Fragments
The Greeks and “Progress”
In evaluating different civilizations, we tend nowadays to think in terms of “progress” and of “inventions”, a method of accounting by which the Greeks come off very badly. The Egyptians and the Babylonians had been industrious peoples thousands of years earlier, and had the most remarkable achievements to their credit in technology, engineering and chemistry, before they ever started on their barefaced borrowing and stealing. “The Greeks did not leave behind a single practical invention worth speaking of”, says Hellwald, “and even in the realm of thought and creativity they completely failed to throw off the powerful influences of the Near East.”
One might answer Hellwald by saying that what they did was merely to put their imprint on everything they touched. As for progress, there are two things to be said. First, it is obviously an error to think that intellectual progress must necessarily be preceded by the material enrichment and refinement of life, on the premise that barbarism can only disappear when poverty is overcome.
In certain favored races, even when the culture is materially primitive, and in the absence of that “comfort” which Hellwald prizes so highly and is at such pains to distinguish from luxury, we see the most perfect and abundant beauty in all that relates to the inner life of the people. What, for example, can surpass the story of Nausicaa in spiritual beauty and delicacy?
Similarly, material wealth and refinement of living conditions are no guarantee against barbarism. The social classes that have benefited from this kind of progress are often, under a veneer of luxury, crude and vulgar in the extreme, and those whom it has left untouched even more so.Besides, progress brings with it the exploitation and exhaustion of the earth's surface, as well as the increase and consequent proletarianization of the urban population, in short, everything that leads inevitably to decline, to the condition in which the world casts about for “refreshment” from the as yet untapped powers of Nature, that is, for a new “primitiveness” — or barbarism.
The Function of Heroic Myth
Heroic myth separates this world of remote antiquity from that of history, sometimes only as a thin veil, sometimes as a solid dense curtain; from beyond it we may see a faint gleam or hear the clash of arms and the stamping of horses, distant cries and the rhythmic stroke of oars; the sounds, the gleam of past happenings that can no longer penetrate to us as actual historical facts. And it is scarcely even to be regretted that they cannot; those old pirates might well be glad that we can know so little about them for certain; the knowledge would probably not be very edifying. Only the curtain transforms the factual, the transitory, into the immortal.
The Special Allure of Greek Heroic Myth
Everywhere there was a dual process. On the one hand the Greeks came with lovingly preserved legends of the travels of their intrepid compatriots; on the other, wherever Greek civilization penetrated, the other nations received their mythology as a wonderful invention and wished to be linked with it themselves. But it is no longer possible to determine the relative importance of the Greeks’ urge to expansion and the eagerness of the other peoples to meet them halfway.
What is certain is that everything local was envisaged mythologically, and it was at the ends of the earth that poetry felt most at home. The half-fabulous or entirely fabulous races, the Lapiths, Centaurs, Pygmies and so on already formed a frieze that challenged and improved on reality, framing the life of the heroic Greeks. Add to this the land of the Hyperboreans with its mysterious landscape so wonderfully described by Sophocles, and the journey of Helios bearing the golden cup over the ocean that Stesichorus sings of, and we glimpse a great mythical world in which Earth and Sky are seen in a mighty, fabulous relationship. Beyond the Ocean dwell the Gorgons, on the farthest limits, with Night, where the voices of the Hesperides resound, and at the ends of the earth, beyond these voices, stands Atlas, holding up the sky on his head and his tireless hands. Ocean surrounds Earth with the sea, flowing back on itself; from it all waters spring — sea, rivers and fountains, and this must have been explained by the idea of a subterranean flux; the sun rises and sets in the sea, and the stars, like the gods, bathe in it. Both good and terrible things are found by the sea; the Ethiopians, the Cimmerians, Elysium, the groves of Persephone, and again, as we have said, the Gorgons, and the waters of the Styx are a tithe of its flow. Here too are the Islands of the Blessed, they too, as Pindar says, cooled by the breezes of Ocean.
The regions of Dante's nether world can be surveyed and mapped; these cannot, least of all the Tartarus of Hesiod's Theogony. A bronze anvil would fall from Earth for nine days and nine nights before reaching it; the domain itself is surrounded by a brazen wall, and Night flows about its shoulders; above grow the roots of Earth and the Sea — we may think of them as a vaulted roof — and in misty darkness the Titans sit there captive. There too are the sources (that is, the origin) and the ends of Earth, and also of Tartarus itself, of the Sea and of the starry Heaven; they are described as fearful, mouldering, a horror to the gods themselves. This place, an enormous abyss, is perpetually swept by a terrible storm-wind coming from all sides at once, and there stands the dreadful House of Night; outside it stands Atlas, supporting the vault of the sky, where (evidently at a gate of Tartarus) Night and Day, swiftly changing, greet each other as, one coming, the other going, they cross the great threshold.
Greek Myth Remained Unmolested by Dysgenic Priests
A word is needed about the degree to which Greek myth was elaborated and the many forms in which it was handed down. These forms, as the Greeks knew them, were various; epic poetry that far surpasses any other red in the world, a great series of cyclical epics, a wealth of dramas, religious rituals cast in dramatic form, superb visual art and, lastly, the work of anthologists, of commentators on the poets and so on. No theological systems had affected myth, and no tendentious interpretation — at least none that left any traces — nor had it ever been intentionally restricted or mutilated.
