HOMER AND IONIA
_Who were the Ionians_?
While the ancients believed that the Homeric poems were composed in the
Greek settlements on the Asian coast, and brought from Ionia to Hellas,
modern critics often hold that the earliest lays were made in Greece,
but that our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ contain a large percentage of much
later Ionian work. In these circumstances it is natural to ask, _Who
were the Ionians_? a point on which Homer throws no light. The Ionian
name is not mentioned in the Catalogue any more than the Aeolian and
Dorian names, and "the tunic-trailing Iaones" only appear in _Iliad_,
xiii. 685, where they are very hard pressed in defending the part of
the Achaean wall where it was lowest, near the ships of Aias and the
dead Protesilaus. They are brigaded with Locrian light-armed archers,
the Boeotians, Phthians, and Epeians of Elis, and "the picked men of
the Athenians," whose leaders are Menestheus, king of Athens, as in the
Catalogue, and three others. Thus the Ionians appear to be equivalent
to the Athenians. The epithet "chiton-trailers" occurs but this once
in Homer, and, of course, is inappropriate to the warlike occasion:
the Ionians of the seventh century certainly wore the short tight
_cypassis_, not the chiton, when actively engaged. In the Ionian hymn
to Apollo the Ionians are "chiton-trailers," but the occasion is a
public festival.
The whole passage, according to Mr. Leaf, is "very probably an Attic
interpolation, with the object of giving respectable antiquity to the
hegemony of Athens over the Ionian tribes"; but, as the Ionians of
Asia were proud of their connection with Athens, and far from proud,
says Herodotus, of the name Ionian, _they_ are as likely as the
Athenians to have added the lines. In short, the Ionian name, like the
Dorian and the Aeolian names, never occurs in the _Iliad_; while the
Athenian king, Menestheus, never draws sword or throws spear in the
poem. It will be observed that, when he does mention Athenian leaders,
Menestheus the king, Bias, Stichios, and Pheidas, Homer does not, as is
his custom, assign to any one of them a divine ancestor, nor even name
the father of any one of them, except Petoos, father of Menestheus. He
tells no anecdote about any of them. In the Catalogue (ii. 546-551) the
Athenians alone appear as worshippers of dead men, though in Mycenaean
pre-Homeric Greece this rite was certainly part of religion, as also
in historic Greece, and in Attica it has an uninterrupted record. It
is not inconceivable, though by no means certain, that the Athenians
interpolated their own mention in the Catalogue, with the very few
allusions to their king, Menestheus; but except for these, the epics
almost ignore Attica, ignore the Ionians, and, to learn anything of
their early history, we must turn to other sources.
By the time of Pausanias (post-Christian) and much earlier, for
Euripides wrote a play against the myth, and it was current in the time
of Herodotus, the Athenians and Ionians had arranged for themselves a
fabulous genealogy. Their purpose was to connect themselves with the
supposed most genuine prehistoric Hellenes, namely, those of Achilles's
realm in Hellas, part of the kingdom of Peleus, in south-west Thessaly.
In precisely the same way the Scottish makers of fabulous genealogy
connected the Stewart kings,--really Fitz Alans, with the Dalriadic
Royal House of the Scoti from Ireland (descendants of the Scythian
princess, Scota), who invaded Argyll about 500 A.D. The name of these
Scoti of Ireland had finally been given to the whole country north of
Tweed and Esk, and so its kings must be _Eteoscoti_, genuine Scots.
The Athenian and Ionian genealogists worked on the same principles.
Their heroes are as apocryphal as Princess Scota of Scythia, and their
genealogies vary with the motives of each genealogist. They believed
that they were "Pelasgians," that they did not originally bear the name
which was by their time prepotent, "Hellenes," and was applied to all
Greeks; but, in the fable given by Pausanias they hitched themselves
thus on to the Hellenes and Achaioi whom Achilles led from Thessaly.
To the seacoast on the south of the Corinthian gulf, the _Aigialos_ or
"sea-board" (held by Agamemnon in the Catalogue) came Xuthus, son of
Hellen, out of Thessaly; being expelled, after Hellen's death, by his
brothers. He had first fled to Athens, which in all these fabrications
represents herself as not originally Hellenic or Achaean, but as
the constant asylum of all distressed Achaean princes; Theban, like
Oedipous, or Eleian, like the descendants of Nestor, and Orestes,
having here Homeric warrant (_Odyssey,_ iii. 306). We have a parallel
in the continuous efforts of Highland genealogists, at one period, to
claim descent from Normans who came north out of England and married
the heiresses of the Celtic chiefs; as the Campbells (Crooked-Mouths)
claimed descent from a Norman "De Campo Bello," or Beauchamp.
