reliable, point to the conclusion that the Etruscans may be on
the whole included among the Indo-Germans. ... But even
granting those points of connection, the Etruscan people
appears withal scarcely less isolated. 'The Etruscans,'
Dionysius said long ago, 'are like no other nation in language
and manners'; and we have nothing to add to his statement. ...
Reliable traces of any advance of the Etruscans beyond the
Tiber, by land, are altogether wanting. ... South of the Tiber
no Etruscan settlement can be pointed out as having owed its
origin to founders who came by land; and that no indication
whatever is discernible of any serious pressure by the
Etruscans upon the Latin nation."
_T. Mommsen,
History of Rome,
book 1, chapter 9._
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EUBŒA.
"The island of Eubœa, long and narrow like Krête, and
exhibiting a continuous backbone of lofty mountains from
northwest to southeast, is separated from Bœotia at one point
by a strait so narrow (celebrated in antiquity under the name
of the Eurīpus) that the two were connected by a bridge for a
large portion of the historical period of Greece, erected
during the later times of the Peloponnesian war by the
inhabitants of Chalkis [Chalcis]. Its general want of breadth
leaves little room for plains. The area of the island consists
principally of mountain, rock, dell, and ravine, suited in
many parts for pasture, but rarely convenient for
grain-culture or town habitations. Some plains there were,
however, of great fertility, especially that of Lelantum,
bordering on the sea near Chalkis, and continuing from that
city in a southerly direction towards Eretria. Chalkis and
Eretria, both situated on the western coast, and both
occupying parts of this fertile plain, were the two principal
places in the island: the domain of each seems to have
extended across the island from sea to sea. ... Both were in
early times governed by an oligarchy, which among the
Chalcidians was called the Hippobotæ, or Horse feeders,--
proprietors probably of most part of the plain called
Lelantum."
_G. Grote,
History of Greece,
part 2, chapter 12._
See, also, NEGROPONT.
EUBOIC TALENT.
See TALENT.
EUCHITES, The.
See MYSTICISM.
EUDES, King of France
(in partition with Charles the Simple), A. D. 887-898.
EUDOSES, The.
See AVIONES.
EUGENE (Prince) of Savoy, Campaigns of.
See HUNGARY: A. D. 1699-1718;
GERMANY: A. D. 1704;
ITALY (SAVOY AND PIEDMONT): A. D. 1701-1713;
NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1708-1709, and 1710-1712.
EUGENE I., Pope, A. D. 655-657.
Eugene II., Pope, A. D. 824-827.
Eugene III., Pope, A. D. 1145-1153.
Eugene IV., Pope, A. D. 1431-1447.
EUGENIANS, The.
See HY-NIALS.
EUMENES, and the wars of the Diadochi.
See MACEDONIA: B. C. 323-316.
EUMOLPHIDÆ, The.
See PHYLÆ.
EUPATRIDÆ, The.
"The Eupatridæ [in ancient Athens] are the wealthy and
powerful men, belonging to the most distinguished families in
all the various gentes, and principally living in the city of
Athens, after the consolidation of Attica: from them are
distinguished the middling and lower people, roughly
classified into husbandmen and artisans. To the Eupatridæ is
ascribed a religious as well as a political and social
ascendency. They are represented as the source of all
authority on matters both sacred and profane,"
_G. Grote,
History of Greece,
part 2, chapter 10._
EUROKS, OR YUROKS.
See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: MODOCS.
EUROPE.
A HISTORICAL SKETCH.
A general sketch of the history of Europe at large cannot, for
obvious reasons, be constructed of quotations from the
historians, on the plan followed in other parts of this work.
The editor has found it necessary, therefore, to introduce
here an essay of his own.
The first inhabitants of the continent of Europe have left no
trace of their existence on the surface of the land. The
little that we know of them has been learned by the discovery
of deeply buried remains, including a few bones and skulls,
many weapons and tools which they had fashioned out of stone
and bone, and some other rude marks of their hands which time
has not destroyed. The places in which these remains are
found--under deposits that formed slowly in ancient river beds
and in caves--have convinced geologists that the people whose
existence they reveal lived many thousands of years ago, and
that the continent of Europe in their time was very different
from the Europe of the present day, in its climate, in its
aspect, and in its form. They find reason to suppose that the
peninsula of Italy, as well as that of Spain, was then an
isthmus which joined Europe to Africa; and this helps to
explain the fact that remains of such animals as the elephant,
the lion, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, and the hyena, as
well as the mammoth, are found with the remains of these early
men. They all seem to have belonged, together, to a state of
things, on the surface of the earth, which was greatly changed
before the men and the animals that we have historical
knowledge of appeared.
The Stone Age.
