General History for Colleges and High Schools Part 22

Upon reaching maturity, the youth was enrolled in the list of citizens.

But his graduation from school was his "commencement" in a much more real sense than with the average modern graduate. Never was there a people besides the Greeks whose daily life was so emphatically a discipline in liberal culture. The schools of the philosophers, the debates of the popular a.s.sembly, the practice of the law-courts, the religious processions, the representations of an unrivalled stage, the Panh.e.l.lenic games--all these were splendid and efficient educational agencies, which produced and maintained a standard of average intelligence and culture among the citizens of the Greek cities that probably has never been attained among any other people on the earth. Freeman, quoted approvingly by Mahaffy, says that "the average intelligence of the a.s.sembled Athenian citizens was higher than that of our [the English] House of Commons."

SOCIAL POSITION OF WOMAN.--Woman's social position in ancient Greece may be defined in general as being about half-way between Oriental seclusion and Western freedom. Her main duties were to cook and spin, and to oversee the domestic slaves, of whom she herself was practically one. In the fas.h.i.+onable society of Ionian cities, she was seldom allowed to appear in public, or to meet, even in her own house, the male friends of her husband. In Sparta, however, and in Dorian states generally, she was accorded much greater freedom, and was a really important factor in society.

The low position generally a.s.signed the wife in the home had a most disastrous effect upon Greek morals. She could exert no such elevating or refining influence as she casts over the modern home. The men were led to seek social and intellectual sympathy and companions.h.i.+p outside the family circle, among a cla.s.s of women known as Hetairae, who were esteemed chiefly for their brilliancy of intellect. As the most noted representative of this cla.s.s stands Aspasia, the friend of Pericles. The influence of the Hetairae was most harmful to social morality.

THEATRICAL ENTERTAINMENTS.--Among the ancient Greeks the theatre was a state establishment, "a part of the const.i.tution." This arose from the religious origin and character of the drama (see p. 193), all matters pertaining to the popular wors.h.i.+p being the care and concern of the state.

Theatrical performances, being religious acts, were presented only during religious festivals, and were attended by all cla.s.ses, rich and poor, men, women, and children. The women, however, except the Hetairae, were, it would seem, permitted to witness tragedies only; the comic stage was too gross to allow of their presence. The spectators sat under the open sky; and the pieces followed one after the other in close succession from early morning till nightfall.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GREEK TRAGIC FIGURE.]

There were companies of players who strolled about the country, just as the English actors of Shakespeare's time were wont to do. While the better cla.s.s of actors were highly honored, ordinary players were held in very low esteem. The tragic actor increased his height and size by wearing thick-soled buskins, an enormous mask, and padded garments. The actor in comedy wore thin-soled slippers, or socks. The _sock_ being thus a characteristic part of the make-up of the ancient comic actor, and the _buskin_ that of the tragic actor, these foot coverings have come to be used as the symbols respectively of comedy and tragedy, as in the familiar lines of Dryden:--

"Great Fletcher never treads in buskins here, Nor greater Jonson dares in socks appear."

The theatre exerted a great influence upon Greek life. It performed for ancient Greek society somewhat the same service as that rendered to modern society by the pulpit and the press. During the best days of h.e.l.las the frequent rehearsal upon the stage of the chief incidents in the lives of the G.o.ds and the heroes served to deepen and strengthen the religious faith of the people; and later, in the Macedonian period, the theatre was one of the chief agents in the diffusion of Greek literary culture over the world.

BANQUETS AND SYMPOSIA.--Banquets and drinking-parties among the Greeks possessed some features which set them apart from similar entertainments among other peoples.

The banquet proper was partaken, in later times, by the guest in a reclining position, upon couches or divans, arranged about the table in the Oriental manner. After the usual courses, a libation was poured out and a hymn sung in honor of the G.o.ds, and then followed that characteristic part of the entertainment known as the _symposium_.

The symposium was "the intellectual side of the feast." It consisted of general conversation, riddles, and convivial songs rendered to the accompaniment of the lyre pa.s.sed from hand to hand. Generally, professional singers and musicians, dancing-girls, jugglers, and jesters were called in to contribute to the merrymaking. All the while the wine- bowl circulated freely, the rule being that a man might drink "as much as he could carry home without a guide,--unless he were far gone in years."

Here also the Greeks applied their maxim, "Never too much."

The banqueters usually consumed the night in merry-making, sometimes being broken in upon from the street by other bands of revellers, who made themselves self-invited guests.

