Nationalism and Culture (64 page)

* In the scholia political motives often found expression, such as hatred of tyranny, and so on. Here is a strophe from the paean to the tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, that is ascribed to Kallicrates:

"Myrtle I'll yveave round my murderous blade Like Harmodius and Aristogeiton When at the thrice-holy feast unto Pallas They struck down the tyrant, Hipparchus. Always your fame will endure on the earth. Dear Harmodius and Aristogeiton, Because when you struck down the tyrant You set Athens upright and free again."

and Sophocles and it was said, even in his lifetime, that while Sophocles represented men as they should be, Euripides showed them as they are. That he had the power to move men mightily by his representation is shown by his demonic depiction of passion, in which he was excelled by none.

Greek comedy developed from beginnings similar to those of tragedy; it, too, grew out of the ancient festival plays, and was especially associated with the phallic choruses. But it was in Athens that comedy first reached its highest development. There Cratlnus wrote, of whom it is told that even Pericles, the greatest statesman of Greece, did not escape his biting satire; and with him were Crates, Eupolis, Pherecrates and others, who were, however, completely overshadowed by Aristophanes, that "spoiled darling of the graces." Of the fifty-four comedies of Aristophanes only eltven have been preserved, but these suffice to give us a picture of the renowned poet who knew how to combine the most withering scorn with the most gracious suavity. His biting wit knew no bounds; he lashed men and institutions with the boldest unrestraint and without a trace of prudery. Although he was very conservative in his opinions his devastating mockeries halted neither before gods nor official persons, and he lustily shook his cap and bells at the most sacred things.

It was no accident that comedy and the drama reached their highest perfection just when the Athenian democracy was in fullest bloom. The utterly unrestricted presentation of comedy at that time shows a much better understanding of personal freedom than do the most beautiful descriptions in republican constitutions. For the spirit of a time is not defined by the dead letter of its laws, but by the living actions of its men, which first give it its imprint.

If, finally, we cast a brief glance at what the Greeks brought forth in architecture, sculpture and painting, we shall be able to estimate the whole greatness and depth of their culture. History knows many peoples which have done very great things in special fields of cultural creation; but the Greeks are perhaps the only people who were able to achieve the highest in every field of culture. It was this which gave to their creation that inner balance which for the last two thousand years has constantly aroused the astounded admiration of the greatest minds. One understands what Goethe meant when he said of Greek art: "For all other cultures one must make allowances; to the Greek alone one is always a debtor."

For the Greeks, art was not a private interest of individuals, which they pursued as if it were some sort of sport, but a creative activity that was intimately intergrown with their whole social life, and without which they could not conceive existence. The Hellenes were perhaps the only people that ever understood how to make an art of living itself; at least no other people is known to us among whom the intimate connection of art

with every phase of personal and social life is so clearly and impressively apparent. A community like Athens, which spent more for the support of its theater and its dramatic art than it did on the wars with the Persians, which threatened the entire political existence of ancient Hellas, is hardly conceivable to us today, in this time of state barbarity when bureaucracy and militarism absorb enormously the greatest part of the national incomes of all so-called "civilized"- peoples. But it was only in such a community that art could develop to such a height.

This is especially true of architecture, the most social of all arts, development of which is completely dependent on the understanding that men bring to it socially. Only in a country where the individual constantly took the liveliest kind of part in public affairs, and could easily keep track of those affairs, could architectonic skill reach such perfection. Among the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Persians and other peoples of antiquity, architecture as an art was limited to the palaces and tombs of the kings and the temples of the gods. Among the Greeks we first find it applied to all the purposes of public life and to personal use.

