Evelyn Shirley Shuckburgh

“ To sea-going folk like the Greeks, who for many generations had been sending off swarms of their kindred in search of fresh homes in distant lands, its recitation must have stirred the imagination and roused curiosity in a hundred ways; and the descent of the hero to Hades is the earliest view we have of the vague terror of the hereafter, which has inevitably been encountered sooner or later by all peoples whose minds have in any way been roused to speculate on the mystery of life and death. ”

“ Scatter it from our soul, oh Father, and grant that we attain unto wisdom, whereby thou rulest all things aright, that so being honoured, we may requite thee with honour, hymning thy works for ever, as beseemeth a mortal man: for to none on earth is there nobler task, nor to those in heaven, than rightfully to hymn the Universal Law! ”

“ The religion of Stoicism contained practically the doctrine of Monotheism. One God, of infinite purity, was the origin of all things, existing independently, and furnishing the vital principle which quickened dead matter. In another point of view it is a doctrine of Pantheism—God is everything and everything is God. Providence is not idle, but watches over and directs the universe according to fixed laws and destiny. The human soul, connected with the world-soul, is infused into the body, has a distinct existence and form, and is separated from the body by death. ”

“ Though we cannot suppose that ordinary people would reason with such refinement upon the effect of education, it was some such theory that unconsciously influenced the Greek view of its significance. But for the boys who looked forward to playing an important part in public life—generally the sons of wealthier parents—there was something else needed. In a democracy like that of Athens—and in varying degrees in other states—the only method of attaining power was to persuade the people, and to do that there was need of eloquence, the faculty of putting a case clearly and attractively. ”

“ The soul was a function of the body and with the body dissolved at death. In death, therefore, there were no terrors, "for as long as we are death is not with us, and when death comes then we are not." ”

“ THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF GREECE
Greek education—Grammar, music and gymnastics—The Sophists—The philosophical schools—Literature—Epic, lyric and dramatic poetry—Alexandrine poets, epic and bucolic—History—Oratory. The value attached by the Greeks to education is manifested in many ways. There was no duty which was regarded as of more sacred obligation in a parent than to provide for the education of his children. In some states, such as Sparta, it was taken out of his hands and made the care of the whole community. ”

“ When they got in they found Protagoras walking round the cloistered court, with a number of the most distinguished young Athenians walking in line with him on either hand, while a crowd of other young men followed respectfully behind, whom the charm of his eloquence had drawn from the several cities he had visited to follow him. Socrates was amused to notice how neatly the crowd managed never to get in front of him. ”

“ The need of training in rhetoric was therefore very general. This was supplied by a class of teachers who made it their business to instruct young men after they had left school. They came from various parts of Greece, and lectured in various cities, but Athens attracted those of greatest eminence, and their lecture-rooms to a certain extent filled the place of a university. Though rhetoric was the most prominent subject of their teaching, some of them professed to give instruction in ethics and politics also, and they were known generally by the name of Sophists, or Professors of Wisdom. ”

“ It is virtue, therefore, which is alone choice-worthy for its own sake and without regard to fear or hope or anything external to itself. Virtue again is one; wisdom, self-control, justice, courage are only various exhibitions of it. The contraries to these are all included in vice, which, like virtue, is one. There is no middle term. An action is good or bad. All other things affecting men are indifferent (ἀδιάφορα) , such as life and death, honour and dishonour, labour and pleasure, wealth and poverty, health and sickness. ”

“ The next class of Greek literature, of which we have any considerable fragments, is that of the Lyric and Elegiac poets from the seventh century. Lyrical poetry is poetry meant to be sung to music, and it is naturally more personal and fervent than other kinds of verse. But this fervour was of two kinds—that of passion, and that of political excitement. To the former class belong the poems of Sappho of Lesbos (about B.C. 610) , of whom, besides some less important, there remain two considerable fragments which are marvellously beautiful both in language and in the passion that inspires them. ”

“ One tradition represented him as a lame schoolmaster, whom the Athenians contemptuously sent to Sparta in answer to an appeal for help, and who turned out to be the greatest benefit they could have sent for the spirit which his verses inspired in the Spartan youth. The poems either aim at making the Spartans proud of their country and its customs, or exhort the young men to gallantry. “The most desirable death is that which comes in the forefront of the fight, if the youth wishes to be praised of men and loved of women. He dies, but lives for ever: he is mourned and honoured by old and young. ”

“ For so hast thou yoked together evil with good that order ariseth therefrom, one, eternal. But the wicked will have none of it. Miserable men! they ever yearn to possess the good, yet look not on the impartial law of God, nor hearken thereto, which, if they would obey it, would give them good life. Whereas of their own act they rush upon evil, one with another, some seeking glory with ill-starred rivalry, some set on gain heedless of right or wrong, some given over to loose living and the pleasures of the body. ”

“ The well-known fable of the "Choice of Hercules," in which virtue and vice describe to the young hero the two paths of life which they alternately urge him to take, is preserved in the Memorabilia of Xenophon.
As these Sophists depended for their living on the power to draw large classes of young men in the various cities which they visited, they had not only to embellish their discourses with such attractive episodes, but to study to make their style and language striking, novel, or ornate. ”

“ Popular law courts involve the same necessity. In Athens, for instance, the jury consisted of some five hundred men. To address them successfully implied something of the same qualities as those possessed by a popular leader. Everywhere in Greece, therefore, we find professional teachers of the art of speech. No subject was more often professed by the Sophists, but of scientific treatises on its principles—represented by the general term Rhetoric (ῥητορικὴ τέχνη) , we have of the classical age only that of Aristotle. Of the actual products of the art—speeches—we have somewhat more. ”

