THE GREEKS AND US

Once upon a time thcrc was a littlc boy. Before he could read, his
father told him stories about the War between the Greeks and the
Trojans. Hector and Achilles were as familiar to him as his
brothers, and when the Olympians quarreled he thought of his
uncles and aunts. At seven he went to a boarding school and most
of the next sevcn years were spent in translating Greek and Latn
into English and vice versa. Then he went on to another boarding
school which had a Classical Side and a Modern Side.
The latter was regarded by boys and masters alike in much the
same way as, in a militarist country, civilians are regarded by of-
ficers, and with the same kind of degrees of inferiority: history and
mathematics were, like professional men, possiblc; the natural sci-
ences, comprehensively labcled Stinks, like tradesmen, were not.
The Classical Side, too, had its nice distinctions: Greek, like the
Navy, was the senior, the aristocratic service.
It is hard to believe now that this story is not a fairy tale but
a historical account of middle-class education in England thirty-five
years ago.
For anyone brought up in this way, Greccc and Rome are so
mixed up with his personal memories of childhood and classroom
that it is extremely difficult to look at these civilizations objectively.
3
W.H. AUDEN
This is particularly so, perhaps, in the case of Greece. Until near
the end of the eighteenth century, Europe thought of itself less as
Europe than as Western Christendom, the heir to the Roman
Empire, and its educational system was based on the study of
Latn. The rise of Hellenic studies to an equal and then a superior
position was a nineteenth century phenomenon and coincided with
the development of European nations and nationalist feeling.
It is significant, surely, that when, today, an afterdinner speaker
refers to the sources of our civilization, he always names Jeru-
salem and Athens, but rarely Rome, for the last is the symbol of
a religious and poltica[ unity which has \eased to exist and the re-
viva! of which few believe in or desire. The historical discontinuity
between Greek culture and our own, the disappearance for so
many centuries of any direct influence, made it all the easier, when
it was rediscovered, for each nation to fashion a classical Greece in
its own image. There is a German Greece, a French Greece, an
English Greece-there may even be an American Greece-all
quite different. Had Holderln met Jowett, for instance, one sus-
pects that neither would ha ve understood a word the other said, and
their parting would have been cold.
Even within a single country different Greeces coexist. Por in-
stance he re are two English caricatures:
Professor X. Reade Chair of Moral Philosophy. 59. Married.
Three daughters. Religion: C of E (Broad). Politics: Conservatve.
Lives in a small suburban house stuffed with Victorian knick-
knacks. Does not entertain. Smokes a pipe. Does not notice what
he eats. Hobbies: gardening and long solitary walks. Dislikes:
foreigners, Roman Catholicism, modern literature, noise. Current
worry: his wife's health.
Mr. Y. Classical tutor. 41. Unmarried. Religion: none. Politics:
lllme. Lives in college. Has prvate means and gives wonderful
lunch parties for favorite undergraduates. Hobbies: travel and
cullecling old glass. Dislikes: Christianity, girls, the poor, English
con k ing. Current worry: his figure. .
'l'll X, the word Greece suggests Reason, the Golden Mean,
t'Uin!ion;d control, freedom from superstition; to Y it suggests
< ;ait'l v ;n1d lkauly, the life of the senses, freedom from inhibitions.
t ll' wmse. heing good scholars, both know that their respec-
4
1
. , _ ~
( '
'1
i 1
l
l.'
THE GREEKS ANO US
t ive views are partial; X cannot den y that many Greeks werc at-
tracted to mystery cults and addicted to habits upon which "the
Lommon moral sensc of civilized mankind has pronounccd a judg-
mcnt which requires no justification as it allows of no appeal"; Y
is equally aware that the Plato of the Laws is as puritanical as any
Scotch Presbyter; but the emotional tic to the Greece of their
dreams, fonned in childhood and strengthencd by years of study
and affection, is strongerthan their knowlcdge.
There could be no stronger proof of the riches and dcpth of
Greek culture than its powers of appeal to every kind of person-
ality. It has been said that everyone is born either a Platonist or an
Aristotclian; but it seems to me that there are more contrasted and
signi.ficant divisions than this, between, for instance, the lovers of
lonia and the lovers of Sparta, between those who are dcvoted to
both Plato and Aristotle and those who prefer Hppocrates and
Thucydides to either.
II
The days when classical studies were the core of higher learning
have now passed and are not ljkely, in any future we can envisage,
to return. We have to accept as an accomplished fact that the edu-
cated man of today and tomorrow can read neither Latin nor
Greek. This means, 1 think, that, if the classics are to continue to
exert any educational effcct at all, a change must be made in the
emphasis and direction of Roman and Hellenic studies.
If Greek literature has to be read in translation, then the ap-
proach can no longer be an aesthetic onc. The aesthetic loss in
translation from one language into another is always immcnse; in
the case of languages and cultures as far apart as Greek and Eng-
lish, it becomes practically fatal; one can almost say that the better
a translation is as English poetry, the less like Greek poetry it is
( e.g., Pope's Iliad) and vice versa.
To begin with there is the prosodic difficulty; quantitative
unrhymed verse and qualitative rhymed verse have nothing in
common except that they are both rhythmical patterns. An English
poet can have much fun attempting, as a technical exercise or an
act of piety, to write quantitatively:
5

W.H. AUDEN
With these words Hermes spcd away for lofty Olympos :
And Priam al! fearlcssly from off his chariot alighted.
Ordering Idaeus to remain i' the entry to keep watch
Over thc bcasts: th'old king meanwhile strode doughtily onward,
(Robert Bridges. /liad, xxiv, 468-71 )
But no onc can read this exccpt as a qualitat ivc meter of an ec-
centric kind, and ccccntricity is a very un-Homcric charactcrstic.
Then there are the problc.:ms of word-ordtr and diction; Greek
is an inllc<.:ted languagc wherc Lhe sense does not depend on the
pos ition of lhc words in t hc sentcnce as it dcs in English; Greck
is rich in compound epithets, English is not.
Lastly and most important of all, the poetic sensibility of the
two literatures is rad.i.cally diffcrcnt. Comparcd with English poetry
Greek poctry is primitivc, i. c. , the emotions and subjects it trcats
are simpler and more direct than ours while, on the other hand, the
manner of Ianguagc tcnds to be more involved and complex. Prim-
itive poetry says simple things in a roundabout way whcrc
poctry tries to say complicatecl things straightforwardly. The con-
tinuous ctrorts of Englisb poets in every generation to rediscover
"a language really used by mcn" would have bccn incomprehensi-
bl e to a Greck.
In his introduction to Greek Plays in Modern Translation,
Dudley Fitts quotcs a translation of a bit of stichomythy from
Medea.
MEDEA: Why didst thou fnre to earth's prophetic navel?
AEGEUS : To ask how seed of chi ldren migbt be mine.
MEDEA: 'Fore Heavcn!- ayc childlcss is thy life till now?
AEGEUS: Childless 1 arn, by chance of sorne god's will.
MEDEA: This with a wife, or knowing not the couch?
AEGEUS: Nay, not unyokcd to wedlock's bed amI.
This is, as he says, comically absurd, but what is thc poor
translator to do? If, for instance, he translates the last two Iines
into modern idiom, he must write:
M EDEA: Are yo u rnarri ed or single?
AEGEUS: Married.
This is no longer funny, but it has completely lost an esscntial clc-
ment of the original style, the poetic ornamentat ion of simple
6
/
THE GREEKS AND US
questions and answers by casting them in the form of riddles.
Tt is significant that, in spite of the familiarity with and enor-
mous admiration for Greek poetry of many English poets in the
past, very few indeed show any signs of having been influenced by
it in their stylc of writing-Milton and possibly Browning by the
tragedians, Hopkins by Pindar, are the only namcs I can think of.
The attempt to translate the poetry of one language into an-
other is an invaluable training for a poet, and it is to be hoped that
new versions of Homer, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Sappho, etc. ,
will continue to be made in cvery generation, but their public im-
portance is likcly to be small.
Even when he is reading the epics or the plays, the average
modern reader is going to find that a historical and anthropological
approach is more frui tful than an aesthetic one.
