as Paros was inhabited by Ionians, it was an Ionian colony. Before the
Greeks took possession of it, it was like Cythera, one of the many
settlements of the Phoenicians, whence in Cythera the worship of Mylitta,
and in Thasos that of Melkarth, continued to exist. We must conceive,
that in the very earliest times the Phoenicians were established on the
coasts of Greece in settlements as numerous as in the historical ages
were those on the African and Spanish coasts and in Cythera. Thasos has
quarries of beautiful marble, but is not suited to the growth of corn,
and is not a fertile island, whence it is ill spoken of by Archilochus.
But Thasian wine was much esteemed. The island had also silver mines,
which had been worked even by the Phoenicians, and it possessed still
richer ones on the opposite coast of Thrace.
For a time Thasos was powerful and wealthy in consequence of its mines
and its commerce; and by this wealth the Thasians established their
influence among the sea-faring nations. But when they were forced to
submit to the Athenian supremacy, they found it difficult to live in that
state of dependence, and twenty years after the Persian, and thirty years
before the Peloponnesian war, they revolted, but were subdued by the
Athenians. From that time Thasos began to decay.
All these maritime places, though their lands were barren, had a numerous
population as long as their navigation was flourishing; but as soon
as the current of commerce turned in other directions, the population
decreased with extraordinary rapidity. Such was the case at Chalcis and
Aegina, and also in Thasos.
THE CYCLADES.
It is very convenient in treating of such a multitude of islands to
consider them in certain groups, which is a great assistance to the
memory. It is no trifling matter to impress upon one’s mind geography in
such a manner as to know it completely, and it was a happy idea to divide
the southern islands of the Aegean into Cyclades and Sporades.
The Cyclades are twelve in number, and in the early times no doubt formed
one confederacy, of which, however, we know no particulars. But traces
of such a union occur in the Homeric hymn on Apollo. Delos was the
centre. These islands, according to Thucydides, were partly inhabited
by Phoenicians, but for the most part by Carians. He proves this in the
case of Delos in an excellent manner by the fact, that the arms found
in the newly opened tombs were Carian. However, these islands were not
altogether Carian; for we find that in later times the inhabitants of
Cythnos were Dryopians. This is stated by Herodotus, and the Dryopians,
as we have seen, were Pelasgians. In this case, we cannot think at all of
a migration; the Dryopians were a remnant of the Pelasgians.[70]
The names of the twelve islands, going round the circle in a
north-western direction are:—CEOS, CYTHNOS, SERIPHOS, SIPHNOS, PAROS,
NAXOS, DELOS, RHENEA, MYCONOS, SYROS, TENOS, and ANDROS. Delos was the
smallest, but at the same time the most illustrious among them. The
notion of the ancients was, that it formed the centre, round which
the others were grouped in a circle, and that hence they were called
Cyclades. But this is erroneous, for Delos rather forms the circle
together with the others. In the earliest times, it was the seat of a
common panegyris for the twelve islands and of ancient agones, as we see
from the hymn on Apollo, of which the first part at least is so ancient
that its composition may be regarded as contemporaneous with that of the
Iliad and Odyssey. The dissolution of that union is one of the mysteries
of ancient Greek history.
The ancient names of Delos are ASTERIA and OGYGIA. The statement that it
was at one time a floating island, is of course fabulous, but it is not
improbable that it may have been raised above the sea by volcanic agency.
Wherever we meet with notices of the Cyclades in the historical times,
they are at first all independent of one another; with the exception
of Cythnos, all received Ionian colonists from Athens, whence we there
find the relation of masters and serfs, as for example at Naxos, where
Lygdamis was tyrant. Wherever we have a trace of history, we catch a
glimpse, as it were in the twilight, of an oligarchical relation. After
the Persian wars, the Cyclades came under the supremacy of Athens, for
each by itself was too weak: even Miltiades had tried to subdue Paros
and Naxos, and afterwards the plan succeeded. Naxos, which revolted,
received a cleruchia. Delos was changed by the Athenians into a national
sanctuary; the ancient inhabitants were expelled, and a colony was sent
thither. In obedience to the command of an oracle, the Athenians dug up
all the dead bodies in the island, and conveyed them to Rhenea; but even
for many years previously it had not been allowed to bury any one there.