On these lines, then, the Hellene from Thessaly, Xuthus, married at
Athens the heiress of the king, the daughter of Erechtheus; and had
two sons, Achaeus and Ion. Thus the Achaeans of south-west Thessaly
have a little of Athenian blood, for Achaeus went back to Thessaly and
reigned there; and the Ionians of Athens are mixed up with the sons of
Hellen in a more roundabout way. Ion, son of Xuthus, son of Hellen, was
domiciled in the _Aigialos_, the south coast of the Corinthian gulf,
because his father, Xuthus, had been driven thither from Athens, and
reigned there. Ion succeeded to the throne of the _Aigialos_, but was
buried in Attica, having died there while in command of an Athenian
army. His seacoast subjects on the southern seaboard of the Corinthian
gulf, originally "Pelasgians," but now called after him "Ionians,"
were thus in relations with Attica, and they migrated thither in a
body, when they were driven from home by the Achaeans whom the Dorian
invaders had expelled from their seats in the southern and western
Peloponnese. The Ionians, so far, appear as a pre-Achaean people of
the northern coast of Peloponnesus, Hellenic only through their Royal
House, that of Ion; and later settled in Attica, among a people also
pre-Hellenic in origin.
Attica later offered an asylum to the Neleidae, descendants of Nestor,
who, like the Fitz Alan Stewarts in Scotland, obtained the throne of
the country in which they settled. When a son of Codrus, the last of
these Neleid kings of Athens, led a colony from Attica to the Asian
coast, the most part of the Attic emigrants were Ionians settled in
Attica, not Athenians, though some Athenians accompanied them; and the
Royal contingent, starting from Athens, settled at Miletus.[1]
Thus, in this legend, the people of Attica, in the main, are not
Hellenic, not Achaean in origin, but are connected with the Thessalian
Hellenes and Achaioi by Royal marriages; while, though not in origin
Ionians, they are intermingled, both in Attica and in the Asian
settlements, with that seacoast people, themselves only Achaean through
the grandson of Hellen, Ion, their king.
Historic Greek inquirers understood the matter in that way, and we must
first examine their "Pelasgian" theories.
With theories ancient or modern, fantastic or scientific, or both
scientific and fantastic, about "Pelasgians" and other "races" in
the prehistoric south of Europe; with deductions from place-names
in Greece, the isles, and the Asian coasts; with speculations about
"Aryans" and "non-Aryans," long-headed and short-headed, dark-haired
and light-haired peoples, I have nothing to do. We have not statistics
of pigmentation in prehistoric or in historic Greece, or craniological
statistics. We cannot translate certain fourth century inscriptions
from Crete, written in Greek characters, bat in a language which,
though not improbably "Indo-European," must have been to Greeks as
unintelligible as to ourselves. We cannot even read the characters of
Minoan writing. The much manipulated legends of movements of peoples
which reach us in Greek books vary enormously, as Pausanias says, from
each other, and are no more historical than the Irish legends of the
migrations of the Scots from Scythia to Scotland by way of Athens,
Egypt, and Spain. My sole object is to make intelligible the version
of their own origin which the Athenians and Ionians offered, and to
show that they did, in some moods, draw a distinction between their own
ancestors and Homer's Hellenes and Achaeans. There _was_ a distinction,
in tradition, religion, rites, and customs, but there may have been no
great difference in blood and language.
One thing, then, is certain, the Athenians and Ionians admitted that
they were Hellenic in race and speech merely through slight contact
with Achaeans. Attica was never "Achaeanised" in religion, burial
rites, and other ritual. Attica was never conquered by Achaeans, she
stood apart. Now this claim to be a region apart, conquered neither
by Achaeans nor Dorians, is certainly supported by the fact that the
traditions and legends of Attica stand widely remote in all respects
from the ancient Achaean legends in Homer, and in Theban and Minyan and
Aetolian "saga," or bardic traditions.[2] The traditions of the Ionians
in Asia, again, are connected with those of Attica rather than with the
Achaean saga, although the Ionians of Asia were not, and were known not
to be, by any means of solely Attic descent. This is confessed.