“ The greatest importance was attached to this branch of education. Music was believed to soften and humanise the soul, as well as to inspire it with noble and lofty emotions, and in the representations of the interior of schools which survive on pottery, no scene is more frequent than that of boys practising on a lyre or flute with a master facing them and giving them instructions. ”

“ One of the two considerable extracts that survive contains a catalogue of the miseries of man—his helplessness in the presence of fate, his baffled hopes, the brevity of his life and the various accidents that bring it to an end. ”

“ In the tragedies of Aeschylus the chorus plays a much more conspicuous part than in those of Sophocles, and still more so than in Euripides. In form, however, the plays are, roughly, on the same model, but the poets differ considerably in style and in their view of life, of duty, and providence. Yet there are certain characteristics common to all three arising chiefly from the peculiar circumstances of their age. Thus they are all affected by the rising need and use of oratory. In every play speeches delivered either by the persons chiefly affected, or by some messenger describing the catas ”

“ The earliest literature which formed the staple of the education described above consisted of the Homeric poems and the Epic cycle, which not only served later poets as an inexhaustible store-house of legend and myth, but was regarded by the Greeks generally as the source of their knowledge of the antiquities and early history of their country, and the most authoritative exposition of religion. ”

“ If he plays the coward, shame covers him, and life is a misery : he must wander forth a beggar with wife and child, loathed and contemned by all.”
The poems of Solon (c. B.C. 620–560) are more peaceful and political, though the earliest is an exhortation to the Athenians to secure by arms the island of Salamis. In the later ones, however, his chief themes are the beauty and advantage of good order and government, and the problem of reconciling them with freedom, the danger of wealth and corruption, the superiority of virtue to vice, of moderation to pride and presumption. ”

“ This view of education is put by Plato into the mouth of a great teacher—Protagoras:—
"When children have learnt to read and understand the written, as well as they do the spoken word, schoolmasters set before them for reading aloud poems of good writers, and compel them to learn them by heart. These poems contain much moral instruction, many narratives, panegyrics, and encomiums upon brave men of old, that the child may be roused to emulation of their virtues and yearn to become like them. ”

“ Though the Eumenides, from which this last extract is taken, had a narrower and more local object, namely, to support the prestige and authority of the Areopagus, it contains, like the other plays of the Trilogy, reiterated statements of a lofty faith in the justice of providence, in the punishment of sin and presumptuous pride, and in the eternal laws of right and wrong. It is the Prometheus that shows us the poet touched by the philosophic or rationalistic movement. Prometheus represents humanity struggling with the inequalities and injustice of the divine rule of the world. ”

“ The reason of the women's objection to the marriage is hardly expressed, but force is wrong, the abandonment of suppliants is a breach of religion, and the Divine punishment of both is certain:
In the Persians, again, which represents the horror with which news of the defeat of Xerxes at Salamis is received in Persia, what the poet cares for most is to show the punishment of pride and presumption, and of the sacrilege committed by burning the temples in Greece. Xerxes, though a mortal, expected to be able to defy the gods. ”

“ He describes the sun which makes the lower world light to its inhabitants, the meadows with their bright flowers and golden fruits, and the spirits engaged in the games or exercises in which they took pleasure on earth, cheered by music, rich banquets, fragrant odours, and burnt sacrifices. ”

“ He wrote treatises on nearly every subject—on ethics, rhetoric, poetry, politics, metaphysics, and many branches of physics. These treatises have formed the basis of modern advances in philosophy and science, and have therefore profoundly influenced the best intellects of all ages. Still this school did not immediately affect society in the same way as the two next schools founded at Athens, which long retained their head- quarters there—the Epicureans and the Stoics. ”

“ The only outlet for the energies of active young men seems to be now the career of a mercenary soldier in the service of some of the successors of Alexander the Great. The picture of social and domestic life is not otherwise unkindly, and though there are the conventional gibes at women and marriage, there is a manifest appreciation of family confidence and purity. The parasite, or needy hanger-on, is an almost invariable feature in these plays, performing a part something between those of the chorus and the “messengers” in the old plays. ”

“ Antigone is altogether great in affection and courage; Tecmessa shows touching loyalty and devotion to her husband; and Neoptolemus, though persuaded by the cunning of Odysseus to enter upon an ungenerous intrigue, in the end retrieves his good name and proves the real nobility of his nature. Of love scenes in the modern sense there is little or nothing in the tragedians. Nearest to the picture of a lover, as we regard him, is perhaps Hæmon in the Antigone of Sophocles. ”

“ Thus compelling the principles of rhythm and harmony to sink into their souls, that the children may be more cultivated, and becoming imbued with the principles of true rhythm and harmony, may be effective in speech and action alike. For a man's life needs always to be rhythmical and harmonious. ”

“ The scene is dramatic, yet it doubtless represents in its main features the sort of thing which occurred when famous Sophists visited a Greek city. The welcome that philosophers found at Athens—tempered by peremptory expulsion if their tenets were regarded as dangerous—tended to make it the natural home of philosophy and gradually to become a kind of university, to which young men resorted to complete their education. ”

“ The first principles of morality and religion were the business of the mother, nurse, or paidagogos—the slave who, in most houses, was especially attached to the service of the children, taking them to school and guarding them from evil company. ”

“ Though the equality of all breaches of duty would seem to make social and political institutions useless, yet Stoics were encouraged to enter into ordinary life and business, for they alone are capable of true brotherhood and the highest social life. ”

“ The political purpose of these speeches has already been noted. As literature they mark the highest point in the development of a Greek prose style. Clear, incisive, and harmonious, the language at once pleases the ear and flashes the meaning upon the mind. The art is so great that it is entirely concealed ”