Although the islands were fertile, yet they were powerless, and after
the battle of Naxos, again acknowledged the supremacy of Athens. In the
Macedonian period, Delos alone seems to have remained in the hands of the
Athenians, and after the war of Perseus, it was given back to them by
the Romans; whether the Romans had a right to do so, I know not. During
the Roman period, Delos, which had formerly been venerable for religious
reasons, acquired a different kind of importance: it became the place of
the greatest fair in those parts, being the entrepot between Alexandria
and the towns on the Euxine; it was resorted to by merchants from the
most distant countries, and even by the Romans so far as they carried
on their commerce from Puteoli. To Athens it was of great importance
on account of its harbour dues. It was also a central point for the
slave-trade, and on one occasion 10,000 slaves are said to have been sold
there in one day. From this fact some modern authors have made out, that
this was the number of slaves sold there every day all the year round.
At a later time Delos lost this importance; the piracy of the Cilicians
and Cretans seems to have inflicted on Delos a deadly blow, and in the
time of Augustus and Strabo it had lost its commercial importance, trade
having taken a different direction.
PAROS is celebrated for its white marble, the most beautiful for purposes
of sculpture: the Carrara marble which enjoys a great reputation, is of
a much inferior kind, containing more lime, while the Parian is more
like crystal and precious stone, nor has it the disagreeable suggary
whiteness of the Carrara marble, which becomes a little yellowish only by
exposure to the air. Opposite to Paros is the small island of Antiparos,
remarkable for its grotto with its stalactites, the most celebrated in
the world, though the ancients do not mention it. In early times, the
town of Paros was one of the most enterprising, and, in a commercial
point of view, one of the most important places; besides the island
itself, the Parians had colonies extending far into the interior of the
Adriatic, and the town of Paros there is said to have been of Parian
origin; they also took part in the establishment of a colony on the
Liris. Archilochus, one of the greatest poets of Greece, was a native
of Paros. Some Greeks whose judgment is of great weight, placed him by
the side of Homer: and legendary stories say, that the gods were so
favourably disposed towards him as to order Corax, who had murdered him,
to quit their sanctuary and not to return to it, until he had propitiated
the shade of the poet. Paros also possesses an excellent harbour, suited
even to great ships of war; but it is little noticed in ancient history.
It may be said in general that those islands were rich in harbours.
SIPHNOS, remarkable in a mineralogical point of view, is not far distant
from Paros; previous to the Persian period, it had silver mines, through
which it became wealthy; but when they were exhausted, it sank into the
greatest wretchedness, for it is a barren island.
The neighbouring SERĪPHOS (not Serĭphos) is still more barren, being a
mere rock; it acts a prominent part in the mythus about Perseus. The
Romans in after-times banished their criminals to Seriphos and Cythnos.
CEOS, not far from Attica, was beautiful and populous; it contained
four towns, of which I will mention _Carthaea_ and _Iulis_. The latter
was the birth-place of Bacchylides, and probably also of his uncle,
the elder Simonides. The site of Carthaea has been ascertained only in
modern times by Bröndstedt and Haller of Nürnberg, who caused excavations
to be made there and found ruins and inscriptions. I only trust that
these inscriptions may not prove to be forgeries; for a friend at Athens
sent me them long before they were known in Europe, having probably
been copied by some Greek; but those people are too unscrupulous about
truth, and you cannot trust them. These inscriptions, however, are very
important; a few only belong to the early period during which Athens was
free; most of them were made in the Macedonian and Aetolian times. I have
supplemented the deficiencies, and Bröndstedt has published them with my
emendations and additions, without even intimating that they are only
probable conjectures, and he has altered the mistakes in writing without
informing his readers as to whether they occur on the stones or not. This
is a violation of historical fidelity. The ancient traditions about Ceos
contain strange stories. The moral purity and the severity of the Ceans
are much praised, and in the descriptions of manners in the comedies of
Menander, they are spoken of in the highest terms. The other statement,
that they killed their old men, in order to save them from the miseries
of decrepitude, is, I hope, founded on some confusion, or is limited to
one particular instance. The land is fertile.
