exercised an independent authority. The church of Rome, however, claimed to have been founded by Peter, and quoted Jesus as saying: "Thou art Peter" (Heb. Cephas, Gk. Petros), "and upon this rock" (Heb. cephas, Gk. petra) "I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." 61l The passage has been challenged as an interpolation, and as a pun to which only Shakespeare would stoop; but the likelihood remains that Peter, if he did not establish the Christian colony in Rome, preached to it, and appointed its bishop.70 Irenaeus ( 1 87) wrote that Peter "committed to the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate"; Tertullian (200) confirmed this tradition; and Cyprian (252), bishop of Rome's great rival, Carthage, urged all Christians to accept the primacy of the Roman see.71
The earliest occupants of "Peter's throne" left no mark upon history. The third, Pope• Clement, stands out as the author of an extant letter written about 96 to the church of Corinth, appealing to its members to maintain harmony and order; 72 here, only a generation after Peter's death, the bishop of Rome speaks with authority to the Christians of a distant congregation. The other bishops, while acknowledging the "primacy"of the Roman bishop as the lineal successor of Peter, repeatedly challenged his power to overrule their own decisions. The Eastern churches celebrated Easter on the fourteenth day of the Jewish month of Nisan, whatever day of the week this might be; the Western churches post poned the feast to the following Sunday. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, visiting Rome about 156, tried and failed to persuade Anicetus, Bishop of Rome, to have the Eastern date observed in the West; and on his return he rejected the Pope's suggestion that the Eastern churches should accept the Western date. Pope Victor (190) rephrased Anicetus' request as a command; the bishops of Palestine obeyed, those of Asia Minor refused. Victor sent out letters to the Christian congregations, excommunicating the recalcitrant churches; many bishops, even in the West, protested against so severe a measure, and apparently Victor did not insist.
His successor Zephyrinus (202-18) was "a simple and unlettered man." 73 To aid him in administering the spreading episcopate of Rome, Zephyrinus raised to the archdeaconate a man whose intelligence was less questioned than his morals. Callistus, said his enemies, had begun his career as a slave, had become a banker, had embezzled the funds deposited with him, had been sentenced to hard labor, had been released, had started a riot in a synagogue, had been con demned to the mines of Sardinia, had escaped by having his name surreptitiously inserted into a list of pardoned prisoners, and had then lived for ten years at Antium in painful peace. When Zephyrinus placed him in charge of the papal cemetery he transferred it to the Via Appia, in the catacomb that bears his name. When Zephyrinus died, and Callistus was chosen pope, Hippolytus and some
The term papa, "father," which became in English pope, was applied in the first three centuries to any Christian bishop.
618	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XXVIII
other priests denounced him as unfit, and set up a rival church and papacy ( 2 18). Doctrinal differences accentuated the schism: Callistus believed in read mitting to the Church those who, after baptism, had committed a mortal sin (adultery, murder, aPostasy), and who professed their penitence. Hippolytus considered such lenience ruinous, and wrote a Refutation of All Heresies, with special attention to this one. Callistus excommunicated him, gave the Church a competent administration, and vigorously asserted the supreme authority of the Roman see over all Christendom.
The schism of Hippolytus ended in 235; but under Pope Cornelius (251-53) his heresy was revived by two priests-Novatus at Carthage and Novatian at Rome-who set up schismatic churches dedicated to the unrelenting exclusion of postbaptismal sinners. The Council of Carthage under Cyprian, and the Coun cil of Rome under Cornelius, excommunicated both groups. Cyprian's appeal for Cornelius' support strengthened the papacy; but when Pope Stephen I ( 2 54-57) ruled that converts from heretical sects need not be rebaptized, Cyprian led a synod of African bishops in rejecting the decree. Stephen, like another Cato, excommunicated them in an ecclesiastical Punic War; his providentially early death allowed the quarrel to lapse, and averted the secession of the powerful African Church.
Despite overreachings and setbacks, the Roman see increased its power with almost every decade. Its wealth and ecumenical charities exalted its prestige; it was consulted by the Christian world on every issue of gravity; it took the initiative in repudiating and combating heresies, and in defining the canon of the Scriptures. It was deficient in scholars, and could not boast a Tenullian, an Origen, or a Cyprian; it gave its attention to organization rather than to theory; it built and governed and let others write and talk. Cyprian rebelled; but it was he who, in his De Catbolicae Ecclesiae Unitate, acclaimed the see or seat of Peter (catbedra Petri) as the center and summit of Christendom, and proclaimed to the world those principles of solidarity, unanimity, and persistency which have been the essence and mainstay of the Catholic Church.74 By the middle of the third century the position and resources of the papacy were so strong that Decius vowed he would rather have a rival emperor at Rome than a pope.75 The capital of the Empire naturally became the capital of the Church.
As Judea had given Christianity ethics, and Greece had given it theology, so now Rome gave it organization; all these, with a dozen absorbed and rival faiths, entered into the Christian synthesis. It was not merely that the Church took over some religious customs and forms common in pre-Chris tian Rome-the stole and other vestments of pagan priests, the use of incense and holy water in purifications, the burning of candles and an everlast ing light before the altar, the worship of the saints, the architecture
CHAP. XXVIII)   THE  GROWTH  OF THE  CHURCH
of the basilica, the law of Rome as a basis for canon law, the title of Pontifex Maximus for the Supreme Pontiff, and, in the fourth century, the Latin language as the noble and enduring vehicle of Catholic ritual. The Roman gift was above all a vast framework of government, which, as secular au thority failed, became the structure of ecclesiastical rule. Soon the bishops, rather than the Roman prefects, would be the source of order and the seat of power in the cities; the metropolitans, or archbishops, would support, if not supplant, the provincial governors; and the synod of bishops would succeed the provincial assembly. The Roman Church followed in the foot steps of the Roman state; it conquered the provinces, beautified the capital, and established discipline and unity from frontier to frontier. Rome died in giving birth to the Church; the Church matured by inheriting and accepting the responsibilities of Rome.
CHAPTER  XXIX
TheCollapse of the Empire
A SEMITIC DYNASTY
N January r, 193, a few hours after the assassination of Commodus, the Senate met in a transport of happiness, and chose as emperor one
of its most respected members, whose just administration as prefect of the city had continued the finest traditions of the Antonines. Peninax accepted with reluctance a dignity so exalted that any fall from it must be fatal. He "demeaned himself as an ordinary man," says Herodian,1 attended the lec tures of the philosophers, encouraged literature, replenished the treasury, reduced taxes, and auctioned off the gold and silver, the embroideries and silks and beautiful slaves, wherewith Commodus had filled the imperial palace; "in fact, he did everything," says Dio Cassius, "that a good emperor should do." 2 The freedmen who had lost their perquisites through his economy conspired with the Praetorian Guard, which disliked his restora tion of discipline. On March 28, 300 soldiers forced their way into the palace, struck l}im down, and carried his head upon a spear to their camp. The people and the Senate mourned and hid.
The leaders of the Guard announced that they would bestow the crown upon that Roman who should offer them the largest donative. Didius Julianus was persuaded by his wife and daughter to interrupt his meal and enter his bid. Proceeding to the camp, he found a rival offering 5000 drachmas ($3000) to each soldier in return for the throne. The agents of the Guard passed from one millionaire to the other, encouraging higher bids; when Julianus promised each man 62 50 drachmas the Guard declared him emperor. Aroused by this crowning indignity, the people of Rome appealed to the legions in Britain, Syria, and Pannonia to come and depose Julianus. The legions, angered by exclusion from the donative, hailed their respective generals with the imperial title, and marched toward Rome. The Pannonian commander, Lucius Septimius Severus Geta, gained the Principate by bold ness, expedition, and bribery. He pledged himself to give each soldier 12,000 drachmas upon his accession; he led them from the Danube to within seventy
620
CHAP. XXIX)   THE  COLLAPSE OF THE EMPIRE
miles of Rome in a month; he won over to himself the troops sent to halt him, and subdued the Praetorians by offering them pardon in return for the surrender of their leaders. He violated precedent by entering the capital with all his troops in full armor, but he himself appeased tradition by wear ing civilian dress. A tribune found Julianus in tears and terror in the palace, led him into a bathroom, and beheaded him (June 2, 193).
Africa, which was at this time providing Christianity with its ablest de fenders, gave birth (146) and early schooling to Septimius. Brought up in a family of Punic-speaking Phoenicians, he studied literature and philosophy in Athens and practiced law in Rome. Despite the Semitic accent of his Latin, he was among the best-educated Romans of his time, and liked to surround himself with poets and philosophers. But he did not allow philos ophy to impede his wars, or poetry to soften his character. He was a man of handsome features, strong physique, and simple dress, hardy in hardship, clever in strategy, fearless in battle, ruthless in victory. He conversed with wit, judged with penetration, lied without scruple, loved money more than honor, and governed with cruelty and competence.3
The Senate had made the mistake of declaring for his rival Albinus; Sep timius, surrounded with 600 guards, persuaded it to confirm his own acces sion; then he put scores of senators to death, and confiscated so many aristo cratic estates that he became landlord to half the peninsula. The decimated Senate was replenished by imperial nomination with new members chiefly from the monarchical East. The great lawyers of the age-Papinian, Paulus, Ulpian-accumulated arguments in defense of absolute power. Septimius ignored the Senate except when he sent it commands; he assumed full con trol of the various treasuries, based his rule frankly upon the army, and made the Principate an hereditary military monarchy. The army was in creased in size; the pay of the soldiers was raised, and became an exhausting drain upon the public purse. Military service was made compulsory, but was forbidden to the inhabitants of Italy; henceforth provincial legions would choose emperors for a Rome that had lost the fortitude to rule.
