Mosaics of Grecian History Part 11

Though while Corruption on their sentence waits They thrust pale Justice from their haughty gates, Invisible their steps the Virgin treads, And musters evil o'er their sinful heads.

She with the dark of air her form arrays, And walks in awful grief the city ways: Her wail is heard; her tear, upbraiding, falls O'er their stained manners and devoted walls.

But they who never from the right have strayed-- Who as the citizen the stranger aid-- They and their cities flourish: genial peace Dwells in their borders, and their youth increase; Nor Jove, whose radiant eyes behold afar, Hangs forth in heaven the signs of grievous war; Nor scath, nor famine; on the righteous prey-- Peace crowns the night, and plenty cheers the day.

Rich are their mountain oaks: the topmost tree The acorns fill, its trunk the hiving bee; Their sheep with fleeces pant; their women's race Reflect both parents in the infant face: Still flourish they, nor tempt with s.h.i.+ps the main; The fruits of earth are poured from every plain.

But o'er the wicked race, to whom belong The thought of evil and the deed of wrong, Saturnian Jove, of wide-beholding eyes, Bids the dark signs of retribution rise; And oft the deeds of one destructive fall-- The crimes of one--are visited on all.

The G.o.d sends down his angry plagues from high-- Famine and pestilence--in heaps they die!

Again, in vengeance of his wrath, he falls On their great hosts, and breaks their tottering walls;

Scatters their s.h.i.+ps of war; and where the sea Heaves high its mountain billows, there is he!

Ponder, O Judges! in your inmost thought The retribution by his vengeance wrought.

Invisible, the G.o.ds are ever nigh, Pa.s.s through the midst, and bend th' all-seeing eye.

The man who grinds the poor, who wrests the right, Aweless of Heaven, stands naked to their sight: For thrice ten thousand holy spirits rove This breathing world, the delegates of Jove; Guardians of man, their glance alike surveys The upright judgments and the unrighteous ways.

A virgin pure is Justice, and her birth August from him who rules the heavens and earth-- A creature glorious to the G.o.ds on high, Whose mansion is yon everlasting sky.

Driven by despiteful wrong she takes her seat, In lowly grief, at Jove's eternal feet.

There of the soul unjust her plaints ascend: So rue the nations when their kings offend-- When, uttering wiles and brooding thoughts of ill, They bend the laws, and wrest them to their will.

Oh! gorged with gold, ye kingly judges, hear!

Make straight your paths, your crooked judgments fear, That the foul record may no more be seen-- Erased, forgot, as though it ne'er had been.

--Trans. by ELTON.

OATHS.

As in the beginning of the foregoing extract, so the poets frequently refer to the oaths that were taken by those who entered into important compacts, showing that then as now, and as in Old Testament times, some overruling deity was invoked to witness the agreement or promise, and punish its violation. Sometimes the person touched the altar of the G.o.d by whom he swore, or the blood that was shed in the ceremonial sacrifice, while some walked through the fire to sanctify their oaths. When Abraham swore unto the King of Sodom that he would not enrich himself with any of the king's goods, he lifted up his hand to heaven, pointing to the supposed residence of the Deity, as if calling on him to witness the oath. When he requires his servant to take an oath unto him he says, "Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh: and I will make thee swear by the Lord, the G.o.d of heaven and earth;"

and Jacob requires the same ceremony from Joseph when the latter promises to carry his father's bones up out of Egypt.

When the G.o.ddess Vesta swore an oath in the very presence of Jupiter, as represented in Homer's hymn, she touched his head, as the most fitting ceremonial.

Touching the head of aegis-bearing Jove, A mighty oath she swore, and hath fulfilled, That she among the G.o.ddesses of heaven Would still a virgin be.

We find a military oath described by aeschylus in the drama of "The Seven Chiefs against Thebes":

O'er the hollow of a brazen s.h.i.+eld A bull they slew, and, touching with their hands The sacrificial stream, they called aloud On Mars, Eny'o, and blood-thirsty Fear, And swore an oath or in the dust to lay These walls, and give our people to the sword, Or, peris.h.i.+ng, to steep the land in blood!

That there was sometimes a fire ordeal to sanctify the oath, we learn from the Antig'o-ne of SOPHOCLES. The Messenger who brought tidings of the burial of Polyni'ces says,

"Ready were we to grasp the burning steel, To pa.s.s through fire, and by the G.o.ds to swear The deed was none of ours, nor aught we knew Of living man by whom 'twas planned or done."

In the Twelfth Book of VIRGIL'S aene'id, when King Turnus enters into a treaty with the Trojans, he touches the altars of his G.o.ds and the flames, as part of the ceremony:

"I touch the sacred altars, touch the flames, And all these powers attest, and all their names, Whatever chance befall on either side, No term of time this union shall divide; No force nor fortune shall my vows unbind, To shake the steadfast tenor of my mind."

The ancient poets and orators denounce perjury in the strongest terms, and speak of the offence as one of a most odious character.

THE FUTURE STATE.

The future state in which the Greeks believed was to some extent one of rewards and punishments. The souls of most of the dead, however, were supposed to descend to the realms of Ha'des, where they remained, joyless phantoms, the mere shadows of their former selves, dest.i.tute of mental vigor, and, like the spectres of the North American Indians, pursuing, with dreamlike vacancy, the empty images of their past occupations and enjoyments. So cheerless is the twilight of the nether world that the ghost of Achilles informs Ulysses that it would rather live the meanest hireling on earth than be doomed to continue in the shades below, even though as sovereign ruler there. Thus Achilles asks him--

"How hast thou dared descend into the gloom Of Hades, where the shadows of the dead, Forms without intellect, alone reside?"