Instead of asking "How good a tragedy is Oedipus?" or "Is
such and such an argument of Plato's truc or falsc?" he will try to
see all aspects of Greek activity, their drama, their science, their
philosophy, thcir politics as interrelated parts of one complete and
unique culture,
Accordingly, in selecting the material for this anthology, I have
tried to make it an introdnction to Greek culture rather than Grcck
literature. In a literary anthology it would be absurd to rcpresent
Greek tragedy by Aeschylus a!one, omitting Sophocles and Euripi-
des, but if one wishes to understand the form and idea of Greek
tragedy, it is better to give a trilogy Like The Oresteia than three
separate plays by three authors ; so too with al! the other poetic
selections which have been chasco for their representative charac-
ter as literary forms rather than for their individual poetic excel-
lences.
Again, in the extracts from the philosophers the intention has
been not to give a comprchensive picture of Plato and Aristotle,
but to show how Greck thinkers dealt with certain kinds of prob-
Jems, for instance the problem of cosmology.
Lastly, Greek medicine and Greek mathematics are so essential
parts of their culture, that they cannot be ignored even by a be-
ginner.
The exigencies of space in a volume of this size excl ude much
important material, but I have only consciously excluded one
author, for reasons of personal distaste. I believe, however, that I
7
1:
j
1
W.H. AUDEN
am not alone in finding Lucan, one of the most popular of Greek
writers, too "enlightened" for a generation as haunted by devils as
our own.
III
There is no single Greek literary work of art as great as The
Dvirte Comedy; there is no extant series of works by a single
Greek literary artist as impressive as the complete plays of Shake-
speare; as a period of sustained creative activity in one medium,
the seventy-five-odd years of Athenian drama, between the first
tragedies of Aeschylus and the last comedy of Aristophanes, are
surpassed by the hundred and twenty-five years, between Gluck's
Orpheus and Verdi's Otello, which comprise the golden age of
European opera: nevertheless, the bewildered comment of any
fifth century Athenian upon our society from Dante's time till our
owrr, and with increasing sharpness every decade, would surely
be: "Yes, I can see all the works of a great civilization; but why
cannot l meet any civilized persons? I only encounter specialists,
artists who know nothing of science, scientists who know nothing
of art, philosophers who have no interest in God, priests who are
unconcerned with politics, politicians who only know other politi-
cians."
Civilization is a precarious balance between what Professor
Whitehead has called barbarie vagueness and trivial order. Barba-
rism is unified but undifferentiated; triviality is differentiated but
lacking in any central unity; .. ideal of civilization is the integra-
into a complete whole and ;,.,ith the minlmum strain of the
maximum number of distinct activities.
It is impossible to say, for example, of a harvest dance of a
primitive tribe whether it is aesthetic play, undertaken for the
it gives the participants in performing it well, or religious
ntual, an outward expression of an inward piety towards the pow-
ers who control the harvest, or a scientific technique for sccuring
the practica! effect of a better harvest : it is indeed fooJish tn think
in such terms at all, since the dancers have not lcarned to make
such distinctions and cannot understand what thcy mean.
In a society like our own, on the other hand, whcn a man goes
8
. .
. ,
THE GREEKS ANO US
to the ballet, he goes simply to enjoy himself and all he demands
is that choreography and performance shall be aesthetically satis-
Fyng; when he goes to Mass, he knows that t is irrelevant whether
the Mass be well or badly sung, for what matters is the attitude of
his will towards God and his neighbor; when he plows a field, he
knows that whether the tractor be beautiful or ugly or whether he
be a repentant or a defiant sinner is irrelevant to bis success or
failure. His problem is quite differcnt from that of the savage; the
danger for him is that, instead of being a complete pcrson at every
moment, he will be split into three unrelated fragments which are
always competing for dominance: the aesthetic fragment which
goes to the ballet, the religous which goes to Mass, and the practi-
ca! which earns its living.
lf a civilization be judged by this double standard, the degree
of diversity attained and the dcgree of unity retained, then it is
hardly too much to say that the Athenians of the fifth century B.C.
were the most civilized people who have so far existed. The fact
that nearly all the words we use to define activities and branches
of knowledge, e.g., chemistry, physics, economics, politics, cthics,
aesthetics, theology, tragedy, comedy, etc., are of Greek origin is
proof of their powers of conscious differentiation; their literature
and their history are evidence of their ability to maintain a sense
of common interrelation, a sense which we have in great measure
lost as they themselves lost it in a comparatively short time.
" . . . as their forefathers were they,
those old seapirates, who with roving robbery
built up their island lordships on the ruin of Crete,
when the unforbearing rivalry of their free cities
wrec'd their confederacy within the sevenscore years
'twixt Marathon and Issus; until from the pride
of routing Xerxes and bis fabulous host, they fell
to make that most memorable of all invasions
less memorable in the glory of Alexander,
under whose alen kingship they conspired to outreach
their own ambition, winning dominions too wide
for domination; and were, with their virtue, dispersed
and molten into the great stiffening alloy of Rome."
(Robert Bridges. Testament of Beauty, I , 758-70)
9
W.H. AUDEN
The geography of Grecce, whcre barren mountains scparate
small fertilc Iocalities from each other, cncouraged di versity, mi-
gration to new co1onies, and an economy of exchange rather than
production for use. In consequence, thc Grceks, who, when they
first invaded the Aegcan, werc not so very difl'erent from any other
patriarchal military tribe-the kind of life describccl in the !liad is
much the same as that describcd in Beowulf-rapidly dcveloped
within a comparatively small area a grcat varicty of forms of social
organization, tyrannies and constitutional city-statcs in Jonia, feudal
oligarchy in Boeotia. a militarist policc state in Sparta. democracy
in Athens, almost every possiblc kind, in fact, but onc, the ex-
tended centralized state typical of major river-basin areas like
Egypt or Babylonia. The initial stimulus. therefore, to comprehen-
sion, inquiry, speculation, and cxperiment was prescnt; but this
explains ncither the extraordinary talent the Grccks displayed in
these activities nor their capacity to absorb influences and make
them their own: unlikc the Romans, thc Greeks ncver give the
,i_mpression of being eclectics; everything they do and say is
stamped with their distinctive character.
Greek culture, as a glance at the chronological table at the end
of this introcluction will show, had successivclv three ccnters the
Ionian seaboard, Athcns, and Alexandria. Sparta rcmained o u ~ s i d e
the general cultural development in a fossilized state of primitivism,
exciting in her neighbors a mixture of fear, rcpulsion, and admira-
tion. Nevcrthcless, she made, indirectly through Plato, a contribu-
tion which for good or ill, has inftuenced the world as much as any
other element in Greek culture, namely, the idea of a consciously
planned education of its citizens by the state; indeed the very con-
cept of the state as something distinct from the ruling class, from
the individual, and from the community might be said t o be clerived
from Sparta.
At the beginning of Greek literature stands Homcr. If the /liad
and the Odyssey are better than the epics of othcr nations. this is
due not to their content but to thcir more sophisticated imagination
- as if the original material had been worked ovcr into its prcscnt
form under much more civilized conditions than existed among.
say, the Teutonic peoples until their heroic agc was too far bchind
them to seem real. It is difficult, however, to makc objcctive com-
JO
THE GREEKS ANO US
parisons, since the Teutonic epics had little further history; Homer
hecame, through the Romans. one of the basic inspirations of Eu-
ropean literature, without which there would be neither an Aeneid,
aDivine Comedy, a Paradise Lost, nor the comic epics of Ariosto
or Pope or Byron.
The next development after Homer took place Jargely in Jonia
and for the most part in and around tbe courts of tyrants who werc,
of course, more like the Medicis than like a modcrn dictator.
The Ionian scientists and the l onian lyric pocts had onc thing
in common, a hostility to polythcistic myth. The former saw Naturc
in terms of law rathcr than arbitrary volition; the latter saw their
feelings as their own, as belonging to a single personality, rather
than as visitations from without.
Thales' gucss that all things are madc of water was wrong; but
the insight behind it , namely, that however many different realms
of Nature there may be they must all be rclated was a basic prcsup-
position without which scicncc as we know it would be impossiblc.
Equally influential was the asscrtion of Pythagoras, as a result of
his work in acoustics, that al! things are number, i.e., that the
"naturc" of things, that by virtue of which they are what they are
and behave as they do. is not a question of what they are made of
but of their structure, which can be described in mathematical
terms .