This realistic warrior believed in astrology, and excelled in the interpreta tion of portents and dreams. \Vhen, six years before his accession, his first wife died, he offered his hand to a rich Syrian whose horoscope 1!ad pledged her a throne. Julia Domna was the daughter of a rich priest of the god Elagabal at £mesa. There, long since, a meteorite had fallen, had been en shrined in a gaudy temple, and was worshiped as the symbol, if not the embodiment, of the deity. Julia came, bore Septimius two sons, Caracalla and Geta, and rose to her promised throne. She was too beautiful to be monogamous, but Septimius was too busy to be jealous. She gathered around her a salon of literary men, patronized the arts, and persuaded Philostratus
622.	CAESAR  AND CHRIST	(CHAP. XXIX
to write and adorn the life of Apollonius of T yana. Her strong character and influence accelerated that orientation of the monarchy toward Eastern ways which culminated morally under Elagabalus, and politically under Diocletian.


THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP. XVIl
three are minor works;* the most famous is the Prometheus Rownd; the greatest make up the Oresteia trilogy.
The Prometheus Bound, too, may have been part of a trilogy, though no ancient authority vouches for this. We hear of a satyr play by Aeschy lus called Prometheus the Fire Bringer; but it was produced apart from the Prometheus Bound, in a quite different combination." Fragments sur vive of a Prometheus Unbound by Aeschylus; these are well-nigh mean ingless, but anxious scholars assure us that if we had the full text we should find Aeschylus answering satisfactorily all the heresies which the extant play· puts into the hero's lines. Even so it is noteworthy that an Athenian audience, at a religious festival, should have put up with the Titan's blasphemies. As the play opens we find Prometheus being chained to a rock in the Caucasus by Hephaestus at the command of a Zeus irate because Prometheus has taught men the art of fire. Hephaestus speaks:
High-thoughted son of Themis, who is sage! Thee loath I loath must rivet fast in chains Against this rocky height unclomb by man, Where never human voice nor face shall find
Out thee who lov'st them; and thy beauty's flower, Scorched in the sun's clear heat shall fade away.
Night shall come up with garniture of stars To comfort thee with shadow, and the sun
Disperse with retrickt beams the morning frosts; But through all dangers sense of present woe Shall vex thee sore, because with none of them There comes a hand to free. Such fruit is plucked From love of man! ... For Zeus is stern,
And new-made kings are cruel.'"
Hanging helpless on the crag, Prometheus hurls defiance to Olympus, and recounts proudly the steps by which he brought civilization to primi tive men, who till then
lived like silly ants beneath the ground
In hollow caves unsunned. There came to them No steadfast sign of winter, nor of spring Flower-perfumed, nor of summer full of f it;
TheSuppliant Women is of the primitive type, in which the chorus predominatc3; The Persians is also mostly choral, and vividly describes the battle of Salamis; the Seven against Thebes was the third play in a trilogy that told the story of King Laius and his queen Jocasta. the patricide and incest of their son Oedipus, and the conflict between the sons of Oedipus for the Theban throne.
CHAP.xvn)  THE  LITERATURE  OF 1.'HE  GOLDEN  AGE	385
But blindly and lawlessly they did all things, Until I taught them how the stars do rise And set in mystery, and devised for them Number, the inducer of philosophies,
The synthesis of letters, and besides, The artificer of all things, memory
That sweet muse-mother. I was first to yoke The servile beasts. . ..
And none but I originated ships....
Andi, Who did devise for mortals all these arts, Have no device left now to save myself...
The whole earth mourns with him. "There is a cry in the waves of the sea as they fall together, and a groaning in the deep; a wail comes up from the cavern realms of death." All the nations send their condolences to this political prisoner, and bid him remember that suffering visits all: "Grief walks the earth, and sits down at the feet of each by turns." But they do nothing to free him. Oceanus advises him to yield, "seeing that who reigns, reigns by cruelty instead of right"; and the chorus of Oceanids, daughters
	of the sea, wonder whether humanity deserves to be suffered for with such a crucifixion. "Nay, thine was a helpless sacrifice, 0	beloved.... Didst thou not see the race of men, how little in effort and energy, dream ers bound in chains?"" Nevertheless they so admire him that when Zeus threatens to hurl .him down into T artarus they stay by him, and face with him the thunderbolt that blasts them and Prometheus into the abyss. But Prometheus, being a god, is denied the easement of death. In the lost conclusion of the trilogy he is raised up from Tartarus to be again chained to a mountain rock, and a vulture is commissioned by Zeus to gnaw out the Titan's heart. The heart grows by night as fast as the vulture consumes it by day; in this way Prometheus suffers through thirteen generations of men. Then the kindly giant Heracles kills the vulture, and persuades Zeus to free Prometheus. The Titan repents, makes his peace with Omnipo tence, and places upon his finger the iron ring of necessity.
In this simple and powerful trilogy Aeschylus set the theme of Greek drama-the struggle of human will against inescapable destiny-and the theme of the life of Greece in the fifth century-:-the conflict between re bellious thought and traditional belief. His conclusion is conservative, but he know the case for the rebel, and gives it all his sympathy; not even in Euripides shall we find so critical a view of Olympus. This is another
THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP.XVII
Paradise Lost in which the Fallen Angel, despite the poet's piety, is the hero of the tale. Probably Milton often recalled Aeschylus' Titan when he composed such eloquent speeches for Satan. Goethe was fond of this play, and used Prometheus as a mouthpiece in irreverent youth; Byron made him the model of nearly all his selves; and Shelley, always at odds with fate, brought the story back to life in Prometheus Unbound, where the rebel never yields. The legend hides a dozen allegories: su.ffering is the fruit of the tree of knowledge; to know the future is to gnaw one's heart away; the liberator is always crucified; and in the end one must accept limits, man muss entsagen, must accomplish his purpose within the nature of things. This is a noble theme, and helps the majestic language of Aeschylus to make the Prometheus a tragedy in the "grand style." Never has the war between knowledge and superstition. enlightenment and obscurantism, genius and dogma, been more powerfully pictured, or lifted to a higher reach of symbol and utterance. "The other productions of the Greek
tragedians," said Schlegel, "are so many tragedies; but this is Tragedy her self,,,."
Nevertheless the Oresteia is greater still-by common consent the finest achievement in Greek drama, perhaps in all drama." It was produced in 458, probably two years after Prometheus Bownd, and two years before the author's death. The theme is the fateful breeding of violence by vio lence, and the inescapable punishment, through generation after genera tjon, of insolent pride and excess. We call it a legend but the Greeks, per haps rightly, called it history. The story, as told by each of the greater dramatists of Greece, might be called The Children of Tantalus, for it was he, the Phrygian king so recklessly proud in his wealth, who began the long chain of crime, and called down the vengeance of the Furies, by steal ing the nectar and ambrosia of the gods, and giving the divine food to Pelops, his son; in every age some men acquire more wealth than befits a man, and use it to spoil their children. We have seen how Pelops, by foul means, won the throne of Elis, slew his accomplice, and married th daugh ter of the king whom he had deceived and killed. By Hippodameia he had three children: Thyestes, Aerope, and Atreus. Thyestes seduced Aerope; Atreus, to avenge his sister, served up his brother's children to him at a banquet; whereupon Aegisthus, son of Thyestes by Thyestes' daughter, vowed vengeance upon Atreus and his line. Atreus had two sons, Aga memnon and Menelaus. Agamemnon married Clytaemnestra, and had by her two daughters, Iphigenia and Electra, and one son, Orestes. At Aulis,


Nor mortal wisdom gave them birth; And howsoe'er men may forget, They will not sleep."
It is the pen of Sophocles, but the voice of Aeschylus, faith making the last stand against unbelief. In this piety and resignation we see the figure of Job repentant and reconciled; but between the lines we catch premonitions of Euripides.
Like Solon, Sophocles counts that man most blessed who has never been born, and him next happiest who dies in infancy. A modem pessimist has taken pleasure in translating the somber lines of the chorus on the death of Oedipus, lines that reflect a world-weariness brought on by old age, and the bitter fratricide of the Peloponnesian War:
What man is he that yeameth
For length unmeasured of days?
Folly mine eye discerneth Encompassing all his ways.
For years over-running the measure Shall change thee in evil wise:
Grief draweth nigh thee; and pleasure, Behold it is hid from thine eyes.
This to their wage have they Which overlive their day....
Thpyortion esteem I highest Who wast not ever begot;
Thine next, being born, who diest And straightway again art not.
With follies light as the feather Doth Youth to man befall;
Then evils gather together,
There wants not one of them all Wrath, envy, discord, strife, The sword that seeketh life.
And sealing the sum of trouble Doth tottering Age draw nigh, Whom friends and kinsfolk fiy;
400	THE	LIFE  OF GREECE
Age, upon whom redouble
All sorrows under the sky....
And he that looseth from labor Doth one with other befriend,
Whom bride nor bridesmen attend, Song, nor sound of the tabor,
Death that maketh an end...
(CHAP.XVII
Every scholastic gossip knows that Sophocles consoled his old age with the hetaira Theoris, and had offspring by her... His legitimate son lophon, fearing, perhaps, that the poet would bequeath his wealth to Theoris' child, brought his father to court on a charge of financial incompetence. Sophocles read to the· jury, as evidence of his mental clarity, certain cho ruses from the play which he was writing, probably the Oedipus at Colonus; whereupon the judges not only acquitted him, but escorted him to his home... Born many years before Euripides, he lived to put on mourning for him; and then, in that same year 406, he too died. Legend tells how, as the Spartans besieged Athens, Dionysus, g9d of the drama, appeared to Lysander and obtained a safe-conduct for the friends of Sophocles, who wished to bury him in the sepulcher of his fathers at Deceleia. The Greeks rendered him divine honors, and the poet Simmias composed for him a quiet epitaph:
Creep gently, ivy, ever gently creep,
Where Sophocles sleeps on in calm repose; Thy pale green tresses o'er the marble sweep,


Oh, vain is man, Who glorieth in his joy and hath no fears, While to and fro the chances of the years
Dance like an idiot in the wind! ...	(She 'Wraps the child in the burial garments.) •
Glory of Phrygian raiment, which my thought Kept for thy bridal day with some far-sought Queen of the East, folds thee for evermore	""
In the Electra the ancient theme is far advanced. Agamemnon is dead, Orestes is in Phocis, and Electra has been married off by her mother to a peasant whose simple fidelity, and awe of her royal descent, survive her brooding negligence of him. To her, wondering will Orestes never find her, Orestes comes, bidden by Apollo himself (Euripides drives this point home) to avenge Agamemnon's death. Electra stirs him on; if he will not kill the murderers she will. The lad finds Aegisthus and slays him, and then turns upon his mother. Clytaemnestra is here a subdued and aging woman, gray-haired and frail, haunted by the memory of her crimes, at once fearing and loving the children who hate her; asking, but not beg ging, for mercy; and half reconciled to the penalty of her sins. When the killing is over Orestes is overcome with horror.
