The Life of Greece

  Custom and religion among the Greeks exercise a very modest restraint upon the victor in war. It is a regular matter, even in civil wars, to sack the conquered city, to finish off the wounded, to slaughter or enslave all unransomed prisoners and all captured noncombatants, to burn down the houses, the fruit trees, and the crops, to exterminate the live stock, and to destroy the seed for future sowings.50 At the opening of the Peloponnesian War the Spartans butcher as enemies all Greeks whom they find on the sea, whether allies of Athens or neutrals;51 at the battle of Aegospotami, which closes the war, the Spartans put to death three thousand Athenian prisoners52—almost the selected best of Athens’ depleted citizenry. War of some kind—of city against city or of class against class—is a normal condition in Hellas. In this way the Greece that defeated the King of Kings turns upon itself, Greek meets Greek in a thousand battles, and in the course of a century after Marathon the most brilliant civilization in history consumes itself in a prolonged national suicide.

  V. CHARACTER

  If we are still attracted to these reckless disputants it is because they cover the nakedness of their sins with an exhilarating vigor of enterprise and intellect. The nearness of the sea, the opportunities of trade, the freedom of economic and political life form the Athenian to an unprecedented excitability and resilience of temper and thought, a very fever of mind and sense. What a change from the Orient to Europe, from the drowsy southern regions to these intermediate states where winter is cold enough to invigorate without dulling, and summer warm enough to liberate without enfeebling body and soul! Here is faith in life and man, a zest of living never rivaled again until the Renaissance.

  Out of this stimulating milieu comes courage, and an impulsiveness all the world away from the sophrosyne—self-control—which the philosophers vainly preach, or the Olympian serenity which young Winckelmann and old Goethe will foist upon the passionate and restless Greeks. A nation’s ideals are usually a disguise, and are not to be taken as history. Courage and temperance—andreia, or manliness, and the meden agan, or “nothing in excess” of the Delphic inscription—are the rival mottoes of the Greek; he realizes the one frequently enough, but the other only in his peasants, philosophers, and saints. The average Athenian is a sensualist, but with a good conscience; he sees no sin in the pleasures of sense, and finds in them the readiest answer to the pessimism that darkens his meditative intervals. He loves wine, and is not ashamed to get drunk now and then; he loves women, in an almost innocently physical way, easily forgives himself for promiscuity, and does not look upon a lapse from virtue as an irremediable disaster. Nevertheless he dilutes two parts of wine with three of water, and considers repeated drunkenness an offense against good taste. Though he seldom practices moderation he sincerely worships it, and formulates more clearly than any other people in history the ideal of self-mastery.

  The Athenians are too brilliant to be good, and scorn stupidity more than they abominate vice. They are not all sages, and we must not picture their woman as all lovely Nausicaas or stately Helens, or their men as combining the courage of Ajax with Nestor’s wisdom; history has remembered the geniuses of Greece and has ignored her fools (except Nicias); even our age may seem great when most of us are forgotten, and only our mountain peaks have escaped the obscurity of time. Discounting the pathos of distance, the average Athenian remains as subtle as an Oriental, as enamored of novelty as an American; endlessly curious and perpetually mobile; always preaching a Parmenidean calm and always tossed upon a Heracleitean sea. No people ever had a livelier fancy, or a readier tongue. Clear thought and clear expression seem divine things to the Athenian; he has no patience with learned obfuscation, and looks upon informed and intelligent conversation as the highest sport of civilization. The secret of the exuberance of Greek life and thought lies in this, that to the Greek, man is the measure of all things. The educated Athenian is in love with reason, and seldom doubts its ability to chart the universe. The desire to know and understand is his noblest passion, and as immoderate as the rest. Later he will discover the limits of reason and human effort, and by a natural reaction will fall into a pessimism strangely discordant with the characteristic buoyancy of his spirit. Even in the century of his exuberance the thought of his profoundest men—who are not his philosophers but his dramatists—will be clouded over with the elusive brevity of delight and the patient pertinacity of death.

