CHAP. VI)	THE  GREAT  MIGRATION	153
in a slight degree in the matter of poetry.',.,, As the ancients meant Homer when they said "the Poet," so all the Greek world knew whom men signified when they spoke of "the Poetess."
Psappha, as she called herself in her soft Aeolic dialect, was born at Eresus, on Lesbos, about 612; but her family moved to Mytilene when she was still a child. In 593 she was among the conspiring aristocrats whom Pittacus banished to the town of Pyrrha; already at nineteen she was play ing a part in public life through politics or poetry. She was not known for beauty: her figure was small and frail, her hair and eyes and skin were darker than the Greeks desired;'" but she had the charm of daintiness, deli cacy, refinement, and a brilliant mind that was not too sophisticated to conceal her tenderness. "My heart," she says, "is like that of a child.',,,, We know from her verses that she was of a passionate nature, one whose words, says Plutarch, "were mingled with flames";18 a certain sensuous quality gave body to the enthusiasms of her mind. Atthis, her favorite pupil, spoke of her as dressed in saffron and purple, and garlanded with .flowers. She must have been attractive in her minuscule way, for Alcaeus, exiled with her to Pyrrha, soon sent her an invitation to romance. "Violet-crowned, pure, sweet-smiling Sappho, I want to say something to you, but shame prevents me." Her answer was less ambiguous than his proposah "If thy wishes were fair and noble, and thy tongue designed not to utter what is base, shame would not cloud thine eyes, but thou wouldst speak thy just de sires."'" The poet sang her praises in odes and serenades, but we hear of no further intimacy between them.
Perhaps they were separated by Sappho's second exile. Pittacus, fear ing her maturing pen, banished her now to Sicily, probably in the year 591, when one would have thought her still a harmless girl. About this time she married a rich merchant of Andros; some years later she writes: "I have a little daughter, like a golden .flower, my darling Cleis, for whom I would not take all Lydia, nor lovely Lesbos."90 She could afford to reject the wealth of Lydia, having inherited that of her husband on his early death. After five years of exile she returned to Lesbos, and became a leader of thie island's society and intellect. We catch the glamour of luxury in one of her surviving fragments: "But I, be it known, love soft living, and for me brightness and beauty belong to the desire of the sun."91 She became deeply attached to her young brother Charaxus, and was vexed to her finger tips when, on one of his mercantile journeys to Egypt, he fell in love with the courtesan Doricha, and, ignoring his sister's entreaties, married her.•
Meanwhile Sappho too had felt the fire. Eager for an active life, she
154	THE	LIFE  OF GREECE
had opened a school for young women, to whom she taught poetry, music, and dancing; it was the first "finishing school" in history. She called her students not pupils but hetairai-companions; the word had not yet ac quired a promiscuous connotation. Husbandless, Sappho fell in love with one after another of these girls. "Love," says one fragment, "has shaken my mind as a down-rushing wind that falls upon the oak-trees.".. "I loved you, Atthis, long ago," says another fragment, "when my own girlhood was still all flowers, and you seemed to me an awkward little child." But then Atthis accepted the attentions of a youth from Mytilene, and Sappho ex pressed her jealousy with unmeasured passion in a poem preserved by Longinus and translated haltingly into "sapphic" meter by John Adding ton Symonds:
Peer of gods he seemeth to me, the blissful Man who sits and gazes at thee before him, Oose beside thee sits, and in silence hears thee
Silverly speaking,
Laughing love's low laughter. Oh, this, this only Stirs the troubled heart in my breast to tremble! For should I but see thee a little moment,
Straight is my voice hushed;
Yea, my tongue is broken, and through and through me, 'Neath the flesh, impalpable fire runs tingling.
Nothing see mine eyes, and a voice of roaring Waves in my ear sounds;
Sweat runs down in rivers, a tremor seizes All my limbs, and paler than grass in autumn, Caught by pains of menacing death, I falter,
Lost in the love-trance.•"'
Atthis' parents removed her from the school; and a letter ascribed to
Sappho gives what may be her account of the parting.
She (Atthis?) wept full sore to leave me behind, and said: "Alas, how sad our lot! Sappho, I swear 'tis against my will I leave you." And I answered her: "Go your way rejoicing, but remember me, for you know how I doted upon you. And if you remember not, oh, then I will remind you of what you forget, how dear and beau tiful was the life we led together. For with many a garland of violets
Swinburne has given us a better example of the meter, and described Sappho's love, in a profoundly beautiful poem called "Sapphics" ("All the night came not upon my eyelids"), in Poems arnl Ballads.
CHAP, VI)	THE  GREAT  MIGRATION	1ss
and sweet roses mingled you have decked your fl.owing locks by my side, and with many a woven necklet, made of a hundred blossoms, your dainty throat; and with unguent in plenty, both precious and royal, have you anointed your fair young skin in my bosom. And no hill was there, nor holy place, nor water-brook, whither we did not go; nor ever did the teeming noises of the early spring fill any wood with the medley-song of the nightingales but you wandered thither with me."•
After which, in the same manuscript, comes the bitter cry, "I shall never see Atthis again, and indeed I might as well be dead." This surely is the authentic voice of love, rising to a height of sincerity and beauty beyond good and evil.
The later scholars o antiquity debated whether these poems were ex pressions of "Lesbian love," or merely exercises of poetic fancy and im personation. It is enough for us that they are poetry of the first order, tense with feeling, vivid with imagery, and perfect in speech and form. A fragment speaks of "the footfall of the flowering spring"; another of "Love the limb-loosener, the bitter-sweet torment"; another compares the unattainable love to "the sweet apple that reddens on the end of the bough, the very end of the bough, which the gatherers missed, nay missed not, but could not reach so far."• Sappho wrote of other topics than love, and used, even for our extant remains, half a hundred meters; and she her self set her poems to music for the harp. Her verse was collected into nine books, of some twelve thousand lines; six hundred lines survive, seldom continuous. In the year 1073 of our era the poetry of Sappho and Alcaeus was publicly burnea by ecclesiastical authorities in Constantinople and Rome.Bf Then, in 1897, Grenfell and Hunt discovered, at Oxyrhynchus in the Fayum, coffins of papier-mkhe, in whose making certain scraps of old books had been used; and on these scraps were some poems of Sappho.88
Male posterity avenged itself upon her by handing down or inventing the tale of how she died of unrequited love for a man. A passage in Suidas.,. tells how "the courtesan Sappho"-usually identified with the poetess leaped to death from a cliff on the island of Leucas because Phaon the sailor would not return her love. Menander, Strabo, and others refer to the story, and Ovid recounts it in loving detail;"" but it has many earmarks of legend, and must be left hovering nebulously between fiction and fact. In her later years, tradition said, Sappho had relearned the love of men. Among the Egyptian morsels is her touching reply to a proposal of mar-
THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	{CHAP.VI


As when, among The deep dells of an arid mountain-side,
A great fire bums its way, and the thick wood Before it is consumed, and shifting winds Hither and thither sweep the flames-so ranged Achilles in his fury through the field
From side to side, and everywhere o'ertook
His victims, and the earth ran dark with blood.""
The Odyssey is so different from all this that from the outset one suspects its separate authorship. Even some of the Alexandrian scholars suggested this, and all the critical authority of Aristarchus was required to hush the dispute/1 The Odyssey agrees with the Iliad in certain standard phrases "owl-eyed Athena," "long-haired Greeks," "wine-dark sea," "rosy-fingered Dawn"-which may have been t:1:ken from the same hoard and poetical tradition into which the authors of the Iliad had dipped their pens. But the Odyssey contains an array of words apparently brought into use after the Iliad was composed." In the second epic we hear frequently of iron, where the earlier one spoke of bronze; we hear of writing, of private property in land, of freedmen and emancipation-none of which are mentioned in the Iliad; the very gods and their functions are different.• The meter is the same dactylic hexameter, as in all the Greek epics; but the style and spirit
210	THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP. IX
and substance are so far from the Iliad that if one author wrote both poems he was a paragon of complexity and a master of all moods. The new poet is more literary and philosophical, less violent and warlike, than the old; more self-conscious and meditative, leisurely and civilized; so gentle, in deed, that Bentley thought the Odyssey had been composed for the special benefit of women."
Whether here too we have poets rather than a poet is harder to say than in the case of the -Iliad. There are signs of suture, but the stitching seems more skillful than in the older epic; the plot, though devious, turns out in the end to be remarkably consistent, worthy almost of contemporary fictioneers. From the beginning the conclusion is foreshadowed, every episode advances it, and its coming binds all the books into a whole. Prob ably the epic was built upon pre-existing lays, as in the case of the Iliad; but the work of unification is far more complete. We may conclude with a high degree of diffidence that the Odyssey is a century younger than the Iliad, and is predominantly the work of one man.
The characters are less vigorously and vividly conceived than in the Iliad. Penelope is shadowy, and never quite emerges from behind her loom except in the end, when a moment of doubt, perhaps of regret, flits through her mind at the return of her master. Helen is clearer, and unique; here the launcher of a thousand ships and the cause of ten thousand deaths is still "a goddess among women," maturely lovely in her middle age, gentler and quieter than before, but as proud as ever, and taking gracefully for granted all the attentions that hedge in a queen.• Nausicaa is a pretty essay in the male understanding of women; we hardly expected so delicate and romantic a picture from a Greek. Telemachus is uncertainly drawn, in fected with hesitation as by some Hamlet touch; but Odysseus is the most complete and complex portrait in Greek poetry. All in all, the Odyssey is a fascinating novel in engaging verse, full of tender sentiment and adven turous surprise; more interesting, to an unwarlike and aging soul, than the majestic and bloody Iliad.
