[[221]]
CHAPTER XIII
THE TRAGIC PASSIONS
The question which we have now to face is more obscure and difficult
than any we have yet consideied. In the language used by Thucydides when he
speaks of the tragic passions, are we to see mere poetical metaphor, out of
which all literal meaning has faded; oi does some of this meaning still linger
behind the words, as an unanalysed fund of mythical conception? When Thucydides
boirowed the form of the Aeschylean drama, much, certainly, of the explicit
theological theory which had been the soul of that form, was left behind in the
transmission. On the other hand, there seems to be a residuum of implicit
mythical belief which is inherent in the artistic mould, and so inseparable
from it that the adoption of the mould might involve an unconscious or
half-conscious accept tance of some of its original content. This content is
more primitive than the philosophy of Aeschylus himself, and much older than
the drama in which it became incorporated. We now propose to trace back the
tragic theory of human nature as far as we can follow it, in the hope that a
sketch of its development may help us to answer our question, how much of it
survives in Thucydides.
When we look at the passage in Diodotus' speech (note 1) which contains
in summary form the motives of Cleon's drama and of the tragedy of Athens, we
observe that the so-called `personifications' named in it fall into a series or
cycle. We begin with the various conditions (juntux[[currency]]ai) of human
life; and in particular the two extreme conditions of grinding Poverty and
licentious Wealth--Penia and Ploutos
[1. Thuc. iii. 45. See above, p. 122, for text and
translation.]
[[222]]
([[section]]jous[[currency]]a). (note 1) These are possessed by
irremediable and mastering powers--Daring (tÒlma), sprung from Poverty;
and Covetousness (pleonej[[currency]]a), Insolence (Ïbriw), and Pride
(frÒnhma), sprung from Wealth.Then come Eros and Elpis,
the inward tempters; with Fortune, the temptress of external circumstance,
completing the intoxication. These lead finally to Ruin--the wreck and downfall
of a human life or of a nation's greatness.
The first terms in the series, Wealth and Poverty, are themselves
juntux[[currency]]ai, the outcome of lucky or unlucky coincidence--of Fortune.
Our chain of causes leads us back to a mysterious and unknown agency, which
appears again at the crisis, in `reversal'. The circle of thought revolves
round the very simple and universal observation of the mutability of Fortune,
chance, or luck. In ages before the laws of causation and of probability were
even dimly divined, this mutability must have been the most terrible and
bewildering phenomenon in human events--more terrible, because more
incalculable, than death itself. Not only in the great catastrophes, in flood
and avalanche and earthquake, but again and again in the turns of daily
experience, man finds himself the sport of an invisible demon Now, by some
unforeseen stroke, his long-cherished design is foiled; now, with equally
unintelligible caprice, goods are heaped on him which he never expected.
A reversal of Fortune, coming suddenly, is the primitive root of all
tragedy. Professor Bradley (note 2) quotes the conclusion of the monk's tale of
Croesus in the Canterbury Pilgrims:--
Anhanged was
Cresus, the proudè kyng;
His roial tronè mighte hym nat availle.
Tragédie is noon oother miner thyng,
Ne kan in syngyng criè ne biwaille
But for that Fortune alwey wole assaille
With unwar strook the regnès that been proude;
For whan men trusteth hire, thanne wol she faille,
And covere hire brighte facè with a clowde.
[1. i. 38 Ïbrei dcents ka< [[section]]jous[[currency]]&
ploÊtou: Ar. Rhet. b 17 filotimÒteroi ka<
éndrvddeg.stero[[currency]] efisin tå >=yh ofl dunãmenoi
t<<n plous[[currency]]vn diå tÚ
[[section]]f[[currency]]esyai ~sa [[section]]jous[[currency]]a aÈto>w
prãttein diå tØn dÊnamin. [2. Shakespearean
Tragedy, p. 8.]
[[223]]
Professor Bradley continues: `a total reverse of fortune coming unawares
upon a man who "stood in high degree" happy and apparently secure--such was the
tragic fact to the mediaeval mind. It appealed strongly to common human
sympathy and pity; it startled also another feeling, that of fear. It
frightened men and awed them. It made them feel that man is blind and helpless,
the plaything of an inscrutable power, called by the name of Fortune or some
other name--a power which appears to smile on him for a little, and then on a
sudden strikes him down in his pride.'
The external agencies to which these reversals are attributed will vary at
different stages in the development of thought. In a primitive stage they would
be thought of simply as spirits; later, perhaps, as a single spirit, called
Fate (Mo>ra) or Fortune (TÊxh), who will be placated or `averted' by
magical rites and observances. In any case, the overthrow was thought of as
coming from without--an unexpected stroke out of the surrounding
darkness.
To the early Greeks not only the sudden fall from prosperity, but equally the
sudden rise from adversity, was a part of the tragic fact. (note 1) Both the
extreme conditions are dangerous the transition from either to the other is a
`reversal'. Ploutos and Penia are also known as Resource and Resourcelessness
(Poros and Aporia, or Amechania (note 2)), and again as Licence
[1. In this point the Greek view is darker than the Mediaeval. Thus at
the conclusion of the Monk's Tale above quoted, the Knight breaks
in:Hoo! quod the Knyght, good sire, namoore of this!
That ye han seyd is right ynough, y-wis,...
I seye for me it is a greet disese,
Where as men han been in greet welthe and ese,
To beeren of hire sodeyn fal, allas!
And the contrarie is joye and greet solas,
As whan a man bath ben in poure estaat,
And clymbeth up, and wexeth fortunat,
And there abideth in prosperitee;
Swich thyng is gladsom, as it thynketh me.
[2. Herod. viii. 111.
Themistocles, demanding money of the Andrians, said he had brought `two mighty
gods, Peitho and Anankaia', to enforce his demand. The Andrians replied that
they were cursed with `two unprofitable gods, Penia and Amechania', and could
not pay.]