  As inquisitiveness generates the science of Greece, so acquisitiveness establishes and dominates its economy. “Love of wealth wholly absorbs men,” says Plato, with the exaggeration usual in moralists, “and never for a moment allows them to think of anything but their own private possessions; on this the soul of every citizen hangs suspended.”53 The Athenians are competitive animals, and stimulate one another with nearly ruthless rivalry. They are shrewd, and give the Semites a close run in cunning and stratagem; they are every bit as stiff-necked as the Biblical Hebrews, as pugnacious, obstinate, and proud. They bargain virulently in buying and selling, argue every point in conversation, and, when they cannot make war upon other countries, quarrel among themselves. They are not given to sentiment, and disapprove of Euripides’ tears. They are kind to animals and cruel to men: they regularly use torture upon unaccused slaves, and sleep heartily, to all appearances, after slaughtering a cityful of noncombatants. Nevertheless they are generous to the poor or the disabled; and when the Assembly learns that the granddaughter of Aristogeiton the tyrannicide is living in destitution on Lemnos, it provides funds to bring her to Athens and to give her a dowry and a husband. The oppressed and hunted of other cities find a sympathetic refuge in Athens.

  In truth the Greek does not think of character in our terms. He aspires neither to the conscience of the good bourgeois, nor to the sense of honor of the aristocrat. To the Greek the best life is the fullest one, rich in health, strength, beauty, passion, means, adventure, and thought. Virtue is arete, manly—literally and originally, martial—excellence (Ares, Mars); precisely what the Romans called vir-tus, man-liness. The Athenian ideal man is the kalokagathos, who combines beauty and justice in a gracious art of living that frankly values ability, fame, wealth, and friends as well as virtue and humanity; as with Goethe, self-development is everything. Along with this conception goes a degree of vanity whose candor is hardly to our taste: the Greeks never tire of admiring themselves, and announce at every turn their superiority to other warriors, writers, artists, peoples. If we wish to understand the Greeks as against the Romans we must think of the French vs. the English; if we wish to feel the Spartan spirit as opposed to the Athenian we must think of the Germans vs. the French.

  All the qualities of the Athenians come together to make their city-state. Here is the creation and summation of their vigor and courage, their brilliance and loquacity, their unruliness and acquisitiveness, their vanity and patriotism, their worship of beauty and freedom. They are rich in passions but poor in prejudices. Now and then they tolerate religious intolerance, not as a check upon thought but as a weapon in partisan politics, and as a bound to moral experimentation; otherwise they insist upon a degree of liberty that seems fantastically chaotic to their Oriental visitors. But because they are free, because, ultimately, every office is open to every citizen, and each is ruled and ruler in turn, they give half their lives to their state. Home is where they sleep; they live in the market place, in the Assembly, in the Council, in the courts, in the great festivals, athletic contests, and dramatic spectacles that glorify their city and its gods. They recognize the right of the state to conscript their persons and their wealth for its needs. They forgive its exactions because it gives more opportunity for human development than man has ever known before; they fight for it fiercely because it is the mother and guardian of their liberties. “Thus,” says Herodotus, “did the Athenians increase in strength. And it is plain enough, not from this instance only but from many examples, that freedom is an excellent thing; since even the Athenians, who, while they continued under the rule of dictators, we
re not a whit more valiant than any of their neighbors, no sooner shook off the yoke than they became decidedly the first of all.”54

  VI. PREMARITAL RELATIONS

  In morality, as in alphabet, measures, weights, coinage, costume, music, astronomy, and mystic cults, classic Athens seems more Oriental than European. The physical basis of love is accepted frankly by both sexes; the love philters that anxious ladies brew for negligent men have no merely Platonic aim. Premarital chastity is required of respectable women, but among unmarried men after the ephebic period there are few moral restraints upon desire. The great festivals, though religious in origin, are used as safety valves for the natural promiscuity of humanity; sexual license on such occasions is condoned in the belief that monogamy may be more easily achieved during the balance of the year. No stigma is attached in Athens to the occasional intercourse of young men with courtesans; even married men may patronize them without any greater moral penalty than a scolding at home and a slightly tarnished reputation in the city.58 Athens officially recognizes prostitution, and levies a tax upon its practitioners.59

