General Characteristics of Greek Life
Fragments from Jacob Burckhardt's "The Greeks and Greek Civilization"
Fragments
The Difficulty of Grasping Greek Life
To discern the truth about general attitudes to life in a bygone culture, even one that is well documented, involves accepting many reservations and restrictions. The only really appropriate evidence is what can be shown to correspond to the views and the understanding of the majority, if not all, of the people — primarily popular literature; in the case of Greece, this means, first and foremost, epic poetry and Attic drama. The Greek spirit ranged so widely and explored so deeply that an enormous variety of different attitudes are expressed, all no doubt essentially Greek and often bearing witness to remarkable intellectual capacity, but not each representing the whole, and often starkly contradicting each other. These opinions were explicitly formulated and claimed the status of coherent doctrine, while popular opinion expressed itself randomly and unsystemati-cally. The concept of a 'view of life', though, is a very wide one, and to narrow it down does violence to it. [^]
No Priestly Caste
Despite the efforts of philosophers, Greek religion remained polytheistic, if only for fear of incurring divine wrath if particular gods were neglected; also the most powerful force of all, the polis, had made this part of life its own, and cult was associated with every aspect of popular entertainment. This divine world and its mythology seemed to have been secured for ever by matchless visual art. Yet the gods lacked sanctity, that is, the quality they needed to become models for human morality, and the fear that they inspired fell short of reverence. Religion completely lacked the element of instruction and there was no priestly caste. Fear of the supernatural was felt obscurely, often strongly, but irregularly, and more by anxious individuals than by the people as a whole. [^]
The Purity of Homeric World
Inevitably the whole ethics of the age of philosophy, literature and rhetoric is put in the shade for posterity, that is for later Western culture, by the Homeric world, so noble and, despite all its passions and violence, so pure. In that age, sensibility was not yet fragmented by reflection, and morals not analyzed out of existence; beside its goodness and delicacy of feeling, Greece in its later full development appears spiritually coarse and blunted, for all its intellectual refinement.
All that was best in this later period can be traced to the survival of Homer and to his representation of the figures of myth. Without him even Aeschylus and Sophocles could not have achieved the sublimity of their finest creations. [^]
The Pursuit of Honor and Fame
Greek life offered conditions more favourable to the pursuit of honour than those found at other times and among other nations. First there was the fact that the public nature of activity in the polis gave the opportunity and leisure to know and be known by other people; secondly there existed a remarkable openness in expressing one's own personality, and in discussing the circumstances of others in conversation with them, which seems to have been thought compatible with good manners. Socrates' conversation with the aged Cephalus, at the beginning of Plato's Republic, gives an idea of this, as do Xenophon's Symposium and other accounts of social intercourse in the upper classes.
Besides, the widespread custom of agonal competition, ranging from public appearances at the games to every kind of achievement and self-assertion, excluded the social inhibition which today, as a rule, hardly permits any competition except in business affairs, and otherwise restricts the individual to the negative aspects of the feeling for honour. That is, people now try to avoid anything that is disapproved of, and to obtain respect while shunning notoriety; where the modern aggressively competitive type goes beyond this, it is for the sake of rank and wealth, not for fame, and self-advertisement primarily serves the same purpose.
In contrast, the aim of the talented Greek, since Homer, was 'always to be the first and outshine the rest', and from the same early period the wish for fame after death was also often expressed — not the chief preoccupation of the modern age, even for those in high places. It would have suited the polis very well to adapt this individual philotimia to its own service, but the impulse found other outlets. The man of outstanding personality displayed himself to his contemporaries without diffidence, flaunting signs of power, often resorting to wholehearted self-praise; the Greeks were inclined to be very indulgent to energy of character, as long as they did not personally suffer from it or find themselves put too much in the shade. All these matters deserve to be seen in a wider context, but here we will consider only the general antagonism that the distinguished man had to contend with. [^]
Intensity of Political Life Inside the Polis
The real dangers surrounding the citizen who made himself in any way conspicuous were so great that mere social sensitivity must have retreated into insignificance. A permanent terrorism was exercised by the combination of the sycophants, the orators and the constant threat of public prosecution, especially for peculation and incompetence, as well as the ever present risk of being accused of asebeia (impiety). A certain hardening of the nerves must have resulted from all this; not all accusations were successful, and anyone with influential contacts could not only defend himself but make counteraccusations; still, with the perpetual assemblies and trials there must always have been something going on to command attention and keep passions at a high pitch. [^]
Making Sense of Greek Comedy
It might be said in defense of comedy that it was performing the function of a nonexistent police authority or even of justice itself, though this would have been taking on a fearful responsibility in a very frivolous way; it can also be said that comedy usually waged war on demagogy, and that, with his great campaign against Cleon, Aristophanes drew down vengeance on himself. But this will hardly do as the basis for the moral transfiguration of Aristophanes in some modern views of him. In general he was safe enough, since the demos was not unwilling to laugh at its own leaders and at those who thought themselves superior to the 'poor and common people' they came from, still the usual victims of his scorn were ‘rich or highborn or influential’.