These poems-sole survivors of a long succession of epics-became the most precious element in the literary heritage of Greece. "Homer" was the staple of Greek education, the repository of Greek myth, the source of a thousand dramas, the foundation of moral training, and-strangest of all-the very Bible of orthodox theology. It was Homer and Hesiod, said Herodotus (probably with some hyperbole), who gave definite and human form to the Olympians, and order to the hierarchy of heaven.• There is much that is magnificent in Homer's gods, and we come to like them for
CHAP. IX)  T H E CO M MON  CULT UR E OF EARL Y GREECE	211
their failings; but scholars have long since detected in the poets who pic tured them a rollicking skepticism hardly befitting a national Bible. These deities quarrel like relatives, fornicate like fleas, and share with mankind what seemed to Alexander the stigmata of mortality-the need for love and sleep; they do everything human but hunger and die. Not one of them could bear comparison with Odysseus in intelligence, with Hector in hero ism, with Andromache in tenderness, or with Nestor in dignity. Only a poet of the sixth century, versed in Ionian doubt, could have made such farcelings of the gods."' It is one of the humors of history that these epics, in which the Olympians have essentially the function of comic relief, were reverenced throughout Hellas as props of respectable morality and belief. Eventually the anomaly proved explosive; the humor destroyed the belief, and the moral development of men rebelled against the superseded morals of the gods.
GAMES
Religion failed to unify Greece, but athletics-periodically-succeeded. Men went to Olympia,_Delphi, Corinth, and Nemea not so much to honor the gods-for these could be honored anywhere-as to witness the heroic contests of chosen athletes, and the ecumenical assemblage of varied Greeks. Alexander, who could see Greece from without, considered Olympia the capital of the Greek world.
Here under the rubric of athletics we find the real religion of the Greeks
-the worship of health, beauty, and strength. "To be in health," said Simonides, "is the best thing for man; the next best, to be of form and nature beautiful; the third, ·co enjoy wealth gotten without fraud; and the fourth, to be in youth's bloom among friends.""'• "There is no greater glory for a man as long as he lives," said the Odyssey,"" "than that which he wins by his own hands and feet." Perhaps it was necessary for an aristocratic people, living among slaves more numerous than themselves and frequently called upon to defend their soil against more populous nations, to keep in good condition. Ancient war depended upon physical vigor and skill, and these were the original aim of the contests that filled Hellas with the noise of their fame. We must not think of the average Greek as a student and lover of Aeschylus or Plato; rather, like the typical Briton or American, he was interested in sport, and his favored athletes were his earthly gods.
Greek games were private, local, municipal, and Panhellenic. Even the
fragmentary remains of antiquity reveal an interesting range of sports.
:uz	THE   LIFE  OF GREECE
A relief in the Athens Museum shows on one side a wrestling match, on another a hockey game.• Swimming, bareback riding, throwing or dodging missiles while mounted, were not so much sports as general accomplish ments of all citizens. Hunting became a sport when it ceased to be a neces sity. Ball games were as varied then as now, and as popular; at Sparta the terms ballplayer and youth were synonyms. Special rooms were built in the palaestra for games of ball; these rooms were called sphtti.risteria., and the teachers were spbairistai. On another relief we see men bouncing a ball against the floor or the wall, and striking it back with the fiat of the hand;'° we do not know whether the players did this in tum as in modem handball. One ball game resembled Canadian lacrosse, being a form of hockey played with racquets. Pollux, writing in the second century of our era, describes it in almost modem terms:
Certain youths, divided into two equal groups, leave in a level place-which they have prepared and measur d-a ball made of leather, about the size of an apple. They rush at it, as if it were a prize lying between them, from their fixed starting-points. Each of them has in his right hand a racquet (rhabdon) ... ending in a sort of flat bend whose center is woven with gut strings ... plaited like a net. Each side strives to be the first to drive the ball to the op posite end of the ground from that allotted to them.•
The same author pictures a game in which one team tries to throw a ball over or through an opposed group, "until one side drives the other back over their goal line." Antiphanes, in an imperfect fragment from the fourth century B.c., describes a "star": "When he got the ball he de lighted to give it to one player while dodging another; he knocked it away from one and urged on another with noisy cries. Outside, a long pass, be yond him, overhead, a short pass  "•
From these private sports came local and incidental games, as after the death of a hero like Patroclus, or the successful issue of some great enter prise, like the march of Xenophon's Ten Thousand to the sea. Then came municipal games, in which the contestants represented various localities and groups within one city-state. Almost but not quite international were the quadrennial Panathenaic games, established by Peisistratus in 566; here the entries were mostly from Attica, but outsiders were welcomed. Besides the usual athletic events there were chariot races, a torch race, a rowing race, musical competitions for voice, harp, lyre, and flute, dances, and recitations, chiefly from Homer. Each of the ten divisions of Attica was
CHAP. IX)  THE  COMMON CULTURE OF EARLY GREECE    213
represented by twenty-four men chosen for their health, vigor, and good looks; and a prize was awarded to the most impressive twenty-four for "fine manhood."•


in all these cases the members sit on benches under the open sky, and the sitting begins at dawn. Each session opens with the sacrifice of a pig to Zeus. It is usual to adjourn at once in case of a storm, earthquake, or eclipse, for these are accounted signs of divine disapproval. New legislation may be proposed only at the first session of each month, and the member who offers it is held responsible for the result of its adoption; if these are seriously evil another member may within a year of the vote invoke upon him the graphe paranomon, or writ of illegality, and have him fined, dis franchised, or put to death; this is Athens' way of discouraging hasty legis lation. By another form of the same writ a new proposal may be checked by a demand that before its enactment one of the courts shall pass upon its constitutionality-i.e., its agreement with existing law.111 Again, before considering a bill, the Assembly is required to submit it to the Council of Five Hundred for preliminary examination, very much as a bill in the American Congress, before discussion of it on the floor, is referred to a committee presumed to have especial knowledge and competence in the matter involved. The Council may not reject a proposal outright; it may only report it, with or without a recommendation.
Ordinarily the presiding officer opens the Assembly by presenting a probouleuma, or reported bill. Those who wish to speak are heard in the order of their age; but anyone may be disqualified from addressing the Assembly if it can be shown that he is not a landowner, or is not legally married, or has neglected his duties to his parents, or has offended public morals, or has evaded a military obligation, or has thrown away his shield in battle, or owes taxes or other money to the state.111 Only trained orators avail themselves of the right to speak, for the Assembly is a difficult audi ence. It laughs at mispronunciations, protests aloud at digressions, expresses its approval with shouts, whistling, and clapping of hands, and, if it strongly disapproves, makes such a din that the speaker is compelled to leave the bema, or rostrum."' Each speaker is allowed a given time, whose lapse is measured by a clepsydra or water clock.85 Voting is by a show of hands unless some individual is directly and specially affected by the proposal, in which case a secret ballot is taken. The vote may confirm, amend, or override the Council's report on a bill, and .the decision of the Assembly is final. Decrees for immediate action, as distinct from laws, may be en acted more expeditiously than new legislation; but such decrees may with equal expedition be canceled, and do not enter into the body of Athenian law.
Above the Assembly in dignity, inferior to it in power, is the boule, or
CHAP.XI)  PERICLES  AND THE DEMOCRATIC EXPERIMENT   257
Council. Originally an upper house, it has by the time of Pericles been reduced in effect to a legislative committee of the ekklesia. Its members are chosen by lot and rote from the register of the citizens, fifty for each of the ten tribes; they serve for a year only, and receive, in the fourth cen tury, five obols per day. Since each councilor is disqualified for re-election until all other eligible citizens have had a chance to serve, every citizen, in the normal course of events, sits on the boule for at least one term during his life. It meets in the bouleuterion, or council hall, south of the agora, and its ordinary sessions are public. Its functions are legislative, executive, and consultative: it examines and reformulates the bills proposed to the Assembly; it supervises the conduct and accounts of the religious and ad ministrative officials of the city; it controls public finances, enterprises, and buildings; it issues executive decrees when action is called for and the As sembly is not in session; and, subject to later revision by the Assembly, it controls the foreign affairs of the state.
To perform these varied tasks the Council divides itself into ten prytanies,
or committees, each of fifty members; and each prytany presides over the Council and the Assembly for a month of thirty-six days. Every morn ing the presiding prytany chooses one of its members to serve as chairman of itself and the Council for the day; this position, the highest in the state, is therefore open by lot and turn to any citizen; Athens has three hun dred presidents every year. The lot determines at the last moment which prytany, and which member of it, shall preside over the Council during the month or the day; by this device the corrupt Athenians hope to reduce the corruption of justice to the lowest point attainable by human charac ter. The acting prytany prepares the agenda, convokes the Council, and formulates the conclusions reached during the day. In this way, through Assembly, Council, and prytany, the democracy of Athens carries out its legislative functions. As for the Areopagus, its powers are in the fifth century restricted to trying cases of arson, willful violence, poisoning, or premeditated murder. Slowly the law of Greece has been changed "from status to contract," from the whim of one man, or the edict of a narrow class, into the deliberate agreement of free citizens.
Law
The earliest Greeks appear to have conceived of law as sacred custom, divinely sanctioned and revealed; themis• meant to them both these customs and
I.e., what is laid down, from ti-themi, I place; cf. our doom in its early sense of law, and
the Russian duma.
THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP. XI
a goddess who (like India's Rita or China's Tao or Tien) embodied the moral order and harmony of the world. Law was a part of theology, and the oldest Greek laws of property were mingled with liturgical regulations in the ancient temple codes... Perhaps as old as such religious law were the rules established by the decrees of tribal chieftains or kings, which began as force and ended, in time, as sanctities.
