A Day In Old Athens

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61. The Habits and Ambitions of Schoolboys.--It is a clear fact,
that by the age say of thirteen, the Athenian education has had a
marked effect upon the average schoolboy. Instead of being "the
most ferocious of animals," as Plato, speaking of his untutored
state describes him, he is now "the most amiable and divine of
living beings." The well-trained lad goes now to school with his
eyes cast upon the ground, his hands and arms wrapped in his chiton,
making way dutifully for all his elders. If he is addressed by an
older man, he stands modestly, looking downward and blushing in a
manner worthy of a girl. He has been taught to avoid the Agora,
and if he must pass it, never to linger. The world is full of
evil and ugly things, but he is taught to hear and see as little of
them as possible. When men talk of his healthy color, increasing
beauty, and admire the graceful curves of his form at the wrestling
school, he must not grow proud. He is being taught to learn relatively
little from books, but a great deal from hearing the conversation
of grave and well-informed men. As he grows older his father will
take him to all kinds of public gatherings and teach him the working
details of the "Democratic Government" of Athens. He becomes
intensely proud of his city. It is at length his chief thought,
almost his entire life. A very large part of the loyalty which
an educated man of a later age will divide between his home, his
church, his college, his town, and his nation, the Athenian lad
will sum up in two words,--"my polis"; i.e. the city of Athens.
His home is largely a place for eating and sleeping; his school
is not a great institution, it is simply a kind of disagreeable
though necessary learning shop; his church is the religion of his
ancestors, and this religion is warp and woof of the government,
as much a part thereof as the law courts or the fighting fleet;
his town and his nation are alike the sovran city-state of Athens.
Whether he feels keenly a wider loyalty to Hellas at large, as
against the Great King of Persia, for instance, will depend upon
circumstances. In a real crisis, as at Salamis,--yes. In ordinary
circumstances when there is a hot feud with Sparta,--no.

62. The "Ephebi."--The Athenian education then is admirably adapted
to make the average lad a useful and worthy citizen, and to make
him modest, alert, robust, manly, and a just lover of the beautiful,
both in conduct and in art. It does not, however, develop his
individual bent very strongly; and it certainly gives him a mean
view of the dignity of labor. He will either become a leisurely
gentleman, whose only proper self-expression will come in warfare,
politics, or philosophy; or--if he be poor--he will at least envy
and try to imitate the leisure class.

By eighteen the young Athenian's days of study will usually come
to a close. At that age he will be given a simple festival by
his father and be formally enrolled in his paternal deme.[*] His
hair, which has hitherto grown down toward his shoulders, will be
clipped short. He will allow his beard to grow. At the temple
of Aglaurus he will (with the other youths of his age) take solemn
oath of loyalty to Athens and her laws. For the next year he will
serve as a military guard at the Peireus, and receive a certain
training in soldiering. The next year the state will present
him with a new shield and spear, and he will have a taste of the
rougher garrison duty at one of the frontier forts towards Boetia or
Megara.[+] Then he is mustered out. He is an ephebus no longer,
but a full-fledged citizen, and all the vicissitudes of Athenian
life are before him.

[*]One of the hundred or more petty townships or precincts into
which Attica was divided.

[+]These two years which the ephebi of Athens had to serve under
arms have been aptly likened to the military service now required
of young men in European countries.

Chapter X. The Physicians of Athens.

63. The Beginnings of Greek Medical Science.--As we move about
the city we cannot but be impressed by the high average of fine
physiques and handsome faces. Your typical Greek is fair in color
and has very regular features. The youths do not mature rapidly,
but thanks to the gymnasia and the regular lives, they develop not
merely admirable, but healthy, bodies. The proportion of hale and
hearty OLD men is great; and probably the number of invalids is
considerably smaller than in later times and in more artificially
reared communities.[*] Nevertheless, the Athenians are certainly
mortal, and subject to bodily ills, and the physician is no unimportant
member of society, although his exact status is much less clearly
determined than it will be in subsequent ages.

[*]A slight but significant witness to the general healthiness of
the Greeks is found in the very rare mention in their literature
of such a common ill as TOOTHACHE.

