Chapter X: The Romans in Greece

[Sidenote: Position of Rome towards the Leagues.]

§ 79. The interference of the Romans in Greek affairs reopened many of the constitutional questions upon which I have touched; for in their conflicts with Macedon they took care to win the Greeks to their side by open declarations in favour of independence, and by supporting the Leagues, which afforded the only organization that could supply them with useful auxiliaries. When the Romans had conquered came the famous declaration that all the cities which had been directly subject to Macedon should be independent, while the Achæan League could resume its political life freed from the domination of the Antigonids which Aratus had accepted for it. Now at last it might have seemed as if the peninsula would resume a peaceful and orderly development under the presidency and without the positive interference of Rome.

[Sidenote: Roman interpretation of the 'liberty of the Greeks.']

But new and fatal difficulties arose. The 'liberty of the Greeks' was still, as ever, a sort of sentimental aphorism which the Romans repeated, often from conviction, often again from policy. But the Romans were a practical people, and did not the least understand why they should free the Greeks from Macedon in order that they might join some other Hellenistic sovran against Rome. And even if this danger did not arise, the Romans felt that the liberation of Greece would have worse than no meaning if the stronger States were allowed to prey upon the weaker, if every little city were allowed to go to war with its neighbours,--if, in fact, the nominal liberty resulted in the tyranny of one section over another.

[Sidenote: Opposition of the Ætolians.]

Both these difficulties soon arose. The Ætolians, who had not obtained from the Romans any extension of territory or other advantages adequate to their vigorous and useful co-operation against the king of Macedon, were bitterly disappointed, for they saw clearly that Rome would rather curtail than advance their power. The cities of northern Greece which had been liberated by the Romans from Philip V. could not be coerced into the Ætolian League without an appeal on their part to Rome, which could hardly fail to be successful. So then the Ætolians found that they had brought upon themselves a new and steady control, which would certainly prevent the marauding chiefs from acquiring wealth by keeping up local disturbances, raids, and exactions as the normal condition of the country. They therefore openly incited king Antiochus of Syria to invade Greece, and so brought on their own destruction.

[Sidenote: Probably not fairly stated by Polybius.]

It was a great pity, for this League of mountaineers had shown real military vigour, and had it been educated into orderly and constitutional ways, would have been a strong bulwark of Hellenic independence. Nor are we to forget that when we read of its turbulence and its reckless disregard of justice, we are taking the evidence of its most determined foe, the historian Polybius. He was one of the leaders of the rival League, and will hardly concede to the Ætolians any qualities save their vices. On the other hand, he has stated as favourably as possible the more interesting case of his own confederation.

[Sidenote: Rome and the Achæans.]

[Sidenote: Mistakes of Philopoemen gave Rome excuses for interference.]

§ 80. Here the second difficulty just stated was that which arose, not without the deliberate assistance of the Romans. On the one hand, the Achæans thought themselves justified in extending their Union so as if possible to comprise all Greece; and though they usually succeeded by persuasion, there were not wanting cases where they aided with material force the minority in a wavering city, and coerced a new member which showed signs of falling away. More especially the constant attempts to incorporate Sparta and Messene, which had never been friendly to the League, proved its ultimate destruction. The bloody successes of Philopoemen, the first Greek who ever really captured Sparta, and who compelled it to join the League, led to complaints at Rome about violated liberties, and constant interferences of the Senate, not only to repress disorders, but to weaken any growing union in the country which Rome wished to see reduced to impotent peace; and so there came about, after half a century of mutual recrimination, of protest, of encroachment, the final conquest and reduction of Greece into a Roman province[190:1].

[Sidenote: Mommsen takes the Roman side.]

§ 81. The diplomatic conflict between the Achæans and the Romans is of the highest interest, and we have upon it the opposing judgments of great historians; for here Roman and Greek history run into the same channel, and the conflict may be treated from either point of view. Those who look at the debate from the Roman point of view, like Mommsen, and who are, moreover, not persuaded of the immeasurable superiority of republican institutions over a strong central power, controlling without hesitation or debate, are convinced that all the talk about Greek independence was mere folly. They point out that these Greeks, whenever they had their full liberty, wore each other out in petty conflicts; that liberty meant license, revolutions at home and encroachments upon neighbours; and that it was the historical mission and duty of the Romans to put an end to all this sentimental sham.

[Sidenote: Hertzberg and Freeman on the Achæan question.]

On the other hand Hertzberg, in the first volume of his excellent _History of the Greeks under Roman Domination_, and Professor Freeman, in his _Federal Government_, show with great clearness that far lower motives often actuated the conquering race, that they were distinctly jealous of any power in the hands of their Greek neighbours, and that they constantly encouraged appeals and revolts on the part of individual cities in the League. So the Senate in fact produced those unhappy disturbances which resulted in the destruction of Corinth and the conquest of Greece by a Roman army in formal war.

