Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3: I. Agorè: Polities of the Homeric Age. II. Ilios: Trojans and Greeks Compared. III. Thalassa: The Outer Geography. IV. Aoidos: Some Points of the Poetry of Homer.Gladstone, W. E. (William Ewart)
Philosophy
Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3: I. Agorè: Polities of the Homeric Age. II. Ilios: Trojans and Greeks Compared. III. Thalassa: The Outer Geography. IV. Aoidos: Some Points of the Poetry of Homer.
Gladstone, W. E. (William Ewart)
Civilization, Homeric; Epic poetry, Greek -- History and criticism; Homer
We shall find it probable that, although the ostensible privileges
of the people were not less, yet the same spirit of freedom did not
pervade Trojan institutions; that their kings were followed with a more
servile reverence by the people; that authority was of more avail,
apart from rational persuasion; that amidst equally strong sentiments
of connection in the family and the tribe, there was much less of moral
firmness and decision than among the Greeks, and perhaps also a far
less close adherence to the great laws of conjugal union, which had
been violated by the act of Paris. Indeed it would appear from the
allusion of Hector to a tunic of stone[428], that Paris was probably by
law subject to stoning for the crime of adultery: a curious remnant, if
the interpretation be a correct one, of the stern traits of pristine
justice and severity, still remembered amidst a prevalent dissolution
of the stricter moral ties.
[428] Il. iii. 57.
Although it results from our previous inquiries that the plebeian
_substratum_, so to speak, of society, was perhaps nearly the same in
both countries, yet the opinions of the masses would not then have the
same substantiveness of character, nor so much independence of origin,
as in times of Christianity, and of a more elaborate development of
freedom and its main conditions. Then, much more than now, the first
propelling power in the formation of public opinion would be from the
high places of society: and in the higher sphere of the community, if
not in the lower, Greece and Troy were, while ethnically allied, yet
materially different as to moral tone. It is remarkable, that there is
no Τὶς in Troy.
~_The Trojans more sensual and false._~
If we may trust the general effect of Homer’s representations, we
shall conclude that the Trojans were more given to the vices of
sensuality and falsehood, the Greeks, on the other hand, more inclined
to crimes of violence: in fact, the latter bear the characteristics of
a more masculine, and the former of a feebler, people. In the words
of Mure, the contrast shadows forth ‘certain fundamental features of
distinction, which have always been more or less observable, between
the European and Asiatic races[429].’
[429] Greek Lit. vol. i. p. 339.
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