Authorities.—Constantine Sathas,Νεοελληνικὴ φιλολογία(Athens, 1868); D. Bikelas,Περὶ νεοελληνικῆς φιλολογίας δοκίμιον(London, 1871), reprinted inΔιαλέξεις καὶ ἀναμνήσεις(Athens, 1893); J. S. Blackie,Horae Hellenicae(London, 1874); R. Nicolai,Geschichte der neugriechischen Literatur(Leipzig, 1876); A. R. Rhangabé,Histoire littéraire de la Grèce moderne(Paris, 1877); C. Gidel,Études sur la littérature grecque moderne(Paris, 1878); E. Legrand,Bibliothèque grecque vulgaire(vol. i., Paris, 1880); J. Lamber,Poètes grecs contemporains(Paris, 1881); Kontos,Γλωσσικαὶ παρατηρήσεις(Athens, 1882); Rhangabé and Sanders,Geschichte der neugriechischen Literatur von ihren Anfängen bis auf die neueste Zeit(Leipzig, 1885); J. Psichari,Essais de grammaire historique néo-grecque(2 vols., Paris, 1886 and 1889);Études de philologie néo-grecque(Paris, 1892); F. Blass,Die Aussprache des Griechischen(3rd ed., Berlin, 1888); Papademetrakopoulos,Βάσανος ἑλληνικῆς προφορᾶς(Athens, 1889); M. Konstantinides,Neo-hellenica(Dialogues in Modern Greek, with Appendix on the Cypriot Dialect) (London, 1892); Rhoïdes,Τἁ Εἴδωλα. Γλωσσικὴ μελέτη(Athens, 1893); Polites,Μελεταὶ περὶ τοῦ βίου καὶ τῆς γλώσσης Ἑλληνικοῦ λάου(2 vols., Athens, 1899).For the Klephtic ballads and folk-songs: C. Fauriel,Chants populaires de la Grèce moderne(Paris, 1824, 1826); Passow,Popularia carmina Graeciae recentioris(Leipzig, 1860); von Hahn,Griechische und albanesische Märchen(Leipzig, 1864);Τεφαρίκης, Λιανοτράγουδα(2nd ed., Athens, 1868); E. Legrand,Recueil de chansons populaires grecques(Paris, 1874);Recueil de contes populaires grecs(Paris, 1881); Paul de Lagarde,Neugriechisches aus Kleinasien(Göttingen, 1886); A. Jannaris,Ἄσματα Κρητικά(Kreta’s Volkslieder) (Leipzig, 1876); A. Sakellariou,Τὰ Κυπριακά(Athens, 1891);Ζωγραφεῖος Ἁγών, published by theἙλληνικὸς φιλολογικὸς σύλλογος(Constantinople, 1891). Translations: L. Garnett,Greek Folksongs from the Turkish Provinces of Greece(London, 1885); E. M. Geldart,Folklore of Modern Greece(London, 1884). Lexicons: A. N. Jannaris,A Concise Dictionary of the English and Modern Greek Languages(English-Greek) (London, 1895); Byzantios (Skarlatos D.),Λεξικὸν τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς γλώσσης(Athens, 1895); A. Sakellario,Λεξικὸν τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς γλώσσης(5th ed., Athens, 1898); S. Koumanoudes,Συναγωγὴ νέων λέξεων(Athens, 1900). Grammars: Mitsotakes,Praktische Grammatik der neugriechischen Schrift- und Umgangssprache(Stuttgart, 1891); M. Gardner,A Practical Modern Greek Grammar(London, 1892); G. N. Hatzidakes,Einleitung in die neugriechische Grammatik(Leipzig, 1892); E. Vincent and T. G. Dickson,Handbook to Modern Greek(London, 1893); A. Thumb,Handbuch der neugriechischen Volkssprache(Strassburg, 1895); C. Wied,Die Kunst der neugriechischen Volkssprache durch Selbstunterricht schnell und leicht zu lernen(2nd ed., undated, Vienna); A. N. Jannaris,Historical Greek Grammar(London, 1897).
Authorities.—Constantine Sathas,Νεοελληνικὴ φιλολογία(Athens, 1868); D. Bikelas,Περὶ νεοελληνικῆς φιλολογίας δοκίμιον(London, 1871), reprinted inΔιαλέξεις καὶ ἀναμνήσεις(Athens, 1893); J. S. Blackie,Horae Hellenicae(London, 1874); R. Nicolai,Geschichte der neugriechischen Literatur(Leipzig, 1876); A. R. Rhangabé,Histoire littéraire de la Grèce moderne(Paris, 1877); C. Gidel,Études sur la littérature grecque moderne(Paris, 1878); E. Legrand,Bibliothèque grecque vulgaire(vol. i., Paris, 1880); J. Lamber,Poètes grecs contemporains(Paris, 1881); Kontos,Γλωσσικαὶ παρατηρήσεις(Athens, 1882); Rhangabé and Sanders,Geschichte der neugriechischen Literatur von ihren Anfängen bis auf die neueste Zeit(Leipzig, 1885); J. Psichari,Essais de grammaire historique néo-grecque(2 vols., Paris, 1886 and 1889);Études de philologie néo-grecque(Paris, 1892); F. Blass,Die Aussprache des Griechischen(3rd ed., Berlin, 1888); Papademetrakopoulos,Βάσανος ἑλληνικῆς προφορᾶς(Athens, 1889); M. Konstantinides,Neo-hellenica(Dialogues in Modern Greek, with Appendix on the Cypriot Dialect) (London, 1892); Rhoïdes,Τἁ Εἴδωλα. Γλωσσικὴ μελέτη(Athens, 1893); Polites,Μελεταὶ περὶ τοῦ βίου καὶ τῆς γλώσσης Ἑλληνικοῦ λάου(2 vols., Athens, 1899).
