Land of the lordly mien and iron frame!
Where wealth was held dishonour, Luxury’s smile
Worse than a demon’s soul-destroying wile!
Where every youth that hailed the Day-God’s beam,
Wielded the sword, and dreamt the patriot’s dream;
Where childhood lisped of war with eager soul,
And woman’s hand waved on to glory’s goal.
--NICHOLAS MICHELL.
From the earliest period there were two peoples of Greece who seem, at
least in the eye of later generations, to have been pre-eminent--the
Dorians and the Ionians. Of the former the leaders are the Spartans; of
the latter, the Athenians. In the main, so preponderant are these two
cities that, viewed retrospectively, Greek history comes to seem the
history of Athens and Sparta. This appears a curious anomaly when one
considers that these cities were not great world emporiums like Babylon
and Nineveh and Rome, but at best only moderate-sized towns. Yet they
influenced humanity for all time to come; and our study of Greek history
perforce resolves itself largely into the doings of the citizens of
these two little communities. We shall first consider the history of the
Dorians, who, though in the long run the less important of the two, were
the earlier to appear prominently on the stage of history.[a]
The Dorians derived their origin from those districts in which the
Grecian nation bordered towards the north upon numerous and dissimilar
races of barbarians. As to the tribes which dwelt beyond these boundaries
we are indeed wholly destitute of information; nor is there the slightest
trace of any memorial or tradition that the Greeks originally came from
those quarters. On these frontiers, however, the events took place which
effected an entire alteration in the internal condition of the whole
Grecian nation, and here were given many of those impulses, of which
the effects were so long and generally experienced. The prevailing
character of the events alluded to, was a perpetual pressing forward of
the barbarous races, particularly of the Illyrians, into more southern
districts.
To begin then by laying down a boundary line, which may be afterwards
modified for the sake of greater accuracy, we shall suppose this to be
the mountain ridge, which stretches from Mount Olympus to the west as far
as the Acroceraunian Mountains (comprehending the Cambunian ridge and
Mount Lacmon), and in the middle comes in contact with the Pindus chain,
which stretches in a direction from north to south. The western part of
this chain separates the farthest Grecian tribes from the great Illyrian
nation, which extended back as far as the Celts in the south of Germany.
In the fashion of wearing the mantle and dressing the hair, and also in
their dialect, the Macedonians bore a great resemblance to the Illyrians,
whence it is evident that the Macedonians belonged to the Illyrian
nation. Notwithstanding which, there can be no doubt that the Greeks were
aboriginal inhabitants of this district. The plains of Emathia, the most
beautiful district of the country, were occupied by the Pelasgi, who,
according to Herodotus, also possessed Creston above Chalcidice, to which
place they had come from Thessaliotis. Hence the Macedonian dialect was
full of primitive Greek words. And that these had not been introduced by
the royal family (which was Hellenic by descent or adoption of manners)
is evident from the fact, that many signs of the most simple ideas (which
no language ever borrows from another) were the same in both, as well as
from the circumstance that these words do not appear in their Greek form,
but have been modified according to a native dialect. In the Macedonian
dialect there occur grammatical forms which are commonly called Æolic,
together with many Arcadian and Thessalian words: and what perhaps is
still more decisive, several words, which, though not to be found in the
Greek, have been preserved in the Latin language. There does not appear
to be any peculiar connection with the Doric dialect: hence we do not
give much credit to the otherwise unsupported assertion of Herodotus, of
an original identity of the Dorian and Macednian (Macedonian) nations.
In other authors Macednus is called the son of Lycaon, from whom the
Arcadians were descended, or Macedon is the brother of Magnes, or a son
of Æolus, according to Hesiod and Hellanicus, which are merely various
attempts to form a genealogical connection between this semi-barbarian
race and the rest of the Greek nation.
