Senses Fail Let It Enfold You Deluxe Edition Rar 1

0 views

Skip to first unread message

Message has been deleted

Lina Neiffer

unread,

Jul 16, 2024, 11:10:34 PM7/16/24

to erwomliame

The great name of Homer covers the whole of the first periodof Greek literature.[1] It is from the Homeric poems alone thatwe can form a picture to our imagination of the state of societyin prehistoric Hellas. The picture which they present is so livelyin its details, and so consistent in all its parts, that we have noreason to suspect that it was drawn from fancy. Its ideal, as distinguishedfrom merely realistic, character is obvious. The poetprofesses to sing to us of heroes who were of the seed of gods,whose strength exceeded tenfold the strength of actual men, andwho filled the world with valiant deeds surpassing all that theirposterity achieved. Yet, in spite of this, the Iliad and the Odysseymay be taken as faithful mirrors of a certain phase of Greek society,just as the Niebelungen Lied, the romances of Charlemagne,and the tales of the Round Table reflect three stages in the historyof feudalism. We find that in this earliest period of Greek historythe nation was governed by monarchs each of whom claimeddescent from a god. Thus the kings exercised their power overthe people by divine right; but at the same time a necessary conditionof their maintaining this supremacy was that they shouldbe superior in riches, lands, personal bravery, and wisdom. Theirsubjects obeyed them, not merely because they were Διογενεῖς, orbecause they were fathers of the people, but also, and chiefly, becausethey were the ablest men, the men fitted by nature to rule,the men who could be depended upon in an emergency. The[Pg 20]king had just so much personal authority as he had ability to acquireor to assert. As soon as this ability failed, the sceptre departedfrom him. Thus Laertes overlives his royalty; and thesuitors of Penelope, fancying that Ulysses is dead, take no heedof Telemachus, who ought to rule in his stead, because Telemachusis a mere lad; but as soon as the hero returns, and proveshis might by stringing the bow, the suitors are slain like sheep.Again, Achilles, while acknowledging the sway of Agamemnon,quarrels with him openly, proving his equality and right to suchindependence as he can assert for himself. The bond betweenthe king in the heroic age and his chieftains was founded on thepersonal superiority of the suzerain, and upon the necessity feltfor the predominance of one individual in warfare and council.The chiefs were grouped around the monarch like the twelvepeers round Charlemagne, or like the barons whose turbulenceShakespeare has described in Richard II. The relation of theHomeric sovereign to his princes was, in fact, a feudal one.Olympus repeats the same form of government. There Zeus ismonarch simply because he wields the thunder. When Herèwishes to rebel, Hephæstus advises her to submit, because Zeuscan root up the world, or hurl them all from the crystal parapetof heaven. Such, then, is the society of kings and princes in Homer.They stand forth in brilliant relief against the background,gray and misty, of the common people. The masses of the nation,like the chorus in tragedy, kneel passive, deedless, appealingto Heaven, trembling at the strokes of fate, watching with anxietythe action of the heroes. Meanwhile the heroes enact their dramafor themselves. They assume responsibility. They do and sufferas their passions sway them. Of these the greatest, the most trulytypical, is Achilles. In Achilles, Homer summed up and fixedforever the ideal of the Greek character. He presented an imperishablepicture of their national youthfulness, and of their ardent[Pg 21]genius, to the Greeks. The "beautiful human heroism" ofAchilles, his strong personality, his fierce passions controlled andtempered by divine wisdom, his intense friendship and love thatpassed the love of women, above all, the splendor of his youthfullife in death made perfect, hovered like a dream above the imaginationof the Greeks, and insensibly determined their subsequentdevelopment. At a later age, this ideal was destined to be realizedin Alexander. The reality fell below the ideal: for rien n'estsi beau que la fable, si triste que la vérité. But the life of Alexanderis the most convincing proof of the importance of Achillesin the history of the Greek race.