OCCUPATION.--The enormous body of slaves in ancient Greece relieved the free population from most of those forms of labor cla.s.sed as drudgery. The aesthetic Greek regarded as degrading any kind of manual labor that marred the symmetry or beauty of the body.

At Sparta, and in other states where oligarchical inst.i.tutions prevailed, the citizens formed a sort of military cla.s.s, strikingly similar to the military aristocracy of Feudal Europe. Their chief occupation was martial and gymnastic exercises and the administration of public affairs. The Spartans, it will be recalled, were forbidden by law to engage in trade.

In other aristocratic states, as at Thebes, a man by engaging in trade disqualified himself for full citizens.h.i.+p.

In the democratic states, however, speaking generally, labor and trade were regarded with less contempt. A considerable portion of the citizens were traders, artisans, and farmers.

Life at Athens presented some peculiar features. All Attica being included in what we should term the corporate limits of the city, the roll of Athenian citizens included a large body of well-to-do farmers, whose residence was outside the city walls. The Attic plains, and the slopes of the half-encircling hills, were dotted with beautiful villas and inviting farmhouses.

And then Athens being the head of a great empire of subject cities, a large number of Athenian citizens were necessarily employed as salaried officials in the minor positions of the public service, and thus politics became a profession. In any event, the meetings of the popular a.s.sembly and the discussion of matters of state engrossed more or less of the time and attention of every citizen.

Again, the great Athenian jury-courts, which were busied with cases from all parts of the empire, gave constant employment to nearly one fourth of the citizens, the fee that the juryman received enabling him to live without other business. It is said that, in the early morning, when the jurymen were pa.s.sing through the streets to the different courts, Athens appeared like a city wholly given up to the single business of law.

Furthermore, the great public works, such as temples and commemorative monuments, which were in constant process of erection, afforded employment for a vast number of artists and skilled workmen of every cla.s.s.

In the Agora, again, at any time of the day, a numerous cla.s.s might have been found whose sole occupation, as in the case of Socrates, was to talk.

The writer of the "Acts of the Apostles" was so impressed with this feature of life at Athens that he summarized the habits of the people by saying, "All the Athenians, and strangers which were there, spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing."

(Chap. xvii. 21.)

SLAVERY.--There was a dark side to Greek life. h.e.l.lenic art, culture, refinement--"these good things were planted, like exquisite exotic flowers, upon the black, rank soil of slavery."

The proportion of slaves to the free population in many of the states was astonis.h.i.+ngly large. In Corinth and aegina there were ten slaves to every freeman. In Attica the proportion was four to one; that is to say, out of a population of about 500,000, 400,000 were slaves. [Footnote: The population of Attica in 317 B.C. is reckoned at about 527,000. That of Athens in its best days was probably not far from 150,000.] Almost every freeman was a slave owner. It was accounted a real hards.h.i.+p to have to get along with less than half a dozen slaves.

This large cla.s.s of slaves was formed in various ways. In the prehistoric period, the fortunes of war had brought the entire population of whole provinces into a servile condition, as in certain parts of the Peloponnesus. During later times, the ordinary captives of war still further augmented the ranks of these unfortunates. Their number was also largely added to by the slave traffic carried on with the barbarian peoples of Asia Minor. Criminals and debtors, too, were often condemned to servitude; while foundlings were usually brought up as slaves.

The relation of master and slave was regarded by the Greek as being, not only a legal, but a natural one. A free community, in his view, could not exist without slavery. It formed the natural basis of both the family and the state,--the relation of master and slave being regarded as "strictly a.n.a.logous to the relation of soul and body." Even Aristotle and other Greek philosophers approved the maxim that "slaves are simply domestic animals possessed of intelligence." They were regarded as just as necessary in the economy of the family as cooking utensils.

In general, Greek slaves were not treated harshly--judging their treatment by the standard of humanity that prevailed in antiquity. Some held places of honor in the family, and enjoyed the confidence and even the friends.h.i.+p of their master. Yet at Sparta, where slavery a.s.sumed the form of serfdom, the lot of the slave was peculiarly hard and unendurable.

If slavery was ever justified by its fruits, it was in Greece. The brilliant civilization of the Greeks was its product, and could never have existed without it. As one truthfully says, "Without the slaves the Attic democracy would have been an impossibility, for they alone enabled the poor, as well as the rich, to take a part in public affairs." Relieving the citizen of all drudgery, the system created a cla.s.s characterized by elegant leisure, refinement, and culture.