Sister, touch her again, Oh, veil the body of her,
410	THE	LIFE  OF GREECE
Shed on her raiment fair,
And close that death-red stain. Mother! And didst thou bear, Bear in thy bitter pain,
To life, thy murderer?"'
(CHAP.XVD
The final act of the drama, in Euripides, is called Iphigenia in Ttmris i.e., Iphigenia among the Tauri. Anemis, it now appears, substituted a deer for Agamemnon's daughter on the pyre at Aulis, snatched the girl from the flames, and made her a priestess at the- shrine of Anemis among the half-savage Tauri of the Crimea. The Tauri make it a rule to sacrifice to the goddess any stranger who sets foot unasked upon their shores; and Iphigenia is the unhappy, brooding ministrant who consecrates the vic tims. Eighteen years of separation from Greece and those she loved have dulled her mind with grief. Meanwhile the oracle of Apollo has promised Orestes peace if he will capture from the Tauri the sacred image of Anemis, and bring it to Attica. Orestes and Pylades set sail, and at last reach the land of the T auri, who gladly accept them as gifts of the sea for Artemis, and hurry them off to be slain at her altar. Orestes, exhausted, falls in an epileptic fit at Iphigenia's feet; and though she does not recog nize him, she is overwhelmed with pity as she sees the two comrades, in the fairest years of youth, faced with death.
lphig. To none is given
To know the coming nor the end of woe; So dark is God, and to great darkness go
His paths, by blind chance mazed from our ken. Whence are ye come,0 most unhappy men? ... What mother then was yours,0 strangers, say, And father? And your sister, if you have
A sister: both at once, so young and brave To leave her brotherless....
Orestes. Would that my sister's hand could close mine eyes!
lphig. Alas, she dwelleth under distant skies, Unhappy one, and vain is all thy prayer.
Yet, oh, thou art from Argos; all of care That can be I will give, and fail thee not. Rich raiment to thy burial shall be brought, And oil to cool thy pyre in golden floods,
And sweet that from a thousand mountain buds The murmuring bee hath garnered, I will throw To die with thee in fragrance.
CHAP.xvn) THE  LITERATURE  OF THE GOLDEN  AGE	411
She promises to save them if they will carry back to Argos the message
which she bids them store in their memories.
Iphig. Say, "To Orestes, Agamemnon's son, She that was slain in Aulis, dead to Greece Yet quick, Iphigenia, sendeth peace."
Orestes. Iphigenia! Where? Back from the dead? lphig. 'Tis _I. But speak not, lest thou break my thread. "Take me to Argos, brother, ere I die."
Orestes wishes to clasp her in his arms, but the attendants forbid it; no man may touch the priestess of Artemis. He declares himself Orestes, but she cannot believe him. He convinces her by recalling the tales Electra told them.


Since athletics were necessary for war, and yet would die without com petitions, the cities of Greece, to provide the highest stimulus, arranged Panhellenic games. The oldest of these were organized as a regular quad rennial event at Olympia in 776 B.c.-the first definite date in Greek history. Originally confined to Eleans, within a century they were drawing entries from all Greece; by 476 the list of victors ranged from Sinope to Marseilles. The feast of Zeus became an international holyday; a truce was proclaimed to all wars in Greece for the month of the festival, and fines were levied by the Eleans upon any Greek state in whose territory a traveler to the games suffered molestation. Philip of Macedon humbly paid a fine because some of his soldiers had robbed an Athenian en route to Olympia.
We picture the pilgrims and athletes starting out from distant cities, a month ahead of time, to come together at the games. It was a fair as well as a festival; the plain was covered not only with the tents that sheltered the visitors from the July heat, but with the booths where a thousand con cessionaires exposed for sale everything from wine and fruit to horses and statuary, while acrobats and conjutors performed their tricks for the crowd. Some juggled balls in the air, others performed marvels of agility and skill, others ate fire or swallowed swords: modes of amusement, like forms of superstition, enjoy a reverend antiquity. Famous orators like Gorgias, famous sophists like Hippias, perhaps famous writers like Herodotus, de livered addresses or recitations from the porticoes of the temple of Zeus. It was a special holiday for men, since married women were not allowed to attend the festival; these had their own games at the feast of Hera. Menander summed up such a scene in five words: "crowd, market, acro bats, amusements, thieves.""'
Only freeborn Greeks were allowed to compete in the Olympic games. The athletes (from athlos, a contest) were selected by local and municipal elimination trials, after which they submitted for ten months to rigorous training under professional paidotribai (literally, youth rubbers) and gym nastai. Arrived at Olympia, they were examined by the officials, and took an oath to observe all the rules. Irregularities were rare; we hear of Eupolis bribing other boxers to lose to him," but the penalty and dishonor attached to su h offenses were discouragingly great. When everything was ready the athletes were led into the stadium; as they entered, a herald announced their. names and the cities that had entered them. All the con-
214	THE	L IF E  OF	GREECE	(CHAP. IX
testants, whatever their age or rank, were naked; occasionally a girdle might be worn at the loins... Of the stadium itself nothing remains but the narrow stone slabs toed by the runners at the starting point. The 45,ooo spectators kept their places in the stadium all day long, suffering from in sects, heat, and thirst; hats were forbidden, the water was bad, and flies and mosquitoes infested the place as they do today. Sacrifices were offered at frequent intervals to Zeus Averter of Flies...,
The most important events were grouped together as the pentathlon, or five contests. To promote all-around development in the athlete each entry in any of these events was required to compete in all of them; to secure the victory it was necessary to win three contests out of the five. The first was a broad jump; the athlete held weights like dumbbells in his hands, and leaped from a standing start. Ancient writers assure us that some jumpers spanned fifty feet;"" but it is not necessary to believe everything that we read. The second event was throwing the discus, a circular plate of metal or stone weighing about twelve pounds; the best throws are said to have covered a hundred feet."" The third contest was in hurling the javelin or spear, with the aid of a leather thong attached to the center of the shaft. The fourth and principal event of the group was the stadium sprint-i.e., for the length of the stadium, usually some two hundred yards. The fifth contest was wrestling. It was a highly popular form of competi tion in Greece, for the very name palaistra was taken from it, and many a story was told of its champions.
Boxing was an ancient game, almost visibly handed down from Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece. The boxers practiced with punching balls hung on a level with the head and filled with fig seeds, meal, or sand. In the classic age of Greece (i.e., the fifth and fourth centuries), they wore "soft gloves" of oxhide dressed with fat and reaching almost to the elbow. Blows were confined to the head, but there was no rule against hitting a man who was down. There were no rests or rounds; the boxers fought till one surrendered or succumbed. They were not classified by weight; any man of any weight might enter the lists. Hence weight was an asset, and boxing degenerated in Greece from a competition in skill into a contest in brawn. In the course of time, as brutality increased, boxing and wrestling were combined into a new contest called the pankration, or game of all powers. In this everything but biting and eye-gouging was permitted, even to a kick in the stomach.'° Three heroes whose names have come down to us won by breaking the .fingers of their opponents;" another struck so fero-
CHAP. IX)  THE  COM  MON  CULTURE OF EARLY GREECE    215
ciously with straight extended fingers and strong sharp nails that he pierced the .flesh of his adversary and dragged out his bowels.02 Milo of Crotona was a more amiable pugilist. He had developed his strength, we are told, by carrying a calf every day of its life until it was a full-grown bull. Peo ple loved him for his tricks: he would hold a pomegranate so fast in his fist that no one could get it from him, and yet the fruit was uninjured; he would stand on an oiled quoit and resist all efforts to dislodge him; he would tie a cord around his forehead and burst the cord by holding his breath and so forcing blood to his head. In the end he was destroyed by his virtues. "For he chanced," says Pausanias, "on a withered tree, into which some wedges had been driven to separate the wood, and he took it into his head to keep the wood apart with his hands. But the wedges slipped out, he was imprisoned in the tree, and became a prey to the wolves."'"
In addition to the pentathlon sprint, there were other foot races at the games. One was for four hundred yards, another for twenty-four stadia, or 2 ½ miles; a third was an armed race, in which each runner carried a heavy shield. We have no knowledge of the records made in these races; the stadium differed in length in different cities, and the Greeks had no instruments for measuring small intervals of time. Stories tell of a Greek
runner who could outdistance a hare; of another who raced a horse from Coronea to Thebes (some twenty miles) and beat it; and of how Pheidip pides ran from Athens to Sparta-150 miles-in two days" and, at the cost of his life, brought to Athens the news of the victory at Marathon, twenty four miles away. But there were no "marathon races" in Greece.
In the plain below the stadium Olympia built a special hippodrome for horse races. Women as well as men might enter their horses, and, as now, the prize went to the owner and not to the jockey, though the horse was sometimes rewarded with a statue.'" The culminating events of the games were the chariot races, with two or four horses running abreast. Often ten four-horse chariots competed together; and as each had to negotiate twenty three turns around the posts at the ends of the course, accidents were the chief thrill of the game; in one race with forty starters a single chariot fin ished. We may imagine the tense excitement of the spectators at these contests, their wordy arguments about their favorites, their emotional aban donment as the survivors rounded the last turn.
