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PROBLEMS
IN
GREEK HISTORY
BY
J. P. MAHAFFY, M.A., D.D.
_Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Dublin; Knight (Gold
Cross) of the Order of the Redeemer; Hon. Fellow of
Queen's College, Oxford; Author of 'Prolegomena
to Ancient History,' 'Social Life in Greece,'
'A History of Classical Greek
Literature,' &c., &c._
=London=
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1892
[_All rights reserved_]
=Oxford=
HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
PREFACE
Even since the following sheets were printed, the researches into
prehistoric Greek life, and its relation both to the East, to the
Homeric poems, and to the Greece we know in the 7th century B.C., have
progressed, and we are beginning to see some light through the mist. I
can refer the reader to two books, of which one has just been published
in English. The other, the second edition of Busolt's _History of
Greece_, though still in the press, will be accessible to those that
read German in a few weeks. I prefer to cite the former--Schuchardt's
account of _Schliemann's Excavations_--in its English form, as it is
there enriched with an Introduction, and apparently a revision of the
text, by Mr. Walter Leaf. This is the first systematic attempt to bring
into a short compass, with the illustrations, and with some regard to
chronology, the great body of facts discovered and hastily consigned to
many large volumes by the gifted discoverer. There is, moreover, a
separate chapter (vi.) which gathers these facts under a theory, not to
speak of the acute and cautious criticism of Mr. Leaf, which will be
found in the Introduction to the volume. The Introduction to Busolt's
_History_, of which (by the author's courtesy) I have seen some 130
pages, contains a complete critical discussion of the same evidence.
Here is the general result in Busolt's own exposition (_G. G._ 2nd ed.
pp. 113 sq.): 'The Homeric culture is younger than the Mykenæan, it is
also simpler and in better proportion. The former had come to use iron
for arms and tools, the latter is strictly in the age of bronze[vi:1].
If the culture of the Epics does show a lower stage of technical
development, we perceive also a decline of oriental influences. In many
respects, in matters of interment, dress and armour, the epic age
contrasts with the Mykenæan, but in many points we find transitions and
threads which unite the two civilizations. The Homeric palace shows
remarkable agreements with those of Mykenæ and Tiryns. The Homeric
heroes fight with sword, spear, and bow, like the Mykenæan. Splendid
vases, too, and furniture, such as occur within the range of the
Mykenæan culture, agree even in details with the descriptions of the
Epos. The Epos, too, knows Mykenæ "rich in gold," and the "wealthy"
Odeomenos. In general the homes of the Mykenæan culture are prominent in
the Iliad. The splendour of the Mykenæan epoch was therefore still fresh
in the memory of the Æolians and Ionians when the Epos arose.
'If the life thus pictured in the Epos thus shows many kindred features
to that of Mykenæ, the Doric life of the Peloponnesus stands in harsh
contrast. Not in strong fortresses, but in open camps, do we find the
Dorian conquerors. The nobles do not fight on chariots in the van, but
serried infantry decides the combat[vii:1].
'It was about from 1550 to 1150, that Mykenæan culture prevailed, and
was then replaced, as the legends asserted, by the Dorian invaders.'
Let us note that the earlier and ruder civilisation of Troy may be
contrasted with that of Mycenæ, though both of them show successive
stages--the later stage of the (second) city of Troy approaching to the
intermediate stage of Tiryns, and indeed, forming an unbroken chain with
this, Mycenæ, and even the later and more finished relics of
prehistoric art found at Menidi and at Vaphio (Amyclæ). The whole series
is homogeneous. The long-misunderstood palace of Troy is of the same
kind in plan and arrangement as that of Tiryns and that of Mycenæ; the
gold ornaments of Mycenæ are akin to those of Amyclæ; we stand in the
presence of an old and organised civilisation which was broken off or
ceased in prehistoric days, and recommenced on a different basis, and
upon a somewhat different model, among the historical Greeks. And yet
the prehistoric dwellers at Tiryns and Mycenæ had certainly some
features in common with the later race. Not to speak of details such as
the designs in pottery, or in the architecture of the simpler historic
temples, they were a mercantile and a maritime people, receiving the
products of far lands, and sending their own abroad; above all, they
show that combination of receptivity and originality in their
handicrafts which gives a peculiar stamp to their successors. While
the ruder Trojan remains are said to show no traces of Phoenician
importation, the Mycenæan exhibit objects from Egypt, from northern
Syria, and from Phoenicia; while on the other hand all the best
authorities now recognise in much of the pottery, and of the other
handicrafts, intelligent home production, which can even be traced in
exports along a line of islands across the southern Ægean and as far as
Egypt. This latter fact, and the closer trade-relations with Hittite
Syria than with Egypt or Phoenicia, are brought out by Busolt in his
new Introduction.