[[224]]
and Constraint (Exousia and Ananke,--both of which terms are used by
Diodotus). Eros and Elpis may be associated with either. In the
Symposium, Plato for his own purposes makes Eros the child of both: he
was born, in the garden of Zeus, of Poros and Penia. But in an earlier stage
Elpis, at any rate, was more closely associated with Poverty.As
a personality, she first appears in Hesiod, who mentions her twice. He warns
the labouring man to pass by the sunny portico where the poor gather for warmth
the winter season, when the frost has stopped work in the fields. Otherwise, in
the hard winter-time, Amechania and Penia will swoop down on him. `An idle man,
waiting on empty Hope, gathers many evils to his heart. Hope is an ill guide
for a needy man,' sitting there and chattering when he has not enough
livelihood. (note 1) Such are the sinister associations of lElpis, the
temptress, prompting evil thoughts which we, with our different conception of
Hope, associate rather with the daring of despair.
No less significant is Hesiod's other mention of her, which occui's in the
second, and more primitive, of the two versions which he gives of the Pandora
myth. Mankind originally lived free fiom evil and pain and the sprites
(Keres) of disease. These were all shut up safely in the great jar; but
`a woman' lifted the lid and they all flew abroad, filling land and sea. `Only
there, in a house not to be broken into, abode Elpis, inside the mouth of the
jar, and flitted not
[1. Hesiod, Erga, 493 ff. mÆ se kakoË xeim<<now
ÉAmhxan[[currency]]n katamãrc[[dotaccent]] sÁn
Pen[[currency]][[dotaccent]]... ÉElpfrag. 221 (Diels) ÉElpTheognis, 643:âA
deilØ Pen[[currency]]n, t[[currency]] [[section]]mo>w
[[section]]pikeimdeg.nh moiws<<ma kataisxÊneiw ka<
nÒon <=mdeg.teronafisxrå ddeg. mÉ oÈk
[[section]]ydeg.lonta b[[currency]][[dotaccent]] ka< pollå
didãskeiw,[[section]]sylå metÉ ényr~pvn ka<
kãlÉ [[section]]pistãmenon;]
[[225]]
forth; for the woman first shut down on her the lid of the jar.' (note 1)It seems probable that several notions are confused in the
myth. The uppermost and latest stratum, like the story of the Erichthonius
snake, is tinged with satire against feminine curiosity. Woman is the source of
evil, as she is in Hesiod's other version of the Pandora myth. But the woman
herself is tempted by Elpis, who is one of the baneful sprites inside the jar.
Perhaps in the earliest version there was no woman at all, but only Elpis, the
temptress, who stays with man in his utter destitution and besets him with
dreams of wealth. This idea is crossed by the opposite (and later) notion that
hope is the sole comforter of poverty; (note 2) and finally the introduction of
the curious woman who lets out the evil sprites completes the confusion.
How ever the story is to be disentangled, it is certain that
[1. Erga, 90-105 moÊnh dÉ aÈtÒyi
ÉElpErga, it seems likely that Hesiod does not mean expectation of evil, but
a false and flattering expectation of goods, which will not be realized.
Another critic says: `The jar (p[[currency]]yow) is appropriately introducad,
because of the allurement (pe[[currency]]yv) that comes from women; it is
empty of good and contains only vain hopes.' This writer shows that he is
on the true scent, by associating Elpis with Peitho, though, of course, the
word-play (p[[currency]]yow--peiy~) is late. He sees, too, that Elpis is not a
good, but an evil; and this, we believe, was what the authors of the myth
intended. [1. Theogn. 1135 ff. ÉElpvii sap. conv. 153 D t[[currency]]
koinÒtaton; ÉElpboth a comforter and a delusion are combined by
Sophocles in the Antigone chorus (616): è går dØ
polÊplagktow ÉElpw mcentsn ^nasiw éndr<<n,
pollo>w dÉ ÉApãta koufonÒvn [[section]]r~tvn, and
by Thucydidas (v. 103) in tha paallel passage from the Melian dialogue (see
above, p. 184).]
[[226]]
Elpis is a Ker; and this gives us one primitive form in which the
passions were conceived as external spiritual agencies. Eros retained to the
last some resemblance to the Keres; the Erotes are always winged
sprites. (note 1) These figures are something very different from what we think
of as `personifications of abstract ideas'. They are not the intolerable,
bran-stuffed dummies which stalk absuidly through eighteenth-century verse.
They are spirits, unseen, and swift, and terrible in onset. How did they come
into being?
The solid fact from which we must start is that many of these
`personifications', as we call them, were objects of established worship,
possessing shrines and altars. In Athens alone we know of altars to Aidos,
Pheme, Horme, Anteros, Ara, Eirene, Eleos, Eukleia, Lethe, Nike, Peitho,
Philia, Tyche, and others. (note 2) Of those which specially concern us here,
Tyche is known to have been worshipped at a great number of places; Penia had
an altar at Gades; Elpis was not, so far as we know, the object of any cult;
Eros, on the contrary, is the most real and personal of all, and finds his
way--much transformed, it is true--into Olympus.
Now it is certainly possible, in an advanced state of civilization, for a cult
to be artificially founded in honour of an abstraction. Democratia, to whom the
Athenian Generals made offerings in Boedromion, must always have been little
more than an epithet of Athena, never an independent person. In such a instance
the cult must have been established merely from political motives, and it
remains as unreal and artificial as the worship of the Goddess Reason at the
time of the French Revolution. But the case is not the same with others of the
names above enumerated: some
[1. Miss J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek
Religion, p. 632. Eros, as a developed personality, seems to be a complex
product of several different elements. We are here only concerned with one of
these--the psychological affection of violent desire, whether sexual or other.
Democritus, frag. 191 (Diels), calls Jealousy, Envy, and Hatred
K[[infinity]]rew: taÊthw êrÉ [[section]]xÒmenow
t[[infinity]]w gn~mhw eÈyumÒterÒn te diãkeiw ka<
Ùl[[currency]]gaw K[[infinity]]raw [[section]]n t"
b[[currency]][[florin]] di~seai, FyÒnon ka< Z[[infinity]]lon ka<
Dusmen[[currency]]hn. [2. The evidence will be found in Roscher's lexicon,
a v. Personifactionen.]