When the toils of five days were over the victors received their rewards. Each bound a woolen fillet about his head, and upon this the judges placed
216	ThE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP. IX
a crown of wild olive, while a herald announced the name and city of the winner. This laurel wreath was the only prize given at the Olympic games, and yet it was the most eagerly contested distinction in Greece. So im ponant were the games that not even the Persian invasion stopped them; and while a handful of Greeks withstood Xerxes' army at Thermopylae the customary thousands watched Theagenes of Thasos, on the very day of the battle, win the pancratiast's crown. "Good heavens!" exclaimed a Per sian to his general; "what manner of men are these against whom you have brought us to fi.ght?-men who contend with one another not for money but for honor!"'" He, or the Greek inventor of the tale, did the Greeks oo much credit, and not merely because the Greeks should on that day have been at Thermopylae rather than at Olympia. Though the direct prize at the games was little, the indirect rewards were great. Many cities voted substantial sums to the victors on their rettirn from their triumphs; some cities made them generals; and the crowd idolized them so openly that jealous philosophers complained." Poets like Simonides and Pindar were engaged by the victor or his patrons to write odes in his honor, which were sung by choruses of boys in the procession that welcomed him home; sculptors were paid to perpetuate him in bronze or stone; and sometimes he was given free sustenance in the city hall. We may judge tht: cost of this item when we learn, on questionable authority, that Milo ate a four year-old heifer, and Theagenes an ox, in a day.'"
The sixth century saw the peak of the splendor and popularity of ath letics in Greece. In 582 the Amphictyonic League established the Pythian games in honor of Apollo at Delphi; in the same year the lstµmian games were instituted at Corinth in honor of Poseidon; six years later the Nemean games were inaugurated to celebrate the Nemean Zeus; and all three occa sions became Panh'ellenic festivals. Together with the Olympic games they formed a periodos, or cycle, and the great ambition of a Greek athlete was to win the crown at all of them. In the Pythian games contests in music and poetry were added to the physical competitions; and indeed such musi cal tilts had been celebrated at Delphi long before the establishment of the athletic games. The original event was a hymn in honor of Apollo's vic tory over the Delphic python; in 582 contests were added in singing, and in playing the lyre and the flute. Similar musica) contests were held at Corinth, Nemea, Delos, and elsewhere; for the Greeks believed that by frequent public competitions they could stimulate not only the ability of the performer but the taste of the public as well. The principle was ap-
CHAP.IX)  THE  COMMON CULTURE OF EARLY GREECE    217
plied to almost every art-to pottery, poetry, sculpture, painting, choral singing, oratory, and drama:• In this way and others the games had a pro found influence upon art and literature, and even upon the writing of his tory; for the chief method of reckoning time, in later Greek historiography, was by Olympiads, designated by the name of the victor in the one-stadium foot race. The physical perfection of the all-around athlete in the sixth century generated that ideal of statuary which reached its fullness in Myron and Polycleitus. The nude contests and games in the palaestra and at the festivals gave the sculptor unequaled opportunities to study the human body in every natural form and pose; the nation unwittingly became mod els to its artists, and Greek athletics united with Greek religion to generate Greek art.
ARTS
Now that we come at last to the most perfect products of Greek civ ilization we find ourselves tragically limited in the quantity of the remains. The devastation caused in Greek literature by time and bigotry and mental fashions is negligible compared with the destruction of Greek art. One classic bronze survives-the Charioteer of Delphi; one classic marble statue
-the Hermes of Praxiteles; not one temple-not even the Theseum-has come down to us in the form and color that it had for ancient Greece. Greek work in textiles, in wood, in ivory, silver, or gold, is nearly all gone; the material was too perishable or too precious to escape vandalism and time. We must reconstruct the ship from a few planks of the wreckage.
The sources of Greek art were the impulses to representation and deco ration, the anthropomorphic quality of Greek religion, and the athletic character and ideal. The early Greek, like other primitives, when he out grew the custom of sacrificing living beings to accompany and serve the dead, buried carved or painted figures as substitutes. Later he placed images of his ancestors in his home; or he dedicated in the temple likenesses of himself, or of those whom he loved, as votive figurines that might magically win for their models the protection of the god. Minoan religion, Myce naean religion, even the chthonic cults of Greece, were too vague and im personal, sometimes too horrible and grotesque, to lend themselves to esthetic form; but the frank humanity of the Olympian gods, and their need of temple homes for their earthly stays, opened a wide road for sculp ture, architecture, and a hundred ancillary arts. No other religion-pos sibly excepting Catholicism-has so stimulated and influenced literature and
218	THE	LIFE  OF  GREECE	(CHAP. IX
art: almost every book or play, statue or building or vase, that has come down to us from ancient Greece touches upon religion in subject, purpose, or inspiration.
But inspiration alone would not have made Greek art great. There was needed a technical excellence rising out of cultural contacts and the trans mission and development of crafts; indeed art to the Greek was a form of handicraft, and the artist grew so naturally out of the artisan that Greece never quite distinguished them. There was needed a knowledge of the human body, as in its healthy development the norm of proportion, sym metry, and beauty; there was needed a sensuous, passionate love of beauty,


MYSTERIES
There were essentially three elements and stages in Greek religion: chthonian, Olympian, and mystic. The first was probably of Pelasgo-Mycenaean origin, the second probably Achaeo-Dorian, the third Egypto:.Asiatic. The first wor shiped subterranean, the second celestial, the third resurrected, gods.  The first was most popular among the poor, the second among the well to do, the third in the lower middle class. The first predominated before the Homeric age, the second in it, the third after it. By the time of the Periclean Enlight enment the most vigorous element in Greek religion was the mystery. In the Greek sense a mystery was a secret ceremony in which sacred symbols were revealed, symbolic rites were performed, and only initiates were the wor shipers. Usually the rites represented or commemorated, in semidramatic form, the suffering, death, and resurrection of a god, pointed back to old vegetation themes and magic, and promised the initiate a personal immortality.
Many places in Greece celebrated such mystic rites, but no other place in this respect could rival Eleusis. The mysteries there were of pre-Achaean origin, and appear to have been originally an autumn festival of plowing and sowing.'" A myth explained how Demeter, rewarding the people of Attica for their kindness to her in her wanderings, established at Eleusis her greatest tem ple, which was destroyed and rebuilt many times during the history of Greece. Under Solon, Peisistratus, and Pericles the festival of Demeter at Eleusis was adopted by Athens, and raised to higher elaboration and pomp. In the Lesser Mysteries, held near Athens in the spring, candidates for initiation underwent a preliminary purification by self-immersion in the waters of the Ilissus. In Sep tember the candidates and others walked in grave but happy pilgrimage for fourteen miles along the Sacred Way to Eleusis, bearing at their head the image of the chthonian deity lacchu . The _Procession arrived at E eusis under torchlight, and solemnly placed the image m the temple; after which the day was ended with sacred dances and songs.
The Greater Mysteries lasted four days more. Those who had been purified with bathing and fasting were now admitted to the lesser rites; those who had
CHAP. vm)	THE  GODS  OF  GREECE
received such rites a year before were taken into the Hall of Initiation, where the secret ceremony was performed. The mystai, or initiates, broke their fast by participating in a holy communion in memory of Demeter, drinking a holy mixture of meal and water, and eating sacred cakes. What mystic ritual was then performed we do not know; the secret was well kept throughout antiquity, under penalty of death; even the pious Aeschylus narrowly escaped condem nation for certain lines that might have given the secret away. The ceremony was in any case a symbolic play, and had a part in generating the Dionysian drama. Very probably the theme was the rape of Persephone by Pluto, the sorrowful wandering of Demeter, the return of the Maiden to earth, and the revelation of agriculture to Attica. The summary of the ceremony was the mystic marriage of a priest representing Zeus with a priestess impersonating Demeter. These symbolic nuptials bore fruit with magic speed, for it was soon followed, we are told, by a solemn announcement that "Our Lady has borne a holy boy"; and a reaped ear of corn was exhibited as symbolizing the fruit of Demeter's labor-the bounty of the fields. The worshipers were then led by dim torchlight into dark subterranean caverns symbolizing Hades, and, again, to an upper chamber brilliant with light, representing, it appears, the abode of the blessed; and they were now shown, in solemn exaltation, the holy objects, relics, or icons that till that moment had been concealed. In this ecstasy of revelation, we are assured, they felt the unity of God, and the oneness of God and the soul; they were lifted up out of the delusion of individuality, and knew the peace of absorption into deity."
In the age of Peisistratus the mysteries of Dionysus entered into the Eleu sinian liturgy by a religious _infection: the god lacchus was identified with Dionysus as the son of Persephone, and the legend of Dionysus Zagreus was superimposed upon the myth of Demeter."' But through all forms the basic idea of the mysteries remained the same: as the seed is born again, so may the dead have renewed life; and not merely the dreary, shadowy existence of Hades, but a life of happiness and peace. When almost everything else in Greek religion had passed away, this consoling hope, reunited in Alexandria with that Egyptian belief in immortality from which the Greek had been derived, gave to Christianity the weapon with which to conquer the Western world.
In the seventh century there came into Hellas, from Egypt, Thrace, and Thessaly, another mystic cult, even more important in Greek history than the mysteries of Eleusis. At its source we find, in the age of the Argonauts, the obscure but fascinating figure of Orpheus, a Thracian who "in culture, music, and poetry," says Diodorus, "far surpassed all men of whom we have a record.'"" Very probably he existed, though all that we now know of him bears the marks of myth. He is pictured as a gentle spirit, tender, medi-
THE	LIFE  OF "'G'REECE	(CHAP. VIII
tative, affectionate; sometimes a musician, sometimes a reforming ascetic priest of Dionysus. He played the lyre so well, and sang to it so melodi ously, that those who heard him almost began to worship him as a god; wild animals became tame at his voice, and trees and rocks left their places to follow the sound of his harp. He married the fair Eurydice, and almost went mad when death took her. He plunged into Hades, charmed Perseph one with his lyre, and was allowed to lead Eurydice up to life again on condition that he should not look back upon her until the surface of the eanh was reached. At the last barrier anxiety overcame him lest she should no longer be following; he looked back, only to see her snatched down once more into the nether world. Thracian women, resenting his unwillingness 1 o console himself with them, tore him to pieces in one of their Dionysian revels; Zeus atoned for them by placing the lyre of Orpheus as a constella tion among the st s. Thesevered head, still singing, was buried at Lesbos in a cleft that became the site of a popular oracle; there, we are told, the nightingales sang with especial tenderness."
