The Life of Greece

by Will Durant

  The soil might yield metal as well as food; but the Achaeans neglect to mine the earth, and are content to import copper and tin, silver and gold, and a strange new luxury, iron. A shapeless mass of iron is offered as a precious prize at the games held in honor of Patroclus,26 it will make, says Achilles, many an agricultural implement. He says nothing of weapons, which are still of bronze.27 The Odyssey describes the tempering of iron,* but that epic probably belongs to a later age than the Iliad.

  The smith at his forge and the potter at his wheel work in their shops; other Homeric craftsmen—saddlers, masons, carpenters, cabinetmakers—go to work at the home that has ordered their product. They do not produce for a market, for sale or profit; they work long hours, but leisurely, without the sting and stimulus of visible competition.29 The family itself provides most of its needs; everyone in it labors with his hands; even the master of the house, even the local king, like Odysseus, makes bed and chairs for his home, boots and saddles for himself; and unlike the later Greeks he prides himself on his manual skill. Penelope, Helen, and Andromache, as well as their servant women, are busy with spinning, weaving, embroidery, and household cares; Helen seems lovelier when she displays her needlework to Telemachus30 than when she walks in beauty on the battlements of Troy.

  The craftsmen are freemen, never slaves as in classic Greece. Peasants may in emergency be conscripted to labor for the king, but we do not hear of serfs bound to the soil. Slaves are not numerous, nor is their position degraded; they are mostly female domestics, and occupy a position in effect as high as that of household servants today, except that they are bought and sold for long terms instead of for precariously brief engagements. On occasion they are brutally treated; normally they are accepted as members of the family, are cared for in illness or depression or old age, and may develop a humane relation of affection with master or mistress. Nausicaa helps her bondwomen to wash the family linen in the stream, plays ball with them, and altogether treats them as companions.31 If a slave woman bears a son to her master, the child is usually free.32 Any man, however, may become a slave, through capture in battle or in piratical raids. This is the bitterest aspect of Achaean life.

  Homeric society is rural and local; even the “cities” are mere villages nestling against hilltop citadels. Communication is by messenger or herald, or, over long distances, by signal fires flashing from peak to peak.33 Overland traffic is made difficult and dangerous by roadless mountains and swamps and bridgeless streams. The carpenter makes carts with four wheels boasting of spokes and wooden tires; even so most goods are carried by mules or men. Trade by sea is easier, despite pirates and storms; natural harbors are numerous, and only on the perilous four-day trip from Crete to Egypt does the ship lose sight of land. Usually the boat is beached at night, and crew and passengers sleep on trusty land. In this age the Phoenicians are still better merchants and mariners than the Greeks. The Greeks revenge themselves by despising trade, and preferring piracy.

  The Homeric Greeks have no money, but use, as media for exchange, ingots of iron, bronze, or gold; the ox or cow is taken as a standard of value. A gold ingot of fifty-seven pounds is called a talent (talanton, weight).34 Much barter remains. Wealth is computed realistically in goods, especially cattle, rather than in pieces of metal or paper that may lose or alter their value at any moment through a change in the economic theology of men. There are rich and poor in Homer as in life; society is a rumbling cart that travels an uneven road; and no matter how carefully the cart is constituted, some of the varied objects in it will sink to the bottom, and others will rise to the top; the potter has not made all the vessels of the same earth, or strength, or fragility. Already in the second book of the Iliad we hear the sound of the class war; and as Thersites flies oratorically at Agamemnon we recognize an early variation on a persistent theme.35

  2. Morals

  As we read Homer the impression forms that we are in the presence of a society more lawless and primitive than that of Cnossus or Mycenae. The Achaean culture is a step backward, a transition between the brilliant Aegean civilization and the Dark Age that will follow the Dorian conquest. Homeric life is poor in art, rich in action; it is unmeditative, buoyant, swift; it is too young and strong to bother much about manners or philosophy. Probably we misjudge it by seeing it in the violent crisis or disorderly aftermath of war.

  There are, it is true, many tender qualities and scenes. Even the warriors are generous and affectionate; between parent and child there is a love as profound as it is silent. Odysseus kisses the heads and shoulders of the members of his family when, after their long separation, they recognize him; and in like manner they kiss him.36 Helen and Menelaus weep when they learn that this noble lad, Telemachus, is the son of the lost Odysseus who fought so valiantly for them.37 Agamemnon himself is capable of tears so abundant that they remind Homer of a stream pouring over rocks.38 Friendships are firm among the heroes, though possibly a degree of sexual inversion enters into the almost neurotic attachment of Achilles to Patroclus, especially to Patroclus dead. Hospitality is lavish, for “from Zeus are all strangers and beggars.”39 Maids bathe the foot or the body of the guest, anoint him with unguents, and may give him fresh garments; he receives food and lodging if he needs them, and perhaps a gift.40 “Lo,” says “faircheeked Helen,” as she places a costly robe in Telemachus’ hands, “I too give thee this gift, dear child, a remembrance of the hands of Helen, against the day of thy longed-for marriage, for thy bride to wear.”41 It is a picture that reveals to us the human tenderness and fine feeling that in the Iliad must hide themselves under the panoply of war.

  Even war does not thwart the Greek passion for games. Children and adults engage in skillful and difficult contests, apparently with fairness and good humor; Penelope’s suitors play draughts, and throw the disk or javelin; the Phaeacian hosts of Odysseus play at quoits, and a strange medley of ball and dance.* When the dead Patroclus has been cremated, according to Achaean custom, games are played that set a precedent for Olympia—foot races, disk-throwing, javelin-throwing, archery, wrestling, chariot races, and single combat fully armed; all in excellent spirit, except that only the ruling class may enter, and only the gods may cheat.42

  The other side of the picture is less pleasing. As a prize for the chariot race Achilles offers “a woman skilled in fair handiwork”; and on the funeral pyre horses, dogs, oxen, sheep, and human beings are sacrificed to keep the dead Patroclus well tended and fed.44 Achilles treats Priam with fine courtesy, but only after dragging Hector’s body in mangled ignominy around the pyre. To the Achaean male, human life is cheap; to take it is no serious matter; a moment’s pleasure can replace it. When a town is captured the men are killed or sold into slavery; the women are taken as concubines if they are attractive, as slaves if they are not. Piracy is still a respected occupation; even kings organize marauding expeditions, plunder towns and villages, and enslave their population; “Indeed,” says Thucydides, “this came to be the main source of livelihood among the early Hellenes, no disgrace being yet attached to such an occupation,”45 but some glory; very much as, in our times, great nations may conquer and subjugate defenseless peoples without loss of dignity or righteousness. Odysseus is insulted when he is asked is he a merchant, “mindful of the gains of his greed”;46 but he tells with pride how, on his return from Troy, his provisions having run low, he sacked the city of Ismarus and stored his ships with food; or how he ascended the river Aegyptus “to pillage the splendid fields, to carry off the women and little children, and to kill the men.”47 No city is safe from sudden and unprovoked attack.

  To this lighthearted relish for robbery and slaughter the Achaeans add an unabashed mendacity. Odysseus can hardly speak without lying, or act without treachery. Having captured the Trojan scout Dolon, he and Diomed promise him life if he will give them the information they require; he does, and they kill him.48 It is true that the other Achaeans do not quite equal Odysseus in dishonesty, but not because they would not; they envy a
nd admire him, and look up to him as a model character; the poet who pictures him considers him a hero in every respect; even the goddess Athena praises him for his lying, and counts this among the special charms for which she loves him. “Cunning must he be and knavish,” she tells him, smiling, and stroking him with her hand, “who would go beyond thee in all manner of guile, aye, though it were a god that met thee. Bold man, crafty in counsel, insatiate in deceit, not even in thine own land, it seems, wast thou to cease from guile and deceitful tales, which thou lovest from the bottom of thine heart.”49

  In truth we ourselves are drawn to this heroic Munchausen of the ancient world. We discover some likable traits in him, and in the hardy and subtle people to which he belongs. He is a gentle father, and in his own kingdom a just ruler, who “wrought no wrong in deed or word to any man in the land.” “Never again,” says his swineherd, “shall I find a master so kind, how far soever I go, not though I come again to the house of my father and mother!”50 We envy Odysseus his “form like unto the immortals,” his frame so athletic that though nearing fifty he throws the disk farther than any of the Phaeacian youths; we admire his “steadfast heart,” his “wisdom like to Jove’s”;51 and our sympathy goes out to him when, in his despair of ever seeing again “the smoke leaping up from his own land,” he yearns to die, or when, in the midst of his perils and sufferings, he steels himself with words that old Socrates loved to quote: “Be patient now, my soul; thou hast endured still worse than this.”52 He is a man of iron in body and mind, yet every inch human, and therefore forgivable.

  The secret of the matter is that the Achaean’s standard of judgment is as different from ours as the virtues of war differ from those of peace. He lives in a disordered, harassed, hungry world, where every man must be his own policeman, ready with arrow and spear, and a capacity for looking calmly at flowing blood. “A ravening belly,” as Odysseus explains, “no man can hide. . . . Because of it are the benched ships made ready that bear evil to foeman over the unresting sea.”53 Since the Achaean knows little security at home, he respects none abroad; every weakling is fair play; the supreme virtue, in his view, is a brave and ruthless intelligence. Virtue is literally virtus, manliness, arete, the quality of Ares or Mars. The good man is not one that is gentle and forbearing, faithful and sober, industrious and honest; he is simply one who fights bravely and well. A bad man is not one that drinks too much, lies, murders, and betrays; he is one that is cowardly, stupid, or weak. There were Nietzscheans long before Nietzsche, long before Thrasymachus, in the lusty immaturity of the European world.

  3. Sexes

  Achaean society is a patriarchal despotism tempered with the beauty and anger of woman, and the fierce tenderness of parental love.* Theoretically the father is supreme: he may take as many concubines as he likes,† he may offer them to his guests, he may expose his children on the mountaintops to die, or slaughter them on the altars of the thirsty gods. Such paternal omnipotence does not necessarily imply a brutal society, but only one in which the organization of the state has not yet gone far enough to preserve social order; and in which the family, to create such order, needs the powers that will later be appropriated by the state in a nationalization of the right to kill. As social organization advances, paternal authority and family unity decrease, freedom and individualism grow. In practice the Achaean male is usually reasonable, listens patiently to domestic eloquence, and is devoted to his children.

  Within the patriarchal framework the position of woman is far higher in Homeric than it will be in Periclean Greece. In the legends and the epics she plays a leading role, from Pelops’ courtship of Hippodameia to Iphigenia’s gentleness and Electra’s hate. The gynaeceum does not confine her, nor does the home; she moves freely among men and women alike, and occasionally shares in the serious discourse of the men, as Helen does with Menelaus and Telemachus. When the Achaean leaders wish to fire the imagination of their people against Troy they appeal not to political or racial or religious ideas, but to the sentiment for woman’s beauty; the loveliness of Helen must put a pretty face upon a war for land and trade. Without woman the Homeric hero would be a clumsy boor, with nothing to live for or die for; she teaches him something of courtesy, idealism, and softer ways.

  Marriage is by purchase, usually in oxen or their equivalent, paid by the suitor to the father of the girl; the poet speaks of “cattle-bringing maidens.”56 The purchase is reciprocal, for the father usually gives the bride a substantial dowry. The ceremony is familial and religious, with much eating, dancing, and loose-tongued merriment. “Beneath a blaze of torches they led the brides from their chambers through the city, and loud rose the bridal song. The young men whirled in the dance, and high among them did sound the flute and the lyre”;57 so changeless are the essentials of our life. Once married, the woman becomes mistress in her home, and is honored in proportion to her children. Love in the truest sense, as a profound mutual tenderness and solicitude, comes to the Greeks, as to the French, after marriage rather than before; it is not the spark thrown off by the contact or nearness of two bodies, but the fruit of long association in the cares and industries of the home. The Homeric wife is as faithful as her husband is not. There are three adulteresses in Homer—Clytaemnestra, Helen, and Aphrodite; but they do injustice to the mortal average, if not to the divine.