The great diffcrence between the Grcek conception of Nature
and later ones is that the Greeks thought of the universe as analo-
gous to a city-statc, so that for them naturallaws, like human Iaws,
were not laws of things, descriptions of how in fact they behave,
but Iaws for things. When we speak of a falling body "obeying"
the law of _gravitation, we are unconsciously echoing Greek thought;
for obedience implies the possibility of disobedience. To the Greeks
this was no dead metaphor; consequently, their problem was not
the relation of Mind to Matter, but of Substance to Form, how
matter became "educated" enough, so to speak, to conform to law.
The lyric poets were equa11y important in their own sphere; for
it was through them that Western civilization has learned to dis-
tinguish poetry from history, pedagogy, and religion.
The most famous phase of Greek civilization is, of course, that
associated with Athens. If he knows nothing else about them,
TT

W.H. AUDEN
every man in the street has heard the names of Homer, Aeschylus,
Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and,
if he is a little better informed, of Pericles, Demosthenes, and
Thucydides. All but Homer are Athenian.
The Athenian period divides into two; the first is preceded by
the political and economic establishment of the Athenian state as
a mercantile democracy by Solon and Cleisthenes, and the demon-
stration of its strength through its victory over the Persian Inva-
sion; the second is the product of poltica! defeat, first by Sparta,
then by Macedonia. The typical expression of the fi rst period is
drama, of tbe second philosophy.
In comparison with the preceding Ionian culture, Athenian
drama is marked by a revulsion from luxury and frivolity towards
austerity and simplicity, and by a return to myth. Above all, for
the first and last time in history, an art, drama, became the. domi-
nant religious expression of a whole pcople, the dramatist the most
mportant figure in their spiritual life. Compared with the Greek
tragedians, Homer and Pindar secm secular wrters, of educational
value certainly for a ruling minority, but stiH primarily entertainers,
subordinate in importance to the priest and the oracle. Like mod-
ern drama, which grew out of religious festivals such as Easter and
Corpus Christi, Athenian drama was associated with the festivals
of the Wine Press and of the Greater Dionysus. But, whereas mod-
ern drama was at first subordinate to the religious rituals and then
developed a secular life of its own, leaving the festivals to them-
selves, Athenian drama, while being definitely works of art, whose
value can be judged by vote, became the dominant religious exer-
: cise, of greater importance than sacrifices or prayers. In thc nine-
.. teenth century and in our own the individual artistic gcnius has
sometimes claimed a supremc importance and even persuaded a
minority of aesthetes to agree with him; but only in Athens was
this a universal social fact, so that the genius was not a Joncly
figure claiming exceptional rights for himself but the acdaimcd
. spiritual leader of socety.
The nearest modern equivalent is not any work of lhc tlwatcr,
but a baH game or a bull-fight.
Greek tragedy returned to myth, but it was IH> longcr lil e
Homeric mythology; the Ionian cosmolngists had done lhLi r work.
12
THE GREEKS ANO US
Thc gods are no longer essentially strong and accidentally right-
cous; thcir strength is now secondary, the means by which they
cnforce the laws which they thcmselves keep and represent. I n
consequence, the mythology is subjected to strain; for, the more
monotheistic it becomes, the greater the importance of Zeus, the
less individual, the more allegorical, become the other gods. Fur-
thermore, behind Zeus himself appears the quite unmythological
conccpt of Fate. Now either the personal Zeus and the impersonal
Fate must coalesce as the Creator God of the Jews, a stcp whtch
the Greek rel igious imagination never took, or, in the end, Zcus
bccomes a Demiurge, an allegorical ft gure for the order in nature,
and Fate becomes the true God, cither as Fortune or as an im-
personal Idea or First Cause, in which case drama ceases to
the natural vehicle for teaching about the nature of God and 1s
replaced by the science of Theology.
It is partly for such reasons, perhaps, that the
from the piety of Aeschylus to the skepticism of Eunp1des JS so
rapid, and the period of Greek tragedy so short. As Werncr Jaeger
has pointed out, Sophocles stands a little apart from the other two
in that while their interests are basically the samc, his concern was
more ,;,ith human character than with religious or social problems.
For Greek tragedy to have developed further, it would have had
to go on from Sophocles, abandon its relation to myth and festiv_a l,
and become a frankly secular art; perhaps its very tnumphs tted
it too firmly to myth and festival to allow it to make the break
which the Elizabethan drama, for instance, madc. Thus , greatly
as the Greck tragedians have bcen admircd by later writers, they
cannot be said to have exerted much direct literary inl1uence. The
nfl.uence of the philosophers is in striking contrast to this, for Plato
and Aristotle between them established thc bas ic premises of an
intellectuallife, the unity and the divcrsity of truth; moreover, thcy
are responsible for the particular kinds of divisions to. which_ we
are accustomed. li,.Jor .. example, one tries to read Indmn ph!los-
ophy, the great obstacle to understanding what it means is that the
joints of man and nature, so to speak, are carved differently. ?ur
cuts, carving are Greek; and we fi nd it hard for us to belteve
that there can be any others.
The final period of Grcek culture, the Hcl!cnist, or Alexandrian,
13
l
1

W.H. AUDEN
returns to Ionian hedonism and rnaterialism but without its rcla-
tion to pol tica! and social life. Thc important achieverncnts are
technological. The literature, as typified by the Greck Anthology,
is highly polishcd, pretty, but on the whoic boring, at least to the
prcsent age, becausc of its imrnensc influence on minor poetry
since the Renaissance. To .it we owe all the worst "classical" prop-
ertics, the littlc rogue of a Cupid, the catalogue of fiowers, Celia's
bosom, etc., etc.
Christcndom was a product of Jcwish historical rcligious cx-
perience ancl Gcntile speculation upon and organization of that
expcrience. The Greek mind is thc typically Gentile mind, and it
is at odds wilh thc J ewish consciousncss. As a Greek the Christian
is ternptcd to a secsaw betwecn wordly frivol ity and a falscly
spiritual othcr-worldliness, bot h of them, au fond, pessimistic; as
a Jew he is lcmpted to the wrong kind of seriousncss, to an in-
tolerancc which persecutcs dissenters as w.ickecl rather than stupid.
Thc lnquisition was a product of a Gentilc intercst in rationality
and a Jewish passion for truth .
Th..: d carcst historical cxample is the Crucifixion. ln thei r book
Talking of Dick Whittington Hesketh Pearson and Hugh Kingsmill
report an inlerview with Hilairc Bclloc in which he says of the
.Jcws:
" Poor cl<u
1
ings, it must be terrible to be born with thc
knowledge thal you belong to the cnemies of the human
race . .. beca use of the Crucifixion."
I cannot belicve that Mr. Bclloc is an altogether stupid man. N..:v-
erthelcss, his stalerncnt is on a par with Adam's "Th..: \Voman
beguiled me and l did cat." !:fe can hardly be unawarc that the
Crucifixion was actually pcrformcd by the Romans. or, to make it
contcmporary, by thc French (the English said, " Oh, dcar!" and
consented; the Americans said, "How undemocratic!" and scnt
photographers) fo.r the frivolous reason that Jes us >vas a ptllitical
nuisancc. The Jcws who demanded it die! so for thc SL'I'ilus t"L';snn
that, in their opinion. Jcs us was guilty of blasphcmy, i.L' .. of fal sdy
cJaiming Lo be thc Mcss iah. Every Christian is. of coursl',
Pilate and Caiaphas.
l
1
1
1
THE GREEKS AND US
IV
11' Lhere is any reaction to the Greeks which may be caBed
typical of our age as comparcd with preccding times, it is, J think,
a feeling that they were a very ocld people indeed, so much s?
when we come across something they wrote which seems s1m1lar
!o our own way of thinking, wc immediatcly suspect that we have
misundcrstood the passage. It is the unl ikeness of thc Greeks to
ourselves, the gulf between the kind of assumptions. they made,
the kind of questiOIJS they asked and our own that strrkes us more
than anything else.