Greek medicine and surgery, as it appears in Homer, is simply a
certain amount of practical knowledge gained by rough experience,
largely supplemented by primitive superstition. It was quite as
important to know the proper prayers and charms wherewith to approach
"Apollo the Healer," as to understand the kind of herb poultice
which would keep wounds from festering. Homer speaks of Asclepius;
however, in early days he was not a god, but simply a skilful leach.
Then as we approach historic times the physician's art becomes
more regular. Asclepius is elevated into a separate and important
deity, although it is not till 420 B.C. that his worship is formally
introduced into Athens. Long ere that time, however, medicine and
surgery had won a real place among the practical sciences. The
sick man stands at least a tolerable chance of rational treatment,
and of not being murdered by wizards and fanatical exorcists.

64. Healing Shrines and their Methods.--There exist in Athens and
in other Greek cities real sanataria[*]; these are temples devoted
to the healing gods (usually Asclepius, but sometimes Apollo,
Aphrodite, and Hera). Here the patient is expected to sleep over
night in the temple, and the god visits him in a dream, and reveals
a course of treatment which will lead to recovery. Probably there
is a good deal of sham and imposture about the process. The canny
priests know more than they care to tell about how the patient is
worked into an excitable, imaginative state; and of the very human
means employed to produce a satisfactory and informing dream.[+]
Nevertheless it is a great deal to convince the patient that he
is sure of recovery, and that nobody less than a god has dictated
the remedies. The value of mental therapeutics is keenly appreciated.
Attached to the temple are skilled physicians to "interpret" the
dream, and opportunities for prolonged residence with treatment by
baths, purgation, dieting, mineral waters, sea baths, all kinds of
mild gymnastics, etc. Entering upon one of these temple treatments
is, in short anything but surrendering oneself to unmitigated quackery.
Probably a large proportion of the former patients have recovered;
and they have testified their gratitude by hanging around the
shrine little votive tablets,[$] usually pictures of the diseased
parts now happily healed, or, for internal maladies, a written
statement of the nature of the disease. This is naturally very
encouraging to later patients: they gain confidence knowing that
many cases similar to their own have been thus cured.

[*]The most famous was at Epidaurus, where the Asclepius cult seems
to have been especially localized.

[+]The "healing sleep" employed at these temples is described, in
a kind of blasphemous parody, in Aristophanes's "Plutus." (Significant
passages are quoted in Davis's "Readings in Ancient History," vol.
I, pp. 258-261.)

[$]Somewhat as in the various Catholic pilgrimage shrines (e.g.
Lourdes) to-day.

These visits to the healing temples are, however, expensive: not
everybody has entire faith in them; for many lesser ills also they
are wholly unnecessary. Let us look, then, at the regular physicians.

65. An Athenian Physician's Office.--There are salaried public
medical officers in Athens, and something like a public dispensary
where free treatment is given citizens in simple cases; but the
average man seems to prefer his own doctor.[*] We may enter the
office of Menon, a "regular private practitioner," and look about
us. The office itself is a mere open shop in the front of a house
near the Agora; and, like a barber's shop is something of a general
lounging place. In the rear one or two young disciples (doctors
in embryo) and a couple of slaves are pounding up drugs in mortars.
There are numbers of bags of dried herbs and little glass flasks
hanging on the walls. Near the entrance is a statue of Asclepius
the Healer, and also of the great human founder of the real medical
science among the Greeks--Hippocrates.

[*]We know comparatively little of these public physicians; probably
they were mainly concerned with the health of the army and naval
force, the prevention of epidemics, etc.

Menon himself is just preparing to go out on his professional
calls. He is a handsome man in the prime of his life, and takes
great pains with his personal appearance. His himation is carefully
draped. His finger rings have excellent cameos. His beard has
been neatly trimmed, and he has just bathed and scented himself
with delicate Assyrian nard. He will gladly tell you that he is
in no wise a fop, but that it is absolutely necessary to produce
a pleasant personal impression upon his fastidious, irritable
patients. Menon himself claims to have been a personal pupil of
the great Hippocrates,[*] and about every other reputable Greek
physician will make the same claim. He has studied more or less
in a temple of Asclepius, and perhaps has been a member of the
medical staff thereto attached. He has also become a member of
the Hippocratic brotherhood, a semi-secret organization, associated
with the Asclepius cult, and cheerfully cherishing the dignity of
the profession and the secret arts of the guild.

[*]Who was still alive, an extremely old man. He died in Thessaly
in 357 B.C., at an alleged age of 104 years.

