§ 76. The debate in the present case was somewhat different in its
details. The Achæan League, a number of small cities situated upon a
coast exposed to pirates, and able to foresee from lofty posts the
coming raid, united voluntarily for attack and defence, and so formed a
Confederacy, which lasted a long time before the wealth gained by its
members as mercenaries and the decay of the greater Powers of Greece
brought it into prominence[181:1]. These cities had a common executive
and a sort of cabinet, preparing the business for the general Assembly,
which met for three days twice a year, and then decisions were obtained
from this Assembly and measures ratified by its votes. But as the more
distant members could not attend in great numbers, the members of each
city present, whether few or many, gave that city's vote, which counted
as an unit in the Confederacy. The result was of course to put political
power into the hands of the richer classes, who had leisure to leave
their own affairs and go regularly to the Assembly at Ægion[181:2].
[Sidenote: Statement of the new difficulty]
The difficulties which now arose were these: Had any of the original
twelve towns, that had voluntarily formed this Union, the right to
withdraw their adhesion? In a lesser degree, had the towns that
afterwards joined in consequence of the pressure of circumstances, but
by a deliberate and public vote, a right to rescind that vote? And in a
still less degree, had any town which had subscribed to the Achæan
constitution any right to violate its observance in one point, as by
negotiating separately with another State, or was it bound to observe in
all respects the terms imposed by the Union from which it was not
allowed to secede?
[Sidenote: in its clearest form never yet settled except by force.]
The first of these cases is by far the most perplexing, and I am not
aware that it has ever been settled by any argument better than an
appeal to force. To the Greeks, at all events, it seemed that the right
of autonomy--the power to manage one's own affairs--was the inalienable
right of every _city_; just as the Irish Nationalists may be heard daily
asserting it for every _nation_[182:1].
[Sidenote: Case of the American Union.]
In our own youth we heard this right far more seriously urged by the
seceding States of the American Union, some of which had been members of
the first combination, and had voluntarily ceded certain portions of
their political rights, at least their theoretical rights, in return for
the protection and support of the Confederation as a whole. These States
argued that if the Union began to interfere in the domestic concerns of
each,--such, for example, as the practice of permitting household
slaves,--it was a breach of contract, and justified the State in
formally repudiating the remainder of the contract. But even had there
been no encroachment by new legislation, the Greek city claimed the
right of returning to its isolated independence.
[Sidenote: Arguments for coercion of the several members.]
§ 77. On the other side, it has always been argued that though contracts
for a definite period need not be renewed, there are many contracts
intended by their very nature to be permanent, and which are so
far-reaching in their consequences that for any one party to abandon
them is a profound injustice to the remainder, whose lives have been
instituted and regulated upon these contracts[183:1]. Let us take an
illustration from everyday life. From the contract of marriage there
arise such important consequences that a dissolution does not permit the
contracting parties to resume their original life; and therefore in all
higher civilizations legal divorce has been made very difficult, and
secession by either party without legal sanction a grave offence.
In like manner it was argued that the several cities had grown rich and
powerful under the League. The lives of its members had been sacrificed
to defend every city attacked; the funds of the League had been spent on
each as they were needed. Was it just that after growing and thriving
upon these conditions any one of them should, for its own convenience,
repudiate the bond and regard all the accruing benefits as a private
property, to be disposed of to any strange Power?
[Sidenote: Cases of doubtful or enforced adherence.]
To answer this question and to adjudicate between the litigants is hard
enough, and yet I have stated the simplest difficulty. For in the case
of many of the additions to the Achæan League a revolution had first
taken place, the existing government had been overthrown, and then the
new majority had placed themselves under the protection of the
Confederation. If the old rulers returned to power, were they bound by
the Government which had coerced them, and which they regarded as
revolutionary? Others, again, had been constrained by the presence of an
armed force, and by threats of imminent danger if they did not accept
the League's protection. When circumstances changed, could they not
argue that they were coerced, and that an apparently free _plébiscite_
was wrung from them against their better judgment?
[Sidenote: Various internal questions.]
§ 78. Such were the profoundly interesting and thoroughly modern
problems which agitated the minds of men in post-Alexandrian Greece.
There were moreover various internal questions,--whether new cities
which joined should have equal rights with the original members; whether
large cities should have a city vote only equal to the vote of the
smallest; whether the general Assembly should be held in turn at each of
the cities, or in the greatest and most convenient centre, or in a place
specially chosen for its insignificance, so that the Assembly might be
entirely free from local influences? All these questions must have
agitated the minds of the founders of the Swiss Union and the American
Union, for the problems remain the same, however nations may wax and
wane.
[Sidenote: Looser bond of the Ætolian League.]
The Achæan and Ætolian Unions were very popular indeed, especially the
latter, which required no alterations in the administration of each
State, but accepted any member merely on terms of paying a general tax,
and obtaining in lieu thereof military aid, and restitution of property
from other members if they had carried off plunder from its
territory[185:1]. The Achæan League required more. A tyrant must
abdicate before his city could become a member, and in more than one
case this actually took place.
The most dangerous, though passive, enemy of this hopeful compromise
between the Separatist and the truly National spirit was, as I have
said, the sullen standing aloof of the greater cities. Of course the
ever active foe was the power of Macedon, which could deal easily with
local tyrants, or even single cities, but was balked by the strength of
the combination.
[Sidenote: Radical monarchy of Cleomenes.]
At last there arose a still more attractive alternative, which was
rapidly destroying the Achæan League, when its leader, Aratus, called in
the common enemy from Macedon, and enslaved his country in order to
checkmate his rival. This rival was the royalty of Sparta, who offered
to the cities of the Peloponnesus an Union on the old lines of a
Confederation under the headship of Sparta, but of Sparta as Cleomenes
had transformed it; for he had assassinated the ephors, abolished the
second king, and proposed sweeping reforms in the direction of
socialistic equality,--division of large properties, and protection of
the poor against the oppression of aristocrats or capitalists. This kind
of revolution, with the military genius of Cleomenes to give it strength
and brilliancy, attracted men's minds far more than the constitutional,
but somewhat torpid and plutocratic, League. Of course the fatal
struggle led practically to the destruction of both schemes by the
superior force and organization of Macedon.
FOOTNOTES:
[168:1] We may well apply to it the famous words of Tacitus at the
opening of his _Histories_: 'Opus adgredior opimum casibus, atrox
proeliis, discors seditionibus, ipsa etiam pace saevum; principes ferro
interempti, bella civilia, plura externa ac plerumque permixta . . .
pollutae caeremoniae; magna adulteria; plenum exiliis mare; infecti
caedibus scopuli . . . corrupti in dominos servi, in patronos liberti;
et quibus deerat inimicus, per amicos oppressi.'
[170:1] This judgment seems likely to be reversed by the wonderful
accession of new materials upon the Ptolemaic age, the first instalment
of which I have published in a monograph upon the Petrie Papyri (with
autotype plates, Williams & Norgate, 1891). We shall presently know the
conditions of life in one province at all events, the Fayoum, which was
peopled with Greek veterans along with Jews and Egyptians. I have now
under my hand their wills, their private letters, their accounts, their
official correspondence in hundreds of shreds and fragments.
[171:1] The best special work on the conflict of the Greek settlements
with the Jewish population, and with the Asmonæan sovrans all along the
coast of Palestine, is B. Stark's _Gaza und die Philistische Küste_.
[172:1] Cf. Plutarch's _Life of Cleomenes_, cap. xi.
[173:1] Cf. the cases quoted in my _Greek Life and Thought_, pp. 394,
537, 541-543.
[173:2] Above §§ 35 _seqq._
[173:3] _Florilegium_ (ed. Teubner), ii. 247-284.
[178:1] The momentary acquisition (in 190 B.C.) of two unimportant
towns, Pleuron and Heraclea, in northern Greece, need hardly count as a
correction of this general statement. The acquisition of the island
Zacynthos was prevented by the Romans.
[179:1] _Hist. des Grecs_, chap. xix.
[180:1] I need not pause to remind the reader that each Greek city, or
+polis+, was in every constitutional sense a separate and independent
State, just as much as the largest country is now. These cities
severally made frequent treaties even with Rome, to which they stood in
the same relations as a foreign king.
[181:1] These points were suggested for the first time in my _Greek Life
and Thought_, pp. 7 _seqq._
[181:2] This voting by cities seems to me the nearest approach to
representation that the Greeks ever made in politics, as distinct from
religious councils, such as the Amphictyonies; for of course a city far
from the place of assembly could agree with a small number of its
citizens that they should attend and vote in a particular way. Every
citizen, however, might go if he chose, so that this would be a mere
private understanding.
[182:1] The Greek _city-polity_ (+polis+) was a perfectly clear and
definite thing. A _nation_, on the contrary, may mean anything, for it
may be determined by race, religion, language, locality, or tradition.
Any one or all of these may be utilized to mark out the bounds of a
nation according to the convenience of the case. I have often heard it
asserted, and seen it printed, that in Ireland the Protestants of the
North and East are quite a separate race. Such a statement, generally
made to justify harsh measures against them from a Parliament of Roman
Catholics, would also justify them in seceding from the rest of Ireland.
[183:1] Duruy even quotes, in connection with the earlier Athenian
Confederacy (chap. xix. § 2), the words of the actual treaties between
several of the smaller towns (Erythræ, Chalcis), which have been found
graven on stone; and argues that because they assert permanent union
with Athens, and invoke curses on him that hereafter attempts to
dissolve this union, Athens was legally as well as morally justified in
coercing any seceders. It is strange so acute a thinker should not
perceive that this assertion of eternal peace and union was an almost
universal and perfectly unmeaning formula. If such formulæ were really
valid, we might find ourselves bound by our ancestors to very serious
obligations. There is no case, except that of Adam, where the act of one
generation bound all succeeding centuries.
[185:1] We now have recovered several inscriptions, which give us
information on some of these points. Cf. _Mitth._ of the German
Institute at Athens, xi. 262.
CHAPTER X.
THE ROMANS IN GREECE.
[Sidenote: Position of Rome towards the Leagues.]
§ 79. The interference of the Romans in Greek affairs reopened many of
the constitutional questions upon which I have touched; for in their
conflicts with Macedon they took care to win the Greeks to their side by
open declarations in favour of independence, and by supporting the
Leagues, which afforded the only organization that could supply them
with useful auxiliaries. When the Romans had conquered came the famous
declaration that all the cities which had been directly subject to
Macedon should be independent, while the Achæan League could resume its
political life freed from the domination of the Antigonids which Aratus
had accepted for it. Now at last it might have seemed as if the
peninsula would resume a peaceful and orderly development under the
presidency and without the positive interference of Rome.