The second phase of Greek legal history was the collection and co-ordination of these holy customs by lawgivers (thesmothetai) like Zaleucus, Charondas, Draco, Solon; when such men put their new codes into writing, the thesmoi, or sacred usages, became nomoi, or man-made laws.• In these codes law freed itself from religion, and became increasingly secular; the intention of the agent entered more fully into judgment of the act; family liability was replaced by individual responsibility, and private revenge gave way to statutory punishment by the state.8'1
The third step in Greek legal development was the accumulative growth of a body of law. When a Periclean Greek speaks of the law of Athens he means the codes of Draco and Solon, and the measures that have been passed-and not repealed-by the Assembly or the Council. If a new law contravenes an old one, the repeal of the latter is prerequisite; but scrutiny is seldom complete, and two statutes are often found in ludicrous contradiction. In periods of excep tional legal confusion a committee of nomothetai, or law determiners, is chosen by lot from the popular courts to decide which laws shall be retained; in such cases advocates are appointed to defend the old laws against those who propose to repeal them. Under the supervision of these nomothetai the laws of Athens, phrased in simple and intelligible language, are cut upon stone slabs in the King's Porch; and thereafter no magistrate is allowed to decide a case by an unwritten law.
Athenian law makes no distinction between a civil and a criminal code, except that it reserves murder cases for the Areopagus, and in civil suits leaves the complainant to enforce the court's decree himself, going to his aid only if he meets with resistance... Murder is infrequent, for it is branded as a sacrilege as well as a crime, and the dread of feud revenge remains if the law fails to act. Under certain conditions direct retaliation is still tolerated in the fifth century; when a husband finds his mother, wife, concubine, sister, or daughter in illicit relations he is entitled to kill the male offender at once.89 Whether a killing is intentional or not it has to be expiated as a pollution of the city's soil, and the rites of purification are painfully rigid and complex. If the victim has granted pardon before dying, no action can be brought against the killer."' Beneath the
In Periclean Athens the name thesmothetai was given to the six minor archons who recorded, interpreted, and enforced the laws; in Aristotle's day they presided over the popular couns.
CHAP.XI)  PERICLES AND THE DEMOCRATIC EXPERIMENT   259
Areopagus are three tribunals for homicide cases, according to the class and origin of the victim, and according as the act was intentional, or excusable, or not. A fourth tribunal holds court at Phreattys on the coast, and tries those who, while exiled for unpremeditated homicide, are now charged with another and premeditated murder; being polluted by the first crime, they are not allowed to touch Attic soil, and their defense is conducted from a boat near the shore.
The law of property is uncompromisingly severe. Contracts are rigorously enforced; all jurors are required to swear that they "will not vote for an abolition of private debts, or for a distribution of the lands or houses belong ing to Athenians"; and every year the head archon, on taking office, has procla mation made by a herald that "what each possesses he shall remain possessor and absolute master thereof."" The right of bequest is still narrowly limited. Where there are male children the old religious conception of property, as bound up with a given family line and the care of ancestral spirits, demands that the estate should automatically pass to the sons; the father owns the property only in trust for the family dead, living, and to be born. Whereas in Sparta (as in England) the patrimony is indivisible and goes to the eldest son, in Athens (very much as in France) it is apportioned among the male heirs, the oldest receiving a moderately larger share than the others... As early as Hesiod we find the peasant limiting his family in Gallic fashion, lest his estate be ruinously divided among many sons... The husband's property never descends to the widow; all that remains to her is her dowry. Wills are as complex in Pericles' day as in our own, and are couched in much the same terms as now." In this as in other matters Greek legislation is the basis of that Roman law which in tum has provided the legal foundations of Western society.
Justice
Democracy reaches the judiciary last of all; and the greatest reform ac complished by Ephialtes and Pericles is the transfer of judicial powers from the Areopagus and the archons to the heliaea. The establishment of these popular courts gives to Athens what trial by jury will win for modem Europe. The heliaea* is composed of six thousand dicasts, or jurors, annu ally drawn by lot from the register of the citizens; these six thousand are distributed into ten dicasteries, or panels, of approximately five hundred each, leaving a surplus for vacancies and emergencies. Minor and local cases are settled by thirty judges who periodically visit the demes or coun ties of Attica. Since no juror may serve more than a year at a time, and
Strictly, heliaea is the name of the place where the courts met. and was so called (from
helios, sun) because the sessions were held in the open air.
260	THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP. XI


When Achilles comes she finds that he knows nothing of their supposed marriage; instead she learns that the army is impatient for her sacrifice. She throws herself at Agamemnon's feet, and begs for her life.
I was thy first-born-first I called thee Sire, And sat, thy child, upon thy knees the first; And we exchanged sweet charities of life.
And this was thy discourse with me-"My child, Shall I behold thee happy in the home
Of thy liege lord and husband, as befits?" And nestling in the beard which now I clasp A suppliant, I made answer unto thee:
"I too will welcome thee, when grey with years, In the sweet shelter of my home, my Sire,
And with fond fostering recompense thy love." Such were our words, which I remember well; But thou fotgettest, and wouldst take my life.88
Clytaemnestra denounces Agamemnon's surrender to a savage ritual, and utters a threat that contains many tragedies-"Constrain me not to turn traitress to thee." She encourages Achilles' attempt to rescue the girl, but Iphigenia, changing her mood, refuses to escape.
Hear the thing that flashed upon me, mother, as I thought hereon: Lo, I am resolved to die; and fain am I that this be done Gloriously-that I thrust ignoble thoughts away....
Unto me all mighty Hellas looks; I only can bestow
Boons upon her-sailing of her galleys, Phrygia's overthrow, Safety for her daughters from barbarians in the days to come,
That the ravisher no more may snatch them from a happy home, When the penalty is paid for Paris' outrage, _Helen's shame.
All this great deliverance I in death shall compass, and my name, As of one who gave to Hellas freedom, shall be blessing-crqwned.""
When the soldiers come for her she forbids them to touch her, and moves of her own accord to the sacrificial pyre.
THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP. XVII
In the Hecuba the war is over; Troy has been taken, and the victors are apportioning the spoils. Hecuba, widow of King Priam, sends her young est son Polydorus with a treasure of gold to Priam's friend Polymnestor, King of Thrace. But Polymnestor, thirsting for the gold, slays the boy and throws his corpse into the sea; it is cast up on the shores of Ilion, and is brought to Hecuba. Meanwhile the shade of dead Achilles holds the winds from blowing the Greek fleet homeward till he has received in human sacrifice the fairest of Priam's daughters, Polyxena. The Greek herald, T althybius, comes to take the girl from Hecuba. Finding her prostrate, disheveled, and distraught who had so recently been a queen, he utters some lines of Euripidean doubt:
What shall I say, Zeus?-that thou look'st on men? Or that this fancy false we vainly hold
For naught, who deem there is a race of gods, While chance controlleth all things among men?01
The next act of the composite drama takes the form of The Trojan Women. It was produced in 415, shortly after the Athenian destruction of Melos (416), and almost on the eve of the expedition that aimed to conquer Sicily for the Athenian Empire. It was at this moment that Euripides, shocked by the massacre in Melos and by the brutal imperialism of the proposed attack upon Syracuse, dared to present a powerful plea for peace, a brave portrayal of victory from the standpoint of the de feated, "the greatest denunciation of war in ancient literature.".. He be: gins where Homer ends-after the capture of Troy. The Trojans lie dead after a general slaughter, and their women, bereaved to madness, pass down from their ruined city to be the concubines of the victors. Hecuba enters with her daughters Andromache and Cassandra. Polyxena has already been sacrificed, and now Talthybius comes to lead Cassandra to Aga memnon's tent. Hecuba falls to the ground in grief. Andromache tries to console her, but she too breaks down, as clasping the little prince Astyanax to her breast, she thinks of his dead father.
Andromache.	And I ... long since I drew my bow Straight at the heart of good fame; and I know
My shaft hit; and for that am I the more Fallen from peace. All that men praise us for, I loved for Hector's sake, and sought to win.
I knew that always, be there hurt therein Or utter innocence, to roam abroad
CHAP.XVII) THE  LITERATURE  OF THE GOLDEN  AGE	407
Hath ill report for women; so I trod
Down the desire thereof, and walked my way In mine own garden. And light words and gay Parley of women never passed my door.
The thoughts of mine own heart-I craved no more Spake with me, and I was happy. Constantly


He uses almost any workable material that comes to his hand-wood, ivory, bone, terracotta, limestone, marble, silver, gold; sometimes, as in the chryselephantine statues of Pheidias, he uses gold on the raiment and ivory for the flesh. In the Peloponnesus bronze is the sculptor's favorite material, for he admires its dark tints as well adapted to represent the bodies of men tanned by nudity under the sun; and-not knowing the rapacity of man-he dreams that it is more durable than stone. In Ionia and Attica he prefers marble; its difficulty stimulates him, its firmness lets him chisel it safely, its translucent smoothness seems designed to convey the rosy color and deli cate texture of a woman's skin. Near Athens the sculptor discovers the marble of Mt. Pentelicus, and observes how its iron content mellows with time and weather into a vein of gold glowing through the stone; and with the obstinate patience that is half of genius he slowly carves the quarries into living statuary. When he works in bronze the fifth-century sculptor uses the method of hollow casting by the process of cire perdu, or lost wax: i.e., he makes a model in plaster or clay, overlaps it with a thin coat ofwax, covers it all with a mold of plaster or clay perforated at many points, and places the figure in a furnace whose heat melts the wax, which runs out through the holes; then he pours molten bronze into the mold at the top till the metal fills all the space before occupied by the wax; he cools the figure, removes the outer mold, and files and polishes, lacquers or paints or gilds, the bronze into the final form. If he prefers marble he begins with the un shaped block, unaided by any system of pointing;• he works freehand, and
A method of indicating the depth to which, at various points, a block of sculptural ma terial is to be cut by a carver before the artist takes it in hand. This process came mto use in Hellenistic Greece.•
CHAP.XIV)	THE  ART  OF  PERICLEAN  GREECE	321
for the most part guides himself by the eye instead of by instruments;• blow by blow he removes the superfluous until the perfection that he has con ceived takes shape in the stone, and, in Aristotle's phrase, matter becomes form.