For the Klephtic ballads and folk-songs: C. Fauriel,Chants populaires de la Grèce moderne(Paris, 1824, 1826); Passow,Popularia carmina Graeciae recentioris(Leipzig, 1860); von Hahn,Griechische und albanesische Märchen(Leipzig, 1864);Τεφαρίκης, Λιανοτράγουδα(2nd ed., Athens, 1868); E. Legrand,Recueil de chansons populaires grecques(Paris, 1874);Recueil de contes populaires grecs(Paris, 1881); Paul de Lagarde,Neugriechisches aus Kleinasien(Göttingen, 1886); A. Jannaris,Ἄσματα Κρητικά(Kreta’s Volkslieder) (Leipzig, 1876); A. Sakellariou,Τὰ Κυπριακά(Athens, 1891);Ζωγραφεῖος Ἁγών, published by theἙλληνικὸς φιλολογικὸς σύλλογος(Constantinople, 1891). Translations: L. Garnett,Greek Folksongs from the Turkish Provinces of Greece(London, 1885); E. M. Geldart,Folklore of Modern Greece(London, 1884). Lexicons: A. N. Jannaris,A Concise Dictionary of the English and Modern Greek Languages(English-Greek) (London, 1895); Byzantios (Skarlatos D.),Λεξικὸν τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς γλώσσης(Athens, 1895); A. Sakellario,Λεξικὸν τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς γλώσσης(5th ed., Athens, 1898); S. Koumanoudes,Συναγωγὴ νέων λέξεων(Athens, 1900). Grammars: Mitsotakes,Praktische Grammatik der neugriechischen Schrift- und Umgangssprache(Stuttgart, 1891); M. Gardner,A Practical Modern Greek Grammar(London, 1892); G. N. Hatzidakes,Einleitung in die neugriechische Grammatik(Leipzig, 1892); E. Vincent and T. G. Dickson,Handbook to Modern Greek(London, 1893); A. Thumb,Handbuch der neugriechischen Volkssprache(Strassburg, 1895); C. Wied,Die Kunst der neugriechischen Volkssprache durch Selbstunterricht schnell und leicht zu lernen(2nd ed., undated, Vienna); A. N. Jannaris,Historical Greek Grammar(London, 1897).
(J. D. B.)
1For authorities and criticisms see T. W. Allen inClassical Quarterly(Jan. and April 1908).2Others attribute it, as well as theMargites, to Pigres of Halicarnassus, the supposed brother of the Carian queen Artemisia, who fought on the side of Xerxes at the battle of Salamis.3The extant fragments of Solon have been augmented by lengthy quotations in theConstitution of Athens.4Since the above was written, four considerable fragments generally assigned to Sappho have been discovered: a prayer to the Nereids for the safe return of her brother Charaxus; the leave-taking of a favourite pupil; a greeting to Atthis, one of her friends, in Lydia; the fourth, much mutilated, addressed to another pupil, Gongyla. They are of great beauty and throw considerable light on the personality of Sappho and the language and metre of her poems.5Recently increased by specimens of thePartheneia(choral songs for maidens) and paeans.6His Constitution of Athens (q.v.), of which a papyrus MS. was found in Egypt and published in 1891, forms part of a larger work on the constitution of 158 Greek and foreign cities.7See Ad. Bauer and J. Strzygowski, “Eine alexandrinische Weltchronik” (1905) (Denkschrift der kaiserlich. Akademie der Wissenschaften, li.).8The patriarch Cyrillos Lucares (1572-1638), who had studied for a time in England and whose sympathies with Protestantism made him many enemies, established a Greek printing-press at Constantinople, from which he had the temerity to issue a work condemning the faith of Mahomet; he was denounced to the Turks by the Jesuits, and his printing-press was suppressed.
1For authorities and criticisms see T. W. Allen inClassical Quarterly(Jan. and April 1908).
2Others attribute it, as well as theMargites, to Pigres of Halicarnassus, the supposed brother of the Carian queen Artemisia, who fought on the side of Xerxes at the battle of Salamis.
3The extant fragments of Solon have been augmented by lengthy quotations in theConstitution of Athens.
4Since the above was written, four considerable fragments generally assigned to Sappho have been discovered: a prayer to the Nereids for the safe return of her brother Charaxus; the leave-taking of a favourite pupil; a greeting to Atthis, one of her friends, in Lydia; the fourth, much mutilated, addressed to another pupil, Gongyla. They are of great beauty and throw considerable light on the personality of Sappho and the language and metre of her poems.
5Recently increased by specimens of thePartheneia(choral songs for maidens) and paeans.
6His Constitution of Athens (q.v.), of which a papyrus MS. was found in Egypt and published in 1891, forms part of a larger work on the constitution of 158 Greek and foreign cities.
7See Ad. Bauer and J. Strzygowski, “Eine alexandrinische Weltchronik” (1905) (Denkschrift der kaiserlich. Akademie der Wissenschaften, li.).
8The patriarch Cyrillos Lucares (1572-1638), who had studied for a time in England and whose sympathies with Protestantism made him many enemies, established a Greek printing-press at Constantinople, from which he had the temerity to issue a work condemning the faith of Mahomet; he was denounced to the Turks by the Jesuits, and his printing-press was suppressed.
GREEK RELIGION.The recent development of anthropological science and of the comparative study of religions has enabled us at last to assign to ancient Greek religion its proper place in the classification of creeds and to appreciate its importance for the history of civilization. In spite of all the diversities of local cults we may find a general definition of the theological system of the Hellenic communities, and with sufficient accuracy may describe it as an anthropomorphic polytheism, preserving many traces of a pre-anthropomorphic period, unchecked by any exacting dogma or tradition of revelation, and therefore pliantly adapting itself to all the changing circumstance of the social and political history of the race, and easily able to assimilate alien ideas and forms. Such a religion, continuing in whole or in part throughout a period of at least 2000 years, was more capable of progress than others, possibly higher, that have crystallized at an early period into a fixed dogmatic type; and as, owing to its essential character, it could not be convulsed by any inner revolution that might obliterate the deposits of its earlier life, it was likely to preserve the imprints of the successive ages of culture, and to reveal more clearly than any other testimony the evolution of the race from savagery to civilization. Hence it is that Greek religion appears to teem with incongruities, the highest forms of religious life being often confronted with the most primitive. And for this reason the student of savageanthropology and the student of the higher religions of the world are equally rewarded by its study.
Modern ethnology has arrived at the conviction that the Hellenic nation, like others that have played great parts in history, was the product of a blend of populations, the conquering tribes of Aryan descent coming from the north and settling among and upon certain pre-Hellenic Mediterranean stocks. The conclusion that is naturally drawn from this is that Hellenic religion is also the product of a blend of early Aryan or Indo-Germanic beliefs with the cult-ideas and practices of the Mediterranean area that were from of old indigenous in the lands which the later invaders conquered. But to disentangle these two component parts of the whole, which might seem to be the first problem for the history of the development of this religion, is by no means an easy task; we may advance further towards its solution, when the mysterious pre-Hellenic Mediterranean language or group of languages, of which traces remain in Hellenic place-names, and which may be lying uninterpreted on the brick-tablets of the palace of Cnossus, has found its interpreter. For the first question is naturally one of language. But the comparative study of the Indo-European speech-group, great as its philological triumphs have been, has been meagre in its contributions to our positive knowledge of the original belief of the primitive stock. It is not possible to reconstruct a common Indo-European religion. The greater part of the separate Aryan cult-systems may have developed after the diffusion and may have been the result of contact in prehistoric days with non-Aryan peoples. And many old religious etymological equations, such asΟὐρανός= Sanskrit Varuna,Ἑρμῆς= Sarameyās, Athena = Ahana, were uncritically made and have been abandoned. The chief fact that philology has revealed concerning the religious vocabulary of the Aryan peoples is that many of them are found to have designated a high god by a word derived from a root meaning “bright,” and which appears in Zeus, Jupiter, SanskritDyaus. This is important enough, but we should not exaggerate its importance, nor draw the unwarranted inference that therefore the primitive Indo-Europeans worshipped one supreme God, the Sky-Father. Besides the word “Zeus,” the only other names of the Hellenic pantheon that can be explained wholly or partly as words of Aryan formation are Poseidon, Demeter, Hestia, Dionysus (whose name and cult were derived from the Aryan stock of the Thraco-Phrygians) and probably Pan. But other names, such as Athena, Ares, Apollo, Artemis, Hera, Hermes, have no discovered affinities with other Aryan speech-groups; and yet there is nothing suspiciously non-Aryan in the formation of these words, and they may all have belonged to the earliest Hellenic-Aryan vocabulary. In regard to others, such as Rhea, Hephaestus and Aphrodite, it is somewhat more probable that they belonged to an older pre-Hellenic stock that survived in Crete and other islands, and here and there on the mainland; while we know that Zeus derived certain unintelligible titles in Cretan cult from the indigenous Eteo-cretan speech.
