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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
* Italics are denoted by underscores as in _italics_.
* Small caps are represented in upper case as in SMALL CAPS.
* Letter spaced Greek text is enclosed in tildes as in ~καὶ τὰ
λοιπά~.
* Footnotes have been renumbered and placed at the end of the
paragraph that includes their anchor.
* Obvious printer errors have been silently corrected, after
comparison with a later edition of this work. Greek text has
also been corrected after checking with this later edition and
with Perseus, when the reference was found.
* Original spelling, hyphenation and punctuation have been kept,
but variant spellings were made consistent when a predominant
usage was found.
* Nevertheless, inconsistent rendition of proper nouns (Acrisios
and Akrisios, Mycênæ and Mykênæ, Athos and Athôs, Dædalus and
Dædalos) have been kept, noting that this edition does not follow
completely the rules for transcription of Greek names announced
in the Preface, pp. xv-xvi.
* In most cross-references, target pages do not correspond with
pages in this edition.
[Illustration: GEORGE GROTE.]
HISTORY OF GREECE.
I. Legendary Greece.
II. Grecian History to the Reign of
Peisistratus at Athens.
BY
GEORGE GROTE, ESQ.
VOL. I.
REPRINTED FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
329 AND 331 PEARL STREET.
1880.
PART I.—LEGENDARY GREECE
Ἀνδρῶν ἡρώων θεῖον γένος, οἳ καλέονται
Ἡμίθεοι προτἐρῃ γενέῃ.—HESIOD
PART II.—HISTORICAL GREECE.
... Πόλιες μερόπων ἀνθρώπων.—HOMER
PREFACE.
The first idea of this History was conceived many years ago, at a time
when ancient Hellas was known to the English public chiefly through
the pages of Mitford; and my purpose in writing it was to rectify
the erroneous statements as to matter of fact which that History
contained, as well as to present the general phenomena of the Grecian
world under what I thought a juster and more comprehensive point of
view. My leisure, however, was not at that time equal to the execution
of any large literary undertaking; nor is it until within the last
three or four years that I have been able to devote to the work that
continuous and exclusive labor, without which, though much may be done
to illustrate detached points, no entire or complicated subject can
ever be set forth in a manner worthy to meet the public eye.
Meanwhile the state of the English literary world, in reference to
ancient Hellas, has been materially changed in more ways than one. If
my early friend Dr. Thirlwall’s History of Greece had appeared a few
years sooner, I should probably never have conceived the design of the
present work at all; I should certainly not have been prompted to the
task by any deficiencies, such as those which I felt and regretted in
Mitford. The comparison of the two authors affords, indeed, a striking
proof of the progress of sound and enlarged views respecting the
ancient world during the present generation. Having studied of course
the same evidences as Dr. Thirwall, I am better enabled than others
to bear testimony to the learning, the sagacity, and the candor which
pervade his excellent work: and it is the more incumbent on me to give
expression to this sentiment, since the particular points on which I
shall have occasion to advert to it will, unavoidably, be points of
dissent oftener than of coincidence.
The liberal spirit of criticism, in which Dr. Thirwall stands so much
distinguished from Mitford, is his own: there are other features of
superiority which belong to him conjointly with his age. For during
the generation since Mitford’s work, philological studies have been
prosecuted in Germany with remarkable success: the stock of facts and
documents, comparatively scanty, handed down from the ancient world,
has been combined and illustrated in a thousand different ways: and
if our witnesses cannot be multiplied, we at least have numerous
interpreters to catch, repeat, amplify, and explain their broken
and half-inaudible depositions. Some of the best writers in this
department—Boeckh, Niebuhr, O. Müller—have been translated into our
language; so that the English public has been enabled to form some
idea of the new lights thrown upon many subjects of antiquity by the
inestimable aid of German erudition. The poets, historians, orators,
and philosophers of Greece, have thus been all rendered both more
intelligible and more instructive than they were to a student in the
last century; and the general picture of the Grecian world may now be
conceived with a degree of fidelity, which, considering our imperfect
materials, it is curious to contemplate.