[Sidenote: Roman interpretation of the 'liberty of the Greeks.']
But new and fatal difficulties arose. The 'liberty of the Greeks' was
still, as ever, a sort of sentimental aphorism which the Romans
repeated, often from conviction, often again from policy. But the
Romans were a practical people, and did not the least understand why
they should free the Greeks from Macedon in order that they might join
some other Hellenistic sovran against Rome. And even if this danger did
not arise, the Romans felt that the liberation of Greece would have
worse than no meaning if the stronger States were allowed to prey upon
the weaker, if every little city were allowed to go to war with its
neighbours,--if, in fact, the nominal liberty resulted in the tyranny of
one section over another.
[Sidenote: Opposition of the Ætolians.]
Both these difficulties soon arose. The Ætolians, who had not obtained
from the Romans any extension of territory or other advantages adequate
to their vigorous and useful co-operation against the king of Macedon,
were bitterly disappointed, for they saw clearly that Rome would rather
curtail than advance their power. The cities of northern Greece which
had been liberated by the Romans from Philip V. could not be coerced
into the Ætolian League without an appeal on their part to Rome, which
could hardly fail to be successful. So then the Ætolians found that they
had brought upon themselves a new and steady control, which would
certainly prevent the marauding chiefs from acquiring wealth by keeping
up local disturbances, raids, and exactions as the normal condition of
the country. They therefore openly incited king Antiochus of Syria to
invade Greece, and so brought on their own destruction.
[Sidenote: Probably not fairly stated by Polybius.]
It was a great pity, for this League of mountaineers had shown real
military vigour, and had it been educated into orderly and
constitutional ways, would have been a strong bulwark of Hellenic
independence. Nor are we to forget that when we read of its turbulence
and its reckless disregard of justice, we are taking the evidence of its
most determined foe, the historian Polybius. He was one of the leaders
of the rival League, and will hardly concede to the Ætolians any
qualities save their vices. On the other hand, he has stated as
favourably as possible the more interesting case of his own
confederation.
[Sidenote: Rome and the Achæans.]
[Sidenote: Mistakes of Philopoemen gave Rome excuses for
interference.]
§ 80. Here the second difficulty just stated was that which arose, not
without the deliberate assistance of the Romans. On the one hand, the
Achæans thought themselves justified in extending their Union so as if
possible to comprise all Greece; and though they usually succeeded by
persuasion, there were not wanting cases where they aided with material
force the minority in a wavering city, and coerced a new member which
showed signs of falling away. More especially the constant attempts to
incorporate Sparta and Messene, which had never been friendly to the
League, proved its ultimate destruction. The bloody successes of
Philopoemen, the first Greek who ever really captured Sparta, and who
compelled it to join the League, led to complaints at Rome about
violated liberties, and constant interferences of the Senate, not only
to repress disorders, but to weaken any growing union in the country
which Rome wished to see reduced to impotent peace; and so there came
about, after half a century of mutual recrimination, of protest, of
encroachment, the final conquest and reduction of Greece into a Roman
province[190:1].
[Sidenote: Mommsen takes the Roman side.]
§ 81. The diplomatic conflict between the Achæans and the Romans is of
the highest interest, and we have upon it the opposing judgments of
great historians; for here Roman and Greek history run into the same
channel, and the conflict may be treated from either point of view.
Those who look at the debate from the Roman point of view, like Mommsen,
and who are, moreover, not persuaded of the immeasurable superiority of
republican institutions over a strong central power, controlling without
hesitation or debate, are convinced that all the talk about Greek
independence was mere folly. They point out that these Greeks, whenever
they had their full liberty, wore each other out in petty conflicts;
that liberty meant license, revolutions at home and encroachments upon
neighbours; and that it was the historical mission and duty of the
Romans to put an end to all this sentimental sham.
[Sidenote: Hertzberg and Freeman on the Achæan question.]
On the other hand Hertzberg, in the first volume of his excellent
_History of the Greeks under Roman Domination_, and Professor Freeman,
in his _Federal Government_, show with great clearness that far lower
motives often actuated the conquering race, that they were distinctly
jealous of any power in the hands of their Greek neighbours, and that
they constantly encouraged appeals and revolts on the part of individual
cities in the League. So the Senate in fact produced those unhappy
disturbances which resulted in the destruction of Corinth and the
conquest of Greece by a Roman army in formal war.
[Sidenote: Senility of The Greeks.]
It is of course easy to see that there were faults on both sides, and
that individual Romans, using their high position without authority of
the Senate, often promoted quarrels in the interests of that truculent
financial policy which succeeded in playing all the commerce of the
world into the hands of Roman capitalists. On the other hand, it is hard
to avoid the conviction that the days of independent Greece were over,
that the nation had grown old and worn out, that most of its intellect
and enterprise had wandered to the East, to Egypt, or to Rome, and that
had the Romans maintained an absolute policy of non-intervention, the
result would have been hardly less disastrous, and certainly more
disgraceful to the Greeks. For a long and contemptible decadence, like
that of Spain in modern Europe, is surely more disgraceful than to be
embodied by force in a neighbouring empire.
[Sidenote: Decay of the mother-country.]
Greece in this and the succeeding centuries had arrived at that curious
condition that her people who emigrated obtained fortune and distinction
all over the world, while those who remained at home seemed unable even
to till the land,--which was everywhere relapsing into waste
pasture,--far less to prosecute successful trade, for want of both
capital and sustained energy. One profession unfortunately
flourished,--that of politics; and the amount of time and ability spent
on this profession may perhaps account for the decadence of both
agriculture and commerce.
[Sidenote: The advocates for union with Rome.]
§ 82. Greek politicians were divided into three classes. There were
first those who saw in Roman domination the only salvation from internal
discord and insecurity. They either despaired of or despised the
prospects of political independence, and saw in the iron Destiny which
extended the Roman sway over the East, a definite solution of their
difficulties, and possibly a means of increasing their material welfare.
They therefore either acquiesced in or actively promoted every
diplomatic encroachment on the part of Rome, and made haste to secure to
themselves 'friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,' as their
adversaries thought, that by and by they might be the local governors,
and recipients of Roman favour.
[Sidenote: The advocates of complete independence.]
Over against them were the uncompromising Nationalists,--I apologize for
using the right word,--who maintained absolutely the inalienable right
of the Greeks to be independent and manage not only their internal
affairs, but their external differences as they pleased. They insisted
that the Romans had gained their power over Greece by a system of
unconstitutional encroachments, and that no material advantages of
enforced peace or oppressive protection could compensate for the
paralysis which was creeping over Hellenic political life.
The tyrannous and cruel act of the Romans, who deported one thousand
leading Achæans to Italy (on the charge of disloyalty to Rome in
sentiments) and let most of them pine in their exile and die as mere
_suspects_, without ever bringing them to trial, gave this party the
strongest support by the misery which it inflicted and the wide-spread
indignation it excited.
[Sidenote: The party of moderate counsels.]
The third party was the party of moderate counsels and of compromise.
Sympathizing deeply with the National party, they felt at the same time
that any armed resistance to Rome was absurd and ruinous. They therefore
desired to delay every encroachment by diplomatic protests, by appeals
to the justice of the Romans, and thus protract, if they could not
prevent, the absorption of all national liberties into the great
dominion of Rome. This party, undoubtedly the most reasonable and the
most honest, have left us their spokesman in the historian Polybius; but
we may be sure that, like every intermediate party, they commanded
little sympathy or support.
[Sidenote: Money considerations]
[Sidenote: acted upon both extremes.]
§ 83. Moreover, both the extreme parties had strong pecuniary interests
to stimulate them. The party which promoted complete submission to Rome
were the people of property, to whom a settled state of things without
constitutional agitations or sudden war-contributions afforded the only
chance of retaining what they possessed. Rome had never favoured the
needy mob in her subject cities, but had always ruled them through the
responsible and moneyed classes. Roman dominion therefore meant at least
peace and safety for the rich. The grinding exactions of Roman prætor
and Roman publican were as yet unknown to them. The Nationalist party,
on the other hand, consisted of the needy and discontented, who
expected, if allowed to exercise their political power, to break down
the monopolies of the rich, and, in any case, to make reputation and
money by the practice of politics; for, as I have shown above, and as is
not strange to our own day, politics had become distinctly a lucrative
profession. These people's hope of gain, as well as their local
importance, would vanish with full subjection to Rome; and this was a
strong motive, even though in many it may have only been auxiliary to
the real patriotism which burned at the thought of the extinction of
national independence.
[Sidenote: Exaggerated statements on both sides.]
[Sidenote: The Separatists would not tolerate separation from
themselves.]
[Sidenote: Democratic tyranny.]
The debate soon went beyond the stage of rational argument or the
possibility of rational persuasion. To the Nationalist, the Romanizing
aristocrat or moneyed man was a traitor, sacrificing his country's
liberties for his mess of potage, grovelling and touting for Roman
favour, copying Roman manners, and sending his sons to be educated in
Roman ways. To the advocate of union with Rome, the so-called
Nationalist was a needy and dishonest adventurer, using the cry of
patriotism and of nationality to cloak personal greed, socialistic
schemes, and hatred of what was orderly and respectable. If he
succeeded, his so-called liberty would be used in coercing and
plundering the dissentients; and, after all, such stormy petrels in
politics must be quite unfit to form any stable government. If any
portion of the Peloponnesus asserted its right to several liberty, no
politicians would have recourse to more violent coercion than these
advocates of national independence. They protested against enforced
union with Rome: they would be the first to promote enforced union with
themselves, and carry it through in bloody earnest. This was actually
what happened during the last despairing struggle. The coercion
practised by the last presidents of the Leagues, the violent
Nationalists who forced the nation into war, was tyrannous and cruel
beyond description.
But of course the issue was certain; and with the reeking smoke of the
ruins of Corinth closes the history of Greece, as most historians, even
of wider views, have understood it.
[Sidenote: Modern analogies forced upon us,]
[Sidenote: and not to be set aside.]
§ 84. There is no period of the history which deserves modern study more
than that which I have here expounded in its principles. The analogies
which it presents to modern life, nay, to the very history of our times,
are so striking that it is almost impossible to narrate it without
falling into the phraseology of current politics. When I first
published an account of these things[196:1], I was at once attacked by
several of my reviewers for daring to introduce modern analogies into
ancient history. I had dragged the Muse of History into the heated
atmosphere of party strife and the quarrels of our own day; I had
spoiled a good book by allusions to burning questions which disturbed
the reader and made him think of the next election, instead of calmly
contemplating the lessons of Polybius. It would have been far more to
the point had they shown that the analogies suggested were invalid, and
the comparisons misleading. This not one of them has attempted to do;
nor do I hesitate to say that the objections they raised were rather
because my analogies were too just and striking than because they were
far-fetched and irrelevant. If these critics had found that the facts I
adduced favoured their own political views, no doubt they would have
lavished their praise upon the very feature which incurred their
censure.