[Sidenote: Senility of The Greeks.]

It is of course easy to see that there were faults on both sides, and that individual Romans, using their high position without authority of the Senate, often promoted quarrels in the interests of that truculent financial policy which succeeded in playing all the commerce of the world into the hands of Roman capitalists. On the other hand, it is hard to avoid the conviction that the days of independent Greece were over, that the nation had grown old and worn out, that most of its intellect and enterprise had wandered to the East, to Egypt, or to Rome, and that had the Romans maintained an absolute policy of non-intervention, the result would have been hardly less disastrous, and certainly more disgraceful to the Greeks. For a long and contemptible decadence, like that of Spain in modern Europe, is surely more disgraceful than to be embodied by force in a neighbouring empire.

[Sidenote: Decay of the mother-country.]

Greece in this and the succeeding centuries had arrived at that curious condition that her people who emigrated obtained fortune and distinction all over the world, while those who remained at home seemed unable even to till the land,--which was everywhere relapsing into waste pasture,--far less to prosecute successful trade, for want of both capital and sustained energy. One profession unfortunately flourished,--that of politics; and the amount of time and ability spent on this profession may perhaps account for the decadence of both agriculture and commerce.

[Sidenote: The advocates for union with Rome.]

§ 82. Greek politicians were divided into three classes. There were first those who saw in Roman domination the only salvation from internal discord and insecurity. They either despaired of or despised the prospects of political independence, and saw in the iron Destiny which extended the Roman sway over the East, a definite solution of their difficulties, and possibly a means of increasing their material welfare. They therefore either acquiesced in or actively promoted every diplomatic encroachment on the part of Rome, and made haste to secure to themselves 'friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,' as their adversaries thought, that by and by they might be the local governors, and recipients of Roman favour.

[Sidenote: The advocates of complete independence.]

Over against them were the uncompromising Nationalists,--I apologize for using the right word,--who maintained absolutely the inalienable right of the Greeks to be independent and manage not only their internal affairs, but their external differences as they pleased. They insisted that the Romans had gained their power over Greece by a system of unconstitutional encroachments, and that no material advantages of enforced peace or oppressive protection could compensate for the paralysis which was creeping over Hellenic political life.

The tyrannous and cruel act of the Romans, who deported one thousand leading Achæans to Italy (on the charge of disloyalty to Rome in sentiments) and let most of them pine in their exile and die as mere _suspects_, without ever bringing them to trial, gave this party the strongest support by the misery which it inflicted and the wide-spread indignation it excited.

[Sidenote: The party of moderate counsels.]

The third party was the party of moderate counsels and of compromise. Sympathizing deeply with the National party, they felt at the same time that any armed resistance to Rome was absurd and ruinous. They therefore desired to delay every encroachment by diplomatic protests, by appeals to the justice of the Romans, and thus protract, if they could not prevent, the absorption of all national liberties into the great dominion of Rome. This party, undoubtedly the most reasonable and the most honest, have left us their spokesman in the historian Polybius; but we may be sure that, like every intermediate party, they commanded little sympathy or support.

[Sidenote: Money considerations]

[Sidenote: acted upon both extremes.]

§ 83. Moreover, both the extreme parties had strong pecuniary interests to stimulate them. The party which promoted complete submission to Rome were the people of property, to whom a settled state of things without constitutional agitations or sudden war-contributions afforded the only chance of retaining what they possessed. Rome had never favoured the needy mob in her subject cities, but had always ruled them through the responsible and moneyed classes. Roman dominion therefore meant at least peace and safety for the rich. The grinding exactions of Roman prætor and Roman publican were as yet unknown to them. The Nationalist party, on the other hand, consisted of the needy and discontented, who expected, if allowed to exercise their political power, to break down the monopolies of the rich, and, in any case, to make reputation and money by the practice of politics; for, as I have shown above, and as is not strange to our own day, politics had become distinctly a lucrative profession. These people's hope of gain, as well as their local importance, would vanish with full subjection to Rome; and this was a strong motive, even though in many it may have only been auxiliary to the real patriotism which burned at the thought of the extinction of national independence.

[Sidenote: Exaggerated statements on both sides.]

[Sidenote: The Separatists would not tolerate separation from themselves.]

[Sidenote: Democratic tyranny.]

