the light of historical analogy, and compared with other accounts and vestiges-we shall now endeavour to trace the main features of the Heroic or Homeric form of society. The order in which we shall review them will lead us successively to consider the state of government, of manners, of religion, knowledge, and arts. CHAPTER VI. THE GOVERNMENT, MANNERS, RELIGION, IC AGE. to the general rule.* On the other hand, a broad distinction is drawn between the common freemen and the chiefs, who form two separate classes. The latter are described by various titles, denoting their superior dignity, as the best, the foremost, princes, and elders; for this last epithet seems already to have been bestowed, with relation rather to the functions of counsellors and judges than to their age. The essential quality of persons belonging to this higher order was noble birth, which implied nothing less than a connexion with the gods themKNOWL-selves, to whom every princely house seems to have traced its origin. But though this illustrious parentage constituted one claim of the great to popular veneration, it would soon have been forgotten or neglected, unless accompanied by some visible tokens, which were not sought in pedigrees or records, but in personal advantages and merits. The legitimate chief was distinguished from the vulgar herd of merely morhis majestic presence, his piercing eye, and sonorous voice, but still more by the virtues which these bodily endowments promised, by skill in warlike exercises, patience under hardship, contempt of danger, and love of glorious enterprises. Prudence in council, readiness in invention, and fluency of speech, though highly valued, were not equally requisite to preserve general respect. But, though the influence of the nobles depended on the degree in which they were thus gifted and accomplished, it also needed the support of superior wealth. It was this which furnished them with the means of undertaking the numerous adventures in which they proved their valour, while their martial I. THE political institutions of the heroic period were not contrived by the wisdom of legislators, but grew spontaneously out of natural causes. They appear to have exhibited in every part of Greece a certain resemblance in their general outlines, but the circumstances out of which they arose were probably not every-tal origin by his robust frame, his lofty stature, where the same, and hence a notion of them, founded on the supposition of their complete uniformity, would probably be narrow and erroneous. The few scanty hints afforded to us on the transition from the obscure period which we may call the Pelasgian, to that with which Homer has made us comparatively familiar, do not enable us to draw any general conclusion as to the mode in which it was effected. We can just discern a warlike and adventurons race starting up, and gradually overspreading the land; but in what relation they stood to the former inhabitants, what changes they introduced in the ancient order of things, can only be conjectured from the social institutions which we find subsisting in the later pe-achievements commonly increased both their riod. These do not, generally, present traces of violent revolutions and subjugating conquests like those of which the subsequent history of Greece furnishes so many examples; yet it is natural to imagine that they took place occasionally, and here and there we meet with facts or allusions which confirm this suspicion. The distinction between slaves and freemen seems to have obtained generally, though not, perhaps, universally but there is no distinct trace that it anywhere owed its origin to an invasion which deprived the natives of their liberty. As soon as war and piracy became frequent, captives, taken or bought, were employed in servile labours, chiefly, it would seem, those of the house; in those of husbandry the poor freemen did not disdain to serve the wealthier for hire. But a class of serfs, reduced to cultivate the land which they had once owned for the benefit of a foreign conqueror, and either bound to it, or liable to be expelled at his pleasure, if it existed anywhere, must have been an exception • The purchase and use of slaves, indeed, are repeatedly mentioned by Homer: the household of Ulysses is served by slaves, over whom their master exercises the power of life and death. But the use of such domestics was, perhaps, nowhere very common, except in the houses of the great, and in several parts of Greece was not introduced ill a later period. This is asserted in Herodotus (vi., 137), of the Greeks in general, and of the Athenians in particular. The assertion is repeated by Timaus (Athen., v., 86), with particular reference to the Locrians and Phocians. But when it is said that the Chians were the first Greeks who purchased slaves (Theopompus, in Athen., v., 88), this must be understood of a regular traffic, as, on the other hand, Pliny's servitium invenera Lacedæmonii (N. H., vii., 54, applies only to the Helots. fame and their riches by the booty which rewarded a successful expedition. If the arm of a single chief could often turn the fortune of a battle, and put to flight a host of common men, this was undoubtedly owed, not solely to his