"The Kingdom of Heaven within Us": Inner (World) Peace in Gilbert Murray's Trojan Women

I. Prolegomena

"Pity is a rebel passion," claims Gilbert Murray. "Its hand is against the strong, against the organised force of society, against conventional sanctions and accepted Gods. It is the Kingdom of Heaven within us fighting against the brute powers of the world; and it is apt to have those qualities of unreason, of contempt for the counting of costs and the balancing of sacrifices, of recklessness, and even, in the last resort, of ruthlessness, which so often marks the paths of heavenly things and the doings of the children of light. It brings not peace, but a sword."¹

Thus reads the introduction to Murray's 1905 translation of Euripides' Trojan Women, a passage in which, through hints, clues, and pithy pronouncements, Murray the interpreter directs a reading of Murray the translator.² (Not that the two are quite so distinguishable.) Observe the bewildering array of ideas, packaged in the author's trademark authoritative-yet-accessible style. First, compassion is the supreme virtue, although "pity" implies that patronizing regard for one's social inferiors that the historian Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975) described as Murray's "aristocratic liberalism."³ Second, radical compassion ("rebel passion") opposes conservative—Conservative?—indifference. Third, Murray celebrates specific Liberal endeavors: championing underdogs ("against the strong"), controlling executive power ("against the organised force of society"), and supporting individual liberty ("against the brute powers of the world").⁴ Liberal pity resists organized strength. Fourth, note "The Kingdom of Heaven within us." Compassion is an internal, quasi-religious response concerning "heavenly things" and "children of light." This Kingdom, with its "qualities of unreason," encompasses the irrational; one's soul dictates one's moral action, even at the expense of reason. Finally, pity "brings not peace, but a sword." Compassion at any cost does not mean peace at any price.

The Kingdom of Heaven, however, contains yet more. "Live according to Nature," wrote Murray in the introduction to his 1902 Bacchae translation, "and Life itself is happiness. The Kingdom of Heaven is within you—here and now. You have but to accept it and live with it—not obscure it by striving and hating and looking in the wrong place."⁵ First, then, acceptance of human(ist) nature brings happiness. Second, ill-judged speculation hides man's essential goodness. (Contrast Socrates' dictum that the unexamined life is not worth living.)⁶ Finally, the Kingdom allows no hate, even though it may allow violence. Overall, "rebel passion" motivates compassionate-radical-Liberal-spiritual-humanist-tough-love.

As inaugural chairman of the League of Nations Union, Murray was never far from international politics; as Hellenist, he was never far from Euripides. In keeping with the scope of the present volume, then, I would like to discuss the treatment of, and potential relationship between, war, peace, and internationalism in Murray's Trojan Women—its interpretation, performance, and translation. How might Murray's optimism contend with a play about prisoners of war, with the sordid death of Astyanax, infant son of the dead Trojan hero Hector, hurled from the walls of Troy by the Greeks? If the Kingdom of Heaven belongs in the soul, which earthly institutions best promote its establishment? The Church of England? The League of Nations Union? The Classical Association? In Murray's hands, Trojan Women may well offer an answer of sorts: it undertakes an autopsy of war, induces pity, and performs a metapoetic interrogation of tragic poetry; above all, it brings Liberal secular humanism to the stage.

II. Pacifist Performance

Let us first consider the specter—spectacle?—of war. The play certainly lends itself to antiwar readings,⁷ with Murray's translation in particular becoming a pacifist touchstone. Murray was the first scholar to associate Trojan Women with the poet's supposed revulsion for the sack of Melos; this became the standard antiwar interpretation, and Trojan Women has since been dubbed "the greatest anti-war literature there is in the world."⁸

There are objections to this reading:⁹ the chorus celebrates Athens, the timescale between Melos and the first performance is tight, sympathy for...