The debate soon went beyond the stage of rational argument or the possibility of rational persuasion. To the Nationalist, the Romanizing aristocrat or moneyed man was a traitor, sacrificing his country's liberties for his mess of potage, grovelling and touting for Roman favour, copying Roman manners, and sending his sons to be educated in Roman ways. To the advocate of union with Rome, the so-called Nationalist was a needy and dishonest adventurer, using the cry of patriotism and of nationality to cloak personal greed, socialistic schemes, and hatred of what was orderly and respectable. If he succeeded, his so-called liberty would be used in coercing and plundering the dissentients; and, after all, such stormy petrels in politics must be quite unfit to form any stable government. If any portion of the Peloponnesus asserted its right to several liberty, no politicians would have recourse to more violent coercion than these advocates of national independence. They protested against enforced union with Rome: they would be the first to promote enforced union with themselves, and carry it through in bloody earnest. This was actually what happened during the last despairing struggle. The coercion practised by the last presidents of the Leagues, the violent Nationalists who forced the nation into war, was tyrannous and cruel beyond description.

But of course the issue was certain; and with the reeking smoke of the ruins of Corinth closes the history of Greece, as most historians, even of wider views, have understood it.

[Sidenote: Modern analogies forced upon us,]

[Sidenote: and not to be set aside.]

§ 84. There is no period of the history which deserves modern study more than that which I have here expounded in its principles. The analogies which it presents to modern life, nay, to the very history of our times, are so striking that it is almost impossible to narrate it without falling into the phraseology of current politics. When I first published an account of these things[196:1], I was at once attacked by several of my reviewers for daring to introduce modern analogies into ancient history. I had dragged the Muse of History into the heated atmosphere of party strife and the quarrels of our own day; I had spoiled a good book by allusions to burning questions which disturbed the reader and made him think of the next election, instead of calmly contemplating the lessons of Polybius. It would have been far more to the point had they shown that the analogies suggested were invalid, and the comparisons misleading. This not one of them has attempted to do; nor do I hesitate to say that the objections they raised were rather because my analogies were too just and striking than because they were far-fetched and irrelevant. If these critics had found that the facts I adduced favoured their own political views, no doubt they would have lavished their praise upon the very feature which incurred their censure.

[Sidenote: The history of Greece is essentially modern;]

[Sidenote: therefore modern parallels are surely admissible, if justly drawn.]

I think, with Thucydides and Polybius, that the study of history is then most useful and serious when it leads us to estimate what is likely to happen by the light of what has already happened in similar cases. Mere remoteness of date or place has nothing to say to the matter. The history of Greece, as I have often said already, is intensely modern,--far more so than any mediæval or than most recent histories. We have to deal with a people fully developed, in its mature life; nay, even in its old age and decadence. To deny a historian the privilege and the profit of illumining his subject by the light of modern parallels, or the life of to-day by parallels from Greek history, is simply to condemn him to remain an unpractical pedant, and to abandon the strongest claim to a hearing from practical men.

Above all, let us seek the truth with open mind, and speak out our convictions; and if we are wrong, instead of blaming us for appealing to the deeper interests and stirring the warmer emotions of men, let our errors be refuted. Let us save ancient history from its dreary fate in the hands of the dry antiquarian, the narrow scholar; and while we utilize all his research and all his learning, let us make the acts and lives of older men speak across the chasm of centuries, and claim kindred with the men and the motives of to-day. For this, and this only, is to write history in the full and real sense,--this is to show that the great chain of centuries is forged of homogeneous metal, and joined with links that all bear the great Workman's unmistakeable design.

[Sidenote: The spiritual history not closed with the Roman conquest.]

§ 85. We have come to the real close of political Greek history,--at a point upon which historians have been unanimous. And yet the Greeks would hardly have been worth all this study if the sum of what they could teach us was a political lesson. They showed indeed in politics a variety and an excellence not reached by any other ancient people. But their spiritual and intellectual wealth is not bounded by these limits; and they have left us, after the close of their independence, more to think out and to understand than other nations have done in the heyday of their greatness.

On this spiritual history I shall not say more than a few words. The earlier part of it, extending to the moment when, under Trajan, Christianity came forth from its concealment, and became a social and political power, I have recently treated in a volume entitled _The Greek World under Roman Sway_. The reader who cares to unfold this complicated and various picture of manners, of ideas, of social habits and moral principles, will find the Greek subjects of the Roman Empire full of interest, and will even find, in the authors of that age, merits which have long been unduly ignored. The crowded thoroughfares of Antioch and Alexandria; the great religious foundations of Comana, Stratoniceia, and Pessinus, each ruled by a priest no less important than the prince-bishops of Salzburg or Würtzburg in recent centuries; the old-world fashions of Borysthenes, of Naples, of Euboea; the gradual rise of Syrian and of Jewish Hellenism, the fascinating rivalries of Herod and of Cleopatra for Roman favour, the Hellenism of Cicero, of Cæsar, of Claudius, and of Nero, the fluctuations of trade from Rhodes to Delos, from Delos to Puteoli and Corinth, the splendours and the dark spots in the society which Dion, Apuleius, and Plutarch saw and described--these and many other kindred topics make up a subject most fascinating, though from its complexity difficult to set in order, and impossible to handle without the occurrence of error.