In what relation do these facts, now reduced to some order, stand to the
Homeric poems? According to Schuchardt they vindicate for our Homer an
amount of historical value which will astonish the sceptics of our
generation. In the first place, however, it is certain that Homer (using
the name as a convenient abstraction) has preserved a true tradition of
the great seats of culture in prehistoric days. He tells us rightly that
Tiryns had gone by when Mycenæ took the lead, and that the civilisation
of this great centre of power in Greece was kindred to that of Troy, an
equally old and splendid centre, which however was destroyed by fire
before it had attained to the perfection of the later stages of Mycenæan
art. Homer also implies that seafaring connections existed between Asia
Minor and Greece, and that early wars arose from reprisals for piratical
raids, as Herodotus confirms.
Some advanced kinds of handicraft, such as the inlaying of metals, which
have been brought to light in Mycenæan work, are specially prominent in
the Homeric poems. It is hard to conceive the nucleus of the poems
having originated elsewhere than in the country where Mycenæan grandeur
was still fresh. The legend which brings the rude Dorians into Greece
about 1100 B.C. (the date need not be so early) accounts for the
disappearance of this splendour, and the migration of the Achæans with
their poems to Asia Minor. So far Mr. Leaf agrees, as well as with the
theory of Fick, that the earliest poems were composed, not in Ionic, but
in the old dialect of Greece, which may be called Æolic, provided (he
adds) we do not identify it with the late Æolic to which it has been
reduced by Fick. It is added by Schuchardt that the great body of
_Nostoi_ seems irreconcilable with E. Curtius' theory that the lays were
composed for the early Æolic settlers, who made Asia Minor their
permanent home; so that the Trojan War may really have been a mercantile
war of Mycenæ against the Trojan pirates, who were outside the zone of
the Mycenæan trade-route, but may have seriously injured it. Mr. Leaf
justly points out that the obscure islands along this route, Cos, and
Carpathus, together with Rhodes, in which Mycenæan wares have been
found, are counted by the Homeric _Catalogue_ as Achæan allies of
Mycenæ, while the (Carian) Cyclades, though much larger and perhaps more
populated, are ignored.
So far the case for the early date and historic basis of Homer seems
considerably strengthened by recent research. Nevertheless, the marked
contrasts between the Mycenæan Greeks and the society in Homer create a
great difficulty. Some of these have been removed by the aid of (perhaps
legitimate) ingenuity, but differences of dress, of burial customs, in
the use of iron, &c., remain. The seafaring too of the Homeric Greeks
does not seem to me at all what we may infer the Mycenæan seafaring to
have been. Minos, or somebody else, must have suppressed piracy, and
prehistoric trading cannot have been so exclusively in the hands of the
Phoenicians. The Old Mycenæans were perfectly ignorant of the art of
writing, a fact which seems to preclude any systematic dealing with the
Phoenicians, though Busolt rather infers from it a want of personal
intercourse with the Hittites, and a mere reception of Asiatic luxuries
through rude and semi-hostile Sidonian adventurers. Busolt thinks we can
follow down prehistoric art through its various steps to that which
leads into the Homeric epoch, but as yet such a gradual transition seems
to me not clearly shown; I cannot but feel a gulf between the two.
Either therefore the original poets of the Iliad were separated by a
considerable gap of time from the life they sought to describe--there
may have been a period of decadence before the Dorians appeared--or the
Ionic recension was far more trenchant than a mere matter of dialect,
and by omission or alteration accommodated the already strange and
foreign habits of a bygone age to their own day; or else the Alexandrian
editors have destroyed traces of old customs far more than has hitherto
been suspected[xi:1].