His subjects range from gods to animals, but they must all be physically admirable; he has no use for weaklings, for intellectuals, for abnormal types, or for old women or men. He does well with the horse, but indifferently with other animals. He does better with women, and some of his anony mous masterpieces, like the meditative young lady holding her robe on her breast in the Athens Museum, achieve a quiet loveliness that does not lend itse_lfto words. He is at his best with athletes, for these he admires without stint, and can observe without hindrance; now and then he exaggerates their prowess, and crosses their abdomens with incredible muscles; but despite this fault he can cast bronzes like that found in the sea near Anticythera, and alternatively named an Ephebos, or a Perseus whose hand once held Medusa's snake-haired head. Sometimes he catches a youth or a girl ab sorbed in some simple and spontaneous action, like the boy drawing a thorn from his foot.• But his country's mythology is still the leading inspiration of his art. That terrible conflict between philosophy and religion which runs through the thought of the fifth century does not show yet on the monuments; here the gods are still supreme; and if they are dying they are nobly transmuted into the poetry of art. Does the sculptor who shapes in br mze the powerful Zeus of Artemisiumt really h lieve that he is model ing the Law of the World? Does the artist who carves the gentle and sor rowful Dionysus of the Delphi Museum know, in the depths of his inarticu late understanding, that Dionysus has been shot down by the arrows of philosophy, and that the traditional features of Dionysus' successor, Christ, are already previsioned in this head?
Schools
H Greek sculpture achieved so much in the fifth century, it was in part because each sculptor belonged to a_ school, and had his place in a long lineage of masters and pupils carrying on the skills of their art, checking the extravagances of independent individualities, encouraging their specific ab ties, disciplining them with a sturdy grounding in the technology and achie\Tements of the past, and forming them,_through this interplay of talent
In the Capitoline Musewn, Rome; probably a copy of a fifth-century Greek original.
t In the Athens Museum; reproduced in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
322	THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP. XIV
and law, into a greater art than often comes to genius isolated and unruled. Great artists are more frequently the culmination of a tradition than its ovenhrow; and though rebels are the necessary variants in the natural his tory of art, it is only when their new line has been steadied with heredity and chastened with time that it generates supreme personalities.
Five schools performed this function in Periclean Greece: those of Rhegium, Sicyon, Argos, Aegina, and Attica. About 496 another Pythago ras of Samos settled at Rhegium, cast a Philoctetes that won him Mediter ranean fame, and put into the faces of his statues such signs of passion, pain, and age as shocked all Greek sculptors till those of the Hellenistic period decided to imitate him. At Sicyon Canachus and his brother Aristocles car ried on the work begun a century earlier by Dipoenus and Scyllis of Crete.. Callon and Onatas brought distinction to Aegina by their skill with bronze; perhaps it was they who made the Aegina pediments. At Argos Ageladas organized the transmission of sculptural technique in a school that reached its apex in Polycleitus.
Coming from Sicyon, Polycleitus made himself popular in Argos by de
signing for its temple of Hera, about 42 2, a gold and ivory statue of the matron goddess, which the age ranked second only to the chryselephantine immensities of Pheidias.• At Ephesus he joined in a competition with Pheidias, Cresilas, and Phradmon to make an Amazon for the temple of Anemis; the four anists were made judges of the result; each, the story goes, named his own work best, Polycleitus' second best; and the prize was
given to the Sicyonian. t"' But Polycleitus loved athletes more th;m women or gods. In the famous Diadumenos (of which the best surviving copy is in
the Athens Museum) he chose for representation that moment in which the victor binds about his head the fillet over which the judges are to place the laurel wreath. The chest and abdomen are too muscular for belief, but the body is vividly posed upon one foot, and the features are a definition of classic regularity. Regularity was the fetish of Polycleitus; it was his life aim to find and establish a canon or rule for the correct proportion of every part in a statue; he was the Pythagoras of sculpture, seeking a divine mathe matics of symmetry and form. The dimensions of any pan of a perfect body, he thought, should bear a given ratio to the dimensions of any one part, say the index finger. The Polycleitan canon called for a round head, broad shoulders, stocky torso, wide hips, and shon legs, making all in all a
We have perhaps an echo of its majesty in the noble head of Juno in the BritishMusemn. reputed to be a copy from Polycleitus.
t Perhaps an A11111ZO'n in the Vatican is a Roman copy of this work.
CHAP. XIV)	THE  ART  OF  PERICLEAN  GREECE
figure rather of strength than of grace. The sculptor was so fond of his canon that he wrote a treatise to expound it, and molded a statue to illustrate it. Probably this was the Doryphoros, or Spear Bearer, of which the Naples Museum has a Roman copy; here again is the brachycephalic head, the powerful shoulders, the short trunk, the corrugated musculature overflow ing the groin. Lovelier is the Westmacott Ephebos of the.British Museum, where the lad has feelings as well as muscles, and seems lost in a gentle medi tation on something else than his own strength. Through these figures the canon of Polycleitus became for a time a law to the sculptors of the Pelopon nesus; it influenced even Pheidias, and ruled till Praxiteles overthrew it with that rival canon of tall, slim elegance which survived through Rome into the statuary of Christian Europe.
Myron mediated between the Peloponnesian and the Attic schools. Born at Eleutherae, living at Athens, and (says Pliny"') studying for a while with Ageladas, he learned to unite Peloponnesian masculinity with Ionian grace. What he added to all the schools was motion: he saw the athlete not, like Polycleitus, before or after the contest, but in it; and realized his vision so well in bronze that no other sculptor in history has rivaled him in portray ing the male body in action. About 470 he cast the most famous of athletic statues-the Discobolos or Discus Thrower.• The wonder of the male frame is here complete: the body carefully studied in all those movements of muscle, tendon, and bone that are involved in the action; the legs and arms and trunk bent to give the fullest force to the throw; the face not dis torted with effort, but calm in the confidence of ability; the head not heavy or brutal, but that of a man of blood and refinement, who could write books if he would condescend. This chef-d'oeuvre was only one of Myron's achievements; his contemporaries valued it, but ranked even more highly his Athena tmd Marsyast and his Ladas. Athena here is too lovely for the purpose; no one could guess that this demure virgin is watching with calm content the flaying of the defeated flutist. Myron's Marsyas is George Bernard Shaw caught in an unseemly but eloquent pose; he has played for the last time, and is about to die; but he will not die without a speech. Ladas was an athlete who succumbed to the exhaustion of victory; Myron por trayed him so realistically that an old Greek, seeing the statue, cried out: "Like as thou wert in life,0 Ladas, breathing forth thy panting soul, such
The Museo delle Terme has the torso of a fine marble copy by a Roman artist. The Munich Antiquarium has a late copy in bronze; the Metropolitan Museum of An has a copy uniting the Vatican torso with the head from the Palazzo Lancelotti.
t There is a good copy of the Lateran copy in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP.XIV
hath Myron wrought thee in bronze, stamping on all thy body thine eager ness for the victor's crown." And of Myron's Heifer the Greeks said that it could do everything but moo.•


turity.  Without them Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle would have been
impossible.
SOCRATES
The Mask of Silenus
It is pleasant to stand at last face to face with a personality apparently so real as Socrates. But when we consider the two sources upon which we must rely for our knowledge of Socrates we find that one of them, Plato, writes imaginative dramas, that the other, Xenophon, writes historical nov els, and that neither product can be taken as history. "They say," writes Diogenes Laertius, "that Socrates having heard Plato read the Lysis, cried out, 'O Heracles! what a number of lies the young man has told a:bout me!' For Plato had set down a great many things as sayings of Socrates which he had never said."w Plato does not pretend to limit himself to fact; probably it never occurred to him that the future might have scant mea:ns of distinguishing, in his work, imagination from biography. But he draws so consistent a picture of his master throughout the Dialogues, from Socrates' youthful timidity in the Parmenides and his insolent loquacity in the Protagoras to the subdued piety and resignation of the Phaedo, that if this was not Socrates, then Plato is one of the greatest character creators in all literature. Aristotle accepts as authentically Socratic the views attrib uted to Socrates in the Protagoras.n' Recently discovered fragments of an Alcibiades written by Aeschines of Sphettos, an immediate disciple of Socrates, tend to confirm the portrait given in the earlier dialogues of Plato, and the story of the philosopher's attachment to Alcibiades.m On the other hand, Aristotle classes Xenophon's Memorabilia and Banquet as forms of fiction, imaginary conversations in which Socrates becomes, more often tha:n not, a mouthpiece for Xenophon's ideas.•= If Xenophon honestly played Eckermann to Socrates' Goethe we can only say that he has care fully collected the master's safest platitudes; it is incredible that so virtuous a man should have upset a civilization. Other ancient writers did not make the old sage into such a saint; Aristoxenus of Tarentum, about 318, re pqrted, on the testimony of his father-who claimed to have known Socrates
-that the philosopher was a person without education, "ignorant a:nd debauched"t' and Eupolis, the comic poet, rivaled his rival Aristophanes
So in Book ill of the Memorabilia SocrateS is made to expound the principles of military
strategy.
CRAP. XVI)  THE  CONFLICT OF PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION	365
in abusing the great gadfl.y.ua Making due discount for polemic vitriol it is at least clear that Socrates was a man, hated and loved beyond any othe1 figure of his time.
