ACHILLES AND PRIAM
Is it possible that in Greece, that well-spring from where all
have drunk, there was no love for enemies? Would-be modern pagans, enemies of the "Palestine superstition," claim that Greek thought has
everything in it. In the spiritual life of the Occident, Greece is like China
to the East, mother of all invention.
In the Ajax of Sophocles, famous Odysseus is moved to
pity at the sight of a fallen enemy reduced to misery. In vain Athena herself,
Hellenic wisdom personified in the sacred owl, reminds him that "the most delightful humor is to laugh
at one's enemies." Ulysses is not convinced. "I pity him, although he is my enemy, because I see him so
unfortunate, bound to an evil destiny; and looking at him, I think of myself.
Because I see we are not other than ghosts, and unsubstantial shadows, all we
who live. . . . It is not right to do evil to a dying man even if you hate
him." It seems to me that we are here still very far away from love. Wily Ulysses is not
wily enough to conceal the motive of his unnatural softening. He pities his
enemy because he thinks of himself, remembers that evil could happen also to
him, and he pardons his enemy only because he sees him dying and unfortunate.
A wiser man than Ulysses, the son of Sophroniscus, the
stone cutter, asked himself, among many other questions, how the righteous man
ought to treat his enemies. But reading the texts, we discover with
astonishment two Socrates, of different opinions. The Socrates of the
Memorabilia frankly accepts the common feeling. Friends are to be treated well
and enemies’ ill, and thus it is better to anticipate one's enemies in doing
ill: "The man most greatly to be
praised," he says to Cherocrate, "is
he who anticipates his enemies in hurtfulness and his friends in
helpfulness." But Plato's Socrates does not accept the common opinion.
He says to Crito, "Injustice should
be rendered to no one in return for injustice; nor evil for evil whatever has
been the injury that thou hast received." And he affirms the same
principle in the Republic, adding in support that the bad are not made better
through revenge. But the ruling idea in Socrates' head is the thought of
justice, not the feeling of love. In no case should the righteous man do evil,
out of self-respect (notice this), not out of affection towards his enemy. The
bad man must punish himself, otherwise the Judges in the lower world will
punish him after death. Aristotle, the disciple of Plato, turns tranquilly
back to the old Idea: "Not to resent
offenses," he says in the Ethics to Nico-machus, "is the mark of a base and slavish man."
In Greece, therefore, there is little to the purpose for
those who are looking for precedents for Christianity.
But in order to make us believe that Christianity existed
before Christ, those who deny Jesus, have found a rival to Jesus even in Rome,
in the very palace of the Caesars. Seneca, the director of conscience to young
gentlemen, leader of the fashionable cult of reformed stoicism; the abstract
aristocrat never moved by the troubles of the poor; the proprietor who despises
riches, and clutches them tightly, who affirms the equality between free and
slave; and owns slaves; the talented anatomist of ethics, of evils, of active
vices, and complacent virtues; he who canalized the old doctrine of Crispus,
dull but clear, towards the bay of refinement; moral Seneca they claim was a
Christian without knowing it during Christ's very lifetime. Thumbing over his
works (many were written after the death of Christ, for Seneca waited till he
was sixty-five years old before committing suicide), they have found that "the wise man does not avenge but
forgets affronts," and that "to
imitate the Gods we should do good also to the ungrateful because the sun
shines equally on the wicked and the seas bear up the pirate ship,"
and finally that "We must aid our
enemies with a friendly hand." But the "forgetting" of the philosopher is not "forgiveness"; and "relief" can be philanthropy
but is not love. The imperious, the stoic, the Pharisee; the philosopher proud
of his philosophy, the righteous man complacent over his righteousness, can
despise the insults of the small, the pricks of enemies, and through pride of liberal
giving and to win admiration can stoop to give a loaf to a hungry enemy in
order to humiliate him more harshly from the heights of perfection. But that
bread was prepared with the leaven of vanity and that would-be friendly hand
could never have dried a tear or dressed a wound.
The world of antiquity did not know love. It knew passion
for a woman, friendship for a friend, justice for the citizen, hospitality for the foreigner; but it did not know love.
Zeus protected pilgrims and strangers; he who knocked at the Grecian door was
not denied meat, a cup of wine, and a bed. The poor were to be covered, the
weak helped, the mourning consoled with fair words; but the men of antiquity
did not know love, love that suffers, that shares another's sorrow, love for
all who suffer and are neglected, love for the poor, the lowly, the outlawed,
the maligned, the downtrodden, the abandoned; love for all, love which knows no
difference between fellow-citizens and strangers, between fair and foul, between
criminal and philosopher, between brother and enemy.
In the last stanza of the Iliad we see an old man, a
mourner, a father who kisses the hand of his most terrible enemy, of the man who
has killed his sons, who has just killed his most loved son. Priam. The old
king, head of the rich, ruined city, father of fifty sons, kneels at the feet
of Achilles, the greatest hero, and the unhappy among the Greeks, son of the
Sea-Goddess, avenger of Patroclus, slayer of Hector. The white head of the
kneeling old man is bowed before the proud youth of the victor, and Priam
mourns for the slain, strongest, and fairest, most loved of all his fifty sons,
and kisses the hand of the slayer! "Thou
also," he says, "hast a
grey-haired, failing, defenseless, far-distant father. In the name of thy
father's love, give me back at least the dead body of my son."
Achilles, the fierce, the wild, the slaughterer, puts the
suppliant gently on one side and begins to weep; and both of them, the two
enemies, the conqueror and the conquered, the father bereaved of his son and
the son who will never see his father again, the white-haired old man and the
golden-haired youth both weep, drawn together for the first time by sorrow. The
others round about gaze at them silent and astounded: we ourselves after fifty
centuries are shaken by their grief.
But in the kiss of Priam there is no pardon, there is no
love. This king humbles himself to obtain a difficult and unusual favor. If a
God had not inspired him he would not have stirred from Ilium; and Achilles
does not weep for dead Hector, for weeping Priam, for the powerful man who is
brought to humble himself, for the enemy who is brought to kiss the hand of the slayer. He weeps over his lost
friend; over Patrocles, dearer to him than all other men; over Peleus,
left at Phthia; over his father, whom he will never more embrace, for he knows
that his young days are numbered. And he gives back to the father the dead body
of his son—that body which he has dragged for so many days in the dust—because
it is the will of Zeus, not because his hunger of vengeance is stilled. Both of
them weep for themselves; the kiss of Priam is a harsh necessity, the
restitution of Achilles is obedience to the Gods. In the noblest heroic world
of antiquity there is no place for that love which destroys hate and takes the
place of hate, for love stronger than the strength of hate, more passionate, more implacable,
more faithful, for love which is not forgetfulness of wrong, but love of wrong,
because wrong is a misfortune for him who commits it rather than for him who
suffers.* There is no place for love for enemies in the world of antiquity.
Jesus was the first to speak of such love, to conceive of
such love. This love was not known till the Sermon on the Mount. This is the
greatest and the most original of Jesus' conceptions. Of all His teachings
this was the newest to men, this is still His greatest innovation. It is
new even to us, new because it is not understood, not imitated, not obeyed;
infinitely eternal like truth.
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