Ex Libris
C. K. OGDEN
STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT
ESSAYS
SELECTED FROM THE PAPERS
OF THE LATE
LEWIS R. PACKARD
HILLHOUSE PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN YALE COLLEGE
BOSTON
PUBLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY
1886
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886, by
GINN & COMPANY,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
J. S. GUSHING & Co., PRINTERS, BOSTON.
PREFACE.
PROFESSOR LEWIS R. PACKARD died on the 26th
of October, 1884, in the forty-ninth year of his age,
having just completed his twenty-fifth year of ser-
vice as instructor in Yale College. He was born Aug.
22d, 1836, graduated in 1856, was appointed tutor
in 1859, Assistant Professor of Greek in 1863,
Hillhouse Professor of Greek in 1867, and became
Senior Professor of Greek after the death of Pro-
fessor Hadley in 1872. He was President of the
American Philological Association in 1881, and
Director of the American School of Classical
Studies at Athens, 1883-1884.
Mr. Packard prepared for the press but two of
the Essays in this volume. Doubtless he would
have improved the literary finish of the others if
he could have revised them, although he was not
accustomed to commit his thoughts in full to paper
until they were well matured in his mind. The
reader will surely not be disturbed by the lack of
a rhetorical peroration for the second Essay.
1063472
IV PREFACE.
The Essays on Plato are part of a course of lec-
tures prepared for College classes, of which these two
only were fully written out, the rest having been
given from careful notes with only now and then
a finished and elaborated section.
The Summaries of the Oedipus at Kolonos and
Antigone of Sophokles were written at Athens dur-
ing Mr. Packard's last winter of feverish weakness
and suffering (1883-1884), on small slips of paper
which he carried in the pocket of his wrapper.
One of his few drives during this last visit to
Greece was to the hill of Kolonos, and he toiled
up the little slope to gaze with charmed eyes upon
the beautiful landscape of which he speaks in the
Summary.
The jottings which are appended to these Sum-
maries were probably the germs, as they lay in
his mind, of such discussions as are found in the
Essay on the Oedipus Rex.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Religion and Morality of the Greeks I
Plato's Arguments in the Phaedo for the Immor-
tality of the Soul 41
III. On Plato's System of Education in the Republic . 65
IV. The Oedipus Rex of Sophokles 77
V. The Oedipus at Kolonos of Sophokles 121
VI. The Antigone of Sophokles 143
VII. The Beginning of a Written Literature among the
Greeks 157
I.
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE
GREEKS. 1
T WISH to present to you some thoughts, in the
way of suggestion rather than as conclusions, on
the morality and religion of the Greeks. It is a topic
that has been often touched upon, and in some of its
parts treated at great length. I am not so bold as to
expect to clear away, at a blow, the difficulties of such
a subject, or to advance wholly new views upon it.
But it is one upon which new light is continually
being thrown, in one part or another, and I may hope
that the thoughts which have interested me may
interest others also.
It is natural to try to begin at the beginning and
see whether we can ascertain what was the basis of
the moral ideas of the Greeks. Can we find any pre-
existing institution, any simpler or more fundamental
series of conceptions, upon which their theories of
human duty and their practical rules were founded ?
1 President's address at the annual meeting of the American Philolog-
ical Association, at Cleveland, July 12, 1881. It was privately printed,
and dedicated " to Theodore D. Woolsey, D.D., LL.D., lately president
of Yale College, on the fiftieth anniversary of his entering upon the
office of Professor of Greek, with most sincere respect and affection,
from an old pupil."
2 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
It seems plain at the outset that they were not based
upon the Olympian theology as set forth by the
earlier poets. For that theology during the period
of our knowledge of the Greeks was rather out of
harmony with the moral sense of the people, lagging
behind, as it were, and needing to be corrected and
interpreted by the more reflective minds. Thus it
has been noticed that the men in Homer are of purer
morals than the gods ; and it is well known that
from Xenophanes on to Plato, and even farther, men
are continually criticizing the Olympian theology on
moral grounds. And new developments are made
of it, reforms within the system, apparently to meet
the higher demands of later times. We can hardly
admit, then, although it seems to have been a com-
mon opinion among the Greeks themselves, 1 that the
Olympian theology was the sole or chief source of
Greek morality. There must have been some other
agency acting alongside of it, to elevate if not to
originate moral ideas. Nor could these ideas have
been originated by the ceremonial worship connected
with that theology, for that is probably itself an effect
rather than a cause, and has almost no reference to
the larger part of morals, the duties of man to his
fellow-man. The same thing is to be said of the mys-
teries, if anything can be confidently said of them,
and of the oracles with a partial exception, mainly in
regard to that of Delphi, to be referred to farther on.
I need not linger to prove that the moral ideas of
1 Isokrates, XI. 41.
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. 3
the people cannot have been based on the teachings
of philosophers. Their task is to explain and defend,
and enforce duties already admitted in theory. They
are often reformers in morals, but they certainly were
not the authors of morality among the Greeks.
Where, then, shall we look for an answer to our
question ? Was there any other form of belief or
practice current among the Greeks which may have
contained the germ of moral ideas? There was one,
of which the fullest exposition is given by a French
scholar, Coulanges. In his work, "The Ancient
City," he maintains that the earliest Aryan religion
was a worship of the dead, each family recognizing
its departed ancestors as divine beings, and offering
worship to them, and that with this was combined
the worship of the hearth-fire, as if its flame was in
some sense a representative of the deceased persons.
This double worship, he claims, extended through
the Indian, Greek, and Italian branches of the Aryan
family, lasted throughout the ancient history of
Greece and Italy, and still exists in India. He finds
his proof in the classical literatures in the shape of
references to forms of burial, anniversary rites at
graves, and the worship of Hestia. I observe that
Sellar in his book on Vergil accepts this theory as
well founded, 1 and it must be said that many passages
in Greek literature indicate the existence of some
such ideas, forming a sort of private family religion
by the side of the Olympian system. This worship,
1 Sellar's Virgil, p. 365 f.
4 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
Coulanges holds, was the bond which constituted
and preserved the family, and out of the family rela-
tion came all the fundamental morality of the people.
Duties of kindness and mutual help grew out of
regard for the spirits of the dead, truth and purity
out of respect for the ever-present deity of the fire.
In this last step we cannot follow him, mainly for
the reason that before the members of a family could
have united in the worship of a deceased ancestor,
the family life must have been otherwise developed
and been recognized as a bond of mutual rights and
duties. If we admit that man has been produced by
gradual steps of elevation from animal life, it seems
clear that many such steps must have been taken
before the custom of ancestor-worship could be estab-
lished, and that in those steps much of what the
theory ascribes to that worship would be already
involved. The recognition of descent in a single line
and of kinship between collateral branches implies a
degree of intellectual and moral development which
would leave comparatively little to be done in that
direction by the observance of the worship of ances-
tors. Hence we can give to this worship only a
subordinate place in the building up of a moral sys-
tem. Furthermore, it is by no means clear that this
institution or custom was a real worship. It is
thought by some careful scholars that it was merely
an affectionate honoring of the dead, and it is cer-
tainly true that the passages in Greek literature do
not clearly show anything more than that, unless in
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. 5
apparently exceptional cases. 1 They do, however,
seem to indicate a fixed and constant usage of honor
to the dead, which may perhaps fairly be supposed
to have had some of the influence which Coulanges
ascribes to it under the name of a religion. As to
the worship of fire the case is different. We have
in Hesiod 2 some important indications of the preva-
lence of a belief in the divinity of the hearth-fire and
the duty of purity in its presence, but in the later
life of the people this belief seems to have disap-
peared or changed its form. It is at least doubtful
whether for the Greeks it ever had any such influ-
ence or any such connection with the worship of the
dead as this theory assumes.
If then we do not find the source of Greek morals
in either of these religious systems or in the doc-
trines of philosophers, perhaps we ought to go back
to the time before they left their original seat in
Asia, and see if anything in the oldest remains of
their Indian kinsfolk can give the answer to our
question. We find in Earth's sketch of the religions
of India, which I am enabled to pronounce trust-
worthy on the highest authority, a brief account of
the morality implied in the earliest Vedic hymns.
Humility, sincerity, affection, in man's attitude
towards the gods, benevolence to the suffering, truth
and justice in dealings with his fellow-man, such
is the outline that Barth gives, and for the evidence
of these ideas of duty, for that which shows these
1 Such as Eur. Alk. 995-1005. 2 Works and Days, 733 f.
6 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
things to have been understood to be duties, he
points to the conception of the gods contained in the
hymns. Have we here at last found what we are
seeking ? Not yet, for the question is only pushed
one step farther back. Whence came such ideas of
the gods ? We see in the case of the Greek mythol-
ogy that it is not necessary for men to have such a
conception of beings whom they may worship. How
was it then that the Aryans of the Vedic period
formed in any degree so pure and lofty ideas of the
divine character ? It may satisfy us to accept this
as an ultimate fact which we cannot analyze, and
then we should have an answer to our question:
The morality of the Greeks was inherited from their
Aryan ancestors, and theirs was founded upon their
religion. This answer would once have been enough,
but we shall surely be told at the present day that
we are looking into the matter at a point too far
down the current of history to find the origin of any-
thing, that we must go back beyond all literature to
the time of the primitive man, and study in the
savage life of some Pacific island or African hut-
village the true parallel to the beginnings of Greek
life. There can be no objection to such a method
from any idea that it would be derogatory to the
Greek character to suppose it to have passed through
such a period. The Greeks themselves, as full of
national pride as any people could be, imagined such
a prehistoric stage in the life of their ancestors.
Aeschylos makes Prometheus 1 describe men as liv-
1 Aesch. Prom. 447471.
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. /
ing like ants in holes in the earth, destitute of all
the elements of civilization, until he taught them to
build houses, to mark the seasons, to count, and so
forth. Other poets and philosophers recognize a
similar period. But if we adopt this course, we lose
our special subject in the wider one of the origin of
moral ideas in the human race as a whole, upon
which Greek usages may throw light, but only as
one among many sources of information. And I
think it may fairly be said that, though this method
may be the right one, it has hardly yet so proved its
processes or led to such definite and accepted results
as to justify its general adoption. Unless then we
are satisfied with tracing the Greek morality back to
the ideas implied in the Vedic hymns and accounting
for those as based upon the religious system of the
same hymns, I do not see but that we must give up
our quest and adopt the words of Antigone 1 when
she says of the unwritten laws of religion and duty,
ov -yap TI vvv ye /edge's, oAA' del TTOTC
$ ravro,
If now we admit that the origin of Greek morality
is lost to our knowledge in the remote past, it is nat-
ural for us to look at it within the period known to us
and see whether it has a history in that time, whether
it undergoes changes either by way of improvement
or of deterioration. What then are the materials that
we have for this investigation ? If we arrange our
1 Soph. Ant. 456 f. ["They are not of to-day nor yesterday | But
live forever, nor can man assign | When first they sprang to being."]
8 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
materials in the order of their value, we should put
in the first place inscriptions, vase paintings, etc., in
a word, all monumental records. These would yield
but little information, but that little would be valu-
able in direct ratio to its scantiness. For they are
contemporary witnesses and in a sense impersonal,
that is, not likely to be affected by the personality of
the author in such a way as to impair the value of
their testimony as to facts and usages. We should
put next to these, institutions and customs incident-
ally made known to us by statements in literature,
such for instance as the Orphans' Court at Athens,
or the practice of offering one's slaves to be tortured
for proof of a statement in a trial. As a third source
of information, and perhaps the most fruitful one, but
needing to be used with critical care as to authenti-
city and historic probability, and of course with con-
stant observation of dates, we have the recorded inci-
dents of private and public life, all actions of states
or individuals of which we can determine the moral
character. Such stories should be collected not only
from histories but from all the literature, including
especially Plutarch, with the aim of forming as com-
plete a picture as possible of the life of the average
man. This vein has been worked to advantage by
Mahaffy in his " Social Life in Greece," but with cer-
tain prejudices and an occasional misuse of authori-
ties which detract from the value of the book. Cer-
tainly a great service remains to be rendered by any
one who will carefully collect such evidence, without
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. 9
preconceived theories, and present it well arranged
and digested. In the fourth and last place would
come the deliberate expressions of moral and relig-
ious feeling by the poets and philosophers. I put
these last partly because they are apt to be put first.
The usual way of expounding the religion and moral-
ity of the Greeks is to cull passages from the poets
and philosophic moralists, to classify those on the
same topic together, and thus to frame a scheme of
morals which is ascribed to the people at large. This
is then offset by evidence of the lewdness of the time,
taken generally from Aristophanes, and some glaring
cases of cruelty, dishonesty, etc., and we are left with
the impression that the Greek character was made up
of irreconcilable extremes. But these leading writers
are not safe guides as to the moral tenets and practice
of the common people, for two reasons, (i) They are
picked men, men of profound thought and rich imagi-
nation. They may be conscious innovators, leaders
in the introduction of new ideas. Some of them,
Aeschylos, Euripides, Plato, for example, were at
variance with the sentiment of their time and keenly
critical of the tone of character prevalent among the
people. Plato would have regarded it as an insult to
be taken as a representative of the ideas of the mass
of men of his day. (2) They are seen in their works
at their own highest moral pitch. They are writing
under the excitement of poetic or speculative inspira-
tion. They may be writing expressly to instruct and
elevate the men about them. They may write better
10 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
than they themselves ever lived, without any decep-
tion, being simply lifted up to a higher plane than
they often reached. For these reasons the language
of these writers needs to be constantly modified by
comparison with the picture of real life to be found
in historical narrative or anywhere else. Indeed, an
incident casually mentioned by Plato, whether real or
fictitious, may be of more value for the purpose in
hand than a whole dialogue of lofty moral reasoning.
Of course we should not exclude the thoughts of
poets and philosophers from our collection of mate-
rial. The expression of the moral sense of a com-
munity takes the most varied forms, and the student
of it must pay heed to the extremes in both direc-
tions ; but yet the most valuable information will come
from the comparatively scanty manifestations which
lie between the extremes. What he wants to learn
are the facts of ordinary life, the actions that seemed
natural and so attracted no attention, which for that
very reason are rarely recorded and hard to find.
Looking at a part of the period in something of the
way now indicated, one might justly say that between
the Homeric and the Periklean age there was some-
how brought about an improvement in morals. Mr.
Grote l has pointed out indications of this in three
notable particulars, the position of orphans, the way
of dealing with homicide, and the treatment of slain
enemies in war. In these there is definite and real
progress. In some other respects we find perhaps
1 History of Greece, Am. ed., II. pp. 91 ff.
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. I I
less positive traces of the same progress. The family
was in the Homeric age established and recognized
as the framework of human life. Such a conception
as that of Nausikaa is by itself sufficient to prove this.
Yet at the same time there are some things not quite
in keeping with so high an ideal. For instance, the
Greek chiefs at Troy openly keep the captive women
as paramours. We can hardly imagine the Athenian
generals at Potidaea or Samos doing this in such a
way. The rights of property were ill-defined, and
especially that of inheritance seems to be not yet
securely established. The absence of money and of
details of business transactions from the Homeric
poems leaves us without means of comparison as to
any standard of honesty in such matters. But the
honor given to the wily and unscrupulous Odysseus
seems to indicate a low morality which as soon as
commerce fairly began would show itself fully in that
sphere. Without thought of trying to defend the
Greeks of ancient or modern times from any deserved
reproach in this matter, we ought yet to recognize
that the system of exchange and banking which was
carried on at Athens in "historic times, simple as it
may seem in comparison with the modern develop-
ment, implies a great degree of confidence, which in
its turn necessarily presupposes a measure of honesty.
The cases of breach of contract or other forms of dis-
honesty, made known to us by the speeches prepared
for the fesulting trials, must have been the excep-
tions, or we cannot see how the system could have
12 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
come into existence or lasted a week. Again, in
regard to courage, as shown in war, there seems to
be distinct indication of progress. Though the Iliad
is a poem of war, and its pages abound in battles, yet
it does not give the impression that military courage
in any high degree characterized the* heroes cele-
brated in it or the people among whom it was com-
posed. There is hardly a trace in it of such courage
as was shown at Thermopylae or at Koroneia, 1 by
which a man can stand at his post and wait for certain
death on the chance of saving some one else behind
him, or march steadily forward step by step in even
line till the enemy's spear touches your breast and
the deadly crush comes. Such courage marks a
moral advance because it arises from two moral
causes : first, a sense of duty, more or less distinctly
conceived, to the state or some power above the indi-
vidual ; and second, the habit of disciplined action in
a body, which only the influence of some such supe-
rior power can originate and maintain. Now it is to
be observed that all these indications of improvement
in morals are matters which show a development of
social relations, an increased sense of society as hav-
ing claims on the individual and doing work for him.
In the treatment of orphans and of homicides the
moral sense of the people has substituted for the
irregular and uncertain action of the individual or the
family a system of definite usage to be followed by
some representative of the community. In the treat-
1 See Grote's description, History of Greece, Am. ed., IX. p. 314 f.
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. 13
ment of enemies slain in war, in matters of honesty
and courage, in conjugal fidelity, there is a fuller con-
sciousness of society as standing by and looking on
with an opinion that must be respected. There is
something of this, of course, in the Homeric poems,
but in the later period we see its influence to be
decidedly stronger in the particulars mentioned. It
is part of the general social progress which is seen as
well in government, art, and commerce. On the
other hand, there was a decline of morals in some
other particulars, two of which may be noticed here.
The change in the position of woman in the family is
a familiar fact. How far it was due to a greater
licentiousness and an increase of luxury and extrava-
gance, as K. F. Hermann l suggests, and how far to a
change in the political importance of woman, as
Mahaffy 2 thinks, we may leave unnoticed here. The
form of slavery too shows a change in moral tone.
In heroic times, slaves are acquired originally by
capture in war, and are regarded as part of the family.
In later times they become more commonly articles
of merchandise and are used less mildly, as* mere
machines, in mines and factories. On these two
classes the progress in civilization somehow presses
heavily to their disadvantage. To the fact above
noted, that the advance in morals in the historic
time is seen in such matters as belong to a more
developed influence of society, another fact corre-
1 Culturgeschichte der Griechen und Romer, I. p. 135.
2 Social Life in Greece, p. 136 f.
14 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
spends, that we find in Homer the more private and
personal virtues, such as generosity, loyalty to
friends, the sense of personal honor, apparently in a
better condition than in later times. How far this
difference is due to the difference in the sources of
our knowledge, may be a question. Of the Homeric
society we have a picture refined by the poet's touch,
e?ri TO tcd\\iov Keicoa-fji'rjfjievov, to adapt the words of
Thukydides. 1 Whereas in our knowledge of the
historic period we come nearer to the hard facts of
actual occurrence. Certainly the tendency in a work
of imagination is to present ideals of individual char-
acters. The poet will naturally make his heroes and
heroines attractive according to his standard, indulg-
ing himself in his freedom from the restraint of facts.
Here we see a reason to regret our hopeless igno-
rance of the relative date of the Hesiodic poetry.
If, as is supposed, it is but little later than that of
the Homeric, then we ought perhaps to take the
" Works and Days " as supplying the needed prosaic
complement to the heroic ideal, and to form our
picture* of the early Greek life by combining the two.
In that case we might more confidently say that the
later historic age shows progress in morals.
It is not difficult to perceive some of the proxi-
mate causes of this progress. The gnomes of the
wise men, the responses of oracles, the elevated
utterances of poets learnt by heart in boyhood and
often afterwards recalled to mind, these all con-
i I. 21.
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. 15
tributed to fix a higher standard. The general
advance of the people in the arts of life, the wider
distribution of wealth, the establishment of some-
thing like a system of law, the facilitation of inter-
course between different communities, all these
things helped to make' society more refined and to
guide the actions of individuals in submission to the
general good. Events in history, notably the Persian
War, did their part by exciting deep feeling and
bringing forth shining examples of heroism. But
back of all these there must have been some cause
or combination of causes which determined that for
a time the progress should be upward and not down-
ward. Why were they able to accumulate and dis-
tribute wealth ? Why did the arts flourish and law
prevail ? Why did poets and wise men of such char-
acter appear ? I do not know that any answer I
could give would be other than a modification or an
imitation of Bagehot's 1 exposition of the difference
between progressive and stationary nations. The
progressive nations, to state his view briefly, are
such as are able to form for themselves in their
infancy a framework of institutions strong enough to
hold them together and support their first steps, and
at the same time are able also to modify those insti-
tutions so as to adapt them to the needs of their
further growth. That the Greeks possessed this
combination of capacities in prehistoric time is suffi-
ciently evident from the effects and even the linger-
1 Physics and Politics.
1 6 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
ing remains of it in the period of history. Applying
an imitation of this theory to a single part of their
complex life, we may say that the Greeks as a people
were able to build up a system of usages and of prin-
ciples based thereon, which supported and shaped,
without hampering, the character of the individual.
Their sense of proportion and moderation, their love
of freedom, their clear-headedness, their power of
reasoning on abstract principles, these qualities, it
may be, guided them between a rigid caste system,
of which there are some faint traces in their life, and
a rude barbarian license. This is only saying in
other words, that something in the combination of
stock and surroundings made possible for them the
attainment of a good result. Perhaps no answer
would amount to very much more.
How good was the result ? Can we in any degree
estimate the value of the Greek system of morals in
its best state ? Can we say what rank it takes
among different systems known to us ? If we under-
take to do that, two cautions must be borne in mind,
(i) We must be careful not to think of the Greeks
as exactly like ourselves and to be judged by the
same standards. It is necessary to make a real effort
of imagination to understand the stock of ideas, the
framework of conceptions and assumptions, that was
in the Greek mind, before we can rightly estimate
the actions based upon that state of mind. (2) On
the other hand, we must take care not to think that
they were wholly different from ourselves. It is not
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. 1 7
only that they had the qualities which seem to be
wellnigh universal and may be called fundamental
in human nature, such as selfishness and avarice, or
parental affection and conscience. More than that,
they reached a point of civilization, that is, the
Athenians and a few other states did, in many
respects strikingly like that of modern times. In
this fact it is involved that their moral condition,
their virtues and their besetting vices, were not
unlike ours. It has often been noticed how very
modern in some things and how remote in others the
life of Athens appears to us when we come to know
it a little. For one thing they were very much like
us in that their theory of morals was considerably
better than their practice. Not only from the pro-
fessed moralists, but from common men, even from
the unblushing scamps on the stage of comedy, we
have the most edifying sentiments expressed and
immediately forgotten when they come to action.
Of course the only proper way to compare the moral
conditions of different peoples is to put theory by
theory and practice by practice and look at each pair
separately. To match the theory of one's own coun-
try with the practice of another is simply a cheap
self -glorifying. In many respects the theory of Greek
morals, if we look at its highest reach, was not very
different from our own best theory. That truth was
recognized as right and falsehood as wrong, we see
in the literature abundantly from Homer through
Solon, Mimnermos, Herodotos, the dramatists, down
1 8 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
to Plato. So family affection, courage, patriotism,
temperance, justice, reverence, all such virtues are
praised and the correlative vices condemned. In
some respects, however, there is a difference. In the
matter of bodily purity the best standard of the
Greeks was low. Revenge is an admitted privilege
or duty, until we come to Plato, who first gives a hint
of a nobler conception. The passive virtues, such as
meekness and gentleness, are ignored. Charity in
the form of benevolence we know was practiced, yet
we hardly find it inculcated as a duty, unless it is to
be recognized in the sacredness of the suppliant. If
we look at the general principle of Greek morality,
as indicated by some of its best exponents, we must
admit that it is a somewhat self-regarding system.
It is built up on an idea of fitness rather than of
right. It has in some respects a curiously unfinished
look, lacking high motives and seeming like an ex-
periment, a tentative sketch of what might be worked
up into a grand scheme. As to the other question,
how in the practice of its moral theories the commu-
nity of Athens, for instance, would compare with any
modern community, I must confess myself unable to
venture an answer. It would require more extensive
investigation and combination than I have been able
yet to undertake. It seems foolish to enter upon
any such comparison with the idea that either of the
two objects compared is to be praised at the expense
of the other. We ought rather by this time to rec-
ognize that different peoples in different periods have
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. IQ
differing phases of morality, and to be content with
ascertaining the points of distinction without trying
to exalt or depress either.
Another question suggests itself at this point.
What was the relation of the morality of the Greeks
to their religion ? How far had the sanction of relig-
ion any force to strengthen the moral sentiment ?
These questions are difficult to answer. They would
be so in the case of any people in any age. Con-
sider for instance the English people in the time of
the great religious and political struggle called the
Reformation, or in the age of Queen Anne, when
the question of the succession was so closely involved
with the disputes of sects and parties in the Church.
How difficult it is, with all our sources of informa-
tion, in these recent and prominent epochs, to form
an opinion how far religion exerted an influence on
private life. The opinion is often expressed that
there was, certainly as late as the time of Demos-
thenes, a complete separation in the Greek mind
between the ideas of religion and of practical morals.
Thus Mahaffy l speaks of the Theogony of Hesiod as
" showing the changing attitude of the Greek relig-
ion by which it was ultimately dissociated from
ethics and gradually reduced to a mere collection of
dogmas and ritual." Gladstone 2 speaks of the
" tendency of the Pagan religion to become the chief
corrupter of morality, or, to speak perhaps more
1 History of Greek Literature, I. p. r 10.
2 Quoted by Merry on Od. 8 : 267.
20 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
accurately, to afford the medium through which the
forces of evil and the downward inclination would
principally act for the purpose of depraving it." In
a different spirit and with more truth Myers l in his
essay on Aeschylos says, "Among the Hellenes
morality grew up separate from religion, and then,
as it were, turned to it to demand its aid." Still
more justly Abbott, 2 "The religious conceptions of
the Greeks became ethical at an early period and
continued to be so to the last, ever growing higher
and higher as the conception of life and duty became
more elevated." These opinions differ widely enough
from one another, yet no one of them can be wholly
denied or wholly accepted. Here as before the way
to reach the safest judgment is to collect and exam-
ine the facts so far as there are facts attainable. At
present I can only indicate some of the conclusions
which I think such an investigation would establish,
although this special topic has never, so far as I
know, been fully treated. We may see one form of
direct influence in the positive power of oaths. To
be sure, they were often violated, but we must
remember that it is the violations that attract atten-
tion and go on record. The additional sanction given
by an oath to a promise or assertion was universally
recognized, as appears from the disgrace attached to
the name of perjurer. Suicide was looked upon as
a sin against the gods ; for the effort of the philoso-
pher to explain the theory implies the existence of
1 Hellenica, p. 15. 2 Essay on Sophokles, Hellenica, p. 38.
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. 21
the opinion. At least Plato's l explanations look
altogether towards the gods, while Aristotle 2 speaks
only of the injury done to the state. The word
v/3pt<> in its general use, not as a technical term of
law but as a description of a quality of character,
includes self-confidence, recklessness, defiance of
decency and public opinion, as all having the com-
mon element of excess and overstepping due bounds.
The conduct thus described, though involving no
breach of human law, was yet condemned by com-
mon opinion and dreaded as rendering one liable to
divine displeasure. Many duties, such as those of hos-
pitality, pity for suppliants, family affection, were
enforced by appeals to the god whose titles, eVto9,
tKeT)j(Tios, f-'pfceios, show his direct relation to human
duty. In such matters as these we see, I think,
direct and positive influence from religious belief
upon conduct. And I have omitted, you will observe,
all those classes of actions which are made immoral
by the special institution of religion, such as particu-
lar forms of sacrilege, and all such as are condemned
by civil law, because I desired to mention only cases
wherein religion by itself gave sanction to what all
men regard as belonging to universal morality. How
should we find it if we look at other matters of daily
life still within the domain of universal morality ?
How far were simple truth without an oath, chastity,
courage, temperance, and the like inculcated and
practiced from religious motives? Here especially
1 Phaedo, 61 D-62 E. 2 Etb. Nicom. V. 15.
22 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
we should seek the evidence of actual incidents and
carefully criticised expressions of sentiment. It
would probably indicate that the conception of relig*
ion as a distinct motive power available as a sanc-
tion of moral duty was not yet fully formed and
developed in the consciousness of the mass of men.
The two ideas, duty and religion, "We must do what
is right " and " Let us worship and obey the gods,"
were both in the Greek mind. They may have come
from different sources. They appear to have had
different stages and rates of development. But they
approached each other, and at the climax of Greek
history they met, at least in some such souls as that
of Xenophon and probably other followers of Sokra-
tes. But with the mass of men these two ideas
perhaps remained always somewhat separate, very
much as they are often kept apart in modern times.