It is that general picture which an historian of Greece is required
first to embody in his own mind, and next to lay out before his
readers;—a picture not merely such as to delight the imagination by
brilliancy of coloring and depth of sentiment, but also suggestive
and improving to the reason. Not omitting the points of resemblance
as well as of contrast with the better-known forms of modern society,
he will especially study to exhibit the spontaneous movement of
Grecian intellect, sometimes aided but never borrowed from without,
and lighting up a small portion of a world otherwise clouded and
stationary. He will develop the action of that social system, which,
while insuring to the mass of freemen a degree of protection elsewhere
unknown, acted as a stimulus to the creative impulses of genius, and
left the superior minds sufficiently unshackled to soar above religious
and political routine, to overshoot their own age, and to become the
teachers of posterity.
To set forth the history of a people by whom the first spark was set to
the dormant intellectual capacities of our nature,—Hellenic phenomena,
as illustrative of the Hellenic mind and character,—is the task
which I propose to myself in the present work; not without a painful
consciousness how much the deed falls short of the will, and a yet
more painful conviction, that full success is rendered impossible by
an obstacle which no human ability can now remedy,—the insufficiency
of original evidence. For, in spite of the valuable expositions of
so many able commentators, our stock of information respecting the
ancient world still remains lamentably inadequate to the demands of an
enlightened curiosity. We possess only what has drifted ashore from the
wreck of a stranded vessel; and though this includes some of the most
precious articles amongst its once abundant cargo, yet if any man will
cast his eyes over the citations in Diogenes Laërtius, Athenæus, or
Plutarch, or the list of names in Vossius de Historicis Græcis, he will
see with grief and surprise how much larger is the proportion which,
through the enslavement of the Greeks themselves, the decline of the
Roman Empire, the change of religion, and the irruption of barbarian
conquerors, has been irrecoverably submerged. We are thus reduced to
judge of he whole Hellenic world, eminently multiform as it was, from
a few compositions; excellent, indeed, in themselves, but bearing too
exclusively the stamp of Athens. Of Thucydides and Aristotle, indeed,
both as inquirers into matter of fact, and as free from narrow local
feeling, it is impossible to speak too highly; but, unfortunately,
that work of the latter which would have given us the most copious
information regarding Grecian political life—his collection and
comparison of one hundred and fifty distinct town constitutions—has
not been preserved: and the brevity of Thucydides often gives us but
a single word where a sentence would not have been too much, and
sentences which we should be glad to see expanded into paragraphs.
Such insufficiency of original and trustworthy materials, as
compared with those resources which are thought hardly sufficient
for the historian of any modern kingdom, is neither to be concealed
nor extenuated, however much we may lament it. I advert to the
point here on more grounds than one. For it not only limits the
amount of information which an historian of Greece can give to his
readers,—compelling him to leave much of his picture an absolute
blank,—but it also greatly spoils the execution of the remainder. The
question of credibility is perpetually obtruding itself, and requiring
a decision, which, whether favorable or unfavorable, always introduces
more or less of controversy; and gives to those outlines, which the
interest of the picture requires to be straight and vigorous, a faint
and faltering character. Expressions of qualified and hesitating
affirmation are repeated until the reader is sickened; while the writer
himself, to whom this restraint is more painful still, is frequently
tempted to break loose from the unseen spell by which a conscientious
criticism binds him down,—to screw up the possible and probable
into certainty, to suppress counterbalancing considerations, and to
substitute a pleasing romance in place of half-known and perplexing
realities. Desiring, in the present work, to set forth all which can be
ascertained, together with such conjectures and inferences as can be
reasonably deduced from it, but nothing more,—I notice, at the outset,
that faulty state of the original evidence which renders discussions of
credibility, and hesitation in the language of the judge, unavoidable.
Such discussions, though the reader may be assured that they will
become less frequent as we advance into times better known, are
tiresome enough, even with the comparatively late period which I adopt
as the historical beginning; much more intolerable would they have
proved, had I thought it my duty to start from the primitive terminus
of Deukaliôn or Inachus, or from the unburied Pelasgi and Leleges,
and to subject the heroic ages to a similar scrutiny. I really know
nothing so disheartening or unrequited as the elaborate balancing of
what is called evidence,—the comparison of infinitesimal probabilities
and conjectures all uncertified,—in regard to these shadowy times and
persons.