It does not therefore appear to me that the antiquity of the Homer which
we possess is materially established by these newer researches. That
the earliest lays embodied in the _Iliad_ were very old has never been
doubted by any sane critic, and has always been maintained by me on
independent grounds. But I now think it likely that the great man who
brought dramatic unity into the Iliad, and who may have lived near 800
B.C., did far more than merely string together, and make intelligible,
older poems. He made the old life of Mycenæ into the newer Ionic life of
Asia Minor. I am sorry to disagree with Mr. Leaf when he calls that
Ionic society 'democratic to the core.' Any one who will read what even
Pausanias records of its traditions will see that it was aristocratic to
the core, and quite as likely to love heroic legends as any other Greek
society of that day.
* * * * *
I must not conclude this Preface without acknowledging the constant help
of my younger colleagues in correcting and improving what I write. Of
these I will here specify Mr. L. Purser and Mr. Bury.
TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN,
_February, 1892_.
FOOTNOTES:
[vi:1] 'In the whole range of the Mykenæan culture, there have only been
found in the later graves of the lower city, and in the beehive tomb of
Vaphio, remains of some finger-rings of iron, used for ornaments. Iron
tools and weapons were unknown to the Mykenæans--in spite of Beloch's
opinion to the contrary. In the Iliad bronze is mentioned 279 times,
iron 23; in the Odyssey they are named 80 and 25 times respectively, but
the use of the later metal was far more diffused than the conventional
style of the Epos betrays. Iron weapons are indeed only mentioned in the
Iliad IV, 123; VII, 141, 144; and XVIII, 34. Books IV and VII are
undoubtedly of later origin. Still the use of iron for tools was known
throughout the whole Homeric age, and was gradually increasing during
the growth of the Epos.'
[vii:1] Probably, Busolt adds in the sequel, the use of iron weapons by
the Dorian invaders may have been one cause of their victory. But it
seems to me mainly to have been the victory of infantry over cavalry,
and thus a very early type of the decisive day at Orchomenus, when the
Spanish infantry of the Grand Catalan Company destroyed Guy de la Roche
and his Frankish knights, and seized the country as their spoil.
[xi:1] This last clause is suggested by the fragment of the Iliad,
published in my Memoir on the Petrie Papyri, which shows, in thirty-five
lines, five unknown to modern texts. Cf. Plate III and p. 34 of that
Memoir.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
Our Earlier Historians of Greece.
PAGE
Definite and indefinite problems 1
Examples in theology and metaphysics 1
Examples in literature 2
The case of history generally 3
Special claims of Greek history 4
The claims of Rome and of the Jews 4
Greek influences in our religion 4
Increasing materials 5
Plan of this Essay 6
Universal histories 6
Gillies 7
Effects of the French Revolution on the writers of the time 8
Mitford writes a Tory history of Greece 8
He excites splendid refutations 9
Thirlwall: his merits 10
his coldness 11
his fairness and accuracy, but without enthusiasm 11
Clinton's _Fasti_: his merits 12
Contrast of Grote's life 13
His theory Radicalism 13
The influences of his time 14
To be compared with Gibbon 14
His eloquence; his panegyric on democracy 15
Objections: that democracies are short-lived 16
that the Athenian democrat was a slave-holder and a ruler
over subjects 16
The Athenian not the ideal of the Greeks 17
Grote's treatment of the despots 18
Their perpetual recurrence in the Greek world 18
Advantages of despotism 18
Good despots not infrequent 19
Grote a practical politician 20
His treatment of Alexander the Great 20
Contrast of Thirlwall 20
Grote ignores the later federations, and despises their history 21
His treatment of the early legends 22
Even when plausible, they may be fictions 22
Thirlwall's view less extreme 23
Influence of Niebuhr on both historians 23
Neither of them visited Greece, which later historians generally
regard as essential 24
Ernst Curtius and Victor Duruy 25
The value of autopsy in verifying old authors 25
Example in the theatre of Athens 25
Its real size 26
No landscape for its background 26
Greek scenery and art now accessible to all 27