It does not seem that the gulf between them was
particularly wide in the case of the Greeks, so that
no modern parallel to it could be found, yet it cannot
be denied that there were elements in the history
and spirit of their religion which made such a sepa-
ration easy and legitimate.
After all, what was the character of the Greek
religion ? On this subject much has been written
and many unwarranted statements made. We are
told that it was a worship of beauty ; that it was a
worship of nature ; that it was a mixture of local
hero-worship and foreign superstition, with reminis-
cences of Hebrew tradition and anticipations of
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. 23
Christian doctrine grotesquely intermingled ; that it
was a simple and enviable flowering out of human
nature unhampered by sense of sin or dread of a
future ; that it was a profound system of truth, con-
cealing under apparently simple stories the greatest
mysteries of the visible and invisible worlds. 1 For
each of these and other like statements, there is
some show of proof, yet they can hardly all be true.
That so many differing views may be taken is due in
part to the difficulty of ascertaining the truth. It is
difficult enough to frame a clear conception and pre-
cise description of any religion held by civilized men,
but there are reasons why it is especially so in the
case of the religion of the Greeks. It had no stand-
ards, no creed, no generally accepted head to control
and coordinate local varieties. It was nearly always
hospitable to the beliefs and rituals of other peoples,
and was itself as composite as the stock of the tribes
which made up the nation. It inherited a mythology
from an unknown past, some features of which it
always retained, modifying only the interpretation of
them, and others it expanded and enriched to adapt
them to the changes in the civilization and moral
sense of the people. It embraced without fatal dis-
cord the most widely divergent views and disposi-
tions towards the gods, including in one fold the
stern devout Puritanism of Aeschylos and the scoffing
obscene Puritanism (strange as this description may
1 See among others, Preller, Petersen, Gladstone, Symonds, Bunsen,
Raskin.
24 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
seem) of Aristophanes. Even in the same mind it
allowed the reverent adoration of Zeus and the sub-
lime conception of his nature expressed in the first
chorus of the Agamemnon to coexist with the repre-
sentation of him in the Prometheus as being in the
early part of his reign a cruel, licentious, and short-
sighted tyrant. Of such a religion it seems impos-
sible to get at any central and governing principle,
to find any doctrine or spirit which runs through all
its manifestations and unites them all.
A religion may be studied either historically or
comparatively, either by tracing its own growth
through successive stages or by comparing it with
other religions. It seems clear that in the case of the
Greek religion the former method ought to precede
the latter and to control all its processes. For this
religion was in a remarkable degree a growing and
changing one. Wherever we look at two points in its
history, between the Iliad and the Odyssey, between
Hesiod and Pindar, between the Persian and the
Peloponnesian wars, between Plato and Polybios and
on to Plutarch, we still see change. What is true of
one period is not true, or true only with many qualifi-
cations, of another. A comparison which brought
into view only one period of the Greek religion
would not be very fruitful ; one which neglected the
succession of different periods would surely lead to
erroneous conclusions. As to the individual deities
in many cases there is a history which must be traced
out before we can understand the worship, the rela-
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. 25
tions of one deity to another, the local connections.
In this field much remains to be done on the plan
adopted by Ernst Curtius, Kuhn, Roscher, and others.
If we look at the Greek religion as a whole histori-
cally, we are carried back at once to a time prior to
the existence of the separate Greek national charac-
ter. We find ourselves obliged to go to the Vedic
hymns and try to learn from their scanty evidence
what the Aryan religion was. In the nature of the
case it is impossible by any such records to reach the
very beginning, for the earliest period can leave no
record behind it, but it is as far as we can go. In the
hymns of the Vedas we find a religious system with a
mythology already established. For a brief account
of it I depend upon the same authority to which I
have already referred, that of Earth. In this Vedic
system all parts of nature were held to be divine and
were objects of worship. But this is true mainly of
what is on the earth and in the atmosphere, for the
heavenly bodies are comparatively left out of view.
There are numerous deities, some personifications of
powers or phenomena of earth and air, in which the
physical element has almost disappeared in the per-
sonal ; others, personifications less complete of ab-
stract ideas or of actions. Each of these in turn is
addressed as chief, and the same powers and gifts to
men are ascribed now to one, now to another. These
deities are represented as acting upon the same mo-
tives and subject to the same passions with men. The
distinction of sex exists among them, but there is as
26 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
yet no organized government, nor are they distinctly
represented in human form, though the constant
ascription of human actions to them implies such
forms. They are immortal, and are regarded as lofty
and holy beings whom the best of men must humbly
worship. It is plain at first sight that this system
differs in many respects from what we find among
the Greeks at the earliest period when they become
known to us, yet on the other hand there are points
of resemblance which seem to warrant the belief that
the two have a common origin. For instance, certain
names of deities the two have in common, although
perhaps the only clear examples are Varuna and
Ovpavos, Dyaus and Zeu<?. It is remarkable in both
cases that the name prominent as that of a deity in
one country is quite subordinate in the other. Qvpavos
has no prominence in Greek mythology, nor Dyaus
in Vedic. It is supposed that the early settlers of the
Greek peninsula brought with them a form of this
worship of the powers of nature. What this form
was, how many deities there were, how fully they
were personified, by what rites they were worshiped
we do not seem to have any means of knowing.
Herodotos (2:52) tells us that the Pelasgians had no
names for their gods until they borrowed them from
the Egyptians. If we combine this guess of his with
the fact that in Homer there is but one obscure refer-
ence 1 to an image of a deity, we may infer that the
ancestors of the Greeks, like the singers of the Vedic
111.6:273.
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. 2/
hymns, had no representations of their gods and even
a less elaborate mythology than they. As time went
on, the number of deities was increased, in part by
real additions, in part by the re-introduction of the
same deity under a new name. Thus Dionysos comes
in as a wholly new figure apparently, and even as late
as the time of the Homeric poems has not won full
recognition. And the Greeks,like the Aryans of the
Veda, began to personify human feelings and func-
tions, social principles, and even abstract qualities.
On the other hand, Ernst Curtius has traced 1 the
progress of the worship of a Semitic goddess from
point to point along the lines of trade, whom the
Greeks came to know and adopted under several dif-
ferent names, as Aphrodite, Hera, Artemis, and per-
haps Athene, with different forms of worship. This
multiplication of deities was not wholy due to a mys-
terious impulse in the Greek mind towards polythe-
ism, but in large measure to an early separation into
small communities and a subsequent combination into
larger aggregates. Each small community, shut in
by its surrounding hills, developed its own form of
worship, attaching its own epithet to the common
name of the god of sky or sea, and perhaps also deify-
ing its local hero. When intercourse began its work,
these all obtained a sort of recognition and a place in
the great family of gods. Thus the many wives of
Zeus are evidences of so many local myths, which the
poets perhaps were the first to gather and combine
1 Preussische Jahrbucher, 1875, p. I.
28 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
into one story. To the influence of the poets, or to
the vivid defining imagination of the race, of which
they are only choice examples, is due also the anthropo-
morphizing tendency which is so prominent in the
Greek mythology. As has been already hinted, the
difference here between the Greeks and other peoples
is only one of degree. All peoples anthropomorphize
in some measure. The Veclic hymns ascribe human
motives and passions and needs to the gods, but, with
a lack of logical sequence, they leave the form of the
individual comparatively vague and mysterious. The
Hebrew Bible does the same, coming a little nearer
in some respects to the Greeks. But the Greeks,
obeying at once their reason and their lively fancy,
went on and pictured to themselves each god in dis-
tinct and beautiful human form. Here came in the
plastic and pictorial arts with powerful aid as soon
as they grew to perfection. Petersen 1 has remarked
how in the age of Perikles sculpture reached its height,
just before the wave of skepticism came, so as to fix
in the minds of the people the forms of the gods and
to provide beauty as a suggestion of holiness. But
the arts were only secondary and subsequent in this
work. Each deity must have been clearly conceived
and defined in form and attributes before the painter
or sculptor represented him to the eye. When this
was done, it was a great help to the slower minds
in imagining the person ; but we must not think of
these arts as original causes of anthropomorphism.
1 Ersch und Gruber, I. Griech. Mythologie, p. 155.
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. 2Q
One such original cause was perhaps the cheerful,
society-loving temper of the early Greek, encouraged
by the sunny and temperate skies above him. He
easily thought of his god as coming near to him in
life and pursuits, and was ready to welcome him if he
would appear at his own festival, where a part of the
victim was always assigned to him. Every festival,
and even ordinary meals, had a religious element.
All through the better time of the Greek religion
there is a tone of simple gladness, a sort of consecra-
tion of physical and social happiness, which may have
weakened its moral influence in one direction but
must have strengthened it in another. Thus conceiv-
ing their gods as individually and socially like them-
selves, they wrought out in imagination a complete
parallel above to their life below, a city in the
heavens. The book of Genesis tells us that man was
made in the image of God. Aristotle 1 supplies the
counterpart to this by his observation that the Greeks
made their gods in their own image. It would follow
naturally from this that as the character of the people
developed and improved, as their theory of an ideal
society, their conception of possible excellencies of
character, even their knowledge of the extent of the
world and the complications of its government, ad-
vanced, so would their ideas of the gods be corre-
spondingly elevated. Perhaps the most prominent
agents in this upward movement, or embodiments of
the spirit that caused it, were the Delphic oracle and
the tragic poets of Athens. The part taken by the
1 Pol. i, 2, p. 1252 b.
3O STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
oracle in promoting civilization and elevating in many
ways the life of the Greeks has been most elaborately
set forth by Ernst Curtius, especially in his History of
Greece. 1 There was one special and remarkable out-
growth of the Greek religion, apparently connected
closely with the oracle, which, I think I may venture
to say, demands more study than it has yet received.
This is briefly the belief in Apollo, not simply as the
revealer of the hidden will of Zeus, but as the agent
of purification to the soul. From this seems to have
grown up, if not a formulated system of doctrine, yet
a strong faith in the power of the god to bring about
an atonement, a reconciliation between the sinner and
the divine wrath against sin ; a faith which marks
the highest point of practical religion reached by the
Greeks. It is most strikingly exhibited to us in the
two cases of Orestes and Oedipus. These cases show
us also how the tragic poets could contribute to the
upward movement of the Greek religion. Plato felt
obliged by his theory to exclude them from his ideal
state, but it would be hard to "find two men who
would more heartily have sympathized with his aspi-
rations, when translated from the language of his phi-
losophy into that of their poetry, than Aeschylos and
Sophokles. It would also be hard to find two who
exercised a wider influence to prepare man for his
elevated views than they. The Apolline religion
apparently grew out of the Dorian worship of the
god, but it found a welcome among the lonians, and
1 Curtius, History of Greece, Bk. II. Ch. IV.
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. 3!
this illustrates how the oracle at Delphi was one
of the main causes of whatever national union the
Greeks achieved. It must not be supposed, however,
that this prominence of Apollo superseded the Olym-
pian theology. It grew out of that system and came
to be the most vital part of it, but never ceased to be
a part. Apollo himself is always the son of Zeus and,
in this his noblest work, the agent of the will of his
father. Zeus remains to the end the supreme god of
the Greek religion, and often the expressions used in
regard to him, if they stood alone, might fairly be
regarded as evidence of monotheism. This was the
culmination of the Greek religion, and then of course
came the decline. But we must not suppose that the
decline began at once. The life of ancient Greece
often seems to us to come to an end with the death of
Demosthenes and Aristotle. The art, the literature,
the philosophy, the free political action, of all these
there seems to be almost nothing after 300 B. c., to
interest most of us, and so we are apt to think that
the religion too sank at once into a degraded condi-
tion into which we need not care to follow its history.
But it had a tougher life than they, and there are
indications that it continued during the following cen-
turies with undiminished pomp of observance and, if
costly offerings are any sign, kept still some hold
upon the hearts of the worshipers. Here, more than
anywhere, the information as to the actual working of
moral and religious ideas is yet to be gathered from
inscriptions, institutions, and incidents of daily life.
32 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
But we may well believe that the religion was all this
time losing its vigor, since the fresh flow of poetic
inspiration and the hopeful energy of independent
political life had ceased to feed and to sustain it.
For this Greek religion had been so shaped by the
poets in its growth, and was so involved with the
functions and legal rights of the state governments,
that the decay or crippling of these two supports
must affect it seriously. It would be asking too much
of a religion with no higher source than it had, to ex-
pect it to do much to preserve the national life from
decay when external causes of such resistless power
were at hand to destroy it.
Now if some such meagre outline of the history of
the matter is in general true, it shows clearly that the
Greek religion was not a worship of beauty. This
idea seems to have for its foundation nothing but a
few instances of semidivine honors paid to persons
of striking beauty and the fact that as a people the
Greeks were remarkably sensitive to the influence and
obedient to the laws of the beautiful. But in reality
this quality entered no more into their religion than
into their literature and their architecture and all
their art. It was for them impossible, we may almost
say, to cultivate any form of intellectual or spiritual
activity without manifesting in it and impressing
upon it their delicate and correct feeling of grace and
proportion. Neither was the Greek religion a wor-
ship of nature. That was an element in it, at one
time, probably the chief element or rather the germ
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. 33
out of which it all grew. But during all the time of
which we have knowledge, this original character is
lost out of sight entirely, surviving only in a few faint
traces, and the names which at the first designated
powers of nature have come to stand for a totally dif-
ferent order of conceptions. We might as well say
that an oak is really an acorn as that the Greek re-
ligion is after all a nature -worship. Nor was it, as we
are sometimes told, a display of human nature un-
clothed and unabashed, acting itself out in the joyous
innocent unconsciousness of infancy. From the very
first, in order to have a raison d'etre, it must have
recognized the helplessness of man, the dread of
an offended superior power, the need of an effort to
please an unseen being. And all through the litera-
ture of Greece is felt the sterner strain that distin-
guishes the man from the child, a sense of duty
and of responsibility for the discharge of duty ap-
pearing in Homer, rising to its highest expression in
Aeschylos, not wholly lost in Aristophanes, translated
into the love of the supreme idea by Plato, and for-
mulated with mathematical precision by Aristotle.
Yet once more, we do not find in the Greek myths
profound truths disguised as fables. It is possible,
no doubt, to read such truths into them and to urge in
defense of the practice the use of the same simple
stories by the tragic poets as the vehicles of their
noble thoughts. But that example does not justify
the detection in the myths of wonderful correspond-
encies with facts not known till centuries later and of
34 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
the most ingenious selection of names and incidents
so as to hide deep thoughts from all but the discov-
erer and reveal them unerringly to him. The myth
of Prometheus is perhaps the most frequent victim of
such speculations, and shows what tortures a poor
myth, stretched on the rack of hypothesis and torn
to furnish food for many more than two fierce con-
structors of theories, may be made to undergo. But
all this interpreting is an inversion of the order of
time. Unless these myths were imparted by inspira-
tion from some superhuman wisdom, we cannot rea-
sonably suppose them intended to convey so much
profound and abstract truth.
I have been led to speak of the myths, whereas I
began to speak of the religion. Is it possible wholly
to divorce the two ? Is it possible to form an opinion
of a religion without looking at the conception which
it presents of its objects of worship, its gods, and can
we look at the gods of Greece without taking into
our view the myths ? There are three elements dis-
tinguishable in thought but so closely connected that
the discussion of one always tends to pass over into
that of another in the relation of any people to the
superhuman world as they conceive it. These are
the theology or mythology (that is, the description
and history of the divine), the morality (that is, the
system of duty among men), and the religion in a
specific sense (by which I mean the sanction which
the belief in the divine gives to morality). I leave
out of consideration the worship as foreign to my
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. 35
subject. Now if we try to estimate the result of these
three elements in the case of the Greeks, we find it to
be somewhat as follows, I think. The motive cause at
the bottom of the whole phenomenon is the need of
man for an object of worship above him. That is, for
us, a primal need, because we cannot tell whence it
arises. Some say from fear, some from wonder, some
from sense of sin, some from material dependence.
Between these or other causes we have at present no
means of deciding, and therefore we may be justified
in saying that it is, so far as we can tell, primitive and
itself a cause. TLavres Se Oewv^areovcr' avOpwjrot,, says
the Homeric poet, 1 words dear to the heart of Philip
Melanchthon. This impulse to worship in the minds
of the ancestors of the Greeks produced, if we can
trust the best evidence we have, a threefold result,
a worship of the powers and forms of nature on earth
and in air, a worship of fire, and possibly, a worship
of the dead. This inheritance the migrating tribes
brought with them to their settlement in Europe, and
in course of time it seems to have become localized
and humanized and systematized. They expanded it
by adopting deities and beliefs and ceremonies from
foreign sources. They added also deities whose
names seem to indicate a native Greek origin, such
as Themis, Peitho, Metis, and other personifications of
qualities or processes. They were ready to see the
divine agency all about them, or, in other words, they
were, with some notable exceptions, in an uncritical
1 Od. 3 : 48. " All men have need of the gods."
36 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
state of mind as to the authority of the prevailing
belief. Their conceptions of the gods, clear and
clean-cut as they were in some respects, were in
others vague, elastic, and constantly open to uncon-
scious modification. There was moreover a sense of
good-fellowship, so to call it, in much of their inter-
course with the gods, which it is hard for us fully to
understand and yet necessary to include in our view
if it is to be a true one. The gods were thought to
sympathize with men and help them in all their ex-
periences of joy or sorrow, in mere sensual pleasure
as well as in the highest intellectual or moral activi-
ties. But all along from the beginning, or perhaps
from some later point and cause now unknown to us,
the conception of these divine beings was just suffi-
ciently above the moral standard of the average man
to exert some control upon him and to help him and
through him the community up to a higher level.
We cannot doubt that Aeschylos believed that the
Zeus to whom he prayed, whatever he might have
been in an earlier period of his reign, was when he
prayed to him, a being wiser and better than himself.
We cannot doubt that Plato felt that " the Idea of the
Good " was continually lifting him up to better
thoughts and a nobler life. Yet each of these men
formed in his own mind the conception of the being
to whom his worship was offered. There is no mar-
vel or self-delusion in this. We know that an idea
may come to any man, with or without recognized
external suggestion, which may make his life and
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. 37
character ever after purer and better than it was
before. In this way we can understand how the
religion of the Greeks was elevated by the improve-
ment of the character of the people and how at the
same time it was continually helping to elevate in its
turn the character of the people.. Certainly the ordi-
nary citizen of Athens did not habitually think of the
gods as Plato and Aeschylos did in their loftiest
speculations, but he must have thought of them as
above himself in some degree, and he must have been
helped to higher views by what he could hear and
understand of the thoughts of the great minds.
But here there occurs a difficulty. What shall we
think of the worship of Dionysos and that of Aphro-
dite ? They seem to rest upon the deification of two
degrading sensual passions which can only lead to the
indulgence of vice, so that they are in a word the
consecration of vice, and how could there be any-
thing elevating in them or in a system which tole-
rated them ? It would be foolish to try to defend
these practices or to explain them away by imagining
a theory of morals which would justify them. One
thing however can and ought to be said to qualify in
some measure the impression they make upon us as
to the character of the people among whom they pre-
vailed. It appears altogether probable that both
these forms of worship were introduced from other
countries and that there was originally nothing corre-
sponding to them in the native Greek belief. " But
they were adopted by the Greeks." Yes, they were
38 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
adopted, at first perhaps because a divine element,
akin to that of other nature-powers, was recognized
in the myths connected with these deities. Then we
may suppose that the worship of Dionysos in particu-
lar became so prominent and popular in part because
it harmonized so w^ll with the festival meetings of
neighbors and friends which the Greeks from our
earliest knowledge of them were accustomed to con-
nect with religious observances. It has been observed
that there are traces and relics of a worship of Aphro-
dite in which bodily purity, l and a worship of
Dionysos in which sobriety, 2 was required of the
worshipers. The gross abuses which became asso-
ciated with the worship of these deities were simply
the indulgence of low passions under the pretext of
religious service. It is folly, as I have already said,
to try to construct a theory of the innocent deification
of everything in human nature which will hold good
for the Greeks at the culmination of their civilization.
Indulgence of such passions was not indeed con-
demned by them in their best estate so strongly as it
has been in modern times, that is, within the last hun-
dred years, but yet, if we can trust at all their litera-
ture and the evidences of character in their history,
we must admit that it was condemned. We cannot
too positively believe and affirm that such excesses
were not the legitimate product of a distorted idea of
religion, but the abuse of a natural and right idea.
1 Preller, Griech. Mythologie, I. p. 268.
2 K. F. Hermann, Culturgeschichte, I. p. 68.
MORALITY AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. 39
The history of the Christian church can show abuses
not less gross but only less public and more incon-
sistent with its general character.
So then, to conclude, if we look thus at the religion
of the Greeks, we see in it a natural development, a
close connection with the character and history of the
people, a steady progress towards a not unworthy
ideal. Compared with Christianity in its highest
forms, compared even with Buddhism and Mahome-
tan ism in some particulars, it appears wavering in its
conception of the divine being, feeble in direct moral
influence, and much too tolerant of gross vice. Still
I believe it was a religion, and not unworthy of the
name, that is, it was a system of belief as to the rela-
tion of man to the supernatural world, which influ-
enced him in his conduct and influenced him in a
continually increasing measure towards reverence,
integrity, temperance, justice, and good-will to his
fellow-man. It was more social and external in char-
acter than agrees with the highest type of religion,
but it must have had even to the common man a per-
sonal element and the effect of an inward control, or
I do not see how we can account in any reasonable
way for the existence of the civilized society of
Athens and for the character of Sokrates.
II.
PLATO'S ARGUMENTS IN THE PHAEDO
FOR THE IMMORTALITY OF
THE SOUL.
'THE thoughts of such a mind as Plato's on such a
* subject as the immortality of the soul ought natu-
rally, it would seem, to be of interest to all students of
the history of mankind. They should not be expected,
of course, to be cast in exactly the forms of thinking
of our own day, but the differences which we find in
them are just such as to make the study of them
interesting and stimulating. In many respects they
are remarkably modern ; in others we may find that
though the form is different the substance is the
same. It is often the case that truths have to be
restated in a new form for each successive genera-
tion of thinkers. The same idea presents itself
differently at different times, and sometimes even
what may appear strange to us when said by one of
a former generation is really what we ourselves are
thinking and stating in a form of our own. In the
following pages the attempt is made to state with
the utmost exactness the several arguments that Plato
advances to prove what he wishes to believe, add-
ing a fe,w words of criticism, only so much as seems
needful to the understanding of his thought. There
42 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
has been some difference of opinion as to the number
of his arguments. Some, finding the doctrine of
Ideas present in several of these arguments, reduce
the number to one, or at most, two. Others, mistak-
ing the answer to one of the objections for an in-
dependent argument, raise the number to five. We
have followed the plain indications in the structure
of the dialogue in presenting four arguments.
I. Plato's first argument is a probability based
upon the doctrine of procession of contraries each
from its opposite. There is an old doctrine, he says,
that the living proceed from the dead. As we know
that the dead proceed from the living (i.e., the living
pass into, become, the dead), then if the old doctrine
be true, this is a case of the alternation of oppo-
sites, a sort of cycle passing continually from one
extreme to the other, and so back and forth. The
probability of such a circular movement he proceeds
to prove in three ways, by analogy, by the presumed
symmetry of nature, and by a reductio ad absurdum.
(a) By analogy. Here he gives a number of in-
stances, first of opposite pairs of things, such as good
and bad, just and unjust, and then of evident and
necessary passage from one of these to the other.
Thus a thing cannot become larger except by passing
out of a previous state of being smaller, nor heavier
except by passing out of a previous state of being
lighter, etc. Here we may remark the advantage to
his argument from the use of comparative adjectives ;
but the real strength of it is in the use of the word
PLATO ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 43
become. It is of course true that nothing capable of
growth can become large or small except from being
comparatively small or large previously. The fact
that he confines his statement to attributives is
justified by his regarding living and dead as attri-
butes of man.
(b) By the presumed symmetry of nature. Here
he confines himself to the case in hand, bringing in
no illustrations. We see that the state of being alive
exists, and the state of being dead ; and equally evi-
dent to us is the transition in one direction, from life
to death, that is, the act of dying. Therefore if na-
ture is not to be unsymmetrical (lame is his word),
must we not assume the existence of the opposite
transition, from death to life, that is, the act of com-
ing back to life ? This is plainly necessary in order
to complete the supposed cycle.
(c) By a reductio ad absurdum. Suppose that there
were no such return to life ; or, to take first an illustra-
tion, suppose that men fell asleep but there were no
waking up again ; plainly all men would in time be
asleep. So if there should be, as we see there is, the
transition of dying, but not the corresponding transi-
tion of coming back to life, everything would ulti-
mately be dead. But what is the absurdity in this ?
There is none apparent, unless we supply the thought
which, though not expressed, seems to be assumed in
the writer's mind, viz., that it is contrary to reason
to suppose that this world of life and activity has
come into being with no other end in prospect for it
but to fall asleep and sink away into universal death.
44 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
Thus, then, the ancient traditional belief that the
souls of men pass from the world of the living to
the world of the dead, and return again thence to the
world of the living, is accepted. It is easy to see how
such a belief may have arisen ; the alternations of life
and death in the vegetable world during the progress
of the seasons, would naturally suggest it. It was
apparently involved in the Pythagorean and Oriental
doctrine of transmigration of souls. It would find
support, too, in the Herakleitean doctrine that being
is really a continual becoming, that all things are in
a perpetual flux. But in the form in which Plato
presents it, it rests in part upon another Pythagorean
doctrine, namely, that of a sort of polarity in the uni-
verse, whereby all things may be grouped in two
classes of opposites.
Two or three remarks may be made upon this ar-
gument before we speak of its general value, (i)
This argument implies a limited, unchanging number
of souls in existence. The possibility of the creation
of new souls or their production out of any existing
materials would destroy the whole argument. Indeed,
Plato recognizes this possibility, in order to exclude
it, when he says (72 D), " For if living things pro-
ceeded from the rest of the universe (i.e., not from
the dead), and then should die, the result would be
that everything would end in death." The belief in
a limited number of souls is distinctly stated by him
in the Republic (611 A). (2) This argument implies
the pre-existence of souls, a belief which appears
PLATO ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 45
more prominently in the next argument, and is else-
where avowed by him. (3) It does not appear from any-
thing in this argument why it should not apply as well
to the animal and plant as to the man, and perhaps
(cf. 70 D) Plato would not have objected to such an
extension, as Aristotle would not.
Of the value of this argument, in the view of
modern thought, it is not necessary to say much.
We do not really know much more about the origin
of the human soul than Plato did ; but few men, un-
less a Thomas Beecher, would soberly argue that the
souls of the dead return again to this life in the form of
bees or wolves, to use Plato's illustrations, or of men.
But it may be observed that the argument regards
the soul as an independent something, of which being
in this life and being in the state beyond death are
merely two conditions. It depends wholly upon the
assumption that being alive and being dead are two
exact opposites, and that there is no third possibility
for the soul. If there is such a third possibility,
for instance, destruction, the argument breaks down.
This weak point is seen further on in "the discussion,
and an attempt is made to cover it.
II. The second argument has much more real
substance than the first. It is sometimes concisely
described as the argument from reminiscence, which
serves well enough for a title ; but it should not be
supposed that the argument is simply this, that we
seem to recall things from a former state of existence,
and therefore must have passed through such a state.
46 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
That it really contains more than this, will appear
from the following formal statement of it.
1. Learning is really recalling or reminiscence.
(This is shown in 73 A, by the usual proof that a
skilful questioner can lead another person to state
a number of truths about a subject on which the
person questioned previously supposed himself to
have no knowledge.)
2. Reminiscence implies three things, viz. :
(a) Previous knowledge of the thing recalled ;
(&) That one thing may recall to the mind another
though entirely different thing ; e.g., the sight of a
lyre may recall the image of its owner, etc. ;
(c) When the object suggesting and the object
suggested are alike, judgment as to the degree of
likeness.
3. There exist certain absolute essences, such as
beauty, goodness, equality, etc.
4. We get our knowledge of them from the
senses, e.g., the Idea (= absolute essence) of like-
ness (TO ta-ov) is suggested by the sight of things
like to one another.
5. But we also observe at the same time that the
Idea of likeness is not perfectly realized in any two like
objects, i.e., no two like objects are precisely alike.
6. In order to be able to pass this judgment, that
the Idea of likeness is not perfectly realized in any
object of the senses, we must have had the Idea of
likeness in our minds before we could make the com-
parison between it and like objects.
PLATO ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 47
7. On the other hand, the perception of the objects
compared with the Idea is gained only by the use of
the senses ; and at the first use of the senses we are
in possession of the Idea which we compare with
them.
8. But the use of the senses begins at birth ; hence
before birth we must have had the Idea of likeness.
