general bond between man and man. A person’s αἰδοῖοι are his relations, friends, guests, and the like. Even so a wanderer is αἰδοῖος to the gods (Od. v. 447). Sometimes it means purely mental modesty, as in Od. viii. 171, ὁ δ’ ἀσφαλέως ἀγορεύει αἰδοῖ μειλιχίῃ; he speaks with that engaging bashfulness and careful indication of respect for his audience, which forms a principal grace of the orator. Sometimes the physical, as well as mental, quality of modesty; as when αἰδὼς kept the goddesses at home (Od. viii. 324). Sometimes, again, simply shyness; as when Telemachus is exhorted by Minerva to put away αἰδὼς in Od. iii. 14; or as in the phrase κακὸς δ’ αἰδοῖος ἀλήτης; ‘it will never do for a beggar to be shy.’

No finer shading of sentiment, I think, can be found in the language of the most civilized nations, nor any case so remarkable of a high and tender, and at the same time largely developed state of feeling at a time when material progress was so partial, rude, and slight. And of the vital importance of this element of the Greek moral code, we find a proof in the representation of Hesiod, who gives it as a characteristic of his iron, or post-Homeric, age, that αἰδὼς along with νέμεσις had fled from the earth.

Other cognate terms.

There are other words, the use of which in Homer approximates occasionally to the sense of αἰδώς. The nearest of them is σέβας (as in Il. xviii. 178), with its verb σέβομαι; which, as we have seen, is sometimes applied simply to an internal standard recognised by the conscience. But in Il. iv. 242, οὔ νυ σέβεσθε; seems to be equivalent to οὐκ αἰδεῖσθε; or ‘for shame.’

The word νέμεσις, too, is sometimes used in a sense akin to that of αἰδώς: as when Neptune exhorts the Greeks, ἐν φρεσὶ θέσθε ἕκαστος αἰδῶ καὶ νέμεσιν (Il. xiii. 121): compare vi. 351. Again, in Od. i. 263, ii. 136, xxii. 40. But this sentiment is usually half way between αἰδὼς and fear, because what it apprehends, though it is not force, yet neither is it simple disapproval; rather it is disapproval with heat, disapproval into which passion enters. It contributes, however, to complete a very remarkable picture of the human mind.

The comparison between Greeks and Trojans, or Europeans and Asiatics, will prove, we shall find, greatly in favour of the former as to most parts of their morality. We have now to touch upon a feature in Greek manners which is unfavourable.

Homicide in the heroic age.

With regard to the practice of homicide, the ordinary Greek morality was extremely loose; while we have no evidence of a similar readiness for bloodshedding among the Trojans: and enough is told us of Trojan life and manners to have probably brought out this characteristic, had it existed.

Among the Greeks, to have killed a man was considered in the light of a misfortune, or at most a prudential error, an ἄτη πυκινὴ[822], when the perpetrator of the act had come among strangers as a fugitive for protection and hospitality. On the spot, therefore, where the crime occurred, it could stand only as in the nature of a private and civil wrong, and the fine payable was regarded, not (which it might have been) as a mode, however defective, of marking any guilt in the culprit, but as, on the whole, an equitable satisfaction to the wounded feelings of the relatives and friends, or as an actual compensation for the lost services of the dead man. The religion of the age takes no notice of the act whatever[823].

The ordinary practice, we learn from the blunt speech of Ajax to Achilles[824], was to accept the established fine upon the loss even of a brother or a son, if offered, and then to let the slayer remain unharmed. If he would not pay, or if the relations would not accept the payment, the alternative was flight: but it does not appear that this entailed any loss of character, perhaps rather otherwise. It was, however, the most common issue of such an affair, and, as such, it furnishes Homer with a simile. Priam, appearing before Achilles by surprise, is compared to a man who, having had the misfortune to kill somebody, appears unexpectedly in a strange place[825].

Eight instances in the poems.

We will proceed to examine the cases of homicide recorded in the poems, which are alike numerous and remarkable.

I. Medon[826], the illegitimate brother of Oilean Ajax, migrates from Locris to Phylace, having, in the usual phrase, killed a man, ἄνδρα κατακτάς. This man was a kinsman, not improbably a brother, (for γνωτὸς may mean brother, as in Il. iii. 174, and xxii. 234), of his ‘stepmother,’ as she is called; that is, of Eriopis, the lawful wife of his father. And yet he retains or improves his position in Phylace, and appears, in the Thirteenth Iliad, as the commander of all the Phthians except the Myrmidons.

II. Theoclymenus[827], of the prophetic family of Melampus, suddenly makes his appearance before Telemachus, when he is about to embark from the Peloponnesus for Ithaca. He inquires of Telemachus who he is[828]; and, on finding that the youth is not in his own country, but a stranger, he says, ‘So am I: I have killed a man, and am flying from the vengeance of his family: they are powerful, and I am in fear lest they should take my life.’ Telemachus immediately promises to take him on board, and entertain him hospitably. He does not seem at all shocked at the intimation he has received. He does not think it worth while to ask the fugitive, whether he killed the man wantonly, or under provocation. But he forthwith assigns to him the place of honour[829]:

III. The next is an instance not less remarkable than the one last named. Tlepolemus, the son of Hercules and Astyoche, kills Licymnius the maternal uncle of his father, and his own grand-uncle. The sufferer is, moreover, in his old age, or he could hardly be the grand-uncle of an adult person; and no plea or palliation is mentioned for the act. The children and grandchildren of Hercules prepare to levy war upon him: but so far is he from having suffered in character for what hardly can have been other than a barbarous and brutal action, that he is enabled to raise a large body of emigrants, who accompany him to Rhodes. When distributed there in three settlements, they are blessed by the peculiar favour of Jupiter; and Tlepolemus appears before Troy as the commander of the Rhodian contingent[830].

IV. Again, the friendship of Achilles and Patroclus had its origin in the circumstance that Menœtius delivered over his son into the protection of Peleus, because, being a youth, he had quarrelled with another youth, the son of Amphidamas, over a game of dice, and had slain him, νήπιος, οὐκ ἐθέλων, as the Poet says; that is, of course, without malice prepense[831]. This is the more worthy of notice, because it is evident that the character of Patroclus, partly perhaps for the sake of contrast with that of Achilles, and therefore of relief to it, is meant to be represented as one of peculiar gentleness[832]; a quality in which no one of the great Greek chieftains, except Menelaus, can compete with him.