We find an almost exact historical parallel to all this in the feudal aristocracy of mediaeval Europe. Such a society has been well likened to a great pyramid, whose top may be gilded with light, while the base lies in dark shadows. The civilization of ancient h.e.l.las was splendid and attractive, but it rested with a crus.h.i.+ng weight upon all the lower orders of Greek society.

SECTION III. ROMAN HISTORY.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE ROMAN KINGDOM.

(Legendary Date, 753-509 B.C.)

DIVISIONS OF ITALY.--The peninsula of Italy, like that of Greece, divides itself into three parts--Northern, Central, and Southern Italy. The first comprises the great basin of the Po, lying between the Alps and the Apennines. In ancient times this part of Italy included three districts-- Liguria, Gallia Cisalpina, which means "Gaul on this (the Italian) side of the Alps," and Venetia.

The countries of Central Italy were Etruria, Latium, and Campania, facing the Western, or Tuscan Sea; Umbria and Picenum, looking out over the Eastern, or Adriatic Sea; and Samnium and the country of the Sabines, occupying the rough mountain districts of the Apennines.

Southern Italy comprised the countries of Apulia, Lucania, Calabria, and Bruttium. Calabria occupied the "heel," and Bruttium formed the "toe," of the peninsula. This part of Italy, as we have already learned, was called Magna Graecia, or "Great Greece," on account of the number and importance of the Greek cities that during the period of h.e.l.lenic supremacy were established in these regions.

The large island of Sicily, lying just off the mainland on the south, may be regarded simply as a detached fragment of Italy, so intimately has its history been interwoven with that of the peninsula. In ancient times it was the meeting-place and battleground of the Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans.

EARLY INHABITANTS OF ITALY.--There were, in early times, three chief races in Italy--the Italians, the Etruscans, and the Greeks. The Italians, a branch of the Aryan family, embraced many tribes (Latins, Umbrians, Sabines, Samnites, etc.), that occupied nearly all Central Italy. The Etruscans, a wealthy, cultured, and maritime people of uncertain race, dwelt in Etruria, now Tuscany. Before the rise of the Romans they were the leading race in the peninsula. Of the establishment of the Greek cities in Southern Italy, we have already learned in connection with Grecian History (p. 111).

Some five hundred years B.C., the Gauls, a Celtic race, came over the Alps, and settling in Northern Italy, became formidable enemies of the infant republic of Rome.

THE LATINS.--Most important of all the Italian peoples were the Latins, who dwelt in Latium, between the Tiber and the Liris. These people, like all the Italians, were near kindred of the Greeks, and brought with them into Italy those same customs, manners, beliefs, and inst.i.tutions which we have seen to have been the common possession of the various branches of the Aryan household (see p. 5). There are said to have been in all Latium thirty towns, and these formed an alliance known as the Latin League. The city which first a.s.sumed importance and leaders.h.i.+p among the towns of this confederation was Alba Longa, the "Long White City," so called because its buildings stretched for a great distance along the summit of a whitish ridge.

THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME.--The place of preeminence among the Latin towns was soon lost by Alba Longa, and gained by another city. This was Rome, the stronghold of the Ramnes, or Romans, located upon a low hill on the south bank of the Tiber, about fifteen miles from the sea.

The traditions of the Romans place the founding of their city in the year 753 B.C. The town was established, it would seem, as an outpost to guard the northern frontier of Latium against the Etruscans.

Recent excavations have revealed the foundations of the old walls and two of the ancient gates. We thus learn that the city at first covered only the top of the Palatine Hill, one of a cl.u.s.ter of low eminences close to the Tiber, which, finally embraced within the limits of the growing city, became the famed "Seven Hills of Rome." From the shape of its enclosing walls, the original city was called _Roma Quadrata_, "Square Rome."

THE EARLY ROMAN STATE: KING, SENATE, AND POPULAR a.s.sEMBLY.--The early Roman state seems to have been formed by the union of three communities.

These const.i.tuted three tribes, known as Ramnes (the Romans proper, who gave name to the mixed people), t.i.ties, and Luceres. Each of these tribes was divided into ten wards, or districts (_curiae_); each ward was made up of _gentes_, or clans, and each clan was composed of a number of families. The heads of these families were called _patres_, or "fathers," and all the members patricians, that is, "children of the fathers."

At the head of the nation stood the King, who was the father of the state.

He was at once ruler of the people, commander of the army, judge and high priest of the nation, with absolute power as to life and death.

Next to the king stood the Senate, or "council of the old men," composed of the "fathers," or heads of the families. This council had no power to enact laws: the duty of its members was simply to advise with the king, who was free to follow or to disregard their suggestions.