Take, for instance, the following passage from the Timaeus:
"Such was the whole plan of thc eterna! God about the god
that was to be, to whom for this reason he gave a body,
smooth and evcn, having a surface in cvery direction equJ-
distant from the centre, a body entirc and perfect, and
formed out of perfect bodics. And in the centre the
soul, which he diffusecl throughout the bocly, makmg 1t als.o
to be thc exterior environment of it; and he made thc Um-
vcrse a circle moving in a circle, onc and yct by
reason of its excell encc able to converse w1th and
nccding no other frienclship or acquaintance. Havmg thesc
purposcs in view he created the worlcl a blcsscd god."
Surcly this kind of thinking is as extraordinary to us as any
habits of an African tribc.
Even those of us whose mathematical equipmcnt is of the rnost
mcager, ha ve so imbibed thc modero conception of number as . an
instrumcnt for explaining naturc, that we can no more thmk
ourselvcs back into a state of rnind where numbers wcre regarded
as physical or mctaphysical entities so that one nurnber "bctter"
than another thun we can return to a belief in sympathet1c mag1c.
Nor is the Platonic assumplion about the moral nature of godh.ead
any Jess peculiar to us that his shape. may. or may not ve
that god exists, but the only kind of god m wh1ch .we can of
believing is a god who suffcrs, eithcr l1ke the
god bccause he loves his creatnres and suffers w1th them; thc kmd
rs
W.H. AUDEN
of god who is both self-sufficient and content to rcmain so could
not interest us enough to raise the question of his cxistence.
It is impudent of me to trespass at all inside a field where so
many and good meo have spent their lifetimes. I can only
try to hm1t the offense by confining my remarks to one aspect of
Greek thought of which I am less ignorant than 1 am of others,
namely to a comparison of the various Greek conceptions of the
hero with our own, as an illustration of the distance between our
culture and theirs.
V
The Homeric Hero: Thc Homeric hero has the military virtues
of courage, resourcefulness, magnanimity in victory, and dignity
m defeat to an exceptional degree. His heroism is manifested in
cxceptional deeds which can be judgcd by others who are forced to
admit "He achieved what we could not have achieved ." His mo-
tive is to_ admiration and glory from his equals whether they
are on hrs srde or the encmy's. The code by which he lives is a
code of honor which is not a universal requirement like law but
an individual one, that which I require of myself and that which
in view of my achievements I have a right to demand of others.
He is not a tragic figure, i.e., he does not suffer more than
others, but his death has exceptional pathos- the great warrior
comes to the same end as the lowest churl. He exists only in the
present moment when he comes into collision with anothcr hcroic
individual; his future forms the past traditions of others. Thc closest
modero to the Homeric hero is the ace fighter piJot. He-
he rs often engaged in single combat, he gets to rccognizc
mdrv1dual p!lots on the side of the enemy and war bccomes a
matter of personal ri valry rather than any political issue; in facl he
has a el o ser relation to the ene m y ace than he has to the infant rv
on his own side. His life is so full of risks and hairbreadlh escape;,
so almost certain to end in death, and the effccts of good 1!
1
,.k and
bad luck, of a sudden engine failurc or an unforesccn cllangl" i11 thc
weather, are so serious that chance takes on all thc nswcrs uf a
personal intervening power . The sense of having golld <lavs whcn
he iS protected and bad days When he iS bcing Wlll"kl"d ;J.; .. inst :tilO
r6
THE GREEKS AND US
thc convicton that he will die when Fate decrees but not befare
become almost nccessary attitudes to life.
There is still however an essential difference between the
fighter pilot and the Homeric hcro; t o make the analogy clase one
would have to imagine that all the countries of thc world had been
continuously at war for centuries and that being a fighter pilot had
becomc a hereditary profession. f..9! the assumption of the !liad, as
of all early epics, which is so strange to us, is that war is thc
I?:ormal condition of mankind and peace an accidental breathing
In the foreground are men locked in battle, killing or bcing
killed, farther off their wives, children, and servants waiting anx-
iously for the outcome, overhcad, watching the spectacle with
interest and at times interferi ng, the gods who know neither sorrow
nor dcath, and around them all indifferent and unchanging, the
natural world of sky and sea and earth. That is how things are;
that is how they always have been and always will be.
Consequently, there can be no moral or historical significance
about the result of any confiict; it brings joy to the victor and
sorrow to the vanquished but neither could imagine raising the
question of justice. If one compares the Ilad with, for example,
Shakespeare's Henry IV or Tolstoy's War and Peace, one sees that
the modero writers are deeply concerned first with historical ques-
tions: "How did Hcnry IV or Napoleon come to power?" "What
were the causes of the civil or international war?" and secondly
with general moral questions: "What is the moral effect of war on
human beings?" " What virtues and vices does it encourage as con-
trasted with those encouraged by peace?" " Irrespectve of the
individuals on both sides, did the defeat of Hotspur and Napoleon
promote or retard the establishment of a J ust Society?" These are
questions which to Homer would seem meaningless. He does, it
is true, give a cause for the Trojan war, the Apple of Discord; but
this is both a divine cause, i.e. , outside human control, and a frivo-
lous cause, i. e., Homer does not take it seriously but uses i t as a
Iiterary devce for beginning his tale.
He does make moral judgments about his heroes. Achilles
should not have refused for so long to aid the Greeks because of
his quarrel with Agamemnon nor should he have treated the body
of Rector as he did, but these are minar blemishes which neither
17
.,
:
W.H. AUDEN
affect thc outcome of the war nor the final proof of h is heroism,
namely that he vanquishcs Hector.
Thc pathos of Hector's death is simple: thc nobler charactcr
is clefeated; the pathos of Hotspur's death is ironic: he is a much
more sympathetic individual than Prince Hal, but he dics defend-
ing thc wrong cause.
Further, in thc Homcric world wherc war is the norm there
can be no crticism of the mlitary hcro as such. The w;ath of
Achilles could never be a tragic naw in h is character in the way
that the wrath of Shakcspeare's Coriolanus is in his. Homer might
well have described Achilles taking a bath but it would havc been
simply a dcscription of a hcro tak ing a batb, not, as in Tol stoy's
descripti on of Napoleon being bathcd. a revclation that the military
hero is an ordinary mortal just as wcak as any of the thousands
for whose death he is responsible.
Though it would be unfar to describe the Homeric hero as
a mere puppet of the gods, bis arca of free choice and responsibil-
ity is pretty circumscribed. ln the first place he is born, not made
( often he is the son of an immortal father) so that though he docs
brave deeds, he cannot be called bravc in our sense of the word
because he ncver fcels fear ; in the second the situations in which
he displays bis heroism are givcn him; he can, on occasion. choose
to fight or not to ftght this or that opponent, but he cannot choose
bis profcssion or bis side.
The world of Homer is unbearably sad because it nevcr tran-
sccnds the immediate moment; one is happy, one is unhappy. one
wins, one loses, finally one dics. That is all . J oy and suffc ri ng are
simply what one fcels at the illl)ffient; they have no mcaning bc-
yond that; they pass away as they carne; they point in no dircct ion;
they change nothing. It is a tragic world but a world without guilt
for its tragic flaws is not a ftaw in human naturc, st ill lcss il llaw
in an individual character, but a ftaw in the naturc of l'Xiskncc.
The Tragic Hero: The warrior-hero of tbe Homcric e pies ( ;111d
bis civilian counterpart, the athlete of thc Pindar ic o(hs is ;t n
aristocratic ideal. He is what every mcmbcr or ti te ruliug dass
should try to imitate, what every member of thc dass should
admire without envy and obey without rcscntrueut . t he l'loscst
18
'\
THE GREEKS ANO US
approxi mation to a god-the divine being conceived as the ideally
strong-possble to man.