A minute consideration of a large mass of evidence justifies the conclusion that the main tribes of the Aryan Hellenes, pushing down from the north, already possessed certain deities in common such as Zeus, Poseidon and Apollo with whom they associated certain goddesses, and that they maintained the cult of Hestia or “Holy Hearth.” Further, a comparison of the developed religions of the respective Aryan peoples suggests that they tended to give predominance to the male divinity, although we have equally good reason to assert that the cult of goddesses, and especially of the earth-goddess, is a genuinely “Aryan” product. But when the tribes of this family poured into the Greek peninsula, it is probable that they would find in certain centres of a very ancient civilization, such as Argolis and Crete, the dominant cult of a female divinity.1The recent excavations on the site of the Hera temple at Argos prove that a powerful goddess was worshipped here many centuries before it is probable that the Hellenic invader appeared. He may have even found the name Hera there, or may have brought it with him and applied it to the indigenous divinity. Again, we are certain that the great mother-goddess of Crete, discovered by Dr Arthur Evans, is the ancestress of Rhea and of the Greek “Mother of the gods”: and it is a reasonable conjecture that she accounts for many of the forms of Artemis and perhaps for Athena. But the evidence by no means warrants us in assuming as an axiom that wherever we find a dominant goddess-cult, as that of Demeter at Eleusis, we are confronted with a non-Hellenic religious phenomenon. The very name “Demeter” and the study of other Aryan religions prove the prominence of the worship of the earth-goddess in our own family of the nations. Finally, we must reckon with the possibility that the other great nations which fringed the Mediterranean, Hittite, Semitic and Egyptian peoples, left their impress on early Greek religion, although former scholars may have made rash use of this hypothesis.2
Recognizing then the great perplexity of these problems concerning the ethnic origins of Hellenic religion, we may at least reduce the tangle of facts to some order by distinguishing its lower from its higher forms, andAnimism.thus provide the material for some theory of evolution. We may collect and sift the phenomena that remain over from a pre-anthropomorphic period, the imprints of a savage past, the beliefs and practices that belong to the animistic or even the pre-animistic period, fetishism, the worship of animals, human sacrifice. We shall at once be struck with the contrast between such civilized cults as those of Zeus, Athena, Apollo, high personal divinities to whom the attributes of a progressive morality could be attached, and practices that long survived in backward communities, such as the Arcadian worship of the thunder and the winds, the cult of ZeusΚεραυνός“the thunder” at Mantinea and ZeusΚαππώταςin Laconia, who is none other than the mysterious meteoric stone that falls from heaven. These are examples of a religious view in which certain natural phenomena or objects are regarded as mysteriously divine or sacred in their own right and a personal divinity has not yet emerged or been separated from them. A noteworthy product of primitive animistic feeling is the universally prevalent cult of Hestia, who is originally “Holy Hearth” pure and simple, and who even under the developed polytheism, in which she played no small part, was never established as a separate anthropomorphic personage.
The animistic belief that certain material objects can be charged with a divine potency or spirit gives rise to fetishism, a term which properly denotes the worshipful or superstitious use of objects made by art and investedFetishismwith mysterious power, so as to be used like amulets for the purposes of protective magic or for higher purposes of communion with the divinity. From the earliest discoverable period down to the present day fetishism has been a powerful factor in the religion of the Graeco-Roman world. The importance of the sacred stone and pillar in the “Mycenaean” or “Minoan” period which preceded Homer has been impressively shown by Dr Arthur Evans, and the same fetishistic worship continued throughout the historic ages of classic paganism, the rude aniconic emblem of pillar or tree-trunk surviving often by the side of the iconic masterpiece. It is a reasonable conjecture that the earliest anthropomorphic images of divinities, which were beginning to make their appearance by the time of Homer, were themselves evolved by slow transformation from the upright sacred column. And the altar itself may have arisen as another form of this; the simple heap of stones, suchas those erected to Hermes by the way-side and calledἙρμαῖοι λόφοι, may have served both as a place of worship and as anagalmathat could attract and absorb a divine potency into itself. Hence the fetishistic power of the altar was fully recognized in Greek ritual, and hence also in the cult of Apollo Agyieus the god and the altar are called by the same name.
It has been supposed that the ancestors of the historic Greeks, before they were habituated to conceive of their divinities as in human form, may have been accustomed to invest them with animal attributes and traits. We must not indeed suppose it to be a general law of religious evolution that “theriomorphism” must always precede anthropomorphism and that the latter transcends and obliterates the former. The two systems can exist side by side, and savages of low religious development can conceive of their deities as assuming at one time human, at another bestial, shape. Now the developed Greek religion was devotedly anthropomorphic, and herein lay its strength and its weakness; nevertheless, the advanced Hellene could imagine his Dionysus entering temporarily into the body of the sacrificial bull or goat, and the men of Phigalia in Arcadia were attached to their horse-headed Demeter, and the primitive Laconians possibly to a ram-headed Apollo. Theriolatry in itself,i.e.the worship of certain animals as of divine power in their own right, apart from any association with higher divinities, can scarcely be traced among the Greek communities at any period. They are not found to have paid reverence to any species, though individual animals could acquire temporarily a divine character through communion with the altar or with the god. The wolf might at one time have been regarded as the incarnation of Apollo, the wolf-god, and here and there we find faint traces of a wolf-sacrifice and of offerings laid out for wolves. But the occasional propitiation of wild beasts may fall short of actual worship. The Athenian who slew a wolf might give it a sumptuous funeral, probably to avoid a blood-feud with the wolf’s relatives, yet the Athenian state offered rewards for a wolf’s head. Nor did any Greek individual or state worship flies as a class, although a small oblation might be thrown to the flies before the great sacrifice to Apollo on the Leucadian rock, to please them and to persuade them not to worry the worshippers at the great solemnity, where the reek of roast flesh would be likely to attract them.
