The Romans in Greece.
Position of Rome towards the Leagues 187
Roman interpretation of the 'liberty of the Greeks' 187
Opposition of the Ætolians 188
Probably not fairly stated by Polybius 189
Rome and the Achæans 189
Mistakes of Philopoemen gave Rome excuses for interference 189
Mommsen takes the Roman side 190
Hertzberg and Freeman on the Achæan question 190
Senility of the Greeks 191
Decay of the mother-country 191
The advocates for union with Rome 192
The advocates of complete independence 192
The party of moderate counsels 193
Money considerations 193
acted upon both extremes 194
Exaggerated statements on both sides 194
The Separatists would not tolerate separation from themselves 195
Democratic tyranny 195
Modern analogies forced upon us 195
and not to be set aside 196
The history of Greece is essentially modern 196
therefore modern parallels are surely admissible, if justly
drawn 197
The spiritual history not closed with the Roman conquest 197
The great bequests of the Roman period 199
The Anthology, Lucian, Julian, Plotinus 200
Theological Greek studies 200
Have the Greeks no share in our religion? 201
Or is it altogether Semitic? 201
The language of the New Testament exclusively Greek 202
Saint Paul's teaching 202
Stoic elements in Saint Paul 203
The Stoic sage 203
The Stoic Providence 203
Saint John's Gospel 204
Neo-Platonic doctrine of the Logos 205
The Cynic independence of all men 205
The Epicurean dependence upon friends 206
The university of Athens 206
Greece indestructible 207
Greek political history almost the private property of the
English writers, 207
who have themselves lived in practical politics 208
Not so in artistic or literary history 208
where the French and Germans are superior 209
especially in art 209
Importance of studying Greek art 209
Modern revivals of ancient styles,--Gothic, Renaissance 210
Probability of Hellenic revival 211
Greek art only recently understood. Winckelmann, Penrose,
Dörpfeld 212
Its effect upon modern art when properly appreciated 212
and upon every detail of our life 212
Greek literature hardly noticed in this Essay 213
Demands a good knowledge and study of the language 213
Other languages must be content to give way to this pursuit 214
The nature and quality of Roman imitations 215
The case of Virgil 215
Theocritus only a late flower in the Greek garden of poetry 216
APPENDIX.
On the Authenticity of the Olympian Register 217
PROBLEMS IN GREEK HISTORY.
CHAPTER I.
OUR EARLIER HISTORIANS OF GREECE.
[Sidenote: Definite and indefinite problems.]
§ 1. There are scientific problems and literary tasks which can be
worked out once for all, or which, at least, admit of final solution, to
the lasting fame of him that finds that solution, as well as to the
permanent benefit of civilized man. There are others, more numerous and
far more interesting, which are ever being solved, finally perhaps in
the opinion of the discoverer, and even of his generation, but ever
arising again, and offering fresh difficulties and fresh attractions to
other minds and to newer generations of men.
[Sidenote: Examples in theology and metaphysics.]
I will cite the largest instances, as the most obvious illustration of
this second class. The deep mysteries of Religion, the dark problems of
Knowing and Being, which have occupied the theologian and the
metaphysician for thousands of years, are still unsettled, and there is
hardly an age of thinking men which does not attack these questions
afresh, and offer new systems and new solutions for the acceptance of
the human race. Nor can we say that in these cases new facts have been
discovered, or new evidence adduced; it is rather that mankind feels
there is more in the mystery than is contained in the once accepted
explanation, and endeavours by some new manipulation of the old
arguments to satisfy the eternal craving for that mental rest which will
never be attained till we know things face to face.
[Sidenote: Examples in literature.]
But perhaps these are instances too lofty for my present purpose: I can
show the same pertinacious tendency to re-solve literary problems of a
far humbler kind. How striking is the fact that the task of translating
certain great masterpieces of poetry seems never completed, and that in
the face of scores of versions, each generation of scholars will attack
afresh Homer's _Iliad_, Dante's _Divina Commedia_, Aeschylus'
_Agamemnon_, and Goethe's _Faust_! There are, I believe, forty English
versions of _Faust_. How many there are of the _Iliad_ and the _Divina
Commedia_, I have not ascertained; but of the former there is a whole
library, and of the latter we may predict with certainty that the latest
version will not be the last. Not only does each generation find for
itself a new ideal in translation,--the fine version of the _Iliad_ by
Pope is now regarded with scorn,--but each new aspirant is discontented
with the earlier renderings of the passages he himself loves best; and
so year after year we see the same attempt made, often with great but
never with universally accepted success. For there are always more
beauties in the old masterpiece than have been conveyed, and there are
always weaknesses in the translation, which show after a little wear.
[Sidenote: The case of history generally.]
This eternal freshness in great masterpieces of poetry which ever tempts
new translators, is also to be found in great historical subjects,
especially in the history of those nations which have left a permanent
mark on the world's progress. There is no prospect that men will remain
satisfied with the extant histories, however brilliant, of England or of
France, even for an account of the periods which have long since
elapsed, and upon which no new evidence of any importance can be found.
Such is likewise the case with the histories of Greece and Rome. No
doubt there is frequently new material discovered; the excavator may in
a month's digging find stuff for years of speculation. No doubt there is
an oscillation in the appreciation even of well-sifted materials: a new
theory may serve to rearrange old facts and present them in a new light.
But quite apart from all this, men will be found to re-handle these
great histories merely for the sake of re-handling them. In the words of
the very latest of these attempts: 'Though we can add nothing to the
existing records of Greek history, the estimate placed upon their value
and the conclusions drawn from them are constantly changing; and for
this reason the story which has been told so often will be told anew
from time to time so long as it continues to have an interest for
mankind,--that is, let us hope, so long as mankind continues to
exist.'[4:1]
[Sidenote: Special claims of Greek history.]
§ 2. Perhaps the history of Greece has more right than any other to
excite this interest, since the effects of that country and its people
are probably far greater, certainly more subtle and various, than those
of any other upon our modern life. It is curious that this truth is
becoming recognized universally by the very generation which has begun
to agitate against the general teaching of Greek in our higher schools.
Nobody now attributes any real leading to the Romans in art, in
philosophy, in the sciences, nay, even in the science of politics. If
their literature was in some respects great, every Roman knew and
confessed that this greatness was due to the Greeks; if their practical
treatment of law and politics was certainly admirable, the theory of the
latter was derived from Hellenic speculation.
[Sidenote: The claims of Rome and of the Jews.]
[Sidenote: Greek Influences In Our Religion.]
And when the originality of our Roman teachers is reduced to its very
modest proportions, there is no other ancient nation that can be named
among our schoolmasters except the Hebrews. Here there has been great
exaggeration, and it has not yet been sifted and corrected, as in the
case of Rome. It is still a popular truism that while we owe all we have
of intellectual and artistic refinement to the Greeks, in one great
department of civilization, and that the highest, we owe them nothing,
but are debtors to the Semite spirit,--to the clear revelation and the
tenacious dogma conveyed to the world by the Jews. Like many such
truisms, this statement contains some truth, but a great deal of
falsehood. When we have surveyed the earlier centuries, we shall revert
to this question, and show how far the prejudice in favour of the Semite
has ousted the Greek from his rightful place. Even serious history is
sometimes unjust, much more the hasty generalizations of theologians or
mere literary critics. For the history of religion will be found to
rest, like everything good which we possess, partly upon a Greek basis;
but of course mainly on that portion of Greek history which has only
recently risen into public notice among our scholars,--I mean the later
and the spiritual development of the nation when the conquests of
Alexander had brought the whole ancient world under its sway.
[Sidenote: Increasing materials.]
So the subject is still quite fresh, and even the evidence of books is
as yet unexhausted, not to speak of the yearly increment we obtain from
the keen labour of many excavators. The _Mittheilungen_ of the German
Institute at Athens, the _Bulletin de Correspondance hellénique_, the
English _Hellenic Journal_, and even the daily papers at Athens, teem
with accounts of new discoveries. A comparison of the newest guide to
Greece, the _Guide-Joanne_ (1891), with the older books of the kind will
show the wonderful increase in our knowledge of pre-historic
antiquities. These recent books and reviews are following in the wake
of Dr. Schliemann, whose great researches have set us more new problems
than we are likely to solve in the present century.
[Sidenote: Plan of this Essay.]
§ 3. What I purpose, therefore, to do in this Essay is to review the
general lines followed by the great historians of Greece of the last
three generations; to show the main points in which each of them excels,
and where each of them still shows a deficiency. I shall then notice
some current misconceptions, as well as some errors to be corrected by
interesting additions to our evidence, even since the last of our larger
histories has appeared; and in doing this shall specially touch on those
more disputed and speculative questions which are on principle omitted
in practical and non-controversial books. By this means we shall
ascertain in a general way what may be expected from any fresh attempt
in Greek history, and where there still seems room for discovery or for
the better establishing of truths already discovered, but not yet
accepted in the current teaching of our day. Whatever occasional
digressions may occur will all be subordinate to this general plan,
which is in fact an essay, not upon Greek history, but upon the problems
of Greek history. We shall conclude with some reflections upon the
artistic lessons of Greek life which are at last becoming accessible to
the larger public.
[Sidenote: Universal histories.]
§ 4. I need not go back to the period of Universal Histories, such as
that of Bossuet or of Rollin, which were only adequate before special
studies had accumulated vast materials from the records of each separate
nation. In our own day there are not wanting universal histories,[7:1]
though even the acknowledged genius and the enormous experience of Ranke
were insufficient for the task as it now presents itself.[7:2] The first
larger Greek histories known to me are those of Gillies and of
Mitford[7:3],--the former now totally forgotten; the latter only
remembered because it stimulated a great successor to write his famous
antidote.
[Sidenote: Gillies.]