In later days it was claimed that he had left behind him many sacred songs; and perhaps it was so. At the behest of Hipparchus, says Greek tradition, a scholar named Onomacritus, about 520, edited these as the Homeric lays had been edited a generation before. In the sixth century, or earlier, these hymns had acquired a sacred character as divinely inspired, and formed the basis of a mystical cult related to that of Dionysus but far superior to it in doctrine, ritual, and moral influence. The creed was essen tially an affirmation of the passion (suffering), death, and resurrection of the divine son Dionysus Zagreus, and the resurrection of all men into a future of reward and punishment. Since the Titans, who had slain Diony sus, were believed to have been the ancestors of man, a taint of original sin rested upon all humanity; and in punishment for this the soul was enclosed in the body as in a prison or a tomb. But man might console himself by knowing that the Titans had eaten Dionysus, and that therefore every man harbored, in his soul, a panicle of indestructible divinity. In a mystic sacra ment of communion the Orphic worshipers ate the raw flesh of a bull as a symbol of Dionysus to commemorate the slaying and eating of the god, and to absorb the divine essence anew.'"
After death, said Orphic theology, the soul goes down to Hades, and
must face judgment by the gods of the underworld; the Orphic hymns and ritual, like the Egyptian Book of the Dead, instructed the faithful in the art of preparing for this comprehensive and final examination. If the ver dict was guilty there would be severe punishment. One form of the doctrine
CHAP.VIII)	THE  GODS  OF GREECE
conceived this punishment as eternal,'" and transmitted to later theology the notion of hell. Another form adopted the idea of transmigration: the soul was reborn again and again into lives happier or bitterer than before accord ing to the purity or impurity of its former existence; and this wheel of rebirth would tum until complete purity was achieved, and the soul was admitted to the Islands of the Blest."° Another variant offered hope that the punishment in Hades might be ended through penances performed in advance by the individual, or, after his death, by his friends. In this way a doctrine of purgatory and indulgences arose; and Plato describes with almost the anger of a Luther the peddling of such indulgences in the Athens of the fourth century B.c.:
Mendicant prophets go to rich men's doors and persuade them that they have a power committed to them of making atonement for their sins or those of their fathers by sacrifices or charms   And
they produce a host of books written by Musaeus and Orpheus ... according to which they perform their ritual, and persuade not only individuals but whole cities that expiations and atonements may be made by sacrifices and amusements [ceremonies?] which fill a vacant hour, and are equally at the service of the living and the dead. The latter [ceremonies] they call mysteries, and these redeem us from the Pains of Hell; but if we neglect them no one knows what awaits us.11
Nevertheless there were in Orphism idealistic trends that culminated in the morals and monasticism of Christianity. The reckless looseness of the Olympians was replaced by a strict code of conduct, and the mighty Zeus was slowly dethroned by the gentle figure of Orpheus, even as Yahweh was to be dethroned by Christ. A conception of sin and conscience, a dualistic view of the body as evil and of the soul as divine, entered into Greek thought; the subjugation of the flesh became a main purpose of religion, as a condition of the release for the soul. The brotherhood of Orphic initiates had no ecclesiastical organization and no separate life; but they were dis tinguished by the wearing of white garments, the avoidance of flesh food, and a degree of asceticism not usually associated with Hellenic ways. They represented, in several aspects, a Puritan Reformation in the history of Greece. Their rites encroached more and more upon the public worship of the Olympian gods.
The influence of the sect was extensive and enduring. Perhaps it was here that the Pythagoreans took their diet, their dress, and their theory of
THE	LIFE  OF  GREECE	(CHAP. VIIl
transmigration; it is worthy of note that the oldest Orphic documents now extant were found in southern Italy.• Plato, though he rejected much in Orphism, accepted its opposition of body and soul, its puritan tendency, its hope of immortality. Pan of the pantheism and asceticism of Stoicism may be traced to an Orphic origin. The Neo-Platonists of Alexandria pos
sessed a large collection of Orphic writings, and based upon them much of their theology and their mysticism. The doctrines of hell, purgatory, and' heaven, of the body versus the soul, of the divine son slain and reborn, as well as the sacramental eating of the body and blood and divinity of the god, directly or deviously influenced Christianity, which was itself a mys tery religion of atonement and hope, of mystic union and release. The basic ideas and ritual of the Orphic cult are alive and flourishing amongst us today.
WORSHIP
Greek ritual was as varied as the kinds of deities that it honored. The chthonian gods received a gloomy ritual of appeasement and riddance, the Olympians a joyful ritual of welcome and praise. Neither form of cere mony required a clergyman: the father acted as priest for the family, the chief magistrate for the state. Life in Greece was not as secular as it has been described; religion played a major part in it everywhere, and each government protected the official cult as vital to social order and political stability. But whereas in Egypt and the Near East the priesthood dominated the state, in Greece the state dominated the priesthood, took the leader ship of religion, and reduced the clergy to minor functionaries in the tem ples. The propeny of the temples, in real estate, money, and slaves, was audited and administered by officials of the state."" There were no sem inaries for the training of priests; anyone could be quietly chosen or ap pointed priest if he knew the rites of the god; and in many places the office was let out to the highest bidder.&< There was no hierarchy of priestly caste; the priests of one temple or state had usually no association with those of another."" There was no church, no orthodoxy, no rigid creed; religion con sisted not in professing certain beliefs, but in joining in the official ritual;"" any man might have his own creed provided that he did not openly deny or blaspheme the city's gods. In Greece church and state were one.
The place of worship could be the domestic hearth, the municipal hearth in the city hall, some cleft in the earth for a chthonian deity, some temple for an Olympian god.  The precincts of the temple were sacred and


From geometry, inverting the modern order, Pythagoras passed to arith-
The Pythagoreans appear to have been the first to use the word mathematike with the meaning of mathematics; before them it had been applied to the learning (mathema) of any- thing...
THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP. VII
metic-not as a practical art of reckoning, but as the abstract theory of numbers. The school seems to have made the first classification of num bers into odd or even, prime or factorable;.. it formulated the theory of proponion, and through this and the "application of areas" created a geometrical algebra."' Perhaps it was the study of proportion that led Pythagoras to reduce music to number. One day, as he passed a black smith's shop, his ear was attracted by the apparently regular musical inter vals of the sounds that came from the anvil. Finding that the hammers were of different weights, he concluded that tones depend upon numerical ratios. In one of the few experiments which we hear of in classical science, he took two strings of equal thickness and equal tension, and discovered that if one was twice as long as the other they sounded an octave when he plucked them; if one was half again the length of the other they gave a fifth (do, sol); if one was a third longer than the other they gave a fourth (do, fa);"" in this way every musical interval could be mathematically calculated and expressed. Since all bodies moving in space produce sounds, whose pitch depends upon the size and speed of the body, then each planet in its orbit about the earth (argued Pythagoras) makes a sound proportioned to its rapidity of translation, which in turn rises with its distance from the earth; and these diverse notes constitute a harmony or "music of the spheres," which we never hear because we hear it all the time...
The universe, said Pythagoras, is a living sphere, whose center is the earth. The eanh too is a sphere, revolving, like the planets, from west to east. The eanh, indeed the whole universe, is divided into five zones arctic, antarctic, summer, winter, and equatorial. More or less of the moon is visible to us according to the degree in which that half of it which is facing the sun is also turned toward the earth. Eclipses of the moon are caused by the interposition of the earth, or some other body, between the moon and the sun... Pythagoras, says Diogenes Laertius, "was the first person to call the earth round, and to give the name of kosmos to the world."111
Having with these contributions to mathematics and astronomy done more than any other man to establish science in Europe, Pythagoras pro ceeded to philosophy. The very word is apparently one of his creations. He rejected the term sophia, or wisdom, as pretentious, and described his own pursuit of understanding as philosophia-the love of wisdom... In the sixth century philosopher and Pythagorean were synonyms.'° Whereas Thales and the other Milesians had sought the first principle of all things
CHAP. vu)	THE  GREEKS  IN  THE  WEST
in matter, Pythagoras sought it in form. Having discovered numerically regular relations and sequences in music, and having postulated them in the planets, he made the philosopher's leap at unity by announcing that such numerically regular relations and sequences existed everywhere, and that the essential factor in everything was number. Just as Spinoza would argue• that there were two worlds-one the people's world of things perceived by sense, the other the philosopher's world of laws and constancies per ceived by reason-and that only the second world was permanently real; so Pythagoras felt that the only basic and lasting aspects of anything were
the numerical relationships of its parts.t Perhaps health was a proper mathe
matical relationship, or proportion, in the parts or elements of the body. Perhaps even the soul was number.
At this point the mysticism in Pythagoras, nurtured in Egypt and the Near East, disported itself freely. The soul, he believed, is divided into three parts: feeling, intuition, and reason. Feeling is centered in the heart, intuition and reason in the brain. Feeling and intuition belong to animals as well as men;t reason belongs to man alone, and is immortal... After death the soul undergoes a period of purgation in Hades; then it returns to earth and enters a new body in a chain of transmigration that can be ended only by a completely virtuous life. Pythagoras amused, or perhaps edified, his followers by telling them that he had been in one incarnation a courtesan, in another the hero Euphorbus; he could remember quite distinctly his adven tures at the siege of Troy, and recognized, in a temple at Argos, the armor that he had worn in that ancient life.  Hearing the yelp of a beaten dog, he
went at once to the rescue of the animal, saying that he distinguished in its
cries the voice of a dead friend." We catch again a glimpse of the trade in ideas that bound sixth-century Greece, Africa, and Asia when we reflect that this idea of metempsychosis was at one and the same time capturing the imagination of India, of the Orphic cult in Greece, and of a philo sophical school in Italy.