The law respecting sufficiency of evidence ought to be the same for
ancient times as for modern; and the reader will find in this History
an application, to the former, of criteria analogous to those which
have been long recognized in the latter. Approaching, though with a
certain measure of indulgence, to this standard, I begin the real
history of Greece with the first recorded Olympiad, or 776 B. C. To
such as are accustomed to the habits once universal, and still not
uncommon, in investigating the ancient world, I may appear to be
striking off one thousand years from the scroll of history; but to
those whose canon of evidence is derived from Mr. Hallam, M. Sismondi,
or any other eminent historian of modern events, I am well assured that
I shall appear lax and credulous rather than exigent or sceptical. For
the truth is, that historical records, properly so called, do not begin
until long after this date: nor will any man, who candidly considers
the extreme paucity of attested facts for two centuries after 776 B.
C., be astonished to learn that the state of Greece in 900, 1000, 1100,
1200, 1300, 1400 B. C., etc.,—or any earlier century which it may
please chronologists to include in their computed genealogies,—cannot
be described to him upon anything like decent evidence. I shall hope,
when I come to the lives of Socrates and Plato, to illustrate one of
the most valuable of their principles,—that conscious and confessed
ignorance is a better state of mind, than the fancy, without the
reality, of knowledge. Meanwhile, I begin by making that confession,
in reference to the real world of Greece anterior to the Olympiads;
meaning the disclaimer to apply to anything like a general history,—not
to exclude rigorously every individual event.
The times which I thus set apart from the region of history are
discernible only through a different atmosphere,—that of epic poetry
and legend. To confound together these disparate matters is, in my
judgment, essentially unphilosophical. I describe the earlier times by
themselves, as conceived by the faith and feeling of the first Greeks,
and known only through their legends,—without presuming to measure how
much or how little of historical matter these legends may contain. If
the reader blame me for not assisting him to determine this,—if he ask
me why I do not undraw the curtain and disclose the picture,—I reply in
the words of the painter Zeuxis, when the same question was addressed
to him on exhibiting his master-piece of imitative art: “The curtain is
the picture.” What we now read as poetry and legend was once accredited
history, and the only genuine history which the first Greeks could
conceive or relish of their past time: the curtain conceals nothing
behind, and cannot, by any ingenuity, be withdrawn. I undertake only to
show it as it stands,—not to efface, still less to repaint it.
Three-fourths of the two volumes now presented to the public are
destined to elucidate this age of historical faith, as distinguished
from the later age of historical reason: to exhibit its basis in the
human mind,—an omnipresent religious and personal interpretation of
nature; to illustrate it by comparison with the like mental habit
in early modern Europe; to show its immense abundance and variety
of narrative matter, with little care for consistency between one
story and another; lastly, to set forth the causes which overgrew and
partially supplanted the old epical sentiment, and introduced, in the
room of literal faith, a variety of compromises and interpretations.
The legendary age of the Greeks receives its principal charm and
dignity from the Homeric poems: to these, therefore, and to the other
poems included in the ancient epic, an entire chapter is devoted,
the length of which must be justified by the names of the Iliad and
Odyssey. I have thought it my duty to take some notice of the Wolfian
controversy as it now stands in Germany, and have even hazarded some
speculations respecting the structure of the Iliad. The society and
manners of the heroic age, considered as known in a general way from
Homer’s descriptions and allusions, are also described and criticized.
I next pass to the historical age, beginning at 776 B. C.; prefixing
some remarks upon the geographical features of Greece. I try to make
out, amidst obscure and scanty indications, what the state of Greece
was at this period; and I indulge some cautious conjectures, founded
upon the earliest verifiable facts, respecting the steps immediately
antecedent by which that condition was brought about. In the present
volumes, I have only been able to include the history of Sparta and the
Peloponnesian Dorians, down to the age of Peisistratus and Crœsus. I
had hoped to have comprised in them the entire history of Greece down
to this last-mentioned period, but I find the space insufficient.
The history of Greece falls most naturally into six compartments, of
which the first may be looked at as a period of preparation for the
five following, which exhaust the free life of collective Hellas.