Besides, Aristophanes assured himself of unfailing popularity by his constant advocacy of peace, even at moments in the Peloponnesian War when peace would have been possible only at an intolerable price. Lysistrata for example dates from the year 411, when a powerful Spartan army was occupying Attic territory in Deceleia. Aristo-phanes' satire on Lamachus is an attack on one of the most brilliant and unselfishly devoted of all the military leaders. [^]
Sensitivity Training
As time went on, lack of sensitivity became a philosophical virtue, especially in the Cynics and Stoics, and could be learned by training. This weakens the effect of anecdotes told of Cleanthes, Arcesilaus and others on the subject. The cynic Crates applied the oddest form of training in this hardening process: he would scold whores and stand listening to their replies. [^]
Greeks Patiently Bore Physical Assault
Greek behavior suggests that physical assault was borne more patiently than it is today, and the being proved inferior to someone else in strength and brutality did not then determine a person's worth and reputation. A man who had raised his stick was addressed in the words which are as typical of the time as they are unthinkable today: 'Hit me if you like, but listen to me!' It hardly matters whether they were spoken by Themistocles, or someone else, to Eurybiades or Adeimantus. The ill-treatment of Socrates calmly tolerated has already been spoken of, and there are similar stories about Diogenes, but other cases contrast even more strikingly with modern behavior. After the performance of Knights, Cleon had Aristophanes beaten up (by the guards at the theatre, it seems). Two years later the dramatist explained to his audience in a parabasis to Wasps that he had been much to blame for mocking Cleon's sufferings at the time, and had even expected some such trick from the victim of his unkindness. Either Aristophanes had an extraordinary passion for keeping his name before the public, or else the Athenians were not sorry he should get an occasional whipping, though they could still respect him in his way and their own. [^]
Democracy Was Tolerant in One Regard
Alongside this peculiar hardening of feeling, and almost as an aspect of it, though a positive one, there was a certain tolerance, a capacity for listening to opponents which is far more difficult for leading parties today. Amidst all the noise of Athens and other democratic cities, beside the ruthless pushiness of the ambitious, there was still a degree of objectivity in judgement, and admiration for talent, which made it possible for men to distinguish themselves if they felt they had the right and the energy to do so.
To such people, and even to the less gifted, an astounding tolerance was extended. No assembly of our own time would be likely to listen with patience even to a popular address like Cleon's; what was heard from other orators and from the comic dramatists would now be prevented as incitement to disorder, or cause immediate violent reactions, and in any case the authorities would feel compelled to suppress or punish such utterances in the name of peace and the law. In Athens though, at least in the fifth and fourth centuries, no orator seems to have been dragged from the rostrum or obliged to withdraw by stone throwing or a beating, though private vengeance was not unknown. As long as its vital principle was not attacked, the demos left the individual representatives of its power to get on as best they could; these men were not invulnerable, not protected by that power in a general immunity, and if they had to be thrown to the wolves, others could be found to take their place. [^]
Distressing to Think What the Greeks Could Have Achieved
The further consequences the polis had for the life of its citizens, whom it had first so exalted, and later made prosperous on such dubious terms, are not relevant in this context, nor is the sad decline which the nation was to undergo in its homeland, while, in the East, the Greek spirit was finding important new regions to inhabit. One thing is certain: that the disposition, will and destiny of the Greeks from an integral whole, that their fate was not the work of chance, and that their withering and decay was the outcome of the political and social life that they led. It is distressing to think of the beauty and greatness which only the Greeks could have achieved, and which never came into being because of this. [Their decline was the result of their abundance and vitality — not decadence per se.] [^]
Three Phases of Greek Consciousness
On the Greek doctrine of the 'highest good', the succession or 'identification' of the blessings of life, only a few points will be added here. Three phases of consciousness can be clearly distinguished: that of Homer and Hesiod, that of the time of the nation's greatness, and lastly that attained by the reflections of the philosophers. Yet in the daily life of the later periods the echoes of the earliest phase can still be found, where the old poets and the viewpoint of myth continue to prevail. If we know anything of these matters it is because the Greeks openly dared to hope that worldly wisdom and apathy should not entirely suppress all man's deeper aspirations. [^]
Greek Priorities: Olbos Supreme
A genuine order of importance is found, though, in a document from the historical period, a poem of Solon's: “first olbos, then reputation, the love and honour of friends, and lastly the ability to terrify and harm one's enemies.” Olbos presents a difficulty, since no single word translates it; it is an expression that comes down from early antiquity and has a mythical glamour, conveying prosperity of every kind. Later, olbos is clearly distinguished from mere wealth: “If a man flourishes and has many possessions in his house, but is without noble ambition, I would not call him olbios but only a comfortable guardian of treasures.”
