The Story of Civilization
Page 73
What language is adequate to praise all the works of Providence? ... If we had sense, ought we to be doing anything else, publicly or privately, than hymning and praising the Deity, and rehearsing his benefits? Ought we not, as we dig and plow and eat, to sing a hymn of praise to God? . . . What then?—since most of you have become blind, ought there not to be someone to fulfill this office for you, and in behalf of all sing hymns of praise to God? 38
Though we have here no word for immortality, and can trace all these ideas back to the Stoics and the Cynics, we find in these pages remarkable parallels to many attitudes of early Christianity. Epictetus, indeed, sometimes advances beyond Christianity: he denounces slavery, condemns capital punishment, and wishes to have criminals treated as sick men.39 He advocates a daily examination of conscience 40 and announces a kind of Golden Rule: “What you shun to suffer, do not make others suffer”;41 and he adds: “If a man is reported to have spoken ill of you, make no defense, but say, “He did not know the rest of my faults, else he would not have mentioned only these.”42 He advises men to return good for evil,43 and to “submit when reviled”;44 to fast now and then and “abstain from the things you desire.”45 Sometimes he speaks of the body with the blasphemous contempt of an unscoured anchorite: “The body is of all things the most unpleasant and most foul. ... It is astonishing that we should love a thing to which we perform such strange services every day. I fill this bag, and then I empty it; what is more troublesome?”46 There are passages that breathe the piety of Augustine and the eloquence of Newman: “Use me henceforward, O God, as thou wilt; I am of one mind with thee. I am thine. I ask exemption from nothing that seems good in thy sight. Where thou wilt, lead me; in what raiment thou wilt, clothe me.”47 And like Jesus he bids his disciples take no care of the morrow:
To have God as our maker, father, and guardian—shall not this suffice to keep us from grief and fear? And wherewithal shall I be fed, asks one, if I have nothing? But what shall we say of . . . the animals, every one of which is sufficient to itself, and lacks neither its own proper food nor that way of life which is appropriate to it, and in harmony with nature? 48
Is it any wonder that Christians like Saint John Chrysostom and Augustine lauded him, and that his Encheiridion was adopted, with minor changes, as a rule and guide for the monastic life?49 Who knows but that Epictetus had read in some form the sayings of Jesus and was, without knowing it, a convert to Christianity?
IV. LUCIAN AND THE SKEPTICS
Nevertheless, in this final stage of Hellenistic culture, there were skeptics who recalled all the doubts of Protagoras, and a Lucian who laughed at belief with the insolence of Aristippus and almost Plato’s charm. The school of Pyrrho was not dead; Aenesidemus of Cnossus rephrased its denials in the Alexandria of our first century, by propounding the famous “Ten Modes” (tropoi), or contradictions, that made knowledge impossible.II Towards the end of the second century Sextus Empiricus, of unknown date or place, gave the skeptical philosophy its final formulation in several destructive volumes of which three survive. Sextus takes all the world for his enemy; he divides philosophers into diverse species and slays each breed in turn. He writes with the vigor necessary to an executioner, the good order and clarity characteristic of ancient philosophy, occasional sarcastic humor, and much dreary chopping of logic.
To every argument, says Sextus, an equal argument can be opposed, so that in the end there is nothing so superfluous as reasoning. Deduction is untrustworthy unless based upon complete induction; but complete induction is impossible, for we can never tell when a “negative instance” will turn up.51 “Cause” is merely a regular antecedent (as Hume would repeat), and all knowledge is relative.52 Similarly there is no objective good or evil; morality changes across every frontier,53 and virtue has a different definition in every age. All the arguments of the nineteenth century against the possibility of knowing whether God exists or not are stated here, and all the contradictions between benevolent omnipotence and worldly suffering.54 But Sextus is a more complete agnostic than the agnostics, for he affirms that we cannot know that we cannot know; agnosticism is a dogma.55 But, he consoles us, we do not need certainty. Probability is enough for all practical purposes, and the suspension of judgment (epoché, holding back; aphasia, saying nothing) in philosophical questions, instead of disturbing the mind, brings it a careless peace (ataraxia).56 Meanwhile, since nothing is certain, let us accept the conventions and beliefs of our time and place, and modestly worship our ancient gods.57
Lucian would have belonged to the Skeptic school if he had been so unwise as to fetter his judgment with a label. Like Voltaire, whom he resembled in all but pity, he wrote philosophy so brilliantly that no one supposed that he was writing philosophy. As if to show the spread of Hellenism, he was born at Samosata, in distant Commagene; “I am a Syrian from the Euphrates,” he said; his native tongue was Syriac, his blood probably Semitic.58 He was apprenticed to a sculptor, but deserted to a rhetor. After a stay in Antioch practicing law he took to the road as a “dependent scholar,” living by lecturing, especially in Rome and Gaul; then (A.D. 165) he settled down in Athens. In his later years he was rescued from poverty by the pious but tolerant Marcus Aurelius, who appointed the irreverent skeptic to an official post in Egypt. There, at a date unknown, he died.