V. In the Fifteenth Iliad, Hector slays Lycophron, son of Mastor, when he is aiming at Ajax. This was an inhabitant of Cythera who had quitted his country for homicide, ‘but whom,’ says Ajax to Teucer, ‘we honoured as if he had been a beloved parent[833].’

VI. Again, the case of Epeigeus is remarkable; for he had been lord of Budeum:

But having slain a cousin, apparently also of the higher order, he had to fly to Peleus and Thetis for protection[834].

VII. In the Thirteenth Odyssey, Ulysses, after being deposited in Ithaca, gives a fabulous account of himself to the disguised Minerva, in which we may be sure that he includes nothing which was deemed essentially dishonourable. In this account he represents himself as a fugitive from Crete on account of homicide. Orsilochus, the son of Idomeneus, had endeavoured, as he says, to deprive him of his share of the Trojan booty: for this cause he waylaid him by night, took away his life without being perceived by any one as he was returning from the country, and then embarked, to avoid the consequences, in a Phœnician ship[835].

VIII. An anonymous Ætolian, having slain a man, fled to Ithaca, visited Eumæus, and as a matter of course was entertained, nay petted, by him; ἐγὼ δέ μιν ἀμφαγάπαζον (Od. xiv. 379–81).

Even this great number of instances do not so fully illustrate the familiarity of the practice, and its thorough disconnection from the idea of moral turpitude, as the mode in which it furnishes the material of general illustration or remark. When Homer desires to represent on the shield of Achilles the ordinary form of public business in an assembly, he chooses a trial for homicide[836]. And so Ulysses, when explaining to Telemachus the formidable difficulties with which, after the slaughter of the Suitors, he has to contend, observes that those whom he has slain were the very flower of the community; whereas, in ordinary cases, a man flies his country after having put but a single person to death, and this even though he be one who has few to take up his quarrel[837].

Now if we knew these facts concerning the Greeks of the heroic age, and knew nothing else, we should at once conclude that they were an inhuman and savage people, who did not appreciate the value of human life. But this is not so. They are not a cruel people. There is no wanton infliction of pain throughout the whole operations of the Iliad, no delight in the sufferings of others. The only needless wounds are wounds given to the dead[838]; a mode of action which imputed nothing brutal or degrading, in times when mankind had not yet learned from the Christian Revelation the honour due to the human body.

It is not then mere savageness, and the low estimate put upon life, which determines the view of the heroic age with respect to homicide. And if not, then it can only be an unbalanced appreciation of some other quality, such as courage, which was commonly implied and exhibited in such cases.

Why viewed with little disfavour.

It seems as though the display of force and spirit of daring, which accompany crimes of violence in a rude age, had such a value in the estimation of the early Greeks, as to excuse proceedings which would otherwise have been visited with the severest censure. We shall find reason to believe that Paris may have had a certain credit in their eyes for carrying off Helen by the strong hand, which went to redeem or mitigate his adultery, and breach of hospitable rights. This idea, which is undoubtedly startling, is supported by the strange narrative of Hercules and Iphitus. Iphitus was the possessor of certain fine mares. Hercules, determined to possess them, visited him, received his hospitality, slew him, and carried off the animals. Now it may indeed be the mixed character of Hercules, which places his εἴδωλον in the Shades, while he is himself among the Immortals; but still the scale is cast on the whole in his favour. Yet surely the story of Iphitus exhibits a crime of the blackest dye; and the only palliation of it that is conceivable seems to lie in this, that he probably did not use stratagem, but proceeded by main force. The crime of Ægisthus, the blackest in the poems, appears to derive its highest intensity from the fact, that he slew Agamemnon like an ox at the stall, in the friendly feast itself, without notice or the opportunity of defence, and by a plot deliberately laid. Such is the effect of all the three passages in which this outrage is described[839]. The most favourable supposition which the case of Hercules admits is, that he came for plunder, and put the possessor of the horses to death, without premeditation, upon his refusal to yield them up; and that such an act, though a proper object of divine resentment, was yet not black enough to destroy his title to honour and a celestial abode[840].

We will now pass on to a kindred subject.

Piracy in the heroic age.

Thucydides has stated that in the earlier ages of Greece the practice of piracy was alike widespread and honourable: οὐκ ἔχοντός πω αἰσχύνην τούτου τοῦ ἔργου, φέροντος δέ τι καὶ δόξης μᾶλλον[841]. In support of this opinion he refers to the questions then usually addressed to strangers on their arrival in a country; such as that by Nestor to the pseudo-Mentor and Telemachus, in order to learn what their business was, or whether they were pirates[842];

Now I think that the last line seems to explain the favourable view which was taken by the Greeks of the practice of piracy. For it combined with the hazards of navigation, then so much more serious than at present, the chance of desperate encounters. It appealed, in the very highest degree, to the spirit of adventure; a spirit congenial especially to the earliest youth of a people full of unsatisfied and, so to speak, hungry energies. The mischief inflicted was inflicted on ἀλλόδαποι, on those with whom there was no close tie, either as compatriots or as ξεῖνοι. Now we must bear in mind that the law which, even in the time of Thucydides, governed the relations of the Greek tribes among themselves, during the period of their high civilization, was a permanent or ordinary state of hostility suspended from time to time by conventions for so many or so many years[843]. The same principle, applied to a period when political organization was less mature, and when men lived rather in knots and companies than in states, involves the Homeric view of piracy. And that view, entertained in such times, should occasion far less surprise, than our finding Thucydides inform us that the same system continued throughout whole divisions of Greece in his day; καὶ μέχρι τοῦδε πολλὰ τῆς Ἑλλάδος τῷ παλαιῷ τρόπῳ νέμεται, περί τε Λοκροὺς τοὺς Ὀζόλας, καὶ Αἰτώλους, καὶ Ἀκαρνᾶνας, καὶ τὴν ταύτῃ ἤπειρον[844]. The gains of the pirate’s life were in some sense fairly balanced by its dangers. The piracy of that age was not like piracy in ours, the strong and well-armed waiting for the feeble and defenceless; it was a game of more even chances, and the real resemblance for it is to be found, not among the Algerine corsairs, not even in the Highland clans sweeping down from the mountains upon the Lowland Scots, but most properly in the more even-handed forays of the border warfare between England and Scotland.

