credited with much of the moral element. Hence its importance in the Homeric poems shows how defective must have been Grecian morality at that epoch. The same is true, although to a less extent, of patience, which is, however, only a form of self-restraint. It does not appear, indeed, that any sense of moral obligation was attached to these qualities. It was good for a man to exercise patience and self-restraint, but if he did not thus act, although it might be a sign of mental weakness, it was no proof of actual wickedness. Even if it were otherwise, those qualities could hardly have reference to anything but the purely passive virtues, the practice of which is the earliest result of the conception of the idea of duty. It is otherwise with the sense of justice. This, as we understand the term, is a really active virtue, and it is the only one which Mr Gladstone refers to as being strongly enforced in the Homeric poems. But even here there is little evidence of the recognition of moral obligation. Justice has a negative as well as a positive side, and the teaching of Confucius, 'Do not unto others that which you would that they should not do unto you," is applicable to the Homeric age, rather than the affirmative precept of Christianity.

Of course, with the progress of general culture, and the combined, although not always harmonious action of religion and philosophy, the moral sense would be gradually developed, and a standard of propriety established. But this standard was very different from that which had resulted from the influences under which the

1 We have an illustration of this in the Greek Nemesis - the Adrastea of Asia Minor and the Athyr of Egypt-who seems to have combined the qualities of a goddess of war, of love, and of the dead. As a moral agent she was at first an impersonation of righteous wrath and of retribution, who brings down excessive good fortune, and checks the presumption generally attending it. At the hands of the tragedians, she became the avenger of crime, and the punisher of every godless expression.

national character of other ancient peoples was moulded. Dr Mommsen has drawn a parallel between the Greeks and Romans which fitly illustrates that assertion, while showing the source from which their difference of character sprang. The learned historian says: "The family and the State, religion and art, received, both in Greece and Italy, a development so peculiar and so thoroughly national, that the common pedestal on which both peoples stood has been so overgrown as to be almost concealed from our view. That Hellenic character, which sacrificed the whole to the part, the nation to the single state, and the single state to the citizen; the beau-ideal of whose life was the beautiful and good, only too often degenerating into indulgence in luxurious ease; whose political development consisted in intensifying the original independence of the several districts and tribes, and finally, in the complete destruction of the central authority; whose religion first changed its gods into men and then denied their existence; which gave free play to the limbs in the games of the naked gymnasts, and full scope to thought in all its grandeur and in all its terror: and that Roman character which enjoined the son to reverence the father, the citizen to reverence the ruler, and all to reverence the gods; which required nothing and honoured nothing but the useful act, and compelled every citizen to fill up every moment of his short life with ceaseless work; which enjoined even the boy modestly to veil his body; which regarded as bad citizens all who wished to be other than their compatriots were; which made the State all in all, and its extension the only aspiration not liable to censure; who can trace these sharp contrasts to an original unity which embraced them both, prepared the way for their development, and at last gave them being." 1

op. cit., vol. i. p. 24.

2

Morality, with the Athenian at least, had reference to the individual, rather than to the State as with the Romans, and hence it possessed a vitality which in the latter case was wholly wanting. But even with the Greek the conditions under which the moral sense was developed were such that the term conscience, as now understood, was hardly applicable to it. That admiration for the beautiful with reference alike to men, women, and animals, which, as Mr Gladstone points out,1 is exhibited in the Homeric poems, was so carefully cultivated by the later Greeks as to give rise to what may be described as an æsthetic sense, the intuitions of which appear almost to have taken the place in the popular mind of a moral conscience, as they certainly affected the moral speculations even of the Greek philosophers. Under its influence was developed the strange social phase by which the Greeks were probably distinguished from all other peoples of antiquity. No one can study the "Dialogues of Plato" without being struck with the fact that "boy-love" was a recognised phenomenon of Greek social life, and with the important position it occupied as a moral agent. Mr Grote, after referring to the absence of passion from the matrimonial connections of the Greeks, says: "The beauty of women yielded satisfaction to the senses, but little beyond. It was the masculine beauty of youth that fired the Hellenic imagination with glowing and impassioned sentiment. The finest youths, and those too of the best families and education, were seen habitually uncovered in the Palæstra and at the public festival matches; engaged in active contention and graceful exercise, under the direc

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1

op. cit., p. 398.

2 This agrees with Mr Mahaffy's remark, that the Greeks were always carried away by a love of beauty, more than by a respect for truth."

op. cit., p. 147.

3 See especially Lysis, The Symposium, and Phædrus.

tion of professional trainers. The sight of the living form, in such perpetual movement and variety, awakened a powerful, emotional sympathy, blended with æsthetic sentiment, which in the more susceptible natures was exalted into intense and passionate devotion. The terms in which this feeling is described, both by Plato and Xenophon, are among the strongest which the language affords, and are predicated even of Socrates himself. Far from being ashamed of the feeling, they consider it admirable and beneficial, though very liable to abuse, which they systematically denounce and forbid. In their view it was an idealising passion, which tended to raise a man above the vulgar and selfish pursuits of life, and even above the fear of death. The devoted attach-ments which it inspired were dreaded by the despots, who forbade the assemblage of youths for exercise in the Palæstræ."

This curious moral phase, which is almost unintel-ligible to us,2 was connected with what a recent French writer terms a veritable "culte du corps," and strange as. the idea may seem, it had undoubtedly a certain influence over the spread, if not the teaching of Christianity. Mr Mahaffy very truly remarks that "the deeper and fuller awakening to love in one sense among Greek hearts was closely connected with the rise of the Asiatic custom of attachments among men. The degradation, as we should say, in the object of their love (from natural to unnatural) was the cause of the ennoblement of that feeling itself." The mere passion was elevated into a sentiment which was not to be condemned, because it usually had a physical basis, and sometimes became de

1

"Plato and other Companions of Socrates," vol. ii. p. 207 seq.

2 In its baser form it is by no means uncommon in the Mohammedan East at the present day.

3 op. cit., p. 119.

"1

graded into an unnatural appetite. This result betokened a defect in the character of the individual, but not in the sentiment itself, which, being independent of sexual influences, was more akin to friendship than to love. We can thus understand how "a great part of the heroism of Greece, a great part of their few unselfish friendships, a great part of their highest education," was based upon the romantic attachments under consideration. The sacred band of Thebes, says Mr Mahaffy, "was cemented by these relations, and the greatest and purest of all the Greeks in history-Epaminondas-was known to have been attached in this way to the boy Asopichus, without fear and without reproach.' The explanation of such sentimental attachments must be sought in the exigencies of Greek society and the conditions of Greek culture. The æsthetic education which the people underwent affected something more than their canons of taste. A refined phase of emotion was induced which was compelled to find a new channel for its expression. Few Greek women could have any idea of pure sympathy. Their ideas were too sexual; hence the man whose mind possessed the possibility of a pure attachment must turn elsewhere for an object worthy of it. Christian history furnishes us with illustrations of such a condition of things. The love of Jesus for Lazarus and for the "beloved disciple" differs little from the attachment between Epaminondas and Asopichus. The feeling of "brotherhood," that of which the feeble beginnings among uncultured peoples have been traced in a preceding chapter, was at the foundation of both, and it constituted the real point of contact between Greek thought and Christianity. There may have been, and no doubt was, as we shall see hereafter, a close resemblance between the doctrines of Christianity and 1 op. cit., p. 307 seq.