Morris - 2000 - 'to Make a New Thermopylae' Hellenism, Greek Libe

Greece & Rome, Vol. 47, No. 2, October 2000

TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE: HELLENISM, GREEK LIBERATION, AND THE

BATTLE OF THERMOPYLAE*

By IAN MACGREGOR MORRIS

In the eighteenth century, attitudes towards ancient Greece were changing from an antiquarian interest in literature and art, into a wider emotional affiliation that permeated many aspects of artistic and political life. With this new attitude came an interest in contemporary Greece and an awareness of and concern about her state under Turkish rule which, by the early nineteenth century, culminated in growing sympathy for the cause of Greek liberation. Of all the characters and incidents of ancient Greek history, none played such a central part in this tradition as those involved in the Battle of Thermopylae of 480 B.C., so that by the very eve of the Greek revolution in 1821 Byron could call on his contemporaries to 'make a new Thermopylae'. The history of Thermopylae in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is, in many ways, the history of contemporary hellenism.

The story of the eighteenth-century obsession with Thermopylae begins in earnest in 1737. Richard Glover, at the age of 25, published Leonidas, a blank verse epic poem in nine books, some 5,000 lines long. Modern critics have been less than kind to Glover, usually dismissing his work without reason or evidence.1 Yet in the eighteenth century the reaction was quite different. The poem was 'for a short time the most popular poem in the English language,'2 and its popularity encouraged Glover to publish an extended version in 1770 and to write a sequel published posthumously in 1787. It went through three editions in the first year, was translated into French, into German four times, and into Danish; eminent artists illustrated scenes from it, and it was twice adapted for the stage.3 Glover himself became the toast of literary circles: Swift, in a letter to Pope - a close acquaintance of Glover - wrote that Leonidas 'hath great vogue';4 Joseph Warton and John Scott praised it for its classical 'simplicity', and Robert Southey for its 'classical propriety', claiming that he read it more than any other poem, and did so 'always with renewed pleasure'.5 Henry Fielding described Glover as 'a celebrated poet of our nation',6 and Byron

TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE

included him in a list of poet-orators of whom he wrote: 'These are great names, I may imitate, I can never equal them'.7

The poem is a retelling of the events before and during the battle of Thermopylae. Glover closely follows his historical sources - mainly Herodotus, Diodorus, and Plutarch - adding embellishments only where they allow.8 Although modern critics have accused him of writing the poem on behalf of a political faction opposed to Robert Walpole's ministry,9 any objective reading of the poem refutes such a claim. Although there are political elements to the poem, they are implicitly critical of the partisan politics of the time and remain secondary to artistic concerns. Glover's objective was to compose a poem on the Homeric model, and his direct rejection of many of the norms of neo- classical epic theory - as epitomized by Dryden and even Pope - place him in the forefront of the new literary trends that came to fruition in the romanticism of the early nineteenth century. He lies somewhere in between neo-classicism and romanticism, and while describing him as a Romantic would be going too far, to describe him as a hellenist would not.

Glover's hellenism can be seen in two ways, the first literary, and the second political. Firstly, he avoids what many at the time saw as the over-sophistication and artificiality of modern poetry, in favour of 'simplicity', an ambiguous term, but one often favourably applied to Glover. Critics such as Joseph Warton and William Cowper considered 'simplicity' as the very essence of ancient Greek poetry, especially Homer. Contemporaries saw in Glover's poetry a conscious emulation of Homer, an attempt to return to ancient models of poetry.?1 In the seventeenth century, during the height of the literary genre that would later be termed 'neo-classicism', writers such as Milton and Dryden, while greatly admiring ancient literature had tended to believe that their Christian age could improve upon it." However, one of the central tenets of the hellenism of the eighteenth century was the belief that, despite the great literature of the Augustan age, no such improvement had been made. As such, imitation was a virtue. Secondly, there is Glover's attitude to the Greeks themselves. Glover was among a growing group of writers who were turning from Roman to Greek models, not just in literary, but also in moral terms. In Leonidas, the characters - both Greek and Persian - epitomize varying ideals and

aspects of virtue. Glover is not so simplistic as to create perfect exemplars in his characters, a quality Dryden had thought essential for an epic hero.'2 Rather, he uses the characters to elucidate the ideas

212


which ancient Greece was increasingly being seen to represent. For example, Leonidas' address to the Spartan assembly:

Why this astonishment on ev'ry face, Ye men of Sparta? Does the name of death Create this fear and wonder? O my friends! Why do we labour through the arduous paths, Which lead to virtue? Fruitless were the toil, Above the reach of human feet were plac'd The distant summit, if the fear of death Could intercept our passage. But in vain His blackest frowns and terrours he assumes To shake the firmness of the mind, which knows, That wanting virtue life is pain and woe, That wanting liberty ev'n virtue mourns, And looks around for happiness in vain.

