>>1886059If by "materialist" you mean historical materialist, well, it's passed down from ancient times and given an edgy renewal in the European Renaissance. The aesthetic celebrates heroes and distinction, therefore reproduces the aristocratic order and the old contest system.
SOME THEMES IN GREEK CULTURE
(1) A central, culturally approved value of Greek life, embedded in and influencing its system of stratification, is an emphasis on individual fame and honor. The ultimate hope is for a “fame undying.” Heraclitus, for example, insists, “The best men choose one thing rather than all else: everlasting fame.” Wealth, of course, is commonly associated with the attainment of fame and came, especially with the rise of urban mercantilism, to be seen as a distinct and creditable aim rather than as an enjoyable byproduct of fame-bringing deeds. Thus Solon’s elegy beseeches, “Grant me prosperity at the hands of the blessed gods, and good fame ever at the hands of men.” 7 Wealth itself, however, is often felt to contain an inherent taint. If the pursuit of fame brought an ennobling danger, especially the “envy of the gods,” the pursuit of wealth was distinctly fraught with the threat of a cheapening but no less dangerous dishonor. In this vein Solon’s elegy continues: “Wealth, I desire to possess, but would not have it unrighteously; retribution comes afterwards always.” Honor is often counterposed to wealth: In his funeral oration, Pericles makes plain that it is “not riches, as some say, but honor that is the delight of men when they are old and useless.” 8
(2) The fame which is best is that which is earned through one’s own active efforts. It is not simply that derived through the inheritance of a good name or wealth. These are by all means pleasant and to be enjoyed to the fullest, as much as a beautiful and a healthy body; but the fame that makes a man memorable is that won by his own achievements. “It is the most experienced and the most capable,” says Isocrates, “who in any field of action deserve to be honoured.”
Above all, a man is made legendary by his readiness to risk what is precious in continuing strife or competition against others. “Who acts, shall endure,” said Aeschylus.1° A man must continue to strive against the odds; for even when he is fated to failure by the gods his efforts—all the more ennobled because they are foredoomed—may yet bring immortal fame. “You will die when the moirai spin death for you,” says Callinus, “but a man should march straight forward brandishing his spear.” 11 A man must never withdraw from the contest.
(3) It is a commonplace to Greeks that fame won in contest brings envy, and vigorous in so many ways, they are also lusty in their envy. Of all the sentiments that moderns may discern in the Greeks, perhaps the most seemingly alien is their unabashed envy; an envy all the more notable to us because it betrays our expectations of a people of a “noble” character, and because envy in our own culture tends to be repressed. To the Greeks, however, envy is a sentiment natural to men; if they have reservations about it, it is not on moral grounds but simply because envy made a man unhappy. Envy, however, signified that a man is successful. Epicharmus says, “It is obvious that a man who is not envied is of no account.” Envy is the expected portion of the famous and, indeed, so pervasive is envy felt to be that the gods themselves are given to it and might envy a mortal’s earthly successes.
(4) Discrepant though it may seem for so earthy and active a people, Greek lustiness is never far removed from an underlying pessimism; the Greeks, says W. C. Grene, were “constantly visited by melancholy.” ** They seem to feel that the best has already been and that the future will bring only pain. Their proverb says: Count no man fortunate until he is dead. Indeed, one of their greatest and most distinctive cultural innovations, the tragic drama, is characterized by its ending, which is commonly, though not always, an “unhappy” one. While a feeling for the “tragic” is by no means synonymous with pessimism, a sense of the tragic is a way of binding the fears underlying pessimism, of coming to terms with and controlling them; it is a defense against the paralysis of action—the apathy or panic—that can result from pessimism.}%
The Greeks believe that the human lot is vulnerable to sudden and smashing disaster, and that the more successful a man, the more certain his destruction. The very gods are seen as thwarting men’s hopes. Zeus is said in the Iliad to resent men’s belief that the gods cause their misery, and well he might; for in the Odyssey Penelope laments, “It is the gods who give us sorrow. . . .” The Greeks often feel the very universe is inimical to men and, like the King in Aeschylus’ The Suppliant Maidens who sees his sudden entrapment by circumstances, they sometimes groan, “I see and shudder.”