[Sidenote: The history of Greece is essentially modern;]
[Sidenote: therefore modern parallels are surely admissible, if justly
drawn.]
I think, with Thucydides and Polybius, that the study of history is then
most useful and serious when it leads us to estimate what is likely to
happen by the light of what has already happened in similar cases. Mere
remoteness of date or place has nothing to say to the matter. The
history of Greece, as I have often said already, is intensely
modern,--far more so than any mediæval or than most recent histories. We
have to deal with a people fully developed, in its mature life; nay,
even in its old age and decadence. To deny a historian the privilege and
the profit of illumining his subject by the light of modern parallels,
or the life of to-day by parallels from Greek history, is simply to
condemn him to remain an unpractical pedant, and to abandon the
strongest claim to a hearing from practical men.
Above all, let us seek the truth with open mind, and speak out our
convictions; and if we are wrong, instead of blaming us for appealing to
the deeper interests and stirring the warmer emotions of men, let our
errors be refuted. Let us save ancient history from its dreary fate in
the hands of the dry antiquarian, the narrow scholar; and while we
utilize all his research and all his learning, let us make the acts and
lives of older men speak across the chasm of centuries, and claim
kindred with the men and the motives of to-day. For this, and this only,
is to write history in the full and real sense,--this is to show that
the great chain of centuries is forged of homogeneous metal, and joined
with links that all bear the great Workman's unmistakeable design.
[Sidenote: The spiritual history not closed with the Roman conquest.]
§ 85. We have come to the real close of political Greek history,--at a
point upon which historians have been unanimous. And yet the Greeks
would hardly have been worth all this study if the sum of what they
could teach us was a political lesson. They showed indeed in politics a
variety and an excellence not reached by any other ancient people. But
their spiritual and intellectual wealth is not bounded by these limits;
and they have left us, after the close of their independence, more to
think out and to understand than other nations have done in the heyday
of their greatness.
On this spiritual history I shall not say more than a few words. The
earlier part of it, extending to the moment when, under Trajan,
Christianity came forth from its concealment, and became a social and
political power, I have recently treated in a volume entitled _The Greek
World under Roman Sway_. The reader who cares to unfold this complicated
and various picture of manners, of ideas, of social habits and moral
principles, will find the Greek subjects of the Roman Empire full of
interest, and will even find, in the authors of that age, merits which
have long been unduly ignored. The crowded thoroughfares of Antioch and
Alexandria; the great religious foundations of Comana, Stratoniceia, and
Pessinus, each ruled by a priest no less important than the
prince-bishops of Salzburg or Würtzburg in recent centuries; the
old-world fashions of Borysthenes, of Naples, of Euboea; the gradual
rise of Syrian and of Jewish Hellenism, the fascinating rivalries of
Herod and of Cleopatra for Roman favour, the Hellenism of Cicero, of
Cæsar, of Claudius, and of Nero, the fluctuations of trade from Rhodes
to Delos, from Delos to Puteoli and Corinth, the splendours and the dark
spots in the society which Dion, Apuleius, and Plutarch saw and
described--these and many other kindred topics make up a subject most
fascinating, though from its complexity difficult to set in order, and
impossible to handle without the occurrence of error.
[Sidenote: The great bequests of the Roman period.]
I am sure it is below the mark to say that more than half the Greek
books now extant date from the period of the Roman domination. And if it
be true that in style there is nothing to equal the great poets and
prose-writers from Æschylus to Demosthenes, it is equally true that in
matter the later writers far exceed their predecessors. All the exacter
science got from the Greeks comes from that large body of Alexandrian
writings which none but the specialist can understand. The history of
Diodorus, embracing an immense field and telling us a vast number of
facts otherwise lost; the great geographies of Strabo, of Ptolemy, and
that curious collection which can be read in Carl Müller's laborious
_Corpus_; the moral essays of Dion Chrysostom; the social encyclopædia
of Plutarch; the vast majority of the extant inscriptions, come to us
from Roman times.
But most of these are special. Is there nothing of general interest?
Assuredly there is. No Greek book can compare for one moment in general
importance with that collection of history and letters called the New
Testament, all written in Greek, and intended to reach the civilized
world through the mediation of Greek.
[Sidenote: The Anthology, Lucian, Julian,]
I will not here enter upon Christian Greek literature, but point to
Plutarch, who has certainly been more read and had more influence than
any other Greek writer on the literature of modern Europe. Nay, in the
lighter subjects, and where the writers must trust to style to commend
them to the reader, not only is there a good deal of poetry once thought
classical,--such as the Anacreontics and the Anthology--which is in
great part the produce of later Greek genius, but the wit of Lucian and
the seriousness of Julian found in the Greek language their appropriate
vehicle.
[Sidenote: Plotinus.]
The deeper philosophy of these centuries, that attempt to fuse the
metaphysics of heathendom and Christendom which is called
Neo-Platonism,--this too was created and circulated by Greek writers and
in Greek; so that though Hellas was laid asleep, and her independence a
mere tradition, her legacy to the world was still bearing interest one
hundredfold.
[Sidenote: Theological Greek studies.]
The writers who have dealt with this great and various development of
later Hellenism are either the historians of the Roman Empire--especially
Duruy, who has kept up the thread of his Greek History in his popular
_History of Rome_--or the theologians. The latter have a field so
specially their own, and the literature of the subject is so enormous,
that the mere historian of Greece and the Greeks must content himself
with the pagan side. To touch even in a general way, as I have hitherto
done, upon the many controversies that now arise concerning Greek life
and thought would here be impossible.
§ 86. But there is one important point at the very outset of the new
departure into Christianity upon which I would gladly save the reader
from a widely diffused error.
[Sidenote: Have the Greeks no share in our religion?]
It has been long the fashion--since the writings of Ernest Renan it has
been almost a commonplace, to say: that while modern Europe owes to the
Greeks all manner of wisdom and of refinement, in politics, literature,
philosophy, architecture, sculpture, one thing there is which they could
not impart to us,--religion. This deeper side of man, his relation to
one God, his duty and his responsibilities beyond this ordinary life, we
owe not to the Greeks, but to the legacy of the Semitic race. To the
Jews, we are told, are due all the highest, all the most serious, all
the most elevating features in modern Christianity.
[Sidenote: Or is it altogether Semitic?]
Is this true? Is it the case that the Greeks were, after all, only
brilliant children, playing with life, and never awaking to the real
seriousness of the world's problems? There has seldom been a plausible
statement circulated which is further from the truth. However capital
the fact that the first great teacher and revealer of Christianity was a
Jew, however carefully the dogmas of the Old Testament were worked up
into the New, Christianity, as we have it historically, would have been
impossible without Hellenism.
[Sidenote: The language of the New Testament exclusively Greek.]
In the first place, the documents of the New Testament were one and all
composed in Greek, as the _lingua franca_ of the East and West; and the
very first author in the list, Saint Matthew, was a tax-gatherer, whose
business required him to know it[202:1]. If, therefore, the vehicle of
Christianity from the first was the Greek language, this is not an
unimportant factor to start with; and yet it is the smallest and most
superficial contribution that Greek thought has given to Christianity.
When my later studies on the history of Hellenism under the Roman Empire
see the light, I trust that the evidence for the following grave facts,
already admitted by most critical theologians, will be brought before
the lay reader.
[Sidenote: Saint Paul's teaching.]
[Sidenote: Stoic elements in Saint Paul.]
§ 87. When we pass by the first three, or Synoptical, Gospels, there
remains a series of books by early Christian teachers, of whom Saint
Paul and Saint John are by far the most prominent. To Saint Paul is due
a peculiar development of the faith which brings into prominence that
side of Christianity now known as Protestantism,--the doctrine of
justification by faith; of the greater importance of dogma than of
practice; of the predestination or election of those that will be saved.
This whole way of thinking, this mode of looking at the world, so
different from anything in the Jewish books, so developed beyond the
teaching of the Synoptic Gospels, was quite familiar to the most serious
school of Hellenism, to the Stoic theory of life popular all over the
Hellenistic world, and especially at Tarsus, where Saint Paul received
his education.
[Sidenote: The Stoic sage.]
The Stoic wise man, who had adopted with faith that doctrine, forthwith
rose to a condition differing _in kind_ from the rest of the world, who
were set down as moral fools, whose highest efforts at doing right were
mere senseless blundering, mere filthy rags, without value or merit. The
wise man, on the contrary, was justified in the sight of God, and could
commit no sin; the commission of one fault would be a violation of his
election, and would make him guilty of all, and as subject to punishment
as the vilest criminal. For all faults were equally violations of the
moral law, and therefore equally proofs that the true light was not
there. Whether one of the elect could fall away, was a matter of
dispute, but in general was thought impossible[203:1]. Whether
conversion was a gradual change of character, or a sudden inspiration,
was an anxious topic of discussion. The wise man, and he alone, enjoyed
absolute liberty, boundless wealth, supreme happiness; nothing could
take from him the inestimable privileges he had attained.
[Sidenote: The Stoic Providence.]
Can any one fail to recognize these remarkable doctrines, not only in
the spirit, but in the very letter, of Saint Paul's teaching? Does he
not use even the language of the Stoic paradoxes, 'as, sorrowful, yet
always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet
possessing all things'? Is not his so-called sermon at Athens a direct
statement of Stoic views against the Epicureans, taking nothing away,
but adding to their account of the moral world the revelation of Jesus
Christ and of the Resurrection? Will any one venture to assert in the
face of these facts that the most serious and religious of Greek systems
was the offspring of children in morals, or that it failed to exert a
powerful influence through the greatest teacher of Christianity upon all
his followers? It is of course idle to weigh these things in a minute
balance, and declare who did most, or what was the greatest advance made
in our faith beyond the life and teaching of its Founder. But the more
we compare Greek Stoicism with Pauline Christianity, the more distinctly
their general connection will be felt and appreciated.
[Sidenote: Saint John's Gospel.]
§ 88. Let us now come to the more obvious and better acknowledged case
of Saint John. It has been the stock argument of those who reject the
early date and alleged authorship of the Fourth Gospel that the writer
is imbued with Hellenistic philosophy; that he is intimate with that
fusion of Jewish and Platonic thought which distinguished the schools of
Alexandria; that in particular the doctrine of the _Word_, with which
the book opens, is quite strange to Semite thought, doubly strange to
Old Testament theology, not even hinted at in the early apocryphal
books. In other words, the Greek elements in the Fourth Gospel are so
strong that many critics think them impossible of attainment for a man
of Saint John's birth and education!