(Leonidas I.126-38)

Liberty and virtue: two concepts inextricably linked and seen, by many, to be embodied in their purest form in ancient Greece. The placing of these ideals in ancient Greece was the real beginning of hellenism. In Glover there was an attitude of admiration to the ancient Greeks that was primarily concerned with the people themselves. Before the eighteenth century, while there had been much admiration for the artistic achievements of ancient Greece, the people of ancient Greece themselves were viewed with a general suspicion.13 As such, the concentration on the people rather than their art was something new. James Thomson, in both The Seasons (1726-44) and Liberty (1735) had shown elements of this, but in both of these works the Greeks were not portrayed as an exceptional people, but merely as worthy of comparison with Romans and Britons. While Glover never actually claimed the ancient Greeks were exceptional, within his concentration on a Greek story and Greek virtue lay the seeds of such an idea.

Furthermore, while Thomson's Liberty, or Mark Akenside's Pleasures of The Imagination (1742) both placed eighteenth-century ideals in Ancient Greece, Glover took this one step further. His poem associated these ideals with one specific event and group of characters, and the success of Leonidas ensured this association in the popular imagination. Such an association was not completely new: the ideals of liberty, virtue, and patriotism can be found in connection with Thermopylae in Simonides and Herodotus, throughout antiquity, and in mediaeval and renaissance accounts. However, the success of this poem meant that Thermopylae was increasingly identified as the exemplar of these

213


ideals. In the 1720s, James Thomson had made no mention of Leonidas among his list of Greek 'worthies' in The Seasons, but in the final revised edition of the poem, published in 1744, the Spartan stands as the best example of Lycurgan schooling. In the wake of Leonidas, Thermopylae had become an essential archetype.

* * *

In the mid-eighteenth century, travel to Greece itself, though still not part of the Grand Tour, was gradualiy becoming more common. These travellers varied in intent, ranging from trade and botany to the study of antiquities, but they all contributed to an awareness of Greece, not merely as the scene and origin of classical literature, but as an actual place. Travellers' accounts of this seemingly exotic land were fuelled by, and in turn further fuelled, the growing passion for hellenism. Although the primary interest of many of these earlier travellers lay in the remains of ancient art, by the 1750s a new aspect was beginning to emerge. Robert Wood's The Ruins of Palmyra, published in 1753, is a painstak- ingly illustrated record of that ancient city. However a passage in the preface shows that Wood's interests lay beyond archaeology: It is impossible to consider with indifference those countries which gave birth to letters and arts, where soldiers, orators, philosophers, poets and artists have shewn the boldest and happiest flights of genius, and done the greatest honour to human nature. Circumstances of climate and situation, otherwise trivial, became interesting from that connection with great men, and great actions, which history and poetry have given them: the life of Miltiades or Leonidas could never be read with so much pleasure, as on the plains of Marathon or at the streights of Thermopylae; the Iliad has new beauties on the banks of the Scamander, and the Odyssey is most pleasing in the countries where Ulysses travelled and Homer sung. The particular pleasure, it is true, which an imagination warmed on the spot receives from those scenes of heroick actions, the traveller can only feel, nor is it to be communicated by description. But classical ground not only makes us always relish the poet, or historian more, but sometimes helps us to understand them better.

Wood was, along with James Stuart, among the first English travellers to visit Thermopylae. His fascination with the landscape is the beginning of a trend that was to reach its climax with the Romantic poets. The Greek landscape, for Wood, represents a continuity with antiquity, that is in some ways more powerful than the ruins. In his later work on Homer,14 Wood used the geography of Troy to explicate the Iliad, and much as modern classicists may scorn his method, his contemporaries did not. There arose a belief, fostered by the likes of Winckelmann and Goethe, in the importance of visiting the setting of ancient literature if it

214


was to be fully appreciated, and with this new attitude came an inevitable concentration on the subject-matter of the literature, rather than simply on the literature itself. Moreover, Wood's choice of ex- amples - Troy, Marathon, Thermopylae - places the emphasis on actions rather than art: Troy, in this case, was important not merely as the setting of Homer's poem, but also as the site of a great historical - as far as Wood was concerned - event. Later writers, especially those concerned with Thermopylae, turned more and more to the land itself for simile and allegory. Robert Collvil, writing in 1771, defined heroism as being like 'Sparta o'er the Malian bay'; John Scott in 1782 visualized how 'epic's voice sonorous calls to Oeta's cliffs'; and eleven years later Henry Boyd called on his readers to: 'Reflect on Sparta, and revere those rites, and that far celebrated soil, Which bred Leonidas.'l5 In each case it was the natural imagery - Sparta hanging over the bay, the cliffs of Oeta, the soil of Sparta - that lent power and meaning to the piece.

This growing emphasis on the relevance of and reaction to location and landscape can be clearly seen in a contrast of two traveller's accounts written some sixty years apart. Richard Pococke visited Thermopylae in about 1740 and relates the event in simple terms:

Our road was between the sea and high mountains; these mountains are called Coumaita, and are doubtless the old mount Oeta, so that I began to look for the famous passage called Thermopylae, where the Spartans with a few men opposed the great army of the Persians.16

On finding the change in the landscape,17 he is equally passionless:

. . . The sea must have lost, and left the passage wider, though possibly it was a way round the cape by the sea side, where there might be some narrow passes.

Edward Dodwell's account of his visit to the Pass in 1805 is quite different:

As we approached the Pass of Thermopylae, the scenery assumed at once an aspect of more beauty and sublimity. To our left were the lofty and shattered precipices of Oeta, covered with forests, while silver lines of descending springs sparkled in the shade ... The scene was one of voluptuous blandishments. No gratification was wanting which the enraptured lover of landscape could desire ... We now approached the spot where the best blood of Greece, and of other nations, had so often been spilt.'1

And his reaction to the change in the landscape:

... The whole country has since experienced great physical as well as moral revolutions. The sea has retired; rivers have altered their courses, and towns, castles, and temples

215


have been swept from the face of the earth, or ingulfed in marshes, and overgrown with weeds and bushes.

Here a moral element emerged, the change in the landscape reflecting the degeneration of Greece: the very land itself is affected by the general malaise. Pococke's reaction was one of reporting his observations with an objective accuracy, while Dodwell's was a passionate hymn to the location of a great event. Pococke was both interested and curious about the event that took place here, but it was only the interest of an antiquarian. His failure to see the pass as he had visualized it brings only the question as to whether the geography had indeed changed, and the comment, without any sense of disappointment, that he might have been in the wrong place. However, Dodwell presented a sharp change in

emphasis. The beauty of the location, itself a testament to nature, also served as a simile to the momentous events that took place there. Moreover, the change in that landscape was both representative of, and indeed part of, the moral change that had swept Greece. Not only have the monuments fallen into ruin and the people themselves into a moral degradation but, in this location so synonymous with liberty, even the very land itself had metamorphosed.

Dodwell was an accomplished artist and during his trips in Greece made some 400 sketches, along with 600 sketches made by his travelling companion, an Italian artist named Pomardi. From these he selected thirty which were reproduced as coloured prints in Views of Greece

(1821). While regretting the restriction on the number of prints he could

reproduce, Dodwell informed his readers that the views selected

... comprise of nearly all the remains of any note in Greece, as well as those scenes which have become particularly celebrated, and by their connexion with the ancient

history of that country, have obtained the admiration and recollection of the modern traveller.19

Thermopylae was one of these selected views, and his print of the Pass [Figure 1] reflects his impression of its beauty. In his explanation of the print, Dodwell described how

... the eye is attracted to the massy form of Mt. Oeta, covered with forests and broken with glens and valleys. The sun was setting behind the mountain, which was enveloped in a tint of aerial blue.20

The physical beauty again predominated. Dodwell saw no need to discuss the events that took place here, that is, the reason this scene was 'particularly celebrated'. That would have been well known to his

216


Fig. 1: 'Thermopylae' by Edward Dodwell from Views in Greece (1821).

readers. The mere act of selecting Thermopylae for inclusion was testament enough to the importance of the place. However his concentration on the beauty of the place served to emphasize this importance.

This highly sentimental reaction to landscape is pivotal in the way Dodwell viewed Thermopylae. The 'sublimity' of the place for the Romantics was an inextricable combination of aesthetic beauty - its appearance - and spiritual beauty - effectively the events that took place there and the ideas those events represented. Yet not all travellers found the Pass beautiful. Edward Clarke had visited the Pass some five years before Dodwell, and provides a sharp contrast. His anticipation as he approached it reveals his feelings on the subject:

We now set out upon the most interesting part of all our travels, - an expedition to the STRAITS OF THERMOPYLAE.21

This is a significant statement for a man whose travels had already taken in much of Europe, Egypt, Palestine, and Greece. His thoughts on leaving the pass are worth quoting in full:

We looked back towards the whole passage with regret; marvelling, at the same time, that we should quit with reluctance a place, which, without the interest thrown over it by antient history, would be one of the most disagreeable upon earth. Unwholesome air,

217


mephitic exhalations bursting through the rifted and rotten surface of a corrupted soil, as if the land around were diseased; a filthy and fetid quagmire; 'a heaven fat with frogs'; stagnant but reeking pools; hot and sulphureous springs; in short, such a scene of morbid nature, as suggested to the fertile imagination of the antient Poets their ideas of a land poisoned by 'the blood of Nessus', and that calls to mind their descriptions of Tartarus.22

This picturesque description leaves little doubt as to Clarke's impression. Dodwell's 'voluptuous blandishments' find no place in such a landscape. And yet Clarke proved himself as much a Romantic as Dodwell. Despite the physical appearance, Thermopylae was still sublime:

... [such a scene] can only become delightful from the most powerful circumstances of association that were ever produced by causes diametrically opposite;- an association combining, in the mere mention of the place, all that is great, and good, and honourable; all that has been embalmed as most dear in the minds of grateful prosperity. In the overwhelming recollection of the sacrifice that was here offered, every other consideration is forgotten; the Pass of Thermopylae becomes consecrated; it is made a source of the best feelings of the human heart; and it 'shall be had in ever lasting remembrance'.23

For Clarke, Thermopylae's spiritual beauty is emphasized by its physical ugliness. Despite the 'fetid quagmire', it is still 'consecrated'. While Dodwell had expressed the sublimity of the place in terms of its beauty, and illustrated it with his painting, Clarke saw it in terms of the remembrance of the event. Yet Clarke clearly felt he could not ignore the landscape, and so rather than avoid the seeming paradox between the physical appearance and the spiritual 'beauty', he uses them together. Thus his illustration of the Pass [Figure 2] concentrates on the heroes who fell there. His identification of the tumulus as the Spartans' grave - the polyandrium mentioned by Strabo - was confident and boldly stated.24 His engraving of it served to illustrate what he saw as the most significant aspect of the site, namely the sacrifice of the Greeks: this predominates over 'every other consideration'. This too is part of the landscape.

Thus while only one of these writers expressed Thermopylae in terms of the landscape, both the Romantic writers reacted to it, and both used it to emphasize the 'sublime' nature of the place. In essence, their attitudes to what the Pass represented was remarkably similar. However, it was, of course, the Romantic poets who most fully realized the power of landscape, and within this context it was Byron who most fully illustrated it. In The Gaiour, written in 1813, some two years after his first visit to Greece, he uses the landscape to its fullest effect:

218


Fig. 2: 'The Tomb of the Spartans' from E. Clarke, Travels in Various Countries, vol. 4 (1812).

Clime of the unforgotten brave! - Whose land from plain to mountain-cave Was Freedoms's home or Glory's grave - Shrine of the mighty! Can it be, That this is all remains of thee? Approach thou craven crouching slave -

Say, is this not Thermopylae? These waters blue that round you lave Oh servile offspring of the free - Pronounce what sea, what shore is this? The gulf, the rock of Salamis! ... Bear witness, Greece, thy living page,

Attest it many a deathless age! While kings in dusty darkness hid, Have left a nameless pyramid, Thy heroes - though the general doom Hath swept the column from their tomb, A mightier monument command, The mountains of their native land!25

Here Thermopylae and Salamis exist in the land, and yet not in the people. Moreover, the land is the monument to the ancient heroes in

219

. : :: .. ... ...

x ::::::;:::::: :

,:::, ::: :::::S:::,s:s:s:s:.-::. :::: ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ::::i:::::::


ways which marble can never be: not only is it where they fought, but also it is what they fought for. Indeed, man-made monuments seem to speak more of man's vanity than his deeds: one is reminded of Shelley's Ozymandias. Thus, in turning to landscape instead of monuments, the focus of idealization of the ancient world is changed from art to action. The worth of the ancients was best seen in their deeds, which display their virtue, rather than their genius for art. This is not to say that ancient art was ignored, but that admiration of ancient Greece was concentrating on the ancient Greeks themselves.

In the extracts from Dodwell and Byron one can see the source of philhellenism. Like many travellers, they were shocked by the state of the Greece they saw. The Greeks displayed an ignorance of their own past and a seeming contentment with 'slavery' which seemed quite at odds with the virtues of their supposed ancestors. Many turned away, blaming the situation on the moral degradation of the Greeks, and becoming what one modern commentator described as 'miso-hellenists'.26 For these observers, the modern Greeks had betrayed their heritage, and were so far changed that no reversal of their fortune was possible. A few, however, not only blamed this state of affairs on the Turks, but also sought to rectify it. This is perhaps the best definition of philhellenism. Working on the idea that liberty and virtue are inextricable - an idea common throughout the eighteenth century and shown in Glover's speech of Leonidas to his Spartans quoted above - they hoped for both a political and moral regeneration of Greece. The solution lay in

educating the Greeks to their glorious past, and then inspiring them with

exemplars from it. And the most powerful of these exemplars was Thermopylae.

* * *

Before going on to illustrate the ways in which Thermopylae was used within this political context, it should be explained why Thermopylae, as opposed to any other exemplar, is so powerful. The first reason is a practical one: for the purposes of rousing the Greeks against the Turks, Leonidas was simply the most suitable Greek figure. To the philhellenes, the age after Alexander was one of decline whilst Byzantium was not even seen as Greek. Within the limited period they considered, many military figures abound, but each had certain limitations. Alexander, despite his victories, had too many personal vices and often appeared as an example to avoid, not to emulate; Epaminondas, although militarily successful and seemingly virtuous, made his reputation in battles against

220


other Greeks, and as such was hardly suitable as a unifying figure. Only the characters of the Persian Wars presented the right image of patriotic defence of liberty, whilst the wars also provided an easy parallel between the Turks and the Persians. Yet of the heroes of the Persian Wars, which would serve as the best exemplar? There is Miltiades of Marathon, later convicted of tyranny; Themistocles of Salamis, who later was ostracized and sought refuge in Persia; Pausanias of Plataea, later accused of attempts at tyranny; Leotychides of Mycale, later disgraced over bribery. The fact that by dying in battle, Leonidas could not blacken his own name is not unimportant. He alone was untainted.

The second reason for Thermopylae's importance is the key to the continual power of the battle as an exemplar, from antiquity to the present day. In dying, Leonidas became a martyr for Greece. Modern historians may argue that he was thinking only of Sparta, but the idea that he was a pan-hellenist dates back at least to Plutarch, and is implied by Herodotus. Moreover, both Herodotus and Plutarch agree - itself a rare occurrence - that Leonidas knew he was going to die, and chose only those 'with sons living' to accompany him. Thermopylae was not a defeat, it was a sacrifice. As such it becomes a moral act, as much as the death of Socrates or Jesus.27 Three extracts from the writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge serve to illustrate the idea. The first is taken from his notebooks:

Moral excellence almost essential to the sublime effect of particular action, Leonidas & his Spartans - the 23rd Dragoons at Talavera - still more the Mamaluke & Winkelried.28

Coleridge is contrasting two kinds of courage, on the one hand that of Leonidas or Winkelried,29 on the other that of the Dragoons at Talavera30 or the Mamaluke.31 He differentiates the types of heroism shown by Winkelried and the Mamaluke as follows:

In the former the state of mind arose from Reason, Morals, Liberty, the sense of duty owing to the independence of his country etc - in short, containing or compatible with the highest perfection & development of the human Faculties, Moral & Intellectual - in the latter, predicative only of mere animal Habit, Ferocity, & unreasoned Antipathy to Strangers .. .32

The essence of these definitions, as shown in the first extract, can also be applied to Leonidas as opposed to the Dragoons.33 In an article in The Courier, Coleridge takes the idea further, again using Leonidas as an example of the positive kind of heroism:

221


The splendid qualities of courage and enthusiasm, which, being the frequent com- panions and in given circumstances the necessary agents of virtue, are too often themselves hailed as virtues by their own title. But courage and enthusiasm have equally characterised the best and worst beings, a Satan, equally with an Abdiel - a Bonaparte equally with a Leonidas.34

These extracts show Coleridge's thinking clearly: the heroism of a Leonidas is a moral heroism. While it necessitates physical bravery, it is much more than that because the source of that bravery is moral. It is premeditated and inspired by a love of 'liberty', which to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century mind was inextricably connected to 'virtue', as is shown in the quote from Glover's Leonidas. The patriotic self-sacrifice for liberty is the ultimate act of virtue, and so in the case of Thermopylae the martial overtones are secondary to the virtues of the heroes. As such Thermopylae serves as a perfect exemplar for philhellenism. Firstly, the martial element serves as a perfect military exemplar, the battling of overwhelming odds against the 'old enemy', the Turks being identified with the Persians. The fact that Thermopylae was a defeat is unimportant because as an exemplar it shows the attitude and courage with which such a battle should be fought, and furthermore it was seen as the first step to the eventual Greek victory. Secondly, its overriding moral element provides for the idea of moral regeneration. As such the twin aims of philhellenism - moral and political regeneration - find their ideal exemplar in Thermopylae.

* * *

The use of Thermopylae, and of Leonidas in particular, to encourage ideas of, and support for, Greek liberation, can be seen clearly in the 1770s. Marie Gabriel Auguste Florent, Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier visited Greece in the late 1770s and published Voyage Pittoresque de la Grece in 1782. That he later became the French ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and completely recanted his philhellenic sentiments is not important here. What is significant is his use of Leonidas. The frontispiece to the Voyage [Figure 3] depicts 'Greece in chains', and is explained in detail. She is surrounded by monuments to classical Greek heroes who fought for liberty, and rests on the tomb of Leonidas, behind which is a pillar bearing Simonides' famous epigram to the Spartans. On the rock above her are the words 'Exoriare Aliquis'. That much is explained. Any eighteenth-century reader cognisant with the classics would understand the implication. The quote comes from Virgil: 'exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor'35 - 'let some avenging spirit

222


Fig. 3: 'Greece in Chains' from Choiseul-Gouffier, Voyage Pittoresque de la Grece (1782).

arise from these bones' - and is Dido's final curse on the departing Aeneas. The inference is unmistakable: while other heroes have monuments, only Leonidas is described as having a tomb. Of all the heroes mentioned, Leonidas has pride of place, and it is on his remains that the chained figure of Greece rests. As such, the call for an avenger centres around him. While other heroes can serve as inspiration, it is the spirit of Leonidas that must be emulated.

As one would expect, it is Byron who most fully illustrates this idea.

223


Childe Harold's Pilgrimage was mostly written in Greece, during Byron's first visit in 1810-11.

Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth! Immortal, though no more! though fallen, great! Who now shall lead thy scatter'd children forth, And now long accustom'd bondage uncreate? Not such thy sons who whilome did await, The hopeless warriors of a willing doom, In bleak Thermopylae's sepulchral strait- Oh! who that gallant spirit shall resume, Leap from Eurotas' banks, and call thee from the tomb?36

He compares the glorious past with the degraded present state of Greece, and then calls on Leonidas - 'that gallant spirit' - having already shown him to be the height of ancient excellence, as the spirit the modern Greeks must emulate. The difference between ancient and modern Greece - the 'departed worth' - is the presence of such a spirit.

A year after Childe Harold appeared, William Haygarth published Greece, a Poem. Little is known of Haygarth, and his poem was over- shadowed by Byron's,37 but in it he expressed a much more fervent philhellenism than any other writer of the time:

I have ventured to predict in poetry what I certainly should not be so hardy as foretell in prose - the moral regeneration of Greece.38

Few at the time dared to show such optimism, even the likes of Byron restricting themselves to calls for such a regeneration. No other poet so illustrates the philhellenic notion that the Greeks needed to be educated as to their past. Haygarth imagined himself with a Greek peasant at the site of Thermopylae, promising:

I will strive To raise thy broken spirit, and with tales Of thy forefathers' deeds, waken the fire Which slumbers, not extinguish'd, in thy breast.

(Greece 1.517-20)

There follows a stirring account of the 'heroes who here fell In Free- dom's phalanx' (1.522-3) and 'died, as they had liv'd, triumphantly' (1.573). Then Haygarth told the peasant the purpose of the tale:

Deeply impress this tale upon thy breast; And when thy country calls thee from thy plains To fight for liberty, remember those Who bled, unconquer'd, with Leonidas!

(Greece 1.574-77)

224


Haygarth thus explained clearly the purpose of these classical exemplars: the inspiring of the modern Greeks to the moral regeneration which was the precondition of political regeneration. Furthermore, he showed his optimism for such a regeneration in asking not whether such a revolt will occur, but rather when it will happen. In ancient Greece 'ev'ry father taught his child these tales' (1.578-79) but now 'those times are past' (1.590). It is the foreigner's task to tell the tales:

... now a stranger's hand Must sweep the strings, and feebly wake the chords To tell Greece, how noble were the sires, How weak and how degen'rate are the sons.

(Greece 1.590-93)

Haygarth not only sought to inspire the idea of a Greek revival, but even described the role the philhellenes would have to play. This philhellenism permeated every aspect of his poem. He emphasized the importance of Thermopylae in his water-colour of the Pass [Figure 4], one of nine plates that adorned the poem. Here the view is dominated by Mt. Oeta, that 'Bulwark of Greece, whilst Greece still had a name' (1.601). Once again there is the recurrent theme of landscape, yet while Dodwell used the landscape of Thermopylae to show how much Greece had changed, Haygarth highlighted that which remained the same. He used the image of the mountain to show what the Greeks had fought for: the gates, and very freedom, of Greece. In so doing, he drew attention to the present plight of Greece and the idea of regaining that freedom. For even though freedom has flown, the gates still stand.

Six years later, on the very eve of the Greek War of Independence, Byron made the call even more clear. 'The Isles of Greece' is a song within Don Juan sung by a Greek bard lamenting the condition of his country. He reflects on Marathon where he 'dream'd that Greece might still be free', and on 'sea-born Salamis', but they are only memories. Then he makes what is probably philhellenism's most direct invocation to Thermopylae:

Must we but weep o'er days more blest? Must we but blush? - Our fathers bled.

Earth! render back from out thy breast A remnant of our Spartan dead!

Of the three hundred grant but three, To make a new Thermopylae!39

225


Fig. 4: 'Thermopylae' by William Haygarth from Greece, a Poem (1814).

It is by recreating the spirit of Thermopylae that Greece, in both a moral and political sense, can be rejuvenated. That is what is meant by making a new Thermopylae. It is the reclaiming of the spirit that, for the philhellenes, was the very essence of ancient Greece.

* * *

The effects of philhellenism on the attainment of Greek Independence is too broad a question to address here. Suffice it to say that the philhellenes who fought in Greece itself died in sufficient numbers to warm western Europe to the cause. Furthermore, despite the persistent opposition of the Great Powers to any form of Greek Independence, it was those same Powers that seemingly inadvertently ensured it. Of all the senior British politicians of the time, only George Canning was a philhellene, Byron describing him as 'our last, our best, our only orator'.40 It was under Canning's brief ministry in 1827 that the Treaty of London, that called for an end to the ongoing war in Greece, was signed; and it was under the provisions of that treaty that Edward Codrington, himself a philhellene, led the allied fleet into Navarino.

It was in terms of awakening the Greeks to their past, or at least the

226


philhellenic interpretation of that past, that philhellenism's real success lay. Among Greeks educated outside Greece itself western-style philhellenism, based on an admiration of antiquity, was taking root. Rigas Velestinlis, although born in Thessaly, spent much of his life travelling and worked at the French consulate in Wallachia. Executed by the Turks in 1798, he became a martyr for Greek liberation, and his Hellenic Marseillaise a revolutionary anthem. Translated by Byron as a Greek War Song, the poem, having called upon the Greeks to rise, then turns to the most powerful of classical exemplars:

Sparta, Sparta, why in slumbers Lethargic dost thou lie?

Awake and join thy numbers With Athens, old ally!

Leonidas recalling, That chief of ancient song,

Who sav'd ye once from falling, The terrible! the strong!

Who made that bold diversion In old Thermopylae,

And warring with the Persian To keep his country free;

With his three hundred waging The battle, long he stood,

And like a lion raging, Expir'd in seas of blood.

(stanza 3)

Rigas called the spirit of Leonidas from the grave as Choiseul-Gouffier had done, and related the events of the battle, thus fulfilling the philhellenists' aim of educating the Greeks to their own past. Antonios Martelaos, a resident on the Ionian islands which during his lifetime were under Venetian, French, Russian, and British control, also wrote a Marseillaise. He too called on Leonidas:

Rise to see how many Like Leonidas there will be! Rise and feel happy, For Greece will live again. Rise and you will see How bravely we fight; How we beat our enemies; How much we resemble you!41

These verses, written in the years between the two great revolts against the Turks, not surprisingly focused on the martial element, and

227


Leonidas was evoked as a martial figure. However, after Greece had won her independence Thermopylae began to take on the moral connotations implicit in the writings of Coleridge and others. Con- stantine Cavafy's Thermopylae was written some seventy years after the end of the war and shows what Thermopylae had come to represent: a moral idea, shed of its martial overtones, a paradigm of the very kind of moral excellence the miso-hellenists had thought to be missing and the philhellenes had sought to restore. The poem shows that, even if only within the bounds of literature, they had succeeded:

Honour to those who in the life they lead define and guard a Thermopylae. Never betraying what is right, consistent and just in all they do ... And even more honour is due to them when they foresee (as many do foresee) That Ephialtes will turn up in the end, that the Medes will break through after all.42

NOTES

* The illustrations to this article are reproduced with the permission of the Librarian, John Rylands University Library of Manchester.

1. George Saintsbury claimed that it would be 'difficult to imagine, and would hardly be possible to find, even in the long list of mistaken 'long poem' writers of the last two centuries, more tedious stuff than his' (The Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. X (1913), 149); E. M. W. Tillyard goes so far as to redefine epic poetry itself, and specifically excludes Leonidas (The English Epic and its Background (1968), 6, 494). However neither critic supports his claims. William Cowper once wrote that The Athenaid, Glover's sequel to Leonidas, was 'condemned I dare say by those who have never read the half of it' (letter to Lady Hesketh, 4 Feb 1789), and his words can be taken for the vast majority of modern critics' attitudes to Glover's work in general. See my article on Glover in P. N. Review (forthcoming).

2. J. Collins, The Greek Influence on English Poetry (1910), 63. 3. Joseph Simpson, The Patriot (1785); J. P. Roberdeau, Thermopylae, or Invasion Repulsed

(1792). 4. May 31, 1737. See Works of Swift, ed. Scott (1824), 73. 5. J. Warton, Essay on the Genius of Pope (1782), ii. 401n; J. Scott, Poetical Works (1782) 207;

R. Southey, Joan of Arc (1794), preface; letter to H. W. Bedford, 13 November 1794 (in The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, ed. Charles Southey (London, 1849), i. 191).

6. H. Fielding, A Journey From this World into the Next (1742) c. 7. Goldgar argues that Fielding's praise of Glover is a 'remnant of his anti-Walpole partisanship', a vestige of the faction - of which both Fielding and Glover were a part - that sought to depose Robert Walpole's ministry (Weslyan Edition of the Works of Henry Fielding: Miscellanies Vol. II, ed. B. A. Goldgar (1983), 37 n. 2). However, the work was completed after Walpole's fall from power, and as Fielding felt free to criticize many of his former colleagues in the faction (ibid, xxv), any praise that remains is surely not such a 'remnant'.

7. Letter to John Hanson, April 2, 1807; see Byron's Letters and Journals, vol. I, ed L. A. Marchand (1993), 113.

8. The only case in which he deviates from the sources is in having Leonidas as the last of the Greeks to die, a necessary device for the central hero of an epic poem.

228


9. For example T. Arnold, The English Poets, ed. Ward (1889), 239; W. Minto, Literature in the Georgian Era (1894), 75; Percival, Political Ballads (1916), 144; E. Rothstein, Restoration and 18th Century Poetry (1981), 205; L. Sutherland, Politics and Finance in the 18th Century (1984), 78; C. Gerrard, The Patriot Opposition to Walpole (1994), 80.

10. Henry Pemberton wrote the work of literary criticism Observations on Poetry, Especially the Epic, Occasioned by the Late Poem Upon Leonidas (1738), pointing out at great length Glover's Homeric qualities. Poets, too, made the connection. See, for example, Matthew Green, who described Glover as:

This, this is he, that was foretold Should emulate our Greeks of old.

(From The Spleen (1737); see Alexander Chamlers, The Works of the English Poets (1810), xv. 167). Similarly, William Thompson wrote to Glover that 'Homer's Self revives again in thee' (From To the Author of Leonidas: A Poem, An Epistle (1757), line 37).

11. T. Ram, The Neo-classical Epic 1650-1720 (1971). 12. Ibid., 182. 13. Ibid., 8-14, 32ff. 14. R. Wood, A Comparative View of the Antient and present State of the Troade. To which is

prefixed an Essay on the Original Genius of Homer (1767); later republished as An Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer, with a Comparative View of the Ancient and present State of the Troade, ed. J. Bryant (1775).

15. R. Collvil, 'The Caledonian Heroine', line 355, in Occasional Poems (1771); J. Scott, 'The Muse', lines 48-9, in The Poetical Works of John Scott (1782); H. Boyd, 'The Helots - A Tragedy', lines 313-15, in Poems (1793).

16. R. Pococke, A Description of the East, vol. I (1743), 42. 17. In 480 B.C. the Pass of Thermopylae, sandwiched between the mountains and the sea, was

wide enough only for two carts to pass one another. A gradual deposit of silt has now created a plain some four miles wide, although it has been estimated that in the early nineteenth century it was considerably less than that (G. Szemler et al., Thermopylai: Myth and Reality in 480 B.C. (Chicago 1996), Map I).

18. E. Dodwell, A Classical and Topological Tour Through Greece during the Years 1801, 1805 and 1806 (London, 1819), ii. 66.

19. E. Dodwell, Views of Greece (London, 1821), preface. 20. Ibid, Description to Plate of Thermopylae. 21. E. Clarke, Travels in Various Countries, vol. 4 (London, 1812), 238. 22. Ibid., 251. 23. Ibid., 251-2 24. Ibid., 240-1. 25. Lines 103-13 and 126-33. 26. G. Dandoulakis, The Struggle for Greek Independence: the Contribution of Greek and English

Poetry, Dissertation, Loughborough University of Technology (1985), 305. 27. The idea of comparing Leonidas with Jesus appeared in The Athenaid, Glover's 30-book

sequel to Leonidas. Although Herodotus records that Xerxes had the Spartan's head erected on a pole, Glover has the Persian king crucify Leonidas' corpse. The passages make an implicit comparison with the crucifixion of Jesus and the idea of self-sacrifice. See The Athenaid 15.244- 87, 17.327-34, 20.246-355, 24.292-97, 26.145-48 and 313-22.

28. K. Coburn (ed.), The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (London, 1973), vol.3, no. 3637. 29. Arnold von Winkelried, a Swiss national hero who died at the battle of Semprach in 1386

against the Hapsburgs. Coleridge describes how he 'with his bundle of Spears turned towards his Breast in order to break the Austrian Pike-men' (Coleridge, Notebooks, vol. 3, no.3312) sacrificed his life to win Swiss freedom. See F. Adams and C. Cunningham, The Swiss Confederation (London, 1889) 6, and G. Thuirer, Free and Swiss (London, 1970), 36.

30. At the battle of Talavera in 1809 the 23rd Dragoons charged the French guns, and although the charge was broken by an unseen watercourse they continued the attack, heroically if somewhat pointlessly, losing over half their complement in the process. See J. Fortescue, The History of the British Army (London, 1912), vii. 251-4, who claims the dragoons attacked 'without any word of command' and describes the charge as a 'mad exploit' (p.253).

229

230 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE

31. The Mamalukes (or Mamelukes) were Egyptian mercenaries. Coleridge (Notebooks, vol. 3, no. 3312) relates the story of one who, when his horse refused to charge the French lines, backed the animal onto the enemy, killing himself in the process.

32. Notebooks, vol. 3, no. 3312. 33. It should be noted that Coleridge's definition of the Dragoons' actions is not as harsh or

negative as that of the Mamaluke, although the motivation behind those actions - violent instinct rather than moral excellence - is similar.

34. The Courier, 13 January 1809. 35. Aeneid 4.625. 36. Canto II, stanza 73. 37. Terence Spencer wrote that 'of all the philhellenic poets of the first two decades of the

nineteenth century, the one who was most cruelly crushed out of existence by the reputation of Byron was William Haygarth ... [his poem] was published, a splendid quarto, in 1814 - too late; for the sun of Byron was already above the horizon.' (Fair Greece, Sad Relic, 2nd ed., 1974, 281). The effect of this 'crushing' out of existence seems all the harsher when one discovers that Haygarth wrote much of his poem in 1811 while still in Greece, before Byron completed Childe Harold, and did not publish until 1814 merely because of what he described as 'the natural apprehension which the Author feels for the fate of a first performance' (Greece, a Poem, preface, v).

38. Greece, a Poem, in three parts; with Notes, Classical Illustrations, and Sketches of the Scenery (London, 1814), Notes p. 276.

39. Canto III, stanza 86, verse 7 (lines 725-30). 40. Age of Bronze (1823), stanza 13, line 552. 41. Translated by G. Dandoulakis, op. cit., 278. 42. Translated by E. Keeley, Passions and Ancient Days (1972).

Documents

Morris - 2000 - 'to Make a New Thermopylae' Hellenism, Greek Libe