[[227]]
of these cults were too ancient to have been anything but genuinely
religious. In an early state of society we caauot suppose that personified
abstractions, regarded as such, could become the objects of a permanent
cult. How, then, did these cults arise?Looking through the list,
we find that a fair number of these entities are psychological. Aidos,
Anaideia, Eros, Anteros, Eleos, Elpis, Himeros, Horme, Hybris, Phobos, Pothos,
are all names of states of mind; and to these we will confine our attention.
Their origin must be sought in mental experience; and we may suppose that it
occurs in some such way as this. At moments of exceptional excitement, a man
feels himself carried away, taken hold of, `possessed' by an impulse, a gust of
emotion, which seems to be not a part of himself, but on the contrary a force
against which he is powerless. This is even to a civilized person a somewhat
terrifying experience. The inexplicable panic which will suddenly run through
an army, the infectious spirit of a crowd, the ecstasy produced by intoxicants,
the throes of sexual pleasure, the raving of the seer and of the poet--all
these are states of mind in which the self appears to be drowned and swept
away. By what? There can be but one answer: some spirit, or daemon, has entered
the soul and possesses it. This is the very language used by Diodotus; (note 1)
and, centuries later, Porphyry (note 2) describes in very similar terms the
invasions of maleficent spirits. `Having in general a violent and insidious
character, which moreover is without the tutelage of the higher spiritual
power, they for the most part make their assaults, as though from an ambush,
with vehemence, so as to overpower their victims, and suddenly, since they try
to escape notice. Hence the passions that
[1. iii. 45 dÉ êllai juntux[[currency]]ai
Ùrg[[ordfeminine]] t<<n ényr~pvn ...w *kãwth tiw
katdeg.xetai ÍpÉ énhkdeg.stou tinow kre[[currency]]ssonow.
See above, p. 122. [2. Porph. de abst. ii. 39 b[[currency]]aion
går ~lvw ka< Ïpoulon [[paragraph]]xontew [[Sigma]]yow
[[section]]sterhmdeg.non te t[[infinity]]w fulak[[infinity]]w t[[infinity]]w
épÚ toË kre[[currency]]ttonow daimon[[currency]]ou,
sfodråw ka< afifnid[[currency]]ouw o[[perthousand]]on [[[section]]j]
[[section]]ndeg.draw ...w tÚ polÁ poioËntai tåw
[[section]]mpt~seiw, p[[ordfeminine]] mcentsn lanyãnein peir~menoi,
p[[ordfeminine]] dcents biazÒmenoi. ~yen Ùjdeg.a mcentsn tå
épÉ [[section]]ke[[currency]]nvn pãyh, afl dcents
ékdeg.seiw. (cf. Diodotus' énhkdeg.ston) ka< katory~seiw afl
épÚ t<<n kreitsÒnvn bradÊterai
dokoËsin.]
[[228]]
come from them are swift and keen; and the remedies and restorations due
to the higher spirits seem to be too slow.
When we have traced these agencies back to this stage, it is only one
step further to the most primitive theory of causes and motives which we find
among existing savages.
`I can see,' says Mr. Sidney Rartland, (note 1) `no satisfactory evidence that
early man entertained any great faith in the order and uniformity of nature...
If he took aim at his enemy and flung his spear, or whatever primitive weapon
served the same purpose; if it hit the man, and he fell; he might witness the
result, but the mere mechanical causation, however inevitable in its action,
would be the last thing he would think about.' What he does think about, Mr.
Rutland, surveying the whole field of savage life as now known to us, and
drawing evidence from every part of it, explains in convincing terms. Every
known object has to the savage an elementary personality, endowed with
qualities which enable it to persist and to influence others; and by virtue of
these qualities it possesses, inherent in it and surrounding it, a sort of
atmosphere charged with power. The Iroquois in North America call this
atmosphere or potentiality, orenda. A good hunter is one whose
orenda is good, and baffles the orenda of his quarry. At public
games, in contests of skill or endurance between tribes, `the shamans--men
reputed to possess powerful orenda--are employed for hire by the
opposing parties respectively to exercise their orenda to thwart or overcome
that of their antagonists.' (note 2) When a storm is brewing, it (the
storm-maker) is said to be preparing its orenda. Of one who has died
from witchcraft it is said `an evil orenda has struck him'. This idea of
orenda, says Mr. Rartland, although it may not receive everywhere the
same explicit recognition, `is implied in the customs and beliefs of mankind
throughout the world.'
[1. Presidential Address to the Anthropological Section of the British
Association, 1906. [2. Quoted from J. N. B. Hewitt, American
Anthropologist, N.S. iv. 38.]
[[229]]
The savage whose spear has struck down his enemy does not, and cannot,
think of the two events--the spear-blow and the enemy's death--as cause
and effect. His view is that `his own orenda felt in his passion, his
will, his effort, (note 1) and displayed in his acts and words, the
orenda of the spear, either inherent in itself, conceived as a personal
being, or conferred by its maker and manifested in the keenness of its point,
the precision and the force with which it flies to its work and inflicts the
deadly wound--these would be to him the true causes of his enemy's fall. His
orenda is mightier than his enemy's and overcomes it.' (note 2)
We have here the notion of cause traced to its root--the psychological
experience of effort, the putting forth of will to constrain or master an
opposing effort. Now, in states of violent excitement, man feels himself
controlled and swept away by something which seems to exercise over his will a
compelling force of the same kind as that which he is at other times conscious
of putting forth out of himself. He regards this as the orenda of a
spirit coming from outside.
At first the invading daemons will be associated only with the peculiar
experiences which they severally cause. Phobos is simply the spirit
which falls upon an army and inspires panic; Eros the spirit which
possesses the lover, and so on. For a long time they may have had no fuller
personality, and not even a continuous existence. They were momentary beings,
sweeping into the soul from nowhere and passing out again into nothingness.