66. The Physician's Oath.--The oath which all this brotherhood has
sworn is noble and notable. Here are some of the main provisions:--

"I swear by Apollo the Physician, and Asclepius and Hygeia; a
[Lady Health] and Panaceia [Lady All-Cure] to honor as my parents
the master who taught me this art, and to admit to my own instruction
only his sons, my own sons, and those who have been duly inscribed
as pupils, and who have taken the medical oath, and no others. I
will prescribe such treatment as may be for the benefit of my
patients, according to my best power and judgment, and preserve
them from anything hurtful or mischievous. I will never, even if
asked, administer poison, nor advise its use. I will never give
a criminal draught to a woman. I will maintain the purity and
integrity of my art. Wherever I go, I will abstain from all mischief
or corruption, or any immodest action. If ever I hear any secret
I will not divulge it. If I keep this oath, may the gods give me
success in life and in my art. If I break this oath, may all the
reverse fall upon me."[*]

[*]For the unabridged translation of this oath, see Smith's
"Dictionary of Antiquities" (revised edition), vol. II, p. 154.

67. The Skill of Greek Physicians.--Menon's skill as a physician
and surgeon is considerable. True, he has only a very insufficient
conception of anatomy. His THEORETICAL knowledge is warped, but
he is a shrewd judge of human nature and his PRACTICAL knowledge
is not contemptible. In his private pharmacy his assistants have
compounded a great quantity of drugs which he knows how to administer
with much discernment. He has had considerable experience in dealing
with wounds and sprains, such as are common in the wars or in the
athletic games. He understands that Dame Nature is a great healer,
who is to be assisted rather than coerced; and he dislikes resorting
to violent remedies, such as bleedings and strong emetics. Ordinary
fevers and the like he can attack with success. He has no modern
anesthetics or opium, but has a very insufficient substitute in
mandragora. He can treat simple diseases of the eye; and he knows
how to put gold filling into teeth. His surgical instruments,
however, are altogether too primitive. He is personally cleanly;
but he has not the least idea of antiseptics; the result is that
obscure internal diseases, calling for grave operations, are likely
to baffle him. He will refuse to operate, or if he does operate
the chances are against the patient.[*] In other words, his medical
skill is far in advance of his surgery.

[*]Seemingly a really serious operation was usually turned over
by the local physician to a traveling surgeon, who could promptly
disappear from the neighborhood if things went badly.

Menon naturally busies himself among the best families of Athens,
and commands a very good income. He counts it part of his equipment
to be able to persuade his patients, by all the rules of logic and
rhetoric, to submit to disagreeable treatment; and for that end
has taken lessons in informal oratory from Isocrates or one of his
associates. Some of Menon's competitors (feeling themselves less
eloquent) have actually a paid rhetorician whom they can take to
the bedside of a stubborn invalid, to induce him by irrefutable
arguments to endure an amputation.[*]

[*]Plato tells how Gorgias, the famous rhetorician, was sometimes
thus hired. A truly Greek artifice--this substitution of oratory
for chloroform!

No such honor of course is paid to the intellects of the poorer fry,
who swarm in at Menon's surgery. Those who cannot pay to have him
bandage them himself, perforce put up with the secondary skill and
wisdom of the "disciples." The drug-mixing slaves are expected to
salve and physic the patients of their own class; but there seems
to be a law against allowing them to attempt the treatment of
free-born men.

68. Quacks and Charlatans.--Unluckily not everybody is wise enough
to put up with the presumably honest efforts of Menon's underlings.
There appears to be no law against anybody who wishes to pose as
a physician, and to sell his inexperience and his quack nostrums.
Vendors of every sort of cure-all abound, as well as creatures who
work on the superstitions and pretend to cure by charms and hocus-pocus.
In the market there is such a swarm of these charlatans of healing
that they bring the whole medical profession into contempt. Certain
people go so far as to distrust the efficacy of any part of the
lore of Asclepius. Says one poet tartly:--

The surgeon Menedemos, as men say,
Touched as he passed a Zeus of marble white;
Neither the marble nor his Zeus-ship might
Avail the god--they buried him to-day.

And again even to dream of the quacks is dangerous:--

Diophantes, sleeping, saw
Hermas the physician:
Diophantes never woke
From that fatal vision.[*]

[*]Both of these quotations probably date from later than 360 B.C.,
but they are perfectly in keeping with the general opinion of Greek
quackery.