Theriolatry suggests totemism; and though we now know that the former can arise and exist quite independently of the latter, recent anthropologists have interpreted the apparent sanctity or prestige of certain animals inTotemism.parts of Greek mythology and religion as the deposit of an earlier totemistic system. But this interpretation, originated and maintained with great acumen by Andrew Lang and W. Robertson Smith, appears now somewhat hazardous; and as a scientific hypothesis there are many flaws in it. The more observant study of existing totem-tribes has weakened our impression of the importance of totemism as a primitive religious phenomenon. It is in reality more important as a social than as a religious factor. If indeed we choose to regard totemism as a mere system of nomenclature, by which a tribe names itself after some animal or plant, then we might quote a few examples of Hellenic tribes totemistic in this sense. But totemism is a fact of importance only when it affects the tribal marriage laws or the tribal religion. And the tribal marriage laws of ancient Greece, so far as they are known, betray no clear mark of totemistic arrangements; nor does the totemism of contemporary savages appear to affect their religion in any such way as to suggest a natural explanation for any of the peculiar phenomena of early Hellenic polytheism. Here and there we have traces of a snake-tribe in Greece, theὈφιεῖςin Aetolia, theὈφιογενεῖςin Cyprus and Parium, but we are not told that these worshipped the snake, though the latter clan were on terms of intimacy with it. Where the snake was actually worshipped in Hellenic cult—the cases are few and doubtful—it may have been regarded as the incarnation of the ancestor or as theavatarof the under-world divinity.
Finally, among the primitive or savage phenomena the practice of human sacrifice looms large. Encouraged at one time by the Delphic oracle, it was becoming rare andHuman sacrifice.repellent to the conscience by the 6th centuryB.C.; but it was not wholly extinct in the Greek world even by the time of Porphyry. The facts are very complex and need critical handling, and a satisfying scientific explanation of them all is still to be sought.
We can now observe the higher aspects of the advanced polytheism. And at the outset we must distinguish between mythology and religion strictly understood, between the stories about the divinities and the private or public religious service. No doubt the former are often a reflection of the latter, in many cases being suggested by the ritual which they may have been invented to interpret, and often envisaging important cult-ideas. Such for example are the myths about the purification and trial of Orestes, Theseus, Ixion, the story of Demeter’s sorrow, of the sufferings and triumph of Dionysus, and those about the abolition of human sacrifice. Yet Greek mythology as a whole was irresponsible, without reserve, and unchecked by dogma or sacerdotal prohibition; and frequently it sank below the level of the current religion, which was almost free from the impurities which shock the modern reader of Hellenic myths. Nor again did any one feel himself called upon to believe any particular myth; in fact, faith, understood in the sense in which the term is used in Christian theology, as the will to believe certain dogmatic statements about the nature and action of divinity, is a concept which was neither named nor recognized in Hellenic ethics or religious doctrine; only, if a man proclaimed his disbelief in the existence of the gods and refused to join in the ritual of the community, he would become “suspect,” and might at times be persecuted by his fellows. Greek religion was not so much an affair of doctrine as of ritual, religious formulae of which the cult-titles of the divinities were an important component, and prayer; and the most illuminative sources of our knowledge of it are the ritual-inscriptions and other state-documents, the private dedications, the monuments of religious art and certain passages in the literature, philology and archaeology being equally necessary to the equipment of the student.
We are tempted to turn to Homer as the earliest authority. And though Homer is not primitive and does not present even an approximately complete account of Greek religion, we can gather from his poems a picture of an advancedReligion in Homer.polytheism which in form and structure at least is that which was presented to the world of Aeschylus. We discern a pantheon already to some extent systematized, a certain hierarchy and family of divinities in which the supremacy of Zeus is established as incontestable. And the anthropomorphic impulse, the strongest trend in the Greek religious imagination, which filled the later world with fictitious personages, generating transparent shams such as an Ampidromus for the ritual of the Ampidromia, Amphiction for the Amphictiones, a heroΚέραμοςfor the gild of potters, is already at its height in the Homeric poems. The deities are already clear-cut, individual personalities of distinct ethos, plastically shaped figures such as the later sculpture and painting could work upon, not vaguely conceivednuminalike the forms of the old Roman religion. Nor can we call them for the most part nature-deities like the personages of the Vedic system, thinly disguised “personifications” of natural phenomena. Athena is not the blue sky nor Apollo the sun; they are simply Athena and Apollo, divine personages with certain powers and character, as real for their people as Christ and the Virgin for Christendom. By the side of these, though generally in a subordinate position, we find that Homer recognized certain divinities that we may properly call nature-powers, such as Helios, Gaia and the river-deities, forms descending probably from a remote animistic period, but maintaining themselves within the popular religion till the end of Paganism. Again, though Homer may talk and think at times with levity andbanalitéabout his deities, his deeper utterances impute an advanced morality to the supremeGod. His Zeus is on the whole a power of righteousness, dealing with men by a righteous law of nemesis, never being himself the author of evil—an idea revealed in the opening passage of theOdyssey—but protecting the good and punishing the wicked. Vengeance, indeed, was one of the attributes of divinity both for Homer and the average Greek of the later period, as it is in Judaic and Christian theology, though Plato and Euripides protested strongly against such a view. But the Homeric Zeus is equally a god of pity and mercy, and the man who neglects the prayers of the sorrowful and afflicted, who violates the sanctity of the suppliant and guest, or oppresses the poor or the wanderer, may look for divine punishment. Though not regarded as the physical author of the universe or the Creator, he is in a moral sense the father of gods and men. And though the sense of sin and the need of piacular sacrifice are expressed in the Homeric poems, the relations between gods and men that they reveal are on the whole genial and social; the deity sits unseen at the good man’s festal sacrifice, and there is a simple apprehension of the idea of divine communion. There is also indeed a glimmering of the dark background of the nether world, and the chthonian powers that might send up the Erinys to fulfil the curse of the wronged. Yet on the whole the religious atmosphere is generally cheerful and bright; freer than that of the later ages from the taint of magic and superstition; nor is Homer troubled much about the life after death; he scarcely recognizes the cult of the dead,3and is not oppressed by fear of the ghost-world.