His father was a sculptor, and he himself was said to have carved a Hermes, and three Graces that stood near the entrance to the Acropolis.us His mother was a midwife: it was a standing joke with him that he merely continued her trade, but in the realm of ideas, helping others to deliver themselves of their conceptions. One tradition describes him as the son of a slave;uo it is improbable, for he served as a hoplite (a career open only to citizens), inherited a house from his father, and had seventy minas ($7000) invested for him by his friend Crito;m for the rest he is represented as poor.m He paid.much attention to the training of the body, and was usu ally in good physical condition. He made a reputation for himself as a soldier during the Peloponnesian War: in 432 he fought at Potidaea, in 424 at Delium, in 422 at Amp_hipolis. At Potidaea he saved both the life and the arms of the young Alcibiades, and gave up in the youth's favor his claim to the prize for valor; at Delium he was the last Athenian to give gflound to the Spartans, and seems to have saved himself by glaring at the enemy; even the Spartans were frightened. In these campaigns, we are told, he excelled all in endurance and courage, bearing without complaint hunger, fatigue, and cold.w At home, when he condescended to stay there, he worked as a stonecutter and statuary. He had no interest in travel, and seldom went outside the city and its port. He married Xanthippe, who berated him for neglecting his family; he recognized the justice of her complaint,:us and defended her gallantly to his son and his friends. Mar riage disturbed him so little that he seems to have taken an additional wife when the mortality of males in the war led to the temporary legalization of polygamy.m
All the world knows the face of Socrates. Judging precariously from the bust in the Museo delle Terme at Rome, it was not typically Greek;- its spacious spread, its fl.at, broad nose, its thick lips, and heavy beard suggest rather Solon's friend of the steppes, Anacharsis, or that modern Scythian, Tolstoi. "I say," Alcibiades insists, even while protesting his love, "that Socrates is exactly like the masks of Silenus, which may be seen sitting in the statuaries' shops, having pipes and fl.utes in their mouths; and they are made to open in the middle, and there are images of gods inside them. I say also that he is like Marsyas the satyr. You will not deny, Socrates, that your face is that of a satyr.'nao Socrates raises no objection; to make
THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP. XVI
matters worse he confesses to an unduly large paunch, and hopes to reduce it by dancing.181
Plato and Xenophon agree in describing his habits and his character. He was content with one simple and shabby robe throughout the year, and liked bare feet better than sandals or shoes.""" He was incredibly free from the acquisitive fever that agitates mankind. Viewing the multitude of arti cles exposed for sale in the market place, he remarked, "How many things there are that I do not want!"ua-and felt himself rich in his poverty. He was a model of moderation and self-control, but all the world away from a saint. He could drink like a gentleman, and needed no timid asceticism to keep him straight.* He was no recluse; he liked good company, and let the rich entertain him now and then; but he made no obeisance to them, could get along very well without them, and rejected the gifts and invitations of magnates and kings.:llll All in all he was fortunate: he lived without working, read without writing, taught without routine, drank without dizziness, and died before senility, almost without pain.
His morals were excellent for his time, but would hardly satisfy all the good people who praise him. He "took fire" at the sight of Charmides, but controlled himself by asking if this handsome lad had also a "noble soul."'.. Plato speaks of Socrates and Alcibiades as lovers, and describes the philoso pher "in chase of the fair youth.",.. Though the old man seems to have kept these amours for the most part Platonic, he was not above giving advice to homosexuals and hetairai on how to attract lovers.188 He gallantly prom ised his help to the courtesan Theodota, who rewarded him with the invi tation: "Come often to see me.""'" His good humor and kindliness were so unfailing that those who could stomach his politics found it simple to put up with his morals. When he had passed away Xenophon spoke of him as "so just that he wronged no man in the most trifling affair ... so temperate that he never preferred pleasure to virtue; so wise that he never erred in distin guishing better from worse ... so capable of discerning the character of others, and of exhorting them to virtue and honor, that he seemed to be such as the best and happiest of men would be.""0 Or, as Plato put it, with mov ing simplicity, he "was truly the wisest, and justest, and best of all the men whom I have ever known.""'
"So far as drinking is concerned,'' Xenophon makes Socrates say, "wine does of a truth
'moisten the soul' and lull our griefs to sleep	But I suspect that men's bodies fare like those of plants.	When God gives the plants water in floods to drink they cannot stand up
straight or let the breezes blow through them; but when they drink only as much as they
enjoy they grow up straight and tall, and come to full and abundant fruitage.""'
CHAP. XVI)	THE  CONFLICT OF PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION	367
Portrait of a Gadfly
Being curious and disputatious he became a s dent of philosophy, and was for a time fascinated by the Sophists who invaded Athens in his youth. There is no evidence that Plato invented the fact as well as the content of Socrates' meetings with Parmenides, Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hip pias, and Thrasymachus; it is likely that he saw Zeno when the latter came to Athens about 450, and that he was so infected with Zeno's dialectic that it never left him.1.. Probably he knew Anaxagoras, if not in person then in doctrine; for Archelaus of Miletus, pupil of Anaxagoras, was for a time the teacher of Socrates. Archelaus began as a physicist and ended as a student of morals; he explained the origin and basis of morals on ration alistic lines, and perhaps turned Socrates from science to ethics.:ua By all these avenues Socrates c me to philosophy, and thencefonh found his "greatest good in daily converse about virtue, examining myself and others; for a life unscrutinized is unwonhy of a man."* So he went prowling among men's beliefs, prodding them with questions, demanding precise answers and consistent views, and making himself a terror to all who could not think clearly. Even in Hades he proposed to be a gadfly, and "find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise and is not."'" He protected himself from a similar cross-examination by announcing that he knew nothing; he knew all the questions, but none of the answers; he modestly called himself an "amateur in philosophy."'" What he meant, presumably, was that he was certain of nothing except man's fallibility, and had no hard and fast system of dogmas and principles. When the oracle at Delphi, to Chaerephon's alleged inquiry, "Is any man wiser than Socrates?" gave the alleged reply, "No one,""" Socrates ascribed the response to his profession of ignorance.
From that moment he set himself to the pragmatic task of getting clear ideas. "For himself," he said, "he would hold discourse, from time to time, on what concerned mankind, considering what was pious, what impious; what was just, what unjust; what was sanity, what insanity; what was courage, what cowardice; what was the nature of government over men, and the qualities of one skilled in governing them; and touching on other subjects ... of which he thought that those who were ignorant might justly be deemed no better than slaves.""' To every vague notion, easy generali zation, or secret prejudice he pointed the challenge, "What is it?" and asked for precise definitions. It became his habit to rise early and go to the mar ket place, the gymnasiums, the palaestras, or the workshops of artisans, and
De tmezetastos bios ou biotos tmthropo.-Plato, Apology, 37.


him, Herod had him slain. Five days afterward he too died (4 B.c.), in the sixty-ninth year of his age, hated by all his people. It was said of him by his enemies that "he stole to the throne like a fox, ruled like a tiger, and died like a dog." 17
THE  LAW AND ITS PROPHETS
Herod's will divided his kingdom among three remaining sons. To Philip
,vent the eastern region known as Batanea, containing the cities of Beth saida, Capitolias, Gerasa, Philadelphia, and Bostra. To Herod Antipas went Peraea (the land beyond the Jordan) and, in the north, Galilee, where lay Esdraela, Tiberias, and Nazareth. To Archelaus fell Samaritis, Idumea, and Judea. In this last were many famous cities or towns: Bethlehem, Hebron, Beersheba, Gaza, Gadara, Emmaus, Jamnia, Joppa, Caesarea, Jericho, and Jerusalem. Some Palestinian cities were predominantly Greek, some Syrian; the Gadarene swine attest the non-Jews of Gadara. The gentiles were in the majority in all the coast towns except Joppa and Jamnia, and in the "Decap olis" or ten cities of the Jordan; in the interior the villages were almost entirely Jewish. In this racial division, not 1Jnpleasing to Rome, lay the tragedy of Palestine.
We must go back to the Puritans of England to understand the repulsion aroused in pious Jews by the polytheism and immorality of pagan society. Religion was to the Jews the source of their law, their state, and their hope: to let it melt away in the swelling river of Hellenism would, they thought, be national suicide. Hence that mutual hatred of Jew and gentile which kept the little nation in a kind of undulating fever of racial strife, political turbulence, and periodic war. Moreover, the Jews of Judea scorned the people of Galilee as ignorant backsliders, and the Galileans scorned the Judeans as slaves caught in the cobwebs of the Law. Again, a perpetual feud burned between Judeans and Samaritans; for the latter claimed that their hill of Gerizim, and not Zion, had been chosen by Yahveh as his home, and they rejected all the Scriptures except the Pentateuch.18 All these factions agreed in hating the Roman power, which made them pay a heavy price for the unwelcome privilege of peace.
There were now in Palestine some 2,500,000 souls, of whom perhaps roo,ooo lived in Jerusalem.19 Most of them spoke Aramaic; priests and scholars understood Hebrew; officials and foreigners and most authors used Greek. The majority of the people were peasants, tilling and irrigating the soil, tending the orchard, the vine, and the flock. In the time of Christ Palestine grew enough wheat to export a modest surplus: 20 its dates, figs, grapes and olives, wine and oil were prized and bought throughout the Medi-
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP.XXV
terranean. The old command was still obeyed to let the land lie fallow in each sabbatical year.21 Handicrafts were largely hereditary and were usually organized in guilds. Jewish opinion honored the worker, and most scholars plied their hands as well as their tongues. Slaves were fewer than in any other Mediterranean country. Petty trade flourished, but there were as yet few Jewish merchants of large means and range. "We are not a commercial people," said Josephus; "we live in a country [eastern Judea] without a sea board, and have no inclination to [foreign] trade." 22 Financial operations were of minor scope until Hillel, perhaps at Herod's suggestion, abrogated the law of Deuteronomy ( 'V, 1-11) requiring the cancellation of debts every seventh year. The Temple itself was the national bank.