These primitive Europeans were evidently quite at the bottom
of the savage state. They had learned no use of metals, since
every relic of their workmanship that can be found is of
stone, or bone, or wood. It is thought possible that they
shaped rough vessels out of unbaked clay; but that is
uncertain. There is nothing to show that they had domesticated
any animals. It is plain that they dwelt in caves, wherever
nature provided such dwellings; but what shelters they may
have built elsewhere for themselves is unknown.
In one direction, only, did these ancient people exhibit a
faculty finer than we see in the lowest savages of the present
day: they were artists, in a way. They have left carvings and
drawings of animals--the latter etched with a sharp point on
horns, bones, and stones--which are remarkable for uncultured
men.
The period in man's life on the earth at which these people
lived--the period before metals were known--has been named by
archæologists the Stone Age. But the Stone Age covers two
stages of human culture--one in which stone implements were
fashioned unskilfully, and a second in which they were
finished with expert and careful hands. The first is called
the Palæolithic or Old Stone Age, the second the Neolithic or
New Stone Age. Between the two periods in Europe there seems
to have been a long interval of time, and a considerable
change in the condition of the country, as well as in that of
its people.
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In fact, the Europe of the Neolithic Age was probably not very
different in form and climate from the Europe of our own day.
Relics of the human life of that time are abundantly scattered
over the face of the continent. There are notable deposits of
them in the so-called "kitchen-middens" of Denmark, which are
great mounds of shells,--shells of oysters and other
molluscs,--which these ancient fishermen had opened and
emptied, and then cast upon a refuse heap. Buried in those
mounds, many bits of their workmanship have been preserved,
and many hints of their manner of life are gleaned from the
signs and tokens which these afford. They had evidently risen
some degrees above the state of the men of the Palæolithic or
Old Stone Age; but they were inferior in art.
The Bronze Age.
The discovery and use of copper--the metal most easily worked,
and most frequently found in the metallic state--is the event
by which archæologists mark the beginning of a second state in
early civilizations. The period during which copper, and
copper hardened by an alloy of tin, are the only metals found
in use, they call the Bronze Age. There is no line of positive
division between this and the Neolithic period which it
followed. The same races appear to have advanced from the one
stage to the other, and probably some were in possession of
tools and weapons of bronze, while others were still
contenting themselves with implements of stone.
Lake Dwellings.
In many parts of Europe, especially in Switzerland and
northern Italy, plain traces of some curious habitations of
people who lived through the later Stone Age into the Bronze
Age, and even after it, have been brought to light. These are
the "lake dwellings," or "lacustrine habitations," as they
have been called, which have excited interest in late years.
They were generally built on piles, driven into a lake-bottom,
at such distance from shore as would make them easy of defence
against enemies. The foundations of whole villages of these
dwellings have been found in the Swiss and North Italian
lakes, and less numerously elsewhere. From the lake-mud under
and around them, a great quantity of relics of the
lake-dwellers have been taken, and many facts about their arts
and mode of life have been learned. It is known that, even
before a single metal had come into their hands, they had
begun to cultivate the earth; had raised wheat and barley and
flax; had domesticated the horse, the ox, the sheep, the goat,
the pig and the dog; had become fairly skilful in weaving, in
rope-making, and in the art of the potter, but without the
potter's wheel.
Gradually copper and bronze made their appearance among the
implements of these people, as modern search discovers them
imbedded, layer upon layer, in the old ooze of the lake-beds
where they were dropped. In time, iron, too, reveals itself
among their possessions, showing that they lived in their
lake-villages from the later Stone Age into that third period
of the early process of civilization which is named the Iron
Age--when men first acquired the use of the most useful of all
the metals. It appears, in fact, that the lake-dwellings were
occupied even down to Roman times, since articles of Roman
make have been found in the ruins of them.
Barrows.
In nearly all parts of Europe there are found burial mounds,
called barrows, which contain buried relics of people who
lived at one or the other of the three periods named. For the
most part, they represent inhabitants of the Neolithic and of
the Bronze Ages. In Great Britain some of these barrows are
long, some are round; and the skulls found in the long barrows
are different in shape from those in the round ones, showing a
difference of race. The people to whom the first belonged are
called "long-headed," or "dolichocephalic"; the others are
called "broad-headed," or "brachycephalic." In the opinion of
some ethnologists, who study this subject of the distinctions
of race in the human family, the broad-headed people were
ancestors of the Celtic or Keltic tribes, whom the Romans
subdued in Gaul and Britain; while the long-headed men were of
a preceding race, which the Celts, when they came, either
drove out of all parts of Europe, except two or three
mountainous corners, or else absorbed by intermarriage. The
Basques of northwestern Spain, and some of their neighbors on
the French side of the Pyrenees, are supposed to be survivals
of this very ancient people; and there are suspected to be
traces of their existence seen in the dark-haired and
dark-skinned people of parts of Wales, Ireland, Corsica, North
Africa, and elsewhere.
The Aryan Nations.