We feel the hot breath of Hindu pessimism mingling, in the ethics of
In the fraFent "On the Improvement of the Intellect."
t Science tries to reduce all phenomena to quantitative, mathematical, verifiable statements; chemistry describes all things in terms of symbols and figures, arranges the elements mathe matically in a periodic law, and reduces them to an intra-atomic arithmetic of electrons; astronomy becomes celestial mathematics, and physicists seek a mathematical formula to cover the phenomena of electricity, magnetism, and gravitation; some thinkers of our time have tried to express philosophy itself in mathematical form.
:I= We should note, m passing, that Pythagoras, slightly anticipating Pasteur, denied spon taneous generation, and taught that all animals are born from other animals through "seeds.',a
166	THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP.VII
Pythagoras, with the clear, bright air of Plato. The purpose of life in the Pythagorean system is to gain release from reincarnation; the method is through virtue; and virtue is a harmony of the soul within itself and with God. Sometimes this harmony can be artificially induced, and the Pytha goreans, like Greek priests and doctors, used music to heal nervous disorders.
More often harmony comes to the soul through wisdom, a quiet under standing of underlying truths; for such wisdom teaches a man modesty, measure, and the golden mean. The opposite way-the way of discord, ex cess, and sin-leads by inevitable fate to tragedy and punishment; justice is a "square number," and sooner or later every wrong will be."squared" with an equivalent penalty.• Here in germ are the moral philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.
Pythagorean politics is Plato's philosophy realized before its conception. According to the common tradition of antiquity the school of Pythagoras was a communistic aristocracy: men and women pooling their goods, edu cated together, trained to virtue and high thinking by mathematics, music, and philosophy, and offering themselves as the guardian rulers of the state. Indeed it was Pythagoras' effon to make his society the actual government of his city that brought ruin upon himself and his followers. The initiates entered so actively into politics, and took so decidedly the aristocratic side, that the democratic or popular party of Crotona, in an ecstasy of rage, burned down the house in which the Pythagoreans were gathered, killed several of them, and drove the rest out of the city. Pythagoras himself, in one account, was captured and slain when, in his flight, he refused to tread upon a field of beans; another story lets him escape to Metapontum, where he abstained from food for fony days and-perhaps feeling that eighty years were enough-starved himself to death."
His influence was lasting; even today he is a potent name. His society survived for three centuries in scattered groups throughout Greece, pro- 1ucing scientists like Philolaus of Thebes and statesmen like Archytas, dictator of Taras and friend of Plato. Wordsworth, in his most famous ode, was an unconscious Pythagorean. Plato himself was enthralled by the vague figure of Pythagoras. At every turn he takes from him-in his scorn of democracy, his yearning for a communistic aristocracy of philosopher rulers, his conception of virtue as harmony, his theories of the nature and destiny of the soul, his love of geometry, and his addiction to the mysticism of number. All in all, Pythagoras was the founder, so far as we know them, of both science and philosophy in Europe-an achievement sufficient for any. man.
CRAP. VD)	THE	GREEKS  IN  THE  WEIT
m. XENOPBANES OF ELEA
West of Crotona lies the site of ancient Locri. The colony was founded, says Aristotle, by runaway slaves, adulterers, and thieves from Locris in main land Greece; but perhaps Aristotle had an Old World disdain for the New. Suffering disorder from the defects of their qualities, the colonists applied to the oracle at Delphi for advice, and were told to get themselves laws. Pos sibly Zaleucus had instructed the oracle, for about 664 he gave to Locri ordinances which, as he said, Athena had dictated to him in a dream. This was the first written cod of laws in the history of Greece, though not the first to be handed down by the gods. The Locrians liked it so well that they required any man who wished to propose a new law to speak with a rope around his neck, so that, if his motion failed, he might be hanged with a minimum of public inconvenience.•"


Sculpture in relief was so old that a pretty legend could undertake to de scribe its origin. A lass of Corinth drew upon a wall the outline of the shadow that the lamplight cast of her lover's head. Her father Butades, a potter, filled in the outline with clay, pressed the form to hardness, took it down, and baked
No. 682 in the National Museum at Athens.
t Now in the British Museum; there are copies in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
The Branchidae were the hereditary priests of the temple.
CHAP.IX)  THE  COMMON CULTURE OF EARLY GREECE	32)
it; so, Pliny assures us, bas-relief was born."' The art became even more im portant than sculpture in the adornment of temples and graves. Already in
520 Aristocles made a funeral relief of Aristion, which is one of the many treasures of the Athens Museum.
Since reliefs were nearly always painted, sculpture, relief, and painting were allied arts, usually handmaids to architecture; and most artists were skilled in all four forms. Temple moldings, friezes, metopes, and pediment backgrounds were usually painted, while the main structure was ordinarily left in the natural color of the stone. Of painting as a separate art we have only negligible remains from Greece; but we know through passages in the poets that panel painting, with colors mixed in melted wax, was already practiced in the days of Anacre on... Painting was the last great art to develop in Greece, and the last to die.
All in all, the sixth century failed to rise, in any Greek art except architecture, to the boldness of conception or the perfection of form attained in the same age by Greek philosophy and poetry. Perhaps artistic patronage was slow to develop in an aristocracy still rural and poor, or in a business class too young to have graduated from wealth to taste. Nevertheless the age of the dictators was a period of stimulation and improvement in f:very Greek art-above all, under Peisistratus and Hippias in Athens. Towards the end of this period the old rigidity of sculpture began to thaw, the rule of frontality was broken down; legs began to move, arms to leave the side, hands to open up, faces to take on feeling and character, bodies to bend in a variety of poses revealing new studies in anatomy and action. This revolution in sculpture, this animation of stone with life, became a major event in Greek history; the escape from fron tality was one of the signal accomplishments of Greece. Egyptian and Oriental influences were set aside, and Greek art became Greek.
Architecture
The science of building recovered slowly from the Dorian invasion, and redeemed beyond its deserts the Dorian name. Across the Dark Age from Agamemnon to Terpander, the Mycenaean megaron transmitted the essentials of its structure to Greece; the rectangular shape of the building, the use of columns within and without, the circular shaft and simple square capital, the triglyphs and metopes of the entablature, were all preserved in the greatest achievement of Greek art, the Doric style. But whereas Mycenaean architecture was apparently secular, devoted to palaces and homes, classical Greek archi tecture was almost entirely religious. The royal megaron was transformed into a civic temple as monarchy waned and religion and democracy united the affec tions of Greece in honoring .the personified city in its god.
224	THE	LIFE  OF  GREECE	(CHAP. IX
The earliest Greek temples were of wood or brick, as befitted the poverty of the Dark Age. When stone became the orthodox material of temple build ing the architectural features remained as set by timber construction; the rectangular naos or temple proper, the circular shafts, the "master-beam" archi traves, the beam-end triglyphs, the gabled roof, confessed the wooden origin of their form; even the first Ionic spiral was apparently a floral figure painted upon a block of wood.08 The use of stone increased as Greek wealth and travel grew; the transition was most rapid after the opening of Egypt to Greek trade about 660 B.c. Limestone was the favored ma erial of the new styles before the sixth century; marble came in towards 580, at first for decorative portions, then for fa ades, finally for the entire temple from base to tiles.
Three "orders" of architecture were developed in Greece: the Doric, the Ionic, and, in the fourth century, the Corinthian. Since the interior of the temple was reserved for the god and his ministrants, and worship was held outside, all three orders devoted themselves to making the exterior impressively beautiful. They began at the ground, usually in some elevated place, with the stereobate-two or three layers of foundation stone in receding steps. From the uppermost layer, or stylobate, rose directly, without individual base, the Doric column--:-"fluted" with shallow, sharp-edged grooves, and widening perceptibly at the middle in what the Greeks called entasis, or stretching. Furthermore, the Doric column tapered slightly towards the top, thereby emulating the tree, and successfully contradicting the Minoan-Mycenaean style. (An undiminished shaft-worse yet, one that tapers downward-seems top-heavy and graceless to the eye, while the wider base heightens that sense of stability which all archi tecture should convey. Perhaps, however, the Doric_ column is too heavy, too thick in proportion to its height, too stolidly engrossed in sturdiness and strength.) Upon the Doric column sat its simple and powerful capital: a "neck ing" or circular band, a cushionlike echinus, and, topmost, a square abacus to spread the supporting thrust of the pillar beneath the architrave.
While the Dorians were developing this style from the megaron, modified probably by acquaintance with the Egyptian "proto-Doric" colonnades of Der el-Bahri and Beni-Hasan, the Ionian Greeks were altering the same fundamental form under Asiatic influence. In the resultant Ionic order a slender column rose upon an individual base, and began at the bottom, as it ended at the top, with a narrow fillet or band; its height was usually greater, and its diameter smaller, than in the Doric shaft; the upward tapering was scarcely perceptible; the flutings were deep, semicircular grooves separated by flat edges. The Ionic capital was composed of a narrow echinus, a still narrower abacus, and between them-almost concealing them-emerged the twin spirals of a volute, like an infolded scroll-a graceful element adapted from Hittite, Assyrian, and other Oriental forms."' These characteristics, together with the elaborate adornment
CHAP.IX)  THE  COMMON CULTURE OF EARLY GREECE    225
of the entablature, described not only a style but a people; they represented in stone the Ionian expressiveness, suppleness, sentiment, elegance, and love of delicate detail, even as the Doric order conveyed the proud reserve, the massive strength, the severe simplicity of the Dorian; the sculpture, literature, music, manners, and dress of the rival groups differed in harmony with their archi tectural styles. Dorian architecture is mathematics, Ionian architecture is poetry, both seeking the durability of stone; the one is "Nordic," the other Oriental; together they constitute the masculine and feminine themes in a basically har monious form.