[Sidenote: The great bequests of the Roman period.]

I am sure it is below the mark to say that more than half the Greek books now extant date from the period of the Roman domination. And if it be true that in style there is nothing to equal the great poets and prose-writers from Æschylus to Demosthenes, it is equally true that in matter the later writers far exceed their predecessors. All the exacter science got from the Greeks comes from that large body of Alexandrian writings which none but the specialist can understand. The history of Diodorus, embracing an immense field and telling us a vast number of facts otherwise lost; the great geographies of Strabo, of Ptolemy, and that curious collection which can be read in Carl Müller's laborious _Corpus_; the moral essays of Dion Chrysostom; the social encyclopædia of Plutarch; the vast majority of the extant inscriptions, come to us from Roman times.

But most of these are special. Is there nothing of general interest? Assuredly there is. No Greek book can compare for one moment in general importance with that collection of history and letters called the New Testament, all written in Greek, and intended to reach the civilized world through the mediation of Greek.

[Sidenote: The Anthology, Lucian, Julian,]

I will not here enter upon Christian Greek literature, but point to Plutarch, who has certainly been more read and had more influence than any other Greek writer on the literature of modern Europe. Nay, in the lighter subjects, and where the writers must trust to style to commend them to the reader, not only is there a good deal of poetry once thought classical,--such as the Anacreontics and the Anthology--which is in great part the produce of later Greek genius, but the wit of Lucian and the seriousness of Julian found in the Greek language their appropriate vehicle.

[Sidenote: Plotinus.]

The deeper philosophy of these centuries, that attempt to fuse the metaphysics of heathendom and Christendom which is called Neo-Platonism,--this too was created and circulated by Greek writers and in Greek; so that though Hellas was laid asleep, and her independence a mere tradition, her legacy to the world was still bearing interest one hundredfold.

[Sidenote: Theological Greek studies.]

The writers who have dealt with this great and various development of later Hellenism are either the historians of the Roman Empire--especially Duruy, who has kept up the thread of his Greek History in his popular _History of Rome_--or the theologians. The latter have a field so specially their own, and the literature of the subject is so enormous, that the mere historian of Greece and the Greeks must content himself with the pagan side. To touch even in a general way, as I have hitherto done, upon the many controversies that now arise concerning Greek life and thought would here be impossible.

§ 86. But there is one important point at the very outset of the new departure into Christianity upon which I would gladly save the reader from a widely diffused error.

[Sidenote: Have the Greeks no share in our religion?]

It has been long the fashion--since the writings of Ernest Renan it has been almost a commonplace, to say: that while modern Europe owes to the Greeks all manner of wisdom and of refinement, in politics, literature, philosophy, architecture, sculpture, one thing there is which they could not impart to us,--religion. This deeper side of man, his relation to one God, his duty and his responsibilities beyond this ordinary life, we owe not to the Greeks, but to the legacy of the Semitic race. To the Jews, we are told, are due all the highest, all the most serious, all the most elevating features in modern Christianity.

[Sidenote: Or is it altogether Semitic?]

Is this true? Is it the case that the Greeks were, after all, only brilliant children, playing with life, and never awaking to the real seriousness of the world's problems? There has seldom been a plausible statement circulated which is further from the truth. However capital the fact that the first great teacher and revealer of Christianity was a Jew, however carefully the dogmas of the Old Testament were worked up into the New, Christianity, as we have it historically, would have been impossible without Hellenism.

[Sidenote: The language of the New Testament exclusively Greek.]

In the first place, the documents of the New Testament were one and all composed in Greek, as the _lingua franca_ of the East and West; and the very first author in the list, Saint Matthew, was a tax-gatherer, whose business required him to know it[202:1]. If, therefore, the vehicle of Christianity from the first was the Greek language, this is not an unimportant factor to start with; and yet it is the smallest and most superficial contribution that Greek thought has given to Christianity. When my later studies on the history of Hellenism under the Roman Empire see the light, I trust that the evidence for the following grave facts, already admitted by most critical theologians, will be brought before the lay reader.

[Sidenote: Saint Paul's teaching.]

[Sidenote: Stoic elements in Saint Paul.]