extraordinary prowess, but to the strength of his armour, the temper of his weapons, the fleetness of his steeds, which transported his chariot from one part of the field to another, and secured for him the foremost place, whether in the flight or the pursuit. The kingly form of government appears to have been the only one known in the heroic age. Its origin is ascribed by Aristotle to the free choice of the people, which first conferred the royal dignity on the man who had rendered some important service to the public by the introduction of new arts, or by martial achievements, or who had collected a body of settlers, and assigned to them portions of his own or of Yet, in the Odyssey (iv., 176), Menelaus expresses his willingness to give a settlement to Ulysses and his followers by ejecting his own subjects from one of the towns in his dominions, and planting the Ithacans in their room. This passage, indeed, has been condemned as spurious, because such despotic power seemed inconsistent with the ordinary relation between king and people in the heroic ages; and undoubtedly it would imply a kind of subjection very different from that in which the warriors who fought at Troy seem to have stood to their princes; yet, as the result of peculiar circumstances, it may not be incredible; and the less, since Agamemnon, when he offers to transfer to Achilles seven towns inhabited by wealthy husbandmen, who would enrich their lord by presents and tribute, seems likewise to assume rather a property in them than an authority over them. I., ix, 149. And the same thing may be intirnated when it is said that Peleus bestowed a great people, the Dolopes of Phthia, on Phoenix. 11., ix., 463. did not belong to them exclusively. Notwithstanding the fabulous reputation of Minos and Rhadamanthys, it must be inferred, from the manner in which Homer describes and alludes to the administration of justice, that the heroic kings did not usually try causes alone, and that in their decisions they expressed the judgment of their assessors, if not of the multitude. In the representation of a trial, which fills one compartment in the shield of Achilles, the elders are seated on the polished stones which were ranged, in a sacred circle, in the marketplace; the crowd stands without, kept in order by the heralds; but no king appears to preside. On the other hand, among the royal prerogatives which Telemachus is said to retain in the absence of Ulysses, the judicial office is expressly mentioned as a source of honour and profit; not, however, in a way implying that he exercised it alone. Achilles, swearing by the sceptre which he has received from the herald, speaks of it as passing through the hands of judges in the discharge of their duty, just as we see it used by those in the shield. The king seems only to have occupied the most distin conquered lands. The latter supposition, un- | ploits; in the division of the spoils their share less it carries us back to the very beginning of was usually increased by a present previously civil society, is only applicable to the case of a selected from the common mass. The religious migration or invasion, which implies the previ- rites which they were entitled to celebrate in ous acknowledgment of a prince or chief. But behalf of the people, if they invested their perthat the kingly office was originally bestowed sons with some degree of sanctity, can have addby popular election, as the reward of personal ed little to their real influence. Nor was this merit, seems to be a conjecture which wants greatly increased by their judicial character; historical foundation. Nor do we find among not merely because comparatively few occasions the ancient Greeks any trace of such a distine-occurred to call it into action, but because it tion as is said to have existed among the ancient Germans, between kings chosen for their illustrious birth, and commanders chosen for their valour: both qualities were expected to meet in the same person: in both, the king was conspicuous among the nobles, as the latter were above the multitude. It is, however, highly probable that the monarchical form of government arose from the patriarchal, with and out of the warlike and adventurous character of the heroic age. Where the people was almost always in arins, the office of leader naturally became permanent. The royal houses may sometimes have been founded by wealthy and powerful strangers, but it is quite as easy to conceive that they often grew, by insensible degrees, into reputation and authority. Homer mentions certain divisions of the nation, in a way implying that they were elements which entered into the composition of every Greek community. Nestor advises Agamemnon to marshal his army according to the larger or smaller bodies in which families were collected, in order that each might derive aid and encouragement from the presence of its neighbour :* not to be included in one is the mark of an out-guished place on these occasions. So, when law or a homeless vagrant. It is probable that, in the heroic age, these tribes and clans were still regarded more as natural than as political associations, and that, in a yet earlier period, the heads of each exercised a patriarchal rule over its members. The