[Sidenote: Neo-Platonic doctrine of the Logos.]
For my purpose this is more than enough. I need not turn, to refute
these sceptics, to show how the author of the book of Revelation, if he
be the same, made great strides in Greek letters before he wrote the
Gospel, thus showing the importance he attached not only to Greek
thought, but to Greek expression. The Alexandrian tone of Saint John's
Gospel, derived from the same sources as those which gave birth to
Neo-Platonism, is as evident as the Stoical tone in Saint Paul, derived
from the schools of Tarsus and Cilicia.
Here is a chapter of deeper Greek history yet to be written from the
Greek side, not as an appendage to Roman history, or as an interlude in
theological controversy.
[Sidenote: The Cynic independence of all men;]
[Sidenote: the Epicurean dependence upon friends.]
§ 89. So much for the influence of the highest and most serious forms of
Greek thinking upon the religion of the Roman Empire. But even from the
inferior developments of philosophy, its parodies of strength and its
exaggerations of weakness, elements passed into this faith which is
asserted to be wholly foreign to Hellenism. The Cynic ostentation of
independence, of living apart from the world, free from all cares and
responsibilities, found its echo in the Christian anchorite, who chose
solitude and poverty from higher but kindred motives. The sentimental
display of personal affection, by which the Epicurean endeavoured to
substitute the love of friends for the love of principle or devotion to
the State, had its echo in those personal ties among early Christians
which replaced their civic attachments and consoled them when outlawed
by the State. Indeed, there is much in Epicureanism which has passed
into Christianity,--an unsuspected fact till it was brought out by very
recent writers[206:1].
[Sidenote: The university of Athens.]
What shall we say too of the culture of this age? Is not the eloquence
of the early Christian Fathers, of John Chrysostom, of Basil, worthy of
admiration; and was not all their culture derived from the old Greek
schools and universities, which had lasted with unbroken though changing
traditions from the earliest Hellenistic days? One must read Libanius, a
writer of the fourth century after Christ, to understand how thoroughly
Athens was still old Greek in temper, in tone, in type, and how it had
become the university of the civilized world[206:2]. The traditions of
this Hellenistic university life and system passed silently, but not
less certainly, into the oldest mediæval Italian universities, and
thence to Paris and to England,--just as the Greek tones or scales
passed into the chants of Saint Ambrose at Milan, and thence into the
noble music of Palestrina and of Tallis, which our own degenerate age
has laid aside for weaker and more sentimental measures.
[Sidenote: Greece indestructible.]
§ 90. It is indeed difficult to overrate the amount and the variety of
the many hidden threads that unite our modern culture to that of ancient
Greece, not to speak of the conscious return of our own century to the
golden age of Hellenic life as the only human epoch in art, literature,
and eloquence which ever approached perfection. As the Greek language
has lasted in that wonderful country in spite of long domination by
Romans, of huge invasion by Celts and Slavs, of feudal occupation by
Frankish knights, of raid and rapine by Catalans and Venetians, ending
with the cruel tyranny of the Turk, so the Greek spirit has lasted
through all manner of metamorphose and modification, till the return
wave has in our day made it the highest aspiration of our worldly
perfection.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Greek political history almost the private property of the
English writers,]
§ 91. I said at the opening of this essay that I should endeavour to
indicate the principal problems to be solved by future historians of
Greece,--at least by those who have not the genius to recast the whole
subject by the light of some great new idea; and in so doing, particular
stress has been laid on the political side, not without deliberate
intention. For, in the first place, this aspect of Greek affairs is the
peculiar province of English historians. They, with their own
experiences and traditions of constitutional struggles, cannot but feel
the strongest attraction towards similar passages in the life of the
Greeks, so that even the professional scholar in his study feels the
excitement of the contested election, the glow of the public debate,
when he finds them distracting Athens or Ægion. The practical insight of
a Grote or a Freeman leads him to interpret facts which may be
inexplicable or misleading to a foreign student. Even with Grote before
him, Ernst Curtius or Duruy is sometimes unable to grasp the true
political situation.
[Sidenote: who have themselves lived in practical politics.]
I say this in the higher and more delicate sense; for of course many
recent histories give an adequate account of the large political changes
to the general student. Perhaps, indeed, the remoteness of foreign
writers from political conflicts such as ours gives them a calmness and
fairness which is of advantage, while the English writer can hardly
avoid a certain amount of partisanship, however carefully he may strive
to be scrupulously impartial. For in all these things we are compelled
unconsciously to reflect not only our century, but our nation, and
colour the acts and the motives of other days with the hues our
imagination has taken from surrounding circumstances.
[Sidenote: Not so in artistic or literary history,]
[Sidenote: where the French and Germans are superior;]
§ 92. When we come to the literary and artistic side, the foreign
historians have a decided advantage. The philosophical side of Greek
literature has indeed been treated by Grote and other English writers
with a fulness and clearness that leave little to be desired; but on the
poetry and the artistic prose of the Greeks, foreign scholars write with
a freshness and a knowledge to which few of us attain. Of course a
Frenchman, with the systematic and careful training which he gets in
composition, must have an inestimable advantage over people, like us,
who merely write as they list, and have no rules to guide their taste or
form their style. And the German, if as regards style he is even less
happily circumstanced than the Englishman, whose language has at least
been moulded by centuries of literature, has yet on the side of
archæology and art enjoyed a training which is only just now becoming
possible in England or America.
[Sidenote: especially in art.]
Hence it is that the earlier part of Curtius' history has such a
charm,--though we must not detract from the individual genius of the
man, which is manifest enough if we compare him with the solid but
prosaic Duncker. However complete and well articulated the bones of fact
may lie before us, it requires a rare imagination to clothe them with
flesh and with skin, nay, with bloom upon the skin, and expression in
the features, if we are to have a living figure, and not a dry and
repulsive skeleton.
[Sidenote: Importance of studying Greek art.]
§ 93. What I think it right, in conclusion, to insist upon is this: that
a proper knowledge of Greek art, instead of being the mere amusement of
the dilettante, is likely to have an important effect upon the general
appearance of our public buildings and our homes, and to make them not
only more beautiful, but also instructive to the rising generation. The
day for new developments of architecture and of decorative art seems
past, though the modern discovery of a new material for
building--iron--ought to have brought with it something fresh and
original. In earlier ages the quality of the material can always be
shown to be a potent factor in style.
[Sidenote: Modern revivals of ancient styles,--Gothic, Renaissance.]
If, however, we are not to have a style of our own, we must necessarily
go back to the great builders and decorators of former ages, and make
them the models of our artists. This has in fact been the history of the
revivals since the universal reign of vulgarity in what we call the
early Queen Victoria period in England. First there was a great Gothic
revival, when we began to understand what the builders of the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries meant, and to reproduce their ideas with
intelligence. This has since given way to the Renaissance style, in
which most recent buildings have been erected, and which has beauties
which the Gothic revivalists used to regard with horror.
There is no probability that the last ideal will be more permanent than
the last but one; it will presently be replaced by some other model.
This, however, will have been gained,--that our ordinary lay public will
have been trained to understand and appreciate not only the great Gothic
works of the early, but the great Renaissance works of the late Middle
Ages. We can now even tolerate those curious vampings, so common in
Holland and Germany, where one style has been laid upon the other or
added to it[211:1].
[Sidenote: Probability of Hellenic revival.]
It is more than likely that the next revival will be a Hellenic revival.
Renaissance architecture, as is well known, is the imitation of Roman or
late Hellenistic art, with certain peculiarities and modifications
forced upon the builders by their education and surroundings. But many
of them thought they were reproducing pure Greek style, concerning which
they were really in total darkness. The few earlier attempts in this
century to imitate Greek buildings show a similar ignorance. Thus the
builders of the Madeleine in Paris thought, I suppose, they were copying
the Parthenon, whereas they knew nothing whatever about the art of
Ictinus. How far this inability to understand the art of a distant
century may go, is curiously exemplified in the drawings taken (in 1676)
from the yet un-ruined Parthenon by Jacques Carrey, by the order of the
Marquis of Nointel. These drawings are positively ludicrous travesties
of the sculpture of Phidias in seventeenth-century style[211:2].
[Sidenote: Greek art only recently understood. Winckelmann, Penrose,
Dörpfeld.]
Not until a long series of great students, beginning with Winckelmann,
had studied with real care the secrets of Greek art, till Mr. Penrose
had disclosed the marvellous subtlety in the curves of the Parthenon,
till Dr. Dörpfeld had analyzed the plan and materials and execution of
the Olympian treasure-houses and temples, could we say that we were
beginning to have a clear perception of the qualities which made Greek
sculpture and architecture so superior to all imitations which have
since been attempted.
[Sidenote: Its effect upon modern art when properly appreciated,]
§ 94. It is high time that all this profound research, this recondite
learning, these laborious excavations, should be made known in their
results, and brought home to the larger public. Then when the day comes
that we undertake to carry out a Hellenic Renascence, we shall know what
we are about; we shall abandon the superstition of white marble worship,
and adopt colours; we shall learn to combine chastity of design with
richness of ornamentation; we shall revert to that harmony of all the
arts which has been lost since the days of Michael Angelo.
[Sidenote: and upon every detail of our life.]
If it be true that there is in heaven a secret treaty between the three
sovran Ideas that ennoble human life,--the Good, the Beautiful, and the
True--which enacts that none of them shall enrich us without the
co-operation of the rest, then our study of this side of Greek
perfection may even have its moral results. May not the ideas of
measure, of fitness, of reserve, which are shown in all the best Greek
work, radiate their influence into our ordinary life, and, making it
fairer, prepare it for the abode of larger truth and more perfect
goodness?
[Sidenote: Greek Literature hardly noticed in this Essay.]
§ 95. Thus far I have sought to bring out the political lessons which
are the peculiar teaching of history, and have only suggested what may
yet result from the artistic lessons left us by this wonderful people.
The reader may wonder that I have said little or nothing concerning
another very prominent side of Greek perfection,--the wonders of the
poetry which ranks with the best that has been produced by all the
efforts of man before or since. My reason for this omission was, that
here, if anywhere, the excellence of the extant Hellenic work is
acknowledged, while the fact that all those ignorant of the language are
excluded from enjoying it, makes any discussion of it unsuited to the
general public. For whatever may be said of good translations of foreign
prose, poetry is so essentially the artistic expression of the peculiar
tongue in which it originates, that all transference into alien words
must produce a fatal alteration. A great English poet may indeed
transfer the ideas of a Greek to his page; but he gives us an English
poem on Greek subjects, not the very poem of his model, however faithful
his report may be.