Their continuous existence would begin when first some rude, unshapen stone was
set up and conceived as their dwelling. The invisible agency can be conveyed by
incantation into a rock or tree, which thus becomes a fetish. The famous
unwrought stone at Thespiae was the habitation, not the image, of Eros--his
baetyl, or beth-el. The personalities would gradually fill out, as
stories
[1. In Homeric language, his flerÚn mdeg.now. [2. When Thales
said that `all things are full of spirits' (da[[currency]]monew), and that `the
magnet has a soul (cuxÆ) because it moves iron', he was using a notion
very like that of orenda. Like a savage, he thought that what moves
something else must have a `soul', a life-force in it.]
[[230]]
were told about them. Cult would secure their permanence; myth would
invest them with a character and history. In the transition from aneikonic to
eikonic cults, we see the figure literally emerging out of its pillar
habitation and growing into human shape. (note 1)We must think
of all this as occurring long before the earliest literature we know. Homer and
Hesiod preserve much that is primitive, but they preserve it in a late and
artificial dress; far behind them stretches a period of popular myth-making,
and it was in that period that these `abstractions' reached their fullest
reality and life. This growth of a mythical person is something utterly
different from the allegorical personification of an abstract idea. To grasp an
abstraction distinctly and then to assign it personal attributes is a
proceeding which can only occur in a very advanced state of culture. These
figures which we are now considering are originally not allegorical, but
mythical; not personiflcations, but persons.
Allegory is a kind of story-telling, and in so far akin to myth; but, in order
of genesis, the fabrication of allegory is the very reverse of myth-making.
Allegory starts with a consciousness of the prosaic truth and then invents an
artificial parable to clothe it withal. Christian sets out with neighbour
Hopeful on a pilgrimage from the city of Mansoul to the New Jerusalem. The
company he meets by the way, Giant Despair and Mr. Worldly Wiseman, are
personifications which can only impose upon a child. Delightful as he is, we
never quite forget that Apollyon is a pantomime bogey in pasteboard armour. It
seems that an abstraction, once escaped, can never get back into the concrete;
abstract and lifeless it must always remain. Allegory is an artificial business
from the first, and foredoomed to failure. It is not thus that children--even
modern sophisticated children--tell themselves stories; it was not thus that
primitive man told himself myths. Eros and Elpis, Ienis and Eris, Nemesis and
Ananke--these and their like are not allegorical fictions.
[1. Note, for instance, that Peitho, in the relief (p. 209), is sitting
on the top of her pillar; Aphrodite, in the vase-painting (p. 195), is emerging
from hers.]
[[231]]
Man has not made them; it is they who make him, and bitter his fate if
ho defy them. They have a long course to run before the dissolution sets in,
whereby the body falls away from the soul, the presentment from the spirit.
They will become personifications only when they die.
How these discarnate passions came to develop into personalities, which
could be represented in human shape, we can only guess. It is the work of
myth-making imagination, helped probably by the fully developed
anthropomorphism of the Olympian religion. Hesiod, by the devices of
affiliation and marriage, somehow brings them into his multifarious pantheon;
but they look queer and unreal when they get there, because they properly
belong to a more primitive, non-anthropomorphic, system of belief. They dwindle
into pale shadows beside the radiant and solid inhabitants of Mount Olympus.
Some of them, we remark--though our impressions on this point are not very
trustworibyhave won and retained a fuller degree of personality than others.
Aidos, Peitho, Eros are more real to us than Eleos, Horme, or Philia. It seems
certain that to the Greeks also some were fainter, others more vividly
conceived. How far any one of them would advance towards complete divinity
would depend on all sorts of accidents, and partly on the real frequency and
importance of the states of mind which the power in question inspired.
Their later history confirms this impression. Some of them retain their
independence, others lose it. It is suggested by Hermann Usener in an
illuminating discussion of this subject (note 1) that the fact that their names
have a known meaning weakens them as against the completely developed personal
god with a proper name, the meaning of which is forgotten. It is easy to see
what would happen if this world of daemons were invaded by a hierarchy of gods
who had reached full anthropomorphic concreteness. The originally independent,
but shadowy, personalities would yield to the stronger and become attached to
them as attendants or even as epithets. So we hear of Athena
[1. Götternamen, p. 869.]
[[232]]
Nike, Athena Hygieia, Artemis Eucleia, and so forth. The weakest will in
this way almost disappear; their personality is absorbed and they sink into
adjectives. Others however maintain their independence. Nike is not lost in
Athena; Peitho never becomes Aphrodite. A long-established cult would be an
anchor to save these ancient figures from being swept away. If myth has wrought
for them a fairly distinct character and history, their personality will resist
absorption. Though many of the take lower rank as attendant and ministering
spirits, they will long retain a hold of their own in the minds of their simple
worshippers. If in one way they are less human than the gods, in another they
have remained closer to the elementary feelings of
humanity.Figurative art will also contribute its help. If it is
markedly anthropomorphic and has advanced far enough to fix a traditional human
type with well-known traits and attributes, its figures will not give way
altogether to newly- imported personalities whose traits and attributes are
different. In actual fact, Eris, Apatê, Peitho, and some others do remain
in Greek vase-painting. They are only subordinated to the Olympians, not
effaced by them, and often the divinity and the attendant spirit appear side by
side. The existence of a familiar archetype counts for much, especially as
polytheism has no objection to indefinite multiplication of divine or daemonic
personalities, and all religions have a remarkable power of `reconciliation'.
Christianity finds room for as many saints and martyrs as Greece had daemons
and heroes. In the modem world saints are kept alive and independent by local
cults. They are also preserved by literature which gives a fixed and enduring
form to popular hagiology. Greek poetry did the same service to the primitive
daemons, for the clear imagination of poets arrested the fiux of popular myths,
and prevented the disappearance of figures which might otherwise have
melted.