Time has preserved seventy-six of Lucian’s little books, and many of them are as fresh and pertinent today as when he read them to friends and audiences eighteen centuries ago. He tried his hand at a variety of forms, until he found a congenial medium in the dialogue. His Dialogues of the Hetairai were free enough to win a large audience. But at least in his works he is more absorbed in the gods than in courtesans; he is never through mishandling them. “When I was a boy,” says his Menippus, “and heard the tales of Homer and Hesiod about the gods—adulterous gods, rapacious gods, violent, litigious, incestuous gods—I found it all quite proper and, indeed, was intensely interested. When, however, I came to man’s estate I observed that the laws flatly contradicted the poets, forbidding adultery and rapacity.” Perplexed, Menippus went to the philosophers for an explanation; but they were so busy refuting one another that they only confounded his confusion. So he made himself wings, flew up to heaven, and examined matters for himself. Zeus received him magnanimously and allowed him to watch Olympus functioning. Zeus himself was listening to prayers as they came up to him through “a row of openings with lids like well covers. ... Of those at sea one prayed for a north, another for a south, wind. The farmer asked for rain, the fuller for sun. . . . Zeus seemed puzzled; he did not know which prayer to grant, and experienced a truly Academic suspension of judgment, showing a reserve and equilibrium worthy of Pyrrho (himself.”59 The great god rejects some petitions, grants others, and then arranges the day’s weather: rain for Scythia, snow for Greece, a storm in the Adriatic, and “about a thousand bushels of hail for Cappadocia.” Zeus is disturbed by the new and outlandish gods who have stolen into his pantheon; he issues a decree that, whereas Olympus is crowded with polyglot aliens, who have caused a great rise in the price of nectar, and the old and only true gods are being squeezed out, a committee of seven shall be appointed to sit on claims. In “Zeus Cross-Examined” an Epicurean philosopher asks Zeus are the gods also subject to Fate? Yes, answers the genial Jove. “Why, then, should men sacrifice to you?” asks the philosopher; and “if Fate rules men and gods, why should we be held responsible for our actions?” “I see,” says Zeus, “that you have been with that accursed race, the sophists.”60 In “Zeus Tragoedus” the god is in a gloomy mood, for he observes a great crowd gathering in Athens to hear Damis the Epicurean deny, and Timocles the Stoic affirm, the existence and solicitude of the gods. Timocles breaks down and runs away, and Zeus despairs about his own future. Hermes comforts him: “There are plenty of believers left—a majority of Greeks, the body and dregs of the people, and the barbarians to a man.”61 That such a piece should have brought no indictment on Lucian’s head proves either the tolerance of
the times or the twilight of the Greek gods.