}'he Tragic Her:o, on the other hand, is not an ideal but a
warning, __ and thc warning is. addrcssed not to _an aristofratic audi-
other potentially heroc individuals, but to the demos, i.e.,
he collective chorus. At the beginning of the play he appears in
glory und good-fortune, a mun of pcdigrec and achievement who
has already demonstratcd are/e in the Homeric sense. By thc end
he has becn plunged into cxccptional suffering, i.e., he suffers more
than the chorus, who are average citizens who have achieved
nothing rcmarkablc. He suiTcrs bccausc he has come into collision,
not with other individuals, but with the universal law of right-
eousness. As a rule, however, thc actual violation of which he is
guilty is not his own conscious choice in thc sensc that he could
have avoidcd iL The typical Grcek tragic situation is one in which
whatever the hero does must be wrong- Agamemnon must cither
"=-- - .
kilrhis daughter or betray his duty to his army, Orestes must eithcr
disobey thc orders of Apollo or be guilty of matricide, Oedipus
must either persist in asking questions or Jet Thebes be destroyed
by plague, Antigone must violate her duty eithcr to her dead
brother or to her city, etc . .But thc fact that he finds himself in a
tragic situation where he has sinned unwittingly or must sin against
his will is a sign that he is guilty of another sin for which the gods
hold him responsible, namely the sin of hybris, an overweening
sclf-confidence whicb makes him believe that he, with his are/e, is
a god who cannot be made to sutler. Sometimes but not always he
man.ifests this hybris in acts-Agamemnon walks on the purple
carpet, Darius tries to bridge the Hellespont-but even if he does
not, he must be assumed to be guilty of hybris, otherwise he would
not be punished by being made guilty of other sins. Through wit-
nessing the fall of the tragic hero from happiness to misery, the
chorus Jearns that the Homeric hero is not the ideal man thcy
should try to imitate or admire. On the contrary, the strong man is
tempted by his strength into bccoming the impious man whom
the gods punish, for the gods are not gods because they are ideally
strong but because they are ideally just. Their strength is only the
instrument by which they enforce their justce.
The ideal man whom every member of the democracy should
19
W.H. AUDEN
try to become is not the aristocratic heroic individual but the mod-
erate Iaw-.abiding citizen who does not want to be stronger and
more glonous than everybody else.
. as in Homer, we find ourselves in a world which
JS al1en to _us. We are so habituated to the bclicf that a man's
a m1xed product of his own free choiccs for which he
18
respons1ble and circumstances for which he is not that we can-
not understand a world in which a situation by itself makes a man
gullty. Take the story of Oedipus, for instance. Here is a man who
hears a prophecy that is kill his father and marry bis
mother, tnes to prevent Jt commg true, but in vain. How would
a modern treat this? He would reason that the only
Oed1pus to make ccrtain of escaping what is foretold
for h1m never to k_ill anybody and never to marry anybody. He
therefore begm by showi ng Oedipus leaving Thebes and
these. two_ resolutions. He would then procccd to involve
m two SJtuatwns, firstly, one in which he is done a mortal
llljury by a man, secondly one in which he falls passionatcly in
!ove a. who returns his love, situations, that is, of
m wh1ch he is torn between doing what he wants and
breakmg lus resolve.
He yields to both temptations, he kills the man and marries the
.excusing himself as he does so with a Iie of self-deception,
that JS,_ mstead of saying to himself, "There is a possibility, how-
ever shg?t, that they are my father and mother; therefore 1 must
not nsk It," he says, "lt is quite impossible that they should be my
father and mother; therefore I may break my resolve." Unfortu-
nately, of course, the sligl1t possibility turns out to be the actual
fa e t.
In Sophocles nothing like this happens. Ocdipus meets an old
man on the road, they have a trivial quarrel , and he kills the old
man. He comes to Thebes, solves the riddle of the Sphinx and
a political match. About thesc two deeds he feels no' guilt
nor JS he expected to feel gui!ty. It is only when in fact they turn
to be his father and mother that he becomes guilty. At no
time has he been conscious of being tempted to do what he knows
he should not do, so that at no time is it possible to say, "That was
where he made his fatal mistakc."
20
THE GREEKS AND US
The original sin of thc Grcck tragic hero is hybris, believing
that one is godlike. Nobody can be tcmpted into hybris except one
who is exccptionally fortunatc. Sometimes he can manifest his
hybris directly, but it does not change his character in any way,
only he is punishcd for it by bcing made by thc gods to sin unwit-
tingly or involuntarily.
The original sin of the modcrn tragic hero is pricle, thc refusal
. to accept the limitations and weaknesses which he knows he has,
the determination to become thc god he is not. A man, thcrcfore,
docs not have to be fortunatc, to be tempted into pride; a misfor-
tune l ikc Richard of Gloucester's hunchback will do just as well.
Pride can never be manifested directly becausc it is a purely sub-
jective sin. Self-examination can reveal to me that I am lustful or
envious but it can ncver revcal to me that I am proud because my
pridc, if it exists, is in the "1" which is doing the examining; I can,
however, infer thal 1 am proud because thc lust and envy which I
can observe in mysclf are caused by it and it alone.
The sccondary sins of which our kind of tragic hero is guilty
and which cause his fall are not, thcrcfore, a divine punishment
for his initial sin but its effccts, and he is as responsiblc for thcm
as he is for it. He is not an unwitting sinner but a self-deceiving
one, who refuses his guilty conscicnce. When Orestes slays Clytem-
nestra he docs not ant icpate the arrival of the Furies; when the
Macbeths plan their murders they try to persuade thcmsclves that
they will not suffer the tormcnts of guilt which they really know in
their hearts they are going to.
In Greek tragedy suffering is a visitation from Heaven, a pun-
ishment imposed upon the hcro from without. Through enduring
it he expiates bis sins and ends reconcilcd to the Jaw, though it is
for the gods not him to decide when bis expiation is complete. I n
modern tragedy, on the other hand, this exterior kind of suffering
which humbles the great and erring and leads them to repent is
not tragic. Thc truly tragic kind of suffer ing is the kind produccd
and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instcad of
making hiJ.n better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not
reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. is not a
tragic hero, Othello is. ..
These two differences between Greek and modcrn tragcdy in
21

'
W.H. AUDEN
first of the relation of the hcro's original subjec-
tJvc sm of hybns or of pridc to his secoodary sinful acts, and sec-
ondly of the naturc and function of suffering, produce different
attitudes towarcls time.
Unity of time is not only possiblc but right and proper in
tragedy becausc the characters do not change, only their
S1tuat1on so that the dramatic time rcquircd is simply thc time re-
thc situation to change. In moclern lragcdy, unity of time
IS poss1blc as a technical tour-de-force but rarcly dcsirable, sincc
one of thc dramatist's principal tasks is to show how his characters
not only are changed by changcs of situation but also play active
parts in creating these situations. and it is almost impossi blc to
show this in a single uninterruptcd passage of time.
The Erotic fiero: About three-quarters of modcrn Iiterature is
conccrned with one subject, thc love between a man and a woman.
and assumes that falling in love is the most important ami valuable
experience that can happe n to human bcings. We are so condi-
!ioned to this attitude that we are inclined to forget that it docs
back be:yond thc twclfth ccntury. Jt does not exist, for in-
stance, in Greek literaturc. There we find two attitudes. Therc are
plenty of lyrics of the screnade type-thc "In delay there lies no
pl enty, then come kiss me sweet-and-twenty" kind of thing, ex-
pressmg a Simple, good-tcmpcrcd, and unser ious sensuality. There
are also, as in the poems of Sappho or the story of Jason and
Medea, descriptions of scrious and violcnt sexual passion, but this
IS not regarded as something to be proud of but as a disastcr, thc
work of mercil css Aphrodite, a dreadful madness which makes one
lose one's dignity and betray one's friends and from which any sane
man or woman will pray to be spared. Our romantic conccption,
that sexual !ove can transform the lover's cbaracter and turn him
into a hero, was unknown.
It is not until we come to Plato that we find descriptions of
something like what we mean by romantic love spokcn of with
approval, yet the differences are still grcater than thc rcsemblances.
!n the first place it is assumed that this kind of lovc is only possible
m a homosexual relation; and in the second, it is only approved of
as the necessary first stage in the growth of the soul. The ultimatc
22
THE GREEKS ANO US
, ... .. 1
1
-. iill' lovc of the impersonal as universal good; the bcst thing
1

1
,, 1 ,.
