The Story Of Mankind - Part 4

This is part 4 of the story of mankind by Hendrik van Loon.

The Greeks Meanwhile,

The Indo-European tribe of the Hellenes was taking possession of Greece.

The pyramids were a thousand years old and were beginning to show the first signs of decay,

And Hammurabi,

The wise king of Babylon,

Had been dead and buried several centuries when a small tribe of shepherds left their homes along the banks of the river Danube and wandered southward in search of fresh pastures.

They called themselves Hellenes,

After Hellen,

The son of Deucalion and Pyrrha.

According to the old myths,

These were the only two human beings who had escaped the great flood,

Which countless years before had destroyed all the people of the world,

When they had grown so wicked that they disgusted Zeus,

The mighty god,

Who lived on Mount Olympus.

Of these early Hellenes we know nothing.

Thucydides,

A historian of the fall of Athens,

Describing his earliest ancestor,

Said that they did not amount to very much.

And this was probably true.

They were very ill-mannered.

They lived like pigs and threw the bodies of their enemies to the wild hogs who guarded their sheep.

They had very little respect for other people's rights,

And they killed the natives of the Greek peninsula,

Who were called the Pelestians,

Who stole their farms and took their cattle and made their wives and daughters slaves and wrote endless songs praising the courage of the clan of the Achaeans,

Who had led the Hellenic advance guard into the mountains of Tessaly and the Peloponnesus.

But here and there on the tops of high rocks they saw the castle of the Aegans,

And those they did not attack,

For they feared the metal swords and the spears of the Aegan soldiers and knew that they could not hope to defeat them with their clumsy stone axes.

For many centuries they continued to wander from valley to valley and from mountainside to mountainside,

Then the whole of the land had been occupied and the migration had come to an end.

The moment was the beginning of Greek civilization.

The Greek farmer,

Living within sight of the Aegan colonies,

Was finally driven by curiosity to visit his haughty neighbors.

He discovered that he could learn many useful things from the man who dwelt behind the high stone walls of Mycenae and Tyrants.

He was a clever pupil.

Within a short time he mastered the art of handling those strange iron weapons which the Aegans had brought from Babylon and from Thebes.

He came to understand the mysteries of navigation.

He began to build little boats for his own use.

And when he had learned everything the Aegans could teach him,

He turned upon his teachers and drove them back to their islands.

Soon afterwards he ventured forth upon the sea and conquered all the cities of the Aegon.

Finally in the 15th century before our era he plundered and ravaged Knossos,

And ten centuries after their first appearance upon the scene the Hellenes were the undisputed rulers of Greece,

Of the Aegon and of the coastal regions of Asia Minor.

Troy,

The last great commercial stronghold of the older civilization,

Was destroyed in the 11th century BC.

European history was to begin in all seriousness.

The Greek Cities The Greek cities that were really states.

We modern people love the sound of the word big.

We pride ourselves upon the fact that we belong to the biggest country in the world and possess the biggest navy and grow the biggest oranges and potatoes,

And we love to live in cities of millions of inhabitants,

And when we are dead we are buried in the biggest cemetery of the whole state.

A citizen of ancient Greece,

Could he have heard us talk,

Would not have known what we meant.

Moderation in all things was the ideal of his life,

And mere bulk did not impress him at all.

And this love of moderation was not merely a hollow phrase used upon special occasions,

It influenced the life of the Greeks from the day of their birth to the hour of their death.

It was part of their literature,

And it made them build small but perfect temples.

It found expression in the clothes which the men wore and in the rings and the bracelets of their wives.

It followed the crowds that went to the theater and made them hut down any playwright who dared to sin against the iron law of good taste or good sense.

The Greeks even insisted upon this quality in their politicians and in their most popular athletes.

When a powerful runner came to Sparta and boasted that he could stand longer on one foot than any other man in Helles,

The people drove him from the city because he prided himself upon an accomplishment at which he could be beaten by any common goose.

That is all very well,

You will say.

In no doubt it is a great virtue to care so much for moderation and perfection,

But why should the Greeks have been the only people to develop this quality in olden times?