Yet the work of Gillies, first published in 1786, was continued by the
author, thirty-five years later, down to the reign of Augustus, when the
sixth edition, a stately book in eight volumes, was published. There is
no lack of merit in the work; but the writer's standpoint will be
apparent from the opening of his Dedication to the King: 'Sir, the
history of Greece exposes the dangerous turbulence of democracy, and
arraigns the despotism of tyrants. By describing the incurable evils
inherent in every form of republican policy, it evinces the inestimable
benefits resulting to liberty itself from the lawful domination of
hereditary kings.' One might imagine Gillies a Hellenistic author
dedicating his work to a Ptolemy or a Seleucus.
[Sidenote: Effects of the French Revolution on the writers of the time.]
[Sidenote: Mitford:]
It is clear enough, though I know not the details of his life, that the
horrors of the French Revolution had sunk deep into his soul. This is
quite certain in the case of Mitford, a gentleman of fortune, whose
education in Greek was early interrupted, but whose long residence at
Nice brought him into contact with St. Croix and Villoison, two of the
most famous Grecians of that day. After his return in 1777 from France,
he found himself a man of leisure and importance, in the same Yeomanry
corps with Gibbon, whose friendship he gained, and at whose suggestion
he wrote his once popular history.[8:1]
[Sidenote: writes a Tory history of Greece;]
Mitford wrote in a Tory spirit, and with a distinct feeling of the
_political_ significance of Greek history as an example to modern men.
He had upon his side the authority of almost every great thinker
produced in the days of Hellenic greatness. All these speculators, in
their pictures of ideal, as well as their criticisms of the actual,
States, regard thorough-going democracy as an evil, and its abuses as
the main cause of the early decay of Hellenic greatness. They all point
with respect and pride to the permanence and consistency of Spartan life
as indicating the sort of government likely to produce the best and most
enduring results. Mitford, therefore, not only deserves the credit of
having taken up Greek history as a political study, but he undoubtedly
represents the body of learned opinion among the Greeks themselves upon
the subject. The literary classes, so far as we can judge from what is
extant of their works, were not usually radical or democratic, and it
was very natural, in a generation which had witnessed the awful results
of a democratic upheaval in France, to appeal to this evidence as
showing that the voice of history was against giving power to the
masses, and taking it from the classes, of any society.
What popularity Mitford attained can only now be inferred from the
editions of his work demanded[9:1], coupled with the all-important fact
that he called forth two tremendous refutations,--the monumental works
of Thirlwall and of Grote.
[Sidenote: he excites splendid refutations.]
§ 5. It is very curious that these two famous histories should have been
undertaken (like Gillies' and Mitford's) nearly at the same time, and
both of them by way of correction for the strong anti-republican views
of Mitford. It is also remarkable that each author explicitly declared
himself so satisfied with the work of the other that he would not have
entered upon the task, had he known of his rival's undertaking. This,
however, seems hard to fit in with the dates, seeing that Thirlwall's
book began to appear many years earlier than that of Grote[10:1]. In
any case the former represents a different kind of work, or I should
rather say an earlier stage of work, and therefore comes logically as
well as chronologically first.
[Sidenote: Thirlwall:]
The Bishop of St. David's was a Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge, a
scholar trained in all the precision and refinement of the public
schools, a man accustomed to teach the classics and to enforce accuracy
of form and correctness of critical judgment. He had also what was then
rather a novelty, and what separates him from his distinguished Oxford
contemporaries--Gaisford and Clinton--a competent knowledge of German,
as well as of other languages, and a consequent acquaintance with the
recent studies of the Germans, who were then beginning to write about
classics in German instead of using the Latin language.
[Sidenote: his merits;]
John Stuart Mill, who, when a young man, belonged to a debating society
along with Thirlwall, thought him the very best speaker he had ever
heard. The qualities which attracted Mill were not passion or
imaginative rhetoric, but clear, cold, reasoning powers, together with a
full command of the language best suited to express accurately the
speaker's argument.
These are the qualities which made all Thirlwall's work enduring and
universally respected. His episcopal charges were certainly the best
delivered in his day, and his history, without ever exciting any
enthusiasm, has so steadily maintained its high position, that of recent
years it is perhaps rather rising than falling in popular esteem[11:1].
[Sidenote: his coldness;]
[Sidenote: his fairness and accuracy;]
[Sidenote: but without enthusiasm.]
But the absence of passion, since it checks enthusiasm in the reader, is
a fatal want in any historian. The case before us is a remarkable
instance. Both the learning and fairness of Thirlwall are conspicuous.
It is difficult for any competent reader to avoid wondering at his
caution in receiving doubtful evidence, and his acuteness in modestly
suggesting solutions which have since been proved by further evidence.
Of course the great body of our materials, the Greek classics, lay
before him; the pioneers of modern German philology such as Wolf,
Hermann, K. O. Müller, Welcker, were accessible to him. In ordering and
criticising these materials he left nothing to be desired, and the
student of to-day who is really intimate with Thirlwall's history may
boast that he has a sound and accurate view of all the main questions in
the political and social development of the Hellenic nation. But he will
never have been carried away with enthusiasm; he will never remember
with delight great passages of burning force or picturesque beauty such
as those which adorn the histories of Gibbon or of Arnold. He has
before him the type of a historian like Hallam, whose work would be the
most instructive possible on its period, were it not the dullest of
writing. It would be unfair to Thirlwall to say he is dull, but he is
too cold and passionless for modern readers. To use the words of Bacon:
_Lumen siccum et aridum ingenia madida offendit et torret_.
[Sidenote: Clinton's Fasti.]
[Sidenote: His merits.]
The mention of these qualities in Thirlwall suggests to me that I ought
not to omit some mention of the great work of a very similar
student--this, too, stimulated by Mitford--I mean the _Fasti Hellenici_,
'a civil and literary chronology of the Greeks from the earliest times
to the death of Augustus[12:1].' It is not, properly speaking, a
history, but the materials for the fullest possible history of Greece,
with all its offshoots, such as the Hellenistic kingdoms of Hither Asia,
arranged and tabulated with a patience and care to which I know no
parallel. Any one who examines this work will wonder that it could have
been accomplished within the fifteen years during which the several
volumes appeared. It is astonishing how difficult the student finds it
to detect a passage in the obscurest author that Clinton has not seen;
and his ordinary habit is not to indicate, but to quote all the passages
_verbatim_. The book is quite unsuited for a schoolboy, but to any
serious enquirer into the history of Greece it is positively
indispensable. The influence of Gaisford, then probably the greatest of
Greek scholars, obtained for the book the adequate setting of the
Clarendon Press. Clinton worked with a calmness and deliberation quite
exceptional; and though he knew no German, had so completely mastered
his subject that the Germans have since indeed translated, re-edited,
and abridged him: they have never been able to supersede him. Even when
he is wrong or obsolete, he can be corrected by the full materials he
has laid before the reader. But the perfect coldness of his reasoning,
the absence of all passion, the abnegation of all style, make the book
unapproachable except to a specialist.
[Sidenote: Contrast of Grote's life.]
[Sidenote: His theory Radicalism.]
§ 6. For the same reason Thirlwall's great and solid book was ousted at
once from public favour by the appearance of Grote's history. Two minds
more unlike can hardly be imagined, admitting that they were both honest
and hard workers, and that both knew German as well as Greek, Latin, and
French. Instead of a cold, calm college don, loving cautious statement
and accurate rendering as the highest of virtues; instead of a mild and
orthodox Liberal both in religion and politics,--we have a business man,
foreign to university life and its traditions, a sceptic in religion, a
Positivist in philosophy, and above all an advanced Radical in politics,
invading the subject hitherto thought the preserve and apanage of the
pedagogue or the pedant. Of course he occasionally missed the exact
force of an optative, or the logic of a particle; he excited the fury of
men like Shilleto, to whom accuracy in Greek prose was the one
perfection, containing all the Law and the Prophets. What was far
worse, he even mistook and misstated evidence which bore against his
theories, and was quite capable of being unfair, not from dishonesty,
but from prejudice.
[Sidenote: The influences of his time.]
[Sidenote: To be compared with Gibbon.]
He lived in the days when the world was recovering from its horror at
the French Revolution, and the reaction against the monarchical
restorations in central Europe was setting in. He was persuaded that the
great social and political results of Greek history were because of, and
not in spite of, the prevalence of democracy among its States, and
because of the number and variety of these States. He would not accept
the verdict of all the old Greek theorists who voted for the rule of the
one or the enlightened few; and he wrote what may be called a great
political pamphlet in twelve volumes in vindication of democratic
principles. It was this idea which not only marshalled his facts, but
lent its fire to his argument; and when combined with his Radicalism in
religion and philosophy, produced a book so remarkable, that, however
much it may be corrected and criticised, it will never be superseded. It
is probably the greatest history among the many great histories produced
in this century; and though very inferior in style to Gibbon's _Decline
and Fall_, will rank next to it as a monument of English historical
genius.
[Sidenote: His eloquence.]
[Sidenote: His panegyric on democracy.]
There are chapters of speculation, such as those on the Greek myths and
their historical value, on the Homeric question, on Socrates and the
Sophists, which mark an epoch in the history of their respective
subjects, and have been ever since gradually moulding even the most
obstinate opponents, who at first rejected his theories with
scorn[15:1]. There are chapters of narrative, such as that on the battle
of Platæa, or the Athenian defeat at Syracuse, where he so saturates
himself with the tragic grandeur of the events, and with the consummate
art of his great Greek predecessors, that his somewhat clumsy and
unpolished style takes their colour and rises to the full dignity of his
great subject. But the greatest novelty among the many which adorn his
immortal work is his admirable _apologia_ for democracy,--for that form
of government where legislation is the result of discussion; where the
minority feels bound to acquiesce in the decision of the majority; and
where the administrators of the law are the servants, not the masters,
of the nation, appointed with defined powers to terminable magistracies,
and liable to indictment for exceeding or abusing these powers. He
occupied the whole body of the book in illustrating how the voluntary
submission of the free citizen to control of this kind, the alternation
in the same men of commanding and obeying, and the loyalty and
patriotism thus engendered, were far higher social factors than the
enforced or unreasoning submission of the masses to the dictates of a
monarch or a close aristocracy.