11
1d happen to a man would be that he should in lov_e
. 111 1 1111 ( lood immediately, but owing to the fact that h1s soul Js
. "' "'' kd in matter and time, he can only get there by degrees;
11
1
1 1;,. rall s in lave with a beautiful individual , then he can pro-
' ,. . . , 1 lo ve of beauty in general, then to lo ve of justice, and so
"" 11 not ic passion can or ought to be transformed in this way,
111 11
1
1 was sound psychological insight on Plato' s part and not
"'ll'h' cultural pattern of erotic life in Greece that h1m
, , l11dl 1he heterosexual relation, for the Iattcr leads beyond 1tsclf,
11
.. 1 , 1 1 he universal. but to more individuals, namely the love of
11
"1
1
,sponsibility a family, whereas, in the case,
'"' ,. thc relation of itself lcads nowhere, the love wh1ch Jt has
11
is free to develop in any direction the lovers choose, and
, 11.11 direction should be towards wisdom which, once acqUJred,
,. tll l ' llablc them to teach human beings procrcatccl in the norma l
. . . 1
1
li11W to bccomc a good society. For !ove is to be judged by lts
, " ,,d and poltica! value. Marriage provides the raw material, the
11
, . , , uli nc eros the desire and knowledge to mold that matenal
111 111 1l s proper form. _
l'hc two great modern erotic myths, which have no parallels m
, ,, , li terature, are the myth of Tristan and !solde, or the World
\\, 11 1 .ost for Lo ve, ancl the countermyth of Don 1 uan, the seducer .
l"ile Tristan-l solde situation is this : both possess hcroic arete
"'
1
1w epic scnse; he is the bravest warrior, she is the most beauti-
lul woman; both are of noble birth. They cannot marry each other
,, , .
111
sc she is already the wife of his king and friend, nevertheless
11
1
, v rall in love. In sorne versions they accidentally dri nk a love
1
" "" 1
11
but the effect of this is not real! y to make thcm fall in lo ve
'"'' mther to makc them rcalize that they already have and to
11, ,pi the fact as predestined and irrevocable. relation is
11
,,
1
pf atonic" in the conventional sense, but the barners of_ mar-
1"'"'' and circumstanccs givc them few opportunities for gomg to
'" ;1 1ngcther, and on each occasion they can never be that
11 "di not be the last. The love they fecl for each other is rehgwusly
" ..... Jutc, i.c., each is the other's ultima te good so that not only is
"
1
:
1
1 infidelity inconceivable, but all other relations t o other
1
..

and the world cease to have any significance. Yet though

23
W.H. AUDEN
thcir relation is the only value that cxists for thcm, it is a torment,
because their sexual desirc is only the symbolic expression of their
real passion, which is the yearning of two souls to merge and be-
come one, a consummation which is impossible so long as they
have bodics, so that their ultimate goal is to die in each other' s
arms.
Don Juan, on the other hand, is not an epic hero; ideally, his
externa! appearance is that of the man who nobody notices is there
because he is so utterly commonplace, for it is important to the
myth that he, the man of hcroic will and achievement, should look
to the outward eye like a membcr of the chorus.
lf Don Juan is either handsome or ugly, then the woman will
have fcelings about him before he sets to work, and the scduction
will not be absolutc, i. e., a purc triumph of his will. For that, it is
esscntial that his victim should have no fedings of her own towards
him, until he chooses to arouse them. Vice versa, what is essential
for him about her is not her appearance but simply her membership
in the class Woman; the ugly a nd the old are as good as the beauti-
ful and the young. Thc Tristan-Isolde myth is un-Greek bccause
no Greek could conceive of attributing absolute value to another
individual, he could only think in comparative terms, ths one is
more beautiful than that one, ths one has done greater deeds than
that one, etc. The Don Juan myth is un-Greek, as Kierkegaard has
pointcd out, not because he sleeps with a number of women, but
because he keeps a list of them.
A Greek could understand seducing a girl because one found
her attractive and then deserting her because one met a more at-
tractive girl and forgot the first one; but he could not have under-
stood doing so for an arithmetical reason, because one had resolved
to be the first lover of cvery woman in the world, and she hap-
pened to be the next integer in this infinite series.
Tristan and Isolde are tormented because they are compelled
to count up to two when they long to be able only to count up to
one; Don Juan is in torment because, however grcat the number
of bis seductions, it still remains a finite number a nd he cannot rest
until he has counted up to infinity.
The great enemy of both is time : Tristan and Isolde dread it
because it threatens change, and they wish the moment of intense
24
THE GREEKS AND US
. f ever hence the lave pot ion and
.. 1"'1' 1 1 "111 ;11!1 or . ' t. which ser ve as defense
1 1 h ttcle m the sJtua 10 11 . .
o\ 1. "o , '""' :1 1 1 o s ' . ., . t threatens repetttton
1
) Ju\11 clrcads tt becclUSC J . .
, .1 11 1 r , ILII I }'.t" ; on ' b b
1 1
ly novel hence l11s m-
. .. ,
1
nt t o e a so u e ,
,
11
, JJ., '" '',hts t.tL-1 momc_ . . . t be her first sexual ex-
. tl llt of hls vtctJms Jt mus
1 lo 111 1 1
1 1 1 l
ly slecp with her once.
1 ..
0 1
,
11
, , . . 1111 1 ut . 1e on Cl .
1
.. ty e they could
i ndent upon HIS tam , . .
llo 1 11 "P{l hs . are e e pe . et which has bcen taught to be-
. .. ol\ hl'l' ll mven_tcd_ a so_ct i unique eternal value to
lo . ,) ilt :t l cvcry tndJvtdual JS o .l . portat1Ce in the world, b)
f h. . r hcr socia 1m '
' .... 1 lll o:-; p,ct ve o lS o G d . act of free-choice, an
, J, ,. ol, tlwation of the self to. o ftsfanl: g made witb infinite
. t . rrespecttve o ce tn ,
-ol , .1
1
111 ,nmm1tmen J . ll . . ncself to be ruled
1 ) th t one rnust ncttller a ow o
1' o . . t .. ll . ; n , ( a t to transcend it but rnake
1 . t h tlmporal moment nor attemp .
, , "bl f .t turning time mto lustory.
, ,
11
, .o ll 1,spnns1 e or 1 ( ' h . ta
1 1
-
111
agmation and while
l
. , . . of thc , ns 1 J '
1 \ 01 \ h lll yt hs are t tseases f b n 1 literature thcir in-
lit' t.. m inspired a great body o J in ,their' frivolous
h man conduct partJcu ar h
'' '' ' 111 1 upon u . ' h. h
1
ss ovcr the fact that bot
!lo to d down rnodern verswnsj w tc J intensely unhappy,
lloo ic couple and the so Jtlary se u a couple divorce
l t
hollv b ad W 1enevcr
t..o , lo, .- n <l mos w ; ' - d. . . , gc to each othcr. they
sed to be a Jvme tmcl
, , .111:,, huvmg cea . t 1 ve a real person no better
1
th thought of havmg o o ' .
otlll"l cm ure e . d tl e spell of thc Tr1stan
l
thev are actmg un er 1 d I
tlo .111 lltlmse ves, ; h. lf "I must be getting ol .
' l a man says to unse ....
"11 tll y.., 1Cnever Wh t Id my friends say lf h .ey
, 1 d x for a week a wou . . "fi t
"" ,n 1 Ja se . h f Don Juan. l t ts sgn can
1 11 w," he is re-enactmg the hmyt h would probably not surprise
ol . ., 11 might interest Plato t oug l . l f m most closely to
. . eal hfe whJc 1 con or
''"" ihat the mstances m r t m either case hetcro-
of both myths are no , ,
!111 "' iginal pattern t
11
" meets are a Lesbian
. J lhe Tristan and Isolde one ac ua ;
' \11.1
. olpk. the Don Juan a pedcrast.
. . Ideal Man of Greek Epic is the
l "ll c Contemplatzve Hero. The f G . k Tragedy is the modest
d
. d 1 the Ideal Man o ree f
. in lVl ua ; '
1
f . ustice. the Ideal Ma n o
h ence for the aw o J ' . h
, olll t" ll w1t a rever . . .
11
with both: Ltke t e
P
h.l h has somethmg m commo
' .m k l osop y L but like the former, he JS an
1.11 ,,. r he is one who keeps the aw '
25
j
o
W.H. AUDEN
exceptional individual, not a member of the chorus, for to learn
how to keep the Law has become a beroic task which is beyond
the powcr of the average man. To thc question "What is the
cause of evil suffering?" Homer can only answer, "I don' t
.. The capnce of thc gods perhaps"; Tragedy answers, ''Thc
vwlatmn the .laws of righteousncss and justice by arrogant
men ; Phllosophy answers, "Ignorance of what the Law
tS leavcs the minds of men at the merey of t her bodily
paSSJOllS. "
hero hopes by brave deeds to win glory bcfore
he d1cs; the trag1c chorus hopes by livi ng modestly to escape mis-
for.tune as as they 1ivc; the contcmplati ve hcro hopcs for
ultnnate happmess of soul whcn he has succeedcd in Jcarning to
know the true and eterna] good, and so dcli vering bis soul from
cntanglemcnls of his body and the temporal tlux; ami beyond
h.c must teach society how to attain the same frecdom from
InJLIStJCC.