ANDROS and TENOS are large and fertile, but have no history.
SYROS is remarkable as the birth-place of the philosopher Pherecydes, the
instructor of Pythagoras.
On the one side of Delos was the island of RHENEA, and on the other that
of MYCONOS; the former is insignificant, but Myconos is somewhat larger.
NAXOS is the most splendid of all the Cyclades, and was justly regarded
as the favourite isle of Dionysus. Its form is like that of most volcanic
islands in the south sea, rising from the waters like a cone: it is a
mountain with broad sloping sides, and fertile to its very top; it does
not indeed produce corn all the way up, but it is clad with vines and
olive groves. The island is a real paradise, and even at this day one of
the most flourishing in the Archipelago. Its summit was crowned with a
temple of Zeus, though the island itself was sacred to Dionysus. In the
early times it was powerful, especially during the age of Pisistratus;
at the period of transition, it fell into the hands of Lygdamis, who
protected the demos against the aristocracy; he became a usurper, but
was a mild ruler, and beneficial to his subjects. During the Persian
period, Naxos was still important and rich, but soon after came under
the supremacy of Athens. It then revolted, but was subdued and received
cleruchi, who however were expelled after the Peloponnesian war. During
the period which then followed, nothing is known about Naxos. When the
power of the Macedonians in Egypt was at its height, that is, in the
reigns of Philadelphus and Euergetes, all the Cyclades were governed
by the kings of Alexandria. After the fourth king, when the empire
was decaying, those islands had no ruler and no protection, for which
reason they endeavoured to enter into the relation of sympolity with the
Aetolians as early as the time of Euergetes, and those who did not form
this relation were infested by Aetolian and Illyrian pirates.
These are the Cyclades as we find them enumerated by Scylax, a highly
respectable authority. But wherever a whole consists of a definite number
of parts, the same number not unfrequently embraces different parts at
different times, new parts being introduced in place of earlier ones; if
you remember this, it will help you out of many an historical labyrinth.
Such also was the case with the twelve Cyclades; they were not the same
at all times, but the southern islands, which are not included by the
ancients, were regarded as belonging to them at a time which cannot now
be defined, so that some must have been omitted, which, accordingly, had
either abandoned the connection or were forgotten on account of their
insignificance. The same is the case with the twelve Achaean towns, and
the seven hills of Rome, two of which are sometimes regarded as one, so
that a new one is added. In this manner we have four more small islands,
which are classed among the Cyclades, for which we must suppose that
others, such as Seriphos and Rhenea, were omitted from the list. Delos,
however, was always regarded as the centre, whence the phrase was, “Delos
and the Cyclades.” The number twelve might thus be kept up in a variety
of ways. The four islands before alluded to are _Melos_ and _Thera_,
which were Doric, and _Ios_ and _Amorgos_, which were Ionic; Scylax
includes them all among the Sporades.
MELOS was a Lacedaemonian colony, but during the Peloponnesian war it
was conquered by the Athenians at the instigation of Alcibiades. The
discussion of this subject in Thucydides is an ever-memorable masterpiece
of the development of conflicting opinions; the transaction itself is
a stain upon Athenian history; fortunately the number of such stains
is but small. The inhabitants of Melos were sold as slaves; after the
Peloponnesian war the island was indeed restored, but it remained
insignificant. It is a beautiful volcanic island with hot sulphureous
springs and the like, and contains much fertile land. Its modern name
is Milo. The ruins of the theatre excite our astonishment, especially
considering that it was a Doric place; they are evidence of a numerous
and wealthy population. The excellent torso of Aphrodite, which is now in
Paris, was found in Melos.