[Sidenote: Objections: that democracies are short-lived;]
§ 7. To the first great objection,--that of the Greek theorists,--that
the greatness of democracies is but transient, and must rapidly
degenerate into the fickle and violent rule of a mob, he might have
answered, that these theorists themselves never contemplated human
institutions as permanent, and even assumed that the ideal State of
their dreams must be subject to exhaustion and decay. Still more might
he have urged that not a long life, but a great life, was the real test
of the excellence of the body politic, and that centuries of Spartan
respectability had done nothing for the world in comparison with the
brief bloom of Attic genius.
[Sidenote: that the Athenian democrat was a slaveholder and a ruler over
subjects.]
Another and more serious objection to the position that Athens was a
typical democracy, and that its high culture was the direct result of
its political institutions, he seems to me to have practically ignored.
The Athenian citizen, however poor, had indeed equal rights with every
other citizen, could succeed to the same high offices, and appeal to the
same laws. But the Athenian citizen, however poor, was a slaveholder,
and the member of an imperial class, ruling with more or less absolutism
over communities of subjects, treating as manifest inferiors even the
many resident aliens, who promoted the mercantile wealth of his city.
Hence, after all, he was one of a minority, controlling a vast majority
of subjects and slaves with more or less despotic sway. Lord
Redesdale[17:1] tells us that this was the point which his brother
Mitford thought of capital importance, and which prompted him to write
his history. He met, all through revolutionary France, and among the
democrats in England, perpetual assertions that Greek democracy was the
ideal at which modern Europe should aim, and he felt that these
enthusiasts had considered neither the size of modern States, nor the
essential difference just stated between the Athenian and the modern
democrat.
[Sidenote: The Athenian not the ideal of the Greeks.]
And it is to me certain, that many of the virtues as well as the vices
of the Athenian arose from his being an aristocrat in the strictest
sense,--the member of a privileged and limited society ruling over
inferiors, with the leisure obtainable by the poorest slaveholder, and
the dignity always resulting from the consciousness of inherent
superiority. And yet with all this, the type of perfection which the
Greeks, as a people, ever held before them was not the polished democrat
of Athens, but the blunt aristocrat of Sparta. This latter was admired
and copied, so far as he could be copied, in like manner as the English
aristocrat has been admired by all the nations of the world,--not
because he lives under free institutions, but because he shows in him
the traditions and the breeding of a dominant race long accustomed to
the dignity and the splendour of ancient wealth and importance.
As Grote could see no superiority whatever in aristocracy over
democracy, so he ignored completely this, the aristocratic side of all
the Hellenic democracies.
[Sidenote: Grote's treatment of the despots.]
[Sidenote: Their perpetual recurrence in the Greek world.]
[Sidenote: Advantages of despotism.]
§ 8. But, when he comes to treat of the despots, or tyrants, who
overthrew governments and made themselves irresponsible rulers, he falls
in with all the stock accusations of the aristocratic Greek
writers,--Herodotus, Xenophon, Plutarch,--and represents these despots
as an unmixed evil to their country[18:1]. He treats them in a special
chapter as a sort of epidemic at a certain epoch of Greek history,
whereas the facts show that through the whole series of centuries, from
the dawn of history to the conquest by Rome, despots were a constantly
recurring phenomenon all over the Greek world. We find them mentioned by
scores, and in every corner of Hellas and Asia Minor. Even Sparta ceased
in time to form the almost solitary exception. This persistence of
tyrants shows that either the people who tolerated them were politically
fools, or that despotic government had really some good points, and
recommended itself at least as an escape from greater evils[18:2]. The
political value of this phase of Greek life I shall treat more fully in
the sequel.
[Sidenote: Good despots not infrequent.]
We hear, of course, of many violent and vicious despots in Greek
history; and these are the cases always cited as proving the unsoundness
of that form of government. But if a list could be procured of the
numerous tyrants who governed wisely or moderately, and who improved the
manners and the culture of their subjects, it would probably comprise an
immense number of names. The good specimens passed by without notice;
the criminal cases were paraded in the schools and upon the stage[19:1]:
and so a one-sided estimate has passed into history. This estimate was
taken up with warmth, and paraded with great amplitude by the Radical
historian. And yet the very history of Europe since he wrote has shown
us strong reasons to doubt that every nation is best managed by a
parliamentary system. But on this point Grote had no misgivings. The
will of the majority was to him the inspired voice, and he trusted to
better education and larger experience to correct the occasional errors
from which not even the fullest debate will save an excited populace.
[Sidenote: Grote a practical politician.]
§ 9. These observations, though meant as strictures upon the sanguine
enthusiasm of Grote's Radical views, are not to be understood as
detracting from the charm of his work. It is this very enthusiasm which
has led him to understand and to interpret political movements or
accommodations completely misunderstood by many learned continental
professors; for he was a practical politician, accustomed to
parliamentary life,--above all to the conservative effects of tradition
and practice, even in the face of the most innovating theories. He has,
therefore, put the case of an educated democracy with more power and
more persuasiveness than any other writer; and for this reason alone his
book must occupy a prominent place even in the library of the mere
practical politician.
[Sidenote: His treatment of Alexander the Great.]
[Sidenote: Contrast of Thirlwall.]
§ 10. Far more serious are the objections to his last volume, on the
life and conquests of Alexander the Great. So unequal, indeed, is this
episode, which to him was a mere appendix to the story of independent
Greece, that a fabulous anecdote prevails of his publisher having
persuaded him against his will to pursue his narrative beyond the battle
of Chæronea[20:1]. Here it is that the calmness and candour of Thirlwall
stand out in marked contrast. The history of the great conqueror and of
the recovered independence (such as it was) of Greece, are treated by
the scholar-bishop with the same care and fairness which mark all the
rest of his work. But Grote is distinctly unfair to Alexander; his love
of democracy led him to hate the man who made it impossible and absurd
for Greece, and he shows this bias in every page of his twelfth volume.
[Sidenote: Grote ignores the later federations,]
As regards the subsequent history, which embraces the all-important
development of federal government throughout Greece, he does not
condescend to treat it at all. His great work is therefore incomplete in
plan, and stops before the proper conclusion of his subject. Of course
he would have found it hard to panegyrize his favourite democracies when
he came to the Hellenistic age. There the inherent weaknesses of a
popular government in days of poverty and decay, in the face of rich and
powerful monarchs, showed themselves but too manifestly.
[Sidenote: and despises their history.]
But he will not confess this weak point; he even covers his retreat by
the bold assertion in his preface that Greek history from the generation
of Alexander has no interest in itself, or any influence on the world's
history--a wonderful judgment! However great therefore and complete the
work of Grote is on the earlier periods, this may be added as a
warning,--the reader of Greek history should stop with the death of
Philip of Macedon, and read the remainder in other books. It is indeed
necessary for schoolmasters to limit the bounds of Greek literature in
school studies, and so with common consent they have admitted nothing
later than the golden age. But the vast interest and paramount
importance of Greek ideas in the culture of the Roman world have tempted
me to sketch the subject in my _Greek Life and Thought from Alexander to
the Roman Conquest_ and _Greek Life under Roman Sway_. Any reader of
these volumes will at least concede the vastness, the importance, and
the deep interest of the period which Grote despised. But so intricate
are the details, and so little arranged, that to write upon it is rather
pioneer's work than anything else.
[Sidenote: His treatment of the early legends.]
[Sidenote: Even when plausible, they may be fictions].
§ 11. Let us now, before passing to his successors, turn back to the
very beginning of the subject, and say a word on his treatment of the
elaborate mythical system which the Greeks prefixed to their historical
annals. Here the Positivism of the man was sure to bear fruit and
produce some remarkable results. He gives, accordingly, with all
deliberation and fulness of detail, a complete recital of the stories
about the gods and heroes, telling all their acts and adventures, and
then proceeds to argue that they are to be regarded as quite distinct
from, and unconnected with, any historical facts. He argues that as
there is in the legends a large quantity of assertions plainly false and
incredible, but intertwined indissolubly with plausible and credible
statements, we have no right to pick out the latter and regard them as
derived from actual facts. There is such a thing as plausible fiction;
and we have no guarantee that the authors of incredible stories about
gods and their miracles did not invent this plausible kind as well.
Rejecting, therefore, all historical inferences from the Greek legends,
he merely regards them as conclusive evidence of the state of mind of
their inventors,--a picture of the Greek mind in what Comte called the
'theological stage.'
[Sidenote: Thirlwall's view less extreme.]
It is remarkable how fully Thirlwall states this view of the Greek
myths, and how clearly his cautious mind appreciates the indisputable
weakness of all such legends in affording proper and trustworthy
evidence. But when we come to persistent bodies of legend which assert
that Oriental immigrants--Cadmus, Danaus, Pelops, &c.--brought
civilization to yet barbarous Greece, Thirlwall, with all his doubts,
with all his dislike to vague and shifting stories, cannot make up his
mind to regard these agreeing myths as mere idle inventions. Moreover,
he urged the point, which Grote omitted to consider, _that early art
might so corroborate a story_ as to make its origin in fact morally
certain.
[Sidenote: Influence of Niebuhr on both historians.]
No doubt both historians were considerably under the influence of
Niebuhr, whose rejection of the old Roman legends, which were often
plausible fiction, produced a very great sensation in the literary
world[23:1]. Nor did they live to see the great discoveries in early
art and prehistoric culture which have since been made by the
archæologists. It seems to me, therefore, that as regards the
_incunabula_ of Greek history these great men came at the moment when
little more than a negative attitude was possible. The mental history of
the nation in its passage from easy faith to utter scepticism was
expounded by Grote in a masterly way; but for the construction of the
myths he would not admit any other than subjective causes. Here, then,
was the point on which some further advance might fairly be expected.