I. Period from 776 B. C. to 560 B. C., the accession of Peisistratus at
Athens and of Crœsus in Lydia.
II. From the accession of Peisistratus and Crœsus to the repulse of
Xerxes from Greece.
III. From the repulse of Xerxes to the close of the Peloponnesian war
and overthrow of Athens.
IV. From the close of the Peloponnesian war to the battle of Leuktra.
V. From the battle of Leuktra to that of Chæroneia.
VI. From the battle of Chæroneia to the end of the generation of
Alexander.
The five periods, from Peisistratus down to the death of Alexander and
of his generation, present the acts of an historical drama capable
of being recounted in perspicuous succession, and connected by a
sensible thread of unity. I shall interweave in their proper places
the important but outlying adventures of the Sicilian and Italian
Greeks,—introducing such occasional notices of Grecian political
constitutions, philosophy, poetry, and oratory, as are requisite to
exhibit the many-sided activity of this people during their short but
brilliant career.
After the generation of Alexander, the political action of Greece
becomes cramped and degraded,—no longer interesting to the reader, or
operative on the destinies of the future world. We may, indeed, name
one or two incidents, especially the revolutions of Agis and Kleomenês
at Sparta, which are both instructive and affecting; but as a whole,
the period, between 300 B. C. and the absorption of Greece by the
Romans, is of no interest in itself, and is only so far of value as
it helps us to understand the preceding centuries. The dignity and
value of the Greeks from that time forward belong to them only as
individual philosophers, preceptors, astronomers, and mathematicians,
literary men and critics, medical practitioners, etc. In all these
respective capacities, especially in the great schools of philosophical
speculation they still constitute the light of the Roman world; though,
as communities, they have lost their own orbit, and have become
satellites of more powerful neighbors.
I propose to bring down the history of the Grecian communities to
the year 300 B. C., or the close of the generation which takes its
name from Alexander the Great, and I hope to accomplish this in eight
volumes altogether. For the next two or three volumes I have already
large preparations made, and I shall publish my third (perhaps my
fourth) in the course of the ensuing winter.
There are great disadvantages in the publication of one portion of
a history apart from the remainder; for neither the earlier nor the
later phenomena can be fully comprehended without the light which each
mutually casts upon the other. But the practice has become habitual,
and is indeed more than justified by the well-known inadmissibility
of “long hopes” into the short span of human life. Yet I cannot but
fear that my first two volumes will suffer in the estimation of many
readers by coming out alone,—and that men who value the Greeks for
their philosophy, their politics, and their oratory, may treat the
early legends as not worth attention. And it must be confessed that the
sentimental attributes of the Greek mind—its religious and poetical
vein—here appear in disproportionate relief, as compared with its
more vigorous and masculine capacities,—with those powers of acting,
organizing, judging, and speculating, which will be revealed in the
forthcoming volumes. I venture, however, to forewarn the reader, that
there will occur numerous circumstances in the after political life of
the Greeks, which he will not comprehend unless he be initiated into
the course of their legendary associations. He will not understand
the frantic terror of the Athenian public during the Peloponnesian
war, on the occasion of the mutilation of the statues called Hermæ,
unless he enters into the way in which they connected their stability
and security with the domiciliation of the gods in the soil: nor will
he adequately appreciate the habit of the Spartan king on military
expeditions,—when he offered his daily public sacrifices on behalf of
his army and his country,—“always to perform this morning service
immediately before sunrise, in order that he might be beforehand in
obtaining the favor of the gods,”[1] if he be not familiar with the
Homeric conception of Zeus going to rest at night and awaking to rise
at early dawn from the side of the “white-armed Hêrê.” The occasion
will, indeed, often occur for remarking how these legends illustrate
and vivify the political phenomena of the succeeding times, and I have
only now to urge the necessity of considering them as the beginning of
a series,—not as an entire work.
[1] Xenophon, Repub. Lacedæmon. cap. xiii. 3. Ἀεὶ δὲ, ὅταν
θύηται, ἄρχεται μὲν τούτου τοῦ ἔργου ἔτι κνεφαῖος, προλαμβάνειν
βουλόμενος τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ εὔνοιαν.