At least one part of this conjecture has much to rest upon.
The inhabitants of western Europe when our historical
knowledge of them--that is, our recorded and reported
knowledge of them--begins, were, certainly, for the most
part, Celtic peoples, and it is extremely probable that they
had been occupying the country as long as the period
represented by the round barrows. It is no less probable that
they were the lake-dwellers of Switzerland, North Italy, and
other regions; and that they did, in fact, displace some
earlier people in most parts of Western Europe.
The Celts--whose nearly pure descendants are found now in the
Bretons of France, the Welsh, the Highland Scotch and the
Celtic Irish, and who formed the main stock of the larger part
of the French nation--were one branch of the great family of
nations called Aryan or Indo-European. The Aryan peoples are
assumed to be akin to one another--shoots from one
stem--because their languages are alike in grammatical
structure and contain great numbers of words that are
manifestly formed from the same original "root"; and because
they differ in these respects from all other languages. The
nations thus identified as Aryan are the nations that have
acted the most important parts in all human history except the
history of extremely ancient times. Besides the Celtic peoples
already mentioned, they include the English, the Dutch, the
Germans, and the Scandinavians, forming the Teutonic race; the
Russians, Poles, and others of the Slavonic group; the ancient
Greeks and Romans, with their modern representatives, and the
Persians and Hindus in Asia. According to the evidence of
their languages, there must have been a time and a place, in
the remote past, when and where a primitive Aryan race, which
was ancestral to all these nations, lived and multiplied until
it outgrew its original country and began to send forth
successive "swarms," or migrating hordes, as many unsettled
races have been seen to do within the historic age.
{991}
It is hopeless, perhaps, to think of determining the time when
such a dispersion of the Aryan peoples began; but many
scholars believe it possible to trace, by various marks and
indications, in language and elsewhere, the lines of movement
in the migration, so far as to guess with some assurance the
region of the primitive Aryan home; but thus far there are
great disagreements in the guessing. Until recent years, the
prevailing judgment pointed to that highland district in
Central Asia which lies north of the Hindoo-Koosh range of
mountains, and between the upper waters of the Oxus and
Jaxartes. But later studies have discredited this first theory
and started many opposing ones. The strong tendency now is to
believe that the cradle of all the peoples of Aryan speech was
somewhere in Europe, rather than in Asia, and in the north of
Europe rather than in the center or the south. At the same
time, there seems to be a growing opinion that the language of
the Aryans was communicated to conquered peoples so
extensively that its spread is not a true measure of the
existing diffusion of the race.
The Celtic Branch.
Whatever may have been the starting-point of the Aryan
migrations, it is supposed that the branch now distinguished
as Celtic was the first to separate from the parent stem and
to acquire for itself a new domain. It occupied southwestern
Europe, from northern Spain to the Rhine, and across the
Channel to the British islands, extending eastward into
Switzerland, North It&ly and the Tyrol. But little of what the
tribes and nations forming this Celtic race did is known,
until the time when another Aryan people, better civilized,
came into collision with them, and drew them into the written
history of the world by conquering them and making them its
subjects.
The people who did this were the Romans, and the Romans and
the Greeks are believed to have been carried into the two
peninsulas which they inhabited, respectively, by one and the
same movement in the Aryan dispersion. Their languages show
more affinity to one another than to the other Aryan tongues,
and there are other evidences of a near relationship between
them; though they separated, it is quite certain, long before
the appearance of either in history.
The Hellenes, or Greeks.
The Greeks, or Hellenes, as they called themselves, were the
first among the Aryan peoples in Europe to make themselves
historically known, and the first to write the record which
transmits history from generation to generation. The peninsula
in which they settled themselves is a very peculiar one in its
formation. It is crossed in different directions by mountain
ranges, which divide the land into parts naturally separated
from one another, and which form barriers easily defended
against invading foes. Between the mountains lie numerous
fertile valleys. The coast is ragged with gulfs and bays,
which notch it deeply on all sides, making the whole main
peninsula a cluster of minor peninsulas, and supplying the
people with harbors which invite them to a life of seafaring
and trade. It is surrounded, moreover, with islands, which
repeat the invitation.
Almost necessarily, in a country marked with such features so
strongly, the Greeks became divided politically into small
independent states--city-states they have been named--and
those on the sea-coast became engaged very early in trade with
other countries of the Mediterranean Sea. Every city of
importance in Greece was entirely sovereign in the government
of itself and of the surrounding territory which formed its
domain. The stronger among them extended their dominion over
some of the weaker or less valiant ones; but even then the
subject cities kept a considerable measure of independence.