§ 87. When we pass by the first three, or Synoptical, Gospels, there remains a series of books by early Christian teachers, of whom Saint Paul and Saint John are by far the most prominent. To Saint Paul is due a peculiar development of the faith which brings into prominence that side of Christianity now known as Protestantism,--the doctrine of justification by faith; of the greater importance of dogma than of practice; of the predestination or election of those that will be saved. This whole way of thinking, this mode of looking at the world, so different from anything in the Jewish books, so developed beyond the teaching of the Synoptic Gospels, was quite familiar to the most serious school of Hellenism, to the Stoic theory of life popular all over the Hellenistic world, and especially at Tarsus, where Saint Paul received his education.

[Sidenote: The Stoic sage.]

The Stoic wise man, who had adopted with faith that doctrine, forthwith rose to a condition differing _in kind_ from the rest of the world, who were set down as moral fools, whose highest efforts at doing right were mere senseless blundering, mere filthy rags, without value or merit. The wise man, on the contrary, was justified in the sight of God, and could commit no sin; the commission of one fault would be a violation of his election, and would make him guilty of all, and as subject to punishment as the vilest criminal. For all faults were equally violations of the moral law, and therefore equally proofs that the true light was not there. Whether one of the elect could fall away, was a matter of dispute, but in general was thought impossible[203:1]. Whether conversion was a gradual change of character, or a sudden inspiration, was an anxious topic of discussion. The wise man, and he alone, enjoyed absolute liberty, boundless wealth, supreme happiness; nothing could take from him the inestimable privileges he had attained.

[Sidenote: The Stoic Providence.]

Can any one fail to recognize these remarkable doctrines, not only in the spirit, but in the very letter, of Saint Paul's teaching? Does he not use even the language of the Stoic paradoxes, 'as, sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing all things'? Is not his so-called sermon at Athens a direct statement of Stoic views against the Epicureans, taking nothing away, but adding to their account of the moral world the revelation of Jesus Christ and of the Resurrection? Will any one venture to assert in the face of these facts that the most serious and religious of Greek systems was the offspring of children in morals, or that it failed to exert a powerful influence through the greatest teacher of Christianity upon all his followers? It is of course idle to weigh these things in a minute balance, and declare who did most, or what was the greatest advance made in our faith beyond the life and teaching of its Founder. But the more we compare Greek Stoicism with Pauline Christianity, the more distinctly their general connection will be felt and appreciated.

[Sidenote: Saint John's Gospel.]

§ 88. Let us now come to the more obvious and better acknowledged case of Saint John. It has been the stock argument of those who reject the early date and alleged authorship of the Fourth Gospel that the writer is imbued with Hellenistic philosophy; that he is intimate with that fusion of Jewish and Platonic thought which distinguished the schools of Alexandria; that in particular the doctrine of the _Word_, with which the book opens, is quite strange to Semite thought, doubly strange to Old Testament theology, not even hinted at in the early apocryphal books. In other words, the Greek elements in the Fourth Gospel are so strong that many critics think them impossible of attainment for a man of Saint John's birth and education!

[Sidenote: Neo-Platonic doctrine of the Logos.]

For my purpose this is more than enough. I need not turn, to refute these sceptics, to show how the author of the book of Revelation, if he be the same, made great strides in Greek letters before he wrote the Gospel, thus showing the importance he attached not only to Greek thought, but to Greek expression. The Alexandrian tone of Saint John's Gospel, derived from the same sources as those which gave birth to Neo-Platonism, is as evident as the Stoical tone in Saint Paul, derived from the schools of Tarsus and Cilicia.

Here is a chapter of deeper Greek history yet to be written from the Greek side, not as an appendage to Roman history, or as an interlude in theological controversy.

[Sidenote: The Cynic independence of all men;]

[Sidenote: the Epicurean dependence upon friends.]

§ 89. So much for the influence of the highest and most serious forms of Greek thinking upon the religion of the Roman Empire. But even from the inferior developments of philosophy, its parodies of strength and its exaggerations of weakness, elements passed into this faith which is asserted to be wholly foreign to Hellenism. The Cynic ostentation of independence, of living apart from the world, free from all cares and responsibilities, found its echo in the Christian anchorite, who chose solitude and poverty from higher but kindred motives. The sentimental display of personal affection, by which the Epicurean endeavoured to substitute the love of friends for the love of principle or devotion to the State, had its echo in those personal ties among early Christians which replaced their civic attachments and consoled them when outlawed by the State. Indeed, there is much in Epicureanism which has passed into Christianity,--an unsuspected fact till it was brought out by very recent writers[206:1].

[Sidenote: The university of Athens.]