But Lucian was as skeptical of rhetoric and philosophy as of the old religion. In one of his Dialogues of the Dead Charon commands a rhetorician, whom he is ferrying to the other world, to “strip off that boundless length of sentences that is wrapped around you, and those antitheses, and balanced clauses”—otherwise the boat will surely sink.62 In “Hermotimus” a student enters with enthusiasm upon the study of philosophy, hoping that it will give him some substitute for faith; but he is shocked by the vanity and greed of the rival teachers, and is left intellectually and morally naked by their mutual refutations; henceforth, he concludes, “I shall turn aside from a philosopher as from a mad dog.”63 Lucian himself defines philosophy as an attempt to “get an elevation from which you may see in every direction.”64 From such an elevation life seems to him a ridiculous confusion, a chaotic chorus in which all the dancers move and shout each at his own individual will, “until the impresario dismisses them one by one from the stage.”65 In “Charon” he paints a dark picture of the human scene as witnessed by superhuman eyes from some celestial peak: men plowing, toiling, disputing, suing in the courts, lending at usury, cheating and being cheated, running after gold or pleasure; over their heads a cloud of hopes, fears, follies, and hates; over these the Fates spinning the web of life for each human atom; one man is lifted high from the mass and then has a resounding fall; and each in turn is drawn away by some messenger of death. Charon observes two armies fighting in the Peloponnesus; “Fools!” he comments, “not to know that though each of them should win a whole Peloponnesus he will get but a bare foot of ground in the end.”66 Lucian is as impartial as nature; he satirizes the rich for their greed, the poor for their envy, the philosophers for their cobwebs, the gods for their nonexistence. In the end he concludes with Voltaire that one must cultivate his garden. Menippus, finding Teiresias in the lower world, asks him, What is the best life? The old prophet answers:
The life of the ordinary man is the best and most prudent choice. Cease from the folly of metaphysical speculation and inquiry into origins and ends; count all this clever logic as idle talk, and pursue one end alone—how you may do what your hand finds to do, and go your way with never a passion and always a smile.67
If we sum up Greek thought in the first two centuries of our era, we find it, despite Lucian, overwhelmingly religious. Men had once lost faith in faith and taken to logic; now they were losing faith in logic and were flocking back to faith. Greek philosophy had completed the circuit from primitive theology through the skepticism of the early Sophists, the atheism of Democritus, the reconciliatory blandishments of Plato, the naturalism of Aristotle, and the pantheism of the Stoa back to a philosophy of mysticism, submission, and piety. The Academy had passed from the utilitarian myths of its founder through the skepticism of Carneades to the learned devotion of Plutarch; soon it would culminate in the heavenly visions of Plotinus. The scientific achievements of Pythagoras were forgotten, but his notion of reincarnation was having another life; Neo-Pythagoreans were exploring the mysticism of number, were practicing a daily examination of conscience, and were praying that after a minimum of avatars they might pass—if necessary through Purgatory—into a blessed union with God.68 Stoicism was ceasing to be the proud and scornful philosophy of aristocrats, and had found its final and most eloquent voice in a slave; its doctrine of a final conflagration of the world, its rejection of all pleasures of the flesh, its humble surrender to the hidden will of God, were preparing for the theology and ethics of Christianity. The Oriental mood was capturing the European citadel.
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I Arrian later issued an Encheiridion, or synoptic “Handbook” of Epictetus.
II Some of them: (1) The sense organs (e.g., eyes) of different animals, even of different men, vary in form and structure, and presumably give diverse pictures of the world; how do we know which picture is true? (2) The senses convey only a fraction of the object—e.g., a limited range of colors, sounds, and smells; clearly the conception that we form of the object is parcial and unreliable. (3) One sense sometimes contradicts another. (4) Our physical and mental condition colors and perhaps discolors our perceptions—awake or sleeping, youth or age, motion or rest, hunger or satiety, hatred or love. (6) The appearance of an object varies according to the condition of the surrounding media—light, air, cold, heat, moisture, etc.; which appearance is “real”? (8) Nothing is known by itself or absolutely, but only in relation to something else, ta pros ti. (10) An individual’s beliefs depend upon the customs, religion, institutions, and laws amid which he was reared; no individual can think objectively.50
CHAPTER XXIV
The Hellenistic Revival
I. ROMAN EGYPT
EGYPT should have been the happiest of lands, for not only was the earth freely nourished by the Nile, but the country was the most self-sufficient in the whole Mediterranean basin—rich in cereals and fruits, cutting three crops a year, unexcelled in its industries, exporting to a hundred nations, and seldom disturbed by foreign or civil war. And yet—perhaps for these reasons—“The Egyptians,” Josephus notes, “appear never in all their history to have enjoyed one day of freedom.”1 Their wealth tempted, their semitropical lassitude suffered, one despot or conqueror after another through fifty centuries.