  With a career so open to talent, harlotry becomes in Athens, as in most other cities of Greece, a well-plied profession with many specialties. The lowest order of them, the pornai, live chiefly at the Piraeus, in common brothels marked for the convenience of the public with the phallic symbol of Priapus. An obol secures admission to these houses, where the girls, so lightly clad that they are called gymnai (naked), allow their prospective purchasers to examine them like dogs in a kennel. A man may strike a bargain for any period of time, and may arrange with the madam of the house to take a girl to live with him for a week, a month, or a year; sometimes a girl is hired out in this way to two or more men, distributing her time among them according to their means.61 Higher than these girls in the affection of the Athenians are the auletrides, or flute-players, who, like the geisha of Japan, assist at “stag” entertainments, provide music and gaiety, perform dances artistic or lascivious, and then, if properly induced, mingle with the guests and spend the night with them.62 A few old courtesans may stave off destitution by developing training schools for such flute girls, and teaching them the science of cosmetic adornment, personal transfiguration, musical entertainment, and amorous dalliance. Tradition hands down carefully from one generation of courtesans to another, like a precious heritage, the arts of inspiring love by judicious display, holding it by coy refusal, and making it pay.63 Nevertheless some of the auletrides, if we may take Lucian’s word for it from a later age, have tender hearts, know real affection, and ruin themselves, Camille-like, for their lovers’ sakes. The honest courtesan is an ancient theme hoary with the dignity of age.

  The highest class of Greek courtesans is composed of the hetairai—literally, companions. Unlike the pornai, who are mostly of Oriental birth, the hetairai are usually women of the citizen class, who have fallen from the respectability or fled from the seclusion required of Athenian maids and matrons. They live independently, and entertain at their own homes the lovers whom they lure. Though they are mostly brunettes by nature, they dye their hair yellow in the belief that Athenians prefer blondes; and they distinguish themselves, apparently under legal compulsion, by wearing flowery robes.64 By occasional reading, or attending lectures, some of them acquire a modest education, and amuse their cultured patrons with learned conversation. Thais, Diotima, Thargelia, and Leontium, as well as Aspasia, are celebrated as philosophical disputants, and sometimes for their polished literary style.65 Many of them are renowned for their wit, and Athenian literature has an anthology of hetairai epigrams.66 Though all courtesans are denied civil rights, and are forbidden to enter any temple but that of their own goddess, Aphrodite Pandemos, a select minority of the hetairai enjoy a high standing in male society at Athens; no man is ashamed to be seen with these; philosophers contend for their favors; and an historian chronicles their history as piously as Plutarch.67

  In such ways a number of them achieve a certain scholastic immortality. There is Clepsydra, so named because she accepts and dismisses her lovers by the hourglass; Thargelia, who, as the Mata Hari of her time, serves the Persians as a spy by sleeping with as many as possible of the statesmen of Athens;68 Theoris, who consoles the old age of Sophocles, and Archippe, who succeeds her about the ninth decade of the dramatist’s life;69 Archeanassa, who amuses Plato,70 and Danae and Leontium, who teach Epicurus the philosophy of pleasure; Themistonoe, who practices her art until she has lost her last tooth and her last lock of hair; and the businesslike Gnathaena, who, having spent much time in the training of her daughter, demands a thousand drachmas ($1000) as the price of the young lady’s company for a night.71 The beauty of Phryne is the talk of fourth-century Athens, since she never appears in public except completely veiled, but, at the Eleusinian festival, and again on the feast of the Poseidonia, disrobes in the sight of all, lets down her hair, and goes to bathe in the sea.72 For a time she loves and inspires Praxiteles, and poses for his Aphrodites; from her, too, Apelles takes his Aphrodite Anadyomene.73 So rich is Phryne from her loves that she offers to rebuild the walls of Thebes if the Thebans will inscribe her name on the structure, which they stubbornly refuse to do. Perhaps she asks too large an honorarium from Euthias; he revenges himself by indicting her on a charge of impiety. But a member of the court is one of her clients, and Hypereides, the orator, is her devoted lover; Hypereides defends her not only with eloquence but by opening her tunic and revealing her bosom to the court. The judges look upon her beauty, and vindicate her piety.74