public sacrifices, which in the remotest, certainly not less than in later times, formed the bond of their union, were, it may be supposed, celebrated by the chief of the principal family, and these priestly functions seem to have been one of the most ancient branches of the regal office, as they were retained the longest. The person to whom they belonged would naturally assume the rest as occasion required. But the causes which determined the precedence of a particular family in each tribe and in a state, when several tribes were united in one body, may have been infinitely varied, and, in almost all cases, lie beyond the reach of historical investigation. The nature and prerogatives of the heroic sovereignty, however, are subject to less doubt than its origin. The command in war, the performance of those sacrifices which were not appropriate to particular priests, and the administration of justice, are mentioned by Aristotle as the three main functions of the heroic kings. It must have been from the discharge of the first that they derived the greatest part of their power. Their authority, if feeble at home, was strengthened by the obedience which they were able to exact in the field, and, if their enterprises were successful, by the renown of their ex Telemachus convenes an assembly in Ithaca, he takes his seat in the market-place on his paternal throne, while the elders reverently make way for him. They must be conceived here to occupy a circle, like that of the judges in the scene on the shield; the ring of stones may be fairly presumed to have been a common and permanent ornament of the public places, where all assemblies, judicial or deliberative, were held, and it marks the ordinary limits of the kingly power. It is evident that the kings took no measures, and transacted no affairs in their official capacity, without the assistance and the sanction of the chiefs and the people. In the camp, indeed, Agamemnon frequently summons a select council of the princes, who may be considered either as his generals or allies. But even there, on great occasions, the whole army is assembled, and in peace there seems to have been no formal and regular distinction between a popular assembly and a senate: every public meeting might be regarded in either light. The great men who formed the inner circle were the counsellors who debated; but no freeman was excluded from the outer space; and the presence of the multitude must have had some influence on all proceedings. Even at the trial the heralds do not prevent them from venting their feelings; and their clamour seems to have had the greater weight, in proportion as their interests were affected by the result of the deliberation.* Alcinous is described in the Odyssey as king of all the Phæacians, and yet as only one of * Od., iii., 150. П., ii, 282. nary practice is recognised even in the case of Telemachus, which forms a seeming exception to it. It is, indeed, represented as uncertain whether the young prince shall finally wield his father's sceptre in his own right; but while the fate of Ulysses remains unknown, his son continues to enjoy the royal honours and revenues, and even Antinous admits that his birth gives him a presumptive title to the throne. The uncertainty, in this instance, seems to have arisen, not from the want of an acknowledged law or custom to regulate the succession, but from the peculiar situation of the rightful heir. The general usage is confirmed by the cases in which the aged parent resigns the reins of government to his son, as Ulysses reigns over Ithaca in the lifetime of his father Laertes, and Peleus sinks into a private station, in which he needs the protection of Achilles. Such instances prove that personal vigour was necessary to maintain the royal dignity; and in general, the king's legal prerogatives, unless supported by the qualities of the man, were probably a very feeble restraint on the independence of the nobles. Most of the great families seem to have resided in the same town which contained the royal mansion, which frequently stood on a fortified height, though we also find frequent mention of their sequestered rural habitations.* But it would appear that a long absence from the town was unusual, and was regarded as a kind of exile.t Homer affords no glimpse of a mode of life among the heroic nobles at all resembling that of the feudal barons, nor of holds from which they sallied forth on predatory excursions : there may be more room to imagine that, at a distance from the capital, they exercised a separate jurisdiction, as the heads of their tribes or clans. thirteen chiefs, who all bear the same title; he | the age and character of the person whose birth speaks of himself rather as the first among gave him a claim to the succession. The ordiequals than as if he belonged to a higher order. In Ithaca, though there was one acknowledged sovereign, many bore the name of king, and in the vacancy of the throne might aspire to the supreme dignity. There seems to be no good reason for doubting that these instances represent the ordinary relation of the kings to the nobles, nor for suspecting that they are less applicable to the earlier times than to a period when the royal authority was on the