In a word, the heroic spirit, as seen in heroic poetry, is the outcome of a society cut loose from its roots, of a time of migrations, of the shifting of populations.[42] But more is needed, and just this something more the age that gave birth to Homer had.  We know now that before the northern people whom we call Greeks, and who called themselves Hellenes, came down into Greece, there had grown up in the basin of the AEgean a civilization splendid, wealthy, rich in art and already ancient, the civilization that has come to light at Troy, Mycenae, Tiryns, and most of all in Crete.  The adventurers from North and South came upon a land rich in spoils, where a chieftain with a band of hardy followers might sack a city and dower himself and his men with sudden wealth.  Such conditions, such a contact of new and old, of settled splendour beset by unbridled adventure, go to the making of a heroic age, its virtues and its vices, its obvious beauty and its hidden ugliness.  In settled, social conditions, as has been well remarked, “most of the heroes would sooner or later have found themselves in prison.”

A heroic age, happily for society, cannot last long; it has about it while it does last a sheen of passing and pathetic splendour, such as that which lights up the figure of Achilles, but it is bound to fade and pass.  A heroic society is almost a contradiction in terms.  Heroism is for individuals.  If a society is to go on at all it must strike its roots deep in some soil, native or alien.  The bands of adventurers must disband and go home, or settle anew on the land they have conquered.  They must beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks.  Their gallant, glorious leader must become a sober, home-keeping, law-giving and law-abiding king; his followers must abate their individuality and make it subserve a common social purpose.

Athens, in her sheltered peninsula, lay somewhat outside the tide of migrations and heroic exploits.  Her population and that of all Attica remained comparatively unchanged; her kings are kings of the stationary, law-abiding, state-reforming type; Cecrops, Erechtheus, Theseus, are not splendid, flashing, all-conquering figures like Achilles and Agamemnon.  Athens might, it would seem, but for the coming of Homer, have lain stagnant in a backwater of conservatism, content to go on chanting her traditional Spring Songs year by year.  It is a wonderful thing that this city of Athens, beloved of the gods, should have been saved from the storm and stress, sheltered from what might have broken, even shattered her, spared the actual horrors of a heroic age, yet given heroic poetry, given the clear wine-cup poured when the ferment was over.  She drank of it deep and was glad and rose up like a giant refreshed.

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