What shall we say too of the culture of this age? Is not the eloquence of the early Christian Fathers, of John Chrysostom, of Basil, worthy of admiration; and was not all their culture derived from the old Greek schools and universities, which had lasted with unbroken though changing traditions from the earliest Hellenistic days? One must read Libanius, a writer of the fourth century after Christ, to understand how thoroughly Athens was still old Greek in temper, in tone, in type, and how it had become the university of the civilized world[206:2]. The traditions of this Hellenistic university life and system passed silently, but not less certainly, into the oldest mediæval Italian universities, and thence to Paris and to England,--just as the Greek tones or scales passed into the chants of Saint Ambrose at Milan, and thence into the noble music of Palestrina and of Tallis, which our own degenerate age has laid aside for weaker and more sentimental measures.

[Sidenote: Greece indestructible.]

§ 90. It is indeed difficult to overrate the amount and the variety of the many hidden threads that unite our modern culture to that of ancient Greece, not to speak of the conscious return of our own century to the golden age of Hellenic life as the only human epoch in art, literature, and eloquence which ever approached perfection. As the Greek language has lasted in that wonderful country in spite of long domination by Romans, of huge invasion by Celts and Slavs, of feudal occupation by Frankish knights, of raid and rapine by Catalans and Venetians, ending with the cruel tyranny of the Turk, so the Greek spirit has lasted through all manner of metamorphose and modification, till the return wave has in our day made it the highest aspiration of our worldly perfection.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Greek political history almost the private property of the English writers,]

§ 91. I said at the opening of this essay that I should endeavour to indicate the principal problems to be solved by future historians of Greece,--at least by those who have not the genius to recast the whole subject by the light of some great new idea; and in so doing, particular stress has been laid on the political side, not without deliberate intention. For, in the first place, this aspect of Greek affairs is the peculiar province of English historians. They, with their own experiences and traditions of constitutional struggles, cannot but feel the strongest attraction towards similar passages in the life of the Greeks, so that even the professional scholar in his study feels the excitement of the contested election, the glow of the public debate, when he finds them distracting Athens or Ægion. The practical insight of a Grote or a Freeman leads him to interpret facts which may be inexplicable or misleading to a foreign student. Even with Grote before him, Ernst Curtius or Duruy is sometimes unable to grasp the true political situation.

[Sidenote: who have themselves lived in practical politics.]

I say this in the higher and more delicate sense; for of course many recent histories give an adequate account of the large political changes to the general student. Perhaps, indeed, the remoteness of foreign writers from political conflicts such as ours gives them a calmness and fairness which is of advantage, while the English writer can hardly avoid a certain amount of partisanship, however carefully he may strive to be scrupulously impartial. For in all these things we are compelled unconsciously to reflect not only our century, but our nation, and colour the acts and the motives of other days with the hues our imagination has taken from surrounding circumstances.

[Sidenote: Not so in artistic or literary history,]

[Sidenote: where the French and Germans are superior;]

§ 92. When we come to the literary and artistic side, the foreign historians have a decided advantage. The philosophical side of Greek literature has indeed been treated by Grote and other English writers with a fulness and clearness that leave little to be desired; but on the poetry and the artistic prose of the Greeks, foreign scholars write with a freshness and a knowledge to which few of us attain. Of course a Frenchman, with the systematic and careful training which he gets in composition, must have an inestimable advantage over people, like us, who merely write as they list, and have no rules to guide their taste or form their style. And the German, if as regards style he is even less happily circumstanced than the Englishman, whose language has at least been moulded by centuries of literature, has yet on the side of archæology and art enjoyed a training which is only just now becoming possible in England or America.

[Sidenote: especially in art.]

Hence it is that the earlier part of Curtius' history has such a charm,--though we must not detract from the individual genius of the man, which is manifest enough if we compare him with the solid but prosaic Duncker. However complete and well articulated the bones of fact may lie before us, it requires a rare imagination to clothe them with flesh and with skin, nay, with bloom upon the skin, and expression in the features, if we are to have a living figure, and not a dry and repulsive skeleton.

[Sidenote: Importance of studying Greek art.]

§ 93. What I think it right, in conclusion, to insist upon is this: that a proper knowledge of Greek art, instead of being the mere amusement of the dilettante, is likely to have an important effect upon the general appearance of our public buildings and our homes, and to make them not only more beautiful, but also instructive to the rising generation. The day for new developments of architecture and of decorative art seems past, though the modern discovery of a new material for building--iron--ought to have brought with it something fresh and original. In earlier ages the quality of the material can always be shown to be a potent factor in style.

[Sidenote: Modern revivals of ancient styles,--Gothic, Renaissance.]