(All this applies to all the Ideas or absolute essences,
that of likeness being merely taken as an example.)
9. Hence, as to all such Ideas, there are two
alternatives :
(a) Either we are in possession of them from birth
all along through life ;
(b) Or we have lost andtare obliged to recall them.
10. We are not all of us in possession of them, for
we cannot all of us explain them, and no man knows
what he cannot explain.
1 1. Hence it must be that we have lost them ; and
the process of learning about them is a recalling of
what we knew before in a state before birth.
12. Therefore our souls existed and had intelli-
gence to apprehend these Ideas before birth.
This doctrine of reminiscence is prominent in
Plato's system. It does not appear at all in Xeno-
phon, and hence was probably unknown to Sokrates.
But it is inseparably connected with Plato's doctrine
of Ideas. For the Ideas, being the one unchanging
real existence, are the link not only between the
seen and the unseen, but also between past and
present (and here in the Phaedo recognized also as
48 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
the link between present and future). No one of
the ever-perishing objects of this visible world has
enough reality of existence to have belonged to that
past state ; it is only the Ideas that exist in and by
themselves, and hence are always to be apprehended
in any sphere by whatever being is present capable
of apprehending them. The doctrine of Ideas was to
Plato the way into the realm of truth, the only attain-
able theory of knowledge. It was his means of get-
ting a foothold of ground for thought to start from.
The Eleatics had denied all existence except that of
absolute Being, a pure abstraction having no possible
connection with the world of sense. Herakleitos
had denied any existence except the process of com-
ing into being and passing out of it, the unceasing
flux which every object of sense undergoes continually.
Neither of these theories is a satisfactory basis for
knowledge or for reasoning. To gain that basis, as
well as to overthrow the dogma of Protagoras, omnium
homo mensura, Plato conceived the perfect original
of all sensible objects as existing in a world remote
from this, beyond all sense-knowledge, of which
world alone real existence could be predicated. The
connection between these real existences and the
phenomenal existences about us, necessary in order
to be able to determine the relation of our world to
existence, was not established by Plato very satisfac-
torily. He was in doubt about the nature of it, and
leaves it uncertain (Phaedo 100 D) whether it should
be called a presence of the Idea in the sensible ob-
PLATO ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 49
ject or a communion of one with the other or by
some other name. But however joined to sensible
objects, beauty and goodness and equality and trees
and tables, yes, even dust and filth, have real exist-
ence only beyond the sphere of the visible in a realm
apart. This was the world of Ideas, and of that
world, as beyond the reach of sense, the mind could
have knowledge only by having been in it during a
previous life.
In general it is true enough to say that these Ideas
of Plato's correspond to what we call abstract ideas,
though he did not use that adjective because it im-
plies a theory as to their origin which he had not
formed. We say that such conceptions as those of
whiteness, beauty, goodness, are formed by abstract-
ing the common element found in all white or beau-
tiful or good objects from the qualities peculiar to the
individual or the sub-class. This may account for
the existence of abstract ideas, but it leaves unac-
counted for the existence in our minds of the faculty
of abstraction. If then we seek to translate Plato's
thought into modern thought, we must take a differ-
ent class of conceptions from abstract ideas. The
true parallel in this respect to his Ideas would be
such things as the idea of cause, the idea of duty, the
conception of space, and others like these, which we
find existing in the human mind at its earliest ac-
tivity and do not know how to account for. With
this substitution we should state his argument thus :
" We find in our minds certain things for the presence
50 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
of which we cannot account ; the objects of sense
around us furnish the occasion of our conscious use
of these things, but cannot have originated them ;
at no time since birth have we been put into posses-
sion of them ; hence we are born with them ; they
must be ascribed to some extra-mundane source, and
we must suppose that we acquired them in a previ-
ous state of existence." All the steps of this argu-
ment, except the last four, would be valid in the view
of all modern thought but that which denies indepen-
dent existence and divine origin to the human soul.
These last steps were the only conclusion to the ar-
gument which could be expected from even such a
mind as Plato's in the age in which he lived.
As an argument in the series, it will be noticed at
once (as it is in the dialogue), that it may prove prior
existence for the soul, but does not at all go to show
anything more than the possibility of existence after
death. This defect has to be made good by subse-
quent proof. As compared with the first argument, it
has not only the advantage of being based more directly
on the facts of human nature, and so of having more
logical substance, but also it makes an advance in
that it applies only to man, and not to animals or
plants as well ; and only to the spiritual part of man, and
not to his body also. That is because it rests entirely
upon intellectual phenomena, and the fact is recog-
nized by Plato in the significant addition (76 C),
" Our souls then existed before they came into hu-
man form, apart from the body, and had intelligence "
PLATO ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 51
ao)/Jidro)v, KOL el%ov (^povrfcnv). At the end
of this argument (76 D E), Plato states the sub-
stance of it in a pregnant form which- is worth re-
peating, " The existence of our souls before we
came into this life is as sure as the existence of the
Ideas." Jowett, in his Introduction to the P/iaedo,
points out that this is as if we should say, " The im-
mortality of the soul is as sure as the existence of
God," or, " I believe in the existence of God, and
therefore in the immortality of the soul."
III. The third argument moves in a sphere more
familiar to the popular forms of thought concerning
the soul ; there is little in it which is not found in
ordinary writing of average minds on the subject ;
cycles of existence, transmigration and a pre-natal
life appear no more. We may remark by way of in-
troduction that it is apparently suggested to the mind
of Sokrates in the dialogue by the words ffwurraa-Qai
afJioQev irodev (compacted from some quarter or other)
in 77 B.
1. An uncompounded thing is probably incapable
of dispersion.
2. The always-same thing is probably uncom-
pounded.
3. Ideas are always-same things and invisible,
whereas objects about us are ever-changing and
visible.
4. Soul is itself invisible, and is always hampered
by the body in its efforts to reach by thought the
invisible.
52 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
5. Hence soul is like and akin to the always-same
ideas.
6. Soul dominates body as the divine (and immor-
tal) does the (human and) mortal.
7. Hence soul herein is like the divine.
8. Thus the soul is like the divine, the invisible,
the always-same, the indissoluble.
Here the argument might well have stopped, but
Plato, perhaps with a view to introducing the next
step in the dialogue, goes on to add what rather
weakens the foregoing by suggesting mere compara-
tive durability on the part of the soul.
9. The body lasts some time after death, especi-
ally if it is embalmed ; and some parts of it, such as
the bones, seem almost imperishable. Can it be that
the higher, purer essence of the soul is less long-
lived ?
As has been said, this argument moves in a plane
of thought familiar in almost every respect to our
modern thinking. In the popular conception, death
is commonly regarded as a dividing of (i) soul from
body and (2) body into its constituents. " Divide
and conquer " might be its motto. Hence if it could
be proved that the soul, regarded for the moment as
in some sense material, is uncompounded, we might
infer that it can defy death or any known form of
destruction. An atom of matter we suppose cannot
in the course of nature be destroyed, and the soul,
if simple, would have at least the eternity of mat-
ter. Plato seems to mean to distinguish soul from
PLATO ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 53
matter by calling it invisible and unchanging, but no
such distinction would be admitted now. We may
all argue that the soul is invisible and that it has
dominion over the body ; but when we are further told
that it is simple and not compounded, we are in-
clined to ask whether the predicate is applicable,
whether it would not be as proper to speak of a
white smell or an oblong thought as of an uncom-
pounded soul. At best, the argument as Plato puts it,
does no more than establish a presumption. The like-
ness of the soul to a class of invisible, unchanging,
supreme, immortal objects does not prove that all
these predicates are equally applicable to it.
Here the discussion takes a new turn by the intro-
duction of two objections or difficulties suggested by
the two Theban friends of Sokrates. The second of
these leads to the introduction of Plato's fourth argu-
ment, and so will come legitimately into this sum-
mary. The first objection, however, is answered by
criticisms which contain no new argument, and hence
it might be passed over here. But the objection is in
itself so akin to the fashionable modern view of the
soul, that it seems worth while to give it a little
space. The objection of Simmias is suggested by
the remark Sokrates had made, that the body as a
whole lasts a while, some parts of it a very long time,
after death, and that it can hardly be that the pure,
invisible essence of the soul does not last longer.
Simmias says : " How is it in this parallel case ?
A strain of melody is invisible and incorporeal
54 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
and admirable and divine, while the instrument that
produces it is earthly and compounded, and akin
to the mortal. Shall we say then that, because the
broken strings and wood of the lyre last a long time,
the melody must be lasting still longer ? Now we
regard the soul as a melody or harmony, produced by
the exact tension of the body in equilibrium between
opposing forces. May it not perish when this nice
adjustment is broken down, just as the music does,
though the materials which were so adjusted last for
some time ? " The answer of Plato is as follows :
1. This objection is inconsistent with the doctrine
of reminiscence, and with the pre-natal existence of
the soul which that doctrine has been shown to im-
ply. For a harmony cannot exist before the material
causes of it exist in a state of proper adjustment ;
hence if the soul is a harmony, it cannot have had an
existence prior to this life. But the doctrine of
reminiscence is inseparably connected with the doc-
trine of Ideas, and so must be true.
2. A harmony is determined in its nature and
quality by the material things which produce it ;
hence one harmony is more a harmony than another,
if its material causes are better adjusted. But one
soul cannot be more a soul than another ; hence the
soul is not a harmony.
3. One soul may have more of virtue or vice than
another. But if those who call the soul a harmony
also call virtue harmony and vice discord (which prob-
ably, but not certainly, they would do), then, as one
PLATO ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 55
soul cannot be more or less a soul, or, in other words,
cannot be more or less harmonized than another, all
souls must have an equal degree of harmony in the
sense of virtue ; or rather, no soul could have any dis-
cord, that is, vice. Hence the soul cannot be a
harmony.
4. (Recurring to the former principle, under 2,
and applying it differently.) Harmony is dependent
on the material things that produce it. But the soul
leads, opposes, disciplines, chastises the body, as is
illustrated by a quotation from the Odyssey. Hence
the soul is not a harmony.
The objection of Simmias is based upon what
seems to have been a current metaphor, probably of
Pythagorean origin. Thus it happens that the an-
swer to it put into the mouth of Sokrates is mainly
a criticism of the metaphor, and contributes no posi-
tive argument for immortality. But the objection
itself, though thus easily disposed of, is yet, as has
been already said, one of the most modern things in
the book. Who does not as he reads it recognize
the familiar tone, the view of the nature of the soul
which now meets us everywhere, the only view we
are told for which there is any evidence at all ?
There is little difference, from one point of view, be-
tween calling the soul a harmony, produced by the
action of balanced forces upon the body, and calling
it the product of molecular change, or rather, not a
product at all, but a mere series of such changes. As
Demokritos has been summoned from his sleep of ages
56 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
to be the patron of one modern theory, so might Hera-
kleitos be brought up from the dead to give authority
to this one. For he thought that all existence was
but a series of changes, a perpetual flux, and on this
theory the mind and soul of man is a mere stream of
states of consciousness, like a river passing through
the same bed, but never for two seconds together
the same actual substance. We cannot certainly say
how Plato would have met this theory if it had been
formulated in his time, but the points of his criticism
on the metaphor of a harmony suggest a probability.
The first point above needs but little adaptation in
order to become the question, " How can a series of
molecular changes have a memory ? " And the last
point he makes (4) is as good against the modern
theory as against the ancient metaphor. It is an
appeal to consciousness and to conscience ; to con-
sciousness as testifying to the action of the will, to
conscience as sitting in judgment upon the decisions
of the will.
We come now to the objection of Kebes, which in-
troduces the last and most important of the formal
arguments for immortality. Kebes begins by conced-
ing that the soul is much more durable than the body,
and therefore may probably enough survive the ex-
perience of death. But who can tell, he argues,
but let us have his illustration first, for the sake of
its quaintness. He too, like Simmias, will present
his thought in a garb of imagery. " Suppose a weaver
dies and is buried, and some one brings us his clothes
PLATO ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 57
and says, ' Here are the clothes, still in existence ;
must you not admit that the man himself, a much
more durable thing than a garment, is still in exis-
tence, too ? ' Not so, we should answer ; for this
weaver made for himself, and wore out, many a gar-
ment, and finally perished before the latest garment
was worn out. May it not be, then, that the soul
likewise wears out many bodies, if the man has a long
life, constantly renewing its bodily vesture as it con-
stantly wears it out, but at last finds its own life ex-
hausted in the process, and so dies before the last
form of its body does, leaving it still existing ? May
it not even pass through several lives, surviving several
successive deaths, but at last, in some one death (and
no man can tell when that one will come), itself also
perish ? " '
By way of preliminary to the answer to this objec-
tion, Sokrates is represented as giving a sketch of his
own intellectual history, so far as it may be traced in
the effort to determine the true meaning of the idea
of cause. If this sketch could be taken as a real piece
of history, representing what actually occurred in the
case of Sokrates or of Plato, it would be of exceeding
value and interest. But, unfortunately, it does not
seem to be personal history. It begins too far back
for Plato, and goes too far forward for Sokrates. We
must rather look at it as a brief outline, in this bio-
graphical form, of the course of Greek philosophy in
the discussion of the nature of cause. He says that
when he was young he used to be much interested in
58 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
questions as to the cause of the origin and of the de-
cline of this thing and that, as, for example, of thought,
and of the movements of heavenly bodies, and of the
growth of the human body. But from all such inqui-
ries he could get no answer which satisfied him. For
instance, if you say one man is taller than another by
a head, is it the head that makes him so ? If so, then
is it the head that makes the second man shorter than
the first ? But how can the same thing make one
man taller and another shorter ? Again, division
makes two things out of one, and the addition of one
to another makes two ; but how can division and addi-
tion cause the same result ? In the midst of these
puzzles he heard one day a man reading from a book,
said to be by Anaxagoras, that the organizer and
cause of all things was Mind. This phrase pleased
him wonderfully, suggesting a possibility of all sorts
of rational explanations of different phenomena, and
he lost no time in getting the book into his own
hands. But how wofully he was disappointed when
he found that the author of the new theory himself
did not make any satisfactory use of it, but went on
in the old way, suggesting all sorts of proximate and
occasional causes. It was, he says, as if some one
should say that he, Sokrates, did everything by (reason
of) his mind, and then should go on to say that the
reason why he was sitting there in the prison was be-
cause his body was made up of bones and sinews, and
that, by certain contractions of the latter, he was
held there in a sitting position ; thus ignoring the fact
PLATO ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 59
that his body would long since have been away in
Megara or Boeotia, if he had not thought it more just
and honorable to stay there where he was. What he
ought to have said was that the possession of these
bones and sinews was the necessary condition of his
sitting there; but Sokrates's judgment of what was
best was the real cause. This confusion of necessary
condition with real cause was responsible for many of
the absurd theories as to natural phenomena prevalent
in former times. It seemed necessary, in order to
avoid these errors, not to look at realities directly, lest
the mental sight should be dazzled (just as the eyes
would be if one should look directly at an eclipse of
the sun instead of at a reflection of it), but to turn
the attention upon conceptions or the world of Ideas,
and study there the true reality. The method in this
sphere of thought is to determine a principle which is
known to be true by its application to a number of
cases, and to hold fast by it, and use it consistently ;
and if it is assailed, strive for some more general prin-
ciple in its stead, until you reach something which
will hold good.
This brings us to the fourth argument.
IV. i. The existence of Ideas is assumed as -a
starting-point. (This is the "principle" which is
now to be applied to determine the nature of cause.)
2. Objects have qualities by being connected in
some way with the Ideas. E.g., It is by partaking of
beauty, that an object is beautiful. Or, it is not the
addition of one to one that makes two, but the pres-
ence of the duad.
6O STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
3. Opposite Ideas cannot be present in the same
object at the same time. It may appear so some-
times. E.g., A man midway in height between two
others may seem to have at once smallness and great-
ness, being smaller than one of the two others, and
larger than the other. t But these are merely compar-
ative greatness and smallness, not the absolute Ideas.
Absolute greatness and smallness cannot co-exist.
4. There are certain objects which contain one Idea
in such a way that they cannot admit the Idea oppo-
site to the one they contain, and therefore may always
be described by the term which describes the Idea
contained in them. E.g., Snow contains the Idea
coldness, cannot admit the Idea heat, and so may be
always called cold. The number three contains the
triad (i.e., the Idea of three), and also the Idea odd-
ness ; it can never admit the Idea evenness, and may
always be called odd. Each of these, on the approach
of the Idea opposed to its contained Idea, must either
withdraw or perish.
5. What sort of objects are the foregoing ? They
are such as contain an Idea which necessarily carries
with it another Idea, which latter is one of a pair of
op'posite Ideas. E.g., The number three is not oppo-
site to the number two, or to the Idea evenness, or to
anything at all. But the number three contains the
triad and also necessarily thereby the Idea oddness,
which latter is opposed to the Idea evenness. (This
is the reason why three can never be even.)
6. What in a number causes it to be odd ? Not
PLATO ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 6 1
alone the Idea oddness, but also the monad or the
triad, etc., which necessarily contains the Idea odd-
ness. What, then, similarly in a (human) body causes
it to be living ? Not merely the presence of the Idea
life, but also the presence in the body of the soul,
which, besides the Idea soul, contains and carries
with it the Idea life. Hence, at the approach of
death, as three at the approach of evenness, or snow
at the approach of heat, soul must either withdraw or
perish, for it contains,the Idea life, and cannot admit
the Idea death ; that is, it is undying.
7. Now, if the uneven were imperishable, the num-
ber three, on the approach of evenness, could not
perish, but would withdraw and disappear. So if the
undying thing is imperishable, it cannot perish ; it
must withdraw on the approach to it of death.
Therefore, if the undying thing is imperishable, soul,
besides being undying, would also be imperishable.
8. But God and the Idea life and any other immor-
tal thing would be admitted to be incapable of per-
ishing. This indicates that the undying must be
imperishable. Hence the soul, because undying,
must be supposed to be imperishable, and to withdraw
in safety at the onset of death.
On this argument Jowett remarks that it is purely
verbal, and is but the expression of an instinctive
confidence put into a logical form, " The soul is im-
mortal because it contains a principle of imperisha-
bleness." Somewhat similarly another writer (Chase,
Bib. Sac. 1849) says that the argument reduced to
62 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
syllogistic form would be, " Whatever is essentially
vital cannot die : the soul is essentially vital ; there-
fore it cannot die," where the major premise is an
identical proposition and the minor premise cannot be
proved. These opinions seem to indicate that the
critics did not get hold of the real point of the argu-
ment. That point may be stated somewhat as fol-
lows : |" Life and death are opposed and incompatible ;
where either is, the other cannot be. The soul, so
far as our knowledge goes, is inseparable from life;
it brings life with it, it never leaves it behind when it
leaves the body, and it never lingers behind when life
is gone ; we cannot therefore conceive of the soul
apart from life ; a dead soul is something outside of
human experience, as much so as hot snow or cold
fire. Hence we infer that the soul is incapable of
death, and as that is the only form of destruction
known to us, is immortal." We may represent to our-
selves the vital part of the argument by a modern
parallel : " Heat implies motion, is an external sign of
it, and is inseparable from it. Wherever we perceive
heat, we infer motion. Wherever we produce mo-
tion, we infer and expect and find heat. So soul
and life are uniformly connected in our experience.
Wherever we observe life, we infer soul. Wherever
we find soul, we may expect to find life, not death."
In thus representing the argument, we aim not to go
beyond Plato's reasoning, but merely to adapt it to
modern forms of thought. There are many criticisms
that might be made upon his reasoning. Thus, for
PLATO ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 63
instance, he seems to juggle with the word addvaros,
using it now in the sense deathless, and again in the
sense imperishable. Again, it is to be observed that
the argument fails to establish personal immortality.^,/!
If we recur to the parallel suggested above, we reflect
at once that it is possible for the motion to be in
one centre and for the heat radiated from that centre
to appear in a number of bodies which have no heat
or motion of their own. So it might be that life
was radiated from a central source of life to a number
of souls with absolute universality ; and then when a
certain time came, it might be re-absorbed by the
original source, so that it would no longer belong to
the individual soul.
III.
ON PLATO'S SYSTEM OF EDUCATION
AS PROPOSED IN THE REPUBLIC.
DLATO'S system of education as proposed in the
L Republic is not to be understood as presenting
his ideal of intellectual culture for all human minds.
This needs to be kept in mind when we think of
criticising it ; for without remembering this, we should
be likely to do him injustice in comparing his scheme
with those which have prevailed in other times. The
modern theory of universal education, for instance,
rests on totally different aims, and therefore con-
tains totally different principles from his. But this
special restriction in his case does not forbid com-
parison of his scheme with others ; it only compels a
candid critic to use greater caution. There is
enough of common matter in almost all systems to
furnish ground for comparison.
The first thing, then, to notice in his scheme is
that it is designed solely for his ruling class. We
might easily overlook this fact when we read his
remarks on the use of the poets which come in under
the head of TratSe/a (education} in music and gym-
nastics, II. xvn.-III. xvm. For what he says there
seems, as we hastily read it with our ideas, to apply
66 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
with equal truth to the whole people. But we must
observe that it is introduced by the remark that the
$>v\aice<; (guardians of the state) must be </uXocro</>o4
rrjv (frva-iv (philosophers by nature) ; therefore, as the
Trai&eia is one of the means for making them so, it must
be intended for them alone. Certainly we cannot sup-
pose that he meant the whole population to deserve
the name <f>i\.6o-o(f)oi, with his high conception of its
meaning. This, then, as well as the more elaborate and
advanced part of the scheme in the seventh Book, is
designed solely for the small and carefully selected
ruling class. And he clearly indicates again and
again that it is a difference of natures that deter-
mines the selection of some and the rejection of
others. Only some specially qualified natures are
capable of meeting the tests of fitness for this edu-
cation, and of these probably some again would be
weeded out by the severe discipline of the education
itself. It is plain, then, that we must not compare
Plato's scheme with general theories of education,
which undertake simply to show how the mind can
best be developed and instructed. There is another
reason why this comparison cannot be made. This
scheme is not only for selected natures, but it also
has a definite purpose in view. It is the work of a law-
giver, and aims to produce men qualified to do the work
of government. Neither of these things is true of
what I have called general theories of education.
They aim to make scholars, it may be, or cultivated
gentlemen, so far as their power extends, but not
specially rulers.
ON PLATO'S SCHEME OF EDUCATION. 67
If, then, his scheme has a specific object in view,
may we not fairly compare it with our systems of
special education, those, I mean, of the technical
and professional schools ? No, we cannot, for the
very opposite reason to the previous one. Our gen-
eral education is, at least in its aims, too general to
be compared with Plato's scheme ; and, on the other
hand, our special educations, for particular lines of
work, are too special and limited to be so compared.
In the modern theory they are supplementary to the
more general scheme, and make no pretension to
supply what is supposed to come from it. There is
no modern scheme, then, which covers the ground
which Plato aimed to cover. If any person attains
to such results, it is by favoring circumstances and
by work on his own part, of a kind and at times out-
side of all formal systems.
Can Plato's system be briefly stated ? It is set
forth in separate parts of his work, in an order deter-
mined by the time of life of the pupil. First comes
f^ovaiKij ("music"), including the literature and mu-
sic which is to form the character from the very
earliest youth. He aims to control the nursery
stories which mothers and nurses tell to children
(Rep. 377 C), and proposes to have them, in their
representations of the gods, in their heroic examples,
and so in their unconscious effect upon character,
in harmony with what the young rulers are to hear
and believe all their lives. The music, too, allowed
in his state is to be such only as will contribute to
68 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
his main end, and even the metre of poetry must do
the same. (This, it may be observed in passing, illus-
trates not only the sensitiveness of the Greeks to
these things, but also the wide reach of Plato's plan,
which left no agency unused to influence the develop-
ment of his selected natures.) Alongside of this
mental training, he provides for a bodily training,
(yv/j,va(TTLKJ], "gymnastic ") beginning almost as early,
and lasting, like the other, through life. Here he does
not give quite so full details, but in general outline
prescribes a system of simple, harmonious, unremit-
ting exercise, prohibiting all excess, and especially
the use of medical treatment to keep life going in
spite of sins against laws of health. These two ele-
ments of /iofcrt/c?; and <yv/jLvao-Tiicr) form a sort of foun-
dation on which, in the seventh Book, he builds up
his advanced education which is to constitute the
difference, as I understand him, between the two
classes of the fyvXaices (guardians). They have alike
the former training, but this higher education is
designed only for those who have shown themselves
by his tests worthy to be the rulers. In this, math-
ematics come first, in the order arithmetic, plane
and solid geometry, astronomy, and the science of
harmony in sound, which are to be studied however
only in theory or, as he expresses it, by problems.
After mathematics come dialectics, by which we may
understand logic in a wide sense, the science of rea-
soning, or the laws of thought. Apparently the time
for the mathematical training is the ten years from
ON PLATO S SCHEME OF EDUCATION. 69
twenty to thirty, and the next five years are to be
given to dialectics ; then fifteen years are to be spent
in the active duties of civil and military government ;
and from fifty years of age on, the man or woman is
to be contemplating the Idea of the Good, and con-
trolling the state in its highest concerns.
In looking at this scheme of education, one thing
that strikes us is that its two parts are, or seem to
be, controlled by distinct and different ideas. In
the first part, the leading idea is a moral one ; the
aim to be attained and by which the methods are de-
termined is a moral aim. This is plain in the treat-
ment of literature. Nothing is to be admitted, no
matter how great the name or the skill of any author,
which will give to the youth of this ideal state wrong
ideas of the character of the gods, fear of death, or
license in excessive indulgence of any emotion. So
also as to musical modes and rhythms ; such as are
simple and severe in their moral effect are alone tol-
erated. So again as to gymnastics, in the wide sense
of all the treatment of the body. Everything is to be
done which will contribute to the production in the
trained person of ev\o>yia, evppv0[j,ia (beauty of lan-
guage and of rhythm), and all the other compounds
of ev. Even medicine must be watched and disci-
plined, to see that it does not in any way pander to
vice and weakliness, and help men to evade their
penalties. In a word, as Plato says (Rep. 410 C), the
teachers of both ^OVO-LKYJ and yv^vaa-nKij have in view
the improvement of the soul. But when we come to
7<D STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
the second part of the scheme, in the seventh Book,
a different principle controls everything. In both
mathematics and dialectics, the aim of every study
and of the way in which it is pursued throughout, is
to conduct the mind to the contemplation of real
existence, TO 6V, and especially to the highest and
brightest part of real existence, the Idea of the Good.
This conception of real existence controls, for in-
stance, his mathematical method, and explains why
he will have only pure theoretical geometry and as-
tronomy pursued, no surveying, no observation of the
heavens ; for all external objects are but images or
shadows of reality, and only turn the eye away from
the only existing thing the pure Idea. I have said
that these two parts of the proposed education seem
to be governed by two different principles ; but it
may more truly be said that the principle is the same
in the two cases and the difference is only in the
form. For it would be difficult not to see, in Plato's
" Idea of the Good," the highest conceivable existence ;
in other words, it is his name for God. There can be
nothing beyond this, as he describes it in the sixth
Book ; and if the principle of the second part of his
scheme of education is the effort to turn the mind to
the continual and intelligent contemplation of this
divine reality, must we not admit that it would tend
to the best possible moral results ? Many things in
the earlier part point forward to this, the eleva-
tion of the conception of the gods of mythology, by
requiring absolute truth in the description of them,
ON PLATO'S SCHEME OF EDUCATION. 71
insisting on simplicity and reality, and excluding all
mimicry. The apparent inconsistence between the
two parts diminishes when we remember that with
Sokrates, and with Plato, too, virtue is explained as
the knowledge of what is right and best. They could
not always maintain and carry through its conse-
quences such a theory, no man can, but in
their reasonings they uphold it. With this as a
prior conception (that it is only from ignorance or
blindness of mind that men do wrong), it is easy to
see how these mathematical and logical studies, pur-
sued, as Plato proposes, to the end of attaining the
knowledge of reality, would be introduced into a
scheme of education having a moral aim. Thus we
see that he uses, in describing the effect of his pro-
posed education, precisely the term which religion
has adopted from the Bible, the " conversion of the
soul." How different an idea this is from that in
the usual Greek word Tra&eia, or the Latin word
educatio !