If we look now broadly over the salient facts of the Greek public and private worship of the historic period we find much in it that agrees with Homeric theology. His “Olympian” system retains a certain life almost toThe post-Homeric period.the end of Paganism, and it is a serious mistake to suppose that it had lost its hold upon the people of the 5th and 4th centuryB.C.We find it, indeed, enriched in the post-Homeric period with new figures of prestige and power; Dionysus, of whom Homer had only faintly heard, becomes a high god with a worship full of promise for the future. Demeter and Kore, the mother and the girl, whom Homer knew well enough but could not use for his epic purposes, attract the ardent affections and hopes of the people; and Asclepius, whom the old poet did not recognize as a god, wins a conspicuous place in the later shrines. But much that has been said of the Homeric may be said of the later classical theology. The deities remain anthropomorphic, and appear as clearly defined individuals. A certain hierarchy is recognized; Zeus is supreme, even in the city of Athena, but each of the higher divinities played many parts, and local enthusiasm could frustrate the departmental system of divine functions; certain members of the pantheon had a preference for the life of the fields, but as thepolisemerged from the village communities, Demeter, Hermes, Artemis and others, the gods and goddesses of the husbandmen and shepherds, become powers of the council-chamber and the market-place. The moral ideas that we find in the Homeric religion are amply attested by cult-records of the later period. The deities are regarded on the whole as beneficent, though revengeful if wronged or neglected; the cult-titles used in prayer, which more than any other witnesses reveal the thought and wish of the worshipper, are nearly always euphemistic, the doubtful title of Demeter Erinys being possibly an exception. The important cults of ZeusἹκέσιοςandΠροστρόπαιος, the suppliant’s protecting deity, embody the ideas of pity and mercy that mark advanced religion; and many momentous steps in the development of morality and law were either suggested or assisted by the state-religion. For example, the sanctity of the oath, the main source of the secular virtue of truthfulness, was originally a religious sanction, and though the Greek may have been prone to perjury, yet the Hellenic like the Hebraic religious ethics regarded it as a heinous sin. The sanctity of family duties, the sacredness of the life of the kinsman, were ideas fostered by early Hellenic religion before they generated principles of secular ethics. In the post-Homeric period, the development of the doctrine of purity, which was associated with the Apolline religion, combining with a growing dread of the ghost-world, stimulated and influenced in many important ways the evolution of the Greek law concerning homicide.4And the beginnings of international law and morality were rooted in religious sanctions and taboo. In fact, Greek state-life was indebted in manifold ways to Greek religion, and the study of the Greek oracles would alone supply sufficient testimony of this. In many cases the very origin of the state was religious, the earliestpolissometimes having arisen under the shadow of the temple.
Yet as Greek religion was always in the service of the state, and the priest a state-official, society was the reverse of theocratic. Secular advance, moral progress and the march of science, could never long be thwarted by religious tradition; on the contrary, speculative thought and artistic creation were considered as attributes of divinity. We may say that the religion of Hellas penetrated the whole life of the people, but rather as a servant than as a master.
Distinct and apart from these public worships and those of the clan and family were the mystic cults of Eleusis, Andania and Samothrace, and the private services of the mystic brotherhoods. The latter were scattered broadcast over Hellas, and the influence of the former was strengthened and their significance intensified by the wave of mysticism that spread at first from the north from the beginning of the 7th century onwards, and derived its strength from the power of Dionysus and the Orphic brotherhoods. New ideals and hopes began to stir in the religious consciousness, and we find a strong Salvationist tendency, the promise of salvation relying on mystic communion with the deity. Also a new and vital principle is at work; Orphism is the only force in Greek religion of a clear apostolic purpose, for it broke the barriers of the old tribal and civic cults, and preached its message to bond and free, Hellene and barbarian.
The later history of Greek paganism is mainly concerned with its gradual penetration by Oriental ideas and worships, and the results of thisθεοκρασίαare discerned in an ever increasing mysticism and a tendency towards monotheism. Obliterated as the old Hellenic religion appeared to be by Christianity, it nevertheless retained a certain life, though transformed, under the new creed to which it lent much of its hieratic organization and religious terminology. The indebtedness of Christianity to Hellenism is one of the most interesting problems of comparative religion; and for an adequate estimate a minute knowledge of the ritual and the mystic cults of Hellas is one of the essential conditions.
Bibliography.—Older Authorities: A. Maury,Histoire des religions de la Grèce antique(3 vols., 1857-1859); Welcker,Griechische Götterlehre(3 vols., 1857-1863); Preller,Griechische Mythologie, 2 vols. (4th edition by C. Robert, 1887), all antiquated in regard to theory, but still of some value for collection of materials. Recent Literature—(a) General Treatises: O. Gruppe, “Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte” in Iwan von Müller’sHandbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, v. 2. 2 (1902-1906); L. R. Farnell’sCults of the Greek States, 4 vols. (1896-1906, vol. 5, 1908); Miss Jane Harrison’sProlegomena to the Study of Greek Religion(ed. 1908); Chantepie de la Saussaye’sLehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte(Greek section, 1904); (b) Special Works or Dissertations: articles in Roscher’sAusführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie, and Pauly-WissowaEncyklopädie(1894- ); Immerwahr,Kulte und Mythen Arkadiens(1891); Wide,Lakonische Kulte(1893); de Visser,De Graecorum diis non referentibus speciem humanam(Leiden, 1900). Greek Ritual and Festivals—A. Mommsen,Feste der Stadt Athen(1898); P. Stengel, “Die griechischen Sacralaltertümer” in Iwan von Müller’sHandbuch, v. 3 (1898); W. H. D. Rouse,Greek Votive Offerings(1902). Greek Religious Thought and Speculation—L. Campbell’sReligion in Greek Literature(1898); Ducharme,La Critique des traditions religieuses chez les Grecs des origines au temps de Plutarque(Paris, 1904). See also articles on individual deities, and cf.Roman Religion;Mysteries;Mithras.
Bibliography.—Older Authorities: A. Maury,Histoire des religions de la Grèce antique(3 vols., 1857-1859); Welcker,Griechische Götterlehre(3 vols., 1857-1863); Preller,Griechische Mythologie, 2 vols. (4th edition by C. Robert, 1887), all antiquated in regard to theory, but still of some value for collection of materials. Recent Literature—(a) General Treatises: O. Gruppe, “Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte” in Iwan von Müller’sHandbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, v. 2. 2 (1902-1906); L. R. Farnell’sCults of the Greek States, 4 vols. (1896-1906, vol. 5, 1908); Miss Jane Harrison’sProlegomena to the Study of Greek Religion(ed. 1908); Chantepie de la Saussaye’sLehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte(Greek section, 1904); (b) Special Works or Dissertations: articles in Roscher’sAusführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie, and Pauly-WissowaEncyklopädie(1894- ); Immerwahr,Kulte und Mythen Arkadiens(1891); Wide,Lakonische Kulte(1893); de Visser,De Graecorum diis non referentibus speciem humanam(Leiden, 1900). Greek Ritual and Festivals—A. Mommsen,Feste der Stadt Athen(1898); P. Stengel, “Die griechischen Sacralaltertümer” in Iwan von Müller’sHandbuch, v. 3 (1898); W. H. D. Rouse,Greek Votive Offerings(1902). Greek Religious Thought and Speculation—L. Campbell’sReligion in Greek Literature(1898); Ducharme,La Critique des traditions religieuses chez les Grecs des origines au temps de Plutarque(Paris, 1904). See also articles on individual deities, and cf.Roman Religion;Mysteries;Mithras.
