resort to Europe for his earliest monuments and his earliest
authentications--for the facts to be attested, and for the evidences
which are to attest them. But if to Europe, next, to what part of
Europe? Two great nations--great in a different sense, the one by
dazzling brilliancy of intellect, the other by weight and dignity of
moral grandeur--divide between them the honours of history through the
centuries immediately preceding the birth of Christ. To which of these,
the pupil asks, am I to address myself? On the one hand, the greater
refinement and earlier civilization of Greece would naturally converge
all eyes upon her; but then, on the other hand, we cannot forget the
'_levitas levissimæ gentis_'--the want of stability, the want of all
that we call moral dignity, and by direct consequence, the puerile
credulity of that clever, sparkling, but very foolish people, the
Greeks. That quality which, beyond all others, the Romans imputed to the
Grecian character; that quality which, in the very blaze of admiration,
challenged by the Grecian intellect, still overhung with deep shadows
their rational pretensions and degraded them to a Roman eye, was the
essential _levitas_--the defect of any principle that could have given
steadiness and gravity--which constituted the original sin of the Greek
character. By _levitas_ was meant the passive obedience to casual,
random, or contradictory impulses, the absence of all determining
principle. Now this _levitas_ was the precise anti-pole of the Roman
character; which was as massy, self-supported, and filled with
resistance to chance impulses, as the Greek character was windy, vain,
and servile to such impulses. Both nations, it is true, were
superstitious, because all nations, in those ages were intensely
superstitious; and each, after a fashion of its own, intensely
credulous. But the Roman superstition was coloured by something of a
noble pride; the Grecian by vanity. The Greek superstition was fickle
and self-contradicting, and liable to sudden changes; the Roman,
together with the gloom, had the unity and the perseverance of bigotry.
No Christian, even, purified and enlightened by his sublime faith, could
more utterly despise the base crawling adorations of Egypt, than did the
Roman polytheist, out of mere dignity of mind, while to the frivolous
Athenian they were simply objects of curiosity. In the Greek it was a
vulgar sentiment of clannish vanity.[28] Even the national
self-consequence of a Roman and a Greek were sentiments of different
origin, and almost opposite quality; in the Roman it was a sublime and
imaginative idea of Rome, of her self-desired grandeur, and, above all,
of her divine _destiny_, over which last idea brooded a cloud of
indefinite expectation, not so entirely unlike the exalting expectations
of the Jews, looking for ever to some unknown 'Elias' that should come.
Thus perplexed by the very different claims upon his respect in these
two exclusive authorities of the ancient world--carried to the Roman by
his _moral_ feelings, to the Grecian by his intellectual--the student is
suddenly delivered from his doubts by the discovery that these two
principal streams of history flow absolutely apart through the elder
centuries of historical light.
IV. _777 and its Three Great Landmarks._--In this perplexity, we say,
the youthful pupil is suddenly delighted to hear that there is no call
upon her to choose between Grecian and Roman guides. Fortunately, and as
if expressly to save her from any of those fierce disputes which have
risen up between the true Scriptural chronology and the chronology of
the mendacious Septuagint, it is laid down that the Greek and Roman
history, soon after both had formally commenced, flowed apart for
centuries; nor did they so much as hear of each other (unless as we
moderns heard of Prester John in Abyssinia, or of the Great Mogul in
India), until the Greek colonies in Calabria, etc., began to have a
personal meaning for a Roman ear, or until Sicily (as the common field
for Greek, Roman, and Carthaginian) began to have a dangerous meaning
for all three. As to the Romans, the very grandeur of their
self-reliance and the sublime faith which they had in the destinies[29]
of Rome, inclined them to carelessness about all but their nearest
neighbours, and sustained for ages their illiterate propensities.
Illiterate they were, because incurious; and incurious because too
haughtily self-confident. The Greeks, on the other hand, amongst the
other infirmities attached to their national levity, had curiosity in
abundance. But it flowed in other channels. There was nothing to direct
their curiosity upon the Romans. Generally speaking, there is good
reason for thinking that as, at this day, the privilege of a man to
present himself at any court of Christendom is recognised upon his
producing a ticket signed by a Lord Chamberlain of some other court, to
the effect that 'the Bearer is known at St. James's,' or 'known at the
Tuileries,' etc.; so, after the final establishment of the Olympic
games, the Greeks looked upon a man's appearance at that great national
congress as the criterion and ratification of his being a known or
knowable person. Unknown, unannounced personally or by proxy at the
great periodic Congress of Greece, even a prince was a _homo
ignorabilis_; one whose existence nobody was bound to take notice of. A
Persian, indeed, was allowably absent; because, as a permanent public
enemy, he could not safely be present. But as to all others, and
therefore as to Romans, the rule of law held--that 'to those not coming
forward and those not in existence, the same line of argument applies.'