There was no organization of national government to embrace
the whole, nor any large part, of Greece. Certain among the
states were sometimes united in temporary leagues, or
confederacies, for common action in war; but these were
unstable alliances, rather than political unions. In their
earliest form, the Greek city-states were governed by kings,
whose power appears to have been quite limited, and who were
leaders rather than sovereigns. But kingship disappeared from
most of the states in Greece proper before they reached the
period of distinct and accepted history. The kings were first
displaced by aristocracies--ruling families, which took all
political rights and privileges to themselves, and allowed
their fellows (whom they usually oppressed) no part or voice
in public affairs. In most instances these aristocracies, or
oligarchies, were overthrown, after a time, by bold agitators
who stirred up a revolution, and then contrived, while
confusion prevailed, to gather power into their own hands.
Almost every Greek city had its time of being ruled by one or
more of these Tyrants, as they were called. Some of them, like
Pisistratus of Athens, ruled wisely and justly for the most
part, and were not "tyrants" in the modern sense of the term;
but all who gained and held a princely power unlawfully were
so named by the Greeks. The reign of the Tyrants was nowhere
lasting. They were driven out of one city after another until
they disappeared. Then the old aristocracies came uppermost
again in some cities, and ruled as before. But some, like
Athens, had trained the whole body of their citizens to such
intelligence and spirit that neither kingship nor oligarchy
would be endured any longer, and the people undertook to
govern themselves. These were the first democracies--the first
experiments in popular government--that history gives any
account of. "The little commonwealths of Greece," says a great
historian, "were the first states at once free and civilized
which the world ever saw. They were the first states which
gave birth to great statesmen, orators, and generals who did
great deeds, and to great historians who set down those great
deeds in writing. It was in the Greek commonwealths, in short,
that the political and intellectual life of the world began."
In the belief of the Greeks, or of most men among them, their
early history was embodied with truth in the numerous legends
and ancient poems which they religiously preserved; but people
in modern times look differently upon those wonderful myths
and epics, studying them with deep interest, but under more
critical views. They throw much light on the primitive life of
the Hellenes, and more light upon the development of the
remarkable genius and spirit of those thoughtful and
imaginative people; but of actual history there are only
glimpses and guesses to be got from them.
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The Homeric poems, the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," describe a
condition of things in which the ruling state of Peloponnesus
(the southern peninsula of Greece) was a kingdom of the
Achaians, having its capital at Mycenæ, in Argolis,--the realm
of King Agamemnon,--and in which Athens is unknown to the
poet. Within recent years, Dr. Schliemann has excavated the
ruins of Mycenæ, and has found evidence that it really must
have been, in very early times, the seat of a strong and rich
monarchy. But the Achaian kingdom had entirely disappeared,
and the Achaian people had shrunk to an insignificant
community, on the Gulf of Corinth, when the first assured
views of Greek history open to us.
The Dorians.
It seems to be a fact that the Achaians had been overwhelmed
by a great invasion of more barbarous Greek tribes from the
North, very much as the Roman Empire, in later times, was
buried under an avalanche of barbarism from Germany. The
invaders were a tribe or league of tribes called Dorians, who
had been driven from their own previous home on the slopes of
the Pindus mountain range. Their movement southward was part,
as appears, of an extensive shifting of place, or migration,
that occurred at that time (not long, it is probable, before
the beginning of the historic period) among the tribes of
Hellas. The Dorians claimed that in conquering Peloponnesus
they were recovering a heritage from which their chiefs had
been anciently expelled, and their legends were shaped
accordingly. The Dorian chiefs appeared in these legends as
descendants of Hercules, and the tradition of the conquest
became a story of "The Return of the Heraclids."
The principal states founded or possessed and controlled by
the Dorians in Peloponnesus, after their conquest, were
Sparta, or Lacedæmon, Argos, and Corinth. The Spartans were
the most warlike of the Greeks,--the most resolute and
energetic,--and their leadership in practical affairs common
to the whole came to be generally acknowledged. At the same
time they had little of the intellectual superiority which
distinguished some of their Hellenic kindred in so remarkable
a degree. Their state was organized on military principles;
its constitution (the body of famous ordinances ascribed to
Lycurgus) was a code of rigid discipline, which dealt with the
citizen as a soldier always under training for war, and
demanded from him the utmost simplicity of life. Their form of
government combined a peculiar monarchy (having two royal
families and two kings) with an aristocratic senate (the
Gerousia), and a democratic assembly (which voted on matters
only as submitted to it by the senate), with an irresponsible
executive over the whole, consisting of five men called the
Ephors. This singular government, essentially aristocratic or
oligarchical, was maintained, with little disturbance or
change, through the whole independent history of Sparta. In
all respects, the Spartans were the most conservative and the
least progressive among the politically important Greeks.
At the beginning of the domination of the Dorians in
Peloponnesus, their city of Argos took the lead, and was the
head of a league which included Corinth and other city-states.
But Sparta soon rose to rivalry with Argos; then reduced it to
a secondary place, and finally subjugated it completely.
The Ionians.