There is indeed yet a higher authority for this kind of piracy, than that to which Thucydides has referred. Ulysses, when he has destroyed the Suitors, considers, in conversation with his wife, not only how he is to preserve his remaining property in live stock, but how he is to replace what his enemies have destroyed. Part he thinks his subjects will make up to him by presents, but great part he will himself obtain by freebooting[845];

We can hardly, I think, restrain the meaning of the word to the booty of legitimate and successful war. Sometimes, as in the case of the Cicones, piracy is scarcely distinguishable from war; but Ulysses fairly relates of himself a piratical attack upon Egypt, which can leave us no room for scruple in supposing, that he might without hesitation think of doing again what he thought it worth while to pretend that he had done before. Both these last-named instances may serve, however, to show that, in times when preparedness for war was habitual, the pirate took no great advantage in such attacks as these. For with the Cicones Ulysses had the worst of it at last[846]; and in the case of Egypt, according to his fable, the whole party were taken prisoners or slain. Kidnapping, however, such as that of Eumæus stolen in his childhood, is not, I presume, to be regarded as equal in honour to freebooting with the strong hand, thus apparently stamped with the sanction of Ulysses.

And yet this model-man had been stung to the very quick by Euryalus in Phæacia, who said to him, ‘You do not look like a man to compete in athletic games; but rather like one of the captains of merchant vessels, who looks after the cargo and makes rapacious profits[847]!’

Nor, after all, is this so strange as at first sight it might appear; for the Phœnicians, the merchants of those days, were also kidnappers and slave-dealers: and if their transactions were not, like those of the pirates, uniformly bad, they were, when exceptionable, double-dyed in guilt, because they involved fraud as well as robbery.

Mixed view of it in the poems.

Again, as to piracy, it by no means appears that it was attended with respect, nor is the language of the poems quite uniform regarding it. In the νεκυία of the Twenty-fourth Odyssey, and also in that of the Eleventh, the shade of Agamemnon calls freebooters of this description ἀνάρσιοι ἄνδρες[848]. The Cretan piracy of the pseudo-Ulysses in Egypt is mentioned as an act of ὕβρις, an outrage deservedly punished by Jupiter[849]. On the other hand, Greek trade, like Phœnician, embraced kidnapping. At least the Taphians carried away from her country the Phœnician nurse, who in her turn carried off the young Eumæus.

Upon the whole, after allowing liberally for the masculine character and redundant energies of the Hellenic people, we shall best explain their favourable view of piracy by remembering the near relation it then bore both to war, which we know may be just and honourable, as well as to trade, which we regard as in itself both innocent and beneficial. Since Homer’s time the character of war has been softened, and that of trade has been elevated, almost immeasurably; while that of piracy has been lowered; hence there is now a wide gulf, where there was then scarcely even a seam discernible; and Homer might have sung the expressive words of Goëthe in Faust,

We may also, I think, find among the Greeks a tendency to family feuds, beyond certain limits, of which the poems do not afford any instance on the Trojan side.

Of these, two have already been noticed among the homicides. Medon kills his father’s wife’s kinsman. Tlepolemus kills his grand-uncle. But also Phœnix for a quarrel flies from his father’s home and settles in Dolopia. Phyleus, the father of Meges, for a similar reason migrates to Dulichium[850]. Eurystheus, as the great grandson of Jupiter, is of reputed kin to Hercules his son; but persecutes him through life with the imposition of cruel and endless toils. Meleager has a fierce feud with his family, which is recited by Phœnix as a warning to Achilles. Bellerophon is expelled from Greece by a family quarrel. Ægisthus himself is the cousin of Agamemnon.

As with families, so with communities. The pre-Troic legends are almost invariably legends of the internal raids and wars of Greece. They were a people of the strong and the red hand, marvellously combined with high refinement, true love of art and song, and an unexampled political genius.

But although the Homeric age had not ceased to be as yet an age of violence, it was as far as possible from being one marked by a general sway either of unbridled appetite, or of ungovernable passion; and if it is sometimes mistakenly supposed to have borne this character, the appearances which produce the illusion are due only to the fact, that vice of all kinds then went straight forward to its work, and had not yet learned, in the school of the wisdom of this world, how much it might gain from method, order, and reserve.

Temperance in the heroic age.

We have ample signs of that regard for temperance, bodily as well as mental, which Homer united with his thoroughly convivial spirit. By the mouth of Ulysses, he reprehends even that mild form of excess in wine which does no more than promote garrulity (Od. xiv. 463–6). When the Greeks were about to suffer great calamities on their return, he makes them proceed in a state of drunkenness to the Assembly[851]. When Elpenor dies by an accidental fall, he assigns drunkenness as the cause, and takes care to inform us that he was young, and neither valiant nor sensible[852]. Ulysses encourages the brutal Polyphemus to drink, with a view to his own liberation. And the proceedings of the monster, when intoxicated, are certainly more revolting than those of Stephano, if not than those of Caliban, in the Tempest. Again, though it is certainly true, that the most vivid denunciation of excess in liquor to be found throughout the poems is put into the mouth of the Suitor Antinous[853], yet I think it was plainly meant to be accepted as spoken in earnest, and as expressing the sense of Homer. Wine, we thus learn, caused the Centaur Eurytion to lose his ears and nose. In no single case does the Poet permit liquor to act in the slightest degree upon the self-possession of his heroes, or of any character whom he esteems; or represent them as either doing, or leaving undone, any act through excess in drink[854]. The only allusion to its influence, in connection with a practical result, is one very faint, and perfectly innocent. It is when, dissatisfaction having prevailed among the Grecian kings and army, as we see from the speech of Diomed, Nestor recommends Agamemnon to treat his Council to a supper, before proceeding to obtain their advice; and observes to him, that he can readily do it, for he has wine and all other provision in abundance. The intention apparently is to lay the ground for concord, not in excess, nor even here in hilarity, but at least in amicable humour[855]. To the Immortals, indeed, it is conceded to abide at the banquet for the livelong day, but not to men; for the pseudo-Mentor observes to Nestor in the Third Odyssey, that it is not seemly to sit long at the sacred (that is, regular and public) feast[856].