Besides, the Grecian temple breathed a very different spirit from the sacred buildings of Oriental peoples, whose shapeless massiveness express the whole oppressive and crushing weight of gloomy religious systems and rigid priestly dogmas. There hovers over the religious ideas of the Greeks the poetic glamour of a cheerful view of life, which regarded the gods as also human and was burdened with no life-hating dogmas. A healthy sensuality governed the life of the Greeks and set its mark even on their conceptions of divinity. The Hellene prostrated himself in the dust before no god. The idea of sin was utterly foreign to him; he never blasphemed against his humanity. Thus culture became for him a worldly celebration of the joy of life. Songs, dances, farces, tragedies, athletic contests, associated with joyous feasts where wine and love played no small part, followed one another in colorful sequence and gave to the religious festivals their characteristic note. And this did not occur behind thick temple walls, but under the blue sky, in the midst of lovely natural settings which supplied a fitting frame for these joyous exercises. This sense of the joy of life inevitably revealed itself in the works of man. Taine has sketched the peculiarity of architectonic achievement in Hellas in these words:

There is nothing ceremonial, peculiar, torturedly artistic, about this building; it is a rectangle surrounded by a row of pillars; three or four geometrical forms at the foundation support the whole, and the symmetry of the plan becomes apparent through the repetition of these and the opposition of them one to another. The crowning of the gable, the deck-plate of the capital, all accessories and all detail equally make clear the peculiar

character of every member, and the diversity of the coloring completes the emphasis and the elucidation of these values.^

This special type of architectonic artistry, this graceful, flexible beauty, in which every line blends into a brilliant, harmonious whole, is found everywhere in Hellas: in the temple of Zeus at Olympia, in Apollo's temple in Phigalia, in the Theseum, in the Parthenon j from the propylea of the Acropolis to the splendid works of Ictinus, Kallicrates and so many other masters.

No art was so widespread among the Hellenes as sculpture. It surpasses, in fact, everything that peoples have ever done in this field and constantly astounds us by the fabulous abundance of its creations. In the time of the Roman invasion Roman generals plundered the art treasures of Greece to an extent unheard of. The reports even state that in Rome and its immediate vicinity over sixty thousand Greek statues were set up. Yet, in spite of this, Pausanias, who lived in the second century after Christ, in the time of the Roman emperors, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, could say after his great journey through Hellas that the whole country, from coast to coast, was like a great museum of art. According to Winckelmann, Pausanias tells of twenty thousand statues which he had seen himself.'* From these figures one can form an approximate estimate of the lavish abundance of Greek sculpture and of its wide distribution. The care of the naked body became for the Greeks a regular cult. Public games and athletic contests were a part of every festival, and offered to the eye of the artist the human body in every conceivable posture, giving ever new inspiration for the exercise of his creative power.

Along with the individual masters there developed in such centers as Athens, Corinth, Argos and Sicyon, whole schools of sculpture. And what a horde of great artists do we find here. Agelades, who worked in Argos, was celebrated as the teacher of the three great masters, Phidias, Myron and Polycletus. Phidias is known as the creator of the forty-foot-high statue of Zeus in his temple in Olympia. Also the colossal bronze statue of Athena Promachos on the Acropolis in Athens, which could be seen from afar by mariners at sea, was his work. We can form only an imperfect idea of Phidias' gigantic statue of the Athena of the Parthenon, for, like so many others of that period, it has completely disappeared. Later there developed the new Attic school, which attained the height of its power in the works of Scopas of Paros and, above all, of Praxiteles of Athens. The rediscovered statue of Hermes to the north of the Olympian temple gives us an idea of the perfected art of Praxiteles. And the great sculptors, Euphranor of Corinth and Lysippos of Sicyon, must not be left unmen-

' Hippolyte Taine, Philosofhy of Art.

■* J. J. Winckelmann, Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums, 1764.

tioned. Of the hundreds on hundreds of less well-known masters we know usually not even the names.

Of course, fewer by far of the works of Greek painters have been preserved. From the accounts of the ancients we gather that a great number of famous schools existed in every part of the country, like the Ionic school of painters in Asia Minor, especially in Ephesus—where Zeuxis and Parrhasius worked—the schools of Sicyon, Paestum, and so on. Polygnotus from the island of Thasos is usually spoken of as the first painter of outstanding importance i but Apelles seems to have produced the greatest works in the field of painting j the ancients are filled with his praise.