The Thessalians as well as the Macedonians were, as it appears, an
Illyrian race, who subdued a native Greek population; but in this
case the body of the interlopers was smaller, while the numbers and
civilisation of the aboriginal inhabitants were considerable. Hence the
Thessalians resembled the Greeks more than any of the northern races
with which they were connected: hence their language in particular was
almost purely Grecian, and indeed bore perhaps a greater affinity to the
language of the ancient epic poets than any other dialect. But the chief
peculiarities of this nation with which we are acquainted were not of
a Grecian character. Of this their national dress, which consisted in
part of the flat and broad-brimmed hat καυσία and the mantle (which last
was common to both nations, but was unknown to the Greeks of Homer’s
time, and indeed long afterwards, until adopted as the costume of the
equestrian order at Athens), is a sufficient example. The Thessalians
moreover were beyond a doubt the first to introduce into Greece the
use of cavalry. More important distinctions however than that first
alleged are perhaps to be found in their impetuous and passionate
character, and the low and degraded state of their mental faculties.
The taste for the arts shown by the rich family of the Scopadæ proves
no more that such was the disposition of the whole people, than the
existence of the same qualities in Archelaus argues their prevalence
in Macedonia. This is sufficient to distinguish them from the race of
the Greeks, so highly endowed by nature. We are therefore induced to
conjecture that this nation, which a short time before the expedition of
the Heraclidæ, migrated from Thesprotia, and indeed from the territory
of Ephyra (Cichyrus) into the plain of the Peneus, had originally come
from Illyria. On the other hand indeed, many points of similarity in
the customs of the Thessalians and Dorians might be brought forward.
Thus, for example, the love for the male sex (that usage peculiar to
the Dorians) was also common among the Illyrians, and the objects of
affection were, as at Sparta, called ἀΐται; the women also, as amongst
the Dorians, were addressed by the title of ladies (δέσποιναι), a
title uncommon in Greece, and expressive of the estimation in which
they were held. A great freedom in the manners of the female sex was
nevertheless customary among the Illyrians, who in this respect bore a
nearer resemblance to the northern nations. Upon the whole, however,
these migrations from the north had the effect of disseminating among
the Greeks manners and institutions which were entirely unknown to their
ancestors, as represented by Homer.
We will now proceed to inquire what was the extent of territory gained by
the Illyrians in the west of Greece. A great part of Epirus had in early
times been inhabited by Pelasgi, to which race the inhabitants of Dodona
are likewise affirmed by the best authorities to have belonged, as well
as the whole nation of Thesprotians; also the Chaonians at the foot of
the Acroceraunian Mountains, and the Chones, Œnotri, and Peucetii on the
opposite coast of Italy, are said to have been of this race. The ancient
buildings, institutions, and religious worship of the Epirotes are also
manifestly of Pelasgic origin. We suppose always that the Pelasgi were
Greeks, and spoke the Grecian language, an opinion however in support of
which we will on this occasion only adduce a few arguments. It must then
be borne in mind, that all the races whose migrations took place at a
late period, such as the Achæans, Ionians, Dorians, were not (the last
in particular) sufficiently powerful or numerous to effect a complete
change in the customs of a barbarous population; that many districts,
Arcadia and Perrhæbia for instance, remained entirely Pelasgic, without
being inhabited by any nation not of Grecian origin; that the most
ancient names, either of Grecian places or mentioned in their traditions,
belonged indeed to a different era of the dialect, but not to another
language; that finally, the great similarity between the Latin and Greek
can only be explained by supposing the Pelasgic language to have formed
the connecting link. Now the nations of Epirus were almost reduced to a
complete state of barbarism by the operation of causes, which could only
have had their origin in Illyria; and in the historic age, the Ambracian
Bay was the boundary of Greece. In later times more than half of Ætolia
ceased to be Grecian, and without doubt adopted the manners and language
of the Illyrians, from which point the Athamanes, an Epirote and Illyrian
nation, pressed into the south of Thessaly. Migrations and predatory
expeditions, such as the Encheleans had undertaken in the fabulous times,
continued without intermission to repress and keep down the genuine
population of Greece.