If, however, we are not to have a style of our own, we must necessarily go back to the great builders and decorators of former ages, and make them the models of our artists. This has in fact been the history of the revivals since the universal reign of vulgarity in what we call the early Queen Victoria period in England. First there was a great Gothic revival, when we began to understand what the builders of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries meant, and to reproduce their ideas with intelligence. This has since given way to the Renaissance style, in which most recent buildings have been erected, and which has beauties which the Gothic revivalists used to regard with horror.

There is no probability that the last ideal will be more permanent than the last but one; it will presently be replaced by some other model. This, however, will have been gained,--that our ordinary lay public will have been trained to understand and appreciate not only the great Gothic works of the early, but the great Renaissance works of the late Middle Ages. We can now even tolerate those curious vampings, so common in Holland and Germany, where one style has been laid upon the other or added to it[211:1].

[Sidenote: Probability of Hellenic revival.]

It is more than likely that the next revival will be a Hellenic revival. Renaissance architecture, as is well known, is the imitation of Roman or late Hellenistic art, with certain peculiarities and modifications forced upon the builders by their education and surroundings. But many of them thought they were reproducing pure Greek style, concerning which they were really in total darkness. The few earlier attempts in this century to imitate Greek buildings show a similar ignorance. Thus the builders of the Madeleine in Paris thought, I suppose, they were copying the Parthenon, whereas they knew nothing whatever about the art of Ictinus. How far this inability to understand the art of a distant century may go, is curiously exemplified in the drawings taken (in 1676) from the yet un-ruined Parthenon by Jacques Carrey, by the order of the Marquis of Nointel. These drawings are positively ludicrous travesties of the sculpture of Phidias in seventeenth-century style[211:2].

[Sidenote: Greek art only recently understood. Winckelmann, Penrose, Dörpfeld.]

Not until a long series of great students, beginning with Winckelmann, had studied with real care the secrets of Greek art, till Mr. Penrose had disclosed the marvellous subtlety in the curves of the Parthenon, till Dr. Dörpfeld had analyzed the plan and materials and execution of the Olympian treasure-houses and temples, could we say that we were beginning to have a clear perception of the qualities which made Greek sculpture and architecture so superior to all imitations which have since been attempted.

[Sidenote: Its effect upon modern art when properly appreciated,]

§ 94. It is high time that all this profound research, this recondite learning, these laborious excavations, should be made known in their results, and brought home to the larger public. Then when the day comes that we undertake to carry out a Hellenic Renascence, we shall know what we are about; we shall abandon the superstition of white marble worship, and adopt colours; we shall learn to combine chastity of design with richness of ornamentation; we shall revert to that harmony of all the arts which has been lost since the days of Michael Angelo.

[Sidenote: and upon every detail of our life.]

If it be true that there is in heaven a secret treaty between the three sovran Ideas that ennoble human life,--the Good, the Beautiful, and the True--which enacts that none of them shall enrich us without the co-operation of the rest, then our study of this side of Greek perfection may even have its moral results. May not the ideas of measure, of fitness, of reserve, which are shown in all the best Greek work, radiate their influence into our ordinary life, and, making it fairer, prepare it for the abode of larger truth and more perfect goodness?

[Sidenote: Greek Literature hardly noticed in this Essay.]

§ 95. Thus far I have sought to bring out the political lessons which are the peculiar teaching of history, and have only suggested what may yet result from the artistic lessons left us by this wonderful people. The reader may wonder that I have said little or nothing concerning another very prominent side of Greek perfection,--the wonders of the poetry which ranks with the best that has been produced by all the efforts of man before or since. My reason for this omission was, that here, if anywhere, the excellence of the extant Hellenic work is acknowledged, while the fact that all those ignorant of the language are excluded from enjoying it, makes any discussion of it unsuited to the general public. For whatever may be said of good translations of foreign prose, poetry is so essentially the artistic expression of the peculiar tongue in which it originates, that all transference into alien words must produce a fatal alteration. A great English poet may indeed transfer the ideas of a Greek to his page; but he gives us an English poem on Greek subjects, not the very poem of his model, however faithful his report may be.

[Sidenote: Demands a good knowledge and study of the language.]

If, therefore, we are to benefit by this side of Hellenic life, there is no short cut possible. We must sit down and study the language till we can read it fluently; and this requires so much labour, that the increasing demands of modern life upon our time tend to thrust aside the study of bygone languages for the sake of easier and more obvious gains.

§ 96. Nevertheless, it seems well-nigh impossible that a Hellenic Renascence, such as I have anticipated, can ever be thorough and lasting unless the English-speaking nations become really familiar with the literary side of Hellenic life. Revivals of the plays of Æschylus and Sophocles must not be confined to the learned stage and public of an English or American university, but must come to be heard and appreciated by a far larger public.