Within the Temple was the hall Gazith, meeting place of the Sanhedrin or Great Council of the Elders of Israel. Probably the institution arose in the period of Seleucid rule (ca. 100 B.c.), to replace the earlier council men, tioned in Numbers (xr, 16) as advising Moses. Originally selected by the high priest from the sacerdotal aristocracy, it had come in Roman times to co-opt into its membership a rising number of Pharisees and a few profes sional Scribes.23 These seventy-one men, under the presidency of the high priest, claimed supreme power over all Jews every""·here, and orthodox Jews everywhere acknowledged it; but the Hasmoneans, Herod, and Rome recognized their authority only in violations of Jewish law by a Judean Jew. They could pass sentence of death upon Jews in Judea for religious offenses, but could not execute it without confirmation by the civil power.24
In this assembly, as in most, two factions fought for predominance-a con servative group led by the higher priests and the Sadducees, and a liberal group led by Pharisees and Scribes. Most of the upper clergy and upper classes belonged to the Sadducees (Zadokim), so named after their founder Zadok; they were nationalistic in politics and orthodox in religion; they stood for the enforcement of the Torah or written Law, but rejected the additional ordinances of the oral tradition and the liberalizing interpretations of the Pharisees. They doubted immortality and were content to possess the good things of the eanh.
The Pharisees (Perusbim, separatists) were so named by the Sadducees as meaning that they separated themselves (like good Brahmans) from those who contracted religious impurity by neglecting the requirements of ritual cleanliness.25 They were a continuation of the Chasidim, or Devotees, of the Maccabean age, who had upheld the strictest application of the Law. Josephus, h½11 elf a Pharisee, defined them as •:a body of Jews who profess to be more religious than the rest, and to explam the laws more precisely." 26 For this purpose they added to the written Law of the Pentateuch the oral tradition of interpretations and decisions made by recognized teachers of the
CHAP. xxv)	ROME  AND  JUDEA	537
Law. These interpretations were necessary, in the judgment of the Phari sees, to clarify the obscurities of the Mosaic Code, to specify its application in particular cases, and to modify its letter, occasionally, in adaptation to the changed needs and conditions of life. They were at once rigorous and lenient, softening the Law here and there as in Hillel's decree on interest, but demanding the full observation of the oral tradition as well as of the Torah. Only through this full obedience, they felt, could the Jews escape assimilation and extinction. Reconciled to Roman domination, the Pharisees so;ight consolation in the hope of a physical and spiritual immortality. They lived simply, condemned luxury, fasted frequently, washed sedulously, and were now and then irritatingly conscious of their virtue; but they repre sented the moral strength of Judaism, won the middle classes to their support, and gave their followers a faith and rule that saved them from disintegration when catastrophe came. After the Temple was destroyed (A.D. 70), the priesthood lost influence, the Sadducees disappeared, the synagogue replaced the temple, and the Pharisees, through the rabbis, became the teachers and shepherds of a scattered but undefeated people.
The most extreme of the Jewish sects was that of the Essenes. They de rived their piety from the Chasidim, their name probably from the Chaldaic aschai (bather), their doctrine and practice from the stream of ascetic theory and regimen circulating through the world of the last century before Christ; possibly they were influenced by Brahmanic, Buddhist, Parsee, Pythagorean, and Cynic ideas that came to the crossroads of trade at Jerusalem. Number ing some 4000 in Palestine, they organized themselves into a distinct order, obsenred both the written and the oral Law with passionate exactitude, and lived together as almost monastic celibates tilling the soil in the oasis of Engadi amid the desen west of the Dead Sea. They dwelt in homes owned by their community, had their meals in common and in silence, chose their leaders by a general vote, mingled their goods and earnings in a common treasury, and obeyed the Chasidic motto, "Mine and thine belong to thee." 27 l\fany of them, says Josephus, "lived more than a hundred years because of their simple diet and regular life." 28 Each clothed himself in white linen, carried a little hoe to cover his droppings, washed himself like a Brahmin afterward, and considered it a sacrilege to evacuate on the Sabbath.29 A few of them married and lived in towns, but practiced the Tolstoian rule of co habiting with their wives only to beget children. The members of the sect avoided all sensual pleasure and sought through meditation and prayer a mystic union with God. They hoped that by piety, abstinence, and con templation they might acquire magic powers and foresee the future. Like most people of their time they believed in angels and demons, thought of diseases as possession by evil spirits, and tried to exorcise these by magical
538	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP.XXV
formulas; from their "secret doctrine" came some parts of the Cabala.30 They looked for the coming of a Messiah who would establish a ccmmunistic egalitarian Kingdom of Heaven (Malchuth Shamayim) on earth; into that Kingdom only those would enter who had led a spotless life.31 They were ardent pacifists and refused to make implements of war; but when the legions of Titus attacked Jerusalem and the Temple the Essenes joined other Jews in defending their city and its shrine and fought till nearly all of their order were dead. As Josephus describes their customs and their sufferings we enter into the atmosphere of Christianity:
Although they were tortured and racked, burnt and tom to pieces, and went through every torment to force them either to blaspheme their legislator, or to eat what was forbidden them, yet could they not be made to do either of them; no, nor once to flatter their tormentors, or to shed a tear. But they smiled in their very pains, and laughed those to scorn who tortured them, and gave up their souls in great cheerfulness, as expecting to receive them again.32
These-Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes-were the chief religious sects of Judea in the generation before Christ. The Scribes (Hakamin, learned) whom Jesus so often bracketed with the Pharisees were not a sect but a profession; they were scholars learned in the Law, who lectured on it in synagogues, taught it in schools, debated it in public and private, and ap plied it in judgment on specific cases. A few of them were priests, some were Sadducees, most were Pharisees; they were in the two centuries before Hillel what the rabbis were after him. They were the iurisprudentes of Judea, whose legal opinions, selected by time and transmitted by word of mouth from teacher to pupil, became part of that oral tradition which the Pharisees honored along with the written Law. Under their influence the Code of l\foses proliferated into thousands of detailed precepts designed to meet every circumstance.
The earliest definite figure among these lay teachers of the Law is that of Hillel, and even he is nearly lost in the web of legend that a fond posterity wove about his name. \Ve are told that he was born in Babylon (75 B.c.?) of a distinguished but impoverished family. He came as a grown man to Jerusalem, where he supported his wife and children by manual labor. Half his daily wage he paid for admission to the school where two famous masters, Shemaya and Abtolim, expounded the Law. Lacking the fee one day, and denied entry, he climbed upon a window sill "that he might hear the words of the living God." Frozen with the cold, story says, he fell into the snow and was found there half dead the next morning.33 He became in his rum a revered rabbi or teacher, renowned for his modesty, patience, and gentleness.
CHAP. xxv)	ROME  AND  JUDEA	539
One account tells how a man wagered he could anger Hillel, and lost.34 He laid down three principles for the guidance of life: love of man, of peace, and of the Law and the knowledge of it. When a would-be proselyte asked him to explain the Law in as little time as a man could stand on one foot, Hillel answered: "What is hateful to thyself do not do to another";35* it was a cautiously negative form of that Golden Rule which had long before been phrased positively in Leviticus. Again Hillel taught: "Judge not thy neighbor until thou art in his place." 37 He sought to quiet the quarreling sects by laying down seven rules for interpreting the Law. His own inter pretations were liberal; most notably, he facilitated the lending of money and the procurement of c!ivorce. He was a pacifier, not a reformer; "sepa rate not thyself from the congregation," he advised the young rebels of his day. He accepted Hercd as ::.n inescapable evil and was appointed by him president of the Sanhedrin (30 n.c.). Its Pharisean majority loved him so well that he remained head of the Great Council until his death (A.D. 10). Out of respect for his memory the office was made hereditary in his family for 400 years.
The Council gave its second place of honor to Hillel's rival, the conserva tive rabbi Shammai. He taught a much stricter interpretation of the Law, rejected divorce, and demanded the literal application of the Torah,
regardless of new conditions. This division of Jewish teachers into con servative and liberal groups had existed for a century before Hillel, and con tinued until the destruction of the Temple.
THE GREAT EXPECTATION
The Jewish literature that has come down to us from this period is almost entirely religious. Just as it seemed to the orthodox Hebrew a profanation to make images of the deity, or to adorn his temples with plastic art, so it seemed to him an error to write philosophy or literature for any other ulti mate purpose than to praise God and glorify the Law. There were of course many exceptions, of which the pretty story of Susannah may serve as an instance. It tells of a fair Jewess falsely accused of unchastity by two unsatis fied elders, and freed through the skillful cross-examination of witnesses by a youth named Daniel. Even this romance found its way into some editions of the Book of Daniel.


57°	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XXVI
peal to the people, "the whole throng of his disciples" greeted him with the words, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord"; and when some Pharisees asked him to reprove this salutation, he answered, "I tell you, if they keep silence, the stones will cry out." 120 The Fourth Gospel reports that the crowd hailed him as "King of Israel." 121 Apparently his followers still thought of him as a political Messiah, who would overthrow the Roman power and make Judea supreme. It was these acclamations that doomed Christ to a revolutionist's death.
DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION
The Feast of the Passover was at hand, and great numbers of Jews were gathering in Jerusalem to offer sacrifice in the Temple. The outer court of the shrine was noisy with vendors selling doves and other sacrificial animals, and with money-changers offering locally acceptable currency for the idolatrous coins of the Roman realm. Visiting the Temple on the day after his entry into the city, Jesus was shocked by the clamor and commercial ism of the booths. In a burst of indignation he and his followers overthrew the tables of the money-changers and the dove merchants, scattered their coins on the ground, and with "a scourge of rods" drove the traders from the court. For several days thereafter he taught in the Temple, unhin dered; 122 but at night he left Jerusalem and stayed on the Mount of Olives, fearing arrest or assassination.