THERA, according to tradition, was colonised in the very earliest times
by the guardian of the kings Eurysthenes and Procles, belonging to the
family of the Labdacidae. This account, however, is purely mythical; it
reads very pleasantly in Herodotus, but has not the least historical
foundation. This much only we see from the whole series of Dorian
colonies, that they belong to a period, when most of the Dorians, with
the exception of Corinth and Aegina, had no maritime power, while Sparta
must still have possessed a navy, since without it the colonies could not
have subsisted. The most important point in the history of Thera is, that
it became the metropolis of Cyrene, which reflected its lustre upon it.
Thera had formerly been a Phoenician colony, and the name of Membliaros,
whose family resided there, is entirely Phoenician. The island is
particularly remarkable in a physical point of view; historically it
is of no importance. There is not a spot on the earth that is so much
subject to earthquakes as Thera; hence new islands have been formed in
its vicinity at different periods. The ancients mention an island of the
name of Hiera, which was raised up by volcanic agency, and in this manner
three new islands have appeared there, the last of which rose up in the
year 1707. This, accordingly, is one of the points where the fire burning
in the bowels of the earth shows its direct agency. The name of Anaphe, a
small island in the vicinity, also alludes to this.
IOS is known from the very ancient tradition, that Homer was buried
there. It was an Ionian colony,like AMORGOS, which was celebrated for its
textures, for the _vestes Amorginae_ were prized as highly as the _Coae_;
it is very probable that cotton may have been cultivated there, but it is
possible also that it was imported from Egypt and Syria.
CRETE.
The antiquities of Crete are as much a mystery to us as those of ancient
Boeotia and several other countries. Minos is to us a mere name, but
we may believe the statement of Thucydides, that the recollection of
Crete having once ruled over the Cyclades was connected with the
period represented by Minos. But what connection there existed between
Minos and the later Cretans, is a question about which we know nothing
at all. He can scarcely have been a Greek, and the subsequent Greek
population of Crete has no more to do with him than the Tyrrhenians
have with the Etruscans. I am convinced that he was connected only
with the Eteocretans, as is clearly stated by Herodotus. These earlier
Cretans probably continued to live in the island as subjects of the
later inhabitants, and only two of their towns, Praesos and Polichna,
maintained their independence. All the other towns of Crete are Dorian,
Argive, or in general Peloponnesian colonies. What are called the laws of
Minos, unquestionably belong to the Greek immigrants, and if the question
be raised, as to whether the Spartans obtained their laws from Crete, I
do not hesitate for a moment to assert, that the laws of both nations are
originally Doric, and that the Dorian immigrants introduced them among
the Cretans; though the later inhabitants boasted of having preserved the
ancient laws of the conquered original inhabitants. I believe no more in
the historical personality of Minos than I do in that of Lycurgus. We
must not, however, imagine, that the subsequent Cretans were an entirely
new population, for they were in fact only the ruling party. If we
compare the history of different nations we find several instances of
conquerors adopting the name of the conquered people: thus the Spanish
tyrants of Mexico called themselves children of Montezuma; in Peru this
is still more common, though nearly all the Peruvians are hybrids. In
like manner the Dorian conquerors did not go to Crete with their wives
and children, but the later population was descended on the mother’s side
from the ancient Cretans. Those whom we call Ionians, were descended in
the same manner from the Carians.