[Sidenote: Other languages must be content to give way to this pursuit.]

This can hardly be done until we make up our minds that the subjects of education must not be increased in number, and that moreover they may be alternated with far more freedom than is now the case. There is, for example, a superstition that everybody must learn Latin before learning Greek, and that French is a sort of necessary accomplishment for a lady, whereas it is perfectly certain that the cultivation to be attained through Greek is ten times as great as that we can gain through Latin; while in the second case it is no paradox to assert that any woman able to understand the _Antigone_ of Sophocles or the _Thalusia_ of Theocritus would derive from them more spiritual food than from all the volumes of French poetry she is ever likely to read. If we cannot compass all, the lesser should give way to the greater; and it is not till our own day that the supremacy of Greek has been acknowledged by all competent judges.

[Sidenote: The nature and quality of Roman imitations.]

§ 97. What has promoted the reign of Latin, and has told against Greek in our schools, is partly, I believe, the bugbear of a strange alphabet; partly also--and this among more advanced people--the want of a clear knowledge how closely most Roman poetry was copied from Greek models. Were the Greek models now extant, the contrast would probably cause the Roman imitations to disappear, as indeed many such must have disappeared when the Roman readers themselves approached the great originals. Even now, if the lyrics of Sappho and Alcæus were recovered from some Egyptian tomb or from the charred rolls of Herculaneum, it might have a disastrous effect on the popularity of Horace.

[Sidenote: The case of Virgil.]

But in most cases the Romans copied from inferior poets of the Alexandrian age; and before the reader and I part company, it is of importance to insist upon this,--that the best of Roman poetry was often a mere version of third-rate Greek. By far the greatest of the Roman poets is Virgil; and if he alone remained, Latin would be worth learning for his sake. But even Virgil copies from second-rate Alexandrian poets, Apollonius and Aratus--from the latter to an extent which would be thought shameful in any independent literature. It may be true that the translations are in this case not only equal, but far superior, to the originals. I will not dispute this, as my case does not require any doubtful supports. For even granting that he can exceed a second-rate Greek model, what shall we say when he attempts to imitate Theocritus in his _Bucolics_? Here he is taking a really good Greek poet for his model, and how poor is the great Roman in comparison! Even therefore in imitating an Alexandrian master, we can see that the first of Latin poets cannot bear the comparison.

[Sidenote: Theocritus only a late flower in the Greek garden of poetry.]

§ 98. If I had not written fully on this subject in my recent _Greek Life and Thought_, and my _Greek World under Roman Sway_, I should fain conclude with some brief account of the after-glow of Hellenic genius, when the loss of freshness in the language and the life of the people had made pedantry and artificiality common features in the writing of the day. Yet these patent faults did not strike the Romans, whose poets, with only few exceptions, copied Callimachus and Parthenius as the finest models in the world.

From my point of view, though I have cited these facts to show what a superstition the preference of Latin to Greek is, I can urge them as but another evidence of the supremacy of Greece and its right to a spiritual empire over cultivated men. Even debased and decaying Hellenism could produce poetry too good for the ablest disciples to rival, too subtle for any other tongue to express. Can we conclude with any greater tribute to the genius of the race, with any higher recommendation of their history than this, that it is the history of a people whose gifts have never ceased to illumine and to sustain the higher spirits in every society of civilized men?

FOOTNOTES:

[190:1] I am of course speaking generally, nor do I venture to decide without argument the difficult question of the exact status of Greece in the years after 146 B.C.

[196:1] _Greek Life and Thought, from Alexander to the Roman Conquest._ Macmillan, 1887.

[202:1] The old belief in an original Hebrew Gospel, from which Saint Matthew's was translated, now turns out to have no better foundation than the existence of an old version into Hebrew (Aramaic) for the benefit of the common people who were too ignorant to read Greek. Cf. Dr. Salmon's _Introduction to the New Testament_.

[203:1] Cf. further details in my _Greek Life and Thought_, pp. 140, 372.

[206:1] Cf. Mr. W. Pater's _Marius the Epicurean_, which is built on this idea; also the excellent account in Mr. Bury's new _History of the Later Roman Empire_, vol. i. chap. i.

[206:2] The reader who fears to attack Libanius directly, may find all the facts either in Sievers' (German) _Life of Libanius_, or in Mr. W. W. Capes's excellent book on _University Life at Athens_ (London, 1877).

[211:1] Of this confusion the hall of the Middle Temple in London is a very interesting specimen, seeing that the Renaissance screen, a splendid thing, is only two years later than the Gothic hall.

[211:2] They are not, however, one whit worse than the ordinary attempts at Greek dress made by nineteenth-century ladies who go to Fancy Fairs.