[Sidenote: Demands a good knowledge and study of the language.]
If, therefore, we are to benefit by this side of Hellenic life, there is
no short cut possible. We must sit down and study the language till we
can read it fluently; and this requires so much labour, that the
increasing demands of modern life upon our time tend to thrust aside the
study of bygone languages for the sake of easier and more obvious
gains.
§ 96. Nevertheless, it seems well-nigh impossible that a Hellenic
Renascence, such as I have anticipated, can ever be thorough and lasting
unless the English-speaking nations become really familiar with the
literary side of Hellenic life. Revivals of the plays of Æschylus and
Sophocles must not be confined to the learned stage and public of an
English or American university, but must come to be heard and
appreciated by a far larger public.
[Sidenote: Other languages must be content to give way to this pursuit.]
This can hardly be done until we make up our minds that the subjects of
education must not be increased in number, and that moreover they may be
alternated with far more freedom than is now the case. There is, for
example, a superstition that everybody must learn Latin before learning
Greek, and that French is a sort of necessary accomplishment for a lady,
whereas it is perfectly certain that the cultivation to be attained
through Greek is ten times as great as that we can gain through Latin;
while in the second case it is no paradox to assert that any woman able
to understand the _Antigone_ of Sophocles or the _Thalusia_ of
Theocritus would derive from them more spiritual food than from all the
volumes of French poetry she is ever likely to read. If we cannot
compass all, the lesser should give way to the greater; and it is not
till our own day that the supremacy of Greek has been acknowledged by
all competent judges.
[Sidenote: The nature and quality of Roman imitations.]
§ 97. What has promoted the reign of Latin, and has told against Greek
in our schools, is partly, I believe, the bugbear of a strange alphabet;
partly also--and this among more advanced people--the want of a clear
knowledge how closely most Roman poetry was copied from Greek models.
Were the Greek models now extant, the contrast would probably cause the
Roman imitations to disappear, as indeed many such must have disappeared
when the Roman readers themselves approached the great originals. Even
now, if the lyrics of Sappho and Alcæus were recovered from some
Egyptian tomb or from the charred rolls of Herculaneum, it might have a
disastrous effect on the popularity of Horace.
[Sidenote: The case of Virgil.]
But in most cases the Romans copied from inferior poets of the
Alexandrian age; and before the reader and I part company, it is of
importance to insist upon this,--that the best of Roman poetry was often
a mere version of third-rate Greek. By far the greatest of the Roman
poets is Virgil; and if he alone remained, Latin would be worth learning
for his sake. But even Virgil copies from second-rate Alexandrian poets,
Apollonius and Aratus--from the latter to an extent which would be
thought shameful in any independent literature. It may be true that the
translations are in this case not only equal, but far superior, to the
originals. I will not dispute this, as my case does not require any
doubtful supports. For even granting that he can exceed a second-rate
Greek model, what shall we say when he attempts to imitate Theocritus in
his _Bucolics_? Here he is taking a really good Greek poet for his
model, and how poor is the great Roman in comparison! Even therefore in
imitating an Alexandrian master, we can see that the first of Latin
poets cannot bear the comparison.
[Sidenote: Theocritus only a late flower in the Greek garden of poetry.]
§ 98. If I had not written fully on this subject in my recent _Greek
Life and Thought_, and my _Greek World under Roman Sway_, I should fain
conclude with some brief account of the after-glow of Hellenic genius,
when the loss of freshness in the language and the life of the people
had made pedantry and artificiality common features in the writing of
the day. Yet these patent faults did not strike the Romans, whose poets,
with only few exceptions, copied Callimachus and Parthenius as the
finest models in the world.
From my point of view, though I have cited these facts to show what a
superstition the preference of Latin to Greek is, I can urge them as but
another evidence of the supremacy of Greece and its right to a spiritual
empire over cultivated men. Even debased and decaying Hellenism could
produce poetry too good for the ablest disciples to rival, too subtle
for any other tongue to express. Can we conclude with any greater
tribute to the genius of the race, with any higher recommendation of
their history than this, that it is the history of a people whose gifts
have never ceased to illumine and to sustain the higher spirits in every
society of civilized men?
FOOTNOTES:
[190:1] I am of course speaking generally, nor do I venture to decide
without argument the difficult question of the exact status of Greece in
the years after 146 B.C.
[196:1] _Greek Life and Thought, from Alexander to the Roman Conquest._
Macmillan, 1887.
[202:1] The old belief in an original Hebrew Gospel, from which Saint
Matthew's was translated, now turns out to have no better foundation
than the existence of an old version into Hebrew (Aramaic) for the
benefit of the common people who were too ignorant to read Greek. Cf.
Dr. Salmon's _Introduction to the New Testament_.
[203:1] Cf. further details in my _Greek Life and Thought_, pp. 140,
372.
[206:1] Cf. Mr. W. Pater's _Marius the Epicurean_, which is built on
this idea; also the excellent account in Mr. Bury's new _History of the
Later Roman Empire_, vol. i. chap. i.
[206:2] The reader who fears to attack Libanius directly, may find all
the facts either in Sievers' (German) _Life of Libanius_, or in Mr. W.
W. Capes's excellent book on _University Life at Athens_ (London, 1877).
[211:1] Of this confusion the hall of the Middle Temple in London is a
very interesting specimen, seeing that the Renaissance screen, a
splendid thing, is only two years later than the Gothic hall.
[211:2] They are not, however, one whit worse than the ordinary attempts
at Greek dress made by nineteenth-century ladies who go to Fancy Fairs.
APPENDIX.
ON THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE OLYMPIAN REGISTER[217:1].
There seems a sort of general agreement among modern historians of
Greece to accept the 1st Olympiad (776 B.C.) as the trustworthy
starting-point of solid Greek chronology. Even Grote, so sceptical about
legends, and so slow to gather inferences from them, accepts this date.
There is only one exception, I think, to be found in Sir George Cox, who
evidently rejects the Olympian register, who will not set down in his
chronology any figure higher than 670 B.C., and even that under the
protest of a query.
When we come to inquire on what authority so early a date can be
securely established, we find a sort of assumption, not supported by
argument, that from 776 onward the Eleians kept a regular record of
their great festival, and as a matter of fact the alleged list is still
extant. It was generally acknowledged and cited by the late historians
of Greece, who determined events according to it. Above all, the
critical doubts of philologists are soothed by the supposed authority of
Aristotle, who is reported to have made researches on the question, and
to refer to the list as if authentic[218:1]; at all events he mentioned
a discus at Olympia with Lycurgus' name inscribed upon it, but in what
work, and for what purpose, is unknown. Aristotle is considered an
infallible authority by modern philologists, so much so that even the
most sceptical of them seem almost to attribute verbal inspiration to
this philosopher. One other Greek authority shares with him this
pre-eminence--the historian Thucydides. And it so happens that in his
Sicilian _Archæology_ (book vi) Thucydides gives a number of dates,
apparently without hesitation, which start from 735 B.C., and therefore
persuades his commentators that accurate dates were attainable
concerning a period close to the 1st Olympiad. These are apparently the
reasons which have determined the general consent of modern historians.
But neither Grote, nor E. Curtius, nor even Sir George Cox, has analysed
the evidence for the authenticity of the older portion of this register.
I cannot find in Clinton's _Fasti_, where it might well be expected, any
such inquiry. In Mure's _History of Greek Literature_ (iv. 77-90), a
work far less esteemed than it deserves, and here only, do we find any
statement of the evidence. The negative conclusions reached by Mure have
made no impression on the learned world, and are now well-nigh
forgotten. I will take up the question where he left it, and add some
positive evidence to corroborate his argument--that the list of victors
at Olympiads handed down to us by Eusebius is, at least in its earlier
part, an artificially constructed list, resting on occasional and
fragmentary monumental records, and therefore of no value as a
scientific chronology. I will also endeavour to determine when the
victors began to be regularly recorded, and when the extant list was
manufactured. Such an inquiry must be of great importance in measuring
the amount of credence to be given to the dates of events referred to
the eighth and the first half of the seventh centuries B.C.--for
example, Thucydides' dates for the western colonies of the Hellenes.
Let us first sketch the tradition about the Register as we find it
implied in Diodorus, Strabo, the fragments of Timæus, and other late
historians. We find especially in Pausanias a considerable amount of
detail, and an outline of the general history of the feast as then
accepted. All admitted, and indeed asserted, a mythical origin for the
games. The declarations of Pindar and other old poets were express, that
Herakles had founded them, that Pelops and other mythical heroes had won
victories at them--and victories of various kinds, including chariot
races. Another account ascribed their foundation to Oxylus (Paus. v. 8,
5). But a long gap was admitted between these mythical glories and the
revival of the games by his descendant Iphitus, king of Elis. 'This
Iphitus,' says Pausanias (v. 4, 6), '_the epigram at Olympia_ declares
to be the son of Hæmon, but most of the Greeks to be the son of
Praxonides, and not of Hæmon; the old documents (+archaia grammata+) of
the Eleians, however, referred[219:1] Iphitus to a father of the same
name.' Iphitus, in connection with the Spartan Lycurgus, re-established
the games, but (as was asserted) only as a contest in the short race
(+stadion+), and in this first historical Olympiad Coroebus won, as was
stated in an epigram on his tomb, situated on the borders of Elis and
Arcadia (Paus. viii. 26, 4). A quoit on which Lycurgus' name was
engraved, was at Elis, says Plutarch, in the days of Aristotle. The
'discus of Iphitus,' says Pausanias (v. 20, 1), 'has the truce which the
Eleians announce for the Olympiad, not inscribed in straight lines, but
the letters run round the discus in a circular form[220:1].' He alludes
to the list again and again: _e.g._ (v. 8, 6) 'ever since there is a
continuous record of the Olympiads (+ex hou to syneches tais mnêmais epi
tais Ol. esti+); prizes for running were first established, and the
Eleian Coroebus won.'
Pausanias proceeds in this passage to give an account of the successive
additions of other competitions to the sprint race, 'according as they
remembered them,' that is, according as they recollected or found out
that they had been practised in mythical days. In the 14th Ol. the
+diaulos+, or double course, was instituted, and Hypenus the Pisæan won,
and next after him Acanthus. In the 18th they remembered the pentathlon
and the wrestling match, in which Lampis and Eurybatus respectively won,
both Lacedæmonians. In the 23rd came boxing, and Onomastus of Smyrna,
which then already counted as Ionian, won. In the 25th the first chariot
race was won by the Theban Pagondas. In the 33rd came the pancration,
and the monument of the first victor, Lygdamis, was at Syracuse. . . . .