(L. R. F.)
1This has often been explained as a result ofMutterrecht, or reckoning descent through the female: for reasons against this hypothesis see L. R. Farnell inArchiv für vergleichende Religionswissenschaft(1904); cf. A. J. Evans, “Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult,” inJourn. of Hellenic Studies(1901).2V. Bérard has recently revived the discredited theory of a prevalent Phoenician influence in his ingenious but uncritical work,L’Origine des cultes arcadiens. M. P. Foucart believes in very early borrowing from Egypt, as explaining much in the religion of Demeter and Dionysus; seeLes Grands Mystères d’ÉleusisandLe Culte de Dionysos en Attique.3This became very powerful from the 7th century onward, and there are reasons for supposing that it existed in the pre-Homeric, or Mycenaean, period;videRohde’sPsyche(new edition), Tsountas and Manatt,The Mycenaean Age.4See L. R. Farnell,Evolution of Religion(Hibbert Lectures, 1905), pp. 139-152.
1This has often been explained as a result ofMutterrecht, or reckoning descent through the female: for reasons against this hypothesis see L. R. Farnell inArchiv für vergleichende Religionswissenschaft(1904); cf. A. J. Evans, “Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult,” inJourn. of Hellenic Studies(1901).
2V. Bérard has recently revived the discredited theory of a prevalent Phoenician influence in his ingenious but uncritical work,L’Origine des cultes arcadiens. M. P. Foucart believes in very early borrowing from Egypt, as explaining much in the religion of Demeter and Dionysus; seeLes Grands Mystères d’ÉleusisandLe Culte de Dionysos en Attique.
3This became very powerful from the 7th century onward, and there are reasons for supposing that it existed in the pre-Homeric, or Mycenaean, period;videRohde’sPsyche(new edition), Tsountas and Manatt,The Mycenaean Age.
4See L. R. Farnell,Evolution of Religion(Hibbert Lectures, 1905), pp. 139-152.
GREELEY, HORACE(1811-1872), American statesman and man of letters, was born at Amherst, New Hampshire, on the 3rd of February 1811. His parents were of Scottish-Irish descent, but the ancestors of both had been in New England for several generations. He was the third of seven children. His father, Zaccheus Greeley, owned a farm of 50 acres of stony, sterile land, from which a bare support was wrung. Horace was a feeble and precocious lad, taking little interest in the ordinary sports of childhood, learning to read before he was able to talk plainly, and the prodigy of the neighbourhood for accurate spelling. Before Horace was ten years old (1820), his father became bankrupt, his home was sold by the sheriff, and Zaccheus Greeley himself fled the state to escape arrest for debt. The family soon removed to West Haven, Vermont, where, all working together, they made a scanty living as day labourers. Horace from childhood desired to be a printer, and, when barely eleven years old, tried to be taken as an apprentice in an office at Whitehall, New York, but was rejected on account of his youth. After three years more with the family as a day labourer at West Haven, he succeeded, with his father’s consent, in being apprenticed in the office ofThe Northern Spectator, at East Poultney, Vermont. Here he soon became a good workman, developed a passion for politics and especially for political statistics, came to be depended upon for more or less of the editing of the paper, and was a figure in the village debating society. He received only $40 a year, but he sent most of his money to his father. In June 1830The Northern Spectatorwas suspended. Meantime his father had removed to a small tract of wild land in the dense forests of Western Pennsylvania, 30 m. from Erie. The released apprentice now visited his parents, and worked for a little time with them on the farm, meanwhile seeking employment in various printing offices, and, when he got it, giving nearly all his earnings to his father. At last, with no further prospect of work nearer home, he started for New York. He travelled on foot and by canal-boat, entering New York in August 1831, with all his clothes in a bundle carried over his back with a stick, and with but $10 in his pocket. More than half of this sum was exhausted while he made vain efforts to find employment. Many refused to employ him, in the belief that he was a runaway apprentice, and his poor, ill-fitting apparel and rustic look were everywhere greatly against him. At last he found work on a 32mo New Testament, set in agate, double columns, with a middle column of notes in pearl. It was so difficult and so poorly paid that other printers had all abandoned it. He barely succeeded in making enough to pay his board bill, but he finished the task, and thus found subsequent employment easier to get.
In January 1833 Greeley formed a partnership with Francis V. Story, a fellow-workman. Their combined capital amounted to about $150. Procuring their type on credit, they opened a small office, and undertook the printing of theMorning Post, the first cheap paper published in New York. Its projector, Dr Horatio D. Shepard, meant to sell it for one cent, but under the arguments of Greeley he was persuaded to fix the price at two cents. The paper failed in less than three weeks, the printers losing only $50 or $60 by the experiment. They still had aBank Note Reporterto print, and soon got the printing of a tri-weekly paper, theConstitutionalist, the organ of some lottery dealers. Within six months Story was drowned, but his brother-in-law, Jonas Winchester, took his place in the firm. Greeley was now asked by James Gordon Bennett to go into partnership with him in startingThe Herald. He declined the venture, but recommended the partner whom Bennett subsequently took. On the 2nd of March 1834, Greeley and Winchester issued the first number ofThe New Yorker, a weekly literary and news paper, the firm then supposing itself to be worth about $3000. Of the first number they sold about 100 copies; of the second, nearly 200. There was an average increase for the next month of about 100 copies per week. The second volume began with a circulation of about 4550 copies, and with a loss on the first year’s publication of $3000. The second year ended with 7000 subscribers and a further loss of $2000. By the end of the third yearThe New Yorkerhad reached a circulation of 9500 copies, and had sustained a total loss of $7000. It was published seven years (until the 20th of September 1841), and was never profitable, but it was widely popular, and it gave Greeley, who was its sole editor, much prominence. On the 5th of July 1836 Greeley married Miss Mary Y. Cheney, a Connecticut school teacher, whom he had met in a Grahamite (vegetarian) boarding-house in New York.
During the publication ofThe New Yorkerhe added to the scanty income which the job printing brought him by supplying editorials to the short-livedDaily Whigand various other publications. In 1838 he had gained such standing as a writer that he was selected by Thurlow Weed, William H. Seward, and other leaders of the Whig Party, for the editorship of a campaign paper entitledThe Jeffersonian, published at Albany. He continuedThe New Yorker, and travelled between Albany and New York each week to edit the two papers. TheJeffersonianwas a quiet and instructive rather than a vehement campaign sheet, and the Whigs believed that it had a great effect upon the elections of the next year. When, on the 2nd of May 1840, some time after the nomination by the Whig party of William Henry Harrison for the Presidency, Greeley began the publication of a new weekly campaign paper,The Log Cabin, it sprang at once into a great circulation; 40,000 copies of the first number were sold, and it finally rose to 80,000. It was considered a brilliant political success, but it was not profitable, and in September 1841 was merged in theWeekly Tribune. On the 3rd of April 1841, Greeley announced that on the following Saturday (April 10th) he would begin the publication of a daily newspaper of the same general principles, to be calledThe Tribune. He was now entirely without money. From a personal friend, James Coggeshall, he borrowed $1000, on which capital and the editor’s reputationThe Tribunewas founded. It began with 500 subscribers. The first week’s expenses were $525 and the receipts $92. By the end of the fourth week it had run up a circulation of 6000, and by the seventh reached 11,000, which was then the full capacity of its press. It was alert, cheerful and aggressive, was greatly helped by the attacks of rival papers, and promised success almost from the start.