LONDON, March 5, 1846.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION OF VOLUMES I. AND II.
In preparing a Second Edition of the first two volumes of my History,
I have profited by the remarks and corrections of various critics,
contained in Reviews, both English and foreign. I have suppressed, or
rectified, some positions which had been pointed out as erroneous,
or as advanced upon inadequate evidence. I have strengthened my
argument in some cases where it appeared to have been imperfectly
understood,—adding some new notes, partly for the purpose of enlarged
illustration, partly to defend certain opinions which had been called
in question. The greater number of these alterations have been made in
Chapters XVI. and XXI. of Part I., and in Chapter VI. of Part II.
I trust that these three Chapters, more full of speculation, and
therefore more open to criticism than any of the others, will thus
appear in a more complete and satisfactory form. But I must at the same
time add that they remain for the most part unchanged in substance, and
that I have seen no sufficient reason to modify my main conclusions
even respecting the structure of the Iliad, controverted though they
have been by some of my most esteemed critics.
In regard to the character and peculiarity of Grecian legend, as
broadly distinguished throughout these volumes from Grecian history,
I desire to notice two valuable publications with which I have
only become acquainted since the date of my first edition. One of
these is, A Short Essay on Primæval History, by John Kenrick, M. A.
(London, 1846, published just at the same time as these volumes,)
which illustrates with much acute reflection the general features
of legend, not only in Greece but throughout the ancient world,—see
especially pages 65, 84, 92, _et seq._ The other work is, Rambles and
Recollections of an Indian Official, by Colonel Sleeman,—first made
known to me through an excellent notice of my History in the Edinburgh
Review for October 1846. The description given by Colonel Sleeman, of
the state of mind now actually prevalent among the native population of
Hindostan, presents a vivid comparison, helping the modern reader to
understand and appreciate the legendary era of Greece. I have embodied
in the notes of this Second Edition two or three passages from Colonel
Sleeman’s instructive work: but the whole of it richly deserves perusal.
Having now finished six volumes of this History, without attaining
a lower point than the peace of Nikias, in the tenth year of the
Peloponnesian war,—I find myself compelled to retract the expectation
held out in the preface to my First Edition, that the entire work might
be completed in eight volumes. Experience proves to me how impossible
it is to measure beforehand the space which historical subjects will
require. All I can now promise is, that the remainder of the work shall
be executed with as much regard to brevity as is consistent with the
paramount duty of rendering it fit for public acceptance.
London, April 3, 1849.
NAMES OF GODS, GODDESSES, AND HEROES.
Following the example of Dr. Thirlwall and other excellent scholars, I
call the Greek deities by their real Greek names, and not by the Latin
equivalents used among the Romans. For the assistance of those readers
to whom the Greek names may be less familiar, I here annex a table of
the one and the other.
_Greek._ _Latin._
Zeus, Jupiter.
Poseidôn, Neptune.
Arês, Mars.
Dionysus, Bacchus.
Hermês, Mercury.
Hêlios, Sol.
Hêphæstus, Vulcan.
Hadês, Pluto.
Hêrê, Juno.
Athênê, Minerva.
Artemis, Diana.
Aphroditê, Venus.
Eôs, Aurora.
Hestia, Vesta.
Lêtô, Latona.
Dêmêtêr, Ceres.
Hêraklês, Hercules.
Asklêpius, Æsculapius.
A few words are here necessary respecting the orthography of Greek
names adopted in the above table and generally throughout this history.