For an answer I shall point to the way in which the Greeks lived.

The people of Egypt or Mesopotamia have been the subjects of a mysterious supreme ruler who lived miles and miles away in a dark palace and who was rarely seen by the masses of the population.

The Greeks,

On the other hand,

Were free citizens of a hundred independent little cities,

The largest of which counted fewer inhabitants than a large modern village.

When a peasant who lived in Ur said that he was a Babylonian,

He meant that he was one of millions of other people who paid tribute to the king who at that particular moment happened to be the master of Western Asia.

But when a Greek said profoundly that he was an Athenian or a Theban,

He spoke of a small town which was both his home and his country,

And which recognized no master but the will of the people in the marketplace.

To the Greeks his fatherland was the place where he was born,

Where he had spent his earliest years playing hide and seek amidst the forbidden rocks of the Acropolis,

Where he had grown into manhood with a thousand other boys and girls,

Whose nicknames were as familiar to him as those of your own schoolmates.

His fatherland was the holy soil where his father and mother lay buried.

It was the small house within the high city walls where his wife and children lived in safety.

It was a complete world which covered no more than four or five acres of rocky land.

One should see how these surroundings must have influenced a man in everything he did and said and thought.

The people of Babylon and Assyria and Egypt had been part of the vast mob.

They had been lost in the multitude.

The Greek,

On the other hand,

Had never lost touch with his immediate surroundings.

He never ceased to be part of a little town where everybody knew everyone else.

He felt that his intelligent neighbors were watching him,

Whatever he did,

Whatever he wrote plays,

Or made statues out of marble,

Or composed songs,

He remembered that his efforts were going to be judged by all the freeborn citizens of his hometown who knew about such things.

This knowledge forced him to strive after perfection,

And perfection,

As he had been taught from childhood,

Was not possible without moderation.

In this hard school the Greeks learned to excel in many things.

They created new forms of government,

And new forms of literature,

And new ideals in art which we have never been able to surpass.

They performed these miracles in little villages that covered less ground than four or five modern city blocks.

And look what finally happened.

In the fourth century before our era,

Alexander of Macedonia conquered the world.

As soon as he had done with fighting,

Alexander decided that he must bestow the benefits of the true Greek genius upon all mankind.

He took it away from the little cities and the little villages and tried to make it blossom and bear fruit amidst the vast royal residences of his newly acquired empire.

But the Greeks,

Removed from the familiar sight of their own temples,

Removed from the well-known sounds and smells of their own crooked streets,

At once lost the cheerful joy and marvellous sense of moderation which had inspired the work of their hands and brains while they laboured for the glory of their old city-states.

They became cheap artisans,

Content with second-rate work.

The day the little city-states of old Hellas lost their independence and were forced to become part of a big nation,

The old Greek spirit died,

And it had been dead ever since.

Greek Self-Government The Greeks were the first people to try the difficult experiment of self-government.

In the beginning all the Greeks had been equally rich and equally poor.

Every man had owned a certain number of cows and sheep.

His mud hut had been his castle.

He had been free to come and go as he wished.

Whenever it was necessary to discuss matters of public importance,

All the citizens had gathered in the marketplace.

One of the older men of the village was elected chairman,

And it was his duty to see that everybody had a chance to express his views.

In case of war,

A particularly energetic and self-confident villager was chosen commander in chief,

But the same people who had voluntarily given this man the right to be their leader claimed an equal right to deprive him of his job once the danger had been averted.

But gradually the village had grown into a city.

Some people had worked hard,

And others had been lazy.

A few had been unlucky,

And still others had been just plain dishonest in dealing with their neighbors and had gathered wealth.

As a result the city no longer consisted of a number of men who were equally well off.

On the contrary,

It was inhabited by a small class of very rich people and a large class of very poor ones.

There had been another change.

The old commander in chief,

Who had been willingly recognized as headman or king because he knew how to lead his men to victory,

Had disappeared from the scene.

His place had been taken by the nobles,

A class of rich people who during the course of time had got hold of an undue share of the farms and the states.

These nobles enjoyed many advantages over the common crowd of freemen.