The boys' contests were based on no old tradition, but the Eleians
established them of their own good pleasure. The boys' wrestling match
was accordingly instituted in the 37th Ol.
I need not here pursue the account further, but will return to this
passage in connection with the other arrangements of the feast.
We find that other authorities, such as Polemo, quoted by the Scholiast
on Pindar (Ol. v.), agree with Pausanias as to some of these details.
Strabo quotes from Ephorus the double foundation, by Oxylus and again by
Iphitus. So does Phlegon, a freedman of Hadrian, who wrote a work on the
Olympian festival, and gave a list of victors, probably from the same
source as Eusebius' list. Phlegon notes indeed the difficulty of making
Lycurgus and Iphitus contemporary with Coroebus in 776 B.C., and fixes
the date of Iphitus twenty-eight Olympiads earlier (at 887 B.C.). But he
introduces an Iphitus again in the 6th registered Ol., inquiring about
the crowning of victors, and states that Daïcles of Messene was first
crowned with wild olive at the 7th contest. The only other point of
interest in Phlegon's fragments is the full catalogue of the 177th Ol.
(frag. 12 in Müller's _Frag. Hist._ iv. 606), which gives the winners in
seventeen events; some of them thrice successful in the competitions.
We may therefore take it for granted that the account of Pausanias,
which now passes current in all the German and English works on Greek
athletics, was, in the main, that established or adopted by Timæus or by
Aristotle, the latter of whom is often alleged to have first given the
Olympiads their prominent position as the basis of Greek chronology. But
whether he adopted the list as genuine from the beginning or not, his
isolated remark about the quoit with Lycurgus' name is not sufficient
to inform us[222:1]. Indeed we have only negative evidence concerning
his opinion and no direct information.
It is of far more importance to examine what positive evidence there was
for this theory of the gradual rise and progress of the festival, its
regularity, and the prominence of the _stadion_, or short race, in
giving the name of its victor as the index of the date. We have two
kinds of authority to consult--the older literature; and the monuments,
either at first hand, or as described for us by former observers. As
regards the literature, our review need be but very brief.
(1) The twenty-third book of the _Iliad_ seems composed without any
reference to the earliest Olympian games as Pausanias describes them.
The nature of this (perhaps special) competition is quite different.
There are some events, such as the armed combat, which never made part
of the historical games; there are others, such as the chariot race,
which are expressly asserted to have been later innovations at Olympia.
The giving of valuable prizes, and several of them in each competition,
is quite against the practice at Olympia. The Phæacian games in the
_Odyssey_ (+th+ 120, sq.) contain _five_ events, running, wrestling,
leaping, discus, and boxing. Those who believe that the epics were
composed before 776 B.C., or those who believe them to be the much later
compilation of antiquarian poets, will find no difficulty in this. The
one will assert that the poet could not know, and the other that he
would not know, what was established at Olympia. The latter will also
hold that the accounts of the mythical celebrations by Herakles,
Pelops, &c., were invented in imitation of the Homeric account. But
still if Lycurgus indeed promoted the knowledge of the Homeric poems,
why did he and Iphitus found a contest without the least resemblance to
the heroic models? And if, as I hold, the Homeric poems were growing
into shape about the time of the alleged 1st Olympiad, and after it, the
contrast of the _Iliad_ in its games to the Olympian festival is so
difficult to explain, that we must assume the old Eleian competition to
have been no mere sprint race, but a contest similar in its events to
that in the _Iliad_, or at least to that in the _Odyssey_.
(2) This view is strongly supported by the statements of Pindar, who is
the next important witness on the subject. In his Tenth Olympic Ode
(_vv._ 43 _sq._) he tells of the foundation by Herakles, and gives the
names of _five_ heroes who won the various events of the first contest.
He gives us no hint that there was any break in the tradition, or that
these five events had not remained in fashion ever since. In fact he
does mention (_Isth._ i. 26 _sq._) that the _pentathlon_ and
_pancration_ were later inventions, thus making it clear that the rest
were in his mind the original components of the meeting. Nor does he
anywhere give priority or special dignity to the _stadion_; only the
last of his Olympian Odes is for this kind of victory, his Thirteenth
for the _stadion_ and _pentathlon_ together. He never mentions, as we
should certainly have expected, that these _stadion_ victors would have
the special glory of handing down their names as eponymi of the whole
feast. The other contests, the chariot race, the pancration, and the
pentathlon, were evidently far grander and more highly esteemed, and we
find this corroborated by the remark of Thucydides (v. 49), 'This was
the Olympiad when Androsthenes won for the first time the pancration.'
Thucydides therefore seems to have marked the Olympiad, not by the
stadion, but by the pancration.
(3) This historian indeed (as well as his immediate predecessors,
Herodotus and Hellanicus) gives us but little information about the
nature of the games, except the remark that 'it was not many years'
since the habit of running naked had come into fashion at Olympia. Such
a statement cannot be reconciled with Pausanias' account, who placed the
innovation three centuries before Thucydides' time. But in one important
negative feature all the fifth-century historians agree. None of them
recognise any Olympian register, or date their events by reference to
this festival. Thucydides, at the opening of his second book, fixes his
main date by the year of the priestess of Hera at Argos, by the Spartan
ephor, and by the Athenian archon. In his Sicilian _Archæology_, to
which we will presently return, where it would have been very convenient
to have given dates by Olympiads, he counts all his years from the
foundation of Syracuse downward. Yet we know that Hellanicus, Antiochus
and others had already made chronological researches at that time, and
the former treated of the list of the Carneian victors. All these things
taken together are conclusive against the existence, or at least the
wide recognition, of the Olympian annals down to 400 B.C.
In the next century Ephorus wrote in his earlier books concerning the
mythical founding of the festival, but we have nothing quoted from him
at all like the history set down by Pausanias. It is nevertheless about
this time that the newer and more precise account came into vogue, for
Timæus, the younger contemporary of Ephorus, evidently knew and valued
the register. Its origin in literature would have remained a mystery but
for the solitary remark of Plutarch. At the opening of his _Life of
Numa_, in commenting on the difficulty of fixing early dates, he says:
+tous men oun chronous exakribôsai chalepon esti, kai malista tous ek
tôn Olympionikôn anagomenous, hôn tên anagraphên opse phasin Hippian
ekdounai ton Êleion, ap' oudenos hormômenon anankaiou pros pistin.+
What does this mean? Does it mean that Hippias first _published_ or
edited in a literary form the register, or does it mean that he _both
compiled and edited_ it? The former is the implied opinion of the
learned. 'Dieser Zeit,' says E. Curtius, _Hist._ i. 494 (_viz._ 'der
Mitte des achten Jahrhunderts'), 'gehören ja auch die Listen derer an,
welche in den Nationalspielen gesiegt'; and in the note on this at the
end of the volume, he indicates, together with the +anagraphai+ of the
Argive priestesses, which Hellanicus published, two passages in
Pausanias, and adds: 'wissenschaftlich bearbeitet zuerst von Hippias dem
Eleer, dann von Philochorus in seinen +Olympiades+.' Now of the latter
work we know nothing more than the name; of the former nothing but the
passage just cited from Plutarch. Does it justify Ernst Curtius'
_wissenschaftlich bearbeitet_? Or does our other knowledge of Hippias
justify it? The pictures of him drawn in the Platonic dialogues called
after his name, and in Philostratus, though perhaps exaggerated, make
him a vain but clever polymath, able to practise all trades, and
exhibit in all kinds of knowledge. We should not expect anything
'wissenschaftlich' from him. Indeed, in this case there was room for
either a great deal of science, or for none. If there was really an
authentic list at Olympia, Hippias need only have copied it. But is
this consistent with Plutarch's statement? Far from it.
Plutarch implies a task of difficulty, requiring research and
combination. And this, no doubt, was what the Sophist wanted to exhibit.
Being an Eleian, and desirous to make himself popular in the city, he
not only chose Olympia for special displays of various kinds, but
brought together for the people a history of their famous games. And in
doing this he seems to have shown all the vanity, the contempt of
ancient traditions, and the rash theorizing which we might expect from a
man of his class. We have, fortunately, a single case quoted by
Pausanias which shows us both that this estimate of the man is not far
from the truth, and what licence the Eleians gave him when he was
reconstructing the history of the festival. Pausanias (v. 25, 2 _sqq._)
tells a pathetic story about the loss of a choir of boys and their
teacher on the way from Messana in Sicily to Olympia, where they were
commemorated by statues. +to men dê epigramma edêlou to archaion
anathêmata einai tôn en porthmô Messêniôn; chronô de hysteron Hippias ho
legomenos hypo Hellênôn genesthai sophos ta elegeia ep' autois
epoiêsen.+ Here, then, we have some kind of falsification, and
apparently one in favour of the Messenians of the Peloponnesus, if we
may judge from the form of Pausanias' remark. In more than one case a
later epigram appears to have been inscribed on a votive offering, and I
think we can show in Hippias a decided leaning to the Messenians, whose
restoration to independence he probably witnessed.
But were there really no registers, +anagraphai+, from which Hippias
could have copied? If there was certainly no single complete list, of
undoubted authority, may there not have been partial lists, affording
him suitable materials? This we must endeavour to answer from the
passages of Pausanias referred to by E. Curtius, as well as from others,
which he has not thought it necessary to quote.
The first is the opening passage of the sixth book, where the author
says that as his work 'is not a catalogue of all the athletes who have
gained victories at Olympia, but an account of votive offerings, and
especially statues, he will omit many who have gained victories, either
by some lucky chance, or without attaining the honour of a statue.'
Though this passage may imply that there was such a catalogue--of course
there was in Pausanias' day--it says not a word about an old and
authentic register. It is indeed a capital fact in the present
discussion, that neither does Pausanias, in this elaborate account of
Olympia, nor, as far as I know, does any other Greek author, distinctly
mention +anagraphai+, or +parapêgmata+, or any equivalent term for any
official register at Olympia. Pausanias speaks of +ta tôn Êleiôn
grammata+, and also says of certain _an-Olympiads_[227:1]: +en tô tôn
Ol. katalogô ou graphousin+--not that they noted in, or erased from any
official register. In Pausanias the absence of such mention appears to
me decisive.
Let us pass to the second passage indicated by E. Curtius, _viz._ vi. 6,
3. 'There stands there also the statue of Lastratidas, an Eleian boy,
who won the crown for wrestling; he obtained also in Nemea among the
boys, and among youths (+en te paisi kai ageneiôn+) another victory.'
