The Extant Odes of Pindar | Page 5

to us a greater number of thoughts, and those more advanced and more interesting than we find in Pindar, but the similarity in moral temper and tone is very striking, as also is the way in which we see this temper acting on their beliefs. Both hold strongly, as is the wont of powerful minds in an age of stability as opposed to an age of transition, to the traditions and beliefs on which the society around them rests, but both modify these traditions and beliefs according to the light which arises in them, and which is as much moral as intellectual light. In so doing they are indeed in harmony with the best instincts of the society around them, but they lead and guide such instincts and give them shape and definiteness. In the Oreste?n trilogy of Aeschylus we have an ever-memorable assertion of the supreme claims of human morality to human allegiance, of the eternal truth that humanity can know no object of reverence and worship except itself idealised, its own virtues victorious over its own vices, and existing in the greatest perfection which it can at any given time conceive. Somewhat the same lesson as that of the Oresteia is taught later, with more of sweetness and harmony, but not with more force, in the Oedipus Coloneus of Sophokles. And in Pindar we see the same tendencies inchoate. Like Aeschylus he does by implication subordinate to morality both politics and religion. He ignores or flatly denies tales that bring discredit on the gods; he will only bow down to them when they have the virtues he respects in man. Yet he, like Aeschylus and Sophokles, does so bow down, sincerely and without hesitation, and that poets of their temper could do so was well indeed for poetry. By rare and happy fortune they were inspired at once by the rich and varied presences of mythology, 'the fair humanities of old religion,' and also by the highest aspirations of an age of moral and?intellectual advance. We do not of course always, or even often, find the moral principles clearly and consciously expressed or consistently supported, but we cannot but feel that they are present in the shape of instincts, and those instincts pervading and architectonic.
And if we allow so much of ethical enlightenment to these great spokesmen of the Hellenic people, we cannot deny something of like honour to the race among whom they were reared. Let us apportion our debt of gratitude to our forerunners as it is justly due. There would seem to be much of fallacy and of the injustice of a shallow judgment in the contrast as popularly drawn between 'Hellenism' and 'Hebraism,' according to which the former is spoken of as exclusively proclaiming to the world the value of Beauty, the latter the value of?Righteousness. In this there is surely much injustice done to Hellas. Because she taught the one, she did not therefore leave the other untaught. It may have been for a short time, as her other greatness was for a short time, though its effects are eternal, but for that short time the national life, of Athens at any rate, is at least as full of high moral feeling as that of any other people in the world. Will not the names of Solon, of Aristeides, of Kallikratidas, of Epameinondas, of Timoleon and many more, remind us that life could be to the Hellene something of deeper moral import than a brilliant game, or a garden of vivid and sweet sights and sounds where Beauty and Knowledge entered, but Goodness was forgotten and shut out? For it is not merely that these men, and very many more endowed with ample portion of their spirit, were produced and reared among the race; they were honoured and valued in a way that surely postulated the existence of high ethical feeling in their countrymen. And even when the days of unselfish statesmen and magnanimous cities were over, there were philosophers whose schools were not the less filled because they claimed a high place for righteousness in human life. To Solon and Aristeides succeeded Socrates and Plato, to Epameinondas and Timoleon succeeded Zeno and Epictetus. That the morality of the Hellenes was complete on all sides, it would of course be irrational to maintain. They had not, for instance, any more than the Hebrews, or any other nation of antiquity, learnt to abhor slavery, though probably it existed in a milder form at Athens than anywhere else in the old or new world: they were more implacable in revenge and laxer in sexual indulgence than the Christian ethics would allow in theory, though not perhaps much more so than Christendom has shown itself in practice. And though undoubtedly the greatest single impulse ever given