Pindar's list of life's chief blessings, at the end of the first Pythian ode, is shorter than Solon's: “to live happily is the most desirable thing, a noble reputation the next; anyone who attains and keeps both, says Pindar, is the possessor of the most splendid crown.” [^]
— Health
The Greeks well knew that health was the prerequisite for all other kinds of good fortune, and the fine scholium of Ariphron bears early witness to this. That of Simonides is of only slightly later date: “To be healthy is the best of all things for mortals, the second best is a noble character, the third is wealth obtained without dishonour, the fourth, to spend one's youth with dear friends.” A comic writer of the fourth century, commenting on these famous words, allowed health the first place but wanted noble character placed after wealth, since a noble person who is hungry can be terrifying." Philemon wishes first for health, then general wellbeing, thirdly a light heart, and last, not to owe money to anyone. [^]
— Wealth
Wealth, as has been said, was once among the preconditions of happiness that were the objects of naive desire; but as time went on many complained that wealth had become too important, and anyway was usually in the wrong hands. Theognis in particular is always lamenting poverty and the helplessness it brings, while riches (699) give their owner precedence over the wise, the intelligent, the eloquent and the fleet of foot. Euripides goes further: anything said by a rich man is considered wise, but a poor man, even if he speaks well, is laughed at; people would rather betroth their child to a bad rich man than to a good poor one. For most people, though they still paid lip service to 'excellence', gradually came to rate it, and even noble birth, as less important than the pleasure and power that riches could bring. Yet the rich man was surrounded by enemies and dangers that threatened and soured the enjoyment his possessions gave him, besides which he was under an obligation to display his wealth openly.
In Euripides, the rich miser, who lives austerely, is thought capable of treating his friends as enemies and even of stealing from temples." A century later, Alexis insists that the rich man should live in splendour and display the gifts he has from the gods as a sign of his gratitude: if he is secretive and pretends to have no more than others, the gods will think him ungrateful and probably take away what they have given him."
It is important to remember how many distinguished men of the middle and late periods in Greece voluntarily chose poverty, partly because the only occupation open to them would have been considered beneath them, and also because for them the dangers of wealth outweighed its benefits. [^]
— Plutarch’s Late Valuations
Much later the virtuous Plutarch predictably lays stress on the conditional and unreliable nature of all earthly possessions in order to support his doctrine of culture and education as the infallible means to attain virtue and happiness. Noble birth, he says, is a fine thing, but credit for it is only due to past generations; wealth is respected, but a matter of chance and precarious too, exposed to wicked enemies and often in the hands of the basest men; fame is sublime but not immutable; beauty envied but of brief duration; health precious but uncertain; physical strength valuable but vulnerable to age and illness, and puny compared to that of bulls, elephants and lions; of all we have, only culture is immortal and godlike. [^]
The Humanist Miscalculation
Since the great flowering of German humanism in the eighteenth century, the position of the ancient Greeks in this respect was thought to have been settled. The glory of their heroism in war and of their political achievements, their art and poetry, the beauty of their country and climate, all caused them to be considered fortunate, and Schiller's poem "The Gods of Greece' conveys all these assumptions in an image which still retains its magic. At the very least, those who lived in the age of Pericles were believed to have enjoyed rapturous happiness from one year's end to the next.