It is much to be regretted that Horace, who in many cases has shown himself an accurate reader of Homer, has in this point grossly mistaken him:

And this summary character, unfortunately false, has saved men the trouble of collecting the true one from the works of the Poet himself.

Self-control in the heroic age.

When we turn to another form of temperance or self-government, namely, that which we call self-control, we find it eminently exemplified among Greeks. It appears as a pervading and national quality in that silence on the field of battle, which they combined with such an inward energy of determination. In Ulysses it is carried up to its perfection. Perhaps the only occasions on which he even seems to relax it are those of the answer to Euryalus in the Eighth Odyssey, and the reply to Agamemnon in the Fourth Iliad.

So much, however, of emotion as he suffers to escape him in those passages, only serves to heighten the effect of his words, not to make him deflect by one jot or tittle, though in undoubted warmth, from the true rule of reason. But we find this quality not only developed powerfully in a pattern-man like Ulysses; it is also strongly infused into such a warrior as Diomed. This is proved by the manner in which he bears[858] the chiding of Agamemnon on his rounds, and rebukes Sthenelus for having been provoked into a petulant answer. At the same time it is highly illustrative of the national character, that this young and ardent warrior, who could thus bear a reprimand on the field, stored up the recollection of it within his breast: and when, at the beginning of the Ninth Book, Agamemnon showed his own faint-heartedness by advising the abandonment of the enterprise, then Diomed, having watched his opportunity, recalled the circumstances, and quietly but effectively replied upon Agamemnon[859]. Nay more, perhaps the most striking proof of the abundance of this high quality among the Greeks is in the very case where it is on the whole outmatched by the passion that it ought to master, namely, in the case of Achilles. There is something indeed sublime in the manner in which, many times over, when he feels the tide of wrath rising within him, he eyes his own passion, even as a tiger is eyed by its keeper, and puts a spell upon it, so that it dare not spring. Thus it is, when he parleys with himself on the question, whether he shall end the strife with Agamemnon by slaying him, in the Assembly of the First Book. And thus again, when he feels that the words which Priam has incautiously let drop are kindling a flame which, if further fed, would consume the aged and sorrowing suppliant, he is conscious of the rising tempest, and before it has swollen to such force as to disturb his self-command, he sternly, but yet not unkindly, bids him to desist. It is by trying them in mental conflicts like these, that Homer shows us of what mettle his Greek kings were made. It would be curious to draw out a list of the multitude of words in which he describes, under every possible aspect, the power and habit of self-control. But perhaps one of his slightest is also one of his most effective touches. The applause of the Greeks in their Assembly is always described by a word different from that employed to describe the very same indication of feeling by the Trojans. He usually says ἐπὶ δ’ ἴαχον υἷες Ἀχαιῶν for the Greeks: for the Trojans it is ἐπὶ δὲ Τρῶες κελάδησαν. The Greeks shout forth their energetic approval: the Trojans clatter, as if their tongues could not bear restraint.

Yet we must not suppose, either on account of the self-command of the Greeks that they were apathetic, or on account of their frequent homicides that they were inhuman, and savagely indifferent to the infliction of pain on their fellow-creatures.

Neither the Greeks nor the Trojans appear to have been ferocious in the treatment of enemies. The extreme point to which they go is that of giving no quarter: but they never, even in the exasperation of battle, inflict torture with their weapons. The immolation of twelve Trojan youths over the dead Patroclus is doubtless cruel: but it falls far short of what the passions of war have produced in other times and countries. With the manner of inflicting death, passion never has to do.

Savage ideas occasionally expressed.

An inquiry, however, which seems to be most curious, is suggested by the passages in which Hecuba wishes that she could eat Achilles[860], Achilles that he could find it in his heart to devour Hector[861]; and again in which Jupiter[862] suggests to Juno, that nothing could satiate her spite against Troy so well as if she were to eat up Priam and his whole family. For the question arises, how is it that we find these remains of the wildest savagery in company with a refinement of manners and feeling, which the poems very frequently exhibit, and which even reaches in some important points to a degree never exceeded in any country or any period of the world?

The answer I presume to be this: that the civilization of the Greeks in the heroic age, though as to the mind it was really a very high, was yet also a very young civilisation. Its path was marked and decided, but it had not had time to travel far from barbarism. It was not safe by distance, nor defended by the ramparts of long tradition, nor strengthened by the force of continuing bent, and consolidated immemorial habit. The Homeric gentleman, with his civilization, stood, in respect to barbarism, like him who voyages by sea,

only the thickness of the plank is between him and the wilderness which he has left: and if passion makes a breach, the mood of the wild beast reappears. We may account for the cannibalish observation of Jupiter by the fact that he has no self-control in Homer: but that of Hecuba is to be accounted for on the principle I have endeavoured to describe. So it is with Achilles: and so, too, when the wise Ulysses, slaughtering the wretched women of his household who had erred, seems tinged for once with a flush of barbarism. When we let loose the tiger within us, his range is limited not by any force springing from our own will or choice, but by the strong dikes and barriers of social wont, and by habits of thought as well as action, which have been accumulated by the long labours of many successive generations of mankind.

We have already[863] noticed something that will well bear comparison with this state of things in the reports which are made to us respecting modern Persia, the cradle in all likelihood of the family of Achilles.

At the same time it is to be borne in mind that this cannibalism, of which we have glimpses in Homer, in the first place was limited, even in speculation, to enemies; and in the second place, existed in speculation only. Of this we have pretty strong proof from the case of the crew of Ulysses in the Twelfth Odyssey. They did not touch the oxen of the Sun, until death from hunger stared them in the face. Then Eurylochus made a manful speech on the subject of the option before them, between dying on the one side, and the slaughter of some of the animals on the other. But those circumstances of the last extremity, to which they were reduced, were the very circumstances in which the fortitude even of Christians[864] has given way, and with respect to which no prudent man dares to pronounce a judgment upon persons that so succumb. Yet there is not in the case before us the slightest hint at a resort to this most horrible remedy.

Not unfamiliar to later Greece.

Besides the circumstance, that in Homer the cannibal dicta, abstractedly so shocking, are the mere words of phrensied passion, and that there are no corresponding acts, we have to observe that the Poet is never found exhibiting the sentiment of joy in connection with the positive infliction of suffering upon an enemy. It was by no means so among the later Greeks. Too many instances might, indeed, be supplied of the increase of cruelty with the lapse of time.