[Sidenote: Neither of them visited Greece,]
§ 12. There was another matter also, connected with the life and habits
of the time, which made the appreciation of the facts less keen and
picturesque than it might have been. Neither Thirlwall nor Grote, though
each of them possessed ample means and leisure, seems ever to have
thought of visiting the country and seeking to comprehend the
geographical aspects of their histories from personal experience. They
both--Thirlwall especially--cite the earlier travellers who had explored
and pictured the Hellenic peninsula; but in those days the traveller was
regarded as a different kind of man from the historian, who wrote from
books in his closet.
[Sidenote: which later historians generally regard as essential.]
[Sidenote: Ernst Curtius and Victor Duruy.]
[Sidenote: The value of autopsy in verifying old authors.]
It is in the last two features--the interpretation of the legends, and
the personal acquaintance with the country--that the more recent
attempts excel the older masterpieces. Ernst Curtius spent several years
in Greece, and published a complete and scholarly account of the
Peloponnesus before he produced his history. Duruy gives life and colour
to his narrative by references to his personal experiences in Greece. To
visit and study the scenes of great events is now so easy and so
habitual to scholars, that we may count it one of the necessary
conditions for any future history which is to take a high place in the
ever-increasing series of Hellenic studies[25:1]. In his opening
chapters Ernst Curtius breathes such freshness and reality into the once
dry preamble of geographical description that we feel we have attained a
fresh epoch, and are led to expect great things from an experience
gained upon the spot, which can verify the classical descriptions by the
local features which remain. It is of course idle to think that this
kind of familiarity will compensate for imperfect study. The modern
Greek antiquarians, living upon the spot, have not yet shown themselves
equal to many who have never seen what they discuss. Nevertheless, this
is certain, that new force, and directness, are attained by a personal
acquaintance with the coasts, the mountains, the rivers of Greece, and
that many a wrong inference from ancient texts may be avoided by knowing
that the scene of the events precludes it.
[Sidenote: Example in the theatre of Athens.]
[Sidenote: Its real size.]
[Sidenote: No landscape for its background.]
§ 13. Here is an example. It is commonly inferred from a passage in
Plato's _Symposium_, which speaks of thirty thousand citizens being
addressed by Agathon in his plays, that the theatre held that number of
spectators. This is copied into book after book, though I have long ago
called attention to the impossibility of maintaining such an
interpretation[26:1]. I need not urge the absurdity of speaking from an
open-air stage to thirty thousand people. The actual theatre is now
recovered, and any one who has seen it and possesses reasonable
common-sense will perceive that about fifteen thousand people was the
utmost it could ever have contained[26:2]. To expect a larger crowd to
hear any performance of human voices would be ridiculous. What the
passage, therefore, means is that the whole population of freemen in
Athens were in the habit of enjoying the drama,--not, of course, all at
the same moment. Other fancies, which have given rise to eloquent
musings concerning the picturesque view of the sea and islands enjoyed
by the Athenian as a natural background to his tragedy, can be disposed
of in the same way by simply sitting even on the top row and making the
experiment[26:3],--not to speak of the false notion of attributing to
the Athenian citizen a conscious love of picturesque scenery, or an
attempt to combine two heterogeneous and incongruous æsthetic interests.
[Sidenote: Greek scenery and art now accessible to all.]
If the writer of Greek history is bound to have visited Greece, this
cannot be expected of the reader. But for him too our generation has
brought its benefits. In the fine illustrations now published of all the
objects of interest in Greek museums, and of the finest scenery
throughout the country, the general public can find some equivalent; and
from this point of view the history of Duruy marks a fresh epoch, even
as compared with that of Curtius. For I am not aware that there has
hitherto been any accessible collection of all the interesting things in
Nature and Art which the student of Greek history ought to have seen, at
least in reproduction. There are, of course, splendid monographs on
special buildings, such as the works of the Dilettanti Society, or on
special discoveries, such as the original and richly adorned volumes of
Dr. Schliemann on Mycenæ and Tiryns. But these are beyond the reach of
moderate fortunes. The gallery of photographs begun by Mr. Stillman, and
now in process of publication by the Hellenic Society, are both more
varied and less expensive, and will make the treasures of Greece
perfectly familiar to any student who chooses to acquire them.
FOOTNOTES:
[4:1] Mr. Evelyn Abbott's _History of Greece_, preface.
[7:1] More numerous, and much better, in France and Germany than they
are in England.
[7:2] The first volume of his work has recently been translated by Mr.
Prothero, of King's College, Cambridge.
[7:3] I have seen but not read Stanyan's _Grecian History_ in 2 vols.
(1739), and Gast's _History of Greece_, published in Dublin (1793). O.
Goldsmith's Handbook is one of a number published about a hundred years
ago, all of which are forgotten. Of these I have looked through at least
six. They have now no value.
[8:1] It is remarkable that he never mentions his contemporary, Gillies,
so far as I know.
[9:1] The new (second) edition of 1829 has an interesting defence of his
history by Lord Redesdale, his younger brother. There is also a cabinet
edition in 8 vols., published in 1835, and continued from the death of
Agesilaus, where Mitford had stopped, to that of Alexander, by R. A.
Davenport.
[10:1] The dates are, Thirlwall's history, 1835, Grote's first two
volumes, 1846. But Grote says he had his materials collected for some
years. Upon the publication of these volumes, Thirlwall at once
confessed his inferiority, and wrote no more upon the subject.
[11:1] The most obvious proof of this is the price of the book in
auction catalogues. The second (octavo) edition is both rare and
expensive. The first is the cabinet edition in Lardner's series, the
editor of which suggested the work.
[12:1] Published by the Clarendon Press. Clinton alludes to Mitford's
effect upon him in his _Journal_.
[15:1] Thus the recent book on the Homeric theory, by Professor Jebb, a
scholar who in an earlier primer had inclined to the views of Theodor
Bergk, now advocates mainly Grote's theory. Thus Zeller's latest edition
of the _History of Greek Philosophy_, a masterly work, treats the
Sophists with constant reference to Grote's views. Both the recent
German histories of Greece, Holm's and Busolt's, acknowledge fully the
great merits of Grote, whose attitude towards the Greek myths is indeed
maintained by Holm.
[17:1] In his Editorial Preface to the 2nd ed. of Mitford's _Greece_.
[18:1] This curious contrast should be carefully noted in estimating
Grote. The justified and reasonable objections of Greek historians to
ultra-democracy he ignores; their violent and personal objections to the
despots he adopts without one word of qualification.
[18:2] I am glad to see this point dwelt on with great justice and
discrimination in Mr. E. Abbott's recent _History of Greece_, i. 368.
[19:1] Thus Strabo says, when speaking of Sicyon, that the tyrants who
had long ruled the city before its liberation by Aratus were for the
most part good men; and this accounts for the high reputation of Sicyon
for culture. It was Lycophron, in his tragedy entitled the
_Casandreans_, who painted the typical portrait of a tyrant in the
monster Apollodorus. (Cf. my _Greek Life and Thought_, p. 283.) Whether
he was really as bad as he was painted, and whether his Galatian guards
really drank human blood, &c., depends on the comparative weight the
critic assigns to general improbability, as against the veracity of a
stage portrait. We have no other evidence, for the late historians
borrow the traditional features without criticism. But let us suppose
that in the next century the evidence concerning the character of
Napoleon III depended upon Mr. Freeman's allusions in his _Federal
Government_, and upon V. Hugo's monograph, would the inferences from
these great writers be even near the real truth?
[20:1] The original preface to his first volume marks out the limits
which he duly attained.
[23:1] The first edition of Niebuhr's history appeared in 1811. The
second, a wholly different and enlarged work, was published in 1827, and
translated into English by Thirlwall and Hare in 1828. Grote quotes
Niebuhr constantly, and takes from his Lectures on Ancient History more
than from any other modern source.
[25:1] Thus Duncker's chapter on the Olympic games shows at once that he
never was at Olympia, and does not understand the site.
[26:1] _Rambles and Studies in Greece_, p. 107. See also the excellent
note in Duruy's _History_, ii. chap. vii. sect. 1, on the frequent
exaggerations of the number of Athenian citizens, which never reached
this high figure.
[26:2] Dr. Dörpfeld, with his new map before him, estimated the area for
me the last time I was at Athens. He found that counting in every
available space, such as gangways, &c., 16,000 was the limit. It seems,
therefore, highly probable that an average audience would not exceed
10,000. I cannot remember in Attic literature any allusion to crowding
or want of room in this theatre.
[26:3] _Op. cit._, pp. 108-9. Duruy, at the opening of his twentieth
chapter, has given excellent pictures and plans of the theatre in
question.
CHAPTER II.
RECENT TREATMENT OF THE GREEK MYTHS.
[Sidenote: The newer histories.]
[Sidenote: Not justifiable without particular reasons.]
[Sidenote: Max Duncker.]
[Sidenote: Not suited to English readers.]
§ 14. We may now pass to the more modern treatment of the myths and
mythical history of Greece. There are before us the essays of several
men since the monumental work of Grote. First there is that of Ernst
Curtius; then Duncker's (both translated into English); still more
recently the shorter histories of Holm, Busolt, Hertzberg, and other
Germans, not to speak of Sir George Cox's history and the first volume
of that of Mr. Evelyn Abbott. In fact they are so many and so various
that the production of a new work on Greek history requires some special
justification. For the time has really come when we may begin to
complain of new histories that are not new, but merely reproduce the old
facts and the old arguments, without regard to what specialists have
been doing to clear up particular questions. Duncker's large work, of
which the earlier period of Greek history forms the closing part, is
indeed an important book, and cannot be dismissed so easily. But if I
may venture to speak out, I do not think it was worth translating into
English. Scholars earnest and patient enough to read through it can
hardly fail to have learned German, and therefore require no English
version. I cannot believe that the English-speaking public will ever
read it, nor do I think this should be expected. For in the first place
the book is sadly deficient in style,--not merely in the graces of
style, which are seldom attained by professional scholars, but in that
higher quality of style produced either by burning passion or delicate
æsthetic taste. Duncker is not, like most of the English historians, a
politician. To him despot and democracy are mere things to be analyzed.