Rome classed Egypt not as a province but as the property of the emperor, and ruled it through a prefect responsible only to him. Native Greek officials administered the three divisions—Lower, Middle, and Upper Egypt, and the thirty-six “nomes” or counties; and the official language remained Greek. No attempt was made to urbanize the population, for Egypt’s imperial function was to be the granary of Rome. Large tracts of land were taken from the priests and turned over to Roman or Alexandrian capitalists to be worked as latifundia by fellaheen accustomed to merciless exploitation. The state capitalism of the Ptolemies was continued in reduced form. Every step in the agricultural process was planned and controlled by the state: proliferating bureaucrats determined what crops should be sown and in what quantities, annually allotted the requisite seed, received the product into government warehouses (thesauroi, treasuries), exported Rome’s quota, took out taxes in kind, and sold the rest to the market. Corn and flax were state monopolies from seed to sale; so, at least in the Fayum, was the production of bricks; perfumes, and sesame oil.2 Private enterprise was permitted in other fields, but under ubiquitous regulation. All mineral resources were owned by the state, and the quarrying of marble and precious stones was a governmental privilege.
Domestic industry, already old in Egypt, now expanded in the towns—Ptolemaїs, Memphis, Thebes, Oxyrhynchus, Saїs, Bubastis, Naucratis, Heliopolis; in Alexandria it was half the life of the vibrant capital. Apparently the paper industry had reached the capitalist stage, for Strabo tells how the owners of the papyrus plantations limited production to lift the price.3 Priests used the temple precincts as factories and turned out fine linens for their own use and for the market. Slaves outside of domestic service were few in Egypt, since “free” workers were paid only a notch above nudity and starvation. Sometimes the workers went on strike (anachoresis, secession)—they left their tasks and took sanctuary on temple grounds, whence they were coaxed by hunger or fair words. Occasionally wages were raised, prices went up, and all was as before. Guilds were permitted, but they were mostly of tradesmen and managers; the government used them as agents for the collection of taxes and for the organization of forced labor on dikes, canals, and other public works.
Internal trade was active but slow. Roads were poor, and land transport moved on men, donkeys, or camels—which now replaced horses as draft animals in Africa. Much traffic went by inland waterways. A great canal, 150 feet wide, completed in Trajan’s reign, bound the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean through the Nile and the Red Sea, from whose ports at Arsinoë, Myos Hormos, and Berenice ships left daily for Africa or India. The banking system that financed production and trade was under full governmental control. Ea
ch nome capital had a state bank, which acted as a receiver of taxes and repository of public funds. Loans were made to farmers, industry, and business by the government, by priests from temple treasuries, and by private lending associations.4 Taxes were laid upon every product, process, sale, export, or import, even upon graves and burials; and additional assessments were levied from time to time, in kind from the poor, in liturgies from the rich. From Augustus to Trajan the country—or its masters—prospered; after that zenith it succumbed to the discouragement and exhaustion of endless tribute and taxation and the lethargy of a regimented economy.
Outside of Alexandria and Naucratis Egypt remained sullenly, silently Egyptian; Romanization hardly touched it beyond the mouths of the Nile; and even Alexandria, which had been the greatest of Greek cities, was assuming in our second century the character, languages, and odor of an Oriental metropolis. Of Egypt’s 8,500,000 population its capital had now some 800,000 5 (in 1930, 573,000), second only to Rome; in industry and commerce it was first. Everyone in Alexandria is busy, says a letter questionably Hadrian’s; everyone has a trade; even the lame and the blind find work to do.6 Here, among a thousand other articles, glass, paper, and linen were produced on a large scale. Alexandria was the clothing and fashion center of the age, setting the styles and making the goods. Its great harbor had nine miles of wharves, from which its merchant fleet wove a web of commerce over many seas. It was also a tourist center, equipped with hotels, guides, and interpreters for visitors coming to see the Pyramids and the majestic temples of Thebes. The main avenue, sixty-seven feet wide, was lined for three miles with colonnades, arcades, and alluring shops displaying the fanciest products of ancient crafts. At many intersections there were spacious squares or circles named plateai, “broad” (ways)—whence the Italian piazza and our plaza and place. Imposing structures adorned the central thoroughfares—a large theater, an Emporium or exchange, temples to Poseidon, Caesar, and Saturn, a celebrated Serapeum or Temple of Serapis, and a group of university buildings known over the world as the Museum, or Home of the Muses. Of the five sections into which the city was divided, one was almost wholly given to the palaces, gardens, and administrative buildings of the Ptolemies, now used by the Roman prefect. Here, in a pretty mausoleum, lay the city’s founder, Alexander the Great, preserved in honey and encased in glass.