Homer, again, has nowhere made woman to be even the sorrowing minister of justice: as if he felt that there was a radical incompatibility between the proper gentleness of her nature, and the use of the sword of punishment. But in the Hecuba of Euripides, after the aged matron, exasperated by the treacherous murder of her son Polydorus, has put to death the two children of the assassin Polymestor, and has likewise put out his eyes, he addresses to her these words (v. 1233),

and she, no way shrinking from the imputation, replies

In one place Homer has taken an opportunity of showing us, what he thinks of the principle of exultation over fallen enemies. When Euryclea is about to shout over the fallen Suitors, Ulysses, though he has not yet ended the bloody work of retribution, gravely checks her. ‘It is wrong,’ he says, ‘to exult over the slain. These men have been overtaken by divine providence, and by their own perverse deeds: for they regarded no human being, noble or vile, with whom they had to do: wherefore they have miserably perished in their wickedness.’ The whole tone and language of this rebuke, so grave and earnest as it is, and more sad even than it is stern, is worthy of any moral code that the world has known.

Wrath in Ulysses and in Achilles.

There is indeed a terrible severity in the proceedings of Ulysses against the Suitors, the women, and his rebellious subjects. But it is plain that the case, which Homer had to represent, was one that required the hero to effect something like a reconquest of the country. It is also plain that Homer felt that these stern measures would require a very strong warrant. Hence without doubt it is, that the preparations for the crisis are so elaborate; the insults offered to the disguised master of the palace so aggravated; and the direct agency of Minerva introduced to deepen his sufferings. Hence, again, when the incensed warrior is about to pursue with martial ardour the flying insurgents, his eagerness is mildly marked as excessive, and is effectually checked by the friendly but decisive intervention of Jupiter. Some critics have objected to this passage, and have argued that it could not be genuine. They surely must forget, that Homer does not seek to present us in his protagonists with a faultlessness which would have carried them out of the sphere, such as it was conceived by him and by his age, of life either divine or human. Both Ulysses and Achilles may err. But where they err, it is in measure and degree. Ulysses is the minister of public justice, and of divine retribution. But he is composed, like ourselves, of flesh and blood, and he carries his righteous office, in a natural heat, to the verge of cruelty. Then the warning voice is vouchsafed to him, and he at once dutifully obeys. And is, then, a thing like this so new and strange to us? And has neither our philosophy nor our experience of life taught us that there are no circumstances, in which a good and just man runs so serious a risk of becoming harsh and cruel unawares, as when he is hurried along by the torrent of an originally righteous indignation?

Even so with Achilles. He is, no more than Ulysses, merely vengeful, but he resents a wrong done to justice, to decency, and to love, in his person. Upon the stream of this resentment he is carried, until it threatens to become a torrent. Then, by an admirable design, he is chastised in the yet deeper passion of his soul, his friendship for Patroclus; and so is recalled within the bounds of his duty to his suffering countrymen.

But in both cases the foundation of conduct is just and sound: by neither is any sanction given to the principle which the Gospel rebukes, ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ For a wrong done to principles of public morality and justice is in each case alike the thing chiefly resented, although in each case the person who resents it is also a person that had greatly suffered by it.

Again, we should misunderstand Homer’s picture of the Greek character, if we conceived that he left no room in it for those accesses of emotion, with respect to which it may be difficult to say whether they contributed most to its strength or its weakness, while it seems clear that they are in near association with both.

The Poet’s intention does not oblige him to place his protagonists beyond the reach of human infirmity, as we see in the stubborn wrath of Achilles, and in the awakened keenness of Ulysses for the blood of his rebellious subjects[865]. And though he never exhibits them as vicious, still, in the case of Ulysses, as well as in that of Achilles, he has introduced into his picture great quickness of temper, which is indeed nearly, though not necessarily, connected with sensitiveness of honour. On two occasions in particular is this observable: in the sharp answers namely of Ulysses, first to Agamemnon, who on his circuit accuses him of remissness in military duty[866]; and secondly to the θυμοδακὴς μῦθος of Euryalus[867], who has taken him for a πρήκτηρ or merchant, and a rogue to boot.

The Domestic affections.

The point in which the ethical tone of the heroic age stands highest of all is, perhaps, the strength of the domestic affections.

A marked indication of the power of this principle among mankind is to be found in its prevalence even among the Olympian deities. For its appearance there has no relation to divine attributes properly so called; it is strictly a part of the mythology; a sentiment copied from the human heart and life, and transferred to these inventive or idealized formations. Indeed we always find it in connection with that in which they are most human, namely, the indulgence of their sensual passions, and the results of that indulgence in their human progeny. It is not, therefore, among the higher or traditive deities that we find the sentiment; it does not exist in Apollo or Minerva, whose love is always of a different kind, and is grounded in the gifts or character of the person who is the object of it, as for instance, the great Ulysses[868], or, in a smaller sphere, the skilful Phereclus, who built the ships of Paris[869]. It is in Jupiter over Sarpedon, in Neptune for the blindness of his brutal son Polyphemus, in Mars over Ascalaphus, in Venus about Æneas; and these two last are the two deities whose ethical and intellectual standard is the lowest of all[870].

When we come down to earth, we find the sentiment strong everywhere. Among the Trojan royal family, where there is but little sense of the higher parts of morality, this feeling is intense alike with Priam and with Hecuba. The latter is not passionate, she is ἠπιόδωρος[871]. Yet on the death of Hector we see her become a tigress, and wish she could devour the conqueror[872]. Ulysses chooses for the title by which he would be known that of the Father of Telemachus[873]. It is true indeed that, then as now, the imperiousness of bodily wants made itself felt; and it was then more ingenuously acknowledged. Hence Telemachus, attached to his father, when he explained the double cause of his grief and care to the Ithacan assembly, first named the death or absence of his father, but then proclaimed as the chief matter, the continuing waste and threatened destruction of his property[874]:

And the gist of his complaint against the Suitors was, not their urging Penelope to marry, but their living upon him while prosecuting the suit[875]. But then this is a father, whom he has never known or consciously seen. The Shade of Achilles in the nether world is anxious upon one subject: it is that he may know if old Peleus is still held in honour. In another he is also deeply interested; it is the valour of his son: and the gloom of his chill existence is brightened into an exulting joy, when he learns that Neoptolemus is great in fight[876]. The mother of Ulysses died neither of disease nor of old age, but of a broken heart for the absence of her son[877]. But the most signal proof of the power of the instinct is in its hold upon the self-centred character of Agamemnon, which, as a general rule, leaves no room in his thoughts for anything, except policy alone, that lies beyond the range of his personal propensities and especially his appetite for wealth. But when the gallant Menelaus, ashamed of the silence of his countrymen, accepts the challenge of Hector[878], Agamemnon seizes him by the hand, and beseeches him not to run so terrible a hazard. And again, in the Δολώνεια, when Diomed has to select a companion, Agamemnon, in dread lest his choice should fall on Menelaus, desires him to take not the man of highest rank, but the most valiant and effective companion for an enterprise of so critical a kind. His motive was apprehension for the safety of his brother[879]:

The war too is full of the most pleasing instances of attachment between brothers; Ajax and Teucer, Glaucus and Sarpedon, and many other instances less illustrious, might be quoted. It is the sad end of Polydorus which at the last works up Hector into the most daring heroism; and again in the Odyssey, the advantage is set forth of having brothers, who defend a man while he is living, and avenge him when he is dead[880].

And hence it is that, even though Greeks were hot of head and ready of hand, we find no instance where, in consequence of a broil, one member of a family inflicts violence or death upon another of the same household. The horrible idea of parricide, and the execration with which public opinion would brand such a crime, restrain Phœnix at the very height of his passion from laying hands upon his father[881]:

Directly that we pass beyond the household and its affections intertwined by habit, the aspect of the case alters. Out of six instances of unpremeditated homicide in Homer, three[882] are committed upon relations by blood or by affinity, though not very near ones. Medon, the bastard of Oileus, kills a relation of the lawful wife. Tlepolemus the son of Hercules kills his grand-uncle Licymnius. Epeigeus of Budeum kills his cousin.

Relationships close, not wide.

This marked line of distinction, between the homicides of crime and the homicides of misfortune, illustrates another point in the structure of Greek society. Relationships do not appear to have been reckoned by them as subsisting beyond a rather narrow range. We cannot trace any defined idea of kin more remote than the first cousin. The lexicographers treat the term ἀνέψιος as capable of a wider sense; but the only individuals named as ἀνέψιοι by Homer, whose relationships we can follow, are first cousins: namely, Caletor son of Clytius, and Dolops son of Lampus, both first cousins of Hector[883]. There are also persons named in the poems, whose consanguinity we can trace, while it is nowhere noticed by the Poet: for instance, Eumelus is first cousin, once removed, to Nestor. Priam and Anchises are second cousins: Æneas and Hector third. These relationships are never referred to. Thus then society is not arranged in clans, but in tribes, united by the general sense of a common name, a common abode, a common history, a common religion, and a remote sense of a common tribal stock, without any sense of personal affinity in each individual case. Again, it is curious to observe that the xenial relation was not less vivacious than that of blood. The tie of blood subsists in the second generation from the common ancestor; and Diomed and Glaucus similarly own one another as ξεῖνοι, because two generations before Œneus had entertained Bellerophon[884].

Purity in the heroic age.

The elevated and free social position of womankind in the Homeric times of itself implies a great purity of ideas respecting them. This subject, however, will receive a separate discussion.

There is a passage of Athenæus which conveys to us a tradition of no ordinary beauty, and effectually severs for us ideas and objects which only a corrupt bias has associated. He tells us that Zeno of Citium[885], whatever the practice of the Stoic leader may have been, conceived of Ἔρως, the God of Love, as a deity of friendship, liberty, concord, and public happiness, and of nothing else. So likewise his antecessors in philosophy taught that this deity was as a being perfectly pure: σεμνόν τινα καὶ παντὸς αἰσχροῦ κεχωρισμένον. This idea took refuge in the Venus Οὐρανία, the opposite one in the Πάνδημος, or promiscuous[886]. In the later ages of Greece, the distinction of these two characters one from the other feebly lived on: but there was no subjective basis for the separate existence of the former, and it was practically eclipsed, if not absorbed. The true severance of the ideas probably was effected before the time of Homer; and they were lodged in separate impersonations. The effective form of the Celestial Venus is to be sought most probably in Diana, though it was natural for Plato and the philosophers to keep alive the memory of the distinction by way of apology for the popular religion. The traces of this unstained conception were in later times only to be found in the sphere of art, and were even there not always visible: but in the Homeric poems, and probably in the Homeric period, this purity of admiring sentiment towards beautiful form appears to have been a living reality.

Our inquiry on this subject must have reference partly to the Poet, and partly to his period and nation. I will first deal with the points which have a bearing upon the age as well as the bard: and will thereafter subjoin what appears to touch Homer only.

Lay of the Net of Vulcan.

Let us commence, then, by considering that one and only case, in the whole compass of twenty-eight thousand lines, which might lead to an opposite conclusion: the case of the second Lay of Demodocus, or the adultery of Mars and Venus[887].

Of course it is impossible to justify this single passage upon its own merits: but there are many circumstances that ought to be borne in mind by those who wish to form an accurate judgment upon it in its connection with the morals either of the Poet himself, or of the age to which he belonged.

Of these the most important, in my view, is the tendency which the Pagan religion already powerfully showed to become itself the positive corrupter of morality, or, to speak perhaps more accurately, to afford the medium, through which the forces of evil and the downward inclination would principally act for the purpose of depraving it. Even in Homer’s time, the existing mythology contained ample warrant for the scene of indulgence here laid bare; and we see the remaining modesty and delicacy of mankind feebly resisting the torrent of passion, which ought to have been counteracted, but which, on the contrary, was principally swollen and impelled, by the agency of the acknowledged religion of the country.