All in all, despite Menon's good intentions and not despicable
skill, it is fortunate the gods have made "Good Health" one of
their commonest gifts to the Athenians. Constant exercise in the
gymnasia, occasional service in the army, the absence of cramping
and unhealthful office work, and a climate which puts out-of-door
existence at a premium, secure for them a general good health that
compensates for most of the lack of a scientific medicine.

Chapter XI. The Funerals.

69. An Athenian's Will.--All Menon's patient's are to-day set
out upon the road to recovery. Hipponax, his rival, has been less
fortunate. A wealthy and elderly patient, Lycophron, died the
day before yesterday. As the latter felt his end approaching, he
did what most Athenians may put off until close to the inevitable
hour--he made his will, and called in his friends to witness it;
and one must hope there can be no doubt about the validity, the
signets attached, etc., for otherwise the heirs may find themselves
in a pretty lawsuit.

The will begins in this fashion: "The Testament of Lyophron the
Marathonian.[*] May all be well:--but if I do not recover from
this sickness, thus do I bestow my estate." Then in perfectly
cold-blooded fashion he proceeds to give his young wife and the
guardianship of his infant daughter to Stobiades, a bachelor friend
who will probably marry the widow within two months or less of the
funeral. Lycophron gives also specific directions about his tomb;
he gives legacies of money or jewelry to various old associates;
he mentions certain favorite slaves to receive freedom, and as
specifically orders certain others (victims of his displeasure)
to be kept in bondage. Lastly three reliable friends are names as
executors.

[*]In all Athenian legal documents, it was necessary to give the
deme of the interested party or parties.

70. The Preliminaries of a Funeral.--An elaborate funeral is the
last perquisite of every Athenian. Even if Lycophron had been a poor
man he would now receive obsequies seemingly far out of proportion
to his estate and income. It is even usual in Greek states to have
laws restraining the amount which may be spent upon funerals,--otherwise
great sums may be literally "burned up" upon the funeral pyres.
When now the tidings go out that Lycophron's nearest relative has
"closed his mouth," after he has breathed his last, all his male
kinsfolk and all other persons who HOPE to be remembered in the
will promptly appear in the Agora in black himatia[*] and hasten
to the barber shops to have their heads shaved. The widow might
shave her hair likewise, with all her slave maids, did not her
husband, just ere his death, positively forbid such disfigurements.
The women of the family take the body in charge the minute the
physician has declared that all is over. The customary obol is put
in the mouth of the corpse,[+] and the body is carefully washed in
perfumed water, clothed in festal white; then woolen fillets are
wound around the head, and over these a crown of vine leaves. So
arrayed, the body is ready to be laid out on a couch in the front
courtyard of the house, with the face turned toward the door so
as to seem to greet everybody who enters. In front of the house
there stands a tall earthen vase of water, wherewith the visitors
may give themselves a purifying sprinkling, after quitting the
polluting presence of a dead body.

[*]In the important city of Argos, however, WHITE was the proper
funeral color.

[+]This was not originally (as later asserted) a fee to Charon the
ferryman to Hades, but simply a "minimum precautionary sum, for the
dead man's use" (Dr. Jane Harrison), placed in the mouth, where a
Greek usually kept his small change.

71. Lamenting of the Dead.--Around this funeral bed the relatives
and friends keep a gloomy vigil. The Athenians after all are
southern born, and when excited seem highly emotional people. There
are stern laws dating from Solon's day against the worst excesses,
but what now occurs seems violent enough. The widow is beating
her breast, tearing her hair, gashing her cheeks with her finger
nails. Lycophron's elderly sister has ashes sprinkled upon her gray
head and ever and anon utters piteous wails. The slave women in
the background keep up a hideous moaning. The men present do not
think it undignified to utter loud lamentation and to shed frequent
tears. Least commendable of all (from a modern standpoint) are the
hired dirge singers, who maintain a most melancholy chant, all the
time beating their breasts, and giving a perfect imitation of frantic
grief. This has probably continued day and night, the mourners
perhaps taking turns by relays.

