SOCIAL LIFE IN ANCIENT GREECE.*
THE book before us is one of the most interesting and suggestive of the lighter works on serious subjects that we have seen for a long time, and will well repay any one occupied in the study of Greek literature for the comparatively short time he will have to devote to it, to say nothing of its thoughtful, pleasant, and often amusing style, and frequent modern allusions and illustrations, which give it a charm for the general reader, for whom, indeed, it was intended by the author. At first, it is true, we felt a dis- inclination to the perusal of a book which we suspected of an in- tention to attempt the upsetting of all our ideas on Greek life, in the same sort of way that we have lately been told that all our childish ideas on the character of Cleon, Richard III., and Henry VIII. were the exact reverse of what the ingenious histor- ians have now (as they say) discovered to be the truth. Mr. Mahaffy, however, is so moderate and so scrupulously fair and frank in stating whatever he knows to be objections to his con- clusions, that even where he does not convince us of the truth of his views, we feel no vexation with him, but, on the contrary, a certainty that he has thrown all the light on the subject which his wide scholarship has enabled him to give.
The subject of this book—the subjective side of old Greek life —has been so little noticed by English scholars hitherto, that its introduction is like the discovery of a new metal in the well- worked mine of classical research. The mode, too, in which it is here treated is full of vigour, and totally free from conventionality. The very language which Mr. Mahaffy uses gives us a sense of the reality of and a familiarity with the people and things of which we are reading, that can never be gained amidst the technicalities of the scholars (at least up to Mr. Grote's time). It is pleasant to hear Penelope and Aspasia spoken of as "ladies," and it is even refreshing to have Alcibiades called a "thorough snob," in relation to his brutal treatment of his wife, and to his cruel vanity in cutting off the tail of a mag- nificent dog which he possessed, in order that people might "talk of that, and say nothing worse of him."
Mr. Mahaffy divides his subject roughly into three periods,—the Homeric age, the Lyric age, and the Attic Age ; and he also devotes separate chapters to "Attic Culture," "Religion in the Attic Age," and "The Business Habits of the Greeks.". With regard to the Homeric and the Lyric age, Mr. Mahaffy does not pretend to be able to gather from his authorities more than hints
• Social Life in Greece, from Homer to Menander. By the Bev. J. P. Mahaffy, M.A. London : Macmillan and Co. 1874.
and suggestions, though in the former case these are sufficient for a general sketch of life and manners. In the latter, they "allow little more than scattered reflections, often inconsistent, and scanty inferences, always uncertain." The essays, therefore, on these early ages are only intended as a necessary introduction to the later ones on Athenian life. In his first chapter, the author expresses his opinion that, "In connection more particularly with such theories .as those of Mr. Froude, which endeavour to get rid of the refine- ments of philosophers and politicians, and to reduce the motives of society to rude violence and successful force, the best possible antidote is to study the various phases through which the society and the morals of such a people as the Greeks passed."
After speaking of those differences between ancient and modern society which are caused by the abolition of slavery and the in- vention of printing, and considering the enormous contrasts between the religion of the Greeks and Christianity, Mr. Mahaffy naturally wonders "not at the greatness, but at the smallness of the advance in public morality which has been attained," and he concludes his introductory chapter with a boldness which we may admire,—though we do not agree with him, in a clerical Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, in the following words :—" Socrates and Plato are far superior to the Jewish moralists ; they are far :superior to the average Christian moralist ; it is only in the match- less teaching of Christ himseif that we find them surpassed. So, then, the social life of the Greeks is more than a matter of anti- quarian curiosity. It is of practical value and interest to us all." Considering the very immoral doctrines of parts of Plato's Republic, we cannot in the least admit, however, that Plato came near the morality of Isaiah and Ezekiel, to say nothing of the ruder morality of the earlier Hebrew periods, on many of the most important questions of human life.