It was impossible for Homer to be altogether above the operation of influences so closely allied with an origin believed to be celestial: nor could it be easy for the popular Poet wholly to disregard the tastes of his hearers: the Poet, whose strains swept over the whole height and depth of life and nature, both human and divine, could not absolutely shut out from his encyclopædic survey so marked a characteristic of Olympian habits. He has not omitted to mark as peculiar, in more ways than one, the licence he has assumed. The lay is sung in an assembly attended by men only: and it purports also to describe a scene, from which the goddesses intentionally kept away. The amusement of the deities present is not universal: Neptune, the senior one among them, does not laugh[888], but takes the matter gravely, and desires to put an end to the scandal, by promising to make to the injured husband a pecuniary reparation[889]. He evidently appears to act under an impulse of offended dignity at least, though not of modesty. Again, the Poet endeavours to give a ridiculous air, not only a laughable one, to the whole proceeding, through the extreme mortification of the guilty persons; who, when released, are made to disappear in real dismay and discomfiture[890]. In this point he altogether differs, undoubtedly, from the generality of the writers of licentious pieces, as materially as he does in the simplicity of his details; and that supposition of a partially moral aim on which some have ventured, is not so extravagant as to deserve total and absolute rejection.

It has been common to employ, in vindication of Homer, the supposition that the passage is spurious. There is something rather more marked in the personal agency of the Sun than the poems elsewhere present; and undoubtedly Apollo is made to assume a tone wholly singular, and unsupported by what is told of him in the rest of the poems. These are arguments, so far as they go, against it. But I do not venture to adopt this alluring expedient: for the general character of the colouring, diction, and incidents, appears to be Homeric enough. And again, if licentiousness was to come in, this was exactly the way for its entrance, because it was after a banquet; because it was among men exclusively, and not in the presence of women; because of the connection with mythology; and because the tale is thoroughly in keeping with the mythological character of the personages chiefly concerned.

The direct reference however of the evil to the influence of a perverted religion can be supported by distinct evidence from other parts of the poems. In the Iliad there appear to be but two passages, which can fairly be termed indelicate. One is the account of the proceeding of Juno, with the accompanying speech of Jupiter, in the Fourteenth Book[891]. This relation belongs strictly to the mythology of the poem, and it is evidently handled in an historical manner; for Jupiter’s details, at least as it seems to me, are introduced for the purpose of fixing ancient national legends, as much as the stories of Nestor and Phœnix. The other passage is that, which in a few words contains the sensual advice given by Thetis, as a mother, to her son Achilles in his grief, by way of comfort;

This precisely exemplifies the relation of which I speak. The deity teaches the debased lesson: the human hero passes by the recommendation in silence. Homer would have put no such language as this into the mouth of one of his matrons.

When we come to pass sentence upon Homer, we must remember that, since in the Odyssey he represents the comic as well as the serious side of life, he ought in justice to be first compared with his successors. And here we not only shall find he gains by the comparison with Aristophanes or with Horace, but that he gains yet much more when tried by the standard of the other great school of poets which followed him in associating heroic subjects with wit and with amusement, namely, the poets of the Italian romance. There is hardly, perhaps, one of that whole school of Christian writers, who has not descended to licentiousness of far more malignant type. Nor let it be supposed that the Æneid shows in this respect any superiority in Virgil or in his hearers. As to Virgil, and as to his poems, if we take the whole of them into view, I am afraid that whatever the veil of words may do, the case was in reality bad enough: as to the hearers of the Æneid, we must remember that they were not a people, but a court: we must compare his Roman auditors with the hearers of Homer, not as to that particular only of their public amusements, but as to the whole; that is, we must compare the Homeric poems not with the Æneid alone, but with the Æneid and the Floralia. In Homer’s time, men had not learned to screen their vices behind walls which also serve to fortify them. And it still remains more than doubtful whether the appetite of Homeric Greece would have endured the garbage on which Christian Florence was content to feed, during its carnivals, in the period of its most famous civilization.

Evidence of comparative purity.

From this scene let us turn to consider the evidence for asserting the comparative purity of Homer’s age, and the peculiar purity of his mind.

2. We find in Homer no trace whatever of the existence of those unnatural vices, which appear to have deeply tainted the lives of many of the most eminent Greeks of later days[893]; which drew down the blasting sentence of St. Paul[894]; which in early times had been visited on the Cities of the plain; and which, it is no less strange than horrible to think, have left their mark upon more than one period or portion even of the literature of Christendom, in a manner and degree such as must excite scarcely less of surprise than shame.

The seizure of Ganymedes became in later times the basis of a tradition of this kind: but there is not a trace of it in Homer. The intense love and admiration of beauty to which his pages bear constant witness is wholly disconnected from animal passions, and in its simplicity and earnestness is, for its combined purity and strength, really nearer the feeling of some of the early Italian painters, and of Dante, than any thing else I can recall.

This is the more remarkable when we bear in mind what had already, and long before his time, happened in the East, and is recorded for us in the Book of Genesis.

Homer most rarely alludes to what is unbecoming in the human form: in the case of woman not once, and in the case of men only where he has a legitimate and sufficient purpose. Thus when Ulysses[895] threatens to strip Thersites to the skin in the event of his repeating his turbulence and insolence, it is plainly with an honest view to inflict upon him the last extremity of shame, and to make him an object of general and wholly unmixed disgust. Again, when Priam refers to the likelihood that his own body may be stripped naked, and then mangled by animals after his death, every one feels that the insult to natural decency, which he anticipates, contributes only to enhance the agony of his feelings. And the scene in the Odyssey, where Ulysses emerges from the sea upon the coast of Scheria, will always be regarded as one of the most careful, and yet most simple and unaffected, examples of true modesty contained in the whole circle of literature. Now these appear to be, not peculiarities, but samples of the general manners. We should look in vain for the proofs of an equal truth and fineness of perception among the Hebrews or among their forefathers, unless it be among a very few individuals, who, under a direct teaching from above, became select examples of virtue.

Many other indications in the poems converge upon the same point. The horror with which incest was regarded is one. The deep grief and humility stamped on the character of Helen is a second. The manner in which the chastity of Bellerophon is held up to admiration, and followed by reward, is a third[896]. The high-toned living widowhood of Penelope is of itself conclusive on the point before us.

Homer’s subject in the Iliad was one, which tempted and almost forced him into indecency, where he had to refer to the original crime of Paris or to describe his private life. The manner in which he has handled it is deserving of all praise. He treats as an evil gift the original promise and temptation to Paris. The scene in the end of the Third Book was necessary in order to complete the view of the character of that bad prince: and it could not have been drawn in a manner less calculated to seduce the mind, whether by the management of its details, or by the sentiments of loathing which it raises against the principal actor.