All in all it is well that Greek custom enjoins the actual funeral,
at least, on the second day following the death.[*] The "shade"
of the deceased is not supposed to find rest in the nether world
until after the proper obsequies.[+] To let a corpse lie several
days without final disposition will bring down on any family severe
reproach. In fact, on few points are the Greeks more sensitive
than on this subject of prompt burial or cremation. After a land
battle the victors are bound never to push their vengeance so far
as to refuse a "burial truce" to the vanquished; and it is a doubly
unlucky admiral who lets his crews get drowned in a sea fight,
without due effort to recover the corpses afterward and to give
them proper disposition on land.

[*]It must be remembered that the Greeks had no skilled embalmers
at their service, and that they lived in a decidedly warm climate.

[+]See the well-known case of the wandering shade of Patrocius
demanding the proper obsequies from Achilles (Iliad, XXIII. 71).

72. The Funeral Procession.--The day after the "laying-out" comes
the actual funeral. Normally it is held as early as possible in
the morning, before the rising of the sun. Perhaps while on the
way to the Agora we have passed, well outside the city, such a
mournful procession. The youngest and stoutest of the male relatives
carry the litter: although if Lycophron's relatives had desired
a really extravagant display they might have employed a mule car.
Ahead of the bier march the screaming flute players, earning their
fees by no melodious din. Then comes the litter itself with the
corpse arrayed magnificently for the finalities, a honey cake set
in the hands,[*] a flask of oil placed under the head. After this
come streaming the relatives in irregular procession: the widow and
the chief heir (her prospective second husband!) walking closest,
and trying to appear as demonstrative as possible: nor (merely
because the company is noisy and not stoical in its manner) need
we deny that there is abundant genuine grief. All sorts of male
acquaintances of the deceased bring up the rear, since it is good
form to proclaim to wide Athens that Lycophon had hosts of friends.[+]

[*]The original idea of the honey cake was simply that it was a
friendly present to the infernal gods; later came the conceit that
it was a sop to fling to the dog Cerberus, who guarded the entrance
to Hades.

[+]Women, unless they were over sixty years of age, were not allowed
to join in funeral processions unless they were first cousins, or
closer kin, of the deceased.

73. The Funeral Pyre.--So the procession moves through the still
gloomy streets of the city,--doubtless needing torch bearers as
well as flute players,--and out through some gate, until the line
halts in an open field, or better, in a quiet and convenient garden.
Here the great funeral pyre of choice dry fagots, intermixed with
aromatic cedar, has been heaped. The bier is laid thereon. There
are no strictly religious ceremonies. The company stands in
a respectful circle, while the nearest male kinsman tosses a pine
link upon the oil-soaked wood. A mighty blaze leaps up to heaven,
sending its ruddy brightness against the sky now palely flushed
with the bursting dawn. The flutists play in softer measures. As
the fire rages a few of the relatives toss upon it pots of rare
unguents; and while the flames die down, thrice the company shout
their farewells, calling their departed friend by name--"Lycophron!
Lycophron! Lycophron!"

So fierce is the flame it soon sinks into ashes. As soon as these
are cool enough for safety (a process hastened by pouring on water
or wine) the charred bones of the deceased are tenderly gathered
up to be placed in a stately urn. The company, less formally now,
returns to Athens, and that night there will probably be a great
funeral feast at the house of the nearest relative, everybody
eating and drinking to capacity "to do Lycophron full honor"; for
it is he who is imagined as being now for the last time the host.

74. Honors to the memory of the Dead.--Religion seems to have
very little place in the Athenian funeral: there are no priests
present, no prayers, no religious hymns. But the dead man is now
conceived as being, in a very humble and intangible way, a deity
himself: his good will is worth propitiating; his memory is not
to be forgotten. On the third, ninth, and thirtieth days after
the funeral there are simple religious ceremonies with offerings
of garlands, fruits, libations and the like, at the new tomb; and
later at certain times in the year these will be repeated. The
more enlightened will of course consider these merely graceful
remembrances of a former friend; but there is a good deal of
primitive ancestor worship even in civilized Athens.

BURNING is the usual method for the Greeks to dispose of their
dead, but the burial of unburned bodies is not unknown to them.
Probably, however, the rocky soil and the limited land space around
Athens make regular cemeteries less convenient than elsewhere: still
it would have been nothing exceptional if Lycophron had ordered in
his will that he be put in a handsome pottery coffin to be placed
in a burial ground pertaining to his family.

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