They were able to buy the best weapons,

Which were to be found on the market of the Eastern Mediterranean.

They had much spare time in which they could practice the art of fighting.

They lived in strongly built houses,

And they could hire soldiers to fight for them.

They were constantly quarreling among each other to decide who should rule the city.

The victorious nobleman then assumed a sort of kingship over all his neighbors and governed the town until he in turn was killed or driven away by still another ambitious nobleman.

Such a king,

By the grace of his soldiers,

Was called a tyrant,

And during the 7th and 6th centuries before our era,

Every Greek city was for a time ruled by such tyrants,

Many of whom,

By the way,

Happened to be exceedingly capable men.

But in the long run,

This state of affairs became unbearable.

Then attempts were made to bring about reforms,

And out of these reforms grew the first democratic government of which the world has a record.

It was early in the 7th century that the people of Athens decided to do some house cleaning,

And give the large number of freemen once more a voice in the government,

As they were supposed to have had in the days of their Archaean ancestors.

They asked a man by the name of Draco to provide them with a set of laws that would protect the poor against the aggressions of the rich.

Draco set to work.

Unfortunately,

He was a professional lawyer,

And very much out of touch with the ordinary life.

In his eyes a crime was a crime,

And when he had finished his code,

The people of Athens discovered that these draconian laws were so severe that they could not possibly be put into effect.

There would not have been enough rope to hang all the criminals under the new system of jurisprudence which made the stealing of an apple a capital offence.

The Athenians looked about for a more humane reformer.

At last they found someone who could do that sort of thing better than anybody else.

His name was Solon.

He belonged to a noble family,

And he had travelled all over the world and had studied the forms of government of many other countries.

After a careful study of the subject,

Solon gave Athens a set of laws which bore testimony to that wonderful principle of moderation which was part of the Greek character.

He tried to improve the condition of the peasants without however destroying the prosperity of the nobles,

Who were,

Or rather who could be,

Of such great service to the state as soldiers.

To protect the poorer classes against abuse on the part of the judges,

Who were always elected from the class of the nobles because they received no salary,

Solon made a provision whereby a citizen with a grievance had the right to state his case before a jury or thirty of his fellow Athenians.

Most important of all,

Solon forced the average freeman to take a direct and personal interest in the affairs of the city.

No longer could he stay at home and say,

Oh,

I'm too busy today,

Or it is raining and I had better stay indoors.

He was expected to do his share.

To be at the meeting of the town council,

And carry part of the responsibility for the safety and prosperity of the state.

The government by the demos,

The people,

Was often far and from successful.

There was too much idle talk.

There were too many hateful and spiteful scenes between rivals for official honor,

But it taught the Greek people to be independent and to rely upon themselves for their salvation,

And that was a very good thing.

Greek Life How the Greeks lived.

But how,

You will ask,

Did the ancient Greeks have time to look after their families and their businesses,

If they were forever running to the marketplace to discuss affairs of state?

In this chapter I shall tell you.

In all matters of government,

The Greek democracy recognized only one class of citizens,

The freemen.

Every Greek city was composed of a small number of freeborn citizens,

A large number of slaves and the sparkling of foreigners.

At rare intervals,

Usually during a war,

When men were needed for the army,

The Greeks showed themselves willing to confer the rights of citizenships upon the barbarians as they called the foreigners.

But this was an exception.

Citizenship was a matter of birth.

You were an Athenian because your father and your grandfather had been Athenians before you.

But however great your merit as a trader or as a soldier,

If you were born non-Athenian parents,

You remained a foreigner until the end of time.

The Greek city,

Therefore,

Whenever it was not ruled by a king or tyrant,

Was run by and for the freemen.

And this would not have been possible without a large army of slaves who outnumbered the freed citizens at the rate of six or five to one,

And who performed those tasks to which the modern people must devote most of our time and energy,

If we wish to provide for our families and pay the rent for our apartments.

The slaves did all the cooking and baking and candlestick making of the entire city.