The art of the Greeks found expression in every object of daily usej it swept like a transfiguring inspiration over every phenomenon of public and private life, as we can see from the numberless vases with their charming paintings and from the unearthed gems, cameos and engraved precious stones of the most varied kinds that so arouse our admiration. One can hardly overestimate the outstanding greatness and the infinite many-sidedness of this people, even though one does not lose sight of their darker side and counts it in for its full worth. No other people in ancient history has been able to exert such power of attraction on the greatest minds of all later times. Countless books have been written in every language about every branch of their rich creative activity, and even now hardly a year passes which does not bring to light new and important material concerning the culture of ancient Hellas.

If one turns to observe what was the status among the Greeks of that national and political unity which is asserted to be the indispensable preliminary to the development of any kind of culture among a people, one comes to conclusions that are utterly destructive of this view. Ancient Hellas never knew what national unity meant, and when towards the end of its history national-political unity was forcibly imposed on it from without, it was the end of Grecian culture, which then had to find another home for its creative activities. The Greek spirit simply could not endure the national-political experiment, and was gradually extinguished in the countries in which its force had poured forth most strongly for centuries.

What united the Grecian tribes and peoples was their common culture, which revealed itself everywhere in thousands upon thousands of different forms—not the artificially woven bond of national-political community, in which no one in Greece felt any interest and the essence of which was always alien to the Hellenes; Greece was politically the most dismembered country on earth. Every city took zealous care lest its political independence be assailed J for this the inhabitants of even the smallest of them were in no mind to surrender. Each of these little city-republics had its own constitution, its own social life with its own cultural peculiaritiesj and this it was that gave to Hellenic life as a whole its variegated wealth

of genuine cultural values. Albrecht Wirth has rightly said: "The achievements of the Greeks were the more astounding the more they were, as a people, torn and divided. No one ever succeeded in uniting their infinity of different tribes for any collective deed, in any single opinion. . . , They all always valued highly their membership in their own folk-group, but they did not possess enough power of sacrifice, enough political feeling to weld them into one great whole j to subordinate to it their separate ambitions." ^

But it was just this lack of political feeling which quickened the cultural activity of the Greeks, yes, which first made them spiritually susceptible to it. When Aristotle was collecting the material for his work on the constitutions of the Hellenes he found himself under the necessity of extending his undertaking over a hundred and fifty-eight municipalities, each of which presented a political entity in itself and, because of its autonomy, had its own peculiar social characteristics. Even the topography of the whole peninsula was highly favorable to such a development of social life. The land is mountainous in parts and enjoys a mild and delightful climate, which without doubt exerted a strong influence on the minds and souls of the inhabitants. Lovely and fruitful valleys cut across the landscape in every direction j the sea penetrates deep into the land in countless bays, and provides on three sides the most wonderful coastline one could conceive of. Added to this, a multitude of larger and smaller islands connect the peninsula with Asia Minor almost like a bridge. This entire rich natural setting was unusually variable and could but inspire in men reflections that would have been denied them anywhere else. Every part of the country had its peculiar character, which helped to give a definite stamp to the activities of the inhabitants. Thus was awakened and furthered that rich diversity of intellectual and social life which is so characteristic of ancient Hellas.

As to the Greeks themselves, it is today becoming constantly clearer to us that they were neither a homogeneous people nor a pure race. Everything indicates, rather, that we have to do here with an exceptionally happy intermixture of different folk and race elements fused into spiritual unity by a common culture. The assertion that the Hellenes were a people of the Germanic race which invaded the peninsula and gradually subdued the resident population, is, in that sweeping form, confirmed by no intelligible proof. The harder scientific research tries to penetrate the veil that still covers the primitive history of Greece, the more does it bring to light facts which indicate exactly the opposite. That the peninsula suffered from frequent invasions of foreign tribes that pressed in from the north is unquestioned. But we are still far from a clear understanding of the racial affiliation of those tribes, whose origin is completely lost in the mists of