In the Ker stage, before they became humanized under the
influence of Olympian anthropomorphism, Eros and Elpis were beings of the same
order as that out of which the
[[233]]
Erinyes and the Moirai developed. They were closely akin to the
angry ghosts and the avenging spirits; and it was easy for them
to be associated with the malevolent daemon who causes reversals of fortune,
(note 1) since these reversals are often due to excess of confidence,
intoxication, the sudden access of blind and violent feeling. Thus the passions
take their place in the cycle of the tragic fact----Elpis beside Penia, Eros
beside Ploutos. This first stage of the tragic theory is religious, but not
theological; and it is quite non-moral.With the advent of the
Olympian gods we reach a second stage, which, though still non-moral, is
theological. The spirits of vengeance are now employed by the gods to punish
man, not for moral offences, but for arrogant presumption. The notion of the
divine Jealousy (fyÒnow) is now prominent. If man seeks to overstep the
limits assigned him and to become as a god, he excites the resentment
(ndeg.mesiw) of higher powers. Great prosperity is one of the divine
prerogatives, and the tragic passions of unrestrained desire and ambition are
offences against the gods. The reversal of fortune, formerly attributed to an
independent daemon, now becomes an act of divine punishment. (note 2) `God is
wont to lop and cut
[1. As the Erinyes are in Aesch. Agam. 468 kelaina< dÉ
ÉErinÊew xrÒn[[florin]] tuxhrÚn ^ntÉ
êneu d[[currency]]kaw palintuxe> tribò b[[currency]]ou
tiye>sÉ émaurÒn. ÉElp[[currency]]w occurs in the
Orphic Hymn (lix) to the Moirai : a.tÉ [[section]]p< l[[currency]]mnhw |
Ùrfna[[currency]]hw... | na[[currency]]ousai pepÒthsye
brot<<n [[section]]pÉ épe[[currency]]rona ga>an. |
[[paragraph]]nyen [[section]]p< brÒteon dÒkimon gdeg.low
[[section]]lp[[currency]]di koÊf[[dotaccent]] | ste[[currency]]xete--a
reminiscence of the winged (koÊfh) Ker-Elpis. [2. One of the earliest
expressions of this theory is in a recently deciphered Babylonian book, dated
before 2000 B.C., the story of Tabi-utul-Bel, King of
Nippur:
`How can mortals fathom the way of a god?
He who is still alive in the evening may be dead the next morning;
In an instant he is cast into grief; of a sudden he is crushed;
One moment he sings and plays,
In a twinkling he wails like a mourner.
Like day and night their fate changes;
If they hunger they are like corpses,
When they are satiated they think themselves equal to their god;
If things go well they talk of ascending to heaven,
If they are in distress, they speak of going down to
Irkalla.'
Morris Jastrow (A Babylonian Job, Contemp.
Review, Dec. 1906, p. 805), from whom the above rendering is taken,
discusses the document.]
[[234]]
down all excess'; (note 1) it is Zeus who `abases the high, and exalts
the low'. (note 2) Countless stories of the attempts to scale Olympus, and of
men who have aspired to the love of goddesses, belong to this order of thought.
These latter sins are the offences of Eros; but Elpis, who dares to count upon
the future as assured, is also guilty of impious presumption. `Some day,' says
Pindar, `I may say for certain what shall be; but now, although I hope, with
God is the end.' (note 3) Such is the cautious language of piety. `In every
matter,' says Solon to Croesus, `one must look to the end and see how it will
turn out; for there are many to whom God gives a glimpse of prosperity and then
overturns them root and branch.' (note 4) It is not safe to call a man happy
until he is dead; premature congratulations will bring ill luck on
him.As a third stage in the development of these ideas, we next
encounter the Aeschylean notion that God uses the tragic passions themselves
as agents of punishment, and bringgs the sinner to ruin by increasing the
arrogant delusion. His ministers of Justice are Delusion
(ÉApãth), and Blindness (ÖAth) ; (note 5) the former
sometimes takes the shape of Elpis or of Eros. Thus the very causes of offence
are enhanced by God to lead the guilty man deeper into the snare which Ruin
spreads. This is the theory stated by Sophocles in the chorus we have already
quoted. Elpis, the Delusion who wings the dreams of Desire, steals upon the
sinner unawares. He is blinded and becomes unable to distinguish
[1. Herod. vii. 10 fildeg.ei går i yeÚw tå
Íperdeg.xonta pãnta koloÊein. [2. Laert. Diog. i. 3.2
Chilon asked Aesop how Zeus was employed; fãnai dÉ
aÈtÒn: tå mcentsn Íxhlå tapein<<n,
tå dcents tapeinå Ív<<n.
[3. Pind. Ol.
xiii. 103. Cf. Theogn. 659 oÈdÉ ÙmÒsai
xrØ toËyÉ ~ti mÆpote prçgma tÒdÉ
[[paragraph]]stai: | yeo< går toi nemes<<sÉ,
o[[perthousand]]sin [[paragraph]]pesti tdeg.low.
[4. Herod. i. 32 fin.
[5. Aesch. fragm. 301 ÉApãthw dika[[currency]]aw
oÈk épostate> yeÒw. One means of delusion, used by the
gods is the riddling oracle, which is of the nature of an ordeal. If a man is
right-minded, he will interpret it. correctly and take warning; but if he is
infatuated, it will mislead him. Cf. the terms in which Thucydides (v. 103
cit. supr. p. 178) speaks of oracles, divination, ka< ~sa toiaËta
metÉ [[section]]lp[[currency]]dvn luma[[currency]]netai, and Dionysius'
paraphrase, <= parå t<<n ye<<n
[[section]]lp[[currency]]w.]