Nor does he strive to advocate novel and picturesque views, like Ernst
Curtius. His mind is so conservative that he rather takes a step
backward, and reverts, especially in his chronology, to statements which
of late seemed likely to be discarded as obsolete. He is always sensible
and instructive; he has an excellent habit of making his authorities
speak for themselves: but he wants _verve_ as well as originality in
treating old, unsettled problems, though he has made some remarkable
re-constructions of history from conflicting myths.
[Sidenote: Busolt and Holm.]
[Sidenote: Return to Grote.]
[Sidenote: Holm's postulate.]
The two best recent histories to which I have referred, Busolt's in
1885, Holm's in 1886 (I speak of the first volumes), are by no means so
conservative as Duncker; Holm is as advanced in his scepticism as Grote;
but, as I shall show in the sequel, their scepticism is still spasmodic,
or shall I say varied with touches of credulity, which are probably the
necessary relief of all scepticism. Nothing strikes the reader of these
new Greek histories more forcibly than their abandonment of the
combinations of the school of E. Curtius, and their return to the
attitude of Grote, whose decision concerning the utter untrustworthiness
of legends for historical purposes they all quote with approval. The
ground taken by Grote was the possibility of 'plausible fiction' which
could not possibly be distinguished, as miraculous stories can, from
sober history. Holm adds to this some excellent arguments showing the
strong temptations to deliberate invention which must have actuated the
old chronographers and genealogists[30:1]. Nevertheless, Holm devotes
200 12mo pages, Busolt 100 8vo, of their 'short histories' to the
analysis and discussion of the legends and discoveries concerning
pre-historic Greece, in the course of which they cannot avoid many
inferences from very doubtful evidence. Holm very justly demands that
historians should let the reader know in the stating of it, what has
been handed down to us, and what is modern hypothesis, and claims to
have observed this distinction himself. But there are traditions which
are manifestly late and untrustworthy, such as that which fixes the
dates of Arktinos and Eumelos, and tells us of written registers in the
eighth century B.C., which he accepts without a due caution to his
readers.
[Sidenote: The modern attitude.]
§ 15. I think, moreover, that even the most trenchant of sceptics does
not consistently deny that there must be some truth in legendary
history, though we may not be able to disentangle it from miracles and
misunderstandings. And when once we have abandoned Grote's position, and
hold it more probable that old legends are based on facts than purely
invented, nothing will prevent the sanguine student from striving to
pick out for himself the facts and making a probable, if not a certain,
sketch of the otherwise unrecorded _incunabula_ of a nation's history.
[Sidenote: Pure invention a rare occurrence;]
[Sidenote: plausible fiction therefore not an adequate cause.]
This view and these attempts are based upon an ascertained truth in the
psychology of all human societies. Just as people will accommodate a
small number of distinct words to their perpetually increasing wants,
and will rather torture an old root in fifty ways than simply invent a
new combination of sounds for a new idea; so in popular legends the
human race will always attach itself to what it knows, to what has gone
before, rather than set to work and invent a new series of facts. Pure
invention is so very rare and artificial that we may almost lay it aside
as a likely source for _old_ legends[31:1]; and we may assume either a
loose record of real facts, or the adoption and adaptation of the
legends of a previous age, as our real, though treacherous, materials
for guessing pre-historic truth. This is the reason why we later
students have not adhered without hesitation to the sceptical theory
that plausible fiction _may_ account for all the Greek myths, and we
look for some stronger reason to reject them altogether.
[Sidenote: Cases of deliberate invention,]
[Sidenote: at Pergamum,]
[Sidenote: which breed general suspicion of marvellous stories.]
§ 16. There are cases, for example, where we can see distinct reasons
why people in a historic age should have invented links to attach
themselves to some splendid ancestry. Just as the heralds of our own day
are often convicted of forging the generations which connect some
wealthy upstart with an ancient house, so it is in Greek history. No
larger and more signal instances of this can be found than the barefaced
genealogies made by the learned in the days of Alexander's
successors[32:1], when any of the new foundations,--Antioch, Seleucia,
&c.,--wanted to prove themselves ancient Hellenic cities, re-settled
upon a mythical foundation. Not different in spirit were the Pergamene
fabrications, which not only invented a mythical history for Pergamum,
but adopted and enlarged the Sicilian fables which connected a Pergamene
hero, Æneas, with the foundation of Rome[33:1]. What capital both the
Ilians and the people of Pergamum made out of these bold mendacities, is
well known. I shall return in due course to another remarkable instance,
which I have set before the world already, where a great record of
Olympic games was made up at a late date by a learned man in honour of
Elis and Messene. Later Greek history does show us some of these
deliberate inventors,--Lobo the Argive, Euhemerus the Messenian, and a
few more; a list which the Greeks themselves augmented by adding the
travellers who told wonderful tales of distant lands which conflicted
with Hellenic climate and experience. But here too the Greeks were
over-sceptical, and rejected, as we know, many real truths only because
they found them marvellous. In the same way, modern inquirers who come
to estimate the doubtful and varying evidence for older history must be
expected to differ according to the peculiar temper of their minds.
[Sidenote: Example of a trustworthy legend from Roman history.]
§ 17. But perhaps the reader will desire to hear of a case where a
legend has conveyed acknowledged truth, rather than the multifarious
cases where it may lead us into error. I will give an instance from
Roman history, all the more remarkable from the connection in which it
is found.
[Sidenote: Niebuhr, Arnold, Mommsen.]
That history, as we all know, used to commence with a pretty full
account of the seven kings, who ruled for very definitely stated
periods. The difficulties in accepting this legend were first shown by
Niebuhr; and then came Arnold, who told again the legend as a mere
nursery tale, refusing to call it history. Mommsen, in his very
brilliant work, goes further, and omits the whole story contemptuously,
without one word of apology. The modern reader who refers to his book to
know who the kings of Rome were, would find one casual and partial list,
no official chapter. I am not sure that Mommsen names most of them more
than once in any passing mention.
[Sidenote: The _rex sacrorum_ at Rome.]
But does it follow that Mommsen denies there ever were kings at Rome?
Far from it. For there were laws and ordinances, lasting into historical
times, which would be wholly inexplicable had they not come down from a
monarchy. Thus there remained a priest of great dignity, though of
little importance, whose very title--_rex sacrorum_--shows that his
office was created to perform those priestly functions once performed by
the abolished kings, and not otherwise provided for in the reformed
constitution. The fact therefore asserted by the famous legend, that
there were once kings in Rome, is established to the satisfaction of any
reasonable man by the evidence of surviving usages.
[Sidenote: The king-archon at Athens.]
In the same way we have at Athens legends of kings, but all of such
antiquity as to make us hesitate in believing them, had there not
survived into historical days the _king-archon_, whose name and
functions point clearly to their being a survival of those kingly
functions which were thought indispensable on religious or moral
grounds, even after the actual monarchs had passed away[35:1].
The legends, therefore, which tell of a gradual change from a monarchy
to an aristocracy, and a gradual widening of the Government to embrace
more members by making its offices terminable, are no mere plausible
fictions, but an obscure, and perhaps inadequate, yet still real account
of what did happen in Attica in the days before written records existed.
[Sidenote: Legends of foreign immigrants.]
[Sidenote: Corroborative evidence of art, but not of language.]
§ 18. Larger and more important is the great body of stories which agree
in bringing Phoenician, Egyptian, and Asianic princes to settle in
early Greece, where they found a primitive people, to whom they taught
the arts and culture of the East. To deny the general truth of these
accounts now would be to contradict facts scientifically ascertained; it
is perfectly certain that the Greek alphabet is derived from the
Phoenician, and it is equally certain that many of the artistic
objects found at Orchomenos, in Attica, and at Mycenæ, reveal a foreign
and Oriental origin. At the same time Duruy, in the luminous discussion
he has devoted to the subject[36:1], shows that, however certain the
early contact with the East, there is hardly any trace in Greece of the
language of any non-Hellenic conquerors, as there is, for example (he
might have added), in the names of the letters, which mostly bear in
Greece their Semitic names. He thinks, therefore, that although early
Asianic Greeks were the real intermediaries of this culture, they merely
stimulated the latent spark in the natives, which shows itself in
certain original non-Asiatic features which mark pre-historic Greek
remains. But those who in their enthusiasm for Greece go even further in
rejecting any foreign parentage for the higher Greek art[36:2], will now
no longer deny that the occurrence of amber, ostrich-eggs, and ivory,
which surely were not all imported in a rude or unmanipulated condition,
prove at least the lively traffic in luxuries which must have existed,
and which cannot exist without many other far-reaching connections.
[Sidenote: Corroboration of legends in architecture.]
There are even lesser matters, where legends might seem only to set
before us the difficulty of harmonizing conflicting statements; and yet
archæology finds that there is something real implied. Thus the legend
which asserts that the older Perseids were supplanted by the Pelopids in
the dominion of Mycenæ is in striking agreement with the fact that there
are two styles of wall-building in the extant remains, and that the
ruder work has actually been re-faced with the square hewn blocks of the
later builders[37:1].
§ 19. But we have here been dealing with political legends, which are
less likely than genealogical or adventurous legends to excite the
imagination, and so to be distorted from facts. Let us turn to consider
some of these latter.