I cannot say much that is satisfactory about Crete; in my opinion, this
is another of those points in regard to which a sober inquirer must be
content with very few results. I feel it my duty to caution you against
all those Ogygian inquiries in ancient Greek history; they are very
often no inquiries at all, but mere gossip about notions taken up at
random and vaguely conceived—things which rouse the indignation of a
genuine philologer. I cannot accordingly, in the case of Crete, go back
to the earliest times, simply because we have no information. Cnosos
and Cydon, according to some obscure account, were Argive colonies; of
Lyctos it is certain that it was a Dorian colony, though neither time nor
circumstances are mentioned; respecting most of the towns, no information
at all has come down to us. The statement in the Odyssey,[71] where Crete
is spoken of accidentally, is very singular; it does not afford us much
assistance, but only leads us to the conclusion, that all the statements
in the Odyssey are much more recent than those in the Iliad, and that the
conclusion of the Odyssey is even of much later origin than the rest: the
part I allude to must have been composed at a time which we cannot place
farther back than the commencement of the Olympiads. Odysseus there says,
that he comes from Crete, which was inhabited by the Dorians, Pelasgians,
Cydonians, and Eteocretans. The Eteocretans are here mentioned as the
most ancient inhabitants; next come the Cydonians, without any remark
being made as to their nationality; the Pelasgians are otherwise not
mentioned at all in those parts; and the Dorians, of course, are the
later immigrants from Peloponnesus. Another and more probable statement,
in Herodotus, is, that the Cretans were either Carians or Lycians, or
Carians mixed with Lycians. These nations, whom we regard as barbarous,
are said to have emigrated from Crete, which implies nothing beyond the
fact that they belonged to the same race. The ancient inhabitants, as I
have already said, afterwards appear partly in subject places, and partly
as serfs in the larger towns.
At no period of our history did Crete form one connected state; it
consisted of a number of independent towns which, tradition says,
amounted to one hundred; this is at least a proof of a very dense
population.
The Eteocratans, as a nation, disappear in history, without there being
any definite mention of the immigration of their later rulers, and
stories were invented in ancient times to account for this disappearance.
According to one tradition, all the old Cretans, with the exception of
two tribes, emigrated, in order to avenge the death of Minos, and all
perished; while, according to another, they were all carried off by a
plague, which occurred after the Trojan war. But all this is foolish.
Crete is a large island, presenting a grave, and not an Ionian aspect,
but in many parts it is rich and fertile. The great woody mountain
Ida (Ἴδη is the Ionian name of a woody mountain) extends through the
whole length of the island. Mythology describes this mountain as the
birth-place of Zeus, and the other statement that he was born on mount
Ida near Troy arose only from a confusion. The Cretan Ida is covered with
most magnificent forests, and furnishes not only timber for shipbuilding,
but is also rich in medicinal herbs. The coast contains a number of the
most fertile plains. All the promontories of Crete are branches issuing
from mount Ida.
In the historical times, the number of Cretan towns, if we gather the
names from the different writers, amounts to thirty. How many of them
were sovereign and how many subject, is a question which can be answered
only approximately.
The greatest towns were CNOSOS (better than Cnossos) and GORTYN, or in
Latin poets Gortyna, like Cortona and Ancona. The Latin language does
not recognise the termination _on_, whence in names of male persons the
Greek ων is shortened into a single _o_; hence the Romans in the earlier
times did not say _Solon_, but _Solo_, and the editors of Cicero should
always write the name in this manner. In later times this practice was
forgotten; and Pliny has Hieron and Solon; but names of towns are
generally lengthened by the addition of _a_. Both Cnosos and Gortyn
were very ancient Cretan towns, but were taken possession of by later
settlers. The magnitude of the ruins of Gortyn, situated on a beautiful
table land, points to a brilliant period, which must have been a very
early one. Near them is the labyrinth, the construction of which is
ascribed to Minos; it is however not fabulous, but a mighty palace-like
building of the heroic age. CYDONIA reminds us of the people of the same
name in the Odyssey. LYCTOS is expressly mentioned as a Spartan colony.
I point out these places to you because they are of some historical
importance; I might add a great many others, but they are only empty
names.
During the Peloponnesian war, when all Greece was divided between Athens
and Sparta, the Cretans sided with neither. There are a tolerable number
of Cretan monuments with inscriptions, belonging to the period of the
power of the Aetolians; they are for the most part treaties by which they
were admitted by the Aetolians into the relation of sympolity.