This must be one of the most tremendous historical falsifications that have ever occurred, and the more innocent and single-minded its proponents, the more irresistible it was. They were deaf to the loud united protest of the whole of recorded literature from myth onwards, and they were willfully blind as well to Greek national life in particular, attending only to its attractive aspects and usually cutting short their survey at the battle of Chaeronea, just as if the next two hundred years, in which the nation was led to the brink of physical annihilation — mainly by its own actions — were not the continuation of what had gone before. [^]
Achilles and Odysseus
In the myths and folktales of many nations, heroes are exposed to/ terrible dangers and vainly threatened by cunning and deceit. Perseus over. comes all this by means of the magic he can command, and is last heard of as a ruler in the Peloponnese. In contrast, Bellerophon, though a radiant hero like Perseus, victorious over dreadful monsters and whole tribes, goes mad and incurs the hatred of all the gods; 'presumptuously he tries to storm the dwelling of Zeus on his winged horse, but is cast down and smashed to pieces like Phaethon. If this madness, like that of Heracles, is really to be understood as symbolizing irregularities in the behaviour of the sun, the question still remains as to why it was only the Greeks who spun these terrifying stories from such material.
Another motif frequent in Greek myth and largely peculiar to it is that the most splendid creatures die young. The attitude of Greeks in the historical time towards youth and age will be discussed later, and with it the open envy of early death. This feeling is certainly prevalent in myth, and in the cases of Hippolytus and Androgeus, for instance, we do not need the interpretation that they symbolize the morning star sinking into the sea or paling before the rising sun; popular imagination and dirges are fill of divine beings who died early and violently, such as Linus, Hyacinthus, Hylas, Bormus, Cinyras, Adonis and so on. If it is true that the short heroic life of Achilles (minunthadios, panaorios) was originally meant to correspond to a forest torrent flinging itself into the sea, no obvious trace of this remains. The epic poets concentrated all that was finest into one young life and wove its melancholy destiny through it from the beginning with compelling sympathy. Achilles is so wonderful because he will die young, and that he will die young is because he is so wonderful. No matter whether he was first a nature divinity; independently of this, his apotheosis after being mortally wounded by Paris's arrow, and his union with Helen on the island of Leuce, must have come about because the Greek imagination had lavished so much of its best upon him. Many of the less glorious dead were worshipped as heroes; Achilleia were erected in many places to the son of Thetis.
In contrast to the figure of the hero who dies young, Odysseus exemplifies the mighty sufferer and survivor, the Greek as mature man. Other nations have invented tales in which a series of perilous adventures are heaped indiscriminately upon their heroes, who emerge at the end alive and happy; in the Odyssey things are different. Homer passes over the whole of the early life of Odysseus with his selfish wiles and acts of violence, and starts with the famous return from Troy. One by one the companions perish, not always because of their own guilt; the disaster in the land of the Laestrygonians is not caused by any individual's action; Scylla's victims are blameless, and the companions deal with Polyphemus more shrewdly than their leader; but their general fate represents that of the vast majority of mortals. Odysseus himself declines from his status as a king and military leader and becomes a solitary castaway. The suspense of his longing for home and family is immensely drawn out by his visit to the underworld and his dallying with Calypso, till ultimately the gods are obliged to show mercy to this man who has remained so impressive and so strong — but only to him. After the death of the suitors the hero still has some duties to perform, but then a peaceful old age ruling over contented subjects is predicted. This version however is only in the Odyssey; other legends have later lively adventures in store for him and his family, some, indeed, discreditable. [^]
Making Sense of Greek Pessimism
— Greeks Were a Tragic and Suffering People
The fact that this homeland of Hector's was till then a place of supreme happiness ensures that its destruction shows all the more clearly and poignantly the fragility of earthly things menaced by fate. All the splendour and divine favour that a ruling house could hope for had been enjoyed in abundance by the sons of Dardanus; fame, riches and material delights were theirs until the Achaeans arrived — but the outcome for most of these victors has already been told. The destinies of Trojans as well as Greeks reveal the true Greek assessment of the value of earthly things, but the gods, with their vacillating and treacherous interventions, only act as agents of a more powerful common will: the favoured races were to cease to exist.