Undoubtedly we must, as regards the whole morality of the poems, ascribe much to the praise of Homer personally: yet it is plain that he represented his age in no small degree. First, because, as a popular and famous minstrel, he could not have been in sharp or general contrast with the feeling of his contemporaries. Secondly, because we perceive remains of this seriousness and purity in the older Greek writers junior to Homer. Thirdly, because we find from Thucydides that, at the time when the original Olympian games were instituted, it was still the custom carefully to avoid the exposure of the human form, and that a different practice was introduced afterwards by the Lacedæmonians, probably without evil intention, and for gymnastic ends alone (Thuc. i. 6).

And now, if we contemplate the belief, ideas, and institutions of the heroic period, as they would work upon an individual, we shall, perhaps, find that they fully justify the outline with which this section began. We may, indeed, see in the Homeric pictures of that age much to condemn or to deplore; but we may also be led to believe that if, through God’s mercy, there have been happier, there also have been less happy forms, for human destiny to be cast in.

Life of the high-born Greek.

The youth of high birth, not then so widely as now separated from the low, is educated under tutors in reverence for his parents, and in desire to emulate their fame: he shares in manly and in graceful sports, acquires the use of arms, hardens himself in the pursuit, then, of all others the most indispensable, the hunting down of wild beasts, gains the knowledge of medicine, probably also of the lyre. Sometimes, with many-sided intelligence, he even sets himself to learn how to build his own house or ship, or how to drive the plough firm and straight down the furrow, as well as to reap the standing corn[897]. And when scarcely a man, he bears arms for his country or his tribe, takes part in its government, learns by direct instruction and by practice how to rule mankind through the use of reasoning and persuasive power in political assemblies, attends and assists in sacrifices to the gods. For all this time he has been in kindly and free relations, not only with his parents, his family, his equals of his own age, but with the attendants, although they are but serfs, who have known him from infancy on his father’s domain.

He is indeed mistaught with reference to the use of the strong hand. Human life is cheap; so cheap that even a mild and gentle youth may be betrayed, upon a casual quarrel over some childish game with his friend, into taking it away. And even so throughout his life, should some occasion come that stirs up his passions from their depths, a wild beast, as it were, awakes within him, and he loses his humanity for the time until reason has re-established her control. Short, however, of such a desperate crisis, though he could not for the world rob his friend or his neighbour, yet he might be not unwilling to triumph over him to his cost, for the sake of some exercise of signal ingenuity: while, from a hostile tribe or a foreign shore, or from the individual who has become his enemy, he will acquire by main force what he can, nor will he scruple to inflict on him by stratagem even deadly injury[898]. He must, however, give liberally to those who are in need; to the wayfarer, the poor, the suppliant who begs from him shelter and protection. On the other hand, should his own goods be wasted, the liberal and open-handed contributions of his neighbours will not be wanting to replace them.

His early youth is not solicited into vice by finding sensual excess in vogue, or the opportunities of it staring in his eye and sounding in his ear. Gluttony is hardly known; drunkenness is marked only by its degrading character and the evil consequences that flow so straight from it, and is abhorred. But he loves the genial use of meals, and rejoices in the hour when the guests, gathered in his father’s hall, enjoy a liberal hospitality, and the wine mantles in the cup[899]. For then they listen to the strains of the minstrel, who celebrates before them the newest and the dearest of the heroic tales that stir their blood, and rouse their manly resolution to be worthy, in their turn, of their country and their country’s heroes. He joins the dance in the festivals of religion; the maiden’s hand upon his wrist, and the gilded knife glancing from his belt, as they course from point to point, or wheel in round on round[900]. That maiden, some Nausicaa or some Hermione of a neighbouring district, in due time he weds, amidst the rejoicings of their families, and brings her home to cherish her, ‘from the flower to the ripeness of the grape,’ with respect, fidelity, and love.

Whether as a governor or as governed, politics bring him, in ordinary circumstances, no great share of trouble. Government is a machine, of which the wheels move easily; for they are well oiled by simplicity of usages, ideas, and desires; by unity of interest; by respect for authority, and for those in whose hands it is reposed; by love of the common country, the common altar, the common festivals and games, to which already there is large resort. In peace he settles the disputes of his people, in war he lends them the precious example of heroic daring. He consults them, and advises with them, on all grave affairs; and his wakeful care for their interests is rewarded by the ample domains which are set apart for the prince by the people[901]. Finally, he closes his eyes, delivering over the sceptre to his son, and leaving much peace and happiness around him[902].

Such was, probably, the state of society amidst the concluding phase of which Homer’s youth, at least, was passed. But a dark and deep social revolution seems to have followed the Trojan war: we have its workings already become visible in the Odyssey. Scarcely could even Ulysses cope with it, contracted though it was for him within the narrow bounds of Ithaca. On the mainland, the bands of the elder society are soon wholly broken. The Pelopid, Neleid, Œneid houses are a wreck: disorganization invites the entry of new forces to control it: the Dorian lances bristle on the Ætolian beach, and the primitive Greece, the patriarchal Greece, the Greece of Homer, is no more.

Ethics of earlier and later Paganism.

When we take a general survey of the practical morality of the Heroic age, and compare it with that of later times, we must at once be struck with the great superiority of the former, in all that most nearly touches the moral being of man. The mere police of society, indeed, improves with the advance of civilization. The law of determinate rights to property, which we rather dangerously call the law of meum and tuum, whereas it is but a limited part of that great ordinance, comes to be better understood in later times, and better defended by penal sanctions. A clearer ideal, as well as actual, distinction, is gradually established between force and civil right. But who will venture to say that the duties of man to the Deity, or the larger claims of man upon man, were better understood in the age of Pericles or Alexander, of Sylla or of Augustus, than in the days of Homer?

It is to be expected that, when the elements of wealth are for the most part such as nature offers, when man has hardly left the mark of his hand upon the earth, when little has been appropriated, and that little indeterminately, then the description of right which is least understood should also be least respected; namely, the law which withdraws things from original community of use into individual dominion. To this day we dispute, what was the pristine foundation of the law of property. Why do we not perceive that this is equivalent to an admission, that in the first periods of political society, the whole idea of property must of necessity have been more or less vague? And consequently, that even plunder in primitive times is a different thing from plunder in later times, not only as to public estimation, but as to the moral colour of the act, and that it should be judged accordingly?