Informing the Fundamental Principle of Greek Life
Turning to the subject of the temperament and behavior of the hero, one point immediately strikes us; the fundamental principle of Greek life has already been established, and remains valid for later times:
“Always to be the best and to outdo the others.”
But this does not imply the hero's being an ideal of humanity. All his actions and his passions go to extremes; what is ideal in him lies in the beauty and freshness he embodies. He is not haunted by nobility of soul, aspirations to dignity or moral perfection; he represents the wholly unspoiled, spontaneous egoism of human nature, unrepentant but great-hearted and benign. Thus the poet is able to base his rich edifice on a strong foundation.
Achilles and Odysseus
One main aspect of the heroic character is embodied in Homer's Odysseus, the other, just as clearly, in Achilles. This hero is presented to us in his striving for the superhuman, in the excess of his passion and in his insatiable hatred of the Greeks, for whose downfall, with the exception of himself and Patroclus, he longs; and then again in his deep grieving for his dead friend and in his terrible and total vengeance on Hector, which draws down on him the strong condemnation of Apollo and of Zeus himself. With all his faults he has greatness of soul; he knows he is doomed to a brief life, and how soon his death must follow upon Hector's, but in contrast to Hector's melancholy, Achilles faces his death with sublime tranquillity. Finally his full nobility is displayed at the funeral games for Patroclus and in the encounter with Priam. The process of his divine transcendence, for which we are prepared by various indications throughout the poem, reaches its completion here; but even in these last speeches, when full emotional sympathy has been established between him and Priam, he still warns the king, who has merely expressed impatience, not to anger him, since otherwise he fears he may yet kill him…
Cunning is perfectly permissible, and even deceit; Odysseus is the incarnation of it, and will use it even against a comrade such as Philoctetes, so long as the main objective is served. In earlier years Odysseus had intended to obtain poison for his arrows, but he only succeeded much later, because the man he first asked feared the gods. Thus one may have a bad conscience about an action and do it none the less.
Fame After Death is the Heroic Ambition
The gods have it in their power to bestow glory upon the heroes and even to lend a radiance to their persons, so that on occasion a glimpse of the supernatural is seen in them, and Odysseus at certain moments appears divine. Fame after death is also an heroic ambition. Hector thinks of those who will sail through the Hellespont in time to come, and see the monument set up to the man he is to vanquish, so that the victor's fame will be preserved. The Greek who successfully spies on the Trojans is promised the reward of towering fame among all men, and before a battle they reflect that whatever happens the vanquished will enhance the glory of the victor." Always, the greatest events are bound to be sung of by later generations.
A Non-Utilitarian, Noble, and High-Bred World
Although the age is by no means a golden one, and in spite of the predominance of evil and ill fortune, still the heroic existence is pervaded by the ideal. Other nations will always envy one whose normal picture of the imagined past resembled the world of Homer. It is, of course, a "non-utilitarian' world, in which, characteristically, apart from poetic similes, the peasant never appears except as the guardian of movable property, as a shepherd, and once indeed, in the case of Laertes, as a gardener. On the other hand splendid figures like Eumaeus and Eurycleia are highly idealized. For everything in this world is noble and high-bred; serving and menial tasks appear only in relation to the heroes, and reflect their radiant existence.
Banausic Activities Are Not Completely Despised
In this world of heroes there is occasionally a protest against the banausic, though Hesiod shows no hostility to it. Euryalus the Phaeacian unfavorably compares the merchant seafarer, whose eyes are fixed on his wares and his miserly gains, with the man skilled in competitive games (Odyssey VIII.159-64). Certainly there could be no stronger contrast than that between the banausic way of life and one where the great issue is whether a man dies and brings fame to his opponent, or conquers and wins fame for himself. At the same time, a man's ability to turn his hand to anything does not derogate from the heroic ideal. Laertes is a gardener, Achilles carves the meat for his guests, Odysseus builds his raft with his own hands and takes pride in even more trivial things: “In the skill of service,” he says to Eumaeus “no mortal can compete with me, in building a fire properly, splitting firewood, carving and roasting and pouring wine” (Odyssey XV.321-4). Nor does going out to wash the clothes diminish the nobility of the king's daughter; Nausica casually asks her father for the wagon, explaining that she has to see to the washing for him and her five brothers, three of whom are still unmarried and always wanting clean linen for the dancing.
Heroic Age: Window Into the Inner Sanctum of Greek Life
As a whole, the world of the heroes was one of such brilliance that people could cherish the idea that some of them, especially those who had fought at Troy, had not really died, but been taken by Zeus to live in the Islands of the Blessed, on the margins of the world. This idea is expressed in Works and Days (166 ff.); but here, the heroes are succeeded by the fifth generation of man, and with it the most extreme declaration of the arguments of Greek pessimism, so that in spite of all the violence and suffering they had endured, the heroic forerunners retreat by comparison into a golden cloud. Although mythical, these figures, for us, are historical in the most important sense; they show us the changing phases of the inner life of the Greeks, of which we would otherwise know nothing.