[_De non apparentibus et de non existentibus eadem est ratio._]
Had this been otherwise--had the two nations met freely before the light
of history had strengthened into broad daylight--it is certain that the
controversies upon chronology would have been far more and more
intricate than they are. This profound[30] separation, therefore, has
been beneficial to the student in one direction. But in another it has
increased his duties; or, if not increased, at all events it serves to
remind him of a separate chapter in his chronological researches. Had
Rome stood in as close a relation to Greece as Persia did, one single
chronology would have sufficed for both. Hardly one event in Persian
history has survived for our memory, which is not taken up by the looms
of Greece and interwoven with the general arras and texture of Grecian
history. And from the era of the Consul Paulus Emilius, something of the
same sort takes place between Greece and Rome; and in a partial sense
the same result is renewed as often as the successive assaults occur of
the Roman-destroying power applied to the several members of the
Græco-Macedonian Empire. But these did not commence until Rome had
existed for half-a-thousand years. And through all that long period,
two-thirds of the entire Roman history up to the Christian era, the two
Chronologies flow absolutely apart.
Consequently, because all chronology is thrown back upon Europe, and
because the pre-Christian Europe is split into two collateral bodies,
and because each of these separate bodies must have a separate head--it
follows that chronology, as a pre-Christian chronology, will, like the
Imperial eagle, be two-headed. Now this accident of chronology, on a
first glance, seems but too likely to confuse and perplex the young
student.
How fortunate, then, it must be thought, and what a duty it imposes upon
the teacher, not to defeat this bounty of accident by false and pedantic
rigour of calculation, that these two heads of the eagle--that head
which looks westward for Roman Chronology, that which looks eastward for
Grecian Chronology--do absolutely coincide as to their nativity. The
birthday of Grecian authentic history everybody agrees to look upon as
fixed to the establishment [the _final_ establishment] of the Olympic
games. And when was _that_? Generally, chronologers have placed this
event just 776 years before Christ. Now will any teacher be so 'peevish'
[as hostess Quickly calls it]--so perversely unaccommodating--as not to
lend herself to the very trivial alteration of one year, just putting
the clock back to 7 instead of 6, even if the absolute certainty of the
6 were made out? But if she _will_ break with her chronologer, 'her
guide, philosopher and friend,' upon so slight a consideration as one
year in three-quarters of a millennium, it then becomes my duty to tell
her that there is no such certainty in the contested number as she
chooses to suppose. Even the era of our Saviour's birth oscillates
through an entire Olympiad, or period of four years; to that extent it
is unsettled: and in fifty other ways I could easily make out a title to
a much more considerable change. In reality, when the object is--not to
secure an attorney-like[31] accuracy--but to promote the _liberal_
pursuit of chronology, a teacher of good sense would at once direct her
pupil to record the date in round terms as just reaching the
three-quarters of a thousand years; she would freely sacrifice the
entire twenty-six years' difference between 776 and 750, were it not
that the same purpose, viz., the purpose of consulting the powers or
convenience and capacity of the memory, in neglect and defiance of
useless and superstitious arithmetic punctilios, may be much better
attained by a more trifling sacrifice. Three-quarters of a millennium,
that is three parts in four of a thousand years, is a period easily
remembered; but a triple repetition of the number 7, simply saying
'_Seven seven seven_' is remembered even _more_ easily.[32]
Suppose this point then settled, for anything would be remarkable and
highly rememberable which comes near to a common familiar fraction of so
vast a period in human affairs as a millennium [a term consecrated to
our Christian ears, (1) by its use in the Apocalypse; (2) by its
symbolic use in representing the long Sabbath of rest from sin and
misery, and finally (3) even to the profane ear by the fact of its being
the largest period which we employ in our historical estimates]. But a
triple iteration of the number 7, simply saying '_Seven seven seven_,'
would be even more rememberable. And, lastly, were it still necessary to
add anything by way of reconciling the teacher to the supposed
inaccuracy (though, if a real[33] and demonstrated inaccuracy, yet, be
it remembered, the very least which _can_ occur, viz., an error of a
single unit), I will--and once for all, as applying to many similar
cases, as often as they present themselves--put this stringent question
to every woman of good sense: is it not better, is it not more
agreeable to your views for the service of your pupils, that they should
find offered to their acceptance some close approximation to the truth
which they can very easily remember, than an absolute conformity to the