When we look at Plato's scheme in comparison
with our modern schemes, we notice several points
of difference in matters where they may fairly be
compared. Plato's scheme extends to body as well
as mind. This has never, I believe, been a part of
the educational system of any nation, unless it has
become so of late years here ; that is, though the
European universities have teachers of riding, fen-
cing, etc., connected with them, the attendance of
pupils is entirely voluntary, and the connection
72 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
merely nominal. But the state, in a rude way, does
what Plato suggests when it requires of every man a
term of service in the militia. Plato's scheme covers
the whole life of the man, keeping him, as it were, in
college from twenty to thirty ; in a higher professional
school five years longer; then again, after fifteen
years of discipline in places of responsibility, calling
him back to pursue still further the study which was
the climax of his earlier education. This may re-
mind us that we have here the work not of one
charged with the organization of a system of educa-
tion, nor yet of a legislator in an actual state.
Neither of these men could venture on such absolute
control of the lives of men from beginning to end.
This is merely an ideal, and the ideal character of it
appears perhaps as clearly in this feature as any-
where else. We notice again what seems to us a
notable want, in the entire absence of the historical
and natural sciences. There is nothing said of lan-
guages, history, political science, or, on the other
hand, of mechanics, optics, or zoology. The general
reason for this omission is plain : these sciences were
hardly in existence, we should say; but more pre-
cisely, they were not yet so developed as to become
part of the common property of educated men. Back
of this, of course, is another reason, which may be
most concisely stated in this form the comparative
absence of books. Books were not easily and rapidly
multiplied ; the reading class was very small ; the con-
ception of book education on a wide variety of sub-
ON PLATO S SCHEME OF EDUCATION. 73
jects for any but the few was not formed. Thus,
although, in some of the subjects named, certain
individuals had in Plato's day made great progress,
particularly in political science and in some branches
of natural science, yet the idea that some degree of
theoretical knowledge of them, a mere smattering if
you will, belonged to the education of youth, had not
occurred to anybody. Plato's idea goes far beyond
the usual education of an Athenian boy of his time,
but does not include this side of the modern idea. It
might be added that Plato, though himself a wide
student, had a bent towards metaphysics, which would
keep him from recognizing fully the claims of the
physical sciences. The linguistic science, if it de-
serves the name of science, of his day is the object
of his ridicule in another dialogue; and history, though
the type of writing it had been fixed for all time by
Herodotus and Thukydides, had not reached a form
in which it could be taught. It has sometimes been
asked how the average of Athenian education would
compare with the modern average, or how the culti-
vated Athenian gentleman would compare with one
who would deserve such a description in our time ;
and in answering, it is properly said that the works
of art in constant sight, the dramatic exhibitions and
public recitations, the speeches in the assembly and
in courts, must have made up an education which
would not suffer greatly in the comparison. This is
true, but we must remember that the educational
influence of these things was not their prime object,
74 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
but an incidental result. It may be, however, that
the fact of such an effect was one reason why no more
elaborate system of intentional education was orga-
nized. The men who would have been the ones to
see the need of it, and plan it, and keep it going, were
also the very ones who appreciated the effect of the
influences above mentioned on their countrymen.
Perikles's funeral oration in the second book of Thu-
kydides shows this clearly. Demosthenes, a century
later, makes a similar remark.
How far does Plato, in constructing this scheme,
draw upon his own experience, or how far does it cor-
respond with what we know of his own education ?
There seems no reason to doubt that the early part
of his life was passed like that of other young Atheni-
ans of good family. The story that he was inclined
to make of himself a poet has no improbability about
it, and is indeed confirmed in a measure by the strong
evidence in his writings of poetic taste and genius.
His writings, too, show very clearly that he was well
acquainted with, and sensitive to, the influence of the
poetical literature of his people. Nor was there any-
thing in the circumstances of the state during his
youth, in the first two-thirds of the Peloponnesian war,
to prevent his growing up under quiet influences, as
at other times. We are told by a tradition that when
he was twenty years old he first met Sokrates, and
was drawn away, by the fascination of his society,
from every thought of other pursuits. He attached
himself to his new master, undoubtedly for the re-
ON PLATO'S SCHEME OF EDUCATION. 75
maining seven or eight years of the life of Sokrates,
and after his death was for several years absent from
Athens, studying the philosophic ideas of others, and
developing his own system. There is special note in
tradition of his meeting Archytas, the noted Pytha-
gorean mathematician, in Tarentum. It appears cer-
tain that he was strongly influenced by the doctrines
of the school of Pythagoras, and particularly by the
mathematical element in them. On his return to
Athens, he became head of a company of students of
philosophy, and remained there for most of his re-
maining years, elaborating his system and writing his
later dialogues. Now, it seems natural to see in this
outline of his life something of a resemblance to the
plan for his ideal rulers. First, the usual study of
literature and of the arts of poetry and music, with a
gymnastic training of the body, which latter no one
can doubt that he himself had in youth. Then the
taking up of severer studies, wholly in the line of
mathematics ; then the final devotion to metaphysics.
May we not reasonably account, in this way, for his
choice of these two subjects, mathematics and meta-
physics, for the food and exercise of his selected
minds, from the fact that he had found his own path
of mental growth to lie through them, and in this
order ? I should think we might venture to say that
another thinker, who had followed a different course
himself, would probably have marked out a different
one for his ideal state. And it may be added that
Aristotle, whose course of education, in part with
76 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
Plato, was different from Plato's, has left a scheme
of education which, so far as it goes, is very unlike the
one in the Republic.
IV.
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. 1
A WORD of apology may be allowed me at the
outset. I am quite aware of the apparent au-
dacity of coming to speak upon the subject I have
chosen, in this city and in this room. For you have
made this play in some sense your own, and there
are scholars here far better qualified than I to ex-
pound its meaning. Besides, in this room, if these
walls could speak, they might reproduce the thrilling
tones of the actors and the chorus of last May, and
you can hardly look upon this stage without having
brought back vividly to memory those striking com-
binations, the beautiful group of suppliants, the dig-
nified chorus, the impassioned Oedipus, the graceful
form of lokasta, and all the other elements of the
admirable reproduction, a memory which will make
any words of mine seem tame and feeble. But I
remember that a certain one also of your own poets,
in prose not less graceful than his verse, likened him-
self in the opening of an address before the Phi Beta
Kappa in 1870, to the humble mechanic who goes
round, when a train stops at a station, with lantern
and hammer, to test the soundness of the wheels. In
1 Lecture given in the Sanders Theatre, at Cambridge, before the
Harvard Philological Society, April 26, i8$2.
78 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
distant imitation of his example, I would compare
what I hope to do to-night to the work of a much
humbler ministrant, the ignorant boy, perhaps, who
lights the street-lamps, or the brakeman who tells
you the name of the next station. If, by often going
over this road, I am able to name the things that will
attract your attention, or if, after the cunning toil of
others is done, I can by a mere unskilful touch throw
a little light on your path, it will be as much as I
ought to aim at.
The Oedipus Rex of Sophocles is one of the most
interesting and most distinctly characterized of the
extant Greek tragedies. Though it does not contain,
like the Prometheus, any profound intellectual con-
ception of permanent significance and value, nor any
character of terrible majesty in crime, like the Aga-
memnon, nor yet any pure and noble heroine, like the
Antigone and the Electra, it still deserves to rank
with these great poems, as of kindred though differ-
ent excellence. In elaboration of plot, in the com-
plete and sustained presentment of a natural story, it
has no superior among the Greek plays preserved to
our time. If we accept Aristotle's definition, or
rather description, of tragedy, that it excites fear and
pity, and thereby purifies the soul in the sphere of
such emotions, we can hardly find a better illustration
than this play furnishes, to help us understand the
description clearly. For here the pity and the fear
which a sensitive reader feels are centred on the
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. 79
same person ; their causes are no conscious relations
or intelligent actions of his ; and the character which
made him liable to such suffering is, by the very
same elements, such as to attract our sympathy. A
sketch of the course of the action will perhaps make
this manifest, and will serve as an introduction to
some comments upon it.
The play opens with the visit of a company of the
priests and people of Thebes to the palace of their
king, Oedipus, to entreat him to find them some
relief from the pestilence which is desolating the
city. He has been in peaceful and prosperous pos-
session of the throne for perhaps ten or twelve years,
although he did not come to it in ordinary succes-
sion. His predecessor, Laios, was killed by some
person or persons unknown while on a journey away
from home, and at nearly the same time Oedipus,
coming as a stranger to Thebes and guessing the rid-
dle of the Sphinx, was rewarded with the throne and
the wife (lokasta) of the missing king. Four children
had been born to them, and their life had been one
of undisturbed happiness until the coming of this
pestilence. Gratitude for that former deliverance,
and affection to him as a loved and trusted ruler,
naturally bring the suppliants to Oedipus in this new
trouble. They describe the sufferings of the people,
and appeal to him, alrffost as to a god, by his previous
succor, to help them now again. Oedipus in his
answer declares, as would be expected, that the woes
of the people were known and keenly felt by him,
80 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
and tells them that he has already sent Kreon,
lokasta's brother, to inquire of the oracle at Delphi
how the plague could be checked, and that he was
then looking for his return. As he utters these
words, the priest who had been the spokesman of
the rest sees Kreon approaching with his head
crowned with laurel, which is interpreted as a sign of
good news. Kreon comes upon the stage, and an-
nounces in answer to the questions of Oedipus that
the oracle declares the plague to be due to a pollu-
tion of the land by the presence in it of the mur-
derer of Laios, and that it could be checked only by
his banishment or death. This leads to a series of
questions from Oedipus in regard to the murder, of
which he knows nothing ; and Kreon in his answer
states that one of the companions of Laios who had
escaped reported that he was killed by robbers who
met the party in the highway and slew all but him-
self, and adds that the investigation of the matter at
the time had been prevented by the all-absorbing
distress occasioned by the presence of the Sphinx.
Oedipus, forming at once the theory that the mur-
derer had been some one bribed by a party in Thebes
hostile to Laios, declares that he will do all in his
power to discover and punish the criminal as a mere
measure of self-defence, lest a similar plot should be
formed against him. Thereupon, at his suggestion,
the suppliants retire, having accomplished their pur-
pose, and willing to leave the matter now with the
king and the god who sent the oracle. Here ends
the prologue or opening act.
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOCLES. 8 1
The chorus, consisting of elderly men, citizens of
Thebes and representatives of its people, now comes
forward, apparently summoned by a messenger from
Oedipus. In his presence, but before he has spoken
to them, they break out in a prayer to the gods for
help in the city's trouble. They describe the dis-
tress arising from the plague in similar terms to
those already used by the priest, and found upon it
a yet more urgent appeal to Zeus, Apollo, Artemis,
and Bacchus. They know that an oracle has come,
but what it is they know not ; hence they can only
pray in vague terms for relief.
Oedipus, in response to their prayer, states to them
the proclamation which he proposes to make, and on
which he seems to rely for the discovery of the crimi-
nal more than upon prayer. It calls upon whoever has
any knowledge in regard to the murderer to commu-
nicate it at once to him, and threatens a sort of banish-
ment, or rather excommunication, upon him who hides
his knowledge. The chorus, accepting his adjuration,
deny all knowledge of the matter, and suggest that
the prophet Teiresias should be consulted. Oedipus
has already sent for him, and, as he now comes in,
proceeds to inform him of the oracle, and asks his help
to discover at whom it points. To his surprise and
indignation, Teiresias refuses to give any information,
saying he would not have come if he had fully under-
stood the purpose for which he was summoned. Oedi-
pus urges him, but he persistently refuses, asserting
that he, Oedipus, knows not what he is asking, and
82 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
that for his sake it cannot be told. In the excitement
of dispute, Oedipus at last charges the prophet with
having been himself privy to the killing of Laios. Then
Teiresias is roused to charge upon him, at first very
vaguely, but with growing clearness, that he, the king }
is involved in the pollution and guilt which has brought
such disaster on the country. In the violent alterca-
tion which follows, Teiresias refers for confirmation of
his words to Apollo, whose minister he is, the god of
prophets and oracles. This instantly reminds Oedipus
that Kreon had just come from the Delphic oracle of
Apollo, and suggests to him that Kreon and Teiresias
were in conspiracy to eject him from the throne.
This idea, in harmony with his previous theory of a
former plot against Laios, takes firm possession of his
mind, and he expands it in terms of bitter reproach.
Teiresias is stung by this attack into more express
revelations of the condition in which Oedipus is now
ignorantly placed, and the terrible future that awaits
him ; but Oedipus, blinded by anger, and misled by
his fixed theory of the motive of the prophet, cannot
understand him. A chance allusion on the part of
Teiresias to the parents of Oedipus arrests his atten-
tion, and makes him ask a question, which, if plainly
answered, would bring out the whole truth ; but Tei-
resias is too angry, and only tells him he will soon
learn what he asks. Then, with another enigmatical
threat, he leaves the stage, and the second act ends.
The chorus, having now learnt the answer of the
oracle, wonders who the guilty man can be, yet feel
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. 83
sure that it is hopeless for him to try to escape the
punishment which the gods are preparing for him.
The altercation between the king and the prophet
plunges them into perplexity and distress, for they
regard both men with confidence and respect, and
cannot tell which is in the right. Yet they decide,
for the present, not to give up their faith in Oedipus,
who has shown himself, on thorough trial, such a
benefactor to Thebes.
Kreon now appears, having heard the rumor of
charges made against him by Oedipus, and eager to
clear himself from them. Oedipus presently comes
out from the palace and states plainly the accusation
of conspiracy to get possession of the throne. Kreon,
of course, denies the charge, and proves the entire
absence of any reasonable foundation for it. But
Oedipus is not convinced, for he has conceived his
own theory of the matter, and will not readily give it
up. He declares his purpose to put Kreon to death
as a necessary measure of defence for the state and
for himself. At this point, lokasta, attracted by the
sound of their voices in high dispute, comes out and
remonstrates with them for thus wrangling in public.
Both men address themselves to her, Kreon with an
appeal to the gods asserting his innocence. She
calls upon Oedipus to respect that oath, and is sup-
ported by the chorus to the same effect. Oedipus
yields to their urging, so far as to let Kreon go safely
away, but does not yet lay aside his anger. When
Kreon is gone, lokasta asks the cause of the quarrel,
84 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
and learns from Oedipus his theory, that Kreon had
instigated the prophet to denounce him as the mur-
derer of Laios. To relieve him from any anxiety
arising from prophets or oracles, she tells him then of
a previous prophecy, in regard to the death of Laios,
which had been falsified by the result. It had been
foretold that he should die by the hand of a son of
himself and lokasta : but they exposed their only
child to die on a mountain, and Laios was long after-
wards killed by robbers, at a place where three ways
met. So, she reasons, there is no use in paying any
heed to prophecies, if they are not sure to be fulfilled ;
the will of the gods is better declared by the results
they bring to pass. Her story was meant to comfort
Oedipus, but one phrase in it disturbs him rather.
He asks more particularly about the place " where
three ways met," and learns that it was in Phokis, not
far from Delphi. Then he asks about the time of the
killing, and is told that it was just before he himself
came to Thebes. His interest increases, and he in-
quires what sort of a man Laios was in appearance,
and in what company he was travelling when he was
killed. The answers make him still more agitated,
and he insists that the man who had escaped to tell
the story, and who was now a herdsman at a pasture
far from the city, be at once sent for. lokasta prom-
ises this, but naturally asks, in her turn, why he is so
much excited by her answers. He then tells her,
what strangely, perhaps, he seems never to have
told her before, the story of his life up to his appear-
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. 8$
ance at Thebes, how his father was ruler of
Korinth, and he had grown up respected there until
one day a man at a feast insulted him with the
charge that he was not really born of his supposed
parents. When he appealed to them, they resented
the intimation, but, as it still rankled in his mind, he
finally went off secretly to consult the oracle at
Delphi. There he got no information as to the past,
but a terrible statement as to the future, that it
was his destiny to slay his own father and to be
joined in incestuous marriage with his mother. In
dread of such a complication, he wandered off, care-
less whither he went provided it was not back to
Korinth, where were the only father and mother he
knew. As he walked along the road, he met a party
with a chariot, and, becoming involved in a quarrel
with them, killed, as he supposed, all of them. The
place, " where three ways met," the time, the ap-
pearance of the leader of the party, the number of per-
sons in it, all correspond with what lokasta has told
him of the circumstances of the killing of Laios, so
that he greatly fears lest he may be himself the man
guilty of that crime and under the curse of excom-
munication that he has himself pronounced. Must
he be an outcast again, still unable to return to
Korinth lest he may unwittingly fulfill that terrible
oracle given him at Delphi ? He only waits, to see
the man who had escaped and brought news of the
murder, to learn whether he will say that Laios was
killed in conflict with a single robber or with several ;
86 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
for, if the latter, he is certainly clear. lokasta still
encourages him, for the earlier oracle had said Laios
was to die by the hand of his own son, and that cer-
tainly had not proved true, so that he need not be so
afraid of oracles. " True enough," says he ; " but
still send for the herdsman." Here ends the third
act.
Now comes in, to interrupt the course of action, the
second song of the chorus. They are even more dis-
tressed and perplexed about the matter now, and do
not seem so sure as before that justice will speedily be
done. The coincidences which disturbed Oedipus in his
confidence do not seem to have fallen upon their loyal
minds with so much force ; but the impious contempt
for oracles expressed by lokasta shocks them ; their
song is a prayer and a protest against such sinful
daring. They will not cease to make the god their
defence. There is some dreadful mystery in this
violation of the eternal laws of heaven, a fearful out-
growth of pride and excess. If such deeds are to go
unpunished, where is religion and the honor of the
gods ?
As if in answer to their prayer, lokasta comes out
from the palace in a very different frame of mind
from that with which she had gone in. Oedipus has
been aroused and excited by what she had told him,
beyond her power to understand or control him, and
in a kind of panic she comes to supplicate the very
god whose oracles she had spurned, to help her now.
To her in this temper comes a messenger, who seems
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. 8/
to bring just what she was wishing for. He comes
from Korinth to say that the people there desire
Oedipus to be their ruler, since Polybos has just died
from old age. She sees at once how much this
means, forgets all about her prayer to Apollo, utters
in a word her regained scorn of the oracles, and
eagerly sends for Oedipus to tell him of the death,
from natural cause, of the man whom it had been
foretold that he should kill. It seems too clear a
case for him to doubt any more, and so he joins in
and even outdoes her contempt for the falsified ora-
cle. Yet there is one thing that makes him hesitate
to go at once to Korinth and accept the throne,
the wife of Polybos is still living, and there was some-
thing in the oracle about his marrying his mother,
which may somehow come true so long as she lives.
When he gives this explanation to the messenger, he
laughs at such a fear, and, with the single purpose of
clearing it away, tells him that he is not the true son
of Polybos, but that he himself, the messenger, had
once, when a messenger on Mt. Kithaeron, received
him as an infant from one of the shepherds of Laios,
and had given him to the king of Korinth to bring
up. So if Oedipus cares to trace his real descent, he
must find that Theban shepherd; and he turns to
lokasta to inquire about him, whom the chorus
think to have been also the attendant of Laios on his
last journey. But she has heard too much already.
She tries to turn off the question carelessly, as of no
importance. When he persists, she implores him by
88 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
the gods, by his love of life, by his love for her, to
forget all that has been said and abandon the whole
inquiry. He mistakes her motive, thinking she fears
he may find himself to have sprung from a low family,
and, now thoroughly aroused to solve the old long-for-
gotten doubt as to his parentage, determines to follow
up this clue and find out, at any cost, who his parents
were. She leaves the stage, in silent agony of de-
spair, foreseeing the terrible revelation. He remains,
despising her woman's pride, and trusting that the
good luck which has given him this throne, and
whose child he jestingly calls himself, will still be-
friend him. So the fourth act ends.
The chorus, taking his tone, rejoice in the thought
that soon his mysterious parents, perhaps some moun-
tain nymph and wandering god, will be made known,
and all the trouble ended ; but their song is short.
The old Theban shepherd comes in, sent for by
lokasta, we must remember, as the only man who
had witnessed the killing of Laios ; but there is no
thought now of asking him about that. He is con-
fronted with the Korinthian messenger and recog-
nized by him at once. His own memory is feebler,
but with a reminder from him he recalls their old
acquaintance. Then he is asked about the infant,
and told that Oedipus, king of Thebes, is the same
person. At once he suspects what is coming, and
refuses to answer any questions. By threats from
the king he is compelled to tell what he knows, and
so the dreadful truth comes out that Oedipus himself
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. 89
is the son of Laios and lokasta, and already the mur-
derer of his father and husband of his own mother.
Oedipus curses himself and rushes into the palace.
In bitter contrast to their last hymn of joy and
hope, the chorus now bewail the lot of man, so brief
in its enjoyment of prosperity, as this example teaches
with terrible plainness. They are still loyal to their
former regard for Oedipus, and have no feeling to-
wards him but pity.
Then comes a messenger from within the palace,
and narrates, according to the custom of the Greek
stage, the dreadful events that had occurred within.
He tells how lokasta had come in, tearing her hair
and lamenting bitterly, and had entered her chamber,
when suddenly his attention was drawn away by the
entrance of Oedipus, raving and calling for a sword,
and demanding to be told where lokasta was. No
one would tell him ; but he suspecting, burst open
the doors of the chamber and there found her hanging
lifeless. Then, with most furious curses, he snatched
the golden buckles from her dress, and with them
tore out his own eyes, that they might nevermore,
even in Hades, see the persons involved in his unwit-
ting crimes. While the chorus is lamenting his
madness, he comes forth in his wretched blindness,
carrying the buckles still in his hand, and after inco-
herent exclamations to himself, recognizes the voices
of his friends, and joins them in bewailing his misery.
Then, in a long passage of somewhat calmer tone, he
justifies his self-mutilation, and reviews his life in the
Cp STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
light of the shocking discovery of his real relations
to those about him. While he is thus speaking Kreon
comes in, whom he knows not how to address, re-
membering those unfounded suspicions which he had
held when he was mentally blind. But Kreon re-as-
sures him in kind words of pity, and presently has his
two daughters brought out to him, whom Oedipus
entrusts to his care, bidding them a tender farewell.
Kreon then leads him away, with some last words
which hint that he may not continue to be so gentle
and friendly in his treatment of the helpless sufferer;
and the play ends with the reflection from the chorus
that no man can be pronounced happy until his life
is seen through to its last day.
This outline, inadequate as it must seem to one
who knows the original, may yet be of use in recall-
ing the distinguishing peculiarity of this play, viz.,
the degree to which its interest depends upon the
plot. It is the only one of the Greek tragedies,
with perhaps a single exception, in which a secret
is kept from most of the persons concerned until
near the end, upon which secret the whole story
hangs. In the nature of the material used by the
Greek tragic poets, it was almost impossible that this
should often be the case. For they used old myths
which were familiar to the audience in their whole
structure, and in which, therefore, it was not easy to
succeed with a surprise. It should be said, however,
in justice to their art, that this was not always a
hampering restriction. They constructed their plays
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. 9 1
in free recognition of it, making the interest and the
exercise of poetic and dramatic power depend upon
other elements than intricacy of plot. They allowed
themselves, too, some measure of freedom in the
treatment of the traditional myths, in minor points,
a freedom which was abused by the last of the three
whose works we have, whether from lack of invention
or from some defect in his principles of art. It is a
signal triumph of the strong and disciplined genius
of Sophokles, that he constructs this play with a
catastrophe perfectly familiar to his audience, yet so
skilfully that one might hear it often and still be as
much absorbed in the unfolding action as if he were
as ignorant of the end as the characters are supposed
to be. Let us analyze this delicate work a little.
The poet has two objects to accomplish in laying
out his plan. One is to bring about the revelation
of the secret of the birth of Oedipus in a perfectly
natural way, without the voluntary intervention of
any human agent. This absence of voluntary hu-
man agency is emphasized by the poet, and seems to
have been necessary, in his view ; perhaps for the
reason that he wished to show how the gods work
out their plans without the conscious help of man,
and even against his will. The means which the poet
uses to bring about the revelation are the plague,
the quick temper of Oedipus, the death of Polybos
from old age, the hope of gain on the part of the
Korinthian shepherd, and the love of the Theban
shepherd for Laios. The plague lies at the founda-
92 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
tion of the whole action, so far as it is contained in
this play, furnishing not only a natural opening
scene (the point in dramatic art which was such a
stumbling-block to Euripides), but also the condition
without which the succeeding events could not, in
their present shape, be explained. It is the first
shock to the prosperity of Oedipus since he came to
Thebes, and, of course, it soon brings a strain upon
the weak point in his present position. It is a blow
from the gods, aimed directly at him, in such form
that, while it reveals nothing to him, it compels him
to act, and, by his action, to bring out at last the
whole secret. He acts promptly in the way which
seems to him best at the time, and which yet recoils
upon him later. The moment his proposed course of
action receives a check from Teiresias, his temper is
roused, and he becomes committed to a theory which
he holds obstinately. This theory makes him quar-
rel violently with Kreon, all without suspicion that
he is preparing repentance and woe for himself.
The quarrel with Kreon brings lokasta on the scene,
and she, merely to relieve him from anxiety regard-
ing the alleged oracle, tells the story of the death of
Laios, in which one incidental phrase, "the place
where three ways met," gives the first serious shock
to his conviction of innocence of the murder. This
leads to a review of his life, and so brings back to
his thought the never-solved question as to his
parentage. All this grows naturally, and without
intention, out of his quickness of temper. Then
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. 93
comes in the shepherd from Korinth, whose hope of a
reward (as is stated in lines 1005 f.) had made him
eager to be the first to bring the news to Oedipus of
the throne awaiting him. It seems strange that he
should be the very man who had received him when
an outcast in infancy ; but, apparently, the poet sup-
posed that he was stimulated by that hope of gain
to keep himself informed as to the life of Oedipus
after he left Korinth. His revelation that Oedipus
was not the son of Polybos comes out in simple,
ignorant desire to deliver him from anxiety about
returning to Korinth, not from any purpose to con-
tribute to the exposure of his hidden calamity.
Finally, the Theban shepherd, the one person in the
country, unless we except Teiresias, who knew the
murderer of Laios, and the only one who knew that
the son of Laios and lokasta might still be living
(though, of course, even he had never connected the
two things), comes in to do his part. At his own
request, and apparently from a love to-Laios that
made the sight of his murderer on his throne in-
tolerable, he had been sent out of the way of telling
his knowledge since Oedipus came to Thebes, and had
heard nothing of the new oracle about the plague.
He is now brought in to testify as to the murder,
and, against his will, is compelled to testify as to the
parentage. Thus it appears that every incident, ex-
cept the plague and the oracle, comes into the series
by human action, from some motive entirely apart
from the discovery of the guilt of Oedipus.
94 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
The other object of the poet is to put Oedipus in
the wrong in his attitude towards the gods in this
part of his life, so that his terrible fate may not
seem wholly undeserved. This is a matter which it
is important to have fully recognized, if it is true,
because it is not apt to be recognized at all in mod-
ern estimates of the play. Most of the current pop-
ular references to this story speak of it as one in
which a perfectly innocent person is dragged by a
cruel fate, determined for him before he was born,
into horrible deeds, and then into dreadful, unmerited
ruin. The representation of the play here a year ago
furnished the occasion for a vigorous article in a Bos-
ton periodical, based wholly on this false idea. It
so happens that, besides the evidence in the play
itself, we can bring an independent, ancient au-
thority of no little weight to prove the falseness of
that idea. It is well known that Aristotle, in his
treatise on poetics, uses this particular play perhaps
more than any other, to furnish illustrations or proofs
of the rules he lays down. One of these rules is,
that the hero of a tragedy must be a noble character,
but not without a^apria, that is, not without some
fault or defect ; on the ground that, if he is a per-
fectly innocent person, his suffering would not ex-
cite the spectator's pity or terror, but rather, his
indignation and horror ; and if, on the other hand,
he is made too great a villain, the spectator would
merely think he was getting his deserts. Then he
goes on to mention two examples of such noble
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. 95
heroes with the requisite faults, and one of them is
Oedipus. Now the mere dictum of Aristotle is not
one to which every head must bow, and it may be
that some wholly admirable tragedy has been writ-
ten with a faultless hero. But the thing for which I
quote him is his opinion that, in fact, Oedipus is not
made by Sophokles such a faultless hero, and on that
point, surely, his judgment ought to be respected.
Let us then see, if we can, in what the fault of
Oedipus consists. We find that the course of the
action brings him, by virtue of his own character
and conduct, into such a relation to the gods as can-
not help suggesting to a Greek audience some pain-
ful result. His first words to the chorus, after their
prayer for divine relief, convey a hint that he is dis-
posed to trust more to his own proclamation and the
authority of the government than to the help of the
gods. Then his sudden anger and wanton suspicion
in regard to the prophet, and contempt for his sacred
character, would seem the very thing to draw down
upon him some punishment. When lokasta first
expresses her disregard of the oracle, he does not
interrupt her with rebuke. When she gives reasons,
and speaks yet more scornfully, he assents. When,
finally, the messenger comes with news of the death
of Polybos from old a*ge, which seems to put beyond
all possibility the fulfilment of the oracle that he
should kill his father, he rivals her in triumphing
over the baffled prophecy. These things are not for-
gotten. When, at the end, he comes out blinded
96 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
and bleeding, and the chorus ask him what god has
impelled him to such a deed, he answers, " Apollo !
