Another serious defect in the ordinary Greek moral standard was the low place assigned to the virtue of veracity. The Greeks, in marked contrast to the ancient Persians, had only a very feeble sense of the sanctity of the plighted word. Untruthfulness was ingrained in the nation. The Homeric heroes were full of guile and deceit, and the historic Greeks were little better. They had throughout the ancient world a well-earned reputation for disregard of promises and oaths. When it seemed to them necessary to lie in order to gain a desired end, then lying appeared to them justifiable. Scythas, tyrant of Zancle, if we may judge from a story told by Herodotus, was the only Greek who kept his word to Darius. This man was in exile at Susa. He obtained from the king permission, presumably on parole, to visit Sicily, and honorably returned to Persia. The conduct of Scythas in this matter must have been exceptional, for, in the words of Herodotus, “him Darius regarded the most upright of all the Greeks to whom he afforded a refuge.”[460] The great moral teachers of Greece recognized this defect in the moral character of their countrymen and sought to correct it by extolling the virtue of truthfulness. After the Persian war a class of men arose, historians and philosophers, whom Schmidt, because of their reverence for truth, calls the ancestors of the modern men of science.[461] Thucydides had the same sense of the sanctity of exactness in statement of fact as has the historian of to-day. Socrates died rather than cloak the truth before his judges. Aristotle said, “Friends and truth are both dear to us, but it is a sacred duty to prefer the truth.”[462] IV. THE MORAL EVOLUTION [Sidenote: The morality of the Homeric Age] The historical starting point of the moral evolution in Greece is the morality of the Homeric Age. This morality we find incarnated in the heroes of the time, Achilles and Odysseus, for, as Wundt observes, “the inmost moral convictions of a people are shown far more plainly in the character of its heroes than in its gods.”[463] The qualities of character with which, as worthy of admiration, the poet invests his heroes show that, notwithstanding the great advance already achieved in many of the arts of life, in morality the Greeks of this age were still in some respects on a level with savages. Thus the poet extols the “good Autolycus” for his skill in thievery and perjury.[464] But stealing and lying, as with uncivilized people generally, to be proper and right, must be adroit and “for the good of friends and the harm of enemies.” Piracy was an honorable occupation.[465] The bodies of enemies slain in battle were maltreated, as is the wont of savages.[466] Conceptions of deity were crude and unethical, the gods being represented as capricious, profligate, partial, and unjust.