  Lais of Corinth, says Athenaeus, “appears to have been superior in beauty to any woman that had ever been seen.”75 As many cities as claimed Homer dispute the honor of having witnessed her birth. Sculptors and painters beg her to pose for them, but she is coy. The great Myron, in his old age, persuades her; when she disrobes he forgets his white hair and beard, and offers her all his possessions for one night; whereupon she smiles, shrugs her rounded shoulders, and leaves him statueless. The next morning, burning with readolescence, he has his hair trimmed, and his beard cut off; he puts on a scarlet robe and a golden girdle, a chain of gold around his neck and rings on all his fingers. He colors his cheeks with rouge, and perfumes his garments and his flesh. He seeks out Lais, and announces that he loves her. “My poor friend,” she replied, seeing through his metamorphosis, “you are asking me what I refused to your father yesterday.”76 She lays up a great fortune, but does not refuse herself-to poor but comely lovers; she restores the ugly Demosthenes to virtue by asking ten thousand drachmas for an evening,77 and from the well-to-do Aristippus she earns such sums as scandalize his servant;78 but to the penniless Diogenes she gives herself for a pittance, being pleased to have philosophers at her feet. She spends her wealth generously upon temples, public buildings, and friends, and finally returns, after the custom of her kind, to the poverty of her youth. She plies her trade patiently to the end; and when she dies she is honored with a splendid tomb as the greatest conqueror that the Greeks have ever known.79

  VII. GREEK FRIENDSHIP

  Stranger than this strange entente between prostitution and philosophy is the placid acceptance of sexual inversion. The chief rivals of the hetairai are the boys of Athens; and the courtesans, scandalized to the very depths of their pockets, never tire of denouncing the immorality of homosexual love. Merchants import handsome lads to be sold to the highest bidder, who will use them first as concubines and later as slaves;80 and only a negligible minority of males think it amiss that the effeminate young aristocrats of the city should arouse and assuage the ardor of aging men. In this matter of genders Sparta is as careless as Athens; when Alcman wishes to compliment some girls he calls them his “female boy-friends.”81 Athenian law disfranchises those who receive homosexual attentions,82 but public opinion tolerates the practice humorously; in Sparta and Crete no stigma of any kind is attached to it;83 in Thebes it is accepted as a valuable source of military organization and bravery. The greatest heroes in the fond remem
brance of Athens are Harmodius and Aristogeiton, tyrannicides and lovers; the most popular in Athens in his day is Alcibiades, who boasts of the men who love him; as late as Aristotle “Greek lovers” plight their troth at the tomb of Iolaus, comrade of Heracles;84 and Aristippus describes Xenophon, leader of armies and hardheaded man of the world, as infatuated with young Cleinias.85 The attachment of a man to a boy, or of a boy to a boy, shows in Greece all the symptoms of romantic love—passion, piety, ecstasy, jealousy, serenading, brooding, moaning, and sleeplessness.86 When Plato, in the Phaedrus, talks of human love, he means homosexual love; and the disputants in his Symposium agree on one point—that love between man and man is nobler and more spiritual than love between man and woman.87 A similar inversion appears among the women, occasionally among the finest, as in Sappho, frequently among the courtesans; the auletrides love one another more passionately than they love their patrons, and the pornaia are hothouses of Lesbian romance.88