Even on the Greek side, dark premonitions had been felt; Odysseus had pretended to be an imbecile in the hope of escaping the war, and Thetis had hidden her son among the women of Scyros, but all in vain.
Truly man is inwardly formed by the Fates for suffering, and must be able to grapple with the most terrible pain; accordingly “the gods prepare a full measure of misery for his life.” At times the gods themselves are struck by the thought that they are foolish to take sides in the dealings of these wretched mortals who grow like the leaves on the trees and vanish again. “Nothing on earth is so miserable as man!” says Zeus, “of all that breathes and creeps on its surface.” He speaks these words to the immortal horses of Achilles who are weeping for the death of Patroclus, and pities them, who never grow old, for having been given to the mortal Peleus; the god and these animals understand each other and can converse about human destinies. [^]
— “Happiness is where you are not.”
The imagination that plays with such attitudes and beliefs likes to build up a picture of a golden age when people were happier than they are now. There is a longing for escape at any price, not asking whether cruel gods existed then too. All nations have similar dream pictures, down to the trivial Land of Cockaigne. The real conditions of individual life seem all the worse by comparison; but Greek consciousness, as it is displayed in Hesiod's account of the five ages of man, probably exceeds anything in other literatures in its total pessimism and despair of both present and future. As early as Homer there began the celebration of distant peoples who lived justly and happily, which came to be a great feature of mythical geography and later invaded real geography as well; it seemed as if the outermost boundaries of the world must harbour the wellbeing that had quite disappeared from the centre: “happiness is where you are not.” [^]
— Greeks Felt Their Sufferings Intensely and With Full Awareness
The important characteristic of the Greek people was that they felt their sufferings intensely and with full awareness. In contrast to the resigned acceptance of the human condition in Eastern cultures, and to any contemplative quietism, the Greeks were exposed and vulnerable to physical and mental afflictions. Nations, in their beginnings, have only a collective consciousness of life which may even last into fairly advanced phases of civilization, but the Greeks had become individuals earlier than others, and experienced the glory as well as the pain of this condition. [^]
— Annihilation Constantly Loomed Over the Greeks
This state, too, in which and for which its citizens suffered so much, this be-all and end-all was exposed, if defeated by external enemies, not only to plundering and humiliation but, according to Greek military law, to destruction — the execution of the men, the enslavement of women and children, so that of countless Greek cities nothing but a heap of ruins remained. For those who experienced it, the transition from a life they had lived in its utmost intensity to this total annihilation must have entailed appalling human misery and rage.
This must be borne in mind in considering all the partisan struggles and upheavals which reduced the nation, materially speaking, to a shadow, until it collapsed into the hands of the Romans. [^]
— The national hatred of all that was banausic. No justification in “honest work”
To the Greek way of thinking, the obligation to work, life as toil, was itself a form of suffering, and is probably the age-old root cause of pessimism. Even in Homer, Zeus imposed toil (ponein) on mankind as a heavy curse at their birth, as Agamemnon acknowledges when he and Menelaus have to go about summoning their men individually for a nocturnal task. In Hesiod's Works and Days the gods in general are to blame for having concealed men's sustenance from them: “but for this, you could earn enough for a whole year by one day's work, and be at leisure; you could hang up your steering oar over the chimney piece and there would be an end of all this labour with oxen and mules.” But Zeus hid the means of nourishment in his anger when Prometheus deceived him; for after men were deprived of fire, which they had already possessed, Prometheus brought it back to them in a hollow reed, and in retribution Zeus sent a punishment for all future generations, one they would at first consider a blessing. This was the creation of Pandora, that is of woman herself, to be supported by man in perpetuity, “a woe to the industrious earner”, for till then people had lived without ills, sickness and painful drudgery.
The national hatred of all that was banausic, all toiling for subsistence, grew in proportion to the necessity for it. To keep slaves for labour was only possible for those who could buy them; but any dependent position, even if it could bring gain and pleasure, was a bitter thing to the free Greek, and the attitude of the polis ensured hourly reminders of the low status of honest work. [^]
— Tirades against life
There is a wide range of such tirades against life as not worth living, dating from various periods. The sophist Antiphon finds it intolerable that phrases are made about life as wonderful and sublime; he calls it petty, feeble, fleeting and shot through with great misery. Aristotle maintained that life was desirable in itself; yet these cruel words of his have been handed down: “What is man? A monument of frailty, prey to the moment, the plaything of fate, an image of reversals (of fortune), sometimes more plagued by envy, sometimes by unlucky chances; the rest is slime and bile.”