Pausanias adds: that Paraballon, the father of Lastratidas, won in the
+diaulos, hypeleipeto de kai es tous epeita philotimian, tôn nikêsantôn
Olympiasi ta onomata anagrapsas en gymnasiô tô en Olympia+. Here, at
last, we have some definite evidence, and I will add at once another
passage--the only other passage I can find where any register is alluded
to--as it expounds the former. In vi. 8, 1, we find: Euanorides the
Eleian gained the victory for wrestling both at Olympia and Nemea:
+genomenos de Hellanodikês egrapse kai houtos ta onomata en Olympia tôn
nenikêkotôn+. It appears then that if an Eleian had distinguished
himself at the games, he was likely to be afterwards chosen as one of
the judges--a reasonable custom, even now prevailing amongst us. It also
appears that such +hellanodikai+ obtained the right of celebrating their
year of office by inscribing the names of the victors, and doubtless
their own, in the gymnasium.
But fortunately, the date of these inscriptions is determined by two
facts. In the first place both came after the establishing of boys'
contests, which Pausanias expressly calls an invention of the Eleians,
and fixes at the 37th Olympiad. Again the son of Paraballon, and
Euanorides himself, won prizes at Nemea--a contest not established,
according to E. Curtius, till about 570 B.C., but probably a little
earlier, and nearer to 600 B.C. I do not for a moment deny the existence
of some kind of register from this time onward; in fact there are some
probable reasons to be presently adduced in favour of it. Indeed the
very form of the note about Paraballon _seems to imply some novelty_, an
exceptional distinction in his inscription; and what we are here seeking
is evidence for an _early_ register, in fact a register of the contests
previous to 600 B.C.
What evidence does Pausanias afford of this? As I have said, there is
not a word about a register or catalogue, but there are several notes
of old offerings and inscriptions, which show us what sort of materials
existed, at least in Pausanias' day. And there is no reason whatever to
believe that many ancient monuments or inscriptions had been injured,
unless Hippias carried out his work of falsifying them on a large scale.
There were indeed several monuments antedated by mere vulgar mistakes.
Such was the _stele_ of Chionis (vi. 13, 2), who was reported to have
won in four successive contests (Ols. 28-31), but the reference in the
inscription to _armed races as not yet introduced_, proved even to
Pausanias that the writer of it must have lived long after Chionis'
alleged period. There was again the monument of Pheidolas' children,
whose epigram Pausanias notes as conflicting (vi. 13, 10) with +ta
Êleiôn es tous Olympionikas grammata. ogdoê gar Ol. kai hexêkostê kai ou
pro tautês estin en tois Êl. grammasi hê nikê tôn Ph. paidôn+. These
+grammata+--a word apparently distinct from +anagraphai+--are probably
nothing but the treatise of Hippias, preserved and copied at Elis. Had
these +grammata+ indeed been an authentic register, inscribed at the
time of each victory, is it possible that any epigrams of later date
would have been allowed to conflict with it? Surely not. But if the
register came to be concocted at a late period, such discrepancies might
be hard to avoid.
But as regards genuine early monuments, Pausanias tells us that
Coroebus had no statue at Olympia, and implies that _there was no
record of his victory save the epigram on his tomb_ at the border of
Elis and Arcadia. Then comes the case of the Spartan Eutelidas (vi. 15,
8), who conquered as a boy in the 38th Ol., the only contest ever held
for a pentathlon of boys. +esti de hê te eikôn archaia tou Eut., kai ta
epi tô bathrô grammata amydra hypo tou chronou.+ But this statue cannot
have been so old even as the 38th Ol. For in vi. 18, 7, Pausanias tells
us that the first athlete's statues set up at Olympia were those of
Praxidamas the Æginetan, who won in boxing at the 59th Ol., and that of
the Opuntian Rexibios the pancratiast, at the 61st. 'These portrait
statues are not far from the pillar of Oenomaos, and are made of wood,
Rexibios' of fig-tree, but the Æginetan's of cypress, and less decayed
than the other.' Just below this we have a mention of a treasure-house,
dedicated by the Sicyonian tyrant Myron in the 33rd Ol. In this
treasure-house was an inscribed shield, 'an offering to Zeus from the
Myones.' +ta de epi tê aspidi grammata parêktai men epi brachy, peponthe
de auto dia tou anathêmatos to archaion+ (vi. 19, 5).
These exhaust the oldest dated monuments found by Pausanias. He mentions
indeed an ancient treasury of the Megarians, built in a time before
either yearly archons at Athens or Olympiads (vi. 19, 13)[230:1]. Thus
the antiquarian traveller, who revelled in the venerable in history and
the archaic in Greek art, could find no dated votive offerings older
than the 33rd Ol., and these he specially notes as of extraordinary
antiquity, decayed and illegible with age. We may feel quite certain
that he omitted no really important extant relic of old times in his
survey.
Such then were the materials from which Hippias proceeded, not before
the year 400 B.C., and probably a generation later, to compile the full
register of the Olympiads. There may have been some old inscriptions
which Pausanias failed to see, or which had become illegible, or had
disappeared under the soil with time. Doubtless there were many old
traditions at Elis, which the Eleian sophist would gather and utilise.
There were also throughout Greece, in the various cities he visited,
traditions and inscriptions relating to victors who had been natives of
these cities. But that these formed an unbroken chain from Coroebus
down to Hippias' day is quite incredible.
His work is so completely lost that we can only conjecture his method of
proceeding from the general character of his age, and from the critical
spirit we can fairly attribute to it. He had before him the history of
the Pythian festival, which began in historical times (Ol. 48), if we
omit the old contest in composing a hymn to the gods. The various
innovations and additions were well known, and it is certain that at
Olympia too the range of contests had been enlarged by the pentathlon,
the pancration, the hoplite race, &c. But it is likely that Hippias
carried out this analogy too far. He found no traditions for the other
events as old as Coroebus, and he assumed that the games had begun
with a simple short race. _According to the order of the first record of
each competition_, he set down its first origin. He was thus led to make
the +stadion+ the 'eponymous competition,' if I may coin the expression,
though it is more than probable that the early festivals were noted by
the victor in the greatest feats and--if there was a real register--by
the Hellanodicæ who had presided. For it is certain from Pausanias that
the umpire did inscribe his own name with those of the victors.
Hippias' work, the +grammata+ of the Eleians in after days, was thus a
work based upon a problematical reconstruction of history. It rested for
its earlier portions on scanty and broken evidence; as it proceeded,
and monuments became more numerous, its authenticity increased. After
Ol. 60, when the fashion came in of setting up athlete statues, we may
assume it in the main to have been correct; though even here there were
not wanting discrepancies with other evidence, and possibly some _mala
fides_ on the part of the compiler[232:1].
There remain, therefore, three points of interest connected with the
theory thus proposed. Have we any evidence of the date at which the
Hellanodicæ first made it a matter of ambition to inscribe their own
names, and those of victors in the gymnasium, at Olympia? Are there
traces of deliberate theorizing in the extant list of victors previous
to this date? Why and for what reasons did Hippias fix on the year 776
B.C. as the commencement of his list?
(1) There are several probable reasons for fixing the origin of
registering the victories at about the 50th Ol. It was about this time
that the Eleians finally conquered the Pisatans, and secured the
complete management of the games. From the spoils of Pisa they built the
magnificent Doric temple lately excavated, and no doubt increased the
splendour of Olympia in other ways. For in addition to their increase of
power they were stimulated by a new and dangerous competition--that of
the Pythian games, established in the third year of the 48th Ol., and
this may have been one of the reasons why they determined finally to
crush and spoil the Pisatans. It is likely that the Nemean and Isthmian
games were instituted about the same time, and these rival games were
perhaps connected with some complaints as to the management of the
Olympian festival, for no Eleian seems to have competed at the Isthmian
games (Paus. v. 2, 2). The Eleians were accordingly put upon their
mettle, both to keep their contest unequalled in splendour, and beyond
suspicion in fairness. To obtain the first, they lavished the spoils of
Pisa, as already mentioned. As to the second, we have a remarkable story
told us by Herodotus (ii. 160), and again by Diodorus (i. 95), that they
sent an embassy as far as Egypt to consult the Pharaoh as to the best
possible conduct of the games. This king told them _that no Eleian
should be allowed to compete_. Herodotus calls him Psammis (Psammetichus
II), who reigned 594-587 B.C.; and he is a higher authority than
Diodorus, who calls him Amasis, and so brings down the date by
twenty-five years. Herodotus' story has never been much noticed, or
brought into relation with the other facts here adduced, but it surely
helps to throw light on the question. And there is yet one more
important datum. Pausanias tells us that in Ol. 50 a second umpire was
appointed. If the practice of official registering now commenced at
Olympia, as it certainly did at Delphi in the Pythian games, we can
understand Pausanias' remarks about Paraballon and others having
esteemed it a special glory to leave their names associated with the
victors'. For it was a new honour. From this time onward, therefore, I
have nothing to say against the register which we find in Eusebius.
(2) But as regards the first fifty Olympiads, is there any appearance of
deliberate invention or arrangement about the list of names? Can we show
that Hippias worked on theory, and not from distinct evidence? It is
very hard to do this, especially when we admit that he had a good many
isolated victories recorded or remembered, and that he was an
antiquarian, who no doubt worked out a probable list. Thus the list
begins with victors from the neighbourhood, and gradually admits a wider
range of competitors. This is natural enough, but I confess my suspicion
at the occurrence of eight Messenians out of the first twelve victors,
followed by their total disappearance till after the restoration by
Epaminondas. For the sacred truce gave ample occasion for exiled
Messenians to compete at the games[234:1]. I also feel grave suspicions
at the curious absence of Eleian victors. Excepting the first two, there
is not a single Eleian in the list. How is this consistent with Psammis'
remark to the Eleians? For how could they have avoided answering him
that their fairness was proved by the occurrence of no Eleian as victor
eponymous for 170 years? Many Eleian victors are indeed noticed by
Pausanias in the other events. It is hardly possible that they could not
have conquered in the _stadion_, so that I suspect in Hippias a
deliberate intention to put forward non-Eleians as victors. I have
suspicions about Oebotas, placed in the 6th Ol. by Hippias, but about
the 75th by the common tradition of the Greeks. It is curious, too, that
Athenian victors should always occur in juxtaposition with Laconian. But
all these are only suspicions.