Returning to the Ionians of Asia, and their account of themselves given
in the time of Herodotus, we find that it agrees with the fabulous
genealogies already studied. The Ionians claimed to have in-habited
twelve cities of what, in the time of Herodotus, was called "Achaia,"
the _Aigialos_ in the northern Peloponnese;--that they were driven
thence to Attica by Achaeans, fugitives from the Dorians in other parts
of Peloponnese, is asserted by Herodotus. Ionians were also, of old,
_in Boeotia_, neighbours of the "Cadmeians," and some of the Cadmeians
were admitted, on conditions, to Athenian citizenship.[3]
It thus appears that the people later called, in Asia, "Ionians," had
been dwellers on the coasts of Boeotia and Attica, as well as on the
northern Peloponnese. That they were then and there known as "Ionians"
it would be difficult to prove. Homer has nothing to say of the Ionians
as a peculiar people in the Peloponnesus or Boeotia. Of their twelve
Peloponnesian cities, the Catalogue gives Orneai, Pellênê, Aigeira, and
Helikê to Agamemnon.[4]
If Homer really knew any people called Ionians at all, they were
Athenian. Meanwhile the people of the Ionian name in Asia were,
according to Herodotus, "a mixed multitude," including members of the
communities known to Homer as Abantes of Euboea, with forty ships,
Phocians, even Arcadians, Cretans, and many others. All these could
only be lumped together as "Ionians" after their settlement in Asia,
and their alliance with the Ionian colonists from Attica.
If the so-called Ionian emigrants were thus mixed, and if some of
them possessed Achaean lays or legends, and at first practised only
the rites mentioned by Homer, such as cremation and cairn-burial, it
would appear that the pre-Hellenic element among these settlers in
Asia overpowered the other elements, or that the Cyclic poets of Ionia
were mainly of pre-Hellenic origin. Their poems, at all events, are
in harmony with Attic ideas and usages, not with Homer's statements:
and, as we shall show, the Ionian poets cannot have tampered much with
our Homer, for the two Epics never admit the Ionian manners which
are copiously illustrated by the Ionian poets of the Trojan war, the
Cyclics.
According to Thucydides as well as Herodotus, the so-called Ionian
migration was a movement of mixed peoples. The leading men of various
Achaean regions had found an asylum in Attica during the troubles
caused by the Dorian incursions, and "so greatly increased the number
of inhabitants that Attica became incapable of containing them, and was
at last obliged to send colonies to Ionia."[5]
We are thus on almost historic ground when we believe that the settlers
in Ionia, though their tendency was to claim Athenian connections, were
"a mixed multitude" from many States, mainly of the seacoasts; and it
is natural to suppose that they intermarried with Carians at Miletus,
as Herodotus says that they also did with Lycians, and other Asiatic
civilised peoples. Though alien religions might be accepted by the
settlers, these beliefs would be Hellenised, as usual; and the Olympian
Poseidon, the Homeric sea-god, patronised the Ionian league of cities.
We really have no historical evidence for the earliest conditions of
Ionian life in Asia. Mr. Murray supposes the early settlers to have
lost all "tribal obligations," all "old laws," and even "household
and family life." "It looks as if the ancestors of the Ionians had in
the extreme stress of their migrations lost hold upon their Achaean
traditions." But the Ionians had no _Achaean_ traditions to lose! They
built walls to their new cities, and inside the wall a man "could take
breath. He could become for a time a man again, instead of a frightened
beast." A terrible picture is drawn of the sufferings and ferocious
cruelties of the invaders, who, however, remain orthodox in religion
after all, and confident in "the manifest help of Zeus and Apollo."[6]
This is not the condition of frightened beasts. In fact, they were not
in that terror-stricken condition when they were able to build walls.
No doubt there was a great deal of rough work; though, as shall be
shown, judging from the art of the Dipylon, the Attic colonists were
highly civilised men, with large ships, and everything handsome about
them, who could make well-organised short voyages, with abundance of
stores. Nor, when they landed, were they, like the early Puritans of
New England, in a country of naked savages. Lycians and Carians, in
Homer, are as much civilised as the Achaeans: a Carian woman was not a
bloodthirsty squaw.