Apollo it was who brought to pass this bitter, bitter
woe of mine!" But Apollo was the god of the
Delphic oracle. Though, indeed, the ultimate cause
of his misery was his involuntary parricide and in-
cest, yet the shock with which the discovery came,
and its fearful consequences, are to be ascribed to
the sin of contempt of the gods, into which too great
confidence in his prosperity had betrayed him. No
one can study the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sopho-
kles without recognizing the prominence in their
view of this particular kind of sin, as provoking the
wrath of the gods. In this play it takes a form cor-
responding to the rest of the plot, and seems to
be brought on inevitably by the action of such inci-
dents upon such a character.
One or two minor features of the plot also deserve
passing notice. The fact that it was Kreon, the
natural successor to the throne as regent, in the
minority of the sons of Oedipus, who was sent to
Delphi for information as to the plague, prepares the
way for the suspicion that he was in league with the
prophet to put Oedipus out of the way. The quar-
rel with Kreon subsequently not only furnishes an
occasion for lokasta, his sister, as well as the wife of
Oedipus, to come out and remonstrate with them,
thereby bringing her with her story of the murder
into the action, but also adds greatly to the impres-
sion of the closing dialogue between the two men in
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. 97
relations so changed, Oedipus repentant, and Kreon
forgiving. This last scene would have been just as
possible, though not nearly so effective, if, in the
previous scene, Oedipus had merely expressed to
others, in Kreon's absence, his suspicions of him.
The introduction of Teiresias likewise effects a two-
fold purpose. On the one hand, his refusal to an-
swer the question put to him starts Oedipus on his
course of opposition to the gods, and, on the other,
it is his relation to Apollo, the god of Delphi, that
suggests collusion on his part with Kreon, and thus
introduces the train of events that follow upon the
quarrel with the latter.
The whole play, like many others, is marked by,
or rather consists of, a series of alternate movements
in opposite directions, and with opposite effects on
the feelings of the audience. First, the deputation
of priests describe the sufferings of the city under
the plague ; and then Oedipus, comforting them with
sympathy, is presently enabled, b^y Kreon's arrival,
to point out a definite cause of the calamity, and to
promise that every means shall be taken to remove
it. Next, the chorus, on its entrance, fills the mind
again with the dismal scenes of the general misery ;
and Oedipus again, by his strong, confident declara-
tions of what he is going to do, seems to clear away
half the trouble at once. The strange conduct and
incredible statements of Teiresias cannot fail to
make the hearer dread something, though he hardly
knows what, before which Oedipus seems helpless as
98 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
a child ; but when he has to deal with Kreon, though
we may think him hasty and overbearing, yet he
seems strong enough to crush mere human opposi-
tion, and to make a way for the State into peace. In
his conversation with lokasta, however, he is plainly
overpowered by the close coincidences of her ac-
count of the murder with his own recollections, and
feels again the presence of some mystery which may
be too much for him. The coming of the news from
Korinth naturally lifts him into freedom from fear,
but it is only for a moment ; and the determination
which the other fact, learnt from the same man, ex-
cites in him to discover at any cost his real parents,
presently plunges him, in spite of the gleam of hope
seen in the song of the chorus, into the depth of misery.
After the first rush of horror and self-condemnation,
there comes again a reaction, and the play leaves the
audience at last somewhat soothed by the compara-
tively quiet final scene. It is manifest how these
changes add to the life and interest of the action,
and also how they serve to retard the movement of
events, and postpone the coming of the fatal dis-
covery. Some one has said of the Odyssey that the
whole plot would be broken down by the existence
of a post-office system, so that Penelope might have
heard from Odysseus occasionally. Surely, in this play,
if Teiresias had come to Oedipus in a calm hour, and
told him what he knew as a prophet about his life,
or if, by any other natural means, he might have
learned it earlier, the whole structure would break
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. 99
down. However, it is plain that the poet, with artis-
tic design, makes a gradual approach to his climax,
letting the anger of Oedipus prevent his believing,
or even listening to, the significant words of the
prophet ; making lokasta 6k> all she can to dissuade
him from pursuing the investigation after she sees
whither it tends ; bringing in the news from Korinth
to give him a moment's delusive comfort before his
fall. A notable instance of this designed delay has
been already mentioned, that when Teiresias says,
" Your parents, however, thought me inspired," Oedi-
pus suddenly asks him, " Who ? Stop ! Who were
my parents ? " An answer to this question would have
ended the play there, but Teiresias has been angered
beyond such compliance, and puts him off with the
riddle, " This day shall bring you parents and ruin."
It is in some sense a consequence of this character
of the plot that the play exhibits in especial frequency
what has been called the irony of Sophokles. The
word irony, though perhaps the best that our language
affords, does not strictly in its English use express
the idea that is here intended. If I understand its
modern usage, it implies generally some measure
of contempt, good-natured contempt sometimes, when
a man feels perfectly sure of his own position or
powers and plays with an adversary, but still a real
looking down upon one who might claim to be an
equal. The Greek word, as defined and illustrated
originally, does not seem to have implied this. The
quality is defined by Aristotle as the pretence or as-
IOO STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
sumed appearance of being worse in some respect
than one really is. He speaks of irony as lying on
one side of the truth, and of boasting or arrogance as
lying on the opposite side. And he acutely adds,
that the pretence of the worse or humbler condition
may proceed from something very like arrogance ;
which recalls the story that Diogenes, in his squalor,
walked in over the rich rugs in Plato's house, saying,
"Thus I trample on the pride of Plato." "Yes,"
answered Plato, " and with a no less pride of your
own." The prime illustration of irony in this Greek
sense is Sokrates in the dialogues of Plato, where he
assumes the tone of ignorance and desire for informa-
tion, and through his questions exposes the ignorance
of another.
Now the word irony as used of the dramatic poet
means something different from either of these senses.
For the poet has no adversary, and cannot properly
manifest contempt for his characters. He is the
creator of his mimic world, and so acts a part toward
it like that of the divine governor of the real world.
Hence, in this use of the word, it means the same as
when we speak of the irony of fate. The tragic poet,
deeply feeling the pathetic contrasts that arise in the
development of his story, and knowing that the audi-
ence will feel them too, chooses to set them forth
most forcibly by showing the hero in his glory just
before his utter ruin, or in his apparent humiliation
just before his triumph, and by making the character
say in his unconsciousness what has a different mean-
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. IOI
ing or a deeper meaning than he can yet suspect. I
have been thus minute in speaking of the different
senses of the word irony, because a recent editor of
Sophokles, Professor Campbell of St. Andrews, has
objected to the use of the word to describe a quality
of the Sophoklean tragedy, oh the ground that the
offensive sense of superiority, the sneer of contempt,
which belongs to the word in its ordinary use, is out
of place in the relation of the poet to his characters.
That is quite true. No such thing as a comparison
between the poet and the character on the stage, to
the disparagement of the latter, can be imagined.
But Professor Campbell does not sufficiently recog-
nize the other use of the word, as in the phrase, the
irony of fate. That phrase justifies the application
of the word to the work of the dramatic poet, for he
is in a sense the Fate of his characters, the author of
all that they say and do. From him proceeds the
practical irony, the conflict in the dramatic situation
between the reality and appearance, and the verbal
irony, that is, the putting into the mouth of a char-
acter words that would seem to a person so situated
to be true, which yet have a pathetic force of contrast
from the knowledge on the part of the audience that,
as the speaker means them, they are terribly far from
the truth. The practical irony of this play has been
admirably expounded by the late Bishop Thirlwall,
in his essay on the Irony of Sophokles, and I will pass
it over. The examples of verbal irony are of course
mainly to be found in words put into the mouth of
IO2 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
Oedipus. In the very opening of the play he
describes himself as "renowned in universal fame."
In declaring his purpose to obey the oracle with zeal-
ous effort to detect and punish the murderer of Laios,
he says, having in mind his theory that it had been
prompted by hostility to the government, that self-
interest prompts him to " put such villany far off from
himself," for a similar attack might be made upon
him. In his proclamation calling for information, and
denouncing any one who shall withhold it, he adds
at the end, "And if he be any inmate of my house, the
curse applies to him as well." When lokasta urges
him not to try to discover his parentage, he ascribes
her entreaties to a fear that he may turn out to be of
a low family, and says to her (his real mother), " Not
even if my mother was a slave, and her family in slavery
for three generations back, will you be degraded by
it." A similar conflict between reality and appear-
ance is seen in the language of the chorus, especially
in that brief ode just before the revelation of the
secret, when, like children playing on the edge of a
precipice, they amuse themselves with conjecture as
to what god and nymph it may have been, who in
some wanton hour begat him who had come to be
their king. These are but a few examples of an ele-
ment which pervades the whole play.
It has been said that the main interest of this play
lies in the skilful treatment of the plot, but the re-
mark should not be understood as implying that the
characters are in themselves feeble or uninteresting.
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. IO3
Oedipus ranks high among the figures of Greek
fiction, and he owes his position wholly to Sopho-
kles, and largely to this play. He is himself his
only enemy. Every other character in the play is
friendly to him, and strives to help him. His very
strength becomes a cause of weakness and calamity
to him, under the circumstances in which the gods
place him, because it betrays him into self-confi-
dence, and blinds him for so long a time to the
truth. From the first it is evident that he is a
man of strong will and clear head. The people of
Thebes, after long experience, reverence him as their
ruler. The people of Korinth, who had not seen
him since his youth, send for him at once, on the
death of Polybos, to take the throne. There is no
feebleness or indecision, either in his action when he
is taunted with being a foundling, when he hears
that threatening oracle at Delphi, and when he meets
the party of Laios on the highway, or in his words
at the beginning of this play. He has already sent
Kreon to Delphi, and as soon as the response comes
back, after a few pointed questions in regard to the
crime, just such as a modern police magistrate might
ask, he has his plan formed, and makes his procla-
mation. He is full of self-reliance and energy. The
opposition of Teiresias only fixes his purpose more
firmly, and he makes up his mind at once to deal
with Kreon as the offense he imputes to him de-
mands, without thought of fear or favor. When his
attention is again drawn to the unsolved question of
104 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
his birth, he pushes the inquiry in that direction with
the same energy, in spite of all the entreaties of
lokasta. And when he learns the bitter truth, his
vengeance upon himself is no less sudden, severe,
and appropriate. After the blow, how clear is his
inward vision over his past life, how complete his
self-subjection ! It is thus evident that his very
clear-sightedness for what lies just before him, and
his promptness of action, are what bring upon him,
so far as his deeds affect his fate, his faults and mis-
fortunes. They make him act too quickly and con-
fide too much in his own judgments. Yet, on the
other hand, he is conceived as a man who made his
way everywhere, and attracted to himself the love
and respect of those around him. The language of
the chorus, as well after as before his fall, shows this
plainly. We might liken him to Achilles, the ideal
warrior of the Iliad, impetuous, truth-loving, self-
impelled rather than self-controlled, capable of feel-
ing and arousing in others intense affection, and
hardly less intense hatred, keenly sensitive to the
judgments of others upon his conduct, yet, under
the influence of excited passion, adopting a course
for himself in defiance of all around him, and per-
sisting in it in defiance of reason, at terrible cost to
himself. Or, to take an example more widely known,
from a period of history not very unlike the fabulous
heroic age of Greece, he was such a man as David,
the partisan chief, the hero of outcasts, the king of
Israel, the poet, the sinner, the penitent.
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. 10$
The character of lokasta, too, though subordinate
and less fully drawn out, is worthy of study. The idea
of the poet embodied in it, to be inferred from the
words he puts into her mouth, seems to have been
often misunderstood. Nearly all who have referred
especially to her, regard her chiefly as an impersona-
tion of impious disbelief in the gods. Thus Camp-
bell calls her "the arch-horror of the piece." Capell-
man, in his essay on the Women of Sophokles, finds
something admirable in all the others, but has hardly
a word to say in her favor. Schneidewin, a most
judicious critic generally, judging a poet's work with
a delicate and cultivated tact, describes her as selfish
and heartless, unconcerned at the death of Laios,
careless what became of the child maimed by him
and exposed by her, indifferent to gods and oracles
alike, until she finds herself driven to heed them by
terror and distress. Now, if Sophokles had imag-
ined her such a person, would he not have drawn the
picture so clearly and strongly that there would have
been no room for doubt or difficulty in receiving the
impression ? Yet, if one reads the scenes in which
she appears, and the references to her, with this
question in mind, In what light did the poet himself
look upon her character ? he will hardly come to
such a conclusion. Her first appearance certainly
impresses one in her favor. When she comes out to
Oedipus and Kreon, at the height of their wrangling,
both men defer to her at once, with great respect,
and state their cases to her. She then, with the aid
106 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
of the chorus, brings them to a settlement, or at
least a postponement of their quarrel. This shows
that she was not a weak character, and creates a pre-
sumption that she was not a wicked one. As to her
attitude towards the oracles, it ought not to be over-
looked that she repeatedly distinguishes between the
direct manifestations of the divine will, and the pos-
sibly mistaken or falsified declaration of it through
human channels. Such a distinction, we may be
sure, was made by many not undevout people in the
poet's time. The Delphic oracle itself was accused
of having Medized in the terrible trial of the Persian
invasion. Other instances of suspected tampering
with its utterances are mentioned. And so the
questioning of the genuineness or supposed appli-
cation or suggested fulfilment of an oracle was prob-
ably no uncommon thing. In other plays of Sopho-
kles the possible defeat of a prediction of evil is part
of the plot. That the chorus here is shocked at the
apparent impiety of such distrust does not prove
that every one, even the poet himself, if he had been
treating a different myth, must feel so. Moreover,
in this case, she had seen, as she fairly argues, one
such instance in her own experience, Laios, as
she thought, had not been killed by his own son, but
by robbers on the highway. And it is to be ob-
served that there is no hint of her having shown any
distrust of oracles, until she finds that her husband
is angry with the prophet Teiresias for charging him
with a murder which he is sure he did not commit.
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. IO/
This leads us to what seems to be the central and
ruling quality of the character, as here drawn. There
is in the lokasta of Sophokles no more prominent
trait than her love as wife for her husband. We
may indeed guess for we are told nothing about it
that it was love to Laios that led her to consent to
the exposing of the child, because that seemed the
only way to save the father from death by his son's
hand. When, after the death of Laios, she is given
by the State to its deliverer from the Sphinx, she
comes under the influence of his character, and after
a time so loves him as to cast contempt on the
oracle for his sake. When she finds that she cannot
thus allay his anxiety about the killing of Laios, her
conscience distresses her, and she appeals for help to
the very god whose Delphic oracle she had scorned.
And at the last, when the secret of the birth of
Oedipus becomes known to her, while yet unrevealed
to him, her first thought is to save him from the
dreadful discovery. She is willing to try to keep it
to herself, to live on with that fearful secret tortur-
ing her soul, if only she can secure for him the bliss
of ignorance. It is the blind impulse of unreason-
ing love precisely such a one as the same poet
represents in the case of Ismene, when she urges
Antigone to accept her as a partner in death, by
falsely admitting that she had been a partner in the
burying of their brother it is, I say, a blind im-
pulse of unreasoning love, for such a secret could
not long be kept by her or hidden from him ; but
IO8 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
she is carried away by it, without stopping to think
what it means and involves. When he persists, she
has nothing left to her but suicide. Now I appeal
to you who are familiar with the play, whether such
an interpretation of her words and deeds is not more
natural and true than one which makes her out a
cold, heartless, skeptical fiend ?
This play suggests a question which is worth ask-
ing, for the sake of the view it opens into the work of
the poet in such a case : Could Oedipus have avoided
his fate by any wisdom or effort of virtue ? Certainly
he need not have killed Laios. The story of the col-
lision on the highway, as he tells it, does not imply
any attack upon him by the other party which justi-
fied his violence as an act of self-defense. If he had
yielded the way to the larger party, he a mere foot-
passenger, and their wagon, perhaps, running in the
deep-worn grooves in the rock-bed of the road, such
as are to be seen now in parts of Greece, there
would have been no such fatal result. Again, he
might have refused marriage under any and all cir-
cumstances, to ensure the failure of the other part of
the oracle given him at Delphi. It appears thus that
forewarned as he was by that oracle, it lay within
his power, by such careful self-restraint, to pre-
vent its fulfilment. It was only a mistake of judg-
ment in supposing that he knew whom the oracle
meant as his father and mother, that betrayed him
into realizing its prediction. Had his idea been
right, his precaution of not returning to Korinth
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. 109
q
would have saved him. And so it is simply a con-
firmation of the conception of his character already
suggested ; for his ruin came from over-confidence
in this opinion of his own. In many ancient stories
it is such a problem on which all the interest hangs :
Will a man, forewarned of an impending calamity,
be able by foresight, caution, wit, or daring, to defeat
the purpose of the gods and avert or evade ' the
calamity ? And always, in the story, there is some
point where his knowledge, or self-control, or watch-
fulness fails, and the will of the gods is done. We
must bear in mind that it is just such a story that
Sophokles has here dramatized, and that he must
take the main incidents as he finds them, without
material change. It would, in fact, destroy the story
to give it a different issue. The original myth may
have had a very different meaning. Indeed, there is
not a little probability in the theory that the germ of
it is one statement that the day destroys the night
from which it sprang ; and another, that the sun, after
much wandering, returns at evening to the beautiful
twilight, from which at morning he came forth.
When the meaning of the terms for the daylight
and the sun was lost from memory, so that they
became proper names to the ear, as Zeus and Se-
lene and Aurora and many others did, as Grace and
George and Augustus and all the others have done
more recently, the old statements became narratives
of supposed human action instead of descriptions of
natural phenomena, and so a story grew out of them.
IIO STUDIES IX GREEK THOUGHT.
All the rest, the oracles, the collision in the high-
way, the guessing of the Sphinx's riddle, the children,
the suicide, and the self-mutilation, were engrafted
upon the original stock to supply motives, or natural
consequences, for the human action. But, however
that may be, the fact remains that Sophokles took
the story as he found it, for the basis of his dramatic
treatment ; and the question as to his work, the test
of his skill, is this : Is the story, in his version of it,
in all respects "such a story as might be believed to
occur in the heroic age of Greece ? It is not possi-
ble to prove an affirmative or negative answer by
comparison of actual events, for we have no record
of facts from that time. The only special material
available for an opinion is the picture presented
in the Homeric poems and in the other tragedies,
which aim to represent in the main the same social
state. If we judge this play in the light of these
works, and on such general principles of human
nature as are true in all ages, we find it a natural,
self-consistent story. Given a man born under such
a fate, led by an unseen control through such an
early life, and the rest of the life, as here developed,
presents nothing unnatural, nothing out of the range
of human experience. It is a marvelous story, and
the supernatural element in it is essential to the
structure ; but such an element is recognized in the
belief of all ages, and here it nowhere interferes with
the action of ordinary human motives and emotions.
It simply avails itself of these springs of human
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOCLES. I I I
action, and brings the persons into such relations to
one another that their natural conduct in these
circumstances produces these momentous results.
Oedipus may act in this or that particular as one or
another of us would not act, but all we can ask of
the poet is that Oedipus should not ever act other-
wise than as the conception of his character would re-
quire ; in other words, that he should be consistent with
himself. The mysterious Sphinx (who also is perhaps
a personification of a natural phenomenon) and the
plague with which the play opens are, besides the
oracles, the only elements which connect the story
with fairy-land or the supernatural world. The
special development which our poet gives to the
bare outline of the myth, the incidents which were
necessarily introduced to fill up a story of human
action on the basis of the phrases describing phenom-
ena of external nature, will be found to lie entirely
within ordinary human life in the social state here
depicted.
In what has been already said of the dramatic skill
displayed in the plot of this play, it may seem that
too much has been claimed for the Greek poet. It
might easily be that a reader familiar with Shak-
speare, or with almost any dramatic poet of the modern
era, would think in going through this play that
nothing was done in it, that there was no action, but
rather, an excessive amount of talk. This difference
we need not try to deny or to apologize for ; but it
may be in part explained by considering certain re-
112 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
strictions under which the ancient poet did his work.
One was in regard to the number of actors. In Greek
tragedy (not in comedy) the highest number allowed
by rules of usage was four, and most of the plays
preserved to us could be acted by two or three persons.
Another was the restriction of unity of time and
place, that the whole action should be confined to a
single day and to one locality. These unities were
not, it is true, strictly regarded by the Greek poets,
for the first is violated in the Agamemnon of Aes-
chylus, and both in the Eumenides. Yet there was
some force in them, and Sophokles has observed
them in all of his plays that are preserved to us.
Once more, there is the rule stated thus by Horace in
the Ars Poetica :
Ne pueros cor am populo Medea trucidet,
Aut humana palatn coquat exta nefarius Atreus,
Aut in avem Procne vertatur, Cadmus in angitem ;
Quodcumque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi.
This explains the comparative absence from the
stage of conflicts, suicides, transformations, etc., and
the introduction of long narratives of messengers
which constitute in part the epic element of Greek
tragedy. These, and other restrictions, are little
matters in themselves, but they would greatly ham-
per a modern playwright. They all belong indeed to
a higher cause, arising from the essentially different
conceptions of ancient and modern tragedy. The
Greek tragedy was in origin, and in theory always, a
chorus interrupted by dialogue. The chorus was at
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. 113
first the whole performance, and the dialogue pas-
sages, called epeisodia from the entrance of the actors
to take part in them, were truly episodes in the sense
which the word has to our minds. Hence it was
only by one at a time, in the course of years, that the
number of allowed actors was raised to three or four.
This explains the comparative absence of scenery
and action from the stage. And hence, too, perhaps,
from the relative subordination of the actor's part
in the play came its limitation to the single place
and time. The whole tragedy was a poem in illus-
tration and explanation of a series of tableaux vivants.
It may fairly be said in view of these restrictions, and
of this theory of tragedy, that Sophokles has in this
play shown wonderful power in developing a com-
plete and absorbing plot. In comparison with other
plays it seems as if he here strained the Greek con-
ception of tragedy to its utmost limits in a direction
approaching the modern conception. And yet how
differently a modern writer would treat the theme !
He would have three or four times as many charac-
ters. He would have a second or third subordinate
plot ; and it would go hard with him if he could not
work in a love-story with reasonable obstacles to its
running smoothly. He would omit the heaven-
inflicted plague, and transform the blind old prophet
into a prime minister or a ghost. He would bring
about the discovery of the fatal secret by some chain
of half-accidental occurrences, like the dropping of
Desdemona's handkerchief, such as might occur in
I 14 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
every-day life. He would change the scene a dozen
times, and lengthen the time of the action indefinitely.
In saying this, of course one does not mean that the
modern dramatic form is necessarily inferior on ac-
count of these differences. It is merely that we have
here two distinct conceptions of this form of art,
the ancient and the modern, or, if you please, the
statuesque and picturesque, though this latter word
has been in bad company and lost some of its native
simplicity. Each form is the best in its own age and
surroundings. Each in comparison with the other
appears to have weak points, but has, not less truly,
strong points peculiar to itself. The remarkable
thing in this play is, that the poet without being
false to the classical conception, has been able to in-
troduce so much of what characterizes more especially
the modern form of dramatic art, an interest in the
mere series of incidents, and a probable secret natur-
ally brought to light.
It may be worth while here to point out certain
improbabilities which appear to a modern judgment
in the story, as presented in this play. One is, that
it should be so long before the plague, or whatever
declared the divine displeasure on account of the
killing of Laios, came upon Thebes. Oedipus must
have been in undisturbed possession of the throne
for years, since he has four children born to him by
lokasta, the age of whom at the time of the action
vis not, to be sure, expressly stated ; but from the last
scene in which the two girls are brought upon the
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. I 1 5
stage, one gets the impression that they were at
least no longer infants. And there are expressions
here and there in the play (vs. 109, 561, 1212) which
contribute to suggest a long interval since the com-
ing of Oedipus to Thebes. The murder of Aga-
memnon, it is true, remained unavenged for seven
years, but that interval was necessary to the story,
in order that Orestes, who was but a child when his
father went to the ten-years' siege of Troy, might
grow to sufficient age to be able to avenge him.
Here there appears no need in the story for a longer
time than that these children should be begotten,
and it is worth notice that, in the brief Homeric
version of the myth, no such interval before the dis-
covery appears. Another strange thing is, that the
death of Laios, known to be a murder on the high-
way, should have been , passed over with so little
notice. The poet himself felt this difficulty, and
suggests, as an explanation of it, that the distress
occasioned by the Sphinx had interrupted a search for
the murderer, which was not afterwards resumed.
Of course, in an unsettled state of civilization, and
among a group of small, independent states, such
acts of violence were more likely to occur and to
defy punishment, and generally, in the primitive
societies, homicide was a less serious offense, as ap-
pears from recognized tariffs of payment in money
for it to the outraged family. But still it remains a
strange thing that the king should be so taken off
with no more serious and prolonged investigation of
Il6 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
the matter. This, it may be observed, is an insepa-
rable part of the original story, and does not belong
only to the dramatic working up of it. Again, one
cannot help asking how it happened that the same
man should have been a shepherd on Mt. Kithaeron
at the time of the birth of Oedipus, then an atten-
dant of Laios on his fatal journey towards Delphi,
and afterwards a shepherd again. This last change is
expressly accounted for by the poet, as caused by the
man's desire to get away from the sight of his master's
murderer on his master's throne. It has been suggested
above that the poet's own reason for thus removing
this man from Thebes was to exclude the possibility
of his revealing, during the reign of Oedipus, his
knowledge that he was the murderer of the former
king ; and besides, the delay in the plot occasioned
by the necessity of sending to some distance for
him contributes to the suspense and interest of the
spectator. But there is no hint of an explanation
how it came about that the same man was a witness
of. the exposure of the child and of the killing of
the father. It is easy to see how necessary it was to
the plot, as Sophokles conceived it, to have the same
man cognizant of both events, though ignorant that
the infant and the homicide were the same person.
The whole identification depends upon his testi-
mony.
Finally, can we say, after all this, what was the
poet's motive or aim in this play? There can be no
doubt that he had some conception in his mind, some
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. 1 1/
definite motive, which controlled the shaping of this
creation. Without such conception, the work would
have little meaning or value. How distinctly it was
present to his mind and formulated in expression, we
cannot guess, but we may be sure that such an artist
as Sophokles did no work at random. In the selec-
tion of a myth for dramatic use, and of the precise
version and part of the myth, we may suppose that
he would be guided almost entirely by his percep-
tion of dramatic possibilities ; at that earlier stage of
the process, the creative faculty of the poet is not
yet at work, or is at work only tentatively and
fitfully ; his mind is rather passive, receiving propo-
sitions, as it were, considering and comparing, but
not yet acting upon any. In this stage, the artistic
element predominates over the true poetic (making)
element, and the mind, with comparative coolness,
selects for artistic reasons without determining the
moral and drift of its future work. But when the
work of composition begins, and the fire burns
within, then the whole man gives shape to the prod-
uct ; his long-cherished thoughts, his beliefs about
the highest and the deepest questions, his principles
of action, his noblest theories, for into such work
the true poet will put the best of everything, all
these will be poured into the crucible, and will give
something of form or color to the final result. And
it is not presumption for any one to attempt to dis-
cover from the finished work what is the ruling idea,
the main thought, in it. The poet speaks to his
Il8 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
hearers and readers. He is not a juggler, aiming to
distract our attention with by-play, and to hide his
real design, but a teacher, whose object is to convey,
in such form as shall suit him best, his mind's
thought to other minds. We may fail from our own
weakness to read his thought rightly, but our honest
effort to discover it is the proper tribute to his effort
to convey it. And if we fail, our failure may lead
another to the truth.
