ple, this Ark, these tables of the law, constituted a tangible, objective center about which the mind, the will, the conscience, could revolve. They visibly embodied the traditional ethnic morality.

CHAPTER VII

PRE-SOCRATIC GREEK SOLIDARITY

The Homeric Greek was rooted in the world about him; he loved life; he was at home with nature; his family relationships were necessary to his existence; and finally he was organically related to his clan and tribe. Nestor advises Agamemnon to arrange his warriors by clans and tribes on the ground that they will fight better in this way. The Cyclops seem strange to Odysseus and his companions because "they have neither gatherings for council nor oracles of law, but each one utters the law to his own children and his wives, and they reck not one of another." In like manner Polyphemus, the giant, "was not conversant with others, but dwelt apart in lawlessness of mind"; he acted not with regard to other men, save as his own spirit moved him. This is strange, because it is so thoroughly out of accord with the Greek spirit. Partaking of wine and fruit, the Greek listened to public discourse, and the minstrel with his lyre kept fresh the memory of famous men and events. Rejecting the omens of birds, the Trojan Hector exclaims: "One omen is best, to fight for our own country." Constant wars abroad and political assemblies at home kept awake in the Greek mind a lively consciousness of his fellows. The Greek did not think of himself as first

existing as an individual and then becoming aware of the lives of his comrades. The Greek individual had never been abstracted in thought from that web of social relationships which bound him to his fellows. The very atmosphere in which he lived, on the battlefield, in the assembly, as a member of a patriarchal family and of a clan and a tribe, nourished a sense of self which was through and through social. There was no store of common possessions; the spoils of war fell to the various leaders. The Greek had a marked sense of individuality. Nevertheless, a sense of individuality abstracted from its social setting had never dawned on the pre-Socratic Greek mind. "What righteous man," said Odysseus to Circe, who invited him to feast and forget his companions in distress, "would have the heart to eat and drink ere he had redeemed his company and beheld them face to face?" The Homeric Greek led a truly gregarious life. How powerful and subtle this gregariousness was even we ourselves can feel in Homer's lines: "As the many tribes of feathered birds, wild geese or cranes or long necked swans . . . fly hither and thither joying in their plumage, and with loud cries settle ever onwards, and the mead resounds; even so poured forth the many tribes of warriors from ships and huts into the plain. And the earth echoed terribly beneath the tread of men and horses. So stood they in the flowery plain, unnumbered as are leaves and flowers in their season."

The old tie of kinship centered in the heads of families, but there developed later a new tie of a common land. This common interest of several families in land led to the formation of settled village com

munities. When, still later, the fear of invasion led to the fortification of some commanding eminence, the older village communities were subordinated to the newer organization of the city-state. They survived as local brotherhoods within the larger unity of the city-state. The Greek city-state was therefore not the expression of individual wills; it was not a voluntary organization on the part of individual persons; it was the outgrowth of preëxisting organizations, each one of which retained its old constitution. When, as tradition reports, Romulus, the founder of Rome, and his companions, deposited a clod of earth, each from his native soil, in the trench dug at the founding of the city, they symbolized the unity which was to exist between the new city-state and the old local groups, and the same principle obtained at Athens.

In the early city-state, the king ruled by divine right or birth and was, like the patriarch of the preceding age, priest, judge, and warrior. There was of course the council of chieftains with whom the king deliberated on matters of common concern. Nevertheless we must not suppose that the early Greeks felt that the authority of their kings was imposed upon them as subjects. According to Homer, when the Trojan elders beheld Agamemnon before the walls of their city, although they knew him not, they pronounced him a kingly personage. In the early days kings were kings because they were able to lead. "Even as a bull," says Homer, "standeth out far foremost amid the herd, for he is preeminent amid the pasturing kine," even so did Zeus make Agamemnon "preëminent among many, and chief amid heroes."

This development of social solidarity, however, did not extend beyond the small groups of family, tribe, and local city-state. Within these groups was comradeship. There is nothing, says the Homeric Odysseus, sweeter than a man's own country. Outside these local groups, however, moral and social responsibility did not exist. The following sentence from Odysseus shows the strong moral sense within the group, and the lack of any responsibility beyond the definitely recognized social relationships: "I sacked their city and slew the people. And from out the city we took their wives and much substance, and divided them amongst us, that none through me might go lacking his proper share." Odysseus was surnamed "waster of cities." Warfare was as little excused as agriculture or commerce. Discus and javelin-throwing, running, leaping, wrestling, hunting, and the bearing of arms were a part of the educational training of the old Greek period. The chief aim of Spartan education-which remained conservative to the last-was to teach the youth to endure pain and to conquer in battle. Bravery in battle was a necessary element in the old Greek moral ideal. The absolute naturalness of warfare in the lines of Homer strikes us moderns with amazement: "There is neither pain nor grief of heart, when a man is smitten in battle fighting for his own possessions." The Homeric heroes have hearts set on war; their hands and their feet lust for battle! The Trojan Paris challenges the chiefs of Agamemnon. Hear Homer's description: "When Menelaos, dear to Ares, marked him coming in the forefront of the multitude with long strides, then even