(3) I come to the last and most important point; indeed it was this
which suggested the whole inquiry. On what principles, or by what
evidence, did Hippias fix on the year 776 B.C. as his starting-point? We
need not plunge into the arid and abstruse computations of years and
cycles which make early chronology so difficult to follow and to
appreciate. For one general consideration is here sufficient. Even had
we not shown from Plutarch's words, and from the silence of all our
authorities, that Hippias _could_ not have determined it by counting
_upwards_ the exact number of duly recorded victories, it is perfectly
certain that he _would_ not have followed this now accepted method. All
the Greek chronologists down to Hippias' day (and long after) made it
their chief object to derive historical families and states from
mythical ancestors, and they did this by reasoning _downwards_ by
generations. They assumed a fixed starting-point, either the siege of
Troy, or the return of the Herakleids. From this the number of
generations gave the number of years. Thus we may assume that Hippias
sought to determine the date of the 1st Olympiad by King Iphitus, who
had been assigned to the generation 100 Olympiads--a neat
round-number--before himself. Hippias thus fixed the date of both
Iphitus and Lycurgus. The Spartan chronologers would not accept such a
date for Lycurgus. His place in the generations of Herakleids put him
fully three generations earlier. Other chronologers therefore sought
means to accommodate the matter, and counted twenty-eight nameless
Olympiads from Lycurgus to Coroebus (and Iphitus). Others imagined two
Iphiti, one of Lycurgus' and one of Coroebus' date. But all such schemes
are to us idle; for we may feel certain that the number of Olympiads was
accommodated to the date of Iphitus, and not the date of Iphitus to the
number of Olympiads.
Unfortunately the genealogy of Iphitus is not extant; in Pausanias' day
he already had three different fathers assigned to him (v. 4, 6.); and
we cannot, therefore, follow out the _a priori_ scheme of Hippias in
this instance; but I will illustrate it by another, which still plays a
prominent figure in our histories of Greece--I mean the chronology of
the Sicilian and Italian colonies, as given by Thucydides in his sixth
book. He speaks with considerable precision of events in the latter half
of the eighth century B.C.; he even speaks of an event which happened
300 years before the arrival of the Greeks in Sicily. As Thucydides was
not inspired, he must have drawn these things from some authority; as he
mentions no state documents it has been conjectured that his source was
here the work of Antiochus of Syracuse. This man was evidently an
antiquarian no wiser or more scientific than his fellows; Thucydides
betrays their method by dating all the foundations _downwards_ from that
of Syracuse. Antiochus was obliged to admit the priority of Naxos, but
grants it only one year; then he starts from his fixed era. But how was
the date of the foundation of Syracuse determined? Not, so far as we
know, from city registers and careful computations of years backward
from the fifth century. Such an assumption is to my mind chimerical, and
the source of many illusions. The foundation of Syracuse was determined
as to date by its founder, Archias, _being the tenth from Temenos_. The
return of the Herakleidæ was placed before the middle of the eleventh
century B.C.; hence Archias would fall below the middle of the eighth
century. The usual date of Pheidon of Argos, 747 B.C., was fixed in the
same way by his being the tenth Temenid, and hence the 8th Ol. was set
down as the _an-Olympiad_ celebrated by him. He should probably, as I
have before argued, be brought down nearly a century (to 670 B.C.) in
date.
I will now sum up the results of this long discussion. When we emerge
into the light of Greek history, we find the venerable Olympian games
long established, and most of their details referred to mythical
antiquity. We find no list of victors recognised by the early
historians, and we have the strongest negative evidence that no such
list existed in the days of Thucydides. Nevertheless about 580 B.C. the
feast was more strictly regulated, and the victors' names recorded,
perhaps regularly, in inscriptions; from 540 B.C. onward the practice of
dedicating athlete statues with inscriptions was introduced, though not
for every victor. About 500 B.C. there were many inscriptions (that of
Hiero is still extant), and there was evidence from which to write the
history of the festival; but this was never done till the time of the
archæologist and rhetorician Hippias, who was a native of Elis, with
influence and popularity there, and who even placed new inscriptions on
old votive offerings. This man (probably in 376 B.C.) constructed the
whole history of the feast, partly from the evidence before him, partly
from the analogy of other feasts. He fixed the commencement of his list,
after the manner of the chronologers of his day, by the date of the
mythical founder. Hence neither the names nor the dates found in
Eusebius' copy of the register for the first fifty Olympiads are to be
accepted as genuine, unless they are corroborated by other evidence.
We have not even, as yet, the corroborative evidence of any other Greek
inscriptions of the seventh or eighth centuries B.C. Till some such
records, or fragments of such records, are found, we are not entitled to
assume that the Greeks began to use writing upon stone for any records
at such a date as 776 B.C. That great storehouse of old civilization,
the Acropolis of Athens, has yielded us nothing of the kind; and even if
we admit that the annual archons were noted down since 683 B.C. (which
is far from certain), is not the further step to nearly a century
earlier completely unwarrantable?
I have reserved till now a passage in Aristotle's fragments (594) on the
Olympian festival, which may help the still unconvinced reader to
estimate the value of his opinion, on the authenticity of the Register.
Aristotle is commonly spoken of as having made critical researches upon
this question: here is _the only specimen_ left to us:--
'The order of the festivals, as Aristotle makes out the list,
is: first, the _Eleusinia_ in honour of the fruit of Demeter;
second, the _Panathenæa_ to commemorate the slaying of the
giant Aster by Athene; third, that which Danaos established at
Argos at the marriage of his daughters; fourth, that of Lykaon
in Arcadia, and called _Lykæa_; fifth, that in Iolkos ordained
by Akastos for his father Pelias; sixth, that ordained by
Sisyphos (_Isthmian?_) in honour of Melikertes: seventh, the
_Olympian_, ordained by Herakles in honour of Pelops; eighth,
that at Nemea, which the Seven against Thebes established in
honour of Archemorus; ninth, that at Troy, which Achilles
celebrated for Patroklos; tenth, the _Pythian_, which the
Amphiktyons established to commemorate the death of the
Python. This is the order which Aristotle, who composed the
treatise called +Peploi+, set out of the ancient festivals
and games.'
This quotation is from a scholiast to Aristides, who is not the only
grammarian who refers to the +Peploi+: there seems no reason to
question the authenticity of the reference to this book as the work of
Aristotle. It seems to be on the strength of these _Peploi_, with its
only extract now cited, that modern historians have claimed the
authority of the great critic for the Olympian Register! Was there ever
so strange an inference? Is this indeed the _wissenschaftliche
Bearbeitung_ which was begun by Hippias of Elis? Any calm critic free of
prejudice will rather conclude from it that on questions of early
chronology and mythical history Aristotle was a firm believer in legend,
and that he understood his duty to be that of a classifier and arranger
of these stories rather than that of a destructive critic. It is but
another case of acquiescence in a sceptic, such as I have described in
the text above. This being Aristotle's attitude as regards the
foundation of the feast, his authority as to the beginning of the
Register would be probably worthless. But as a matter of fact we know
nothing about it.
These considerations are, however, of great importance in dealing with
an objection or reservation made to my argument by Mr. Bury, who, while
he accepts my conclusions as regards the Olympiads, thinks that the
early dates for the Sicilian settlements rest on better evidence, seeing
that they are sanctioned by the much older and greater authority of
Thucydides, who was certainly critical about many of his dates, and
cautious in expressing a positive opinion.
I think the case of Thucydides to be closely analogous to that of
Aristotle. On all historical matters within the reach of proper inquiry,
I hold him to have been thoroughly critical. But when we go back to the
legends such as the Siege of Troy, or the story of Tereus and Procne, I
think he laid aside all this caution, and contented himself with a very
modest rationalism in interpreting the myths. He is most particular
about the _Pentekontaetia_, and Hellanicus' mistakes, but tells us
calmly of events sixty years after the Trojan War, or 300 years before
the Greeks went to Sicily. These matters stood with him on a different
footing from that of his researches, just as our Bible history is
honestly accepted by many scientific men of very sceptical turn in their
special studies. They acquiesce in Scriptural evidence as a matter of
general consent.
Neither critic ever seems to suspect fabrication of legends and lists;
and yet fabrication there certainly was. In discussing the lists of the
Argive priestesses, the kings of Sparta, and others, Max Duncker comes
to the deliberate conclusion (vol. i. pp. 130-1 Eng. ed.) that the early
part of these lists is fabricated. He classes all the names before 800
B.C. as imaginary; applying critical principles more consistently, and
accepting nothing upon the evidence of one unconfirmed witness, I have
now shown reasons why we may suspect many of them down to 650 B.C.
FOOTNOTES:
[217:1] I gladly acknowledge some valuable hints and corrections from
Dr. Hirschfeld of Königsberg, and Dr. Th. Kock of Weimar; both of whom
expressed agreement with my main results.
[218:1] Cf. below, p. 238, for the remaining fragment.
[219:1] +anêge+, as if they were no longer extant; but see below, p.
229.
[220:1] I can find no evidence that these discuses were identical, as is
universally assumed. Pausanias would surely have mentioned Lycurgus'
name, had he seen it.
[222:1] Cf. Plutarch, _Lycurgus_, § 1, to whom we owe the information.
In the extant works of Aristotle there is no allusion whatever to the
Register as a chronological standard. Cf. below, p. 238.
[227:1] By the Eleians the 8th, the 34th, and the 104th were called by
this name, probably used in Hippias' work, because these feasts were
celebrated by invaders, who had no legal right to do so.
[230:1] The recent excavations have refuted this very early date for the
treasure-house.
[232:1] Cf. the case of Oebotas, supposed to have won the 6th Ol., but
also asserted to have fought in Platæa in Ol. 75. His statue and
epigram, be it observed, dated from about Ol. 80.--Paus. vi. 3, 8; vii.
17, 13.
[234:1] Hippias' false epigram on the Sicilian Messenians (above
mentioned) implies that the Messenians exiled from Messene were
eligible.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
The abbreviations B.C. and A.D. are unspaced throughout for consistency.
The following words use an oe ligature in the original:
Boeotia Oenomaos
Coroebus Philopoemen
Euboea Phoenicia
Koenos Phoenician
Oebotas Phoenicians
Oedipus
The following corrections have been made to the text:
Page 46 sidenote: not corroborated by recent discoveries.
[period missing in original]
Page 74: the middle of the seventh century B.C.[period missing
in original]
Page 110: POLITICAL THEORIES AND EXPERIMENTS IN THE FOURTH
CENTURY B.C.[period after "B" missing in original]
Page 121: newly discovered _Polity of the Athenians_[121:2]
[anchor added by transcriber
Page 141 sidenote: Greek democratic patriotism.[period missing
in original]
Page 163 sidenote: Compare[original has Compar] with Napoleon
Page 181 sidenote: Statement of the new difficulty[original
has extraneous period]
[62:1] older authorities[original has authorites], just as
competent
[96:2] under the master's direction. Cf. § 53.[period missing
in original]
End of Project Gutenberg's Problems in Greek history, by John Pentland Mahaffy