It is not to late legends, but to archaeology, that we must look for
information: "on archaeology fell, and falls, the burden of proof in
this inquiry."[7]
First, as to the culture of the mainland which the colonists left;
we do know through excavations at Sparta something about _Dorian_
civilisation there as early as the ninth century B.C., and it is
probable that the Ionians in Europe were rather in advance of than
behind the contemporary Dorians in the arts of life. The precinct of
Artemis Orthia at Sparta has been excavated, and yields "remains of a
temple in crude brick with wooden frame-work ... this structure the
discoverers" (members of the British School of Athens) "refer to the
ninth century B.C." A similar temple "has appeared also in Hellenic
Asia, at Neandria in the Aeolic Troad."
Near the Orthian temple was "a great Altar of Sacrifice, whose
orientation was the same."[8]
Homer's men, we saw, usually sacrifice hecatombs outside of the temple,
though twelve kine are sacrificed _in_ the temple of the Trojan Athena.
The votive objects found in this Spartan precinct of the ninth century
were pottery in the Geometric, post-Aegean style, with ivory plaques,
at least as large as an ordinary playing card, covering the safety pin
of the _fibula_. The earliest designs incised on these plaques of ivory
"repeat in more than one case Aegean motives" (such as the goddess
holding a bird in each hand); the style is touched with Mesopotamian
influences, but more deeply by the art of the Bronze Age in the area
of the Danube. The "double coil" or "pair of spectacles" shape of
fibula-cover, familiar in the Danubian region, also occurs.[9]
Such being the art in the new home of the Dorian invaders, we expect
to find art rather better than worse among the Ionians at Attica at
the same period--the ninth century B.C., which is doubtless much later
than the central period of the Ionian migration to Asia. The tombs of
Spata in Attica, and the treasure from Aegina in the British Museum,
are taken as relics of the late "Sub-Aegean" art of, say, the tenth
to ninth centuries. The ivories of Sparta "suggest some art of West
Asia": the Aegina objects in gold are partly "Aegean" survivals, partly
show unmistakable Egyptian influence passed through an Oriental medium.
The well-known gold cup of Aegina, with its rosette and four spirals,
has a parallel from one of the rich royal tombs of the Mycenaean
acropolis: there are also, as at Mycenae, many thin round plaques of
gold, probably sewn originally on robes. The rings bear no signets: one
is in the form of a buckler, like a reduced Mycenaean figure-of-eight
shield, inlaid with blue glass paste. The figure of a man or god
holding a water-fowl in each hand, and wearing a loin-cloth, is of a
modified Egyptian character. The date of the objects is placed between
the tenth and ninth centuries.[10]
Probably the Ionian emigrants from the mainland near Aegina left behind
them some, and probably they took with them other craftsmen capable of
executing such work in gold as we have described. But they also left
in Attica the potters who, about the ninth to eighth centuries, B.C.,
covered the great vases, which did duty for headstones in the cemetery
of the Dipylon, with geometric ornament and barbaric representations of
life. It was no barbarian life that they knew, crudely as they designed
it. The people of Athens, as the vases prove, had four-horse chariots;
had large ships manned by many oarsmen, and furnished with a submerged
sharp ram. The warriors in the chariots wore shields slung by baldrics:
in form they were circular, in other cases they exaggerated, in much
smaller dimensions, the features of the Aegean figure-of-eight shield,
or were smaller forms of the Aegean oblong shield. Here and there a
spearman holds in front of him an oval shield _by the handle_. The
swords are straight short swords, worn at right angles to the waist,
not heavy Homeric swords, slung by a baldric from the shoulder. In
some cases, however, heavy leaf-shaped blades are used, both for cut
and thrust.
The people had great spectacular funerals. The body of the dead lay
on a bier in the house, while men, women, and children, mere skeleton
figures, plucked out their hair with both hands. Then the body was
borne in a chariot to the grave (it was seldom cremated), and a
procession of charioteers followed.
The swords and spears were of iron, none had richly adorned hilts of
ivory and gold.
The gold work of the period, chiefly stamped on thin bands, was not
quite so crude as that of the potter with his triangle reversed for a
body, the monstrous thighs and calves of his men, their bird-shaped
inhuman faces,--all of them remote from the Aegean art, and apparently
of northern origin. The artists in gold work were in advance of the
vase-painters, whose horses usually have a thing like a fish for head,
set on a neck like a serpent.