very letter of the truth which no human memory, though it were the
memory of Mithridates, could retain? Good sense is shown, above all
things, in seeking the practicable which is within our power, by
preference to a more exquisite ideal which is unattainable. Not, I
grant, in moral or religious things. Then I willingly allow, we are
forbidden to sit down contented with imperfect attempts, or to make
deliberate compromises with the slightest known evil in principle. To
this doctrine I heartily subscribe. But surely in matters _not_ moral,
in questions of erudition or of antiquarian speculation, or of
historical research, we are under a different rule. Here, and in similar
cases, it is our business, I conceive with Solon legislating for the
Athenians, to contemplate, not what is best in an abstract sense, but
what is best under the circumstances of the case. Now the most important
circumstances of this case are--that the memory of young ladies must be
assumed as a faculty of average power, both as to its apprehensiveness
and as to its tenacity; its power of mastering for the moment, and its
power of retaining faithfully; that this faculty will not endure the
oppression of mere blank facts having no organization or life of logical
relation running through them; that by 'not enduring' I mean that it
cannot support this harassing and persecution with impunity[34]; that
the fine edge of the higher intellectual powers will be taken off by
this laborious straining, which is not only dull, but the cause of
dulness; that finally, the memory, supposing it in a given and rare case
powerful enough to contend successfully with such tasks, must even as
regards this time required, hold itself disposable for many other
applications; and therefore, as the inference from the whole, that not
any slight or hasty, but a most intense and determinate effort should be
made to substitute some technical artifices for blank pulls against a
dead weight of facts, to substitute fictions, or artificial imitations
of logical arrangement, wherever that is possible, for blind
arrangements of chance; and finally, in a process which requires every
assistance from compromise and accommodation constantly to surrender the
rigour of superstitious accuracy, (which, after all its magnificent
pretensions, _must_ fail in the performance), to humbler probability of
a reasonable success.
I have dwelt upon this point longer than would else have been right,
because in effect here lies the sole practical obstacle to the
realization of a very beautiful framework of chronology, and because I
consider myself as now speaking _once for all_. Let us now move forward.
I now go on to the other head of the eagle--the head which looks
westward.
Here it will be objected that the Foundation of Rome is usually laid
down in the year 753 B.C.; and therefore that it differs from the
foundation of the Olympiads by as much as 23 or 24 years; and can I have
the conscience to ask my fair friends that they should _put the clock
back_ so far as that? Why, really there is no knowing; perhaps if I were
hard pressed by some chronological enemy, I might ask as great a favour
even as that. But at present it is not requisite; neither do I mean to
play any jugglers' tricks, as perhaps lawfully I might, with the
different computations of Varro, of the Capitoline Marbles, etc. All
that need be said in this place is simply--that Rome is not Romulus. And
let Rome have been founded when she pleases, and let her secret name
have been what it might--though really, in default of a better, Rome
itself is as decent and _'sponsible_ a name as a man would wish--still I
presume that Romulus must have been a little older than Rome, the
builder a little anterior to what he built. Varro and the Capitoline
Tables and Mr. Hook will all agree to that postulate. And whatever some
of them may say as to the youth of Romulus, when he first began to wield
the trowel, at least, I suppose, he was come to years of discretion;
and, if we say twenty-three or twenty-four, which I am as much entitled
to say as they to deny it, then we are all right. 'All right behind,' as
the mail guards say, 'drive on.' And so I feel entitled to lay my hand
upon my heart and assure my fair pupils that Romulus himself and the
Olympiads did absolutely start together; and for anything known to the
contrary, perhaps in the same identical moment or bisection of a moment.
Possibly his first little wolfish howl (for it would be monstrous to
think that he or even Remus condescended to a _vagitus_ or cry such as a
young tailor or rat-catcher might emit) may have symphonized with the
ear-shattering trumpet that proclaimed the inauguration of the first
Olympic contest, or which blew to the four winds the appellation of the
first Olympic victor.
That point, therefore, is settled, and so far, at least, 'all's right
behind.' And it is a great relief to my mind that so much is
accomplished. Two great arrow-headed nails at least are driven 'home' to
the great dome of Chronology from which my whole golden chain of
historical dependencies is to swing. And even that will suffice. Careful
navigators, indeed, like to ride by three anchors; but I am content with
what I have achieved, even if my next attempt should be less
satisfactory.