[[235]]
right from wrong. (note 1) Moral offences, as distinct from presumption
against the gods, gradually become more prominent. One of the earliest is
excess in vengeance, (note 2)--though this, perhaps, was at first only a
theological offence against the divine prerogative of
cruelty.The notion that a passion like Eros can be the
instrument of the divine Jealousy finds an interesting expression on a vase
(note 3) of the same class as the Darius krater figured on p. 195. In the
central field the `death of Meleager is represented inside a house. Outside,
and on a higher level, sits Aphrodite, with her head inclined in sorrow,
watching the scene. In her left hand she holds a bow and arrow; and beside her
stands Eros. He is unmistakable, but the name inscribed above him is not his
own, but Phthonos (FYONOS). The significance is clear: Aphrodite symbolizes the
love of Meleager for Atalanta, of which she is the supernatural cause, the
parait[[currency]]a; Eros-Phthonos is the enhanced passion which has led
Meleager to overstep the bounds assigned to man, and brought on the doom by
which the Jealousy of Heaven is appeased. (note 4)
This moral and theological theory and the drama based on it concentrate
attention more on the abasement of pride than on the exaltation of the lowly;
and the tragic fact comes to consist chiefly of the former. Hence the original
associations of Penia and Elpis have faded for us, while those of Ploutos and
Hybris are vivid. Elpis and Fros, too,
[1. Soph. Ant. 822 tÚ kakÚn doke>n potÉ
[[section]]sylÚn | t"dÉ [[paragraph]]mmen ~t[[florin]] frdeg.naw
| yeÚw êgei prÚw êtan. Lycurgus in Leocr. 92
(cit. Jebb ad loc.) quotes from `ancient poetry': ~tan går
ÙrgØ daimÒnvn blãpt[[dotaccent]] tinã, |
toËtÉ aÈtÚ pr<<ton [[section]]jafaire>tai
fren<<n | tÚn noËn tÚn [[section]]sylÒn, efiw
dcents tØn xe[[currency]]rv trdeg.pei | gn~mhn, .nÉ
efid[[ordfeminine]] mhdcentsn oen èmartãnei. Similarly the chorus
in the Antigone (791) addressing Eros: oÁ ka< dika[[currency]]vn
éd[[currency]]kouw frdeg.naw paraspòw [[section]]p< l~b&. [2.
Herod. iv. 205 ...w êra ényr~poisi afl l[[currency]]hn fisxura<
timvr[[currency]]ai prÚw ye<<n [[section]]p[[currency]]fyonoi
g[[currency]]nontai. The moral, and non-theological, equivalent of this is
expounded in Hermocrates' words (Thuc. iv. 62) quoted above on p. 170.
[3.
From Armentum, now at Naples in the Museo Nazionale CoIl. Santangelo, No. 11.
Interpreted by Kekulé, Strenna festosa efferta a G. Henzen, Roma,
1867.
[4. See Koerte, Ueber Personzationen psychol. psychol. Affekte in
der späteren Vasenmaleren, Berlin, 1874.]
[[236]]
become almost indistinguishable; both are characteristic of Hybris, and
ministerial agents of Nemesis.
We have entered upon this short and imperfect description of primitive
psychology with a view to bringing out the pre-Aeschylean beliefs about the
tragic passions and their relation to reversals of fortune--their place in the
cycle of the tragic fact. Unless our description of the form of Aeschylean
tragedy was altogether fanciful, we found in the double structure of his drama
certain features which pointed back to the primitive, mythical theory of the
passions. Aeschylus conceives them as ministerial agencies, external to man and
yet embodied and personified in him. On the ideal plane of the lyric they
seemed still to keep something of their old independent existence as
elementary, supernatural persons. Hybris was not a mere name for Agamemnon's
pride; Eros was something more than the lust of rapine in the conquerors of
Troy. The old notion of incarnation or spiritual possession, combined with the
subordination of daemons to the gods, provides at this stage of development a
working theory to reconcile the supernatural with the natural causation of
human action. The characters of the play are not merely the blind puppets of
higher powers; they have inward springs of motion, and yet these are agencies
sent from God. Thus for a moment is the balance poised between the two sets of
powers which shape human destiny.
But only for a moment. The theory involves so delicate an equilibrium between
natural and superhuman, so nice a compromise of faith and knowledge, that it
cannot be maintained for long. The balance must turn, and there is no doubt
which scale will sink. The supernatural must fade and recede. The gods must
surrender again to man the life with which, as he slowly learns, himself at his
own cost has lavishly endowed them. Human nature re-enters upon its alienated
domain, conscious of itself, and of nothing else but a material world which
centres round it. Desire and Hope must resign their dream shapes, and all that
will be
[[237]]
left of them is a hot movement of the blood, the thrill of a quickened
nerve. Vengeance and Ruin will be at last transformed into facts of heredity
and causal sequences of physical excess and pain, Destiny will give place to
Law.
The question which can no longer be postponed is, how far this process,
with all the loss and gain it carries with it, had advanced for Thucydides. The
common assumption is that the language of Diodotus is only poetical metaphor,--
that it means no more than a writer of our own day would mean by it.
`Thucydides,' we are told, `has made a clean sweep of the legendary and
novelistic sympathies, and primitive beliefs, rarely mitigated by the light of
criticism, which marked Herodotus.' In a single generation he had leapt across
the whole gulf which separates us from Aeschylus and Pindar.
In the course of this study the conviction has been growing upon us that the
comparisons commonly made between Thucydides and Herodotus are based on false
assumptions and misleading. It is usual to speak of Herodotus as primitive, and
religious to the point of superstition; of Thucydides, as advanced and
sceptical to the point of irreligiousness. Herodotus is treated as a naive and
artless child; Thucydides as a disillusioned satirist and sometimes as a cynic.
These representations seem to us to be founded simply on the external fact that
Herodotus was by a generation the older of the two, and on the false assumption
that, because their books are both called histories, Thucydides must have
started where Herodotus left off, and developed the tradition he originated.
Our own view is almost exactly the reverse. If either of the two men is to be
called religious, it is Thucydides; if either is sceptical, it is Herodotus.
Naivety and artlessness are not terms we should choose to apply to either;
something closely akin to cynicism and fiippancy is common enough in Herodotus;
there is not a trace of either in Thucydides.