The story of Thebes seems to have been particu-
larly attractive to the mind of Sophokles. It is com-
monly supposed, on various grounds, that he wrote
first the Antigone, taking up that part of the myth
which comes last in the order of events, perhaps from
the desire to depict, as in the parallel case of the
Elektra, a heroic woman in a moment of extreme
trial. Next probably in order of writing came the
present play. We are not wrong, I think, in suppos-
ing that this play interested him so deeply in the
character and fate of Oedipus that it did not wholly
satisfy him, that his mind recurred to it and dwelt
upon it until he felt an impulse to treat it once more ;
and then, in his old age, as tradition tells us, he wrote
the Oedipus at Kolonos. Now if this semi-traditional
order of the three plays is correct, it seems to lead us
towards the answer to our question, What was his
main idea in this play ? He was not drawn to the
myth at first by the desire to tell the story of Oedi-
pus in dramatic form. It was not the intricacy of
the plot, the exercise of dramatic skill in the natural
THE OEDIPUS REX OF SOPHOKLES. I IQ
unforced bringing to light of a secret that first at-
tracted him to the Theban myth, but the strong and
pure character of Antigone. The power of her char-
acter over his mind led him then to go back and take
up the dark story over which her self-sacrifice sheds
its gracious light. Perhaps in later years, and in ful-
ler mastery of the resources of his art, he really had
more pleasure in the construction of such a plot as
this ; but that alone does not seem to explain the
vigor and passion of the play. If he was led to select
the theme by the plot alone, he was soon carried be-
yond the source of interest by the deeper questions it
aroused in him. Let us turn now towards the other
Oedipus-play. What was it that he was dissatisfied
with in the Oedipus Rex? What were the deeper
questions started there, and not fully or not rightly
answered, to which the Oedipus at Kolonos was meant
to give the. best answer the poet could find? Here
is a noble character, strong, sagacious, religious,
forced to pass through the deepest misery and dis-
grace. How did it come about ? And beyond that,
how can we believe in a divine government of the
world if such things come to pass under it ? To
answer these two questions was the poet's object,
the same which Milton proposed to himself in the
beginning of Paradise Lost, to
" assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men."
The Oedipus Rex has for its object to "assert
eternal Providence." As clearly as the poet can, he
120 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
shows in it how certainly the gods govern in the life
of this world, how not even the strongest and wisest
and best of men can put his own life outside of the
chain of cause and effect, and nullify the decrees
made known to men in divine oracles. Far-seeing
and firm and devout as Oedipus is, in an unguarded
moment he does commit the very sin that is needed
to bring him into the fatal sequence, and all the
rest follows without any violent intervention, by the
working of ordinary laws. But the poet could not
bear to leave the matter finally here. With all his care
to show Oedipus to be in the wrong, the impression
of undeserved suffering remains. He must go on, as
Milton must, and "justify the ways of God to men" ;
and this he does in the Oedipiis at Kolonos, in a way
which makes us wonder at the depth and tenderness
and truth of Greek theology in his hands. In a word,
then, we may truly say that the main idea of the
Oedipus at Kolonos is to show, by an extreme and
striking example, how, again in spite of all appear-
ances to the contrary, the same divine will and law
is able, as soon as man submits to it, to lead him
even through bitter suffering into joy and peace.
V.
SUMMARY OF' THE OEDIPUS AT
KOLONOS OF SOPHOKLES.
'THE scene of the play is laid at Kolonos, one of
the rural demes of Attika, about four miles north
or north-west from the Acropolis. When the stage
is disclosed to view, we see two persons walking on
the public road, an old man, blind, and in beggar's
rags, and a young woman guiding and half-support-
ing his steps. In the first few words of their con-
versation they announce themselves to be Oedipus
and Antigone. They have been long journeying
thus, in search of the place of his final rest and
release from the burden of life. They do not know
just where they are, though Antigone sees, in the
distance, the walls of a city which she knows,
from directions given them along their way, to be
Athens. The old man sits down at the roadside,
on the low wall of an enclosed grove, while she pro-
poses to go and find out where they are. But before
she can do this it is made unnecessary by the ap-
proach of a man, a wayfarer like themselves, not
a native, apparently, nor resident of Kolonos, to
whom they apply for the information they want.
He is horrified at seeing Oedipus on consecrated
ground where it is forbidden to go, the sacred pre-
122 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
cinct of the Eumenides. Yet he does not venture
to compel him to move, and while thus in doubt
describes to him the region to which he has come.
The whole region, the stranger says, is holy ground.
It belongs, in general, to Poseidon, but Prometheus,
the giver of fire, has in it a place sacred to him ; the
grove is a sanctuary of the Eumenides, called the
corner-stone of Athens, and the surrounding land is
under the protection of its eponymous hero, the
equestrian Kolonos. Politically, the whole territory
is under the government of Theseus, king of Athens.
Having said thus much, the stranger advises Oedi-
pus to remain where he is, while he goes to inform
the men of the deme of his presence there, that they
may decide what he shall do.
This passage gives us a glimpse of the character
of an Attic deme. It is a distinct community, gath-
ered in one locality, like a village in a New England
town. It has its own gods and sanctuaries, gods
who may also be worshipped elsewhere, or may be
peculiar to that spot. Several deities of different
characters may divide among them the reverence
and worship of the little community, each having his
own enclosure and temple. It has a measure of self-
government, as to its own affairs, so that it might
expel Oedipus from its limits ; but, at the same
time, it belongs to a larger body, and recognizes the
authority of Athens over all Attic territory.
After the stranger is gone, Oedipus utters a prayer
to the dread Eumenides, imploring them to fulfil the
THE OEDIPUS AT KOLONOS OF SOPHOKLES. 123
oracle of Apollo, which had promised him that he
should find rest at the sanctuary of some dread dei-
ties, though where it did not tell. Now, since, with-
out intention or knowledge, he had stopped first at
their threshold, on coming into Attica, he, a sober
man, at the door of deities who abhorred all use of
wine, it seemed as if he must have been guided
thither in the divine plan, and this must be the place
meant by the oracle. So he fearlessly throws him-
self on their pity. At the close of his prayer, Antig-
one warns him of the approach of some elderly
men ; whereupon he withdraws into the wood, that
he may learn in what temper they come before he
shows himself.
The chorus announced by Antigone comes for-
ward in great excitement, eager to find the wan-
derer who has profaned the sacred enclosure. While
they are urging each other to look everywhere about
the grove for him, Oedipus calls out and discovers
himself. Something in their words may have encour-
aged him to this, but rather, perhaps, he sees that
he cannot long evade their search, and thinks it
wiser to give himself up. They are filled with awe
and pity at the sight of him, but, nevertheless, they
insist upon his coming out at once from the sacred
grove before they will talk with him. Then follows
a passage in which the poet strikingly depicts the
'icsitation, timidity, and physical weakness of the
old man. " Daughter, what shall I decide to do ? "
" Father, we must do as the citizens here do."
124 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
"Give me then your hand." "Here it is." "Friends,
let me not be wronged if I trust you, and leave the
protection of this sanctuary." " No one shall force
you away from this place." " Further still must I
go ? " " Come on." " Further yet ? " " Lead him
forward, maiden, for you can see." And so it goes
on, while he groans over the trouble he has in get-
ting to the spot they indicate. The hesitation and
helplessness of Oedipus here, in this trifling matter
of walking a few steps, is in strong contrast with
the courage and resolution he shows later in the
play, when upon his decision rests the fate of two
of the chief states of Greece. Here it is bodily
action that is required of him ; there it is an act of the
mind, a decision to be made and maintained. Here
he is still uncertain of his position, whether he will
be suffered to remain in Attika, or must wander
further; there he had learnt from the king that he
may stay.
When he has reached the spot designated for him
by the chorus, they proceed to ascertain by urgent
questions who he is. He resists as long as he can,
but at last, by the advice of Antigone, tells them his
name. Knowing something of his terrible story, they
are horrified at learning that it is Oedipus who is
before them, and instantly bid him quit their terri-
tory. He reminds them of their pledge, but in vain.
They insist that he deceived them (by not telling his
name, apparently), and therefore they are not bound
by their promise to him. Thereupon Antigone appeals
THE OEDIPUS AT KOLONOS OF SOPHOKLES. 12$
to them to have pity upon her, as they might upon
one of their own daughters, and not to drive her and
her father away. They remain unmoved ; the fear,
so general among primitive peoples and in ethnical
religions, lest the whole community may suffer from
the sin of one of its members, or for harboring an
offender against the gods, ,is too strong to give way
readily. Then Oedipus himself addresses them,
taking a higher tone than before, and not only ask-
ing as a favor, but claiming almost as a right, shelter
in Attika : What will become of the reputation of
Athens as a most religious city if she casts off this
suppliant, a man more sinned against than sinning,
whose evil deeds as men regard them were wrought
in ignorance, who comes now to Athens as a man
consecrated and bringing a blessing with him? What
he means by this blessing he will explain when the
ruler of the land appears. The chorus is awed by
his words, and consents to his remaining until the
king comes, adding that the same man who sum-
moned them, the stranger who first came upon Oedi-
pus, had gone on to carry the news to Theseus, and
they feel sure that he will soon be there.
Their conversation is interrupted by an exclama-
tion of surprise from Antigone. In answer to an
anxious question from her father, she tells him that she
sees approaching a woman mounted on an Aitnaian
steed, with a Thessalian hat to protect her head from
the sun. (Those who have seen the Tanagra figu-
rines will recall the shade-hats which appear on some
126 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
of them.) Can it be ? Yes, as she comes nearer, she
sees her smile, and recognizes beyond a doubt her
sister Ismene. 'The description of the comforts with
which Ismene travels is evidently designed to mark
by contrast the hardships which Antigone cheerfully
undergoes, to which her father presently alludes.'
After they have exchanged affectionate greetings,
Ismene says she has come with news for her father.
" But where are my sons ? " he naturally asks. "They
are where they are, and there is trouble between
them." This gives occasion to Oedipus to denounce
the conduct of his sons in staying at home regardless
of his fate, and to contrast it with the love of his daugh-
ters, one of whom has borne all the hardships of his
wandering and want with him, and the other has
come now this second time to bring him informa-
tion. What, then, is her news this time ? It is that
the two brothers have quarrelled about the throne of
Thebes ; that Polyneikes, the elder, has been driven
into exile, and that, according to the prevalent rumor,
he has found friends in Argos, and will presently
come with an army to regain his rights. Then, in
answer to questions from Oedipus, it comes out by de-
grees that the oracle at Delphi has lately made known
to the people of Thebes that the possession or con-
trol of Oedipus's grave was essential to the welfare
of Thebes, although, as a parricide, he could not be
buried in Theban soil. It appears from what he has
previously said, that substantially the same thing had
before been told by the oracle to Oedipus himself,
THE OEDIPUS AT KOLONOS OF SOPHOKLES. I2/
only in the somewhat different form that his grave
should be a blessing to whatever land should contain
it. In consequence of this oracle, she further tells
him, Kreon is coming soon to get possession of his
person, in order that they may keep him close to
the borders of Theban territory so long as he lives,
and bury him there when he dies. He asks whether
his sons knew of this oracle, and when told that they
did, and yet set the possession of the throne before
any care for him, breaks out into curses upon them,
enumerating their misdeeds towards him, and praying
that their strife with each other may never end.
The more the chorus sees of Oedipus, the more
favorably inclined towards him they become, and now,
as if regarding his remaining in Attika as a settled
thing, they call his attention to the ceremony of puri-
fication necessary to propitiate the Eumenides, upon
whose sacred soil he has unwittingly intruded. They
describe with minute detail the process, of which he
is evidently entirely ignorant. The suppliant must
take fresh water from a flowing source in vessels
wreathed with wool from a young sheep, and stand-
ing with his face to the East, pour three libations of
water and honey, without wine ; then he must take
thrice nine twigs of the olive in his hands, and
utter the formula of prayer, including a reference to
the name Eumenides (this in a low tone), and then
withdraw without looking behind him. This minute
account of the ceremony, more minute than we find
elsewhere, illustrates the difference of religious usage
128 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
in different communities, to which reference has
already been made. Oedipus, brought up at Korinth,
and having lived afterwards at Thebes, both within a
day's journey of Athens, has no knowledge of this
ceremony, though the deities to be propitiated seem
from his earlier words (vs. 99-106) to have been knowd
by him. For there, having been told only their
name, he speaks of them as averse to wine, and calls
them daughters of Skotos. The preciseness of the
directions given, and the eager attention which he
pays to each detail, illustrate the importance of such
formalities in a religion like that of the Greeks. The
use of any other material than lamb's wool for the fil-
lets, or of water from a still pool, or of twenty-four
twigs instead of twenty-seven, might vitiate the whole
process. Oedipus himself cannot go to perform this
rite, nor is he willing to be left alone in his blindness ;
so he says one of his daughters must go in his stead,
and Ismene volunteers to do it. We see then here
one of the reasons why she was introduced into the
action of the play. But why the poet introduced here
this mention of the purification, and so made it neces-
sary to have some one go to perform it, we cannot
perhaps be so sure, though we may conjecture.
After Ismene is gone, the chorus extracts from
Oedipus by close and persistent questioning, a con-
fession of the dreadful facts in his past, which he
cannot mention or hear mentioned without great dis-
tress, the murder of his father, and the union with
his own mother. But he insists that both deeds were
THE OEDIPUS AT KOLOXOS OF SOPHOKLES. 129
done in utter ignorance, and without thought of evil
on his part. This brief passage seems to be intro-
duced here in order to bring before us yet again his
freedom from guilt in the matter, and the horror with
which he looks back upon it all. These things are
impressed upon us by frequent repetition through the
play, and it seems necessary that they should be, that
we may understand the favor with which the gods at
last regard him.
At this point Theseus, king of Athens, comes in,
and the action of the play takes a new turn, the
second main incident beginning here. The first main
incident is the application of Oedipus for shelter in
Attika ; the second is his actual reception by the
highest authority of the state. The king greets
Oedipus by name, after briefly explaining how he
has made up his mind that the mysterious wanderer
must be he, and asks what request he has to make.
Oedipus tells him that he brings his own body as a
gift to Athens, and that if the gift is accepted, it will
prove a great benefit to the state. When Theseus
asks how, Oedipus at first puts him off by saying
that time will show ; but presently in answer to fur-
ther questions it comes out that, if Theseus will give
his body burial, and resist all attempts of the Thebans
to get him away before or after his death, then in a
war which shall arise between Athens and Thebes,
the Thebans shall be defeated at his grave. Theseus
now formally consents to his remaining in Attika,
and gives him the choice whether he will remain
I3O STUDIES IX GREEK THOUGHT.
where he is or go with him to Athens. He, of course,
remembering the oracle, decides to remain at the
grove of the Eumenides, and Theseus, after pledging
to him protection against any attack, goes away.
As if to ratify this promise of the king, and to show
what joys are implied in it, the chorus breaks out into
a well-known and exquisite song in praise of Ko-
lonos and of Attika. A rough version will give the
run of thought. First strophe : " Thou hast come,
wanderer, to the choicest region of this land, the white
hill of Kolonos, which above all others the nightingale
frequents, warbling plaintively among green thickets,
honoring the dark ivy and the deity's sacred grove,
rich in fruits, which never the sun nor blast of
any storm penetrates ; where the reveller Dionysos
strays with his divine attendants." Antistrophe :
" And by the rain from heaven is ever fostered the
narcissus, time-honored garland of the two great god-
desses, and the yellow shining crocus. Nor do the
sleepless rills from the Kephissos ever fail, but con-
tinually they flow over and fertilize with pure water
the hollows of the hilly land ; which land the Muses
do not scorn, nor does Aphrodite with golden reins."
Second strophe : "And there is (here) what I do not
hear of as belonging to Asia, nor ever growing in the
great Dorian peninsula the native self-propagating
tree, that no enemy has dared to visit, which here
most abounds, the gray-green wholesome olive, which
no warrior young or old shall ever destroy, for the all-
seeing eye of Zeus and the keen glance of Athena
THE OEDIPUS AT KOLONOS OF SOPHOKLES. 13!
watch over it." Second antistrophe : "And another
most choice glory have I to mention for my native
land, the gift of a mighty god, the glory of the horse
and of the sea. It is thou, O son of Kronos, lord
Poseidon, who hast given her this glory, in that it was
here that thou didst first bring the horse under the
restraining bit. And the oar, framed for the hand of
man, flies and leaps over the water of the sea, keep-
ing pace with the thronging Nereids." You see how
the poet passes from praise of the special locality, the
place of his own birth, to praise which includes the
whole land of Attika. The luxuriant growth of the
vines and trees mentioned may have been peculiar to
Kolonos, but the culture of the olive, the use of the
horse and of the oar, we know were not. No version
that I have seen gives any idea of the careful structure
of the ode, its balanced clauses, its chosen epithets,
its harmony of sound and sense. Each of the first
pair of stanzas ends with a brief mention of deities,
with whose attributes the earlier part of the verse has
some connection. Of the second pair, one is devoted
to the praise of the olive and of Athena, the other
speaks of the horse and the oar, and of Poseidon who
gave them for the use of man, thus recalling the myth
of the strife between these two divinities for the pos-
session of Attika. It is one of the most charming
choruses in Sophokles, and one of the few passages
in classical literature that show a pleasure in the
beauties of nature. But a modern reader notices at
once that there is no reference in it to what strikes
132 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
us as a chief part of landscape beauty. Nothing is
said of the view of Kolonos, or of the view from it,
although the latter is one of the most delightful that
the modern traveller can find in the neighborhood of
Athens, embracing the whole plain with its olive
groves and houses, the Akropolis, and the other hills
around it, the more distant encircling mountains, and
at one point a broad stretch of the blue sea. There is
no recognition of the beauty that appeals to the eye,
and through it to the imagination, the beauty of dis-
tant outline, of ever-varying color, of combination and
suggestion. Instead of this we have an enumeration
of the several features that make the place delightful
or serve the uses of man and of the divinities that
honor it.
After this comes the third main incident of the
play, the efforts to remove Oedipus from his sanc-
tuary, and to make him take one side or the other in
the impending conflict at Thebes. It takes up some
seven hundred lines of the play, but we may pass over
most of it briefly ; indeed, it seems as if some of the
proverbial garrulousness of old age had got control of
the poet here. After the splendid chorus, Kreon
comes in, and, as Antigone says, speedily puts the
brave boasts of its words to the test of action. He
begins with a smooth speech, professing to be sent
from Thebes to persuade Oedipus to come home
and hide away among his kindred the scandal of his
life. But Oedipus answers him with so much in-
dignation and contempt, that in the wrangling that
THE OEDIPUS AT KOLONOS OF SOPHOKLES. 133
follows between the two, Kreon presently throws off
his mask, and, after boasting that he has already cap-
tured Ismene, directs his attendants to seize and
drag off Antigone. This they do in spite of the pro-
tests of the chorus. Then encouraged by his success
so far, he proceeds to attempt to drag off Oedipus
himself, which of course was his real aim from the
beginning. But now the chorus shouts so loudly for
help that Theseus, who is sacrificing at the altar of
Poseidon not far off, hears them, and comes to learn
what the matter is. His coming quickly changes the
state of things. As soon as he learns what has been
done, he sends off from those gathered at the sacri-
fice soldiers to guard the road by which the girls will
naturally be taken on the way to Thebes, and then,
after listening to Kreon's defense of his conduct, and
a long reply from Oedipus, requires the former to
guide him to the place where the girls are.
While they are gone, the chorus, unable on account
of their age to join in the pursuit, utter a song hav-
ing reference to the battle which they suppose will
occur. They wish they could be present at one place
or another where they imagine it to be going on ;
they predict victory for their countrymen ; they pray
to Zeus, Athena, and Apollo to fulfil that prediction.
This choral song seems designed merely to fill the
gap between the departure and the return of Theseus.
Some time must be allowed for the rescue, since it is
implied by line 1 148 that there was something of a
struggle between the two parties. But we see from
134 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
the brevity of the chorus, only fifty lines, that the
poet was not careful to make the interval seem long
enough for the pursuit, the conflict, and the return ;
no such realism was required by anything in the
Greek artistic sense.
At the end of the chorus, Theseus comes in with
the two maidens. They are warmly welcomed by
their father, who also pours out his gratitude to their
deliverer. And here it is interesting to notice how
the poet avoids giving an account of the battle, which
he seems to have known the audience would expect,
and yet to have preferred for some reason not to give.
He makes Oedipus ask Antigone for an account of
what had occurred. She refers him to Theseus as
the proper person to tell of his own achievements.
So he turns to him, and, though he does not in so
many words ask for the story, yet he evidently ex-
pects it, and Theseus recognizes the unuttered wish,
but only to decline gratifying it on the ground that
he does not wish to boast of what he has himself
done, and what Oedipus can learn about from his
daughters. " Besides," says he, " another matter was
brought to my notice as I was coming here which
needs immediate attention." This announcement
diverts the thoughts of all parties from the battle,
and Oedipus himself starts and keeps up the inquiry
about this new matter. "They tell me," says Theseus,
" that a man, not a townsman of yours, but yet a kins-
man, has sat down as a suppliant at the altar of Po-
seidon where I was just now sacrificing." "Who is
THE OEDIPUS AT KOLONOS OF SOPHOKLES. 135
he?" asks Oedipus. "I do not know. I only know
he wants to speak with you, and to have safe conduct
away by the way he came." " But who can it be who
comes thus ? " " Consider whether you have any
relative in Argos who might have come with such a
request." This is enough for Oedipus, who has
heard from Ismene that Polyneikes had found friends
in Argos ; he will hear no more, and refuses at once to
see the man, who must of course be Polyneikes. The-
seus remonstrates with him, and Antigone pleads, until
at last he yields, and consents to his son's coming.
Again, the interval necessary to allow time for
summoning the suppliant is filled up with a choral
song, but this time it is a more interesting song than
before. The thought of it is suggested by the sight
of Oedipus as he sits there, old, blind, and poor, and
assailed first by the violence of Kreon, and then by
the hardly less hateful petition of Polyneikes. " He
who desires length of days nurses folly in his heart.
For many days bring one into sorrow and there is no
joy in them ; and at the end, gloomy death stands
waiting for all. Best of all is it never to be born ; and
next best to die as soon as possible and go whence
one came. For after the follies of youth come the
woes of life, jealousy, strife, conflicts, slayings ; and
after all these comes friendless, gloomy old age. In
such an old age must live not I alone but also this poor
man here, on whose head as on some exposed cliff beat
waves of calamity from all sides, from west and east
and south and north." This passage is one of the
136 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
famous expressions in ancient literature of the sense
of the weariness and emptiness of human life. "All
is vanity and vexation of spirit." It is the more re-
markable as coming from a poet who was notably of
serene and cheerful temper, and whose life was a long
scene of success and happiness until perhaps its very
latest years. It has been used, with other passages of
similar purport, to show that the Greek religion had
nothing in it to satisfy the needs of a thoughtful spirit,
or again to prove that old age was necessarily a gloomy
and cheerless part of life to the Greeks. It does not,
I think, prove either of these things, though they
may both be true. I am not sure that we can get at
the true explanation of such a tone in Greek litera-
ture, but it seems to me to be due merely to natural
reaction in the midst of a life of activity and pleasure.
We may express the idea under various forms ; we
may say that the full blaze of light requires some
qualification of shadow, or that it was the same feel-
ing that prompted the proverbial presence of the
skeleton at the Egyptian banquets ; or we may recog-
nize in it the feeling that most of us have at some
times in youth, a perfectly natural and genuine feel-
ing, I think, but crude and transient, that life is hard-
ly worth going on with, and the world is a poor place
after all. I should suppose that the very brightness
and gayety of Greek life in general would make such
a contrast to be keenly felt and strongly expressed
by a sensitive spirit, wherever its eye was caught by
any of the inevitable calamities of human destiny
THE OEDIPUS AT KOLONOS OF SOPHOKLES. 1 37
which cannot be -wholly ignored. If such things
were possible in the midst of all this joy and rev-
elry, what is it all worth ?
After this chorus, Polyneikes appears and makes
the second attempt to move Oedipus from his chosen
resting-place. He comes in hesitatingly, evidently
in doubt as to his reception, and addresses first his
sisters, speaking of his father in the third person.
Presently he gets up courage to address his father
directly, but failing to get any answer he turns again
to his sisters and asks them to help him move his
father's will. Antigone encourages him to go on
with his appeal, and to expect an answer at the end.
So he tells the story of his quarrel with his brother,
his exile, and his alliance with Argos ; he enumerates
the heroes who are engaged with him in the attack
upon Thebes, and urges his father to give him the help
of his presence. For the oracle, as he understands it,
promises victory to the party in that struggle (not in
a struggle between Thebes and Athens, as Oedipus
has heretofore represented it) which shall have with
it the person of the old hero. Oedipus hears him
through and then calmly proceeds not only to decline
his request, but to curse both of his sons in solemn
form, praying that they may die by each other's hand.
The solemnity and elaborate fulness with which this
curse is uttered and repeated show how prominent
and important an element of the story it was. Upon
it depends apparently the necessity of that insepara-
ble part of the legend, the meeting of the two
138 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
brothers in battle and their killing- each other. Yet
the poet seems plainly to show us in the lines which
follow that there was no such necessity of sequence
as to hamper the free will of either brother. For in
these next lines Antigone pleads with Polyneikes to
give up the expedition against Thebes, and thus frus-
trate that part of the terrible curse. Just so in the
Seven against Thebes of Aeschylos, the chorus pleads
with Eteokles not to put himself in the defense of the
city just where he will be sure to meet his brother.
In both cases we see that the brothers might have
avoided their sad fate, but in both the pride of mili-
tary honor is too strong. Thus we see that in this
case, as I believe in all other cases in Greek tragedy,
the calamity of an individual is due, not to a resistless
fate, but to some error or sin of his own doing.
Scarcely has Polyneikes withdrawn in dejection
and disgrace, when the fourth and last main incident
of the play, the passing of Oedipus, begins. It is
ushered in by a peal of thunder, the meaning of which
Oedipus instantly recognizes. He asks that The-
seus be sent for at once. The dialogue between him
and Antigone is repeatedly interrupted by short stan-
zas from the chorus, which describe the repeated
thunderings, reveal the excitement into which the
chorus is thrown, and must have produced in the
audience, by breaking in thus with quick exclama-
tions in impassioned metre, a similar effect of excite-
ment and confusion. Oedipus repeats and urges
his desire that Theseus should come, and, at the end
THE OEDIPUS AT KOLONOS OF SOPHOKLES. 139
of the last choral stanza which calls loudly for him,
the king appears. Oedipus at once becomes calm, and
with great dignity assumes the direction of matters.
He tells Theseus that these peals of thunder are a
summons to him to go into the other world. He
tells him that he, Theseus, alone must go with him
to the appointed spot which, in order to ensure the
safety of Athens in conflict with the neighboring
States, he must keep secret from every one, only
imparting the knowledge to his successor when his
own life draws near its end. (Thus the poet ingeni-
ously accounts for the fact that in his day no one
knew the spot where Oedipus had died.) Then the
old man rises in his blindness and becomes in his
turn the leader of the others, his daughters being
allowed to accompany him for part of the way. As
they go off the stage, the chorus begins its last choral
song, which is a prayer to the deities of the lower
world to give to Oedipus an easy death and a kindly
welcome into their domain.
At the end of this choral song, a messenger appears
and gives the chorus an account of the last that was
seen of Oedipus. He tells how he led them along
to a place which he describes, but by landmarks which
no longer exist ; a place where apparently there was
thought to be an entrance to the lower world. Here
he sat down, and stripping off his old rags bade his
daughters bring him water for a bath and a libation.
When this was done and he had put on other clothes,
there was heard a peal of thunder from below the
I4O STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
ground, whereupon he began to bid an affectionate
farewell to his daughters. At a pause in their weep-
ing over each other, there came an awful voice, call-
ing, " You there, Oedipus ! Why delay we so ? It is
a long time that we are waiting for you." At this he
must go; he only lingers to commit the maidens
solemnly under an oath to the care of Theseus, and
then bids them go away that they may not see what
becomes of him. When they have withdrawn and
waited a little while, they look back and see Theseus
standing there alone, shading his eyes with his hand
as if some supernatural sight was before him. They
look again presently and see him doing reverence to
the earth beneath and at the same time to the heavenly
Olympus. And no man to-day, except Theseus,
knows any more what became of Oedipus.
After this the rest of the party who had gone with the
old man return, and the two maidens utter their sor-
row in a long kommos, in which the chorus join. At
last Theseus bids them stop lest they offend the gods
by too protracted lamentation. Antigone, in her
blind sorrow, begs him to let them see their father's
grave, but he refuses because Oedipus had required
him not to show it to any one. She acquiesces then
and asks him to send them back to Thebes that, if
possible, they may prevent the threatened fatal con-
flict between their brothers. This he promises to do,
and so the play ends.
THE OEDIPUS AT KOLONOS OF SOPHOKLES. 14!
NOTE. As to the plot : Really no dramatic element. Skill of poet
in working in incidents so as to give as much action as possible to the
play. In this like the Prometheus. There, after the prologue, we have
a motionless figure, approached in various ways with attempts to sway
his will. So here, after the reception of Oedipus, two unavailing
efforts are made to change his purpose. In fact, he, the central figure,
sits still in one place for thirteen hundred lines, from 202 to 1540.