The Illyrians were in these ancient times also bounded on the east by the
Phrygians and Thracians, as well as by the Pelasgi. The Phrygians were
at this time the immediate neighbours of the Macedonians in Lebæa, by
whom they were called Brygians (Βρύγες, Βρύγοι, Βρίγες); they dwelt at
the foot of the snowy Bermius, where the fabulous rose-gardens of King
Midas were situated, while walking in which the wise Silenus was fabled
to have been taken prisoner. They also fought from this place (as the
_Telegonia_ of Eugamon related) with the Thesprotians of Epirus. At no
great distance from hence were the Mygdonians, the people nearest related
to the Phrygians. According to Xanthus, this nation did not migrate to
Asia until after the Trojan War. But, in the first place, the Cretan
traditions begin with religious ceremonies and fables, which appear from
the most ancient testimonies to have been derived from Phrygians of
Asia; and secondly the Armenians, who were beyond a doubt of a kindred
race to the Phrygians, were considered as an aboriginal nation in their
own territory. It will therefore be sufficient to recognise the same
race of men in Armenia, Asia Minor, and at the foot of Mount Bermius,
without supposing that all the Armenians and Phrygians emigrated from
the latter settlement on the Macedonian coast. The intermediate space
between Illyria and Asia, a district across which numerous nations
migrated in ancient times, was peopled irregularly from so many sides,
that the national uniformity which seems to have once existed in those
parts was speedily deranged. The most important documents respecting
the connection between the Phrygian and other nations are the traces
that remain of its dialect. It was well known in Plato’s time that many
primitive words of the Grecian language were to be recognised with a
slight alteration in the Phrygian, such as πῦρ, ὕδωρ, κύων; and the great
similarity of grammatical structure which the Armenian now displays with
the Greek, must be referred to this original connection. The Phrygians
in Asia have, however, been without doubt intermixed with Syrians, who
not only established themselves on the right bank of the Halys, but on
the left also in Lycaonia, and as far as Lycia, and accordingly adopted
much of the Syrian language and religion. Their enthusiastic and frantic
ceremonies, however, had doubtless always formed part of their religion;
these they had in common with their immediate neighbours, the Thracians:
but the ancient Greeks appear to have been almost entirely unacquainted
with such rites.
The Thracians, who settled in Pieria at the foot of Mount Olympus, and
from thence came down to Mount Helicon, as being the originators of the
worship of Bacchus and the Muses, and the fathers of Grecian poetry, are
a nation of the highest importance in the history of civilisation. We
cannot but suppose that they spoke a dialect very similar to the Greek,
since otherwise they could not have had any considerable influence upon
the latter people. They were in all probability derived originally from
the country called Thrace in later times, where the Bessi, a tribe of
the nation of the Satræ, at the foot of Mount Pangæum, presided over the
oracle of Bacchus. Whether the whole of the populous races of Edones,
Odomantes, Odrysi, Treres, etc., are to be considered as identical
with the Thracians in Pieria, or whether it is not more probable that
these barbarous nations received from the Greeks their general name
of Thracians, with which they had been familiar from early times, are
questions which we shall not attempt to determine. Into these nations,
however, a large number of Pæonians subsequently penetrated, who had
passed over at the time of a very ancient migration of the Teucrians
together with the Mysians. To this Pæonian race the Pelagonians, on the
banks of the Axius, belonged; who also advanced into Thessaly, as will
be shown hereafter. Of the Teucrians, however, we know nothing excepting
that, in concert with (Pelasgic) Dardanians, they founded the city of
Troy--where the language in use was probably allied to the Grecian, and
distinct from the Phrygian.
Now it is within the mountainous barriers above described that we must
look for the origin of the nations which in the heroic mythology are
always represented as possessing dominion and power, and are always
contrasted with an aboriginal population. These, in our opinion, were
northern branches of the Grecian nation, which had overrun and subdued
the Greeks who dwelt farther south. The most ancient abode of the
Hellenes proper (who in mythology are merely a small nation in Phthia)
was situated, according to Aristotle, in Epirus, near Dodona, to whose
god Achilles prays, as being the ancient protector of his family. In
all probability the Achæans, the ruling nation both of Thessaly and of
the Peloponnesus in fabulous times, were of the same race and origin as
the Hellenes. The Minyans, Phlegyans, Lapithæ, and Æolians of Corinth
and Salmone, came originally from the districts above Pieria, on the
frontiers of Macedonia, where the very ancient Orchomenus, Minya, and
Salmonia or Halmopia were situated. Nor is there less obscurity with
regard to the northern settlements of the Ionians; they appear, as it
were, to have fallen from heaven into Attica and Ægialea; they were
not, however, by any means identical with the aboriginal inhabitants of
these districts, and had perhaps detached themselves from some northern,
probably Achæan, race. Lastly, the Dorians are mentioned in ancient
legends and poems as established in one extremity of the great mountain
chain of Upper Greece, viz. at the foot of Mount Olympus: there are,
however, reasons for supposing that at an earlier period they had dwelt
at its other northern extremity, at the farthest limit of the Grecian
nation.