A single passage at the beginning of Herodotus' history
[[238]]
will illustrate our meaning. In tracing the earlier stages of the
quarrel between East and West, Herodotus has occasion to relate the story of
Io, the cow-maiden beloved of Zeus and persecuted by Hera. (note 1) Putting
quietly aside the Greek legend, (note 2) which was primitive, gross, and
supernatural, Herodotus gives the story as told by the Persian chroniclers. In
this version Io, an Argive princess, was carried off to Egypt by some
Phoenicians who were trading along the Aegean coasts. Herodotus also gives a
slightly different version, current among the Phoenicians, in which Io became
the captain's paramornr, and, to escape her parents' anger, sailed to Egypt of
her own free will.`It is curious,' says Rawlinson, (note 3) `to
observe the treatment which the Greek myths met with at the hands of
foreigners. The Oriental mind, quite unable to appreciate poetry of such a
character, stripped the legends bare of all that beautified them and then
treated them, thus vulgarized, as matters of simple history. Io, the virgin
priestess, beloved by Zeus, and hated by jealous Hera, metamorphosed,
Argus-watched, and gadfly-driven from land to land, resting at last by holy
Nile's sweet-tasting stream, and there becoming mother of a race of hero-kings,
is changed to Io, the paramour, &c.... Herodotus, left to himself, has no
tendency to treat myths in this coarse, rationalistic way: witness his legends
of Croesus, Battus, Labda, &c. His spirit is too reverent, and, if we may
so say, too credrnlous. The supernatural never shocks or startles him.'
The critic's mind is filled with the Io legend as presented in the
Supplices and the Prometheus, and he quarrels with the
Phoenicians for not having read and appreciated their Aeschylus. But what was
the story of Io, before Aeschylus made it mysterious and beautiful? Apollodorus
preserves the edifying tale (note 4) which `the Semitic race, unable to enter
[1. Herod. i. 1 ff. [2. i. 2 oÏtv mcentsn
ÉIoËn [[section]]w A[[daggerdbl]]gupton épikdeg.syai
ldeg.gousi Pdeg.rsai, oÈk ...w ÜEllhnew. That is all he says
about the Greek story.
[3. Translation of Herodotus, note ad loc.
[4. Apollod. Bibl. 2. 1. 3. Io was priestess of Hera, and Zeus violated
her. Caught iu the act by Hera, he changed the maiden into a white cow, and
swore he would not touch her again. That is why, says Hesiod, the breaking of
lovers' vows does not draw down the anger of the gods. Hera begged the cow from
Zeus, and set Argus to watch her. He tied her to an olive-tree. Then Zeus sent
Hermes to steal the cow, but Hermes was detected by Hierax (the Hawk) and he
killed Argus with a stone. Hera sent a gad-fly to drive Io from land to land,
till at last she came to Egypt, was changed back into a woman, and bore
Epaphos.]
[[239]]
into the spirit of Greek poesy', (note 1) vulgarized and stripped bare
of its beauty. Herodotrns, `left to himself,' would have been too reverent to
be shocked by it; but apparently the Persians and Phoenicians stood over him
with a stick and terrorized his `reverent, and if we may so say, credulous'
spirit. They did their work pretty thoroughly. They corrupted their innocent
victim to the extent of making him repeat a comment, which is not quite the
sort of thing we expect to hear in the nursery. `Now the Persians argue that to
carry off a woman must of course be considered as the act of a wicked man; but,
when the elopement has taken place, to make great ado about vengeance is the
mark of a very foolish man, and to take no notice whatever is the mark of a
very wise one. For obviously, if the victim herself had not wished it, there
would have been no elopement. Now they themselves (they maintain) had acted
like wise men,' &c. (note 2)Where else in Greek literature
shall we find this flippant, Parisian, man-of-the-worldly tone? Not in the
Athenian authors--Aeschylus, Sophocles, Thucydides, Euripides, Plato--no, nor
yet in Aristophanes. It is not Athenian, but Ionian; (note 3) we must look for
a parallel to the latest and most decadent passages of the Ionian Epos; just
as, to match the `Milesian' tale of Gyges, to which Herodotus next turns, we
must look to Boccaccio and Brant6me. Herodotus stands, not
[1. Rawlinson, ibid. [2. Herod. i. 4. Plutarch, malig.
Herod. ii. (856) protests against this utterance as an `apology on behalf
of the ravishers' find as involving impiety, since, if the women were carried
off willingly, the punishment of the gods upon the ravishers was unjust.
[3. The contrast between the Ionian spirit and the Athenian was suggested to me
by an unpublished lecture of Mr. Gilbert Murray, which I have been privileged
to read, and which suddenly illuminated this part of my subject, Whatever truth
there is in the view expressed is due to him, though he is in no way
responsible for the expression of it.]
[[240]]
at the beginning, but at the end of a tradition. He is not the father of
history; he is the last of the Homeridae, turning the refined and polished
product of centuries of festal recitation into material for his amusing and
instructive tale of the quarrel of East and West. The process is, to our eyes,
unscientific; but it was then the most advanced and enlightened treatment of
saga. There is not a word in either of the two versions given by Herodotus
which might not be literal fact. (note 1) Such incidents must have occurred as
frequently when the Phoenicians bartered beads and gaudy stuffs with the simple
natives along the Aegean coasts, as they do now when European traders ply
exactly the same business along the shores of Africa. Herodotus is, to our
minds, unscientific only in three respects. First, he does not understand that
primitive myths are not garbled history, any more than he was aware that
garbled history is a sort of myth. Second, he imports into the heroic age the
international courtesies and decently conducted negotiations by herald and
envoy, which prevailed in his own time. Third, he does not care which
story--the Persian or the Phoenician--is true. `About this matter,' he says, `I
am not going to say whether it happened this way or that.' `I will tell no
lies, George, that I promise you,' says the younger Pendennis; `and do no more
than coincide in those which are necessary and pass current, and can't be got
in without recalling the whole circulation.' (note 2)
[1. The treatment of this myth illustrates a remark we made
above (p. 133); to the effect that rationalization may easily efface the clues
by which the elements of fiction and truth can be discriminated. Herodotus
leaves only the name of Io and the voyage to Egypt, suppressing the
transformation into a cow. Now it is almost certain that the element of
historical fact which lies behind the story is a primitive cow-worship at
Argos, probably even earlier than the worship of Hera. Io is possibly a
primaeval cow-goddess whom Hera replaced. The voyage to Egypt is purely
mythical, having been invented when Io was identified with Isis. Thus the most
rational part of the story is absolutely unhistorical; while the gross and
supernatural features of it, which rationalism refines away, are the clue to
historical truth. Rationalization is the converse of the mythical
`infiguration' of history: it imparts the form of a possible series of events
to a supernatural and impossible story.