[Sidenote: Explanation of myths by the solar theory.]
[Sidenote: The analogy of Indian and Persian mythology,]
When we approach such a story as the rape of Helen by Paris, the
consequent expedition of the Greeks, and the siege of Troy, we are
confronted, or at least we were confronted a few years ago, with a
theory which professed to explain all such stories as mere modifications
or misunderstandings of the great phenomena of Nature expressed in
pictorial language. The break of day, the conquest of the Sun over the
morning mists, his apparent defeat at night, and the victory of the
Powers of Darkness,--all this was supposed to have affected so
powerfully the imaginations of primitive men that they repeated their
original hopes and fears in all manner of metaphors, which by and by
became misinterpreted, and applied to the relations, friendly or
hostile, of the various superhuman powers known as gods or heroes.
Helen, if you please, was the Dawn, carried off by Paris, the Powers of
Night, and imprisoned in Troy. Achilles was only the Sun-god, who
struggles against the Night, and after a period of brilliancy succumbs
to his enemies. It appeared that in the _Vedas_ and the _Zend-Avesta_,
which may be regarded as older cousins of the Greek mythologies, the
names of the gods pointed clearly to their original connection with
solar phenomena, and some of the Greek names were shown to be merely the
Greek forms of the same words.
[Sidenote: expounded by Professor Max Müller,]
[Sidenote: founded on very wide learning,]
It is not necessary for me here to expound more fully this celebrated
theory, seeing that it has acquired great popularity in England from the
brilliant statement of it by Professor Max Müller in his early _Lectures
on the Science of Language_. It was a learned theory, requiring a
knowledge of the various languages as well as the various mythologies of
the Indians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and even other branches of the
great Indo-European family. It required, too, a knowledge of that
wonderful new science, the science of comparative etymology, by which
two names as diverse as possible could be shown to be really akin. The
ordinary reader was surprised at the scientific legerdemain by which
_Helen_ was identified with _Sarama_, and was disposed to accept a great
deal from men who claimed to have made such astonishing discoveries.
[Sidenote: long since shown inadequate,]
[Sidenote: because it implies sentimental savages,]
[Sidenote: which is contrary to our experience.]
§ 20. It is now very long since I first declared myself against this
theory[39:1], not as false, but as wholly inadequate to explain the
great wealth and variety of the Greek legends. On that occasion I argued
the case at length, and showed more especially that the mental condition
presupposed in the primitive Indo-Europeans by this theory was not
provable, and was, moreover, contradicted by everything which we know of
the psychological condition of any such people. The theory implies such
a daily joy and a nightly terror, when the sun rose and set, as coloured
the whole language of the primitive race, and gave them one topic which
wholly occupied their imaginations. Seeing that men must have existed
for a long time before they invented legends, perhaps even before they
used language, such fresh and ever-recurring astonishment would be
indeed a marvellous persistence of childish simplicity[39:2]. Moreover,
what we do know of savage men shows us that surprise and wonder imply a
good deal of intellectual development, and that the primitive savage
does not wonder at, but ignores, those phenomena which interest higher
men.
[Sidenote: K. O. Müller's contribution.]
It is a much more reasonable view to discard the changes of the day, and
adopt those of the year, as having suggested early myths of the death of
beautiful youths, and the lamentation of those that loved them. I do not
know a more masterly treatment of this cause for early myths, such as
the death of Adonis, of Linus, of Maneros (in Egypt), than the opening
of K. O. Müller's _History of Greek Literature_. It is a book now fifty
years old, and our knowledge has so much advanced that Müller's views
are in many points antiquated, as I have shown in re-writing the history
of the same great subject[40:1]. But nothing could antiquate the genius
of K. O. Müller, or the grace with which he shows that the plaintive
lays of shepherd and of vine-dresser express the poignant regrets
excited by the burning up of green and bloom in the fierce heats of a
semi-tropical summer. We now know that Nature provides this rest for her
vegetation in meridional climates; but the sleep of plants in the
drought of torrid sunshine seems to men far less natural than their rest
in the long nights and under the white pall of a northern winter, and
thus were suggested myths of violence and cruelty.
[Sidenote: The transference of myths.]
[Sidenote: Old anecdotes doing fresh duty.]
§ 21. These things, however, account for only a small fraction of the
great volume of Greek legend. It is indeed true that the same story will
be renewed, the same ideas repeated, by succeeding generations. There is
such a principle as the _spontaneous transference of myths_, similar to
the constant recurrence of the same old stories in our modern society
under new scenery and with new characters. If, for example, a man of odd
ways and ridiculous habits haunts any society for a long time, and
becomes what is called 'a character,' a number of anecdotes cluster
about his name, which are told to illustrate his peculiarities. Any old
person who hears these stories will be certain to recognize some of them
as much older than the character in question, and as having been told
about some other oddity long passed away; and we may predict with
confidence that by and by they will be fitted on again to some new
person who is a suitable subject for them. But what would be thought of
the logic which inferred that the story must be false from the beginning
because it wanders down the lapse of time, making itself a new home in
each epoch, or that the person to whom it is fitted must be unreal
because he is the hero of a tale which does not originally belong to
him? Yet I could show that this has been the very attitude assumed by
some of the comparative philologers.
[Sidenote: Example from the Trojan legend,]
[Sidenote: but not therefore false.]
§ 22. I will take an instance which the reader will naturally expect to
find discussed in this Essay--the legend of the siege of Troy. It may be
quite true that old names and old metaphors about the sun or the summer
lie hidden in the names of the heroes. It is to me certain that older
stories were taken from their place and fitted on to the newer and more
celebrated circumstances of this famous War. But all this I take to be
not inconsistent with fact, but even to imply as a necessity that there
must really have been such a war, which excited the minds of all the
Greeks of a certain date, and so formed the obvious nucleus for all the
poetical adventures which clung around it.
[Sidenote: The contribution of Dr. Schliemann.]
[Sidenote: History not an exact science.]
The brilliant researches of Dr. Schliemann have demonstrated that the
locus of the legend was not chosen at random, but that Troy, or Iliom,
was in the first place the site of a prehistoric settlement; in the
next, that it was conquered and burned, and re-settled again and again.
There existed, moreover, a venerable shrine in the obscure historic
town, to which the Locrians, at an early date, sent donations of virgins
to atone for the outrage of their mythical ancestor, the lesser Ajax of
the _Iliad_. These facts show that here, as elsewhere, the legend
formed itself about a historic site, and with some nucleus of
historic fact,--how much will probably for ever remain a subject of
dispute[42:1]. If history were an exact science, in which strict
demonstration were required at every step, this conclusion might warrant
our pursuing Grote's course and rejecting the whole legend as imaginary.
But history is really a science of probabilities, in which this perhaps
is the greatest charm, that it leaves large room to the imagination in
framing hypotheses to supply a rational explanation of results which
come before us full-grown, without their beginnings being recorded.
I am not concerned here with the problem of the origin of the Homeric
poems. Those who desire a summary of modern research in this great
field, and care to know what conclusions I have adopted, may consult my
_Greek Literature_, in which the English reader for the first time found
a full conspectus of this great controversy[43:1]. What now comes before
us is to estimate the amount of historical truth which can be extracted
from our so-called Homer.
[Sidenote: Historical value of the Homeric poems.]
It is certain that there was a great struggle round the very site given
in the poems. It was alleged to be a struggle of many Greek chiefs, at
a time when Mycenæ was the richest capital, against the wealth and
discipline of the princes about the Troad, of whom the chief of Ilion
was the head. This, too, is remarkable, that in spite of the superior
wealth and larger population of Asia Minor, the superiority of the Greek
peninsula over this greater and richer land is plainly asserted. The
whole course of known history has verified the broad fact taught by the
legend. Greece has always been the poorer sister, and the superior, of
Asia Minor.
[Sidenote: Mycenæ preserved in legend only.]
That Mycenæ was really the most powerful city in the Greece of some
early period, is another fact which nobody would ever have suspected but
for the teaching of the legend. Even Dr. Schliemann's new demonstration
of its truth, by the display of wealth and of high art which he found in
the royal tombs, would never have been attempted had he not been guided
by the consistent assertions of the _Iliad_. For the massive remains of
the fortifications, and the tombs, proved no guides to the historical
Greeks, who knew Argos only as the head of that province, and early
forgot the splendour of Mycenæ so far as it was not kept alive in their
epic Bible.
[Sidenote: General teaching of the epic poems.]
§ 23. Quite apart from such particular facts, which teach us that the
statements of Greek legend are never to be despised, there are large
general conclusions which most of us think warranted by the Homeric
poems. We may infer the political ideas prevalent when they were
composed; the relative importance of king, nobles, and commons; the
usages of peace and war; the life of men in its social side; the
position of women and of slaves; the religious notions of the day; and
such other questions as must be answered if we desire to obtain a living
picture of the people. Every recent history of Greece has a chapter on
the Homeric poems from this point of view--none of them fuller or better
than the chapters of Grote.
[Sidenote: Social Life in Greece.]
[Sidenote: Alleged artificiality of the poems.]
What I had to say on this subject was set down in the opening chapters
of my _Social Life in Greece_, from which some stray critics have indeed
expressed their dissent, without undertaking to probe and refute my
arguments. Until that is done, the sketch there given of the
aristocratic society described in the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ claims
to be just, and it is unnecessary to defend it here. Perhaps, however,
recent inquiry may have led some students to imagine that I have
attached too much credit to the Homeric pictures of life, seeing that
they are now often asserted to be artificial, and constructed by the
poets to represent an age and a society different from their own.
[Sidenote: Examples from the Iliad,]
[Sidenote: not corroborated by recent discoveries.]