The agents of the government-civil and ecclesiastical, Roman and Jew ish-had kept watch on him probably from the time when he had taken up the mission of John the Baptist. His failure to secure a large following had inclined them to ignore him; but his enthusiastic reception in Jerusalem seems to have set the Jewish leaders wondering whether this excitement, working upon the emotional and patriotic Passo-ver throncrs, micrht flare up into an untimely and futile revolt against the Roman piwer, ;nd issue in the suppression of all self-government and religious freedom in Judea. The high priest called a eeting of the Sa hedrin, and expressed the opinion "that one man should die for the people, mstead of the whole nation beino destroyed." 123 The majority agreed with him, and the Council ordered th: arrest of Christ.
Some news of this dec sion_see s to have reached Jesus, perhaps through members of the Sanhedrin mmonty. On the fourteenth day of the Jewish month of Nisan (our April third), probably in the year 30,* Jesus and his
" There is much dispute about the duration of Christ's mission, anJ rhe year of his death.
\Ve ha\'e seen Luke dating Christ's baptism in the year 28-29. The chronology of Paul, as based
CHAP. XXVI)	JESUS	571
apostles ate the Seder, or Passover supper, in the home of a friend in Jerusa lem. They looked to the Master to free himself by his miraculous powers; he, on the contrary, accepted his fate, and perhaps hoped that his death would be received by God as a sacrificial atonement for the sins of his peo ple.124 He had been informed that one of the Twelve was conspiring to betray him; and at this last supper he openly accused Judas Iscariot.* In accord with Jewish ritual Jesus blessed (in Greek, eucharistisae) the wine
that he gave the apostles to drink; and then they sang together the Jewish ritual song Hallel.121He told them, says John, that he would be with them
"only a little longer.... Igive you a new command: Love one another.
. . . Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God and believe in me. In my Father's house are many mansions ...  I go to prepare a place for you." 128 It seems quite credible that in so solemn a moment he should ask them to repeat this supper periodically (as Jewish custom required), in commemoration of him; and not improbable that, with Oriental intensity of feeling and imagery, he asked them to think of the bread they ate as his body, and of the wine they drank as his blood.
That night, we are told, the little band hid in the Garden of Gethsemane, outside Jerusalem. There a detachment of Temple 129 police found them, and arrested Jesus. He was taken first to the house of Annas, a former high priest, then to that of Caiaphas; according to Mark the "Council"-prob ably a committee of the Sanhedrin-had already gathered there. Various witnesses testified against him, especially recalling his threat to destroy the Temple. ¼"hen Caiaphas asked him whether he was "the Messiah, the Son of God," Jesus is reported to have answered "I am he." 130 In the morning the Sanhedrin met, found him guilty of blasphemy (then a capital crime), and decided to bring him before the Roman procurator, who had come to Jerusalem to keep an eye on the Passover crowds.
Pontius Pilate was a hard man, who would later be summoned to Rome, accused of extortion and cruelty,131 and removed from office. Nevertheless, it did not seem to him that this mild-mannered preacher was a real danger to the state. Almost playfully he asked Jesus, "Are you the King of the Jews?" According to Matthew 132 Jesus answered, "Yes." Such details, re ported presumably from hearsay and long after the event, must be held suspect; if we accept the text we must conclude that Jesus had resolved to die, and that Paul's theory of atonement had some support in Christ. John
upan his own statements in Galatians 1-n, the chronology of the procurators who tried him, and the tradition of his death in 64. apparently require the dating of Paul's conversion in 31. Cf. Chapter XXVII.
Many arguments have been raised against the story of Judas,125 but they are uncon
Yincing.1211
572	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XXVI
quotes Jesus as adding: "For this I was born . . . to give testimony for the truth." "What is truth?" asked the procurator 133-a question perhaps due to the metaphysical propensities of the Fourth Gospel, but well re vealing the chasm between the sophisticated and cynical culture of the Roman and the warm and trustful idealism of the Jew. In any case, after Oirist's confession, the law required conviction, and Pilate reluctantly is sued the sentence of death.
Crucifixion was a Roman, not a Jewish, form of punishment. It was usu ally preceded by scourging, which, carried out thoroughly, left the body a mass of swollen and bloody flesh. The Roman soldiers crowned Christ with a wreath of thorns, mocking his royalty as "King of the Jews," and placed upon his cross an inscription in Aramaic, Greek, and Latin: Jesus N azarathaeus Rex Ioudaeorunz. \Vhether or not Christ was a revolutionist he was obviously condemned as one by Rome; Tacitus, too, understood the matter so.134 A small crowd, such as could gather in Pilate's courtyard, had called for Christ's execution; now, however, as he climbed the hill of Gol gotha, "he was followed by a great crowd of the people," says Luke,135 and of women who beat their breasts and mourned for him. Quite clearly the condemnation d d not have the approval of the Jewish people.
All who cared to witness the horrible spectacle were free to do so; the Romans, who thought it necessary to rule by terror, chose, for capital offenses by other than Roman citizens, what Cicero called "the most cruel and hideous of 'tortures." 136 The offender's hands and feet were bound (seldom nailed) to the wood; a projecting block supported the backbone or the feet; unless mercifully killed, the victim would linger there for two or three days, suffering the agony of immobility, unable to brush away the insects that fed upon his naked flesh, and slowly losing strength until the heart failed and brought an end. Even the Romans sometimes pitied the vic tim, and offered him a stupefying drink. The cross, we are told, was raised "at the third hour"-i.e., at nine in the morning. Mark reports th:it two robbers were crucified with Jesus, and "reviled him"; 137 Luke assures us that one of them prayed to him.133 Of all the apostles only John was present; with him were three Marys-Christ's mother, her sister 1\1ary, and Mary Magdalene; "there were also some women watching from a dis tance." 139 Follo ng the Roman cu tom,140 the soldiers divided the gar ments of the dymg men; and as Chnst had but one, they cast lots for it. Possibly we have here an interpolated remembrance of Psalm xxu, 18: "They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture." The same Psalm begins with the words: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"-and this is the desperately human utterance that Mark and Matthew attribute to the dying Christ. Can it be that in those bitter moments the
CHAP, XXVI)	JESUS	573
great faith that had sustained him before Pilate faded into black doubt? Luke, perhaps finding such words repugnant to the theology of Paul, substi tutes for them: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit"-which in tum echoes Psalm xxx1, 5 with suspicious accuracy.
A soldier, pitying Christ's thirst, held up to his mouth a sponge soaked in sour wine. Jesus drank, and said, "It is consummated." At the ninth hour


CHAP. I)	ETRUSCAN  PRELUDE	15
Taking a census of persons and property, he classified the citizens according to wealth rather than birth, so that while leaving the old aristocracy intact, he raised up as a balance to it a class of equites, literally, horsemen-men who could equip themselves with horse (equus) and armor to serve in the cav alry.* The census reported some 80,000 persons capable of bearing arms; reckoning one woman and one child for each soldier, and a slave for every fourth family, we may estimate at 260,000 the population of Rome and its subject environs about 560 B.c. Servius divided the people into thirty-five new tribes, arranging them according to place of residence rather than kin• ship or rank; thereby, like Cleisthenes a generation later in Attica, he weak ened the political cohesion and voting power of the aristocracy-the class that rated itself supreme by birth. When another T arquin, grandson of Tarquinius Priscus, charged Servius with ruling illegally, he submitted him self to a plebiscite and received, says Livy, "a unanimous vote." 42 Uncon vinced, Tarquin had Servius assassinated, and announced himself king.t
Under Tarquinius Superbus ("the Proud") the monarchy became abso
lute, and Etruscan influence supreme. The patricians had thought of the rex as the executive of the Senate and chief priest of the national religion; they could not long consent to unlimited royal power. Therefore they had killed Tarquinius Priscus and had raised no hand to protect Servius. But this new Tarquin was worse than the first. He surrounded himself with a bodyguard, degraded freemen with months of forced labor, had citizens crucified in the Forum, put to death many leaders of the upper classes, and ruled with an insolent brutality that won him the hatred of all influential men.44 :j: Think ing to gain popularity by successful wars, he attacked the Ruruli and the Volscians. While he was with the army the Senate assembled and deposed him (508 B.c.), in one of the great turning points of Roman history.
THE  BIRTH OF THE REPUBLIC
Here the tradition becomes literature, and the prose of politics is fused into the poetry Qf love. One evening (says Livy), in the King's camp at
As originally applied to cavalrymen, the tenn could bear the traditional English mis translation into knights; but equites soon lost this early sense, and came to mean the uppe,: middle, or business, class.
t Few students are inclined to follow the extreme skepticism of Ettore Pais, who rejectS as legendary all Roman history before 443 B.c., and believes that the two Tarquins were one person, who never existed.43 A tentative and modified acceptance of the traditional story after Romulus appears to "account for the phenomena" better than any other hypothesis.
:I: The  traditional account of the Tarquins is probably darkened by aristocratic and anti
EtrUScan propaganda. The history of early Rome was written chiefly by representatives or admirers of the patrician class, just as the history of the emperors was later written by sena torial partisans like Tacitus.