The Attic region, towards the end of the Ionian migration, thus
presents the decay of Aegean and the bloom of geometric decoration, and
of barbaric, probably northern design. None the less the life depicted
so barbarously was no barbaric life. Bad as is the art, you see that
the life is Hellenic.
At the same time the Dipylon life is wholly un-Homeric. The manner of
burial, the huge vases in place of the cairn and pillar, the metal of
the weapons, iron, their want of adornment, the size, shape, and mode
of carrying the sword, the tearing out of their own hair by mourners,
the size of the shields, and even the dress of the women who, in my
opinion, wear skirts, not chitons, are all of a nature unknown to the
Epics. Poets of the Dipylon age could never have preserved the uniform
Homeric descriptions of details totally unlike what they saw in actual
existence.
About the relics of the earliest Ionian settlements in Asia,
archaeology now knows something. The excavations of Mr. Hogarth on the
earliest site of the Ionian temple of Artemis at Ephesus (700 B.C.?),
revealed thousands of votive offerings in gold, ivory, bone, paste,
crystal, and other materials. These had been "carefully laid between
the slabs for some hieratic purpose," probably under the central statue
of the goddess. Mr. Hogarth dates the deposit at about 700 B.C., "some
two centuries after the traditional landing of the colonists."
That date tells us little about the condition of the settlers at the
time of landing (we can only guess as to whether they had almost ceased
to be human at that moment), but many objects may be heirlooms of
earlier date; "in any case the elaborate execution and design of the
Ionian documents, notably the trinkets and jewels in electrum, imply a
long previous evolution of skilled craft"; and there are indications
"that this Primitive treasure was, in the main, made at Ephesus
itself." This is proved by the presence of goldsmiths' refuse in the
temple. The treasure has many analogies with that of Enkomi (Cyprus)
in the British Museum, which is of the period of the re-occupation of
the palace of Cnossos in Crete (dated about 1400), and is therefore of
the close of the age of bronze. The Ephesian treasure has also many
points of close analogy with the later Aegean remains at Mycenae and
Sparta in Attica. There are the gold jewels meant to be sewn on to the
robes; there are the clear crystals so common in the ancient graves of
the Mycenaean acropolis; the familiar double axe of Crete is still a
decorative motive; we find, as on the Lion Gate of Mycenae, two animals
opposed in heraldic fashion, and fibulae decorated with Baltic amber,
also the "spectacles" fibula-cover in ivory, common as far north as
Bosnia.
The general result of the archaeological evidence for early Ionia is
to show, in early Ionian work, the Aegean element stronger, and the
Danubian or central European element less strong, than in contemporary
Attica of the Dipylon period. In Attica of 1000-800 B.C. there was
the mixture of new northern and of old Aegean blood and civilisation;
but, says Mr. Hogarth, "the Aegean element was, I conceive, relatively
very much more numerous and potent in the Ionian land,"--in
Asia,--"although, to a very large extent, not indigenous there." The
Ionians, as far as archaeology shows, were more Aegean than the people
whom they left behind in Attica.
Thus the evidence, so far, is in favour of the mass of Ionian emigrants
having been of the older people,--whether we call it "Pelasgian of the
coast lands," or by any other name,--and of the older prae-Dipylon
school of art. "The first departure," says Mr. Hogarth, "may have been
due to the Achaean influx into Greece," though the later Dorian influx
may have presented a more powerful motive; for, by the Greek story, the
Achaeans driven from Argos and Laconia thrust the Ionians out of the
Peloponnesus. The archaeological evidence does not go back far enough
to enable us to estimate exactly the state of the Ionians when they
first landed in Asia. We only know that, some two centuries later,
their art was much more in the Aegean than in the Dipylon manner, and
had been so for long. They must have rapidly recovered from their
perfect oblivion of their ancient laws, rites, beliefs, and traditions.