“The animals are much happier and in truth cleverer than men; the ass we abuse so much is at least not to blame for its own ills,” says Menander, and Philemon agrees with him; the animals only bear what nature imposes on them and need make no judgments and no decisions, while we men in our intolerable life have invented laws, and are slaves to opinion and to our ancestors and descendants: we perpetually find new pretexts for being unhappy.
Elsewhere the same poet says: “storms are not only met with at sea, but even when you are walking under porticos in the street, and at home in the house too; seafarers are rewarded after the gale with a favourable wind, or get safe into harbour, while I suffer storms not just for a day, but all my life long, and suffering always has the upper hand.”
The doctrine that the gods envy human talent was an old one, and Sotades later complains that the gifted endure special misfortune and come to a bad end, while the peculiar malice of fate balances great qualities with great disadvantages; he concludes: “A single day without pain is a blessing, for what are we indeed? And of what stuff are we made? Consider what life is, what you come from and what you are, and what you will become at last.” [^]
— More tirades against life
According to Pindar life is 'only the dream of a shadow”; “time hangs treacherously over mankind and rolls life's tide away with it.” Sophocles says that man is nothing but a breath and a shadow. In his Ajax, Odysseus mourns the hero's dreadful fate, inflicted by Athena as a boastful proof of divine power, as if it were his own: “for I see that all of us, all who live, are no more than phantoms and flimsy shadows.” But in a famous chorus of the old men at Colonus, Sophocles, who was the friend of Herodotus, gives a much broader range to the complaint of life:
Not to be born is best, when all is reckoned, But when a man has seen the light of day The next best thing by far is to go back Where he came from, and as quick as he can. Once youth is past, with all its follies, Every affliction comes on him, Envy, confrontation, conflict, battle, blood, And last of all, old age lies in wait to besiege him, Humiliated, cantankerous, Friendless, sick and weak, Worst evil of all.
It would be an error to believe that Sophocles was the first to declare that not to be born is better than to be born. Several tragedies of Euripides, in which the same expression (me phunai) occurs, may well be older than Oedipus at Colonus. Indeed, at some uncertain date, Homer was supposed to have replied to the question what was best for mankind: “above all, not to be born, or else to pass through Hades' gate as soon as may be.”
In that enigmatic mythical dialogue between Midas and his captive Silenus, originally from a lost work of Aristotle's, but used in Plutarch's Consolation to Apollonius (Chapter 27), the King of Phrygia asks the demigod what is best for man and most to be desired. After long silence and insistent urging the answer comes: “Frail offspring of toil and misery, why force me to tell you what it is better not to know? For there is least grief in life if each is ignorant of his misfortune; but the best thing for all mankind is not to be born, and the next best is to die as soon as possible after birth.”
Plutarch himself adds: “One might go on with countless examples of the same kind, but there is no need to make a long list?” In other nations it is very rarely, and only in extreme anguish, that anyone is said to have cursed the day they were born. [^]
Greeks Did Not Fear Death Like Moderns Do
The reason for thinking it a blessing was either that life was full of misfortune, or — a shade of feeling more frequently admitted to — that a person who had been fairly lucky up to a certain point feared vexation and unhappiness in the future. As we shall see, people sometimes died of their own free will merely because of doubts as to what awaited them, and if anything can prove that life was by no means the thing most highly prized this must be it. It goes without saying that the love of life was inborn in the Greeks as in other nations, and that most of them, like everyone else, feared death, but this fear was openly derided, and the opposite feeling often prevailed.