Greek architecture distinguished itself by developing the column into an ele ment of beauty as well as a structural support. The essential function of the external colonnade was to uphold the eaves, and to relieve the walls of the naos, or inner temple, from the outward thrust of the gabled roof. Above the columns rose the entablature-i.e., the superstructure of the edifice. Here again, as in the supporting elements, Greek architecture sought a clear differentiation, and yet an articulated connection, of the members. The architrave-the great stone that connected the capitals-was in the Doric order plain, or carried a simple painted molding; in Ionic it was composed of three layers, each project ing below, and was topped with a marble cornice segmented with a confusing variety of ornamental details. Since the sloping beams that made the frame work of the roof in the Doric style came down, and were secured, between two horizontal beams at the eaves, the united ends of the three beams formed at first in wood, then imitatively in stone-a triglyph or triply divided surface. Between each triglyph and the next a space was left as an open window when the roof was of wood or of terra-cotta tiles; when translucent marble tiles were used these metopes, or "seeing-between" places, were filled in with mar
ble slabs carved in low relief. In the Ionic style a band or frieze of reliefs might
run around the upper outer walls of the naos or cella; in the fifth century both
forms of relief-metopes and frieze-were often used in the same building, as in the Parthenon. In the pediments-the triangles formed by the gabled roof in front and rear-the sculptor found his greatest opportunity; the figures here might be drawn out in high relief and enlarged for view from below; and the cramped corners, or tympana, tested the subtlest skill. Finally, the roof itself might be a work of art, with brilliantly colored tiles and decorative rain-dis posing acroteria, or pinnacle figures, rising from the angles of the pediments. All in all, there was probably a surplus of sculpture on the Greek temple, be tween the columns, along the walls, or within the edifice. The painter also was involved: the temple was colored in whole or in part, along with its statues, moldings, and reliefs. Perhaps we do the Greeks too much honor today, when time has worn the paint from their temples and divinities, and ferrous strains have lent to the marble natural and incalculable hues that set off the brilliance
226	THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP. IX
of the stone under the clear Greek sky. Some day even contemporary art may become beautiful.
The two rival styles achieved grandeur in the sixth century, and perfection in the fifth. Geographically they divided Greece unevenly: Ionic prevailed in Asia and the Aegean, Doric on the mainland and in the west. The salient achievements of sixth-century Ionic were the temples of Artemis at Ephesus, of Hera at Samos, and of the Branchidae near Miletus; but only ruins survive of Ionic architecture before Marathon. The finest extant buildings from the sixth century are the older temples of Paestum and Sicily, all in the Doric style. The ground plan remains of the great temple built at Delphi, between 548 and 512, from the designs of the Corinthian Spintharus; it was destroyed by earth quake in 373, was rebuilt on the same plan, and in that form still stood when Pausanias made his tour of Greece. Athenian architecture of the period was almost wholly Doric: in this style Peisistratus began, about 530, the gigantic temple of the Olympian Zeus, on the plain at the foot of the Acropolis. After the Persian conquest of Ionia in 546, hundreds of Ionian artists migrated to Attica, and introduced or developed the Ionic style in Athens. By the end of the century Athenian architects were using both orders, and had laid all the technical groundwork for the Periclean age.
Music and the Dance


Inaworld so crowded with supernatural powers, the events of life seemed to depend upon the will of demons and gods. To discover that will the curious Greeks consulted soothsayers and oracles, who divined the future by reading the stars, interpreting dreams, examining the entrails of animals, or observing the flight of birds. Professional soothsayers hired themselves out to families, armies, and states;"' Nicias, before setting out upon the expedition to Sicily, engaged a troop of sacrificers, augurs, diviners;"" and though not all generals were as pious as this great slaveowner, nearly all were as superstitious. Men and women appeared who claimed inspiration
.and clairvoyance; in Ionia particularly certain women called Sibyls (i.e., the Will of God) issued oracles believed by millions of Greeks.88 From Erythrae the Sibyl Herophila was said to have wandered through Greece to Comae in Italy, where she became the most famous of her kind, and lived, we are told, a thousand years. Athens, like Rome, had a collection of ancient oracles, and the government maintained in the prytaneum men skilled in their interpretation...
Public oracles were set up at many temples in all parts of Greece; but the most famous and honored were in early days the oracle of Zeus at
THE	LIFE  OF  GREECE	(CHAP, VIII
Dodona, and in the historical period that of Apollo at Delphi. "Barbarians" as well as Greeks consulted this oracle; even Rome sent messengers to ask or suggest the will of the god. Since the power of divination was supposed to belong particularly to the intuitive sex, three priestesses, each at least half a century old, were trained to consult Apollo through the medium of a trance. From a hollow in the earth below the temple came a peculiar gas, ascribed to the eternal decomposition of the python that Apollo had slain there; the officiating priestess, called Pythia, took her seat on a high tripod over this cleft, inhaled the divine stench, chewed narcotic laurel leaves, fell into delirium and convulsions, and, thus inspired, uttered in coherent words which the priests translated to the people. Very often the final reply admitted of diverse, even contrary, interpretations, so that the infallibility of the oracle was maintained whatever the event.88 Possibly the priests were no less puppets than the priestesses; sometimes they accepted bribes;• and in most cases the voice of the oracle harmonized melodiously with the dominant influence in Greece."° Nevertheless, where external pow ers did not constrain them, the priests taught valuable lessons of moderation and political wisdom to the Greeks. Though they condoned human sac rifice even after the moral sense of Greece had begun to revolt against it, and made no protest against the immoralities of Olympus, they aided the establishment of law, encouraged the manumission of slaves, and bought many slaves in order to give them liberty."' They were not in advance of Greek thought, but they did not hinder it by doctrinal intolerance. They gave a helpful supernatural sanction to necessary Greek policies, and pro vided some degree of international conscience and moral unity for the scat tered cities of Greece.
Out of this unifying influence came the oldest known confederation of Greek states. The Amphictyonic League was originally the religious alli ance of the peoples "dwelling around" the sanctuary of Demeter near Ther mopylae. The chief constituent states were Thessaly, Magnesia, Phthiotis, Doris, Phocis, Boeotia, Euboea, and Achaea. They met semiannually, in spring at Delphi, in autumn at Thermopylae. They bound themselves never to destroy one another's cities, never to allow the water supply of any member city to be shut off, never to plunder-or permit to be plundered the treasury of Apollo at Delphi, and to attack any nation that violated these pledges. Here was the outline of a League of Nations; an outline whose completion was prevented by the natural fluctuations of wealth and power among states, and the inherent rivalries of men and groups. Thessaly formed .t bloc of vassal states, and permanently dominated the League.""
CHAP.VIII)	THE  GODS  OF GREECE	199
Other amphictyonies were established; Athens, for example, belonged to the Amphictyony of Calauria; and the rival leagues, while promoting peace within their membership, became against other groups vast instruments of intrigue and war.
FESTIVALS
If it could not end war Greek religion succeeded in alleviating the routine of economic life with numerous festivals. "How many victims offered to the gods!" cried Aristophanes; "how many temples, statues   sacred pro
cessions! At every moment of the year we see religious feasts and gar landed victims" of sacrifice."" The rich paid the cost, the state provided the theorika, or divine funds, to pay to the populace the price of admission to the games or plays that distinguished the holyday.
The calendar at Athens was essentially a religious calendar, and many months were named from their religious festivals. In the. first month, Hecatombaion (July-August), came the Cronia (corresponding to the Roman Saturnalia), when masters and slaves sat down together to a joyful feast; in the same month, every fourth year, occurred the Panathenaea, when, after four days of varied contests and games, the entire citizenship formed a solemn and colorful pro cession to carry to the priestess of Athena the sacred peplos, a gorgeously embroidered robe which was to be placed upon the image of the city's god dess; this, as all the world knows, was the theme that Pheidias chose for the frieze of the Parthenon. In the second month, Metageitnion, came the Meta geitnia, a minor festival in honor of Apollo. In the third month, Boedromion, Athens sallied forth to Eleusis for the Greater Mysteries. The fourth month, Pyanepsion, celebrated the Pyanepsia, the Oscophoria, and the Thesmophoria; in this the women of Athens honored Demeter Thesmophoros (the Lawgiver) with a strange chthonian ritual, parading phallic emblems, exchanging obsceni ties, and symbolically going down to Hades and returning, apparently as magi cal ceremonies to promote fertility in the soil and man."' Only the month of Maimakterion had no festival.
In the month of Poseideon Athens held the Italoa, a feast of first fruits; in Gamelion the Lenaea, in honor of Dionysus. In Anthesterion came three important celebrations: the Lesser or preparatory Mysteries; the Diasia, or sac rifice to Zeus Meilichios; and, above all, the Anthesteria, or Feast of Flowers. In this three-day spring festival to Dionysus wine flowed freely, and every body was more or less drunk;"" there was a competition in wine drinking, and the streets were alive with revelry. The king-archon's wife rode on a car be side the image of Dionysus, and was married to it in the temple as a symbol
200	THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP.VIII
of the union of the god with Athens. Beneath this jolly ritual ran a somber undertone of fear and propitiation of the dead; the living ate a solemn meal in commemoration of their ancestors, and left for them pots full of food and drink. At the end of the feast the people chased the spirits of the departed from the house with a formula of exorcism: "Out of the door with you, souls! Anthesteria is over"-words that became a proverbial phrase for dismissing importunate beggars.•
In the ninth month, Elaphebolion, came the Great Dionysia, established by Peisistratus in 534; in that year Thespis inaugurated the drama at Athens as part of the festival. It was the end of March, spring was in the air, the sea was navigable, merchants and visitors crowded the city and swelled the attendance at the ceremonies and the plays. All business was suspended, all courts were closed; prisoners were released to let them share in the festivities. Athenians of every age and class, brilliantly attired, took part in the procession that brought the statue of Dionysus from Eleutherae and placed it in his theater. The rich drove chariots, the poor marched on foot; a long train of animals followed as destined gifts for the gods. Choruses from the towns of Attica joined or competed in song arid dance.-In the tenth month, Munychion, Athens cele brated the Munychia, and Attica, every fifth year, celebrated the Brauronia in honor of Artemis. In Thargelion occurred the Thargelia, or feast of the grain harvest. In the twelfth month, Skirophorion, came the festivals of Skiro phoria, Arretophoria, Dipolia, and Bouphonia. Not all these feasts were annual; but even for a four-year period they represented a grateful relief from daily toil.