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. I
Ardea, his son, Sextus T arquin, was debating with a relative, Lucius Tar quinius Collatinus, the comparative virtue of their wives. Collatinus pro posed that they should take horse to Rome and surprise their ladies in the late hours of the night. They found the wife of Sextus feasting with intimates, but Lucretia, wife of Collatinus, was spinning wool for her husband's cloth ing. Sextus was inflamed with desire to try Lucretia's fidelity and enjoy her love. A few days later he returned secretly to the home of Lucretia and overcame her by wile and force. Lucretia sent for her father and her hus-
: band, told them what had happened, and then stabbed herself to death. Thereupon Lucius Junius Brutus, a friend of Collatinus, called upon all good men to drive the Tarquins from Rome. He himself was a nephew of the King; but his father and his brother had been put to death by Tarquin, and he had gained his cognomen Brutus-i.e., idiot-by pretending lunacy so that he might be spared for his revenge. Now he rode with Collatinus to the capital, told Lucretia's story to the Senate, and persuaded it to banish all the royal family. The King had meanwhile left the army and hurried to Rome; Brutus, apprised of this, rode out to the army, told Lucretia's story again, and won the soldiers' support. Tarquin fled north, and appealed to Etruria to restore him to his throne.45 *
An assembly of the citizen-soldiers was now convened; and instead of a
king chosen for life it elected two consuls,t with equal and rival powers, to rule for a year. These first consuls, says the tradition, were Brutus and Col latinus; but Collatinus resigned, and was replaced by Publius Valerius, who won the name Publicola-"friend of the people"-by putting through the Assembly several laws that remained basic in Rome: that any man who should try to make himself king might be killed without trial; t:hat any at tempt to take a public office without the people's consent should be punish able with death; and that any citizen condemned by a magistrate to death or flogging should have the right of appeal to the Assembly. It was Valerius who inaugurated the custom whereby a consul, upon entering the Assembly, must part the axes from the rods and lower them as a sign of the people's sovereignty and sole right, in peace, to impose a sentence of death.
The revolution had two main results: it freed Rome from Etruscan as cendancy and replaced the monarchy with an aristocracy that ruled Rome until Caesar. The political position of the poorer citizens was not improved; on the contrary, they were required to surrender the lands that Servius had given them, and they lost the modest measure of protection with which the
Most students since Niebuhr consign Lucretia to legend and Shakespeare. We do not know where history retires and poetry enters. Some have thought even Brurus to be legend;46 but here, again, skepticism has probably gone too far.
t Or, says another tradition, two praetors or generals.
•,'	I
r-.:,.··/'°;'
.,,'
Fie. 3-H ead of a lVoman
From an Etruscan tomb at Corneto
FrG. 4-Apo/fo of Veii
Villa di Papa Giulio, Rome


12	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. I
miles to the northwest and founded the most famous of man's habitations. This hazardously hypothetical paragraph contains all that history dares say about the origin of Rome. Bur Roman tradition was not so parsimonious. When the Gauls burned the city in 390 B.C. most historical records were pre
sumably destroyed, and thereafter patriotic fancy could paint a free picture 1 of Rome's birth. What we should call April 22, 753 B.c., was given as the date, and events were reckoned A.U.C.-anno urbis conditae-"in the year from the city's foundation." A hundred tales and a thousand poems told how Aeneas, offspring of Aphrodite-Venus, had fled from burning Troy, and how, after suffering many lands and men, he had brought to Italy the gods or 'sacred effigies of Priam's city. Aeneas had married Lavinia, daughter of the king of Latium; and eight generations later their descendant Numitor, said the story, held the throne of AlbaLonga, Latium's capital. A usurper, Amul ius, expelled Numitor and, to end the line of Aeneas, killed Numitor's sons and forced his only daughter, Rhea Silvia, to become a priestess of Vesta, vowed to virginity. Bur Rhea lay down by the banks of a stream and "opened
her bosom to catch the breeze." 29 Too trustful of gods and men, she fell
asleep; Mars, overcome with her beauty, left her rich with twins. Amulius ordered these to be drowned. They were placed on a raft, which kind waves carried to the land; they were suckled by a she-wolf (lupa) or-said a skep tical variant-by a shepherd's wife, Acea Larcntia, nicknamed Lupa be cause, like a wolf's, her love-making knew no law. When Romulus and Remus grew up they killed Amulius, restored Numitor, and went resolutely forth to build a kingdom for themselves on the hills of Rome.
Archeology offers no confirmation to these stories of our youth; prob ably they contain a core of truth. Perhaps the Latins sent a colony to develop Rome as a strategic moat against the expanding Etruscans. The site was twenty miles from the sea, and not well adapted to maritime commerce; but in those days of marauding pirates it was an advantage to be a bit inland. For internal trade Rome was well placed at the crossroads of traffic on the river and the land route between north and south. It was not a healthy location; rains, floods, and springs fed malarial marshes in the surrounding plain and even in the lower levels of the city; hence the popularity of the seven hills. The first of these to be settled, tradition said, was the Palatine, possibly because an island near its foot made easier there the fording and bridging of the Tiber. One by one the neighboring slopes were peopled, until the human overflow crossed the river and built upon the Vatican and Janiculum.* The three tribes-Latins, Sabines, and Etruscans-that dwelt on the hills joined in
There were more than seven of these modest elevations in Rome, and the "seven" varied from time to time. In Cicero's day they were the Palatine, Capitoline, Caelian, Esquiline, Aventine, Viminal, and Quirinal.
'
CHAP. I)	ETRUSCAN  PRELUDE	13
a federation, the Septimontium, and slowly merged into the city of Rome. The ancient story goes on to tell how Romulus, to secure wives for his settlers, arranged some public games and invited the Sabines and other tribes to attend. During the races the Romans seized the Sabine women and drove off the Sabine men. Titus T atius, King of the Sabine Curites tribe, declared war and advanced upon Rome. Tarpeia, daughter of the Roman who had charge of a fortress on the Capitoline, opened a gate to the invaders. They crushed her with their shields in fair recompense; and later generations gave her name to that "T arpeian Rock" from which condemned men were hurled to death. As the troops of T atius neared the Palatine, the Sabine women, not insensitive to the compliment of capture, secured an armistice on the plea that they would lose their husbanqs if the Curites won, and their brothers or fathers if the Curites lost. Romulus persuaded T arius to share the kingdom with him and join his tribe vvith the Latins in a common citizenship; there
{lfter the freemen of Rome were called Curites or Quirites.30 There may again
be some elements of truth in this wholesale romance-or perhaps it patrioti cally concealed a Sabine conquest of Rome.
After a long reign Romulus was lifted up to heaven in a whirlwind, there after to be worshiped as Quirinus, one of Rome's favorite gods. Tatius too having died, the heads of the more important families chose a Sabine, Numa Pompilius, as king. Probably the real power of government, between the foundation of the city and the Etruscan domination, was in the hands of these elders, or senatores, while the functions of the king, like those of the archon basileus in coeval Athens, were chiefly those of the highest priest.31 Tradition pictured Numa as a Sabine Marcus Aurelius, at once philosopher and saint. "He strove," says Livy,
to inculcate fear of the gods as the most powerful influence that could act upon ... a barbarous people. But as this effort would fail to impress them without some claim to supernatural wisdom, he pre tended that he had nocturnal interviews with the divine nymph Egeria; and that it was on her advice that he was instituting the religious ritual most acceptable to Heaven, and was appointing special priests for each major deity.32
By establishing a uniform worship for the diverse tribes of Rome, Numa strengthened the unity and stability of the state;33 by interesting the bellicose
Romans in religion, Cicero thought, Numa gave his people forty -years of Peace.34
His successor, Tullus Hostilius, restored to the Romans their normal life. "Convinced that the vigor of the state was becoming enfeebled through in action, he looked around for a pretext for war.".% He chose Rome's mother
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. I
city, Alba Longa, as an enemy, attacked it, and completely destroyed it. When the Alban king broke a promise of alliance, T ullus had him tied to two chariots and tom to pieces by driving the chariots in opposite direc tions.36 His successor, Ancus Martius, agreed with his martial philosophy; Ancus understood, according to Dio Cassius,
that it is not sufficient for men who wish to remain at peace to re frain from wrongdoing . . . but the more one longs for peace the more vulnerable one becomes. He saw that a desire for quiet was not a power for protection unless accompanied by equipment for war; he perceived also that delight in freedom from foreign broils very quickly ruined men who were tinduly enthusiastic o er it.37
THE  ETRUSCA.  DOMINATION
About 65 5 B.c., proceeds the tradition, Demaratus, a rich merchant ban ished from Corinth, came to live in Tarquinii, and married an Etruscan woman.38 His son Lucius Tarquinius migrated to Rome, rose to high position there, and, on the death of Ancus, either seized the throne or, more probably, was chosen to it by a coalition of Etruscan families in the city. "He was the first," says Livy, "who canvassed for the crown, and delivered a set speech to secure the support of the plebs" 39-i.e., those citizens who could not trace their ancestry to the founding fathers. Under this Tarquinius Priscus the monarchy increased its power over the aristocracy, and Etruscan influence grew in Roman politics, engineering, religion, and art. Tarquin fought suc cessfully agf. nst the Sabines, and subjugated all Latium. He used the re sources of Rome, we are told, to adorn T arquinii and other Etruscan cities, but also he brought Etmscan and Greek artists to his capital and beautified it with majestic temples.* Apparently he represented the growing power of business and finance against the landed aristocracy.
After a reign of thirty-eight years the first Tarquin was assassinated by the patricians, who aimed to limit the kingship again to a religious role. But Tarquin's widow, Tanaquil, took charge of the situation and was able to transmit the throne to her son Servius Tullius. Servius, says Cicero, was the first "to hold the royal power without being chosen by the people" 41-i.e., by the leading families. He governed well, and built a protective moat and wall around Rome; but the great landowners resented his rule and plotted to unseat him. Consequently he allied himself with the richer members of the plebs, and reorganized the army and the voters to strengthen his position.
4 Perhaps also he cleansed it with sewers. Roman historians ascribed to him the Cloaca
Maxima, or Supreme Sewer; but some scholars reserve this honor for the second century B.c.40