Mr. Hogarth concludes: "Note that the date thus assigned" (for the
Greek migration, a prolonged movement) "fits with the indications
in Homer. The Epics, it has often been remarked, show not only no
knowledge of a Hellenic Asia, but also none of a Dorian conquest of
Peloponnesus. They were probably anterior in original composition to
the establishment of both these states of things," of Greeks in Asia,
Dorians in Peloponnesus.[11]
Now archaeology dates the Ephesian finds, which, in the main, are
still "Aegean" in character, during the very age when, according to
general opinion, the Ionian Cyclic Epics were composed. The early
Cyclic poems are usually dated about 770-730 B.C., when the Ephesian
treasure was being made.[12] Ionian art at Ephesus, and at that date,
was much more Aegean than the contemporary art in Attica. There is thus
a fair presumption that the Aegean element, Hellenised, was a strong
element in the Ionian population; and we are to demonstrate that the
Ionian Epics, though dealing with Achaean themes, abound in non-Achaean
traits of life and religion; in the traits which Mr. Murray assigns to
"the conquered races,"[13] apparently meaning the pre-Achaean Aegean
inhabitants of Greece. These traits are undeniably non-Homeric, and the
question must be faced, if the Ionian poets of the eighth and seventh
centuries are profuse in such matter, in the Cyclics; and if they
also added a great mass to the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ at the same
period, why did they keep their favourite themes out of the _Iliad_
and _Odyssey_? This question we study in "The Ionian Cyclic Poems";
but first we must prove that, whether the people of Attica and the
Ionians were apart in "race" from the Hellenes and Achaioi or not,
they certainly stood originally apart from and out of the cycle of
Achaean traditions. The Ionians and Attic tragedians were reduced to
inventing new legends and new points of contact between themselves and
the Achaeans.
NOTE
_Language or Languages of Prehistoric Greece_.--I have abjured all
attempts to discern the truth about races and languages in prehistoric
Greece. The two main theories appear to be that of the Greek
speculators from the seventh century onwards, and that of Mr. Ridgeway.
According to the Greeks, who varied among themselves, the original
population of prehistoric Greece was, at least mainly, "Pelasgian."
Among the Pelasgians came a more cultivated people, the "Hellenes,"
in contact with whom the "Pelasgians" developed into "Hellenes" in
language and culture. Granting an influx of Achaeans or Hellenes among
the pre-existing population which enjoyed the Aegean civilisation,
there is no doubt that this population, if spoken of by Greeks as
"Pelasgian," was much more advanced in material culture than the
Achaeans. This is proved absolutely by excavations in Crete, Greece,
and the isles.
On this point, then, that the Achaeans and Hellenes were more civilised
than the pre-existing "Pelasgians," the Greek thinkers were certainly
in the wrong. But what about language? Was Herodotus right in holding
that the "Pelasgians" spoke a "barbarous" language, and learned
Greek from the Hellenes? He admits that he could not speak with any
certainty about the language of the Pelasgians. But he infers from the
speech of actually contemporary Pelasgians, for example, at Creston in
Thrace, and at Placia and Scylace on the Hellespont, "and, in short,
of any other of the cities which have dropped the name, but are in
fact Pelasgian," that "the Pelasgians spoke a barbarous language"
(Herodotus, i. 56-58).
If so, unconquered Attica and unconquered mountainous Arcadia must
have spoken, in early times, "a barbarous language," and exchanged it
for the Hellenic, though with the Hellenes they were, according to
themselves, but slightly in contact. When we consider the pertinacity
of parts of Wales, Ireland, and the western Highlands in clinging to
Cymric and Gaelic, this theory of Herodotus seems highly improbable.
Mr. Ridgeway, on the other hand, holding that the Achaeans were "a
Celtic tribe" who passed from Epirus into Thessaly, concludes that
_their_ language was what the Hellenes of history would have called
"barbarous"; that they adopted the speech, Greek, of the Pelasgians
among whom they settled, and that the Homeric poems descend from
the lays of Pelasgian minstrels, who sang in Greek of the exploits
of Achaeans who were Celtic, but became merged in a Greek-speaking
Pelasgic population (_Early Age of Greece_, vol. i. p. 648). If so,
the minstrels had entirely absorbed the non-Pelasgian customs and
ideas, absence of ghosts, and hero-worship, of pollution, and ritual
purification, and human sacrifice, and the professed Olympian religion
of their Achaean lords.
