s prompt and stern
with them in their darker outward manifestations, and, as far as it
goes, as a guide in the common daily business of life, it scarcely
leaves anything unsaid.

How far it went we shall see in the details of the life itself, the most
important of which in the eyes of a modern will be the social
organisation; and when he looks for organisation, he will be at once at
a loss, for he will find the fact of government yet without defined
form;--he will find law, but without a public sword to enforce it; and a
'social machine' moving without friction under the easy control of
opinion. There are no wars of classes, no politics, no opposition of
interests, a sacred feeling of the will of the gods keeping every one in
his proper subordination. It was a sacred duty that the younger should
obey the elder, that the servant should obey his master, that property
should be respected; in war, that the leader should be obeyed without
questioning; in peace, that public questions should be brought before
the assembly of the people, and settled quietly as the Council
determined. In this assembly the prince presided, and beyond this
presidency his authority at home does not seem to have extended. Of
course there was no millennium in Ionia, and men's passions were pretty
much what they are now. Without any organised means of repressing crime
when it did appear, the people were exposed to, and often suffered
under, extreme forms of violence--violence such as that of the suitors
at Ithaca, or of AEgisthus at Argos. On the other hand, what a state of
cultivation it implies, what peace and comfort in all classes, when
society could hold together for a day with no more complete defence.
And, moreover, there are disadvantages in elaborate police systems.
Self-reliance is one of the highest virtues in which this world is
intended to discipline us; and to depend upon ourselves even for our own
personal safety is a large element in moral training.

But not to dwell on this, and to pass to the way in which the men of
those days employed themselves.

Our first boy's feeling with the Iliad is, that Homer is pre-eminently a
poet of war; that battles were his own passion, and tales of battles the
delight of his listeners. His heroes appear like a great fighting
aristocracy, such as the after Spartans were, Homer himself like another
Tyrtaeus, and the poorer occupations of life too menial for their notice
or for his. They seem to live f