To tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of the world

Edith Hamilton appears to have used the phrase first in an address at the fiftieth anniversary meeting of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States on April 26, 1957 (published as "The Classics" in The Classical World, 51, no. 2, (November 1957), pp. 29-32). She again used the quotation in "The lessons of the past" in The Saturday Evening Post, September 27, 1958, an article later published as a chapter in her book The Ever-Present Past (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1964), page 34. The quotation has sometimes been attributed by those quoting Edith Hamilton to the fifth century BC Athenian tragedian Aeschylus.

The quotation was used by Robert F. Kennedy in an April 4, 1968 speech in Indianapolis in which he informed his listeners of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. Earlier in the same speech Robert Kennedy had quoted Aeschylus:

In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

This, perhaps, led to confusion about the attribution of the later quotation.

Edith Hamilton did not give a full attribution for the quotation, merely saying in her book, "An old Greek inscription states that the aim of mankind should be 'to tame ...'." In the address to the Classical Association of the Atlantic States she introduced the quotation, "There was said to have been an old inscription at Delphi which stated as men's aim 'to tame ...'."

The source of Ms. Hamilton's phrase appears to be, first, a decree of 125 BC from Delphi (Fouilles de Delphes III, 2, 69) in which Athens is praised because "εγ μεν του θηριωδους βιου μετηγαγεν τους ανθρωπους εις ημεροτητα" and, second, a phrase from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Thucydide, which describes the Athenians as "οι τον κοινον βιον εξημερωσαντες." I believe the source of Ms. Hamilton's juxtaposition ("to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of the world" appears to be Ms. Hamilton's creation) was Gilbert Murray's The Rise of the Greek Epic. On page 2 of the 1934 fourth edition he cites the Dionysius of Halicarnassus quotation as follows:

Denys of Halicarnassus sums up the praises of the Athenians by saying, in the very language of an old Delphian decree, that they 'made gentle the life of the world'.

I think the resemblance of Murray's reference to "an old Delphian decree" (i.e. the decree of 125 BC, Fouilles de Delphes III, 2, 69, which Murray reproduces in note 1 on page 2 of his book) to Ms. Hamilton's reference to "an old inscription at Delphi" and the match of Murray's translation of the Dionysius of Halicarnassus phrase, "they 'made gentle the life of the world'," with Ms. Hamilton's phrase, "and make gentle the life of the world," combined with Ms. Hamilton's near admission that she has not seen the actual inscription (since she says in the 1957 address, as reproduced in The Classical World, 51 no. 2, p. 31 "there was said to have been an old inscription at Delphi ...") makes it appear likely that Ms. Hamilton got her "inscription" from Gilbert Murray's book.

See Judith P. Hallett, "Edith Hamilton (1867-1963)", The Classical World, 90.2-3, (1996-1997), pp. 119-120 note 25 and pp. 146-147, note 89.

See also my article "'Taming the savageness of man:' Robert Kennedy, Edith Hamilton, and their sources", The Classical World, 96.2 (2003) p. 197 ff.