But it is time to state some of the more noticeable conclusions arrived at in Mr. Mahaffy's book. The first is that from the Homeric poems scholars have drawn a much exaggerated idea of the happiness of men in those early days, that probably the "dim, common populations" in those times were in the condition of Hesiod's unfortunate men of the Iron Age, and that the Homeric poems only describe the upper classes of society and those in immediate connection with them ; that for their benefit gods were described as occasionally running away in battle, and goddesses as engaging in intrigues. In fact, it is contended that the early poets, with the exception of Hesiod, were a number of courtiers who accommodated their poems to the weaknesses of their patrons. Our readers, however, must go to Mr. Mahaffy himself for the working-out of this argument, in which, by the way, he suggests that the councils of the Chiefs could not have been such nullities as represented in Homer ; that the common people were beginning to feel their importance in the State, and that Thersites was perhaps as much maligned by the poet, as Cleon, according to Mr. Grote, was by the historian. On the other hand, it is well shown in the book before us that women held a much more natural and honourable position in early times than they did afterwards in the day of Pericles, "at any rate, in the most perfect and ex- clusively Athenian society—that is to say, among Thucydides' and Sophocles' set "—if we are to trust the former in his recom- mendation of the obscurity of women put into the mouth of Pericles. But on Thucydides, as a general rule, Mr. Mahaffy looks with dislike and suspicion, as far as his authority on social matters goes, and he contends that the Greeks of the Periclean period are more truly represented in the pages of Herodotus. This is, perhaps, true, and at any rate, Mr. Mahaffy puts his arguments on that head very for- cibly ; but be has an aversion to Thucydides which is quite amusing, and leads to constant remarks on his " dryness," his " surliness," and his " sameness," which forcibly remind us of the way in which Staunton, in his edition of Shakespeare, keeps snapping at that poor fellow, " Mr. Collier's annotator." But the generality of Athenian women, even in later times, he contends, on the evidence of Euripides, were still in the natural position of being not only the wives, but the trusted friends and helpers of their husbands ; and he argues that since Euripides (according to a saying attributed to Sophocles) "represented men as they were, and Sophocles men as they ought to be," we must modify all notions of Athenian society which are drawn exclusively from Thucydides, Sophocles, and Aristophanes. (It is rather curious, by the way, to compare this view of Euri- pides and Sophocles with Mr. Matthew Arnold's estimate of Sophocles as the most truly modern of poets.) But with all due deference to Mr. Mahaffy's scholarship and great familiarity with these three authors, whose evidence on social matters he depre- ciates, it seems to us that he is inclined to appeal to them as authorities when they make in favour of his theories, and to un- derrate them when they do not. As to his favourite Euripides, he hopes the time is soon coming when English scholars will judge that author "through his own works, and not through those of either ancient buffoons or modern pedants." This is hard on Aristophanes, and we think that from the very book before us it could be shown that there was something to be said from his point of view. As an in- stance of this unfairness (though not an important one), Mr. Mahaffy claims as a merit of Euripides the " utterly novel and bold idea of introducing heroes in a state of penury upon the stage," and in a note to the very same passage be finds fault with Aristophanes for noticing this as a peculiarity of Euripides, " whereas the Philoctetes of Sophocles offers us as strong a case as any in Euripides both of a hero in rags and a hero in villany (Odysseus)." On the whole, too, it seems to us that the evi- dence of Euripides himself, if we accept Mr. Mahaffy's view that his characters are the pictures of the men of his own day, bears out the remarks of Thucydides on the moral effects of the civil wars, to which Mr. Mahaffy, in another part of his book, apparently takes exception, as attributing the effect to a wrong cause. Another point on which our author admits Aristophanes to be a good witness is the slighting manner in which old age was treated at Athens, compared to the respect in which it was held by the Spartans and the Romans, and with which it is still regarded among us, notwithstanding the frequent complaints (half comical, indeed,) of the elders among us concerning the undue import- ance given to the rising generation, and the habit the world is getting into of giving way in everything to "the young people." A propos of this subject, Mr. Mahaffy quotes from a book of travels an account of the custom of a savage tribe in Borneo, who make their old and useless members climb up into the trees, and then dance round them singing, " The fruit is ripe, the fruit is ripe," and then shake the trees till the victims fall down, when they are cooked and eaten.
But to turn to lighter social questions, Mr. Mahaffy contrasts Greek dinner-parties favourably with dull, English, stately feasts, and compares the conversation to that among a lively people like the Irish. Their cooking, however, was far superior, and he re- joices that the attention of modern ladies is now being turned to this essential element of comfort in our households. It is a curious point, lie observes, that the professors of this art were expected to deal in Doric Greek and Homeric phrases, just as our menus are written in French, often quite incomprehensible to the waiters, one of whom, at an Oxford college, lately informed a guest who asked for the " menu " that it was "all gone, sir." These cooks, caterers, and fishmongers seem to have held a very undue im- portance in Athenian society, and from what we read of them, it would have been the very last idea that would have entered any- body's head to wish, with Hamlet, that any of his acquaintances were " so honest a man " as a fishmonger.
Our lady readers will be interested in the fact that high-heeled shoes, false and dyed hair, rouge, and pearl-powder were in common use among the respectable classes at Athens about the time of Xenophon, and are condemned in the treatise on (Eco- nomics which bears his name, whoever the author may have been. The athletic class of readers will be edified by the com- parison drawn between the Greeks and the English, in their contempt for foreigners and the mixture of seriousness and sport in these two peoples, in the one case shown by the games and contests which were part of their religion, and in the other by the sort of religious earnestness entering into their athletic contests, —their boat-races, for example. Our lawyers, again, and especially those of th e present Government, with its reactionary Conservatism, will feel comfort in the fact that, advanced as the legal system of the litigious Athenians was, the suitors were still subject to delays as great as ever disgraced our Court of Chancery, for this will encourage them in their apparent feeling that our present system is perhaps as perfect as any that the ingenuity of man can invent.
But we should never have done, if we tried to exhaust all the points of interest in the book before us ; and we have only to add that Mr. Mahaffy's scrupulous fairness has led him, at least in one instance, to use an argument from results in palliation of Greek, as compared with modern immorality, which is quite indefensible.
Previous page