Other states had similar holidays; and in the countryside every sowing and every harvest was greeted with festal conviviality. Greater than all these were the Panhellenic festivals, the panegyreis, or universal gatherings. There were the Panionia on Mycale, the feast of Apollo at Delos, the Pythian festival at Delphi, the Isthmian at Corinth, the Nemean near Argos, the Olympic in Elis. These were the occasions of interstate games, but basically they were holydays. It was the good fortune of Greece to have a religion human enough
-in later days humane enough-to associate itself joyfully and creatively with art, poetry, music, and games, even, at last, with morality.
RELIGION AND MORALS
At first sight Greek religion does not seem to have been a major influ ence for morality. It was in origin a system of magic rather than of ethics, and remained so, in large measure, to the end; correct ritual received more
In many parts of Europe the people still believe that the ghosts of the dead return to earth yearly, and must be entertained in a "Feast of All Souls,""
CHAP.VU!)	THE  GODS OF GREECE	201
emphasis than good conduct, and the gods themselves, on Olympus or on eanh, had not been exemplars of honesty, chastity, or gentleness. Even the Eleusinian Mysteries, though they offered supernatural hopes, made salvation depend upon ritual purifications rather than upon nobility of life. "Pataikion the thief," said the sarcastic Diogenes, ''will have a better fate after his death than Agesilaus or Epaminondas, for Pataikion has been initiated at Eleusis.'""
Nevertheless, in the more vital moral relations Greek religion came subtly to the aid of the race and the state. The purification ritual, however external in form, served as a stimulating symbol of moral hygiene. The gods gave a general, if vague and inconstant, support to virtue; they frowned upon wickedness, revenged themselves upon pride, protected the stranger and the suppliant, and lent their terror to the sanctity of oaths. Dike, we are told, punished every wrong, and the awful Eumenides pur sued the murderer, like Orestes, to madness or death. The central acts and institutions of human life-birth, marriage, the family, the clan, the state received a sacramental dignity from religion, and were rescued from the chaos of hasty desire. Through the worship or honoring of the dead, the generations were bound together in a stabilizing continuity of obligations, so that the family was not merely a couple and their children, or even a patriarchal assemblage of parents, children, and grandchildren, but a holy union and sequence of blood and fire stretching far into the past and the future, and holding the dead, the living, and the unborn in a sacred unity stronger than any state. Religion not only made the procreation of children a solemn duty to the dead, but encouraged it through the fear of the child less man that no posterity would inter him or tend his grave. So long as this religion kept its influence, the Greek people reproduced themselves vigorously, and as plentifully among the best as among the worst; and in this way, with the help of a merciless natural selection, the strength and quality of the race were maintained. Religion and patriotism were bound together in a thousand impressive rites; the god or goddess most revered in public ceremony represented the apotheosis of the city; every law, every meeting of the assembly or the courts, every major enterprise of the army or the government, every school and university, every economic or politi cal association, was surrounded with religious ceremony and invocation. In all these ways Greek religion was used as a defense by the community and the race against the natural egoism of the individual man.
Art, literature, and philosophy first strengthened this influence, and then weakened it. Pindar, Aeschylus, and Sophocles poured their own ethical


Phaedra dies; and in her hand her husband finds a note saying that Hippo lytus seduced her. Theseus wildly calls upon Poseidon to slay Hippolytus. The youth protests his innocence, but is not believed. He is driven out of the land by Theseus; and as his chariot passes along the shore a sea lion emerges from the waves and pursues him; his horses run away, upset the chariot, and drag the entangled Hippolytus (i.e., "torn by horses") over the rocks to a mangled death. And the chorus cries out, in lines that must have stanled Athens,
Ye gods that did snare him, Lo, I cast in your faces
My hate and my scorn!
In the Medea Euripides forgets for a while his war against the gods, and transforms the story of the Argonauts into his most powerful play. When Jason reaches Colchis, the royal princess Medea falls in love with him, helps him to get the Golden Fleece, and, to shield him, deceives her father and kills her brother. Jason vows eternal love to her, and takes her back with him to lolcus. There the almost savage Medea poisons King Pelias to secure the throne that Pelias promised to Jason. Since the law of Thes saly forbids him to marry a foreigner, Jason lives with Medea in unwedded love, and has two children by her. But in time he tires of her barbarian intensity, looks about him for a legal wife and heir, and proposes to marry the daughter of Creon, King of Corinth. Creon accepts him, and exiles Medea. Medea, brooding upon her wrongs, speaks one of the famous passages of Euripides in defense of woman:
Of all things upon earth that bleed and grow, A herb most bruised is woman. We must pay Our store of gold, hoarded for that one day, To buy us some man's love; and lo, they bring A master of our flesh! There comes the sting Of the whole shame. And then the jeopardy, For good or ill, what shall that master be....
Home never taught her that-how best to guide Toward peace the thing that sleepeth at her side. And she who, laboring long, shall find some way Whereby her lord may bear with her, nor fray His yoke too fiercely, blessed is the breath
That woman draws! Else let her pray for death.
THE	LIFE  OF GREECE
Her lord, if he be wearied of her face
Within doors, gets him forth; some merrier place Will ease his heart; but she waits on, her whole Vision enchained on a single soul.
And then they say 'tis they that face the call Of war, while we sit sheltered, hid from all Peril! False mocking! Sooner would I stand Three times to face their battles, shield in hand, Than bear one child...
(CHAP. XVII
Then follows the terrible story of her revenge. She sends to her rival,·in pretended reconciliation, a set of costly robes; the Corinthian princess puts one on, and is consumed in fire; Creon, trying to rescue her, is burned to death. Medea kills her own children and drives off with their dead bodies before Jason's eyes. The chorus chants a philosophic end:
Great treasure halls hath Zeus in heaven, From whence to man strange dooms be given,
Past hope or fear.
And the end men looked for cometh not, And a path is there where no man thought:
So hath it fallen here.
The remaining plays tum for the most part upon the tale of Troy. In Helen we get the revised version of Stesichorus and Herodotus:.., the Spar tan queen does not elope with Paris to Troy; she is carried against her will to Egypt, and chastely awaits her master there; all Greece, Euripides sug gests, has been hoodwinked by the legend of Helen in Troy. In Iphigenia in Aulis he pours into the old story of Agamemnon's sacrifice a profusion of sentiment new to the Greek drama, and a Lucretian horror of the crimes to which the ancient faith persuaded men. Aeschylus and Sophocles . had also written on this theme, but their plays were soon forgotten in the brilliance of this new performance. The arrival of Clytaemnestra and her daughter is visioned with Euripidean tenderness; Orestes, "yet a wordless babe," is present to witness the superstitious murder that will dictate his destiny. The girl is all shyness and happiness as she runs to greet the King:
lpbig. Fain am I, father, on thy breast to fall, After so long! Though o.thers I outrun- For oh, I yearn for thy face!-be not wroth ...
So glad to see me-yet what troubled look!
Agam. On kings and captains weigheth many a care.
CHAP. XVII) THE  LITERATURE  OF THE GOLDEN  AGE	405
Iphig. This hour be mine-this one! Yield not to care! Agam. Yea, I am all thine now; my thoughts stray not ... Iphig. And yet-and yet-thine eyes are welling tears!
Agam. Yea, for the absence yet to come is long.
lphig. I know not, know not, dear my sire, thy meaning. Agam. Thy wise discernment stirs my grief the more. lphig. So I may please thee, folly will I talk.88


All these Are dead unhappy tales of minstrelsy.1a1
Sometimes such passages are softened with hymns to Dionysus, or psalms
THLIFEEOF GREECE	(CHAP. XVII
of pantheistic piety; but occasionally a character extends the Euripidean doubt to all the gods:
Doth some one say that there be gods above? There are not, no, there are not. Let no fool, Led by the old false fable, thus deceive you. Look at the facts themselves, yielding my words No undue credence; for I say that kings
Kill, rob, break oaths, lay cities waste by fraud, And doing thus are happier than those
Who live calm pious lives day after day.101
He begins his lost Melanippe with a startling couplet-
0 Zeus, if there be a Zeus,
For I know of h	only by report-
whereupon the audience, we are told, rose to its feet in protest. 1\nd he concludes:
The gods, too, whom mortals deem so wise, Are nothing clearer than some winged dream;
And all their ways, like man's ways, but a stream Of turmoil. He who cares to suffer least,
Not blind as fools are blinded by a priest,
Goes straight ...  to what death, those who know him know.1o,.
The fortunes of men, he thinks, are the result of natural causes, or of aimless chance; they are not the work of intelligent supernatural beings.'.. He suggests rational explanations of supposed miracles; Alcestis, for exam ple, did not really die, but was sent off to burial while still alive; Heracles caught up with her before she had time to die.100 He does not clearly tell us what his belief is, perhaps because he feels that the evidence does not lend itself to clear belief; but his most characteristic expressions are those of the va.gue pantheism that was now replacing polytheism among the educated Greeks.
Thou deep Base of the World, and thou high Throne Above the World, whoe'er thou art, unknown
And hard of surmise, Chain of Things that be,
Or Reason of our Reason; God to thee I lift my praise, seeing the silent road
That bringeth justice ere the end be trod To all that breathes and dies.wr
CHAP.XVII)  THE  LITERATURE  OF THE GOLDEN  AGE	415
Social justice is the minor theme of his songs; like all sympathetic spirits he longs for a time when the strong will be more chivalrous to the weak, and there will be an end to misery and strife.108 Even in the midst of war, with all its compulsion to a patriotic belligerency, he presents the woes and horrors of war with unsparing realism.
How are ye blind, Ye treaders down of cities, ye that cast Temples to desolation, and lay waste Tombs, the untrodden sanctuaries where lie
The ancient dead; yourselves so soon to die.JOO
He gnaws his heart out at the sight of Athenians fighting Spartans for half a century, each enslaving the other, and both killing off their best; and he indites in a late play a touching apostrophe to peace: