The Greeks seized on the spatial concept as developed by Ionian philosophers and on the temporal concept emphasized by mystical religions to construct a political society which stood the test of resistance to the Persian empire. The Greeks opposed the raising of gods and religion to an independent position dominating the state and brought to an end the threat of a theocratical and monarchical order. Miletus was captured by the Persians in 494 B.C. and Themistocles, as leader of the radical democrats and elected to the archonship in 493 B.C., determined upon an increase in the size of the fleet. Commercial and maritime interests were attached to the cause of democracy. In contrast to the hoplite in the army who was in a position of relative wealth, the sailor was drawn from the poorer classes. Aristotle held that naval power was followed by mob rule. The Persians were defeated in 478 B.C. and a sense of common nationality was reinforced by security of access to new markets and to new sources of food and raw materials.
The reforms of Cleisthenes in weakening the influence of religion made it possible for citizens of other cities to be accepted in Athens. The bar to mixed marriages was removed with possible implications[114] in the advantages of new blood and a maximum of ability. The migration of Ionians of intelligence and daring, and representing a culture ‘in many ways the most wonderful phenomenon of Greek history’ (Gilbert Murray), brought a profound stimulus to Athenian life. Ionian thinkers opposed the uncritical acceptance of popular ideologies and attempts were made to reconcile the static concepts of order and space with the dynamic concepts based on mythical religions. Heraclitus (about 540-475 B.C.) emphasized the latter with its principle of Dike or righteousness and contributed to the break-up of concepts of state absolutism. He denied being altogether and regarded all becoming as originating in a war of opposites. ‘I contemplate the becoming.’ The whole essence of actuality was activity and fire was introduced as a world-shaping force. Mind was introduced as a metaphysical fact beyond all differentiation and movement. Man was given a place as a completely cosmic being and the claim of wisdom to supremacy was justified by saying that it taught men in speech and action to follow the truth of nature and its divine law. True wisdom was found in language since it was an expression of common wisdom which is in all men and only partly obscured by false private opinions. The structure of man's speech was an embodiment of the structure of the world. Logos was recorded in speech and physis was a representation of social consciousness. ‘Do not listen to me but to the word and confess that all things are one.’ Philosophy was humanized. ‘I sought for myself.’ ‘Great learning does not teach insight.’
Parmenides, born about 539 B.C., wrote in verse presumably to reach a wide audience. He used the didactic epic to show that thought reduced everything to a single uniform essence. Even the intellect itself was demolished and logic became a basic form for the separation of the world of truth from the world of opinion. Empedocles (490-430 B.C.), a citizen of a Dorian state, as founder of the Sicilian school of medicine attempted to combine the mystic tradition with Ionian science by emphasizing complexity. He revived the elements of fire, air, earth, and water, and added two soul substances, love and strife, to develop the idea of being and the theory of a primal source of all becoming. Denial of monism strengthened the position of Anaxagoras (500-428 B.C.) who assumed chaos and mind with free will dependent only on itself for escape from chaos. From this he aimed at the principle of self-hood or personality. Leucippus and Democritus held that the universe was impenetrable and eternal but not continuous; a primary substance with a diversity of forms and infinite arrangement. In atomism physis lost its associations of growth and life. It provided for the concepts of staticism and change and became the background of cosmopolitan individualism.
Philosophy had its impact on larger numbers of the population. The work of Anaxagoras was in prose and made available in an inexpensive and widely read book.[115] Xenophanes used poetry and developed the silloi which was satirical in character. Poetry was recited and the rhapsode was held in high esteem. He attacked Homer as a source of errors and denied that gods had human forms.
But if cattle and horses had hands and were able
To paint with their hands and to fashion such pictures as men do,
Then horses would pattern the forms of the gods after horses
and cows after cattle, giving them just such a shape
as those which they find in themselves.
In the words of Jaeger,[116] by his influence in the dissemination of philosophy he transfused philosophical ideas into the intellectual blood-stream of Greece. Xenophanes was the first to formulate religious universalism.
The Dionysian tradition had retreated in the face of restraints imposed by Delphi, legal reforms, and advance in philosophy, but it advanced from the courts of the Tyrants to the artistic outburst of the fifth century. Stone-cutting had been used in the publication of laws and in the making of records as Greek epigraphy attests. Sculpture escaped from the traditions of imperialism in the East. Polytheism and the art of statuary based on it checked the development of a divine unity as a dogma. ‘The cause of myth and plastic art are really one’ (Dill). After the defeat of the Persians, when the festival and the worship of Zeus became stronger bonds among the Greeks, Olympian victors became heroes of the first rank and were celebrated in statues. Sculpture ceased to be exclusively the handmaid of religion and emancipated itself from architecture. Pindar the Theban (502-452 B.C.) wrote hymns celebrating the greatest moments in the lives of athletes and pointed to the advantages of the wide diffusion of the poem in contrast with the immobility of the statue. He has been called ‘the Homer of the Pythagorean school and captivated by the doctrine of migrations of the soul and its ordeal and chastisement in preparation for a future life emphasized the possibility of elevation to lofty spiritual rank in the form of a hero’ (Dill). With Theognis, the Megarian, he was repelled by the social revolution inspired by Ionian cities and addressed his work to nobles by whom he was sponsored. Simonides went further and wrote odes for a fixed price and made independent sales of his work to the public. The price system had been extended and adapted to new demands.
The choral lyric as perfected by Pindar became a link between the epic and the drama. It has been described as the art form of the Dorian aristocracy as the drama became the expression of Athenian democracy. Tragedy, like the Dionysian ritual, had the essential function ‘through pity and fear to effect the purgation of such emotions’ (Aristotle). Performances as a purge or purification renewed life. Tragedy was a rebirth of the myth. In development of the drama from the primitive chorus dancing around the altar of Dionysus, the dithyramb, ‘a community of unconscious actors who mutually regard themselves as transformed among one another’ (Nietzsche), was split. The mimetic element in which music dominated the words was suppressed. The reed pipe or aulos, apparently taken over from earlier civilizations by the Ionians, became the chief instrument of the Dionysian cult and ‘the only and exclusive instrument of the theatre’.[117] As the epics abandoned musical accompaniment, the style of dancing songs was liberated, so the freeing of the dithyramb from music enabled the leader who varied the drama and song of the chorus by recitations centring around the adventures of Dionysus, to become the actor.[118] The reciter became a separate person from the dancers. Not later than 472 B.C. Aeschylus added a second actor and made possible dramatic action. The complete circle with the actor in the centre was changed to allow the spectators to occupy a half circle and the actor to turn toward a quarter circle. A third actor was added in the latter part of Aeschylus's career. The epic spirit was combined to the dramatic form and since the whole story could not be treated in a single tragedy, three tragedies linked by a fable were used. Sophocles subordinated the choral to the dramatic element, employed three actors, and increased the chorus from twelve to fifteen. The trilogy became separate plays without a link.
Aeschylus attempted a reconciliation between the old and the new gods of justice and followed the ideal of justifying God's
ways to man. A hero could be ‘born in the new spirit of freedom’. In the heroes of Sophocles the divine was blended with human character. To know oneself was to know man's powerlessness and to know the indestructible and conquering majesty of suffering humanity. Tragedy restored the power of embracing all human interests to Greek poetry.[119] It claimed the interest and participation of the entire people. The power of the oral tradition was at its height.
Euripides has been described by Nietzsche[120] as the destroyer of myth and the genius of music. He brought the spectator from the benches to the stage. In contrast with Sophoclean man, the man of Euripides triumphed over the fiercest onslaughts of faith. The collectivism of Aeschylus was replaced by individualism. Tragedy ceased to be the most expressive form and to reflect the profoundest significance of the myth. The audience had lost faith in social life and the power of the oral tradition began to wane. The rationalism of Euripides dominated the new comedy.[121] As the popular assembly became the constitutional organ of public opinion the dramatist became a sort of journalist influencing men by giving practical effect to their sentiments. Prepossessions were strengthened by being reflected in exaggerated form. The comedy of Aristophanes resembled vehement party journalism but was directed against persons or general principles and tendencies and not against measures.[122]
The impact of writing on the oral tradition became increasingly evident in the second half of the fifth century. Prose reflected the demands of the city-state and to some extent of philosophers. According to Jaeger the evolutionary expression of the ethos of the new state was prose. Written laws assumed the development of prose in clear and universally valid sentences. Prose began with plain, accurate statements of public importance. Its development was hampered by the oral tradition in the Homeric epic pattern. In the sixth century it appeared in philosophy, genealogy, geography, and history, and its growth followed an interest in individuals and a concern with characters and stories. Literature was treated before history. Ionian writers treated the annals of cities and of peoples separately. At the beginning of the fifth century ‘Hecateus of Miletus thus speaks, I write as I deem true, for the traditions of the Greeks seem to me manifold and laughable’. An individual could use the ‘sacred majesty’ of a book to express his views. Writing was beginning to destroy the bond of Greek life. In 470 B.C. Athens had no reading public, but by 430 B.C. Herodotus found it convenient to turn his recitations into book form. In the Athens of Pericles ‘reading was universally diffused’ (Curtius), but prose literature developed largely after the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. In his talent for conversation and his concern in arousing the interest of an audience, Herodotus stood at the fountain head of European prose literature.
Intense literary creativeness on the highest scale and the culminating point in Greek literature in the fifth century corresponded with a very limited book production. Rhapsodies had been written down and circulated on manuscripts in the seventh century. Lyrics in the form of dialogue and action had grown out of the choral song and were followed by dramatic poetry. In the fifth century the Iliad and the Odyssey were given a separate privileged position in the public recitations of the Panathenaia. The earliest book trade was a result of the popularity of the Attic tragedy as was the first public library in 330 B.C. By the time of Euripides[123] plays were widely read after the performance and it is significant that he was said to have been the first Greek to own a library. The demand for more efficient writing was probably evident in the change in writing. Following the Semites the Greeks began by writing from right to left, but they continued in a boustrophedon style and finally, by the end of the fifth century, wrote from left to right and generally reversed individual Semitic letters. The oral tradition left its impress in a demand for truthfulness and economy of words. Starting with facts they could not easily become victims of words.[124] The Attic dialect, a variety of Ionic, gradually replaced Ionic and became the dominant language.
The power of the oral tradition was reflected in political as in artistic developments. After the Persian wars national enthusiasm and strengthening of political authority led to the suppression of mysticism and individualistic religious cults and an emphasis on city and new cults. The city-state and religion became a unity. In Athens the prestige of the Areopagus had increased during the Persian wars, but its supremacy came to an end in 462 B.C. In 450 B.C. the citizen roll was drastically revised and large numbers were excluded and in 449 B.C. Pericles deprived the Areopagus still further of important powers. The state paid a small amount to citizens for each day's attendance as a juror or at meetings of the public assembly and an amount to permit every citizen to attend the theatre at public festivals. The courts were empanelled from a list of jurymen selected by lot and Athenians became interested in keeping down the number of those receiving payment. From one-half to one-third of the citizens were supported at public expense and became a class of rentiers living on returns from taxes on trade and resident aliens.
The effect of these changes was shown in the difficulties of the Athenian empire.[125] In 454 B.C. the centre of the Delian league was transferred from Delos to Athens, making the latter the treasury, mint, supreme court, and legal and commercial capital of eastern Hellas. Political and criminal cases were decided by regulations of general application laid down at Athens with the result that the courts suffered from congestion and juries were suspected of susceptibility to irrelevant pleas. The allies protested against oppressive features in judicial control and the levying of tribute. Charges of favouritism to democratic states were made by those less fortunately placed. The peace of Callias (448 B.C.) recognized Athenian claims to dominate the Aegean basin and Greek cities along the coast as far as the eastern boundary of Lydia. The peace of 445 B.C. reflected a vital need of inter-state co-operation and seemed to mark the end of the principle of the autonomous self-sufficient state. Following the great rebellion of 440 B.C. a general equilibrium existed between the surviving oligarchies supported by Sparta and the democratic interests of the Athenian empire. But fourteen years after a principle of conciliation had been adopted in 445 B.C. an appeal was made to force.
The spread of writing contributed to the collapse of Greek civilization by widening the gap between the city-states. In Sparta the oral tradition and its emphasis on music persisted. Only a few laws had been solemnly introduced and fixed in writing and the legislation of Lycurgus persisted in the oral tradition. Citizens were subjected to an aristocratic military system. Sparta[126] became the head and centre of oligarchy and Athens of democracy. The institutions of Sparta carried the Greek capacity for law and discipline to its farthest point and those of Athens the capacity for rich and spontaneous individual development. The deeply rooted division between Ionian and Dorian Greeks was reinforced by geography, dialect, and cultural development. The long struggle of the Peloponnesian wars ended in the fall of Athens in 404 B.C. In turn Spartan supremacy declined after defeat by the Thebans in 371 B.C. Philip of Macedonia emphasized disunity by systematic propaganda and after the battle of Chaeronea the Greek city-states, with the exception of Rhodes, were subordinated to him. Ancient empires had been absorbed in the problem of international affairs, Greece in individual development.
The powerful oral tradition of the Greeks and the flexibility of the alphabet enabled them to resist the tendencies of empire in the East towards absolute monarchism and theocracy. They drove a wedge between the political empire concept with its emphasis on space and the ecclesiastical empire concept with its emphasis on time and reduced them to the rational proportions of the city-state. The monopoly of complex systems of writing which had been the basis of large-scale organizations of the East was destroyed. The adaptability of the alphabet to language weakened the possibilities of uniformity and enhanced the problems of government with fatal results to large-scale political organization. But the destruction of concepts of absolutism assumed a new approach of rationalism which was to change the concept of history in the West.
FOOTNO
TES:
[81] G. R. Driver, op. cit., p. 3.
[82] ‘No Greek word has an exact equivalent in English, no important abstract conception covers the same area or carries with it the same atmosphere of association. Translation from one language to another is impossible, from an ancient to a modern language grotesquely impossible, because of these profound differences of collective representation, which no “translation” will ever transfer.’ F. M. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy (London, 1912), p. 45. In spite of the difficulties Gibbon described Greek as ‘a golden key that would unlock the treasures of antiquity of a musical and prolific language that gives a soul to the objects of sense and a body to the abstractions of philosophy’.
[83] See Arnold Toynbee on ‘History’ in The Legacy of Greece, edited by R. W. Livingstone (Oxford, 1923). See C. N. Cochrane, The Mind of Edward Gibbon for a reflection of the twentieth century in a reflection of the eighteenth century in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; also the criticism of the unilateral interpretation of pre-Socratic philosophy by nineteenth-century scientism. Werner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (Oxford, 1947), p. 195.
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