To the objection that, if Homer's poetic Pelasgian predecessors had the
good Greek, no Pelasgians known to Herodotus spoke it, Mr. Ridgeway
can reply that "the Greeks considered Phrygians and Thracians to be
barbarous, though both spoke languages akin to Greek; so that, although
Herodotus thought the languages of Scylace and Placia" (and of _all_
cities which were, in fact, Pelasgian) "barbarous, this does not prove
that it was not closely cognate to Greek" (_Early Age of Greece_, vol.
i. p. 146).
Yes, but why had the language of the Pelasgian minstrels of the Achaean
lords, which was excellent Greek, become in the time of Herodotus
the language which, to him, was barbarous? I understand Mr. Ridgeway
to answer this question by saying that "there is no difficulty in
supposing that certain Pelasgians long settled in Etruria, whither they
had come from Thessaly, may have again emigrated" (out of Etruria)
"from some external or internal cause, and settled in various spots
around the Aegean, some of them going to Athens, and later to Lemnos."
See Herodotus, ii. 50, 51, for Pelasgians who, when the Athenians "were
just beginning to count as Hellenes," settled for a while in Attica.
For this fact Herodotus cites Hecataeus. These new-come Pelasgians were
unruly, and were banished to Lemnos (Hdt. vi. 137). They later came
back to raid Brauron in Attica (Hdt. vi. 138). Let these much-wandering
Pelasgians return to Thrace, or, at least, let the Pelasgians whom
Herodotus knew in Thrace (and all Pelasgians wherever he knew them)
have strolled from Thessaly to Etruria in Italy, and back again to the
Aegean, and north to Thrace, and it is certain that their original
language, Greek (like _jour_ as derived from _dies_), must have been
_diablement changé en route_, and quite unrecognisable as Greek by
Herodotus (see Ridgeway, vol. i. pp. 144-146, and p. 244; also "Who
were the Romans?" _Proceedings of the British Academy_, vol. iii.).
On the whole Pelasgian question, the most valuable analysis of the
evidence, such as it is, appears to me to be that of Mr. Myres in the
_Journal of the Hellenic Society_, vol. xxvii.
My only conclusion is that, whoever the Achaeans may have been, and
whatever their language, and whoever the pre-existing population may
have been, and whatever their language, the Achaeans imported a new,
lofty, and _brief-lived_ set of ideas, customs, a new tone and taste.
At the same time, Mr. Ridgeway's arguments in favour of his theory
that the pre-Achaean population of Greece spoke Greek, have my assent
for what it is worth, though I do not think that the evidence for the
hypothesis of Dionysius of Halicarnassus that Thessalian Pelasgians
went to Etruria, and that their descendants came back to the Aegean,
has valid historical evidence.
[1] _Pausanias_, vii. i. 11.
[2] "Athenians and Achaean traditions."
[3] Hdt. v. 57, 58, 61. The Cadmeians, till very recently, were
regarded as Phoenicians, Semites. Now the name "Phoenicians" ("red
men") is understood to mean men of the old Aegean race, and no traces
of Semitic import have been discovered in the soil of Boeotia. Thebes
itself was "Minoan," not Semitic. Evans, _Scripta Minoa,_ vol. i.
[4] Iliad, ii. 571, and Leaf's note, ii. 560. Hdt. i. 145.
[5] Thucydides, i. 2.
[6] _R, G. E_. 50-57.
[7] Hogarth. _Ionia and the East_, p. 12.
[8] Hogarth, p. 34.
[9] _Ibid._ pp. 34-36.
[10] Chipiez et Perrot, _La Grèce de l'Epopée_, pp. 235-246.
[11] Hogarth, p. 104.
[12] Mr. Murray, however, writes: "We know that the great mass of the
saga-poetry began to be left on one side and neglected from the eighth
century on; and we find, to judge from our fragments" (of the Cyclic
poems), "that it remained in its semi-savage state" (_Anthropology
in Greek Epic_, 1908, p. 68). This knowledge is far from common. The
Cyclic poems are in the highly developed Homeric hexameter; they
are not, I venture to say, "semi-savage"; and, where they differ in
beliefs, rites, and customs from Homer, they represent the usages of
historic Hellas. They are generally believed to have been composed at
the date when Mr. Murray says that they "began to be neglected." Far
from being neglected, they certainly afforded much of the materials of
the Athenian tragedians, and of the vase painters who choose many more
subjects from the Cyclics than from our Homer.
[13] _R. G. E._ p. 134.