We now turn our attention to the singular nation of the Hylleans
(Ὑλλεῖς, Ὕλλοι), which is supposed to have dwelt in Illyria, but is in
many respects connected in a remarkable manner with the Dorians. The
real place of its abode can hardly be laid down; as the Hylleans are
never mentioned in any historical narrative, but always in mythological
legends; and they appear to have been known to the geographers only
from mythological writers. Yet they are generally placed in the islands
of Melita and Black-Corcyra, to the south of Liburnia. Now the name
of the Hylleans agrees strikingly with that of the first and most
noble tribe of the Dorians. Besides which, it is stated, that though
dwelling among Illyrian races, these Hylleans were nevertheless genuine
_Greeks_. Moreover they, as well as the Doric Hylleans, were supposed to
have sprung from Hyllus, a son of Hercules, whom that hero begot upon
Melite, the daughter of Ægæus: here the name Ægæus refers to a river
in Corcyra, Melite to the island just mentioned. Apollo was the chief
god of the Dorians; and so likewise these Hylleans were said to have
concealed under the earth, as the sign of inviolable sanctity, that
instrument of such importance in the religion of Apollo, a tripod. The
country of the Hylleans is described as a large peninsula, and compared
to the Peloponnesus: it is said to have contained fifteen cities; which
however had not a more real existence, than the peninsula as large as
the Peloponnesus on the Illyrian coast. How all these statements are to
be understood is hard to say. It appears however that they can only be
reconciled as follows: the Doric Hylleans had a tradition, that they
came originally from these northern districts, which then bordered on
the Illyrians, and were afterwards occupied by that people; and there
still remained in those parts some members of their tribe, some other
Hylleans. This notion of Greek Hylleans in the very north of Greece,
who also were descended from Hercules, and also worshipped Apollo, was
taken up and embellished by the poets: although it is not likely that
any one had really ever seen these Hylleans and visited their country.
Like the Hyperboreans, they existed merely in tradition and imagination.
It is possible also that the Corcyræans, in whose island there was an
“_Hyllæan_” harbour, may have contributed to the formation of these
legends, as is shown by some circumstances pointed out above; but it
cannot be supposed that the whole tradition arose from Corcyræan colonies.
Here we might conclude our remarks on this subject, did not the following
question (one indeed of great importance) deserve some consideration.
What relation can we suppose to have existed between the races which
migrated into those northern districts, and the native tribes, and what
between the different races of Greece itself? All inquiries on this
subject lead us back to the Pelasgi, who although not found in every part
of ancient Greece (for tradition makes so wide a distinction between them
and many other nations, that no confusion ever takes place), yet occur
almost universally wherever early civilisation, ancient settlements,
and worships of peculiar sanctity and importance existed. And in fact
there is no doubt that most of the ancient religions of Greece owed
their origin to this race. The Jupiter and Dione of Dodona; Jupiter
and Juno of Argos; Vulcan and Minerva of Athens; Ceres and Proserpine
of Eleusis; Mercury and Diana of Arcadia, together with Cadmus and the
Cabiri of Thebes, cannot, if properly examined, be referred to any other
origin. We must therefore attribute to that nation an excessive readiness
in creating and metamorphosing objects of religious worship, so that
the same fundamental conceptions were variously developed in different
places, a variety which was chiefly caused by the arbitrary neglect of,
or adherence to, particular parts of the same legend. In many places also
we may recognise the sameness of character which pervaded the different
worships of the above gods; everywhere we see manifested in symbols,
names, rites, and legends, an uniform character of ideas and feelings.