Variety of incidents to make up for this: Theseus comes in four times;
the purification, the violent proceedings of Kreon, the conflict brought
almost before our eyes by the choral song about it, the mysterious sum-
mons by the thunder peals.
Natural sequence of incidents, especially at the beginning; acci-
dental meeting with wayfarer; motive of introducing chorus; device
for keeping Theseus in the neighborhood (cf. 888 with 54 f., 1494 f.).
Reasons for introducing Ismene. She brings the news of Kreon's
coming, so that Oedipus is prepared for that. Also, she makes known
to him the quarrel between the two brothers, and their knowledge of
the oracle. This prepares him to receive Polyneikes as he would wish
to do. She also supplies somebody to go and perform the rite of puri-
fication at the proper place, and her being there, or on the way, enables
Kreon to boast of having already captured her.
It may be noted that there is no subsequent reference to this rite of
purification which Ismene was sent to perform. We do not know
whether it was done or not before Kreon seized her. Furthermore, it
does not appear why he should have seized her as a captive except as a
mere wanton outrage to the feelings of Oedipus. For nothing is said
that implies any intention on her part to abandon Thebes and join her
father in his wandering. Why should she not go back with her steed
and attendant to Thebes to live, as she had done once before? The
seizure of Antigone took away the sole companion and the eyes of
Oedipus, but not so that of Ismene.
Other difficulties of plot that have been noted are of little or no
real importance.
Relations of Athens to Thebes implied cannot be satisfactorily
explained. Much friendly language, yet a conflict anticipated; per-
haps the sheltering of Oedipus ought to be regarded as an unfriendly
act. But the myth required it, and perhaps the poet did not concern
himself with either political relations or contradictions.
VI.
SUMMARY OF THE ANTIGONE OF
SOPHOKLES.
THE prologue is a conversation between Antigone
and her sister Ismene. It is accounted for in the
most natural way : Antigone the freer, more active
and wide-awake character, has heard some important
news which the quieter Ismene has not heard, and it
is news the first hearing of which may probably lead
to her committing herself to some action in view of
it. So Antigone, having made up her own mind,
contrives an interview with her sister alone, early in
the morning, and tells her that Kreon has decreed
that Polyneikes must be left unburied as a penalty
for making war on his native city. Antigone, how-
ever, has resolved to bury her brother in spite of this
decree, and urges her sister to join her in discharging
this religious duty. Ismene is too timid or too pru-
dent to venture such defiance of authority, and strives
to persuade Antigone by every argument she can
think of not to persist ; but it is all in vain, and they
part without cither's having affected the other's
purpose. This prologue gives us in brief the theme
of the play, the conflict which constitutes the tragic
situation. Ismene represents the general attitude,
that of everybody except Antigone, she disapproves
144 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
the decree, but feels that she must obey it ; she ad-
mires Antigone's purpose, but cannot bring herself
to make it her own. Thus we see the same event
acting differently on two different characters, and so
developing them in opposite directions.
When the sisters have withdrawn, the chorus comes
in, singing the parados. This is one of the finest
choral songs in Sophokles. It is a song of triumph
over the deliverance of the city and the repulse of
the enemy. It is made up of alternate lyric and
anapaestic stanzas. The first and fourth lyric stanzas
express the joy of the delivered city, the second and
third describe the repulse of the foe. The first and
third anapaestic passages allude to the unpatriotic
action of Polyneikes and the mutual slaughter of the
two brothers, thus mingling thoughts of evil with
the general strain of joy ; the second celebrates the
special intervention of Zeus to punish the pride of
the assailants, and the last merely announces the
coming in of Kreon. The variation of thought ac-
companies the change of metre, and the choice of
words is such as to express the thought most clearly
and precisely, and at the same time with richness of
suggestion and ornament. The whole is full of bright-
ness and vigor, in harmony with the sunrise with
which it opens.
Kreon comes in as announced, and addresses a
speech to the assembled elders, complimenting them
for their past loyalty, declaring his purpose to rule
with firmness and patriotism, and formally publishing
THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOKLES. 145
his decree in regard to Polyneikes. The chorus bows
to the will of the king, and seems to agree to give its
support to the new decree. It asserts its belief,
however, that no action will be needed, for no one
will be so foolish as to disobey, with the penalty of
death before him. Scarcely are the words uttered,
when one of the guards appointed by the king to
watch the body of Polyneikes and see that no one
buries it, comes hurriedly in to tell him that in spite
of their watching the deed has been done. Here we
have one of the best examples of character-talk in
the Greek drama. The man tells everything else
before he gets to his real message, describes his
own reluctance to come with it, in the dramatic form
peculiar to common people, evades the king's ques-
tions, and lets his own concern in the matter intrude
itself, until the reader is in full sympathy with the
king's impatience. Then at last he tells how at sun-
rise they found the body strown over with dust, and
how he was chosen by lot to bring the news. The
king is very angry, and utters at once his belief that
a party among the people hostile to his rule have
bribed some of the guards to do this thing. Then he
dismisses the guard with heavy threats of punishment
for him and his comrades if they do not detect the
criminal.
After this comes a choral song of very different
character from the previous one. This belongs to
the reflective, philosophic type, and is an excellent
example of it. Ignorant who has done this deed just
146 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
reported, and shocked at the daring shown in it, the
chorus breaks out thus : " Many are the things that
excite my awe and wonder, but none more so than
the nature of man ! " Then it enumerates the
achievements of man which show the boldness, rest-
lessness, and ingenuity of his spirit ; how he has
made the stormy sea his pathway, how he makes the
earth yield him food, how he ensnares birds, wild
beasts, and fishes, and has tamed the horse and the
bull ; the invention of speech, of laws, of house-
building, the cure of diseases ; how for everything he
has some device, except that he cannot escape death.
Now all this wisdom, if guided to right ends, is a
blessing, but if a man seeks wrong ends by it, it is a
curse, and here evidently they have in mind him
who has set at defiance Kreon's decree. To this
choral song there is a number of parallels, as to the
type; and there are similar passages not in choral
form, in which is given a brief history, as it were, of
civilization, notably one in the Prometheus, where
all the arts of civilized life are ascribed to his gift.
It is noteworthy that Sophokles here ascribes to
man's daring and inventiveness the very things which
elsewhere are regarded as taught by gods or heroes
to men. This simply illustrates the absence of fixed
systematic doctrine in the Greek religion. Each
poet might represent things on each occasion as the
occasion demanded ; or as his own tradition said, even
if it conflicted with other tradition.
At the end of the choral song is an anapaestic stanza
THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOKLES. 147
in which the entrance of Antigone under guard as a
criminal is announced. Kreon opportunely comes
out from the palace at the same moment (why, we are
not told), and to him the guard, the same man who
had come before, reports with something of the same
style as before (unable to leave out of view his own
feelings and opinions) that they had caught Antigone
in the act of performing burial rites over the body
of Polyneikes. In answer to Kreon's question she
confesses the deed ; thereupon, he dismisses the guard
and asks Antigone how she has dared to defy his
command. In reply she utters the famous lines
avowing a belief in divine law as superior to any
human enactment whatever. Thus she justifies her
action and declares herself ready to meet the conse-
quences of it. But this plea is of no avail in the eyes
of Kreon. His mind is filled, to the exclusion of
everything else, with the idea that his decree has
been set at naught, and that all opposition to it must
be put down by force. He is not at all embarrassed
by the proved falseness of his previous theory that
the guards had been bribed by disaffected citizens to
bury Polyneikes ; but he rages against Antigone as if
he had all along known that she was the criminal.
He includes Ismene, too, in his fury, and, without any
reasonable ground of suspicion, sends for her to
answer the charge of complicity. Meanwhile the argu-
ment between him and Antigone goes on until it is
interrupted by an isolated anapaestic stanza from the
chorus, announcing the approach of Ismene. She
148 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
comes in weeping, and is rudely asked by Kreon
whether she had a share in the burying of her
brother. To our surprise she answers that she had,
if Antigone says so. This is one of the delicate
touches of the poet in illustrating character. The
timid girl, who has urged her bolder sister not to
venture such a deed, is now so ^influenced by the
heroic act and critical position of Antigone that she
wants to be with her in everything. She could not
share her daring before, but she can share her death
now. But Antigone, of course, will not consent to
this. In the dialogue that follows she seems to us
needlessly harsh and cruel to Ismene. Perhaps all
we can say about it is that the poet so conceived her
character, that in this trying situation, with every
nerve held tense in the purpose to meet death in any
form without flinching, she would naturally be unable
to make allowance for feebler spirits, or to allow her-
self any moment of tender feeling. Such seems to
be her attitude here, and we must admit that the
impression her words make is a painful one. Yet
they do not chill the affection of Ismene, for, when
Kreon interrupts the dialogue of the sisters, she
turns to him and pleads, but in vain, for the life of
Antigone. She is the first to mention Haemon, the
son of Kreon, betrothed to Antigone, and thus the
way is prepared for his appearance, in the next scene.
Kreon orders both the sisters to be led into the
house, the proper place, he says, for women.
Then comes the third choral song, of similar type
THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOKLES. 149
with the one immediately preceding, yet not quite the
same. That was entirely abstract and general in its
thought, with no explicit reference to the special
occasion ; this begins and ends with general reflec-
tions, but between them comes a verse applying them
to the case in hand. It opens with a text, as it were :
" O, blest are they whose lives are free from touch of
woe ! " Then comes a magnificent simile, in which
the successive calamities that befall some doomed
families are likened to the billows that sweep on the
Aegean sea, driven by a north-east gale from Thrace,
and dashed on the shores of Greece, full of sand and
sea-weed. The antistrophe sees in the Labdakidae,
the royal family of Thebes, a case like this ; Labda-
kos, Laios, lokasta, Oedipus and his two sons, have
all perished miserably, and now Antigone, the last of
the race (the existence of Ismene being ignored for
the moment), is to be cut off. The second strophe
magnifies in noble language the sleepless, immortal,
irresistible power of Zeus whose offended law brings
on these calamities. Yet not without the sin of
man, the antistrophe adds, for it is by his vain hopes
and foolish desires that he is led into trouble, accord-
ing to the old saying that evil seems good to him
whose mind is set on wickedness. Here we see that
the feeling of dread of evil, which has been an under-
tone in previous choruses, a single thread interwoven
with a different texture, comes to be the dominant
tone; and so it remains, with but a single partial
exception, through the rest of the play.
150 STUDIES IX GREEK THOUGHT.
At the end of this choral song is an anapaestic
stanza introducing Haemon. Kreon at once asks him
on which side of the controversy he stands, to which
Haemon gives an ingeniously ambiguous answer.
Kreon construes it as positively in his favor, yet
shows his inward doubt by going on to give his son
a long lecture on his duty, proving by a variety of
arguments the importance of pleasing one's father,
and of maintaining the government under which one
lives. Haemon then, in a speech of equal length,
utters his views plainly, claiming for himself a right
of independent judgment, telling his father how the
citizens condemn the threatened punishment of An-
tigone, and urging him not to persist to the extreme
of obstinacy in seeing only one side of the matter,
and sticking to his own opinion. They go on from
this, disputing in single verses, until both get thor-
oughly angry. Finally Kreon orders Antigone to be
brought and put to death in presence of Haemon,
upon which the latter rushes away, vowing never to
see his father again. Kreon in his passion says that
both the sisters shall die, but at the suggestion of the
chorus admits that Ismene cannot be included in the
penalty. But, instead of the death by stoning, which
Antigone had heard was to be inflicted, he now sub-
stitutes death by starvation in an underground cham-
ber, apparently as the more cruel form.
Here comes in a short choral song of two stanzas
celebrating the resistless power of love, suggested
apparently by the boldness which that passion had
THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOKLES. 151
imparted to Haemon in standing up against his
father's will. At its close an anapaestic stanza again
announces the coming of Antigone on her way to
death. It makes also the transition to the ensuing
kommos, in which Antigone laments her fate, in lyric
stanzas, and the chorus responds, comforting or
rebuking her, first in anapaestic and then in iambic
dimeters. It has seemed to some that these lamen-
tations of Antigone's were tedious and protracted
beyond the limits of good taste ; to others, that they
were out of character in the heroic girl who had
dared to do the forbidden deed and then to defend it
so bravely. The first of these criticisms I think has
been sufficiently answered in the preface to President
Woolsey's edition of the play. As to the other, it
should be said that such laments seem natural to any
human being in the immediate prospect of such a
death, and that it would be unnatural for a young and
tenderly reared woman to suppress them. Further-
more, there is nothing in them that implies the least
repentance for her act. If Kreon had offered her
pardon on condition of any form of recantation, we
can have no doubt with what scorn she would have
treated the offer. Her latest words show that she
still thinks that what she did was right, and these
laments are simply the natural utterances of grief at
being cut off from life in all the freshness of her
youth. It does not imply any failure of her courage,
that she recognizes the horrors of the fate before her,
and pours out her grief about it.
152 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
As might be expected, these laments are not
very gratifying to Kreon's ear, and presently he
comes out to stop them and hurry her on her way.
But the poet allows her time for another long address
in iambics. She greets the tomb which is to be her
bridal chamber, and the members of her family who
have died before her. She justifies her conduct in dar-
ing so much for her brother's sake. She appeals to the
gods to convince her of error in what she has done,
or to avenge the wrong she suffers. Finally Kreon
threatens those in charge of her with punishment if
they let her linger any more, and then at length she
really goes. Her last words are, " See what I am
suffering for having fulfilled a religious duty ! " As
she goes off, the chorus addresses to her the fifth
stasimon. This belongs to the mythological type, so
to call it, consisting wholly of an enumeration of
mythical characters whose fate was in one point or
another parallel to the one a propos of which they
are mentioned. Here we have first Danae, who was
shut up in a tomb-like box, then Lykurgos, king of
the Edones, who was imprisoned in a rock-cut cham-
ber, and last, Kleopatra, wife of Phineus, and her two
sons, who were likewise put in confinement, although
she was of divine parentage.
At the end of this chorus, without the anapaestic
announcement usual in this play, a new person
appears. It is Teiresias, the blind seer, who comes
unbidden to tell Kreon what his prophetic art has just
been making known to him. By both methods of
THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOKLES. 153
divination, the actions of birds and the condition of
victims on the altar, he has learned that something
is wrong, and he is convinced that the gods are
offended by the fact that pieces of the unburied body
of Polyneikes are brought near their altars by dogs
and unclean birds. Therefore he advises Kreon, in
much the same terms that Haemon had used, to lay
aside his wrath and let the body be buried. But
Kreon is in no mood for this. Forgetting how mis-
taken his former assumption had proved to be, that
some one had bribed the guards to defeat his pur-
pose, he at once makes the same assumption quite
as confidently about the prophet, that he has
been bribed, and declares violently that nothing
shall make him swerve from his purpose, not even if
the throne itself of Zeus be polluted by pieces of the
corpse. They wrangle together for a few lines, and
then Teiresias exercises the other function of his
office, that of foretelling the future, and solemnly
warns Kreon that within a short time he must give
up a life out of his own family in exchange for the life
of Antigone, and to atone for his offense against the
powers of the world below in denying burial to the
corpse. He then withdraws, leaving Kreon dis-
tressed and terrified by his prophecy. The more
stubborn he has been, the more completely he now
breaks down, as soon as he is really frightened. He
turns to the chorus for advice, which it eagerly
gives him, and in obedience to it he hurries away to
release Antigone and to have the corpse duly buried.
154 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
While he is gone the chorus breaks out in a prayer
to Bacchus to come and purify the city from its pol-
lution. It is in the form of a hyporchema, or a song
accompanied by a rapid dance movement. It refers
to the titles of the god, enumerates the places which
he most frequents and from some one of which they
pray him to come, urges the claims of Thebes to his
special favor, and closes with honorific descriptions
of his glories. It is one of the best examples we have
of such a combination of hymn and prayer, and gives
a clear idea of the Greek mind in the attitude of devo-
tion. Now the play hastens to its close. A mes-
senger comes in and after some moralizing tells the
fact of the death of Haemon. Haemon's mother Eury-
dike appears on her way to pray at the temple of Pal-
las, and overhearing the messenger's words requires of
him a full account of what has happened. So he tells
her how he went in attendance on her husband, and
how they performed duly the funeral rites over the
corpse. Thence they went to the prison of Antigone,
but here they were too late. Antigone had hung
herself, and Haemon was there mourning over her
dead body. At sight of his father he drew his
sword and rushed upon him, but when Kreon escaped
by flight, he turned and threw himself upon his sword
and so perished with his intended bride. At the end
of his story, Eurydike, giving up her own useless visit
to the temple, goes back into the palace without a
word, in a way which seems ominous of evil.
Again, a detached anapaestic stanza announces a
THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOKLES. 155
new comer, and Kreon enters, bearing the body of his
son, and bitterly lamenting his death, which he con-
fesses that he himself has caused. In the midst of
his self-reproachings, a messenger comes out from
the palace and informs him that his wife Eurydike
has just committed suicide on hearing of the death
of her son. This of course redoubles his grief, and
the play closes, leaving him in this deserved misery,
with a reflection by the chorus on the folly of such
sinful and obstinate self-will.
JOTTINGS.
CHARACTER OF ANTIGONE. Not an ideal woman, nor drawn
directly from any Greek woman of the poet's time or in history; a fig-
ure of heroic stature, embodying and possessed by one principle or
idea. Suppose a modern poet to try to give such a picture of Jael, or
Judith; it would not be a pleasing picture. It is remarkable how the poet
here seems to strive to soften by hints what in direct depicting he must
make hard and severe; note her relation to Haemon, her apparent popu-
larity as shown by what he says of public sentiment about her death,
her occasional expressions of affection to her family, especially verses
897 ff. For it must be borne in mind that she is not an embodiment of
sisterly love, though it is often said that she is. It is not primarily love
to her brother that made her do her bold deed, but another sentiment,
strange to us but very familiar and powerful in the Greek mind, that of
the religious obligation of members of a family to the dead of the family.
This is shown by her defense, vv. 45 ff. This fulfilment of duty natu-
rally endears her to the dead members of the family, especially Poly-
neikes (vv. 81, 899 f.), and it also naturally implies love to them, but
does not proceed wholly from that feeling. The common view that it
does, belittles the heroic figure of Antigone by as much as a sentiment,
even a natural and pure one, such as family affection, is in itself a less
noble thing than a keen and strong sense of duty.
Antigone or Kreon right? A question much discussed at one time.
Of possible combinations only three probable Antigone all right and
156 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
Kreon all wrong; Antigone all right and Kreon partly so; each partly
right and partly wrong. Last seems most probable. That a tragic
conflict should interest us, it seems almost necessary that there should
be some measure or, at least, appearance of right on each side. That
a tragic hero should be the best possible, he or she ought to be a noble
character with some fault or defect shown in play.
Is Antigone's deed a failure? see Hellenica.
The Antigone in many respects a typical Greek tragedy. Almost
no plot. (The Oedipus Rex a notable exception to this rule) . One
leading character with no development; others as foils or opponents,
here three, as in Prometheus, Oedipus Coloneus, Electra. Chorus
in neutral position, advising moderation to both parties. Chorus of
elders, as in Persae, Agamemnon, Oedipus Rex, Oediptis Coloneus.
In disposition of parts, prologos, parados, etc., quite regular. Epic
element in narrative.
Why is Ismene in prologos? No other fit confidant. First coming
of guard is natural in the story, it serves to show Kreon's character
in treatment of him. The arrest of Ismene by bringing her again upon
the stage enables the poet to show in a new light the character of An-
tigone. Kreon sins against a law of family, and is punished in family.
Introduction of Haemon an invention of Sophokles.
Faults of play : Argumentation between Kreon and Haemon too
much like wrangling in court. Something of it in all Sophokles's
plays, but in Philoktetes it is not offensive. None of it in Aeschylus,
unless in Eumenides, but that is a court scene.
No motive for Kreon's going away at v. 326, or coming back at v.
386.
VII.
THE BEGINNING OF A WRITTEN LITER-
ATURE IN GREECE. 1
A N article on the above subject by Professor F. A.
Paley in Fraser's Magazine for March, 1880, fur-
nishes an occasion for some criticism and for a state-
ment of the grounds of an opinion differing somewhat
from the one there maintained. I will first state as
briefly as possible the arguments and conclusions of
Paley's article, with comments, and then present what
evidence I can in favor of a different view.
Mr. Paley's general proposition is, that there is no
evidence of the use of writing to multiply copies of
books until a much later date than is ordinarily sup-
posed. It is difficult to determine precisely to what
date he would bring it down, for his statements do not
agree with one another. In one place he speaks of
"the times of the Alexandrine school of learning,
when, for the first time (the italics are his), the use
of papyrus and the practice of transcription became
common." But a page or two later he says, "Books
were no sooner introduced than they became both
popular and cheap. Treatises on eloquence, as those
1 Reprinted from Transactions of American Philological Association,
1880.
158 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
by Tisias and Corax, mentioned in the Phaedrus,
the stories of Aesop, and the philosophical dogmas of
Anaxagoras, could be bought at Athens, in the time
of Plato, for a very small sum." It is not easy to see
how books could be " popular and cheap in the time
of Plato," a hundred years before the time when first
" the use of papyrus and the practice of transcription
became common." But we will take the alternative
which involves least divergence from the common
opinion, and suppose Mr. Paley to mean, as indeed
the whole drift of the article indicates, that the use
of writing for books did not become common in
Greece until after 400 B.C., and in fact was hardly
known at all before that date. I may say here at the
outset that my own belief is, that it was introduced
as much as fifty years earlier, and was fully estab-
lished and familiar for some years before 400 B.C.
The first argument for Mr. Paley's view is drawn,
he says, from " the singular, significant, and most im-
portant fact which, so far as I am aware, has never
been noticed, that the Greek language, so copious, so
expressive, not only has no proper verbs equivalent
to the Roman legere and scribere, but has no terms at
all for any one of the implements or materials so
familiar to us in connection with writing (pen, ink,
paper, book, library, copy, transcript, etc.), till a com-
paratively late period of the language." Then in a
note he explains that " the Greek equivalent to legere
means, to speak, and that to scribere means properly,
to draw or paint." The latter "came to be used of
BEGINNING OF A WRITTEN LITERATURE. 159
writing because it (i.e., writing) was at first an adjunct
to descriptive painting." " The Greek had two verbs
which indirectly express reading, but they are clumsy
shifts, unworthy of so complete a language, the one
meaning recognoscere, the other sibi colligere." I have
quoted this in full because it seems so strange a pro-
cess of reasoning that I could hardly trust myself to
summarize it correctly. If it proves anything, it
proves that the Romans began to read and write earlier,
or at least earlier relatively to the development of their
language, than the Greeks. No language, of course,
can have a word for either of these ideas (or any
other) before the thing expressed by the word is
known to the speakers of the language, but it does
not appear that the use of the compound form (eVt-
Xeyoyu-at) proves any less frequency or familiarity with
the thing than the use of the simple form (legere).
Further, legere has other senses besides to read, and
apparently does not mean to read before the time of
Cicero. On the other hand, as was suggested to me
by Mr. F. B. Tarbell, Xeyw, at least once in Plato
(Thcaet. 143 C.), and repeatedly in the orators, has
the sense to read aloud, to recite from a manuscript.
No such inference as is drawn by Mr. Paley from the
use of different stems or simple and compound forms
in kindred languages has any validity. One might as
well argue from the fact that the same stem in mod-
ern German means to speak (reden) and in modern
English to read, that the Germans talked more than
the English, and the English read more than the Ger-
I6O STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
mans. As to scribere and ypdfatv, Mr. Paley arbi-
trarily assumes, without any reason, I think, that all
the uses of ^pdfyeiv and its derivatives, before the
Periklean age, refer to painting or to scratching on a
hard surface. The truth is rather that ypdfaiv means
both of these, and after writing with ink is introduced,
means that too, and the special meaning in each case
must be determined by other considerations. That
scribere means only to write, indicates merely that the
literature from which we learn its meaning belongs
to a period when writing was a familiar art. The
alleged absence of the words for pen, ink, paper, etc.,
will be referred to below.
How, then, it will be asked, is the existence of the
earlier Greek literature, or rather the preservation of
it to later times, to be explained ? How is it that we
have any fragments of the early historians, and the
whole work of Herodotos and Thukydides ? Mr.
Paley anticipates this question, and answers that in
his opinion, " authors of works laboriously wrote
them on strips of wood, probably on a surface pre-
pared with wax." These autograph copies were the
only ones in existence, and the only way of publish-
ing a book was by public readings from these copies.
He doubts whether it would have been possible to pro-
cure for money a copy of the histories of Herodotos or
Thukydides in the lifetime of the authors. His reason
for this view is that he finds no proof that the earlier
Greeks had any writing-material equivalent to our pa-
per or parchment. There are, to be sure, several pas-
BEGINNING OF A WRITTEN LITERATURE. l6l
sages, to be cited presently, where the words for papy-
rus, paper, and parchment occur, but because they are
brief passages, or the only instances, he seems to think
they have no weight. Yet it would seem as if a single
occurrence of the word kerosene in a book printed
before 1 846, or of wigwam in a book earlier than the
discovery of America, would be enough to show
knowledge of the existence of the thing denoted by
the word.
Mr. Paley's next argument is the absence of refer-
ence in the writers of the Periklean age, particularly
Herodotos, Thukydides, and Plato, to the works of
their predecessors. Such reference, he thinks, would
certainly have been made if the later writers had had
access to copies of the earlier works, and the compar-
ative absence of it proves that no such copies were
within their reach.
There are, it is true, remarkably few references by
name to previous writers in the early Greek litera-
ture, but Mr. Paley seems to have overlooked several
passages in Herodotos, where it is clearly implied
that he consulted some kind of records or accounts of
the events he narrates, or descriptions of states whose
form of government he speaks of. They are as fol-
lows : 6 : 5 5 real ravra fiev vvv irepl rovrcov
ort, Be eovres AiyvTrriot, KCU ore aTroSegdpev
ra? A&)pte<wy ySacrtX^/a?, aXXotcri yap Trepl avrwv eipr)-
rai, edo-opev avrd- ra Be a\\oi ov Karekd/SovTO, rov-
rwv /jbvrifjiTrjv Trot^cro/zat, and then he goes on to speak
of the privileges and functions of the Spartan kings.
1 62 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
9:81 6(ra /J,ev vvv e^atpera rotai apKTTevo-acrc avrwv
ev TI\aTaifj(ri eSodr), ou Xeyerat vrpo? ov8afj,a)v, 8o/ce&> &'
ejcaje KOI TOVTOKTI Sodrjvat. A similar expression
occurs in 8 : 133 o n p,ev /JoyXo/xeyo? . . . ravra eVere'X-
Xero, OVK e^co fypdaai ov yap \ejerat 8oe&) S' eywye
KT\. These passages plainly indicate that he had ac-
cess, not merely to inscriptions and formal public
records, but to writings prepared for the information
of inquirers, and discussing the motives of actions
as well as describing the early history of states. (The
use of authorities by Herodotos is treated by Rawlin-
son in his Introduction, chapter II.) But it remains
true, as Mr. Paley says, that there are exceedingly
few quotations by name of these earlier writers.
Plato quotes Akusilaos once, Thukydides quotes
Hellanikos once, Herodotos refers to Hekataeos three
or four times but beyond these few instances there
is no recognition by these writers of the many per-
sons who are said to have written prose before their
time. Here Mr. Paley touches upon a singular fact
which certainly is not easy of explanation. The most
striking instance of it, perhaps, is the case of Thuky-
dides, who is not mentioned, I believe, by any writer
whose works we have, earlier than Dionysios of Hali-
karnassos, in the last century before the Christian era.
But this fact will not bear the interpretation Mr.
Paley puts upon it. It is true also in the next cen-
tury, when books were common. Aristotle does not
mention Hekataeos, Hellanikos, Akusilaos, Thukyd-
ides, or Xenophon. Plato does not quote from Xen-
BEGINNING OF A WRITTEN LITERATURE. 163
ophon, nor Xenophon from Plato. 1 A similar failure
appears in the argument which Mr. Paley bases upon
the statement in the Phaedros of Plato, that Lysias
was taunted with being a \oyoy pdfos, speeck-ivriter, as
almost the same with being a sophist. Mr. Paley
regards this as " satirizing a practice which was then
beginning to come into vogue." But the same con-
tempt for \oyoy pd(f>ot and cro^to-rat together is
expressed in Dem. de Falsa Legatione, a speech
delivered in 342 B.C., long after the use of writing
must have been familiar. It is plain that it is not the
mere writing of the speech that is objected to, but
the professional composition of speeches for others
to use.