decline: but here it may be especially necessary to remember the remark with which we set out, and to be on our guard against laying down any immutable rule and standard for the power of the heroic kings. Though their functions, indeed, were pretty accurately determined by custom, the extent of their influence was not regulated by the same measure, but must have varied according to their personal character and circumstances. The love and respect of the people, acquired by valour, prudence, gentleness, and munificence, might often raise the king above the nobles by a much greater distance than his constitutional prerogatives interposed between them though royalty might immediately confer little solid power, it furnished means which a vigorous and skilful hand might apply to the purposes of personal aggrandizement. "It is no bad thing for a man," says Telemachus, "to be a king; his house presently grows rich, and he himself rises in honour." Some advantages arising from the discharge of the kingly office have been already mentioned; there were others, perhaps less brilliant, but more definite and certain. The most important of these was the domain, which, as it was originally the gift of the people, seems to have been attached to the station, and not to have been the private property of the person; for Telemachus is described as retaining the domains of Ulysses, among oth- The word answering to law, in the language er rights of the crown, which he was neverthe- of the later Greeks, does not occur in the Holess in danger of losing, if he should not be per-meric poems, nor do they contain any allusion mitted to succeed his father;* but even his enemy Eurymachus, who wishes to exclude him from the throne, declares that no one shall deprive him of his patrimony.t Presents appear to have constituted another part of the royal revenue, important enough to be mentioned by Agamemnon as the chief profit to be expected from the towns which he proposed to transfer to Achilles; but whether they were stated and periodical, or merely voluntary and occasional, is uncertain.‡ Achilles brands Agamemnon with an epithet signifying that he was one of those kings who devoured the substance of his people; and Alcinous.seems to assert a power very like that of taxing the Phæacians at his pleasure. The administration of justice seems always to have been requited with a present from the parties. The banquets to which the kings were invited are more than once noticed as a valuable, at least an agreeable, pertinent of their station || The crown appears to have been everywhere hereditary, according to general usage, though the observance of this usage might depend on Od., i., 402, The mapai Ikmores, II., ix., 156, may be considered * Od., n., 185. as stated dues. Od, m., 14. It may, however, mean a purely voluntary contribution. Od, xi., 185. ., xii., 311. which might lead us to suppose that any as- * Od., xviii., 358; xi., 188; xxiv., 208; iv., 517. Η δίκη and θέμις. connected with the same feeling-the desire of avoiding the pollution of bloodshed, which seems to have suggested the practice of burying criminals alive, with a scantling of food by their side. Though Homer makes no mention of this horrible usage, the example of the Roman vestals affords reason for believing that, in ascribing it to the Heroic Ages, Sophocles followed an authentic tradition. Religious associations seem also to have given rise to the practice, which was likewise common in Greece and Italy, of hurling offenders down a precipice: they were, perhaps, originally regarded rather as victims devoted to propitiate the anger of the gods than as debtors to human justice. however, was interested in suppressing quar- | public offences. It may have been originally rels, which threatened to disturb the public peace, and must therefore have compelled one who had suffered a wrong to accept the compensation established by custom from the aggressor. Among a people of strong passions and quick resentment, where the magistrate did not undertake to avenge an injury offered to one of his subjects as an offence to himself, there would have been no end of bloodshed, had not a more peaceful mode of atonement been substituted by common agreement. Accordingly, even the vengeance of a family which had been deprived of a kinsman by violence might be redeemed at a stipulated price. Ajax, when he would set the implacable anger of Achilles in the strongest light, observes that a man is used to accept a compensation from the murderer of his brother or his son, so that the one remains in his country after having paid a heavy price, and the vindictive spirit of the kinsman who receives it is stayed. An instinctive religious feeling, deeply rooted in the bosom of the Greek, though easily overpowered by the violence of his passions-a feeling which shrank from the stain of kindred blood as loathsome even to the gods-concurred with the motive of general expediency in introducing this usage: for that feeling, especially in earlier times, embraced all freemen who were connected together by the ties of civil society, the rights of intermarriage, and communion in public worship. From this feeling also arose a practice, which Herodotus describes as prevailing among the Lydians and Phrygians as well as the Greeks, that the manslayer withdrew into a foreign land, and did not return to his country till he had been purified by some expiatory rites. Homer, indeed, though he frequently notices this species of exile, nowhere speaks of religious ceremonies accompanying it; but, at least, the antiquity of the religious sentiment which they imply seems unquestionable.