ture of Greek society in Plutarch. tails which give them freshness and interest. Here and there we come upon some admission or some compromise regarding morality which shocks us not a little in the midst of much that is lofty, much that is wise. On the question of charity he says and thinks things which, taken by themselves, would make us rank him on no very high level among the world's great moralists. But in other respects also the society of Greece does Unpleasant pic- not appear to us in very fair colors, even through this most favorable medium. I repudiate, indeed, altogether the picture drawn by Hertzberg in his history of the shocking features taken from the novels of the dayfeatures rendered impossible by the virtues which he extracts from Plutarch's and Dio's society. This random setting down of every narrative now extant as equally good evidence is a proceeding only saved from ridicule by the great learning and earnestness of the writer. Plutarch's vanity. But making all due reservations, there is something vain and self-conscious, not only in the general complexion of the social meetings which Plutarch so carefully describes; there is even some of it in the old man himself, who is evidently proud of his position, his virtues, his reputation, and though he often alludes to the follies, the loquacity, the conceit of old age, affords in his own person a specimen, though perhaps a very lovable one, of all these imperfections. There is to me in this, as in every other phase of Greek life which I have studied, a certain want, an absence of the calmness and dignity which we require in the perfect gentleman. Aristotle's disagreeable grand seigneur, who ever stands upon his dignity, is as far removed from our ideal as is Plutarch, with his garrulous unreserve. Nor do I imagine that the domestic arrangements of the Greek houses, even the most wealthy, ever attained the real cleanliness which we consider the essence of refinement. The prying man, he tells us, is to avoid looking in at open doors, "For it is not right or fair to the owners, nor is the result pleasant. Within, ill-favored sights meet the stranger's eye, pots and pans lying in disorder, and women-slaves sitting about, and nothing fine or delightful." It was well if you did not hear the lash, or the outcry of the slaves being punished, or maids upon the rack; an ominous passage, for he couples it with the untidinesses to be witnessed about the home of a dissolute man, the ground wet with wine, and the fragments of garlands lying about. No doubt our superior notions regarding these matters are due to the influence of the women of the house. And yet it is plain that in this age the mistress of the house had at last obtained some of her rights. It was probably in imitation of what they saw in Rome that the richer people in Boeotia and Attica adopted the freer treatment of the sex, which they had long noticed, but not copied at Sparta. Plutarch's wife paid visits and received guests, even when her husband was absent, sat at table with him, and joined in all his public interests. But nevertheless his "Conjugal Precepts" make it plain that he regarded all this as a mere concession or toleration on the part of the husband, to which the wife had no claim in the nature of things, just as he enjoins kindness and mercy to slaves, without for one moment disallowing slavery. In fact, the age was mending its manners little by little, by gradual improvement and gentler habits, just as its moralist is always exhorting the individual to combat his vices by daily resolves and small advances. Such a course of moral hygiene is rational, but has never been really effectual. It requires a new dogma, a great revelation, a startling reform Dio's and Plutarch's ignorance of Christianity and of Judæism. Pliny's recognition of the spread of Christianity in the first century. to carry with it the weak and wavering masses of mankind, who have not the strength or the patience to work out their own salvation. Even now "the Word had been made flesh, and dwelt among them, full of grace and truth"; even now the Gospel had been preached in Syria, in "all Asia," in Macedonia, in Corinth; and yet the great contemporaries, Dio, Plutarch, nay, even Josephus, seem hardly to have heard of it. Had Plutarch been at Athens when St. Paul came there, he would have been the first to give the apostle a respectful hearing, as he himself preached the real identity of all religions, the spirituality and unity of the Deity, and the right of all nations to name inferior gods or demons in accordance with their various traditions. But no; as Judæism was unknown to him beyond the vestments of the high priest, so Christianity, first identified everywhere as a Jewish schism, was still beyond his ken. It is not till the first century has actually closed that Pliny is startled to find in Bithynia the temples deserted, the altars forgotten, and a new religion overrunning the province. Even then we may assume that Christianity was very little known in Greece beyond Corinth, and in all the Macedonian towns only among Jews and people of the poorest class. For the severance of Greece and Asia Minor is not less remarkable at this time than their respective unity under Roman rule. I have spoken of this already as regards the Greece of Plutarch. But even he stands aloof completely from the Hellenism of Asia Minor, and there is but one brief tract (and is it genuine?) which represents the writer as residing in the turmoil and confusion of the principal assize town of the province-Ephesus or Pergamum-which he describes as a scene of passion and of misery. So Dio on his side of Athens. speaks with a sort of complacency of the decay and disgrace of Athens, and of its vulgar and base imitations of Asiatic jealousy Roman vices, as if the jealous Asiatic Hellenist felt that although the wealth and prosperity of the Asiatic towns were now vastly superior, there was still a primacy of sentiment about the name of Athens and of Greece which no stoas or exedras or liberalities from emperors and rich citizens could supply. |