.. In theory, thc possibility of doing this s!ll)uld be opcn to all
al1ke but practcc. it is limited lo those souls whom the heavenly
eros has mspzrcd wzth a passion for knowledge. and whom tem-
poral circumstances allow them to dcvote their 1ifetime to the
search for wisdom; the stupid who cannot, the frivolous wbo will
not, and the poor who havc no time to undcrstand are debarrcd.
may have valuable social funct ions to pcrform but it is not
for them to say what the laws of society should be. That is the
duty of the philosophcr.
This ideal is stranger to us than it looks at first sight. Wc are
famzlmr w1th two kinds of contemplative m en: First, with tbe
religious contemplative as representcd by the various orders of
monks and nuns or by the individual mystic. His aim is to know
the hidden God, the rcality behind al! phenomena, but he thinks
of _this. God as a person, i.e., what he mcans by knowledge is not
obJeCtJve knowledgc about something which is the same for all
and once perceived can be passed on to othcrs by teaching,
the truths of mathematics, but a subjective rclationship which
umque for every individual. A relationship can never be taught,
1t has to be voluntarily entered into, and the only possiblc method
of pcrsuading another to do it is personal exampie. 1 f B is a friend
26
THE GREEKS AND US
. 1 , .111d ( is not. B cannot make C a friend of A by describing
, l11l d 1\ . as the result of his friendship with A has become the
1 ,,, 1 " 1 l'l'I'SOil C WOUJd Jike to be and S DOt , C may decide lO try
.. .. 1 111.11, , \ ' s acquaintancc. too.
e Jl i ,livL' knowledge is the field of anothcr kind of contempla-
11, 111 irll.dlcctual. thc scientist, the artist, etc, and thc knowledge
h . , " -; is not about any transcenclent reali ty but about phe-
" ' " " '
11
.1. intellectuaL l ike the rcligious contemplative, requircs
.. .. 111 ul11;d
1
)assion but in his case it is confincd to the scarch for
1 H"\ ', h' d.'.l' ; towards thc objcct of his search, the facts, he must
1 .. l' ' ''""r1kss. .
\\ lr:ll is puzzling to us about the Greek concept10n of
. . n i 1npl:11 ivc hero is that thesc two kinds of activity are
.l h
1
r11x n l. sometimes he seems t.o talk of a transcendcnt Godas zf
11. ,
1
n a passive object, at other times of observable phcnomena,
1.1. lhc n1nvcmcnts of the planets, as if they wcrc persons for
.. ' "' 11 , >rl L' could feel personal pass ion. Nothing is more bewilder-
,, ... , , '" about Plato. for instance, tha n thc way in which, in the
,,,, ,.. a piccc ictialectic, he will introduce what he himseif
.. 1., ,
1
1:: tt> be a myth but without any fceling on his part that 1t IS a
11 h:1r lhing todo.

1
is hard to say wbethcr onc should cal! the Grecks more
,., 1111 "il''lllorphic in thcir thinking than wc or On the one
1,
1111
1.
11
(lreck cosmology everything in nature zs thought as
1 .. ""' ;di vc the Iaws of naturc are not clescriptions of how t hmgs
..
111
:
1
ilv h..:l
1
avc, laws of. buL like human laws, laws f or, laws
1
,, '- >t ll',hl to obey and can fail to obey properly. On the other, 111
, "' , L ;,nlitical thcory, human bcings are thought of as if they
, ,
11
rnclv thc matter out of which through his techne the crafts-
" ' '"
1
.,,li1iian fashions the good society as a pottcr makes a vasc
" " 1 "' ' l:t y.
1" 1 he Grccks the cssential differencc bctween man and nature
_, . lh:ll the former can rcason if he wants to, whcreas for us the
111 i;d difference is that man has a sclf, i.e., that he and, so far
, .. , . ,_
111
,w, apart from God. he alonc is conscious of existing,
,, , , ,
11
sciousness is his whether he wants it or not, whether he !S
,.,
1
,
11
,
1

11
t or not. Thc Greeks therefore had no real conception of
",, :
1
s distinct from dcsire, so that, though they had, of course,
27
W.H. AUDEN
obser ved the psychological fact of temptation. that one can desire
one knows is_ wr?ng, they were at a loss as to how to explain
1t. The weakest pomt m Greck Ethics is its analysis of Choice. This
1s al! the serious bccausc politics is not peripheral but central
t? Greck Phllosophy; the formation of the Good Society comes
first, the quest for personal salvation or for scicntific truths about
matter or imaginative truths about the human hcart, second.
Through idcntifying the active source of the Good with Reason
not _wit h W_ill, thcy doomed thernselvcs to the hopeless task of
finmg thc form of society which, like thc truths of reason,
be val!d everywhcrc and for everyone, irrespect ivc of their
md!VIdua1 character or their historical circumstances.
A concept is either truc or falsc. A mind which entcrta ins a
false concept may be brought through steps of argumcnt to enter-
tam the true one, but this does not mean that a false concept has
grown mto the true; thcre is always a point in the dialectic, Jikc thc
moment of recognition in tragedy, whcn the revolutionary change
happens and thc false concept is abandoncd with the reaJization
that it ah:ays was false. The ialcctic process may take time, but
the truth 1t tliscovcrs has no history. 1
To thnk of the politicai problcm as a problcm of finding the
l. ( do not. know whelher thcre is ;;ny historical relation but when I rcad the
Plat?ntc 1 am constantly reminded of the stichomythy of tragedy.
The1e .also secrns .a parallel between the role of the Socra tic dialectic in the::
.. of tbe mtel lect an_d thc role of free-association in thc psychoana-
ly uc educatwn of thc emolions. Both are !..leveloped from the observation
that vmue cannot be taught, i.e., the lruth c<tnnot si mply be stated by the
t_eacher and lcarned by rote by the pupil because the r esults of Jearning
c_annot. be the of inquiry which each individual must
!J ve through for htmsel t at fi rst-hand.
.. Both. Socratic and tcchniques, too, are open
0
thc
They rcqLurc tndtvtdual supervision anu take a very lon
time whtch makes thcrn_ too for the majority, and they presuppos!
e n the pat t of thc puptl or p at tent a genume passion for truth or health.
the passwn for truth ts lacking, dialectic becomes a technique for
avot?mg conung to any concluslon just <ls, when the passion for health is
lacktng, self-examnauon 1s used to justify neurosis.
Isocra tes was unfair to the Academy and ovcrestimated the value uf his
own brand of educaton but he was not altogether wong perh p . 1
1" . h h" ' " S, 10 JC-
ICV!Og t at IS method was better adapted te thc needs of the aver age stu-
dcnt and the of the average teacher. At any rate it was his method
r ather than Platos wluch was adopted by the Romans and inherited by tbe
Wcst.
28
THE GREEKS ANO US
ltt l '"rtll of organization leads either to political despair, if one
1 111 \\": : 1 m has failed to find it, or. if one thinks one has been suc-
.. .1111 . lo a dcfense of tyranny for, if it is presupposed that pcople
1 .. tHt. i11 the wrong kind of order cannot have a good wi11 and
1
., "J 'k li ving in thc right kind cannot have abad onc, then not only
.. ti! , t ncion be necessary to cstablish that order but also its ap-
ldt .tlitll will be thc ruler's moral duty.
llil' Remhlic, the Laws, cvcn thc Politics, should be read in
. tJ tlllction with T hucydidcs; only a political situation as desperate
.t . 'h:l which the historian describes could ha ve produced in the
1
h ti. sllphcrs who were looking for cure at once a r adicalism which
''"11ld break completely with the past to build up society again ab
""''" ano a patbological horror of disunity and change. Living as
1\1" dt> in an age of similar stasis on a worJd-wide scalc, we have
,, ti ltLsscd a recurrence on both the Right and the Left, at both the
, , !ltll>mic and thc psychiatric cpicenters, of similar symptoms.
l ,. urther, we have seen with our own cyes the theory of creative
J"d iliLs put into practice, and the spectacle is anything but Utopian.
l itis cxpcricncc by forcing us to takc Plato's political dialogues
. t it >usly not as play fu] exercises in logic, has altered our attitude,
1 111 in k. to the other d ialogues. If there is an essential not an acci-
klll al relation between his metaphysics and hi s politics, and the
1 11n secm to us disastrously mistakcn, thcn there must be a crucial
, t ti H' in the formcr as well, which it is of the utmost importance that
,, ... dctcct, if we are to ofier a positive substitutc for the Platonic ki nd
, .r Sl>i ution to the political crisis.