* Le-themselves as they could. The war between gends which appear to be very ancient, since the custom they refer to is never mentioned in the historical period, describe a voluntary servitude as part of the expiation. It is clear that it would be easier to effect a compromise in the case of undesigned homicide than of deliberate murder; yet the voluntary exile seems to have been quite as usual in the former as in the latter. A kind of sanctity seems to have been attached to the person of the fugitive, and it was deemed almost sacrilegious to refuse him shelter. Acts considered as offences against the community were probably of rare occurrence, and it was only in extraordinary cases that they were visited with capital punishment. Eurymachus, in the name of the suiters, threatens Halitherses with a mulet for his officious interference. It is apparently a sudden irregular burst of popular indignation to which Hector alludes, when he regrets that the Trojans had not spirit enough to cover Paris with a mantle of stones. This, however, was also one of the ordinary formal modes of punishment for great * Whether such rites are distinctly alluded to by Homer depends on the reading of I., xxiv., 482, where Mueller (Dor., 11., 8, 6, note m., in the English translation) infers, from the Scholiast, that we ought to read dyvirsw for doveiov. But propitiatory sacrifices are mentioned, li., ix., 600. The mutual dealings of independent states were not regulated by steadier principles than those of individuals. Consciousness of a distinct national existence, and of certain rights incident to it, manifested itself, not uniformly and consistently, but only on particular occasions, and under accidental impulses. It seems not to have exerted itself in restraining individuals in one community from attacking the members of another, between which and their own no hostility had been previously declared, or known to exist. The case, however, was different when two states were not only at peace, but in alliance, or intimate amity with each other. The people of Ithaca was violently incensed against the father of Antinous, and was with difficulty restrained from putting him to death and confiscating his property, because he had joined the Taphian freebooters in molesting the Thesprotians, a friendly nation. Piracy was everywhere an honourable occupation; and though restitution was sometimes demanded, in the name of the state, for piratical aggressions which injured persons of high station, it is probable that, when the sufferers were of inferior rank, they were left to right Pylus and Elis, in which Nestor performed his first feat of arms, is represented to have arisen from an unprovoked attack on the part of the Epeans, who took advantage of the defenceless condition in which their neighbours had been left by the invasion of Hercules. In this instance the Pylians retaliated by a sudden inroad into the Elean territory. In common cases, especially where the countries lay wider apart, it was, perhaps, more usual first to demand reparation. Heralds, who formed a distinct class, and whose office was accounted sacred, and seems often to have been hereditary, carried on communications between hostile states; but it does not appear that they were employed, like the Italian Fetials, to make formal declarations of war. Partial associations among neighbouring states were very early formed, for purposes partly religious, partly political, of which we shall have occasion to speak hereafter. The Trojan war was, or, at least, was very early represented as, a national enterprise, and at least the legend contributed to awaken the consciousness of a natural unity in the several members of the nation. The name of Hellen, indeed, by which this unity was afterward denoted, tad not in the Homeric age become generally prev * Od., xvi., 428. alent, though it seems then already to have been extended beyond the district of Thessaly, to which it was at first confined, to the whole of Greece north of the Isthmus. Its place is most frequently supplied by that of Achæans. Nor does the term barbarous appear to have been yet applied to nations, or to have implied any notion of intellectual or moral inferiority: in Homer it is only used as an epithet of language, seemingly, however, to signify, not merely a strange, but a rough and uncouth speech; as the rude sounds of the Sintians are mentioned with evident consciousness of a more harmonious language. But the poet seems to have felt the place which his people filled in the scale of nations, the advantage of their social state over a solitary Cyclopean life, and over the savage manners of the Sicels; and on the other hand, the higher rank which the Egyptians and the Phoenicians had attained in knowledge and arts. The time was yet to come, though the poet himself was its harbinger, when the contrast between Greek and barbarian should be thought to swallow up all other distinctions in the human race. II. The laws and institutions of a people can never be wholly separated from the history of its manners, and are most intimately connected with it in a period when, as among the Greeks of the heroic age, law and custom have not yet been discriminated, and are both expressed by the same word. Still it is in the relations which afford the widest range for individual freedom that national character is most clearly unfolded. We shall here touch on a few which may serve to mark the character of the Greeks, and the stage which society had reached among them, in the period which Homer describes. ern delicacy.