From this time Greeley was popularly identified withThe Tribune, and its share in the public discussion of the time is his history. It soon became moderately prosperous, and his assured income should have placed him beyond pecuniary worry. His income was long above $15,000 per year, frequently as much as $35,000 or more. But he lacked business thrift, inherited a disposition to endorse for his friends, and was often unable to distinguish between deserving applicants for aid and adventurers. He was thus frequently straitened, and, as his necessities pressed, he sold successive interests in his newspaper. At the outset he owned the whole of it. When it was already firmly established (in July 1841), he took in Thomas McElrath as an equal partner, upon the contribution of $2000 to the common fund. By the 1st of January 1849 he had reduced his interest to 31½ shares out of 100; by July 2nd, 1860, to 15 shares; in 1868 he owned only 9; and in 1872, only 6. In 1867 the stock sold for $6500 per share, and his last sale was for $9600. He bought wild lands, took stock in mining companies, desiccated egg companies, patent looms, photo-lithographic companies, gave away profusely, lent to plausible rascals, and was the ready prey of every new inventor who chanced to find him with money or with property that he could readily convert into money.
In September 1841 Greeley merged his weekly papers,The Log CabinandThe New Yorker, intoThe Weekly Tribune, which soon attained as wide circulation as its predecessors, and was much more profitable. It rose in a time of great political excitement to a total circulation of a quarter of a million, and it sometimes had for successive years 140,000 to 150,000. For several years it was rarely much below 100,000. Its subscribers were found throughout all quarters of the northern half of the Union from Maine to Oregon, large packages going to remote districts beyond the Mississippi or Missouri, whose only connexion with the outside world was through a weekly or semi-weekly mail. The readers of this weekly paper acquired a personal affection forits editor, and he was thus for many years the American writer most widely known and most popular among the rural classes. The circulation ofThe Daily Tribunewas never proportionately great—its advocacy of a protective tariff, prohibitory liquor legislation and other peculiarities, repelling a large support which it might otherwise have commanded in New York. It rose within a short time after its establishment to a circulation of 20,000, reached 50,000 and 60,000 during the Civil War, and thereafter ranged at from 30,000 to 45,000. After May 1845 a semi-weekly edition was also printed, which ultimately reached a steady circulation of from 15,000 to 25,000.
From the outset it was a cardinal principle with Greeley to hear all sides, and to extend a special hospitality to new ideas. In March 1842The Tribunebegan to give one column daily to a discussion of the doctrines of Charles Fourier, contributed by Albert Brisbane. Gradually Greeley came to advocate some of these doctrines editorially. In 1846 he had a sharp discussion upon them with a former subordinate, Henry J. Raymond, then employed upon a rival journal. It continued through twelve articles on each side, and was subsequently published in book form. Greeley became personally interested in one of the Fourierite associations, the North American Phalanx, at Red Bank, N. J. (1843-1855), while the influence of his discussions doubtless led to or gave encouragement to other socialistic experiments, such as that at Brook Farm. When this was abandoned, its leader George Ripley, with one or two other members, sought employment from Greeley uponThe Tribune. Greeley dissented from many of Fourier’s propositions, and in later years was careful to explain that the principle of association for the common good of working men and the elevation of labour was the chief feature which attracted him. Co-operation among working men he continued to urge throughout his life. In 1850 the Fox Sisters, on his wife’s invitation, spent several weeks in his house. His attitude towards their “rappings” and “spiritual manifestations” was one of observation and inquiry; and in hisRecollectionshe wrote concerning these manifestations: “That some of them are the result of juggle, collusion or trick I am confident; that others arenot, I decidedly believe.”
From boyhood he had believed in a protective tariff, and throughout his active life he was its most trenchant advocate and propagandist. Besides constantly urging it in the columns ofThe Tribune, he appeared as early as 1843 in a public debate on “The Grounds of Protection,” with Samuel J. Tilden and Parke Godwin as his opponents. A series of popular essays on the subject were published over his own signature inThe Tribunein 1869, and subsequently republished in book form, with a title-page describing protection to home industry as a system of national co-operation for the elevation of labour. He opposed woman suffrage on the ground that the majority of women did not want it and never would, and declared that until woman should “emancipate herself from the thraldom to etiquette,” he “could not see how the ‘woman’s rights theory’ is ever to be anything more than a logically defensible abstraction.” He aided practical efforts, however, for extending the sphere of woman’s employments. He opposed the theatres, and for a time refused to publish their advertisements. He held the most rigid views on the sanctity of marriage and against easy divorce, and vehemently defended them in controversies with Robert Dale Owen and others. He practised and pertinaciously advocated total abstinence from spirituous liquors, but did not regard prohibitory laws as always wise. He denounced the repudiation of state debts or the failure to pay interest on them. He was zealous for Irish repeal, once held a place in the “Directory of the Friends of Ireland,” and contributed liberally to its support. He used the occasion of Charles Dickens’s first visit to America to urge international copyright, and was one of the few editors to avoid alike the flunkeyism with which Dickens was first received, and the ferocity with which he was assailed after the publication of hisAmerican Notes. On the occasion of Dickens’s second visit to America, Greeley presided at the great banquet given him by the press of the country. He made the first elaborate reports of popular scientific lectures by Louis Agassiz and other authorities. He gave ample hearing to the advocates of phonography and of phonographic spelling. He was one of the most conspicuous advocates of the Pacific railroads, and of many other internal improvements.
But it is as an anti-slavery leader, and as perhaps the chief agency in educating the mass of the Northern people to that opposition through legal forms to the extension of slavery which culminated in the election of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, that Greeley’s main work was done. Incidents in it were his vehement opposition to the Mexican War as a scheme for more slavery territory, the assault made upon him in Washington by Congressman Albert Rust of Arkansas in 1856, an indictment in Virginia in the same year for circulating incendiary documents, perpetual denunciation of him in Southern newspapers and speeches, and the hostility of the Abolitionists, who regarded his course as too conservative. His anti-slavery work culminated in his appeal to President Lincoln, entitled “The Prayer of Twenty Millions,” in which he urged “that all attempts to put down the rebellion and at the same time uphold its inciting cause” were preposterous and futile, and that “every hour of deference to slavery” was “an hour of added and deepened peril to the Union.” President Lincoln in his reply said: “My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery.... What I do about slavery and the coloured race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union ... I have here stated my purpose according to my views of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.” Precisely one month after the date of this reply the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.