I have approximated as nearly as I dared to the Greek letters in
preference to the Latin; and on this point I venture upon an innovation
which I should have little doubt of vindicating before the reason of
any candid English student. For the ordinary practice of substituting,
in a Greek name, the English C in place of the Greek K, is, indeed, so
obviously incorrect, that it admits of no rational justification. Our
own K, precisely and in every point, coincides with the Greek K: we
have thus the means of reproducing the Greek name to the eye as well
as to the ear, yet we gratuitously take the wrong letter in preference
to the right. And the precedent of the Latins is here against us
rather than in our favor, for their C really coincided in sound with
the Greek K, whereas our C entirely departs from it, and becomes an S,
before _e_, _i_, _æ_, _œ_, and _y_. Though our C has so far deviated in
sound from the Latin C, yet there is some warrant for our continuing
to use it in writing Latin names,—because we thus reproduce the name
to the eye, though not to the ear. But this is not the case when we
employ our C to designate the Greek K, for we depart here not less
from the visible than from the audible original; while we mar the
unrivalled euphony of the Greek language by that multiplied sibilation
which constitutes the least inviting feature in our own. Among German
philologists, the K is now universally employed in writing Greek names,
and I have adopted it pretty largely in this work, making exception for
such names as the English reader has been so accustomed to hear with
the C, that they may be considered as being almost Anglicised. I have,
farther, marked the long _e_ and the long _o_ (η, ω,) by a circumflex
(Hêrê) when they occur in the last syllable or in the penultimate of a
name.
CONTENTS
VOL. I.
PART I.
LEGENDARY GREECE.
CHAPTER I.
LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS.
Opening of the mythical world.—How the mythes are to be
told.—Allegory rarely admissible.—Zeus—foremost in Grecian
conception.—The gods—how conceived: human type enlarged.—Past
history of the gods fitted on to present conceptions.—Chaos.—Gæa
and Uranos.—Uranos disabled.—Kronos and the Titans.—Kronos
overreached.—Birth and safety of Zeus and his brethren.—Other
deities.—Ambitious schemes of Zeus.—Victory of Zeus and
his brethren over Kronos and the Titans.—Typhôeus.—Dynasty
of Zeus.—His offspring.—General distribution of the divine
race.—Hesiodic theogony—its authority.—Points of difference
between Homer and Hesiod.—Homeric Zeus.—Amplified theogony of
Zens.—Hesiodic mythes traceable to Krête and Delphi.—Orphic
theogony.—Zeus and Phanês.—Zagreus.—Comparison of Hesiod and
Orpheus.—Influence of foreign religions upon Greece—Especially
in regard to the worship of Dêmêtêr and Dionysos.—Purification
for homicide unknown to Homer.—New and peculiar religious
rites.—Circulated by voluntary teachers and promising special
blessings.—Epimenidês, Sibylla, Bakis.—Principal mysteries
of Greece.—Ecstatic rites introduced from Asia 700-500 B.
C.—Connected with the worship of Dionysos.—Thracian and Egyptian
influence upon Greece.—Encouragement to mystic legends.—Melampus
the earliest name as teacher of the Dionysiac rites.—Orphic
sect, a variety of the Dionysiac mystics.—Contrast of the
mysteries with the Homeric Hymns.—Hymn to Dionysos.—Alteration
of the primitive Grecian idea of Dionysos.—Asiatic frenzy
grafted on the joviality of the Grecian Dionysia.—Eleusinian
mysteries.—Homeric Hymn to Dêmêtêr.—Temple of Eleusis, built
by order of Dêmêtêr for her residence.—Dêmêtêr prescribes the
mystic ritual of Eleusis.—Homeric Hymn a sacred Eleusinian
record, explanatory of the details of divine service.—Importance
of the mysteries to the town of Eleusis.—Strong hold of the
legend upon Eleusinian feelings.—Different legends respecting
Dêmêtêr elsewhere.—Expansion of the legends.—Hellenic importance
of Dêmêtêr.—Legends of Apollo.—Delian Apollo.—Pythian
Apollo.—Foundation legends of the Delphian oracle.—They served
the purpose of historical explanation.—Extended worship of
Apollo.—Multifarious local legends respecting Apollo.—Festivals
and Agônes.—State of mind and circumstances out of which
Grecian mythes arose.—Discrepancies in the legends little
noticed.—Aphroditê.—Athênê.—Artemis.—Poseidôn.—Stories
of temporary servitude imposed on
gods.—Hêrê.—Hêphæstos.—Hestia.—Hermês.—Hermês inventor of the
lyre.—Bargain between Hermês and Apollo.—Expository value of the
Hymn.—Zeus.—Mythes arising out of the religious ceremonies.—Small
part of the animal sacrificed.—Promêtheus had outwitted
Zeus.—Gods, heroes, and men, appear together in the mythes.
_pages_ 1-64