Читать книгу The Home Life of the Ancient Greeks - Hugo Blumner - Страница 3

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If the account of Greek life and customs given in this work does not present all sides of life in due proportion, we must lay the blame on the insufficiency of the sources whence a description of this kind is derived. These are of three kinds: literary, artistic, and epigraphic. The literary sources supply us with a large amount of detail for the work in hand, but seldom give complete pictures or descriptions of social conditions. Those writers of the Free Age of Greece whom we still possess entirely, or in considerable fragments, are not all equally in a position to touch on matters of private or domestic life. The Homeric Epics give a good deal of insight into the life of those early times; but after Homer epic poetry disappears from the ranks of available testimony, and what remains to us of the Alexandrine Epic, which was essentially a learned style of poetry, supplies no useful material, if only because it seeks its subjects in the mythological period, and describes them on essentially Homeric lines. The lyric poets, too, afford little help; now and then they enable us to add a few details to our picture, but, as a rule, the results are small, and not till we reach the Alexandrine period, and there chiefly in bucolic and epigrammatic poetry, do we obtain richer results in this domain. Here the poems of Theocritus are of especial value. Unfortunately, very much of this period, which would have thrown most interesting lights on different aspects of Greek life, has been entirely lost, or survives only in small fragments. Tragedy again, which usually takes its subjects from mythology, cannot be considered at all. Ancient poetry possesses no “middle-class epic” like modern poetry, which will assuredly some day supply valuable material for the social historian. But ancient comedy is of the greatest value for our purpose, and may indubitably be regarded as the most fertile source of our knowledge of private life. The comedies of Aristophanes deal with the immediate present, and, although full of extravagant notions and fantastic inventions, yet treat of actual circumstances, and thus supply a mine of wealth for the student of Attic life. We can only judge, from numerous fragments of their comedies, how valuable would have been the other poets of the so-called “Older Comedy” of the fifth century B.C., who are, unfortunately, lost to us. Even though we must exercise some caution in the use of these authorities, distinguishing comic inventions and poetical exaggeration from actual fact, yet in the majority of cases it will not be very difficult to come to a decision on such questions. No less valuable, perhaps even more useful, for our purpose would be the so-called “New Comedy” of Menander and others, if we possessed more than a few scattered fragments of it. The imitations of Plautus and Terence compensate to some extent for the lost originals, yet even here we must be on our guard, since the Roman poets in their adaptation often introduced traits from Roman life. Still, as a rule they adhered to Greek, or, rather, Attic manners, upon which the original comedies were based.

Among prose writers we must chiefly consider the historians and orators. The former are of comparatively little use. They deal with great political and military events; the daily life going on around them gave them no subjects for description; apart from the fact that it probably never occurred to them that anyone in later ages would ever care to hear about the social conditions of that time. A writer like Herodotus, who introduces not only political history, but also geographical, ethnological, and social information, directs his attention for this very reason chiefly to foreign nations, and gives his countrymen a great deal of information about the life and customs of the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Persians; concerning the Greeks themselves he is absolutely silent. It is quite natural that historians should only mention by the way facts which we could use with advantage in a description of Greek life. The orators, on the other hand, supply richer material, not so much in political speeches as in private orations dealing with law-suits, of which a considerable number have come down to us. Here side-lights fall on many events of daily life, and we obtain an insight into private affairs such as we seldom gain elsewhere. Philosophical writings supply some material, though comparatively little; especially those that take actual life as their basis and deal with philosophical problems in connection with existing circumstances. Among these may be included such writings as the “Characters” of Theophrastus, and here we can but regret that we possess only mutilated fragments of these admirable descriptions of character, based on much accurate observation, and taken direct from real life.

The Greek literature of the Roman period can only be utilised in selections and with care, to illustrate the period with which we have to deal. After Greece came under Roman dominion, new manners and customs took root there, unknown during the period of Greek freedom and the Hellenistic epoch. This diminishes the value for our purpose of the writings of Plutarch, and even more of Lucian, that excellent delineator of the customs of the second century A.D. But even in this later literature there is a good deal which we have a right to use in our description, for some of its habits and customs obtained through the whole of antiquity; besides which, the later writers often turned to past centuries for descriptions, and sought their material in older sources or old historians and other authors, on whose accuracy we cannot, however, always depend. The same was the case with the materials which we are able to use in Roman literature.