And when Ulysses tries to console him by reminding him that he was even there supreme over all his fellow-shades, he receives this reply:

"Renowned Ulysses! think not death a theme Of consolation: I would rather live The servile hind for hire, and eat the bread Of some man scantily himself sustained, Than sovereign empire hold o'er all the shades."

--Odyssey, by COWPER, B. XI.

But even in Hades a distinction is made between the good and the bad, for there Ulysses finds Mi'nos, the early law-giver of Crete, advanced to the position of judge over the a.s.sembled shades-- absolving the just, and condemning the guilty.

High on a throne, tremendous to behold, Stern Minos waves a mace of burnished gold; Around, ten thousand thousand spectres stand, Through the wide dome of Dis, a trembling band; Whilst, as they plead, the fatal lots he rolls, Absolves the just, and dooms the guilty souls.

--Odyssey, by POPE, B. XI.

The kinds of punishment inflicted here are, as might be expected, wholly earthly in their nature, and may be regarded rather as the reflection of human pa.s.sions than as moral retributions by the G.o.ds. Thus, Tan'talus, placed up to his chin in water, which ever flowed away from his lips, was tormented with unquenchable thirst, while the fruits hanging around him constantly eluded his grasp. The story of Tantalus is well told by PROFESSOR BLACKIE, as follows:

Tantalus.

O Tantalus! thou wert a man More blest than all since earth began Its weary round to travel; But, placed in Paradise, like Eve, Thine own d.a.m.nation thou didst weave, Without help from the devil.

Alas! I fear thy tale to tell; Thou'rt in the deepest pool of h.e.l.l, And shalt be there forever.

For why? When thou on lofty seat Didst sit, and eat immortal meat With Jove, the bounteous Giver, The G.o.ds before thee loosed their tongue, And many a mirthful ballad sung, And all their secrets open flung Into thy mortal ear.

The poet then goes on to describe the gossip, and pleasures, and jealousies, and scandals of Olympus which Tantalus heard and witnessed, and then proceeds as follows:

But witless he such grace to prize; And, with licentious babble, He blazed the secrets of the skies Through all the human rabble, And fed the greed of tattlers vain With high celestial scandal, And lent to every eager brain And wanton tongue a handle Against the G.o.ds. For which great sin, By righteous Jove's command, In h.e.l.l's black pool up to the chin The thirsty king doth stand: With-parched throat he longs to drink, But when he bends to sip, The envious waves receding sink, And cheat his pining lip.

Like in character was the punishment inflicted upon Sis'y-phus, "the most crafty of men," as Homer calls him. Being condemned to roll a huge stone up a hill, it proved to be a never-ending, still-beginning toil, for as soon as the stone reached the summit it rolled down again into the plain. So, also, Ix-i'on, "the Cain of Greece," as he is expressly called--the first shedder of kindred blood--was doomed to be fastened, with brazen bands, to an ever-revolving fiery wheel. But the very refinement of torment, similar to that inflicted upon Prometheus, was that suffered by the giant t.i.t'y-us, who was placed on his back, while vultures constantly fed upon his liver, which grew again as fast as it was eaten.

THE DESCENT OF OR'PHEUS.

Only once do we learn that these torments ceased, and that was when the musician Orpheus, lyre in hand, descended to the lower world to reclaim his beloved wife, the lost Eu-ryd'i-ce. At the music of his "golden sh.e.l.l" Tantalus forgot his thirst, Sisyphus rested from his toil, the wheel of Ixion stood still, and t.i.tyus ceased his moaning. The poet OVID thus describes the wonderful effects of the musician's skill:

The very bloodless shades attention keep, And, silent, seem compa.s.sionate to weep; Even Tantalus his flood unthirsty views, Nor flies the stream, nor he the stream pursues: Ixion's wondrous wheel its whirl suspends, And the voracious vulture, charmed, attends; No more the Bel'i-des their toil bemoan, And Sisyphus, reclined, sits listening on the stone.

--Trans. by CONGREVE.

Pope's translation of this scene from the Iliad is peculiarly melodious:

But when, through all the infernal bounds Which flaming Phleg'e-thon surrounds, Love, strong as death, the poet led To the pale nations of the dead, What sounds were heard, What scenes appeared, O'er all the dreary coasts!

Dreadful gleams, Dismal screams, Fires that glow, Shrieks of woe, Sullen moans, Hollow groans, And cries of tortured ghost!!!

But hark! he strikes the golden lyre; And see! the tortured ghosts respire!

See! shady forms advance!

Thy stone, O Sisyphus, stands still, Ixion rests upon his wheel, And the pale spectres dance; The Furies sink upon their iron beds, And snakes uncurled hang listening round their heads.

The Greeks also believed in an Elys'ium--some distant island of the ocean, ever cooled by refres.h.i.+ng breezes, and where spring perpetual reigned--to which, after death, the blessed were conveyed, and where they were permitted to enjoy it happy destiny. In the Fourth Book of the Odyssey the sea G.o.d Pro'teus, in predicting for Menelaus a happier lot than that of Hades, thus describes the Elysian plains:

But oh! beloved of Heaven! reserved for thee A happier lot the smiling Fates decree: Free from that law beneath whose mortal sway Matter is changed and varying forms decay, Elysium shall be thine--the blissful plains Of utmost earth, where Rhadaman'thus reigns.

Joys ever young, unmixed with pain or fear, Fill the wide circle of the eternal year.

Stern Winter smiles on that auspicious clime; The fields are florid with unfading prime; From the bleak pole no winds inclement blow, Mould the round hail, or flake the fleecy snow; But from the breezy deep the blest inhale The fragrant murmurs of the western gale.