(5) Counterbalancing an activistic, Promethean striving and the zest for contest is their equally insistent taboo against excess.1* Man, the Greeks feel, should control and limit both his hopes and his ambitions, neither expecting nor attempting too much, lest the gods regard him as guilty of hybris—of arrogance or insolence—and exact retribution. This, of course, is implicated in Olympian religion, one of whose central tenets holds that there is an impassable chasm between men and the gods, between mortals and immortals, which men must not seek to surmount. If in their pride they forget this difference, men are doomed. They must think, therefore, only human thoughts; they must remember that they are only human and, as Zeus remarks in the Iliad, of all things living, “there is nothing more piteous than a man.”
(6) Still another pattern that arouses curiosity in examining Greek culture is that which, for want of a better term, I will characterize provisionally as its “rationalism.” Certainly it would be naive to assume that the intellectualism of the philosophers is shared by the peasant in the countryside, or even by the average urbanite. Yet certain aspects of Greek history dispose us to doubt that the growth of philosophical rationalism in the fifth century was completely unheralded or discontinuous with the main drift of Greek culture.
Look, for instance, at the bold pragmatic manner in which constitutions are sometimes established for new colonies, or at the calculating way the older tribal structures are deliberately manipulated with a view to strengthening the unity of the polis. Similarly, there is the masterful manner in which Solon went about mending the rift in the Athenian class system; he clearly knows what he is about. In Hesiod, one finds a commendation of the man who practices foresight and takes good advice. In Homer there is the fascinating figure of the wily Odysseus, the man who is never at a loss. The Greeks seem to have a curious ability to turn their back upon their own past and, within surprisingly broad limits, to do what they think their new situation requires, even if this disposes them to behave in a manner at variance with tradition.
There is a long intellectual tradition in Greece, as E. R. Dodds indicates, in which a man’s character is habitually discussed in terms of what he knows. Achilles’ ferocious bravery, for example, is spoken of as a kind of knowing; he “knows wild things, like a lion.” 1° There is a linguistic tendency to subsume a man’s character under what he knows. Just as terms of commendation reveal a group’s values, so too does the vocabulary of derogation, and “the derogatory epithets employed by Athenian writers often imply intellectual rather than moral failing.” 16 That the deviant Greek is frequently reproached as in some manner ignorant, as knowing no better, or as lacking in insight, indicates the strong value placed upon effective cognition. Also implicit in the basic injunction of the Delphic oracle is the intimate fusion of knowing and of doing right: Man, know thyself. And it is surely related to the Socratic paradox that no one does evil voluntarily. It is also clear from Greek tragedy that a change from ignorance to knowledge, especially knowledge of the identity of the protagonists—the anagnorisis, or recognition 17—is viewed as a major dramatic hinge, consequential for all that follows. “When you know me, rebuke me,” says Oedipus.1®
(7) Finally, I must take note of another pattern long associated with Greek antiquity, male homosexuality or, more strictly speaking, bisexuality. Greek homosexuality is not, as it is in most industrialized societies, a deviant and surreptitious pattern nor is it by any means viewed by the Greeks as unmanly. Although its origins in Greek society are obscure, it seems to be of long standing (deriving in one tradition from the Cretans) and is rather widely accepted, if not equally practiced, throughout Greek society. To an unfortunate extent this pattern has been systematically neglected by many classical scholars, some of whom seem to take the attitude that if the reader is interested “in that sort of thing” he must look elsewhere.!® Yet it is difficult to escape the suspicion that so distinctive and common a pattern of intimate behavior is linked to or expressive of other basic elements in the culture. Common decency may dispose us to a tactful silence on the question; but common scholarly scrupulousness, not to mention perplexity, will not let us off so easily.