[2. Thackeray, Pendennis,
lxviii.]
[[241]]
It is against this light and careless Ionian temper that Thucydides
protests, as Aeschylus, in his way, bad protested before, and Plato, in his,
will protest later. To Aeschylus it seemed irreligious; to Thucydides,
regardless of truth; to Plato, immoral. Aeschylus had taken Homer and made the
religion of Zeus spiritual by incorporating with it a profound interpretation
of those gross and primitive myths, like the story of the cow-maiden, which the
Ionians had rejected or turned to ridicule in the parodies of mock Epic. Plato
finds Homer too thoroughly penetrated with immorality to be rendered
serviceable even by drastic expurgation. (note 1) To Thucydides the Ionian
tradition of Epos and story-telling is anathema; his introduction is ajudicial
and earnest polemic against it and all its works. There was as little of the
Ionian in his temperament as there was in his blood. It is almost certain that
he was related on his mother's side to the Philaidae, for his tomb was to be
seen close to those of Kimon and Miltiades. (note 2) His father bore a Thracian
name, and came probably of that hard-drinking and fighting stock which
worshipped Ares and the northern Dionysus; and it is to the religious drama
which grew up at Dionysus' festivals in Pelasgian Athens, not to the Epos which
bad flowered at the Ionian gatherings and now was overblown, that Thucydides
turns for his inspiration.
Herodotus picks up a good story where he can. His dramatization of the
expedition of Xerxes is tinged with Aeschylean religion, because Aeschylus had
created the Persian legend on this type and fixed the lines which any one who
wished to glorify Athens and to please an Athenian audience must follow. But in
Herodotus the religious notions are ill-digested and lie close to the surface.
They are the theme of illustrative and fabulous anecdote, not the deep-set
framework of earnest thought. It is not in this manner that Thucydides works
when he turns the great moral of Aeschylus' Persians against the
Athenian Empire.
[1. When Homer is called `the Bible of the Greeks', these points tend to
be overlooked. [2. The Philaidae were an Aeginetan family. Miitiades, the
victor of Marathon, married a Thracian wife.]
[[242]]
In doing so, the historian inevitably borrowed much of the structure of
Aeschylean tragedy. This unhistoric principle of design came in on the top of
his first, chronological plan, and he allowed both to shape his work, leaving
long tracts of uncoloured narrative between the scattered episodes of his
drama. The tragic theory of human nature involved in the dramatization differs
from the Aeschylean in being non-theological--at least on the surface
and so far beneath it as we are allowed to see; for in place of all-seeing
Zeus, Thucydides has Fortune. In thus removing the theological element, he has
reverted in a curious way to the pre-theological conception of the
tragic fact, which existed long before Aeschylus. The language of Diodotus
expresses that conception in its completeness and with great precision. We have
in fact in that statement an instance of rationalizing. The accretion of
theological belief is removed; but what is left is a mythical construction
which contains and carries with it conceptions still more primitive. Just as
Thucydides in rationalizing the story of Pausanias cut away the fabulous
anecdotes, and never saw that rvhat remained was not fact, but dramatized
legend; so in rationalizing the theology of Aeschylus, he was unaware that what
remained was mythical in origin, and not a fresh statement of the facts of life
drawn from direct and unbiassed observation. We have traced the theory through
three stages: (1) a primitive, pre-Olympian stage, in which it might be called
religious, but neither theological nor moral; (2) a theological, but still
non-moral stage, in which the Jealousy of the Olympians is a dominant
conception; and (3) a stage both theological and moral, in the drama of
Aeschylus. Thucydides adds a fourth stage in which this train of thought ceases
to involve theology, while it remains moral. But through all its phases it is
more or less mythical.
How much warmth and life these primitive ideas still held for him, what degree
of reality Fortune, Elpis, and Eros retained--these are questions which cannot
be answered with certainty. Our own impression is that the anthropomorphic
[[243]]
mode of thought was so habitual and vivid in the Greek mind, that only
the most determined rationalists could shake it off. Perhaps even they could
not get free of it. Euripides, like Thucydides, is hailed as a modern of the
moderns, and (to our thinking) with better reason. The tragedian has none of
the historian's detachment; he will risk the success of an artistic effect to
gain a point in theological controversy; he is not coolly, but fervently,
rationalistic. And yet, when we read the Hippolytus, and still more when
we see it played, the feeling grows upon us that reason falls back like a
broken wave. A brooding power, relentless, inscrutable, waits and watches and
smites. There she stands, all through the action, the white, implacable
Aphrodite. Is she no more than a marble image, the work of men's hands? Is
there no significance in that secret smile, no force behind the beautiful mask,
no will looking out of the fixed, watching eyes? And yet, how can there be? Is
she not one of the outcast, dethroned Olympians, a figment of bygone
superstition, despised and rejected of an enlightened age? No, she is more than
this, and much more. But what can she be ?--a personification of the
`life-force'? A thousand times, no! It must be that poetry has forced on reason
some strange compromise. We cannot detect the formula of that agreement; but we
know that somehow a compact has been made. Had the poet, in one of the long
days of musing in his seaward cave on Salamis, seen a last vision of the
goddess, rising in wiathful foam?In the Hippolytus we are
approaching the modern conception of the tragic fact, in which the interest
lies in the inward conflict of purely natural motives; but we have not yet
quite reached it; and if the supernatural quality of the elementary human
passions is still felt by Euripides, it is no great paradox to find traces of
it in the historian, who looked to drama of a much more primitive type.