* The father disposed of the maiden's hand with absolute authority; but yet it does not seem that the marriage contract was commonly regarded in the light of a bargain and sale. Presents were interchanged, probably proportioned on both sides to the means of the parties. If the connexion was dissolved by the wife's infidelity, her friends seem to have been bound to restore what they had received ;‡ and if the wife, or the widow, was forced, without her fault, to return to her father's house, she was entitled to carry her portion back with her. But in this age of heroic enterprise, wealth, and even rank or birth, did not, perhaps, more powerfully recommend a suiter than strength, courage, and dexterity in manly sports and martial exercises; and these qualities seem often to have been tried by a public competition, or by the undertaking of some difficult adventure.[{ It accords with this usage, that in many parts of Greece, as among ancient Romans, the nuptial ceremony wore the show of a forcible abduction of the bride.¶ Homer has drawn a pleasing picture of maidenly simplicity, filial tenderness, and hospitable kindness, in the person of the Phæacian princess Nausicaa, one of his most amiable creations; yet he seems to dwell with still greater satisfaction on the matronly dignity and conjugal devotion, which command our respect and admiration in a Penelopé, an Areté, and an Andromaché. If, indeed, we should draw our notions as to the state of domestic society in the heroic age from these characters, we might be in danger of estimating it too favourably. But the poet himself furnishes hints which may serve to correct this impression, especially when combined with certain mythical traditions, which, however fabulous in their origin, The intercourse between the sexes, though show the view which the later Greeks took of much more restricted than by modern European the manners of their ancestors. The stories of usages, was, perhaps, subject to less restraint the loves of the gods, the adventures of a crowd than in the later times of Greece. If it is of heroines, like Tyro and Æthra, Creusa and entirely destitute of the chivalrous devotion Coronis, seem clearly to intimate that female which has left so deep a tinge in our manners, purity was not very highly valued. Nausicaa it displays more of truth and simplicity in the calmly declares that she herself disapproves of degree of respect which the stronger sex pays stolen interviews between maidens and their to the weaker. Before marriage, young per- lovers, and that she is, therefore, the more desisons of different sex and family saw each other rous of avoiding the suspicions which she would only in public, and then at a distance, except certainly incur if she were seen accompanied when some festival might chance to bring them by a stranger on her return into the town. In nearer to each other: as a picture of public re-like manner, numberless tales of the heroic myjoicing in the Iliad exhibits youths and virgins of rank linked together in the dance, as well as promiscuously joining in a vintage procession.* But the simplicity of the heroic way of life not unfrequently drew the maiden out of doors to discharge various household offices, which were afterward confined to slaves; for it was thought no more degrading to a young princess to carry her urn to the fountain,† than for her brother to tend his father's flocks and herds ‡ It was to an occasion still more homely, according to modern prejudices, that Ulysses is represented as owing his first meeting with the daughter of King Aleinous. And it seems to have been not unusual for young women of the highest quality to attend on the guests of the family in situations which appear strangely revolting to mod I., 567, 593. † Od, viz., 20; 1., 107. Pindar, Ol., vi., 67. Od., xv., 428. Od., kiti., 223, and Eustathius, 11., vi., 25. thology, such as those of Helen and Clytem Thus, in Od., iii., 464, Nestor's daughter is said to have assisted Telemachus in bathing, anointing, and dressing ly offensive, even to our more refined conceptions of decency. Od., ., 133, and the commentators. This may be inferred, not merely from the Spartan and Cretan usages, but from the religious rites and le founded on this custom, as to which see Welcker, Ueber eine Kretische Kolonie in Theben, p. 68. It is interesting to observe the close resemblance between the Spartan usage described by Plutarch (Lycurg, c. 15), and that of the modern Circassians related by Klaproth, Tableau du Caucase, p. 80. |