We cannot verify what these poets describe by anything which we know in
historical Greece, without making very large allowances. The games, for
example, described in the twenty-third book of the _Iliad_, are totally
distinct in character from the Olympic games,--the oldest historical
contests of the same kind known to us. The monarchy of Agamemnon and of
Menelaus is totally different from that of Sparta, which survived into
the light of history; and even the poets themselves constantly tell you
that they speak of men not such as the men of their own day, but
greater, stronger, and happier. On the other hand, when we seek for
support from the very ancient remains found at Mycenæ, Tiryns, and Troy
in recent years, we find no clear corroboration, and must admit that the
arms, the dress, and probably the life of the great men whose splendour
we have unearthed do not correspond to the descriptions of the same
things in Homer. This has been the subject of a special book by W.
Helbig[46:1], and the general result at which he arrives is merely
negative. The civilization found by Dr. Schliemann is apparently not
that of Homer. Is the latter then purely imaginary, neither prehistoric
nor historic? Is the life described as artificial as the language?
[Sidenote: Fick's account of the Homeric dialect.]
§ 24. For now we are assured, by the researches of Fick, that the
apparent jumble of dialects in the poems cannot possibly be any original
language which embraced all the dialects, far less a judicious selection
from each due to the genius of the poet, but rather the incongruous
result of the adaptation of an older form (Æolic) to the wants of a
newer and different (Ionic) public. This rehandling of great poems to
make them intelligible is an almost universal phenomenon, and now
affords us the first reasonable theory for the extraordinary facts
presented by Homer's language. Of course there are later poems, and
possibly later passages in the old poems, where this artificial dialect
was deliberately imitated by men who found it already achieved, and
merely accepted it as the received epic language. But these passages are
insignificant. The body of the poems seems to have been rehandled for
the practical purpose of making them intelligible, just as Dryden
rehandled Chaucer.
[Sidenote: Difficulties in the theory.]
In this theory of Fick, which he has defended with extraordinary
acuteness and learning, we have the greatest advance made in our day as
regards the language of Homer. Of course it has not yet been accepted by
the world of scholars[47:1]. I myself think Fick's weak point is his
close adherence to the dissection of the _Iliad_ into three successive
layers by A. Kirchhoff, and his attempt to show that the parts severed
from the older as accretions by Kirchhoff are also exactly the parts
which were composed in the later (Ionic) dialect, and which therefore do
not show the traces of older forms elsewhere to be found. Fick may be
right even here; but I am not persuaded by his arguments[47:2].
[Sidenote: Analogies in its favour.]
But when the conservatives retorted that in presupposing a rehandling of
the dialect, and an imperfect translation into newer forms, he was
assuming a fact unique in literature,--certainly in Greek
literature,--he smote them 'hip and thigh' by showing parallel cases,
not only in mediæval poetry, but in the collateral Greek lyric poetry.
He showed that old epigrams, for example, had been altered to make them
intelligible, while an occasional form for which no _metrical_
equivalent could be found was allowed to remain[48:1].
[Sidenote: Its application to the present argument.]
§ 25. I have delayed over this important and novel theory not unduly,
because its adoption affects the question of the artificiality of the
poems. If, as was thought formerly, the poets were distinctly composing
in an artificial dialect, into which they foisted forms from various
dialects for the purpose of appearing learned in archaic language, we
might fairly suspect such a pedantic school of playing tricks with
manners and customs, and of omitting or accentuating as they fancied, in
order to make an archaic picture according to their lights. And this is
in fact what they are accused of having done by the most recent English
historian of Greece[48:2].
[Sidenote: Illustration from English poetry.]
But on the new theory, we have before us merely verbal changes, perhaps
made with all care to preserve the original work in the parts which are
old and genuine. It is as if some Englishman were to make one of Burns's
Scotch poems, which are so difficult to ordinary people, accessible by
turning the hard words into their English equivalents, leaving here and
there those which could not be removed without destroying rythm or
metre. The new version would doubtless sacrifice the flavour of the rude
original, but could in no deeper sense be called an artificial
composition, and would probably preserve in its mongrel jargon all the
facts set down by the poet.
[Sidenote: The use of stock epithets.]
There is another point alleged for the artificiality of the Homeric
poems which has not any greater weight. It is the use of epithets and of
forms evidently determined by the convenience of the metre. In all
poetry of all ages metre is a shackle,--perhaps modern rime is more
tyrannous than the quantities of the hexameter. Yet these shackles, if
they mar the efforts of the poetaster, only serve to bring out into
clearer light the excellence of the true poet. And the longer the
Homeric poems are read, the more firmly are all good critics persuaded
of their supreme excellence.
[Sidenote: High excellence incompatible with artificiality.]
[Sidenote: The Homeric poems therefore mainly natural;]
This it is which makes any systematic artificiality to my mind most
improbable. The difference between the learned epic of a really
reflective age and the _Iliad_ is illustrated by comparing with it the
_Argonautics_ of Apollonius Rhodius, a great poet in his way, but
unmistakably and lamentably artificial. I agree, therefore, with
Thirlwall, that the Homeric poets described an age not very different
from that in which they lived, and that the reason why widely varying
societies, such as the democratic Athenian, or the modern European, can
appreciate these pictures, is that they are not artificially
constructed, but adapted from a real experience, drawn from very human
nature, and reflecting permanent human passions[50:1]. The most unreal
thing in the poems is of course their theology; and yet this became in
after days perhaps more real than the rest by its universal adoption
among the Greeks as the authoritative account of their gods.
[Sidenote: but only generally true;]
§ 26. The Homeric poems therefore give us a general picture of the state
of the Greeks at a time shortly before the dawn of history; for such
poems could hardly be composed and held together without writing, and
when writing becomes diffused, history begins[51:1]. Still, the poets
lived in an age not controlled by criticism, or subject to the
verifications of study. Hence they could deal loosely with particulars,
omit details that suited them not, and describe places poetically rather
than topographically. So it is that the Catalogue of the Ships will not
agree with the rest; and in many other cases there is evidence that the
lays brought together were not weeded of their mutual inconsistencies,
or compelled to conform strictly to the final plan.
[Sidenote: and therefore variously judged by various minds.]
It is therefore certain that according as critics lay stress on the
great consistency of character and feeling in these poems, they will, as
Mr. Gladstone does, exaggerate their historical value, and set them down
as almost sober history. When the other spirit prevails, and we attend
to the many flaws in plot and inconsistencies of detail, we shall have
acute scholars, like Mr. Evelyn Abbott, denying that either the
assertions or the omissions in the poems are evidence worth anything for
any historical purpose. Yet even such sceptics will not refrain from
drawing pictures of Greek life from these false and treacherous epics.
FOOTNOTES:
[30:1] Cf. his early chapters, especially i. pp. 43 _sq._ Busolt's 2nd
edition, now in the press, contains an exhaustive analysis of all the
recent discoveries.
[31:1] The main causes of invented legends are: first, the glorification
of national heroes; secondly, the desire of chronographers to obtain
synchronisms, and make the heroes of one place contemporaneous with, and
related to, those of another. In the former case it is generally an
older or better known story which is transferred to the new case, with
more or less modification; in the latter there may be deliberate fraud,
as Holm has argued. Of all old Greek legend the chronology is the most
suspicious part, because this has been invented in comparatively late
times, and by learned men, not by, but for, the people.
[32:1] A fine specimen is the pedigree of the Ptolemies direct from
Dionysus and Heracles, given by the historian Satyrus. Cf. C. Müller,
_Fragg. Histor. Graec._, iii. 165. The substance of it is as follows:
From Dionysus and Althea was born Dejanira, from her and Heracles,
Hyllus, and from him in direct descent Kleodaos, Aristomachas, Temenos,
Keisos, Mason, Thestios, Akoos, Aristodamidas, Karanos, Koenos,
Turimmas, Perdikkas, Philippos, Aerope, Alketas, Amyntas, Balakros,
Meleager, Arsinoe. From her Lagus, Ptolemy Soter, &c., down to
Philopator, the then reigning king. Hence, he adds, were derived the
names of the _demes_ in the Dionysiac _phyle_ at Alexandria, viz.
Dejaniris, Ariadnis, &c.
Here is a most instructive fabrication.
[33:1] Cf. Mommsen, R. G. i. 466-8.
[35:1] We have not a few instances in Greek polities--Megara,
Borysthenes, Calymnos occur to me--where there still existed in late
days magisterial +basileis+ and even +monarchoi+. Cf. _Bull. de Corr.
hell._ viii. 30; ix. 286.
[36:1] _Hist. of Greece_, chap. ii. sect. 3.
[36:2] Holm (G. G. i. 125) admits this motive for the Germans: 'Im
Grunde leugnet man phönizische Siedelungen in Griechenland besonders
deswegen, weil man nicht will, dass die Griechen jenen Leuten Wichtiges
verdanken'--that is to Semites. He himself asserts early contacts, and
thinks their influence upon Greece but trifling.
The general body of opinion in Germany seems to agree with what I have
cited from Duruy in the text. The words just quoted may serve to put the
English reader upon his guard against the _subjective_ tone of many of
the most learned modern studies on Greek history.
[37:1] On this cf. Adler's remarkable preface to Schliemann's _Tiryns_.
[39:1] Cf. my _Prolegomena to Ancient History_, Longmans, 1872. A
_reductio ad absurdum_ which attained serious attention, in spite of its
patent jocoseness, appeared in an early number of the Dublin University
_Kottabos_.
[39:2] Accordingly, some use was made of the exceptional and alarming
phenomena, such as thunder-storms and eclipses, to supply a more
reasonable and adequate cause for the violent transitions from terror
and grief to joy, which the theory demanded. But it was the regular
daily phenomena which figured in the leading _rôle_ of the comparative
mythologers.
[40:1] _A History of Greek Classical Literature_ (3rd ed.), Macmillan,
1891. The history of K. O. Müller has since been re-edited and
supplemented by Heitz, but in a very different style.