  Formed out of this background, the Homeric family (barring the enormities of legends that play no part in Homer) is a wholesome and pleasing institution, rich in fine women and loyal children. The women function not only as mothers but as workers; they grind the grain, card the wool, spin, weave, and embroider; they do little sewing, since garments are mostly without seams; and cooking is normally left to men. Amid these labors they bear and rear children, heal their hurts, pacify their quarrels, and teach them the manners, morals, and traditions of the tribe. There is no formal education, apparently no teaching of letters, no spelling, no grammar, no books; it is a boy’s utopia. The girl is taught the arts of the home, the boy those of the chase and war; he learns to fish and swim, to till the fields, set snares, handle animals, aim the arrow and the lance, and take care of himself in all the emergencies of a half-lawless life. When the oldest boy grows up to manhood he becomes, in the absence of his father, the responsible head of the family. When he marries he brings his bride to his father’s home, and the rhythm of the generations is renewed. The individual members of the family change with time, but the family is the lasting unit, surviving perhaps for centuries, and forging in the turbulent crucible of the home the order and character without which all government is in vain.

  4. The Arts

  The Achaeans leave to merchants and lowly scribes the art of writing, which has presumably been handed down to them from Mycenaean Greece; they prefer blood to ink and flesh to clay. In all of Homer there is but one reference to writing,58 and there in a characteristic context; a folded tablet is given to a messenger, directing the recipient to kill the messenger. If the Achaeans have time for literature it is only when war and marauding allow a peaceful interlude; the king or prince gathers his retainers about him for a feast, and some wandering minstrel, stringing the lyre, recounts in simple.verse the exploits of ancestral heroes; this is, for the Achaeans, both poetry and history. Homer, perhaps wishing like Pheidias to engrave his own portrait upon his work, tells how Alcinous, King of the Phaeacians, calls for such song in entertaining Odysseus. “Summon hither the divine minstrel, Demodocus; for to him above all others has the god granted skill in song. . . . Then the herald drew near, leading the good minstrel, whom the Muse loved above all other men, and gave him both good and evil; of his sight she deprived him, but gave him the gift of sweet song.”59

  The only art except his own that interests Homer is toreutics—the hammering of metals into plastic forms. He says nothing of painting or sculpture, but calls up all his inspiration to describe the scenes inlaid or damascened upon Achilles’ shield, or raised in relief upon Odysseus’ brooch. He speaks briefly but illuminatin
gly about architecture. The common dwelling in Homer is apparently of sun-dried brick with a footing of stone; the floor is ordinarily of beaten earth, and is cleaned by scraping; the roof is of reeds overlaid with clay, and slopes only enough to carry off the rain. The doors are single or double, and may have bolts or keys.60 In the better dwellings the interior walls are of painted stucco, with ornamental border or frieze, and are hung with weapons, shields, and tapestries. There is no kitchen, no chimney, no windows; an opening in the roof of the central hall lets out some of the smoke that may rise from the hearth; the rest finds its way through the door, or settles in soot on the walls. Rich establishments have a bathroom; others content themselves with a tub. The furniture is of heavy wood, often artistically carved and finished; Icmalius fashions for Penelope an armchair set with ivory and precious metals; and Odysseus makes for himself and his wife a massive bedstead designed to last for a century.

  It is characteristic of the age that its architecture ignores temples and spends itself upon palaces, just as Periclean architecture will neglect palaces and lavish itself upon temples. We hear of the “sumptuous home of Paris, which that prince had built with the aid of the most cunning architects in Troy”;61 of King Alcinous’ great mansion, with walls of bronze, frieze of blue-glass paste, doors of silver and gold, and other features that may belong rather to poetry than to architecture; we hear something of Agamemnon’s royal residence at Mycenae, and a great deal about Odysseus’ palace at Ithaca. This has a front court, paved in part with stone, surrounded by a palisade or plastered wall, and adorned with trees, stalls for horses, and a heap of steaming dung on which Odysseus’ dog Argos makes his bed in the sun.* A large pillared porch leads to the house; here the slaves sleep and often the visitors. Within, an anteroom opens upon a central hall supported by pillars, and sometimes lighted not only by the opening in the roof, but by a narrow clerestory or open space between the architrave and the eaves. At night braziers burning on tall stands give an unsteady illumination. In the center of the hall is the hearth, around whose sacred fire the family gathers in the evening for warmth and good cheer, and debates the ways of neighbors, the willfulness of children, and the vicissitudes of states.