Greeley’s political activity, first as a Whig, and then as one of the founders of the Republican party, was incessant; but he held few offices. In 1848-1849 he served a three months’ term in Congress, filling a vacancy. He introduced the first bill for giving small tracts of government land free to actual settlers, and published an exposure of abuses in the allowance of mileage to members, which corrected the evil, but brought him much personal obloquy. In the National Republican Convention in 1860, not being sent by the Republicans of his own state on account of his opposition to William Seward as a candidate, he was made a delegate for Oregon. His active hostility to Seward did much to prevent the success of that statesman, and to bring about instead the nomination of Abraham Lincoln. This was attributed by his opponents to personal motives, and a letter from Greeley to Seward, the publication of which he challenged, was produced, to show that in his struggling days he had been wounded at Seward’s failure to offer him office. In 1861 he was a candidate for United States senator, his principal opponent being William M. Evarts. When it was clear that Evarts could not be elected, his supporters threw their votes for a third candidate, Ira Harris, who was thus chosen over Greeley by a small majority. At the outbreak of the war he favoured allowing the Southern states to secede, provided a majority of their people at a fair election should so decide, declaring “that he hoped never to live in a Republic whereof one section was pinned to the other by bayonets.” When the war began he urged the most vigorous prosecution of it. The “On to Richmond” appeal, which appeared day after day inThe Tribune, was incorrectly attributed to him, and it did not wholly meet his approval; but after the defeat in the first battle of Bull Run he was widely blamed for it. In 1864 he urged negotiations for peace with representatives of the Southern Confederacy in Canada, and was sent by President Lincoln to confer with them. They were found to have no sufficient authority. In 1864 he was one of the Lincoln Presidential electors for New York. At the close of the war, contrary to the general feeling of his party, he urged universal amnesty and impartial suffrage as the basis of reconstruction. In 1867 his friends again wished to elect him to the Senate of the UnitedStates, and the indications were all in his favour. But he refused to be elected under any misapprehension of his attitude, and with what his friends thought unnecessary candour re-stated his obnoxious views on universal amnesty at length, just before the time for the election, with the certainty that this would prevent his success. Some months later he signed the bail bond of Jefferson Davis, and this provoked a torrent of public indignation. He had written a popular history of the late war, the first volume having an immense sale and bringing him unusually large profits. The second was just issued, and the subscribers, in their anger, refused by thousands to receive it. An unsuccessful attempt was also made to expel him from the Union League Club of New York.
In 1867 he was a delegate-at-large to the convention for the revision of the state constitution, and in 1869 and 1870 he was the Republican candidate for controller of the state and member of Congress respectively, but in each case was defeated.
He was dissatisfied with General Grant’s administration, and became its sharp critic. The discontent which he did much to develop ended in the organization of the Liberal Republican party, which held its National Convention at Cincinnati in 1872, and nominated Greeley for the presidency. For a time the tide of feeling ran strongly in his favour. It was first checked by the action of his life-long opponents, the Democrats, who also nominated him at their National Convention. He expected their support, on account of his attitude toward the South and hostility to Grant, but he thought it a mistake to give him their formal nomination. The event proved his wisdom. Many Republicans who had sympathized with his criticisms of the administration, and with the declaration of principles adopted at the first convention, were repelled by the coalition. This feeling grew stronger until the election. His old party associates regarded him as a renegade, the Democrats gave him a half-hearted support. The tone of the canvass was one of unusual bitterness, amounting sometimes to actual ferocity. In August, on representations of the alarming state of the contest, he took the field in person, and made a series of campaign speeches, beginning in New England and extending throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, which aroused great enthusiasm, and were regarded at the time by both friends and opponents as the most brilliant continuous exhibition of varied intellectual power ever made by a candidate in a presidential canvass. General Grant received in the election 3,597,070 votes, Greeley 2,834,079. The only states Greeley carried were Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas.
He had resigned his editorship ofThe Tribuneimmediately after the nomination; he now resumed it cheerfully; but it was soon apparent that his powers had been overstrained. For years he had suffered greatly from sleeplessness. During the intense excitement of the campaign the difficulty was increased. Returning from his campaign tour, he went immediately to the bedside of his dying wife, and for some weeks had practically no sleep at all. This resulted in an inflammation of the upper membrane of the brain, delirium and death. He expired on the 29th of November 1872. His funeral was a simple but impressive public pageant. The body lay in state in the City Hall, where it was surrounded by crowds of many thousands. The ceremonies were attended by the President and Vice-President of the United States, the Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court, and a large number of eminent public men of both parties, who followed the hearse in a solemn procession, preceded by the mayor and other civic authorities, down Broadway. He had been the target of constant attack during his life, and his personal foibles, careless dress and mental eccentricities were the theme of endless ridicule. But his death revealed the high regard in which he was generally held as a leader of opinion and faithful public servant. “Our later Franklin” Whittier called him, and it is in some such light his countrymen remember him.
In 1851 Greeley visited Europe for the first time, serving as a juryman at the Crystal Palace Exhibition, appearing before a committee of the House of Commons on newspaper taxes, and urging the repeal of the stamp duty on advertisements. In 1855 he made a second trip to Europe. In Paris he was arrested on the suit of a sculptor, whose statue had been injured in the New York World’s Fair (of which he had been a director), and spent two days in Clichy, of which he gave an amusing account. In 1859 he visited California by the overland route, and had numerous public receptions. In 1871 he visited Texas, and his trip through the southern country, where he had once been so hated, was an ovation. About 1852 he purchased a farm at Chappaqua, New York, where he afterwards habitually spent his Saturdays, and experimented in agriculture. He was in constant demand as a lecturer from 1843, when he made his first appearance on the platform, always drew large audiences, and, in spite of his bad management in money matters, received considerable sums, sometimes $6000 or $7000 for a single winter’s lecturing. He was also much sought for as a contributor, over his own signature, to the weekly newspapers, and was sometimes largely paid for these articles. In religious faith he was from boyhood a Universalist, and for many years was a conspicuous member of the leading Universalist church in New York.
His published works are:Hints Toward Reforms(1850);Glances at Europe(1851);History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension(1856);Overland Journey to San Francisco(1860);The American Conflict(2 vols., 1864-1866);Recollections of a Busy Life(1868; new edition, with appendix containing an account of his later years, his argument with Robert Dale Owen on Marriage and Divorce, and Miscellanies, 1873);Essays on Political Economy(1870); andWhat I know of Farming(1871). He also assisted his brother-in-law, John F. Cleveland, in editingA Political Text-book(1860), and supervised for many years the annual issues ofThe Whig AlmanacandThe Tribune Almanac, comprising extensive political statistics.