As for the notion that the age of Pericles was one of uninterrupted rejoicing, it is useful to hear what Pericles himself says in his funeral oration; the habitual mood, from his account, is earnest and gloomy (luperon) and needs to be dispersed by the daily diversions of competitive games, sacrifices and pleasant domestic arrangements. One hundred years later, Hyperides consoled the fellow citizens and relatives of those who fell in the Lamian War with these words: "Dying may be equivalent to not being born, but our dead are now free from sickness, sorrow and all the other ills that besiege the living." No statesman of modern times in a comparable situation could possibly express such a view. [^]
Old Age
In all neutral contexts old age is bewailed loudly and unrestrainedly, and this is frequently so in drama too. Two elements can be distinguished here; fear of old age itself because of the sufferings it brings, and the fact that the Greeks of the later period evidently felt little respect for the old; and secondly the exceedingly high value placed on youth. Sophocles, in that chorus in Oedipus at Colonus, might warn of the dangerous folly and horrible experiences that belong to youth, but by far the majority of plays glorify youth in lines that suggest the voices of mature men looking back to a lost paradise. What it comes to is that youth is the only real time of life for the Greeks, and all the rest a very dubious prolongation. [^]
The Living Were Deemed Less Fortunate Than the Dead
Great men, though, when their sons died before them, even by violence, would say only: “I knew my child was mortal.” This is reported, in exactly the same words, of Anaxagoras, Pericles, Xenophon, Demosthenes, King Antigonus and others, and even if it is an anecdote transferred from one to another, it would still indicate a widely held and generally accepted attitude. Usually this is explained simply as strength of mind, but these were thinking men, so convinced that life was worthless that they were glad their sons had the happiness of ceasing to be. The laments for the dead, especially wild and insistent in the early period, are not a sign of grief for the sake of the dead, but express the sorrow and loss of the survivors. Semonides of Amorgos says: “If we had any sense, we would not give more than one day to thinking about a person who has died.” On the island of Chios, of which we shall have more to say, the men did not mourn at all, neither cutting their hair nor wearing special clothes; only a mother whose son died young would mourn for a year.
The prospect of life's hazards must have made it easier to face an early death than it is nowadays; people understandably preferred to die before they lost their health or their possessions, and it was perhaps in this frame of mind that many ended their own lives. It was a splendid fate to die in the moment of great good fortune, because the resultant envy, whether that of gods or men, was instantly stifled. Polycrite, the heroine of Naxos, having successfully defended her hometown against the Milesians, was greeted with the most tremendous acclaim as she stood in the gateway; her joy was too much for her and she sank down dead. Another account has it that she was suffocated under the garlands and ribbons that were heaped on her. She was buried on the very spot, and the place is known as 'the tomb of envy', for the possibility of it was laid to rest with Polycrite. [^]
Making Sense of Suicide
— Life was not thought to be a gift
Hopes of the afterlife may have been positive, dubious or shadowy, but in any case there is no evidence at all as to whether people feared they would be punished for taking their own lives. Did the majority expect nothingness? and does the frequency of suicide go to prove this? What it certainly does prove is how few notable or famous people shared the Pythagorean and Orphic belief in the transmigration of souls, for suicide was totally irreconcilable with metempsychosis. Nägelsbach comments: “I have absolutely no evidence as to whether suicide was popularly regarded as a sin against the gods.” Not surprising, since life was not in their gift. [^]
— Custom on the Island of Chios
Immediately off the hilly coast of Attica lies the island of Chios, whose capital was then Iulis, and it should have been easy for the Athenians to leave an accurate record of customs there.? Instead, the surviving accounts are contradictory, the one constant feature being that old people (those in their sixties, it is said) died voluntarily and together, and that this was regulated by law. Explanations for the practice include the poor diet the island afforded, or perhaps one particular occurrence of famine when, besieged by the Athenians, the inhabitants had agreed that the old people should take their own lives. The custom is said to have arisen then, but still as a free choice, merely sanctioned by the law. In fact the common decision is also described as a free one, taken by old people when they felt they were of no use in their community and might be nearing senility. The act itself, when they drank hemlock or poppy juice together, was made into a graceful kind of festival at which everyone was crowned with wreaths. Morality on the island is said to have been very strict, and the islanders remained healthy into old age in the natural course; so without waiting to be overtaken by illness or other physical accidents a group of old people would determine on the day for their shared death. As we have already mentioned, mourning for the dead was not much observed on Chios.