It is certainly a very striking fact to the imagination that great
revolutions seldom come as solitary cases. It never rains but it pours.
At times there _is_ some dark sympathy, which runs underground,
connecting remote events like a ground-swell in the ocean, or like the
long careering[35] of an earthquake before it makes its explosion.
_Abyssus abyssum invocat_--'One deep calleth to another.' And in some
incomprehensible way, powers not having the slightest _apparent_
interconnexion, no links through which any _casual_ influence could
rationally be transmitted, do, nevertheless, in fact, betray either a
blind nexus--an undiscoverable web of dependency upon each other, or
else a dependency upon some common cause equally undiscoverable. What
possible, what remote connexion could the dissolution of the Assyrian
empire have with the Olympiads or with the building of Rome? Certainly
none at all that we can see; and yet these great events so nearly
synchronize that even the latest of them seems but a more distant
undulation of the same vast swell in the ocean, running along from west
to east, from the Tiber to the Tigris. Some great ferment of revolution
was then abroad. The overthrew of Nineveh as the capital of the Assyrian
empire, the ruin of the dynasty ending in Sardanapalus, and the
subsequent dismemberment of the Assyrian empire, took place, according
to most chronologers, 747 years B.C., just 30 years, therefore, after
the two great events which I have assigned to 777. These two events are
in the strictest and most capital sense the inaugural events of history,
the very pillars of Hercules which indicate a _ne plus ultra_ in that
direction; namely, that all beyond is no longer history but romance. I
am exceedingly anxious to bring this Assyrian revolution also to the
same great frontier line of columns. In a gross general way it might
certainly be argued that in such a great period, thirty years, or one
generation, can be viewed as nothing more than a trifling quantity. But
it must also be considered that the exact time, and even the exact
personality,[36] of Sardanapalus in all his relations are not known. All
are vast phantoms in the Assyrian empire; I do not say fictions, but
undefined, unmeasured, immeasurable realities; far gone down into the
mighty gulf of shadows, and for us irrecoverable. All that is known
about the Assyrian empire is its termination under Sardanapalus. It was
then coming within Grecian twilight; and it will be best to say that,
generally speaking, Sardanapalus coincided with Romulus and the Greek
Olympiad. To affect any nearer accuracy than this would be the grossest
reliance on the mere jingle of syllables. History would be made to rest
on something less than a pun; for such as _Palus_ and _Pul_, which is
all that learned archbishops can plead as their vouchers in the matter
of Assyria, there is not so much as the argument of a child or the wit
of a punster.
Upon the whole, the teacher will make the following remarks to her
pupils, after having read what precedes; remarks partly upon the new
mode of delivering chronology, and partly upon the things delivered:
I. She will notice it--as some improvement--that the three great
leading events, which compose the opening of history not fabulous, are
here, for the first time, placed under the eye in their true relations
of time, viz., as about contemporary. For without again touching on the
question--do they, or do they not, vary from each other in point of time
by twenty-three and by thirty years--it will be admitted by everybody
that, at any rate, the three events stand equally upon the frontier line
of authentic history. A frontier or debateable land is always of some
breadth. They form its inauguration. And they would do so even if
divided by a much wider interval. Now, it is very possible to know of A,
B, and C, separately, that each happened in such a year, say 1800; and
yet never to have noticed them consciously _as_ contemporary. We read of
many a man (L, M, N, suppose), that he was born in 1564, or that he died
in 1616. And we may happen separately to know that these were the years
in which Shakespeare was born and died. Yet, for all that, we may never
happen consciously to notice with respect to any one of the men, L, M,
N, that he was a contemporary of Shakespeare's. Now, this was the case
with regard to the three great events, Greek, Roman, and Assyrian. No
chronologer failed to observe of each in its separate place that it
occurred somewhere about 750 years B.C. But every chronologer had failed
to notice this coincident time of each _as_ coincident. And,
accordingly, all failed to converge these three events into one focus as
the solemn and formal opening of history. It is good to have a
beginning, a starting post, from which to date all possible historical
events that are worthy to be regarded as such. But it is better still to
find that by the rarest of accidents, by a good luck that could never
have been looked for, the three separate starting posts--which
historical truth obliges us to assume for the three great fields of
history, Roman, Grecian, and Asiatic[37]--all closely coincide in point
of time; or, to use the Greek technical term, all closely synchronize.