As the lack of reference to previous writers is mere
negative evidence, Mr. Paley supplements it by the fact
that Thukydides, in attempting to sketch the early his-
tory of Greece, is obliged to rest upon "inference, mem-
ory, hearsay." He has no current written literature
to appeal to, and this is made to show that the pre-
vious historians, Herodotos and his predecessors,
were not accessible to him. Indeed, Mr. Paley dis-
tinctly says, "Thukydides does not seem to have
known Herodotos at all." These statements, which
will surprise every Greek scholar, are founded on
passages in the first book, sections i, 9, 20, 21.
1 Westermann (on Dem. 01. 3: 21) remarks upon the habit of the
orators of referring for matters of history to tradition rather than to
written records, and explains it as due to a desire to identify themselves
as much as possible with the average hearer, assuming no more knowl-
edge than he would have.
164 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
They ignore the language of that " single reference "
to Hellanikos in I : 97, which Mr. Paley repeatedly
mentions but nowhere quotes. It deserves to be
quoted in full from its clear evidence on this point.
eypatya &e avra (i.e., the outline of the growth of the
Athenian empire after the Persian war) . . . Bta roBe,
on rot? jrpo efAov arracTLV e/cA-iTre? rovro rjv TO ^wpiov
Kai r) ra rrpo rwv M^Si/ttwj/ 'Ei\\tjvifca ^vveriOecrav rj
avra ra M-^Si/ea rovrutv Be ocnrep teal rjtyaro ev rrj
>?7 'EXXaz/i/co?, /Spa^etw? re /cat rot?
eTre/Avijo-dr}. " I have written this
outline for this reason, because all my predecessors
have neglected this period and composed either a his-
tory of Greece before the Persian wars, or of the Per-
sian wars themselves ; and the one who did touch on
this period in his history of Attika, Hellanikos, made
but a brief record without strict chronological accu-
racy." It is clear from this, (i) that he knew the
works of several predecessors in full, so that he could
tell what periods they treated and in what way ; (2)
that he knew Herodotos's work, for no one else so
far as we know, wrote so full a history of the Persian
wars ; and (3) that he expected readers to look in
their histories for information on that period, and,
failing to find it, to have recourse to his. (Cf. I : 23
Biori & eXvcrav, ra? atr/a? Trpoeypatya rrpwrov Kal ra<?
Bia(j)opd<?, rov f^tj nva tyfrffO'eU rrore e orov rocrovros
TToXe/io? rot? "E\\r)cri Karea-rrj.) How, then, are those
other passages to be understood, wherein he speaks
as if obliged to rest on tradition and without any
BEGINNING OF A WRITTEN LITERATURE. 165
previous authorities to refer to ? Simply by recogniz-
ing the evident fact that he did not regard his prede-
cessors ars authorities. He had formed for himself a
new standard of historic evidence and, tested by
that standard, the works of his predecessors could
not command his confidence. He refused to trust
such material as Herodotos used, and he means by
this language to indicate that in his view all previous
so-called histories rested merely on tradition. It can
hardly be doubted that he included Herodotos, as
well as Hellanikos and Hekataeos among the Xoyo-
<ypd(j>oi, " who composed rather to please the ear than
with a view to truth."
One other point in Mr. Paley's article deserves
notice. He supposes that the stories, histories, and
philosophic teachings of the early Greeks were a
purely oral literature, and that they were put into
writing eventually from the dictation of the pupils
and followers of their authors and that thus it hap-
pens that the writings of the early philosophers and
historians are referred to. It would seem from this
suggestion that Mr. Paley can hardly have ever
looked into the fragments of the early historians.
He would have found a reasonably large number of
such fragments, from Hekataeos, Charon, Xanthos,
Hellanikos, and Akusilaos, preserving in many
cases apparently the original words of the authors,
and quoted from works of some extent, of which the
titles are given. He would have seen also that the
matter of these quotations and the style are such as
l66 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
to make it impossible to imagine them orally deliv-
ered and preserved by memory until after the lapse
of years writing was introduced. It is, I think,
really impossible to suppose that such matter as
makes up the " Europe " and "Asia " of Hekataeos,
for example, can ever have been delivered orally by a
master to a group of listening pupils. For it con-
sists largely, if we may judge by the fragments pre-
served, of a list of names of towns hardly more
than the simple name in many cases, with a brief in-
dication of the locality. One example, taken almost
at random, may show the character of a multitude :
Steph. Byz. XaXatoy TroXt? Aorcpwv ' 'E/carato?
l&vpwTry " pera Be Ao/cpol, ev Be XaXatoy 7roXi9, ev Be
Olavdrj 7roXt9." (Miiller, F. H. G., 83.) One might
as well commit the dictionary to memory as matter
like this, without help of metre or of connection.
Not only could it not be committed to memory, but
we may rightly argue from the subject matter that
it would not be composed before the time when the
idea of a book had become a familiar idea. The mak-
ing of such a record does not belong to the age of
epic narration, nor to that of lyric song, nor to that
of oral speculative discourse, but to that in which
history begins when men first recognize the value
of facts preserved in writing and begin to regard
matter as well as form. That gave rise to a prose
style, and thus also made writing necessary. What
could induce a man to put together such a string of
bare facts as this, except the desire to preserve
BEGINNING OF A WRITTEN LITERATURE. 167
the knowledge for the information of others in such
a form that they could consult it ? We cannot imag-
ine Hekataeos as delivering orally such matter as
this to a company of hearers. We must suppose
that it was written out from the first, and either kept
by him for consultation, or, as seems more likely,
copied out as a whole or in part for the convenience
of those whose interests, of trade or colonization,
made them willing to pay for the work.
I come now, omitting several minor points in Mr.
Paley's article which are open to criticism, to the
evidence upon which I rely to carry back the exten-
sive use of writing to the middle of the fifth century
before Christ. It may seem the more worth while
to do this because, so far as I can ascertain, this pre-
cise point has not been fully illustrated in any easily
accessible work. Several of the passages cited are
referred to in Mr. Paley's article, but have in his
view little or no importance. The passages are ar-
ranged as nearly as possible in chronological order.
Find. 01. XL iff.
rav 'OAu/ATTtoviKav dvayvwre yu,oi
'Ap^ecTTpaTou TratSa iroQi <f>pevo<;
e//,as
This appears to be, as Mr. Paley says, the earliest
instance of avayiyvwa-Kw meaning to read. It is more
than a mere instance of the word, for it shows it in
connection with ypdfaiv meaning to write or engrave,
and both together in a metaphor, which would hardly
168 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
be natural or intelligible, unless the two ideas in this
association were so familiar as to be caught at once
by hearers of the ode. The practice of reading writ-
ten words must have been not the secret art of a
few, but in some degree a part of common life,
before a poet could thus casually refer to it. Unfor-
tunately, this ode cannot be precisely dated, though
it must belong some years before 440 B.C., near which
time the poet died. The same metaphor occurs re-
peatedly in Aeschylos (e.g., Prom. 989, Supp. 991,
Clio. 441).
Aesch. Supp. 946!
TO.\ST ov
iv ecmv
The second of these lines Mr. Paley brackets in his
third edition, on the ground of the metre, though the
fault had not attracted his notice before. No other
editor has ever suspected its genuineness, and many
other lines no less open to objection stand unchal-
lenged (e.g., Supp. 465, 931, 1016). It can hardly be
doubted, I think, that the desire to get rid of the
evidence of the line on the question of the use of
writing sharpened Mr. Paley's sense of its faulty
metre. For it plainly testifies to the familiar use of
papyrus, folded and sealed, at the same time with
that of wax-covered tablets. The date of the Sup-
plices is not known, but from its structure it seems
to be one of the earlier plays of Aeschylos, and no
BEGINNING OF A WRITTEN LITERATURE. 169
one, so far as I know, has placed it later than 460
B.C.
The next witness is Herodotos, whose history is
supposed, from the latest incident referred to in it,
to have been finished in its present form by about
the year 425. Of course the material for it was
gathered in great measure before this date, and
his numerous references (i : 123, 125 ; 3 : 42, 123,
128) to writing upon papyrus, ypdfaiv e'<? /3i/3A,W,
though they may all refer to short memoranda or
notes, yet imply familiar and frequent use of writ-
ing before his time. But the particular passage
which I quote indicates much more than that. He
says, in 5:58: KCU ra? /9t/3A,ou9 St</>#epa
aTro TOV TToXaiov ol *\(ove<$, on Kore ev cnravi
e^peovro St^deprjcn aljer](TL re Kal olerjcri eri Be KOI
TO KCLT epe 7ro\\ol TWV ftapfidpwv e*9 Toiavras Si<f>0epa<j
<ypd$ov(ri. "And the lonians from old usage give the
name &t,(f)depai (skins) to sheets of papyrus, because
when papyrus was scarce they used to use instead
skins of goat and sheep; and still even in my day
many uncivilized peoples use such skins for writing."
This passage proves that papyrus was the usual ma-
terial for writing, as much so as paper in our day, and
that it had been so for a long time. Also, that it was
ordinarily plentiful among the lonians of Asia Minor
and the Greeks generally in the time of Herodotos.
He explains the local use of the word 8t(f>0epat, (skins)
as a name for papyrus, as arising from a local scarcity
of papyrus. Whether the explanation is correct or not,
I/O STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
it plainly shows that the writer thought of papyrus as
the common thing for everybody to write, on at least
among civilized Greeks, for he adds that some uncivil-
ized peoples still used skins or parchment. In my
view this passage alone supplies fully that which Mr.
Paley desiderates, viz., some mention of the use of
papyrus as a writing material. It fully supports the
statements of Grote and Hayman, which Mr. Paley
characterizes as "unsupported by evidence."
In connection with this passage should be men-
tioned the occurrence in certain comic poets, of
about the same time with Herodotos, of words
implying the commonness in ordinary life of writing
and apparently of books. These words are mentioned
by Pollux (vii. 210). Thus he ascribes to Kratinos,
who died about 422 B.C., the word fti/3\ioypd(f)o<?, and
quotes (ix. 47) from Eupolis, whose latest known
play was given in 412 B.C., the phrase ov ra jSifiX.ia
&via, "where is the book-market." Other similar
words occur in later poets. In Aristophanes there
are repeated references to books. Thus in the Frogs
(405 B.C.), verse 943,
(layyava.
" I reduced tragedy in flesh by feeding her on a por-
ridge of moral maxims drawn from books." And
again, Frogs ni3ff., where the chorus addresses the
two poets just as they are going to compare their
poetic styles :
BEGINNING OF A WRITTEN LITERATURE. I /I
crr/3aTV/AeVo<. yap curt,
fii/BXLov r Z\u>v eKaoTos p.av6a.vu TO. Sc^ia
"(Fear not that the audience will not understand
your jokes,) for they have been disciplined and every
man has his book too and learns wisdom out of it."
These are all instances of reference to books in
general, but we have one from the same time which
names a particular book. It is the passage already
quoted from Thukydides (i :97). I may repeat here
the translation of it : " I have written this sketch for
this reason, viz., because all my predecessors have
neglected this period and composed either a history
of Greece before the Persian wars, or of those wars
themselves ; and the one who did touch on this
period in his history of Attika, Hellanikos, made
but a brief record without strict chronological ac-
curacy." Here we have reference to several his-
tories, with implied knowledge of their contents, and
special reference to one of which the title is given 77
'Am/cr) Zvyypa<f)/], being, I take it, a mere paraphrase
for -Y] 'AT0/9, under which name the book is quoted
by later writers. This passage must have been
written before 400 B.C., and probably was written
as early as between the Peace of Nikias (422 B.C.)
and the Sicilian expedition (415 B.C.). It supplies,
from an almost contemporary source, clear proof of
the early existence of written copies of the first
Greek attempts at history, the existence of which
has already been inferred from the subject matter
1/2 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
and style of the histories as seen in the abundant
fragments of them.
Another passage of Aristophanes, as commonly
interpreted, mentions by title a copy of a particular
book. It is in the Frogs, 52ff. :
KO.I Srjr' ITTL r^s veo>s drayiyvwcrKOVTi' fWL
Tr]V 'AvSpoyneSav Trpos eyaauTov efat^VTys TTO$OS
TVJV napBiav tTrara^e.
Mr. Paley does not overlook this passage, but evades
the force of it against his theory by explaining it as
referring to the name of a ship. In his view, Diony-
sos sitting on his own ship saw another near by with
the name "Andromeda" painted on its stern or bow,
and, as his eye rested on that name and he idly read
it over and over, it reminded him of the play of Eu-
ripides bearing the same name and so called up in
him a longing for the poet. It is not possible, per-
haps, to show that this explanation is certainly and
necessarily a mistaken one, yet surely the common
explanation, that he was reading a copy of the play,
is more natural and probable. The tense of dvayc-
yvcoa-KovTi and the addition of Trpo? epavrov to it, are
indications in favor of this view. The passage so
understood shows that it was nothing strange in 405
B.C. for a man going to serve in the Athenian fleet to
take with him a copy of some favorite author or
book.
As to the material on which such books were writ-
ten, we have, besides the passage from Herodotos
BEGINNING OF A WRITTEN LITERATURE. 1/3
already quoted, a line from Plato Comicus, quoted by
Pollux (vii. 210), which proves the use of the later
word for paper in his time (425-395 B.C.) :
TO. ypa/A/xareia TOVS re ^apra? K<j>pa)v,
" bringing out the tablets and the sheets of paper."
With this should be put the passage from the other
and greater Plato (PJiaedros, 276 C.), where he says :
OVK apa (TTrovSfj avra eV vSari jpd^ret, peXavi (TTrelpcov
Sia tcaXdfiov " he will not then laboriously write
them in water, sowing (his seed of truth) with ink
through a pen." The date of the Pkaedros cannot be
certainly determined, though some scholars have
maintained that it must have been one of Plato's
earliest writings. In any case we have here, not far
from 400 B.C. on either side, mention of pen, ink, and
paper (made, of course, from papyrus), and I would
call attention to the perfectly incidental, matter-of-
course character of the reference to pen and ink, in
an illustration, in this last passage. It is not so that
a writer would speak of a new instrument, just intro-
duced and known to few persons.
The passages so far cited, except the last, have
been all taken from writers or writings prior to 400
B.C. It seems proper, however, to add some from
Xenophon and Plato, whose writings probably all
belong after that date. It will be seen that one of
these certainly and others probably involve recogni-
tion of books as easily accessible before that date.
The lives of these two men extend from about 430
174 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
B.C. to about 355 B.C., but their writings were prob-
ably all composed after 400 B.C. It is a great misfor-
tune, especially in the case of Plato and with regard
to the history of his philosophical opinions, that the
chronological order of these works cannot be ascer-
tained. But I think it is fair to accept his incidental
references to the existence and use of books as evi-
dence of the facts within the first twenty-five years
after 400 B.C.
I begin with the passages from Xenophon :
Mem. I. 6. 14 KOI TOU<? Ovjcravpovs rwv 7rd\ai ero-
(frwv dvSpwv 01)9 efceivoi Ka,Te\nrov ev /3t/3A,toi9 ypd^av-
re?, dvekirrwv tcoivf) crvv rot? <iXoi? Siep-^ofiai. " And
the treasures of the wise men of old which they have
left behind them in written books, I open and read
over in company with my friends." It is Sokrates
who speaks here, and the conversation in which the
words occur, Xenophon explicitly tells us that he
himself heard. It must have occurred then before
his departure from Athens to join Kyros on his ill-
fated expedition, that is, before 401 B.C. If there is
any historic truth in the Memorabilia, it would be in
a passage thus commended to us by the author him-
self, and I hardly see how we could ask for clearer or
better evidence that books were easily obtained in the
lifetime of Sokrates. That they were to be obtained
for money appears from another passage :
Xen. Mem. IV. 2. I (o ^(OKpdrr)^ Kare^adev)
Sr)/j,ov TOV Kakov rypd[A/J,aTa TroXka (rvvet'X.e'yfj.evov
TWV re KOI ao(f)i(rT(J!)v TWV evBoKi/jLcoTaTfov. ... 8. etVe
BEGINNING OF A WRITTEN LITERATURE. 1/5
/u.ot, (77, &> l&vdvBrj/jue, TO> OVTI, wcnrep eyu> dtcova),
TTOA.A.O, ypdfMfiara (rvvrj-^a^ rwv \eyo/j,ev(av ao^wv dv-
Bpwv yeyovevai ; N^ rov Ai'a, e(f>r), a> ^u>Kpare^ real
N^ rrjv "Hpav, e<f)r) 6 ^(OKparr)^, ayapai <ye <rov, Store
OVK dpyvpiov Kal xpva-tov Trpoei\ov Oija-avpovs Ke/CTfj-
aOai p,a\\ov 17 cro^ta?. . . IO. Ti 8e 8r/ ySof\oyu.ei/09 dya-
$09 yevecrdai, e(f>r), & ^vOvSrjf^e, o~v\\eyet<f rd ypdp/J,ara;
eVel Be Biea-iMTrrjcrev 6 Eu$u87/ / ao9, (TKOTTWV on diroKpi-
vatro, 7rd\iv 6 ^m/cpdrrj^, 'Apa fir} tar/009 ; <f)r) 7ro\\d
ydp teal larpwv ecrn o-vyypdpfiara. (Sokrates learned)
"that Euthydemos, a noble youth, had collected
many writings of the most eminent poets and
learned men. ... ' Tell me, Euthydemos,' said he,
' have you really, as I am told, collected many writ-
ings of those who have been eminent for wisdom ? '
'Certainly, Sokrates,' said he, 'and I am still collecting
in order to get as many as I possibly can.' ' By Hera,'
said Sokrates, ' I am delighted with you, because you
have not preferred the possession of treasures of
money to that of treasures of wisdom. . . . But what
is it that you want to excel in, Euthydemos,' said he,
' that you are collecting books ? ' And when Euthy-
demos was silent, considering what answer to make,
'Is it in medicine?' asked Sokrates, 'for there are
many books on that subject.' " Here the praise given
to the preference of wisdom over wealth shows that the
books had been obtained by purchase. Though this
conversation is not vouched for, as the other is, by
Xenophon's statement that he heard it, yet it prob-
1/6 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
ably has historic reality, and if so, must have occurred
before 400 B.C., and probably some years before the
time of the Thirty (404 B.C.).
Another passage shows that books were exported
to the Greek colonies on the Euxine Sea :
Xen. Anab. VII. 5. 14 (The Ten Thousand on
their way home come to Salmydessos and find there
many spoils of wrecks on that dangerous coast.) ev-
ravda evplo-KOvrat TroXXat fj*ev K\tvai, TroXXa e /a/3&>-
rta, 7ro\\al Be /3//3Xot jeypafjifjievac, tcai raXXa TroXXa
oaa ev ^v\ivoi^ rev^ecri vavfc\r)poi, ayov<riv. " There
were found many bedsteads, and many chests, and
many written books, and quantities of other things of
all kinds that shipmasters convey in wooden cases."
The word yeypafjifAevai here is wanting in some inferior
manuscripts, but all the later editors (L. Dindorf, Kru-
ger, Rehdantz, Vollbrecht, Sauppe) take it into their
text without question. These works of Xenophon
were probably written after 390 B.C., but the evidence
in these quoted passages all refers to facts occurring
before 400 B.C. Of these passages Mr. Paley takes no
notice whatever.
I add now a few passages from Plato, not as proof
of the existence of written books before 400 B.C.,
for the writings of Plato are of too uncertain date
and presumably too late for that, but as indicating
how common and accessible books were, and on how
great a variety of subjects they were composed, with-
in the first thirty or forty years after that date. It
may be legitimate to reason backwards from this fact
BEGINNING OF A WRITTEN LITERATURE. I'J'J
and infer something like a similar rapidity in the
spread of the new practice before 400 B.C., and thus
get a confirmation of what we might conclude from
the passages already quoted.
Apol. 26 D 'Ava^ayopov olei, tcarijyopeiv, & <f)\e
MeA/^re, teal OVTW fcaTa<f>povei<; rwv&e real olei avrovs
cLTreipovs ypa^jjidrwv elvcu, ojcrre OVK elBevcu on, ra
'Avagayopov /3i/3\la TOV K\ao/J,Viov ye/jiei TOVTWV
rwv \oywv ; Here it will be observed that Plato rep-
resents Sokrates as saying that it would impute il-
literacy or at least strange want of knowledge of
current literature to the jurors, men chosen by lot,
some five hundred perhaps in number, from all ranks
of the citizens, to suppose them ignorant of the fact
that "the books of Anaxagoras teem with such
doctrines " as the accuser charged him with holding.
"The books of Anaxagoras," one would think, must
have been easily within the reach of the people when
this could be said. The next succeeding sentence,
in which reference is made to "buying from the
orchestra, for a drachma at the highest, power to
ridicule Sokrates if he claims these doctrines as
original with him," is so much disputed as to its
precise meaning that it is better not to use it in
evidence here.
PJiaed. 97 C aXA,' aKovcras fiev irore e/c /3i/3X.iof
Tti/o?, to? f'^ 7 ?? 'Ava^ayopov avayLyvcacncovTos KT\.
98 B Kal OVK av aTreBo/Jujv TroXXoO ra<? eX,7rtSa<?,
a\\a Trdvv mrov^fi \a/3a)v ra? /3//3Xou<? &>
olo? T' r)v dveylyvwcrtcov.
178 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
Sympos. 177 B eywye r/S?? rtvl everv^ov J3ij3\iw,
ev <j> evfjcrav a\e<; eTraivov dav/^datov e^ovres 7T/909 uxfre-
\etav, Kal d\\a roiavra av^vd t'Sot? av eyKe/cwuiaa--
fieva.
Gorg. 462 B IIci>Xo9. 'AXXa ri croi &o/cei r) prjro-
piK'rj elvat ; ^WKp. lUpdy/jia o <^>^9 av 7roirj<rai Te%vr]v
ev rcS (rvyypdfAfAaTi b e<ya) 6^0.7^09 dveyvwv.
518 B M/$at09 6 rrfv o^foirodav awyyeypcK^ws Trjv
^LKeXtKrjv. (Mithaikos, author of the " Handbook of
Sicilian Cookery.")
Protag. 325 E. ol 8e SiSda-KaXot rovrwv re eVt/ie'
\ovvrai, Kal 7reiSav av ypd^fAaTa fJidOwcn KCU fjieX\o)crt
crvvrjcreiv rd yeypaf^/jteva, . . irapaTiOeaaiv
rcov ftddpwv dvayiyvaxTKeiv iroi'rjrwv dyaOwv
Kal eKfjuavOdveiv dvajKa^ovo-tv. (If the boys had copies
of Homer and Hesiod to learn lessons from in school,
one would suppose their fathers might have had them
to read.)
Phaedr. 228 D ^w/cp. Aet^o.9 ye Trpwrov, 5) <j)i\o-
T?79, TI dpa ev rfj dpicrrepa %et<; viro ro3 iftarup, ro-
Trd^co ydp ere e^eiv rov \6yov avrov. (And so he had
a copy of Lysias' speech, which he presently reads.)
230 D. . . av e/iol \6yov<? OVTW Trporelvcov ev /3i-
/3Xiot9 rrfv re 'A.TTiKr)v (f>aivei Trepidgeiv aTracrav real
OTroi av aXXoae fSov\,r].
273 A rov ye Ticriav avrbv TreTraTrjfcas aKpi/So)^,
(This same phrase, TreTrarrj/cevai rwd, to be familiar
with an author, occurs in the Birds of Aristophanes
(v. 471) ovS* Mawirov TreTrdnj/cas, It seems to imply
almost necessarily the use of a copy of the author's
BEGINNING OF A WRITTEN LITERATURE. 1/9
works. The Birds came out in 415 B.C. Mr. Paley
speaks of this phrase as new in the time of Plato's
literary activity.)
276 C. (The passage speaking of pen and ink,
already quoted.)
Theaet. 152 A ^co/cp. ^al yap rrov rcavrwv %prj-
p,drwv /Aerpov dvOpwirov elvai. , . aveyvco/cas yap TTOV ;
ea/T. 'Aveyvwfca teal TroAAa/a?.
162 A el d\.rj0r)$ f) d\ij6eia TIpcorayopov, a\\a ftr)
rrai^ovaa etc rov dSvrov r% ^ijB\ov e(f)6ey^aro.
1 66 C ov IAOVOV auTO? vyvels, a\Xa KOI rovs dfcov-
ovra? rovro &pdv et9 ra arvyypd/^pard fiov dvaTreiOeis*
Soph. 232 D Hei>. Ta ye i^rjv irepl TTCLCTWV re KOL
Kara p,iav eKaarriv re^v'rjv, a Bel TT/OO? e/caarov avTov
rov Srj/Jiiovpybv dvreurrelv, Se8r)fj,ocri(i)fjieva rrov tcara/3e-
^\T]rai yeypa/A/jieva rw jBov\op.evw paOelv. ea/r. Ta
Upwrayopeid /AOL (fratvei Trepl re TrdX.ijs teal rwv a\\wv
re^ywv elprjKevai,. Rev- Kat TroXXwi/ ye, &
erepwv.
Poht. 293 A TOU9 iarpovs 8e ov% rfKia
(Aev, edv re kitovra*; edv re cifcovras rjfJids Iwvrai, . . /cat
eav Kara ypd/ji^ara r) %&)pt9 ypa/ji/jidrcov, . . rrdvrws
ouBev rjrrov larpovs (frafiev fcrX.
Parmen. 128 D 8td roiavrijv Sr) <fci\oveiKiav VTTO
veov oWo? efjiov eypd(f)r), Kai Tt9 avrb e/c\e^re ypa(f>ev,
axrre ovSe /3ov\evcracr6ai egeyevero, e'ir egotcrreov avrb
6i9 TO <^>&)9 ei-Ve //.?/.
In these passages we see that books were so com-
mon in Plato's time that not to know the contents
of a certain one would prove a man deficient in
180 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
education, that they were put before schoolboys
to learn lessons out of, that particular ones were
read again and again by the same person, that
there were books on rhetoric, on the uses of salt, on
cookery, on medicine, on wrestling, and, in a word,
on all arts, that once a book was stolen and cir-
culated while the author was still deliberating about
publishing it, that a man overheard another read-
ing from a book and immediately got hold of the
book to read it for himself. If now the use of books
was so general in all circles of life in Plato's time,
the first thirty or forty years after 400 B.C., and if, as
we have previously seen, mention of reading and
writing, of tablets, papyrus, and parchments goes
back to about 450 B.C., and the mention of books
and of book-writers (copyists) and book-selling comes
along between 420 and 405 B.C., can it be supposed
that so quick-witted a people as the Athenians, so
interested especially in every stimulus to mental
activity, failed to see the capabilities of this contri-
vance and to make use of it in that earlier period ?
I may be permitted in conclusion briefly to restate
the evidence as to that earlier period. We have in
Pindar before 450 B.C., a metaphor drawn from the
arts of writing and reading. We have in Aeschylos,
before 460 B.C., repeatedly the metaphor from writing,
and once a mention of tablets and of papyrus. We
have in Herodotos, before 425 B.C., frequent reference
to writing on papyrus, and once a recognition of that
as the usual material for writing, occasionally supple-
BEGINNING OF A WRITTEN LITERATURE. l8l
mented by parchment. We have abundant fragments
of Hekataeos (540-4806.0.) and other early historians,
in a style of composition that forbids the idea of oral
transmission. We have from the comic poets Kra-
tinos (before 420 B.C.), Eupolis (before 412 B.C.), and
Plato (probably before 405 B.C.), fragments containing
mention of book-writing, paper, and book-selling. We
have from Aristophanes (in plays down to 405 B.C.)
reference to books as used by authors and readers,
and consulted by his own audience. We have in
Thukydides (probably before 405 B.C.) reference to
the works of his predecessors implying knowledge
of their contents on his part, and a suggestion that
other historical inquirers would consult his own work
as he had theirs. Finally we have in Xenophon (in
reference to a time before 400 B.C.) mention of books
as read among a company of friends, as bought by a
collector of a library, and as exported to the shores
of the Euxine sea. Now in view of this evidence,
recognizing the fragmentary character of the remains
we have of the literature of the fifth century before
Christ, are we not justified in holding that the use of
writing on papyrus for the purpose of preserving and
multiplying copies of works of literature began as
early as the middle of that century and rapidly grew
to be a familiar matter of common life before its end ?
It will be observed that I have confined myself to
the production of the evidence attainable on my sub-
ject with only the necessary explanation of it. My
purpose has been simply to bring together all the
1 82 STUDIES IN GREEK THOUGHT.
passages which I could find containing real evidence,
in the hope that the collection, not elsewhere made
so far as I know, might be of- service to any one who
wishes to ascertain the facts.
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