It is not one of these communal festivals, but the voluntary death of a single old woman of Chios that is described by Valerius Maximus, who witnessed it during the reign of Tiberius, while travelling in Greece with Sextus Pompeius, the great-grandson of Pompey the Great. His report throws light on the whole subject of suicide among the Greeks. A respected citizeness, over ninety years of age, had given public notice of her intention to take hemlock, and expressed the wish that her death might be honoured (clarior) by the presence of Sextus Pompeius; he came to her and tried to dissuade her by an eloquent address. Lying half-raised on her couch, which was beautifully arranged for the occasion, she first thanked him for taking the trouble to urge her to live, as well as for coming to look on at her death; she said she had always been fortunate, and did not want to risk future misery by merely clinging to life. She advised her two daughters and several grandchildren to live in harmony, and distributed her possessions among them, giving the sacred objects of her household and her jewels to her elder daughter; then she bravely grasped the beaker, poured a libation to Hermes while calling on him to bring her gently to a pleasant place in the underworld, and drank off the poison in one eager draught. She described how her limbs were gradually stiffening, and as death slowly neared her heart she asked her daughters to close her eyes. Even the Romans were moved to tears at her death. [^]
— Enduring the Vicissitudes of Life
As elsewhere, it was recognized in Greece from ancient times that true greatness might consist in enduring the most terrible situations. One of the most powerful utterances of Odysseus is his cry “Bear this, too, my heart, you have suffered worse things!” — and when, while he sleeps, his companions have caused catastrophe by opening the wind bag of Aeolus, he still has the strength to ponder whether to let himself be submerged in the sea, or to live on: “I suffered and stood firm.” He wraps himself in his cloak and lies down on the deck of the ship. Yet Heracles, the greatest of all the heroes who suffered, ended his own pain on the pyre of Oeta; this was the Greek understanding of the myth, even if it is true that it originally signified the end of the solar year. [^]
— Slavery Being Worse than Death Informed View of Suicide
Among the serious reasons for suicide generally admitted without argument in antiquity, including the Roman period, was any incurable illness. The prolongation of life for such an invalid by medical skill was openly disapproved of, and an extract from Plato on the subject is worth quoting:
“Sickly people should not go on living, or at least not have children. Asclepius taught the art of healing for those who can be helped in temporary illness, but he never undertook the carefully regulated bleeding and dressing of bodies that are inwardly diseased, only to prolong a miserable existence, and to produce children who in all probability will beget others equally afflicted. Such patients, he believed, ought not to be treated 'since they can be of no use to themselves, or the state ... even if it were a person as rich as Midas.”
A similar argument in Euripides concludes with this forthright proposal: “If people in this condition are of no use in the world, they should depart from it, and not stand in the way of those who are younger.”
Extreme old age was also held to be sufficient reason for the decision to die, especially if illness or mental debility threatened; this may best be discussed in connection with the deaths of philosophers.
Again, everywhere in the world there must be sympathy, or at least not blame, for the practice followed by Greeks defeated in war, who had not died defending their city walls; if they had time, they all took their own lives together after first killing their wives and children. This behaviour was perfectly appropriate and even generally admired, given that these Greek poleis, so often held up as a model, all shared a rule of war by which the defeated men were massacred and the women and children all sold into slavery. “I tell you one thing only; do not allow yourself to be taken alive into servitude, as long as you can still choose to die free,” says Euripides, “and the ancient writers are unanimous in the view that slavery is worse than death.” If the victor can do as he likes without restraint of any kind, suicide is the indisputable right of the vanquished, and we cannot attach a moral stigma to their last desperate means of saving themselves; to do so would be siding with the chance possessors of a detestable power. [^]
— Hatred of Mere Life Produced Noble View of Suicide
Wherever dishonour', in the widest sense, might threaten, the general sentiment naturally approved of suicide. Twice in Euripides' Helen (80 and 981) Menelaus explains, in eloquent words that must have impressed themselves on his hearers, the method he would use, in case of need, to kill first his wife and then himself on the tomb of Proteus. This does not of course occur — it is just that the poet seizes the opportunity to arouse emotion - but 'to be in love with life' (philopsychia) is a reproach, and one that the Greek would defend himself personally against, as the tragic dramatist avoids it for his heroic characters. “Only a coward or a fool,” says Sophocles “will cling to life in misfortune.” Servants and slaves are often accused of “loving life,” a low trait which distinguishes them from free men.
Agathocles pacified a savage revolt in his camp in Africa by threatening the soldiers, his “comrades”, with his suicide, saying it was not his way to submit to an outrage from mere cowardice and love of life — and at once they let him lead them to victory, while the Carthaginians were expecting them to desert. [^]
Awesome one, best one yet