From all this it is plain that the account given here deals especially with the real “classic” period of Greek antiquity from about the sixth to the third century B.C. It is impossible to give a connected history of the development of Greek civilisation from the beginning, if only on account of the nature of our authorities and the incompleteness of tradition. Between Homeric culture and that which we meet with afterwards in the poets and prose writers of the best time, lies a period of several centuries, about which we know very little, and that little chiefly in a legendary form. We can only determine in a few cases how the conditions of the sixth and fifth centuries gradually developed, for instance in the rise of the constitution, while it is impossible for us to trace the genesis of manners and civilisation. We shall, therefore, not attempt to give a separate account of Homeric civilisation, but content ourselves with introducing a few of its details in appropriate places; nor shall we go beyond the period of Hellenism, since even here foreign, and especially Oriental, influence produced many alterations, while Roman influence afterwards made many essential changes.

The artistic authorities are also chosen in accordance with this scheme. The vase paintings, of which so many have been preserved to us, supply a great quantity and variety of pictures of Greek life, and we have drawn largely on this valuable source of information, which supplies most of the pictures chosen as illustrations. Compared with this there is little else of importance. The statues to which we have access are chiefly figures of gods and heroes, or portraits. These we can only use to illustrate Greek costume. But a few genre pictures are preserved to us in the artistic productions of the best Greek period, and some of these we shall have occasion to discuss. For this purpose the small terra-cotta figures are more useful, which often represent with vigorous truth subjects from real life. Here, too, as in the case of the statues, we must always remember the difference between Hellenic and Roman work, and it is just this consideration which greatly limits our choice of sculptures; for the great majority of those which would be suitable for our purpose date from the Roman period, and usually represent Roman life. For this reason mosaics and frescoes can scarcely be regarded, since none have come down to us from the Greek period. Undoubtedly many of them imitate Greek models, or, at any rate, those of the Alexandrine epoch, but it is not always easy to decide in particular cases; and, moreover, the greater part are mythological pictures. It is obvious that works of Etruscan art, such as sarcophagi, pictures on mirrors, and the like, cannot be regarded. Thus the works of art suitable for supplementing our literary sources are limited in number. Of these the vase paintings constitute the great majority, and this is entirely in accordance with the chronological limits which we have set to our description; for they almost all belong to the centuries mentioned above, and only a few that would be suitable for our purpose are of greater antiquity.

The nature of our authorities not only sets a limit of time, but also one of space. When we speak of Greek life we ought to include in it not only life in actual Greece or Hellas, but also that in the numerous colonies on the Aegean and Black Seas, in Southern Italy, Northern Africa, etc. But we know very little of the conditions in those Greek settlements outside Greece, and even in Greece itself, where, in consequence of the political and racial differences, these circumstances are by no means everywhere identical, our knowledge is limited in many ways. Even though the difference in manners and customs was greater in early times than afterwards, when increase in trade and greater facility of travel produced more equal conditions, yet certain local and national peculiarities always prevailed. Life at Sparta differed in many respects from that at Athens. The other large towns of Greece—Corinth, Sicyon, Thebes, not to speak of the colonies of Miletus, Syracuse, and Cyrene—doubtless showed many local peculiarities which are entirely hidden from our knowledge. Our literary sources are for the greater part Athenian. The majority of our monuments, too, are of Attic origin, or, at any rate, influenced by it, though Southern Italy supplies some of the vases, and in many cases the customs of Magna Graecia are represented in these pictures. Most of our knowledge of Greek life, then, refers to Athens, and to be quite accurate we ought to call our description “Life in Ancient Athens.” Every now and then we are enabled to enlarge our pictures by details from other parts of Greece. Still, we must beg our readers to remember that most of the traits here introduced relate to Athens between the sixth and fourth centuries B.C. We have scarcely the remotest conception of the mode of life at that time in any small Greek city or in the country.

Here the third class of our sources comes in to help us, viz., the inscriptions. These not only give us most of our material for a knowledge of political conditions, legal and religious antiquities, etc., but they also supply interesting details of private life; and as they are found not only in Attica, but all over Greece, the islands, and the colonies, they supply much very valuable information about matters which our literary sources entirely ignore. As in most cases the period of the inscription can be ascertained by the character of the writing or by other peculiarities, we are not so liable here to make chronological mistakes and refer customs of a later period to earlier times. Compared with our literary sources, the inscriptions are also far safer material; for the accuracy of a writer may be sometimes called in question, especially when his information is supplied at second-hand.