[42:1] Duruy, in speaking of the controversy as to the site (is it
Hissarlik, or Bunarbaschi?), says that even this will never be settled,
in spite of the striking discoveries by which Dr. Schliemann has shown
that Hissarlik was a prehistoric city, and the total absence of any
evidence for a city upon the other site. And Duruy is probably right,
because on these matters writers are too often pedants, who, if once
committed to a theory, will not accept the most convincing evidence that
they have been mistaken. They seem to think the chief merit of a scholar
is to maintain an outward show of impeccability, and therefore hold the
candid confession of a mistake to be not honourable, but disgraceful.
Duruy himself inclines to follow E. Curtius, who holds the wrong
opinion. Holm (i. 96) sees clearly that in the light of Schliemann's
discoveries there can hardly remain a doubt that Hissarlik was the site
which the Homeric poets had in view, though their details may be
inaccurate. This conclusion would have been universally accepted, had
not certain scholars pledged themselves to the other site.
[43:1] It has since been treated in a separate form by Professor Jebb.
The third edition of my _Greek Literature_, being still more recent
(1891), gives additional material.
[46:1] _Das Homerische Epos aus den Denkmälern erläutert_, 1884.
[47:1] Probably a generation will pass away before it is appreciated; or
it may soon pass into oblivion, to be rediscovered by some future
thinker. All the newer histories agree in disapproving it, but chiefly
on the authority of the philologers. Most of these are committed, both
by tradition and by their own special researches, to the theory of a
_natural mixture_ of dialects at Smyrna, the border town of Æolic and
Ionic settlements.
[47:2] I understand that Mr. W. Leaf, one of the highest English
authorities, agrees generally with Fick on this problem. On the other
hand, the Provost of Oriel, as he informs me, does not see his way to
accept it.
[48:1] Thus at the end of a famous epigram on Thermopylæ composed in
Laconian Greek, and reformed into literary language, +chiliades tetores+
remained, because +tessares+ would not scan. Fick has now applied his
theory to the early Lyric poets, and even printed a revised text of most
of them in _Bezzenberger's Beiträge_, xi, xiii, and xiv, &c. I have
criticised the newer developments of his theory in the third ed. of my
_Greek Literature_.
[48:2] Evelyn Abbott, _History of Greece_, i. 158 _seqq._ I cannot but
suspect that the account of the diet of the Homeric chiefs--great meals
of roast meat, and no fish--is a piece of deliberate archaism, which
contradicts all we know of any historical Greeks from the earliest to
the present days. The Greeks were probably never a meat-eating race, and
even the early athletes trained on cheese (cf. my _Rambles and Studies_,
p. 290). The poets knew all about fishing, for it appears in a simile,
and yet in no case does fish, the great delicacy of Attic days, appear
upon a Homeric table.
[50:1] Holm gives a very ingenious solution of the difficulty, which is,
I think, quite original. He thinks that the Æolic and Ionic settlers who
were driven out by the Dorian immigration carried with them
recollections and traditions of the splendour of the pre-Doric Mycenæ,
Orchomenos, &c. In Asia Minor they sang of these old glories, clothing
the old kings and heroes of the land, and the cities they had left, in
the dress and manners of the Ionia of their own day. Thus their picture
is true traditionally, for we know that the palaces of Greece were in
the places they describe; their pictures of manners were also true, in
another sense, of the society in which they actually lived.
[51:1] When once composed, they could be easily enough _remembered_ by
trained guilds of reciters. It is therefore the composition, and the
transmission as large unities, which imply, in my opinion, that use of
writing which the poets avoid attributing to the society they depict as
one of the past. If we could determine the date of the first fluent use
of writing in Ionia, I think we could also determine the date of the
creation of the _Iliad_ as an artistic whole. At the same time I think
it right to caution the reader, that he need not assume lapidary
inscriptions to mark the first stage. This has been very justly pointed
out by Mr. E. Abbott, and it is here most important; for we have no
extant inscription on stone which can be surely attributed to a date
earlier than 600 B.C., and I am convinced that had such use of writing
been in common use earlier, we should long since have found evidence of
it. Probably the first writing seen and learned by the Greeks was that
of the Phoenician traders, who kept their accounts either on papyrus or
perhaps on wood. Thus the _Iliad_ may have been composed with the aid of
writing, and yet there may have been no contemporary records on stone.
CHAPTER III.
THEORETICAL CHRONOLOGY.
[Sidenote: Transition to early history.]
[Sidenote: The Asiatic colonies.]
§ 27. We may now pass from so-called legend to so-called early history.
All students, from Thucydides downward, have held that shortly after the
state of things described in Homer, important invasions and consequent
dislocations of population began throughout Greece, so that what meets
us in the dawn of sober history differs widely from what Homer
describes. These various movements have their mythical name,--the return
of the Heracleidæ; and their quasi-historical,--the invasion of
Boeotia and Phocis by the Thessalians, and the invasion and conquest
of Peloponnesus by the Dorian mountaineers. The pressure so produced
drove waves of settlers to Asia Minor, where the coasts and islands were
covered with Greek cities,--Æolian, Ionian, and Dorian. But these cities
always claimed to be colonies from Greece, and told of mythical founders
who led them to the East.
[Sidenote: Late authorities for the details.]
We have no early account of these Asiatic settlements. Their traditions
were not apparently discussed critically till the time of Ephorus, the
pupil of Isocrates, who lived close to Alexandrian days; and we know
part of what he said from quotations in Strabo and from the account
given, rather irrelevantly, by Pausanias in the book on Achaia in his
_Tour_, which was not composed till our second century. The metrical
geography attributed to Scymnus of Chios[54:1] gives us some additional
facts; but on the whole we may say that our account of all this early
history is derived from late and very theoretical antiquarians. They did
not hesitate to put these events into the tenth or eleventh century
before Christ, but on what kind of evidence we shall presently discuss.
From the Asiatic settlements and from the rich cities in Euboea
(Chalcis and Eretria) went out more colonies to the coasts of Thrace and
the Black Sea; but these are placed at such reasonable dates, in the
seventh century, that we must be disposed to give them easier credence.
[Sidenote: The colonization of the West.]
§ 28. Intermediate between these two waves of colonization, both in date
and in credibility of details, come the famous settlements in Sicily, of
which a brief account is given by Thucydides at the opening of his sixth
book; and it is no doubt the apparent precision of this account, and the
general accuracy of the author, which has made this colonization of
Sicily and Southern Italy one of the early portions of Greek history
most readily accepted by even the newest sceptics. It is quite
extraordinary how the general seriousness and the literary skill of an
author may make even practised critics believe anything he chooses to
say[55:1].
[Sidenote: The original authority.]
Any one who reads with care the account of Thucydides will see that he
cannot possibly be writing from his own knowledge or research, but from
some older and far worse authority,--doubtless one of the
chroniclers[55:2] or story-tellers who gathered, most uncritically, the
early legends of various portions of the Greek world. It has long since
been suggested, and with the strongest probability, that Thucydides'
authority was the Syracusan Antiochus, who compiled the early annals of
Sicily with the evident intention of enhancing the glory of his native
city.
On what principles did these chroniclers proceed?
[Sidenote: What was nobility in early Greece?]
[Sidenote: Macedonian kings.]
[Sidenote: Romans.]
The great and only patent of respectability in any Greek house or city
of early times was foundation by a hero or the direct descendant of a
hero; for the heroes were sons or grandsons of the gods, from whom all
Greek nobility was derived. The Homeric poems, in making or defining the
Greek theology, also told of the great houses directly descended from
Zeus or Heracles; and so a royal house which was descended from these
personages, or a city founded by them, secured for itself a dignity
recognized by all the race. To cite late historical instances: the
Macedonian kings made good their claim to being Greeks and civilized men
by showing their descent from the hero Æacus, whose descendants the
Æacids figure so prominently in the legendary wars. The Romans, when
first they came into contact with Greek culture, and felt at the same
time their superior strength and their social inferiority, at once
accepted and promoted the story invented for them at Pergamum or adapted
for them in Sicily, that they were a colony of Trojans, led by Æneas,
the child of Aphrodite by a mortal hero.
[Sidenote: Hellenistic cities.]
If these things took place in the dry tree of sober history, what must
have taken place in the green? Every city was bound to have a heroic
founder, and to have been established in almost mythical times. Even in
late and reflecting days, as I have already mentioned (§ 16), when the
successors of Alexander founded new towns in Syria and Asia Minor,
stories continued to be invented alleging old Hellenic settlements of
mythical heroes in these places, whose shrines were accordingly set up,
and their worship instituted, to produce an appearance of respectability
in upstart polities.
[Sidenote: Glory of short pedigrees.]
It is not usually felt by modern readers that in consequence of these
sentiments the great thing was not to have a long pedigree for a family
or city, but to have as short a pedigree as possible for its founder. To
be the son or grandson of a god was splendid; to be his remote
descendant was only to cling on to real nobility like the younger and
remoter branches of great English families. This will indicate how
strong was the tendency to derive an early origin from a great and known
descendant of the gods or their acknowledged sons. The subsequent
history and fortunes of a city were comparatively vulgar, provided it
was founded by a Heracleid,--the second or third in descent from Temenus
or Hyllus. Hence the systematic habit of all early chronologers _of
counting downwards from Heracles or the Trojan war_, and not upwards
from their own days.
[Sidenote: The sceptics credulous in chronology.]
§ 29. I have already declared that I put more faith than the modern
sceptical historians in the pictures of life and manners left us in
Greek epic poetry, that I do not believe pure invention to be a natural
or copious source for the materials of early poets. But the very
sceptics to whom I here allude are in my mind quite too credulous on the
matter of early chronology, and quite too ready to accept statements of
accurate dates where no accurate dates can be ascertained[57:1].
[Sidenote: The current scheme of early dates.]
[Sidenote: The so-called Olympic register.]