They were the tailors and the carpenters and the jewelers and the schoolteachers and the bookkeepers,

And they attended the store and looked after the factory while the master went to the public meeting to discuss questions of war and peace,

Or visited the theater to see the latest play of Aeschylus,

Or hear a discussion of the revolutionary ideas of Euripides,

Who had dared to express certain doubts upon the omnipotence of the great god Zeus.

Indeed,

Ancient Athens resembled a modern club.

All the freeborn citizens were hereditary members,

And all the slaves were hereditary servants and waited upon the needs of their masters,

And it was very pleasant to be a member of the organization.

But when we talk about slaves,

We do not mean the sort of people about whom you have read in the pages of Uncle Tom's cabin.

It is true that the position of those slaves who tilled the fields was a very unpleasant one,

But the average free man who had come down in the world and who had been obliged to hire himself out as a farmhand led just as a miserable life.

In the cities,

Furthermore,

Many of the slaves were more prosperous than the poorer classes of the free man,

For the Greeks,

Who loved moderation in all things,

Did not like to treat their slaves after the fashion which afterward was so common in Rome,

Where a slave had a few rights as an engine in a modern factory and could be thrown to the wild animals upon the smallest of pretexts.

The Greeks accepted slavery as a necessary institution,

Without which no city could possibly become the home of truly civilized people.

The slaves also took care of those tasks,

Which nowadays are performed by the businessman and the professional man.

As for those household duties which take up so much of the time of your mother,

And which were your father when he comes home from his office,

The Greeks who understood the value of leisure had reduced such duties to the smallest possible minimum by living amidst surroundings of extreme simplicity.

To begin with,

Their homes were very plain.

Even the rich nobles spent their lives in a sort of adobe barn,

Which lacked all the comforts which a modern workman expects as his natural right.

A Greek home consisted of four walls and a roof.

There was a door which led into the street,

But there were no windows.

The kitchen,

The living rooms and the sleeping quarters were built around an open courtyard in which there was a small fountain or a statue and a few plants to make it look bright.

Within this courtyard the family lived when it did not rain or when it was not too cold.

In one corner of the yard a cook,

Who was a slave,

Prepared the meal and in another corner the teacher,

Who was also a slave,

Taught the children the alpha,

Beta,

Gamma and the tables of multiplication,

And in still another corner the lady of the house,

Who rarely left her domain,

Since it was not considered good form for a married woman to be seen on the streets too often,

Was repairing her husband's coat with her seamstresses,

Who were slaves.

In the little office,

Right off the door,

The master was inspecting the accounts which the overseer of his farm,

Who was a slave,

Had just brought to him.

When the dinner was ready the family came together but the meal was a very simple one and did not take much time.

The Greeks seemed to have regarded eating as an unavoidable evil and not a pastime,

Which kills many dreary hours and eventually kills many dreary people.

They lived on bread and on wine,

With a little meat and some green vegetables.

They drank water only when nothing else was available,

Because they did not think it very healthy.

They loved to call each other for dinner,

But our idea of a festive meal where everybody is supposed to eat much more than is good for him would have disgusted them.

They came together at the table for the purpose of a good talk and a good glass of wine and water,

But as they were moderate people,

They despised those who drank too much.

The same simplicity which prevailed in the dining room also dominated their choice of clothes.

They liked to be clean and well-groomed,

To have their hair and beards neatly cut,

To feel their bodies strong with the exercise and the swimming of the gymnasium.

But they never followed the Asiatic fashion which prescribed loud colors and strange patterns.

They wore a long white coat and they managed to look as smart and as modern Italian officer in his long blue cape.

They loved to see their wives wear ornaments,

But they thought it very vulgar to display their wealth,

Or their wives.

In public,

Whenever the women left their home,

They were as inconspicuous as possible.

In short,

The story of Greek life is a story not only of moderation,

But also of simplicity.

Ladies,

Chairs and tables and books and houses and carriages are apt to take up a great deal of their owner's time.

In the end they invariably make him their slave,

And his hours are spent looking after their wants,

Keeping them polished and brushed and painted.

The Greeks before anything else wanted to be free,

Both in mind and in body,

That they might maintain their liberty and be truly free in spirit.

They reduced their daily needs to the lowest possible point.