The Comic Hero: "Comcdy," Aristotle says, " is an imitation
, .r m en worse than the average; worse, however, not as regards any
;Jitd cvery kind of fault, but only as regards one particular kind,
lil e Ridiculous, which is a species of the Ugly. The Ridiculous
ll l iY be defined as a mistake or deformity not productive of pain
"' harm to others."
Thc most primitive form of comedy secms to have been t ales
ttt which, firstly, Gods, and, secondly, hcroes and rulers behave in
;tll undignified and ridiculous manner, that is to say, no better than
11w average man who lacks their arete, but, indeed , r ather worse.
;uch primitive comcdy is associated with holidays of l icensc, during
29
W.H. AUDEN
which the resentments of the small and the wcak against the great
and the strong may be freely expressed, in a rder that on the mor-
row when the habi ts of respect are re-cstablished, the ai r shall be
clear.
When, as in Athcns, a growi ng rationalism comes to think of
the Gods as kceping their own Jaws, and political power comes to
be concentrated in the hands of a few, comedy finds new victims
and new themes.
lt is no longcr tbe ru.lers as a class, but particular public fi gures
who are made ?utts ?f; it is nor authority as such that is the subject
but toptcal polttlcal 1ssues. Tbe laughter of thc aud iencc is not thc
compcnsatory outburst of the weak against those who are above
the law, but thc confidcnr laughter of people who know thcir
that is, either the scorn of the normal majority for the
eccentnc or arrogant individual whosc behavior is not so much
above the law as outside it, or the polemical passion of ene political
party d1rccteu against its ri val. The target of such comedy is the
who vtolates the cthical norm beca use he does not bclieve it is
?mdmg; has, that is. no social consciencc. As a rcsul t he comes
coll!swn, not with thc law itself- it would be beneath the
d1gmty of .the law to concern itself with those who do not rccognize
1t- but WLth others as outside the law as himself. He suffcrs, but
do not because they do not identify themselves with
.. H1s too, is educational; through it he is cured of his
mania and Iearns to conform to the Jaw, out of
prudence, f not from conscience.
This second type of comedy was inventcd by the Greeks and
developed in Europe into the comedy of humor, as in the plays of
Ben Jonson, and comedy of manners and problems plays. If
one dJsregards the1r lack of germine poetry, the Gilbert and Sulli-
van operas are the closest approximation in Engli:.;h to thc Aristo-
phanic type of comedy.
There is, howevcr, a third type which the Greeks did not
possess- thc greatest example is Don Quixote- in which the
cornic figure is at the same time the hero; the audience admire the
very man they laugh at. Such a kind of comedy is based on a sense
that the relations of the individual and society to each other and of
both to the truc good contain insoluble contradictions which are
30
1
THE GREEKS AND US
,,.1 .. , comic as ironic. The comic hero is comic because he
1. ddlo- 11 nl from his ncighbors; either, like Don Quixote, because
11. , , l11:;1s lo accept their values, or, likc Falstaff, because he :e-
' " ... . '" Jl l'l'l cnd, as they do, to one set of values while li.vm.g
, . . 111 ., 1Jn: at the sarne time he is a hero because he IS an mdl-
and not to be an individual, to think and bchave in a certain
.. "' because everyone else does, is egually a comic
1 hv tragic hero suffers, and the audience, because they
1,. 111.dves with him through admiration, suffers too; the COIDJC butt
.11 ri .T:; hut thc audience, since they feel superior, do not. The rela-
11,.11 . .. r the comic hero and the audience to suffering, on the other
11 .1111 1. ,1,-c ironic; the audience sec the hero thwarted and defeated,
, ,
1
., 1icnces which they would regard as suffering, but the .whole
1
.,.1111 is that to the hero himself these are nothmg of
11,. :a rt ; on the contrary, be glories in thcm, erther because be has
11 , :. ha me or beca use he regards them as proof of his being
Thc nearest approach to such a fi gure among the Gre.eks 1s, of
, 1111 rsL'. Socrates. In his person he exhibits the contradrctron, s.o
1ld ik ed by Nietzsche, between his subjective arete of .soul, and
111.111i fcst lack of obj ective arete; he, the best man, JS the ughest
111;11 1. Further, he suffers death at the hands of society and
1111 ! rcrard his fate as a tragic one. To the Greeks, however, he !S
, rlher."' as he is to Aristophanes, a comic butt who is justly pun-
r.l 11 d, or as he is to Plato, a tragic martyr who suffers beca use. the
w1,,ug party was in power, the individual who rcpresents the
\ 11cicty. The notion that any individual clarm. to be the except10n Js
1ril ty of pride and that all societies and good and bad, are
111 thc wrong simply because they are collectJves would be.en
Incomprehensible to them, as would havc been the Chnstmn m-
;istcnce that Jesus was either the Incarnate God or nota good man
.111 d that his condemnation was by due process of Roman law.
VI
1 ll ave strcssed the differences between Greck civilization and our
11wn, firstly, because it seems to me one possible approach to an
incxhaustible subject and one cannot take them all, and, secondly,
1 can think of no better way of indicating what we owe to
31
W.H. AUDEN
Greece than drawing distinctions, for, of all intellectual acts, that
1s, perhaps, the most characteristically Greek.
lt is they who have taught us, not to thi nk-that all human
beings have always done- but to think about our thinking, to ask
such qucstions as "What do I think?" "What do this and that other
person or people think?" "On what do we agree and dlsagrec.
Why?" And not only did they learn to ask questions about thinking,
but they also discovered how, instead of giving immediate answers,
to suppose something to be the case and then see what would
follow if it were.
To be able to perform either of these mental operat ions, a
human being must first be capable of a tremendous feat of moral
courage and discipline for he must havc learned how to resist the
immediate demands of fee!ing and bodily needs, and to disrcgard
h1s natural anxiety about bis future so that he can look at his self
and his world as if they were not bis but a strangcr's.
If sorne of the Grcek questions turned out to have been in-
put, if sorne of their answers have proved wrong. that is
a tnv1al matter. Had Greek civilization never existed, we might
fear God and dcal justly with our nclghbors, we might practice arts
and even have learned how to devise fairly simple machines, but
we would never have become fully conscious, which is to say that
we would ncver have bccome, for better or worse, full y human.
32
AUGUSTUS TO AUGUSTINE
Si ncc the appcarance of the first edition in 1940, l have read this
buok* many times, and my conviction of its. to the
understanding not only of thc epoch with wluch 1t. 1s conccrned,
l>ut also of our own, has increased with each rercadmg. . ,
It is divded into three sections. Thc first,
dl'scribes the attempt of the Principate to justify itsclf as the poh:l-
t;d form which could best rcalize the good Iife on earth as envJs-
agcd by classical philosophy. It traces the fortunes of thc New
( >rder from its foundation by Augustus, attended by the hopes of
al l civ,ilized mankind, to its collapse after the dcath of
The second, "Renovation," beginning with the edict m
_\
13
A. D. and ending with an edict of 403 whic.h authonzed pnvatc
individuals "to exercisc with impunity the nght of pubhc ven-
,.cance against criminals," describes thc futile .attempt,
hy the platonst Julian, of the Jast gtve the .dymg empue
a new Iease of life by substituting Chnstwnlty for as a
state religion. The last section, " Regencration," is of
1 he writings of S t. Augustine, in particular of vc:"s the
doctrine of the Trinity, the S tate and Di vine Provdence m h1story.
< Christianity and Classical Culture: A .swdy of ThouRht and Action from
.1ugustus to A11gustine, by Charles Norns Cochrane.
33