The religions introduced from Phrygia and Thrace, such as that of the
Cretan Jupiter and Dionysus or Bacchus, may be easily distinguished by
their more enthusiastic character from the native Pelasgic worship. The
Phœnician and Egyptian religions lay at a great distance from the early
Greeks, were almost unknown even where they existed in the immediate
neighbourhood, were almost unintelligible when the Greeks attempted
to learn them, and repugnant to their nature when understood. On the
whole, the Pelasgic worship appears to form part of a simple elementary
religion, which easily represented the various forms produced by the
changes of nature in different climates and seasons, and which abounded
in expressive signs for all the shades of feeling which these phenomena
awakened.
On the other hand, the religion of the northern races (who as being of
Hellenic descent are put in contrast with the Pelasgi) had in early
times taken a more moral turn, to which their political relations had
doubtless contributed. The heroic life (which is no fable of the poets),
the fondness for vigorous and active exertion, the disinclination to
the harmless occupations of husbandry, which is so remarkably seen in
the conquering race of the Hellenes, necessarily awakened and cherished
an entirely different train of religious feeling. Hence the Jupiter
Hellanius of Æacus, the Jupiter Laphystius of Athamas, and, finally, the
Doric Jupiter, whose son is Apollo, the prophet and warrior, are rather
representations of the moral order and harmony of the universe, after the
ancient method, than of the creative powers of nature. We do not however
deny, that there was a time when these different views had not as yet
taken a separate direction. Thus it may be shown, that the Apollo Lyceus
of the Dorians conveyed nearly the same notions as the Jupiter Lycæus
of the Arcadians, although the worship of either deity was developed
independently of that of the other. Thus also certain ancient Arcadian
and Doric usages had, in their main features, a considerable affinity.
The points of resemblance in these different worships can be only
perceived by comparison: tradition presents, at the very first outset,
an innumerable collection of discordant forms of worship belonging to
the several races, but without explaining to us how they came to be thus
separated. For these different rites were not united into a whole until
they had been first divided; and both by the connection of worships
and by the influence of poetry new combinations were introduced, which
differed essentially from those of an earlier date.
The language of the ancient Grecian race (which, together with its
religion, forms the most ancient record of its history) must, if we
may judge from the varieties of dialect and from a comparison with the
Latin language, have been very perfect in its structure, and rich and
expressive in its flexions and formations; though much of this was
polished off by the Greeks of later ages: in early times, distinctness
and precision in marking the primitive words and the inflections being
more attended to than facility of utterance. Wherever the ancient forms
had been preserved, they sounded foreign and uncouth to more modern ears;
and the language of later times was greatly softened, in comparison with
the Latin. But the peculiarities of the pure Doric dialect are (wherever
they were not owing to a faithful preservation of archaic forms) actual
deviations from the original dialect, and consequently they do not occur
in Latin; they bear a northern character. The use of the article, which
did not exist in the Latin language or in that of epic poetry, can be
ascribed to no other cause than to immigrations of new tribes, and
especially to that of the Dorians. Its introduction must, nearly as in
the Roman languages, be considered as the sign of a great revolution. The
peculiarities of the Doric dialect must have existed before the period of
the migrations; since thus only can it be explained how peculiar forms of
the Doric dialect were common to Crete, Argos, and Sparta: the same is
also true of the dialects which are generally considered as subdivisions
of the Æolic; the only reason for the resemblance of the language of
Lesbos to that of Bœotia being, that Bœotians migrated at that period to
Lesbos. The peculiarities of the Ionic dialect may, on the other hand, be
viewed in great part as deviations caused by the genial climate of Asia;
for the language of the Attic race, to which the latter were most nearly
related, could hardly have differed so widely from that of the colonies
of Athens, if the latter had not been greatly changed.[b]
THE MIGRATION--THE VIEW OF CURTIUS
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1100 B.C.]]
It is with the advance of the Dorians that the power of the mountain
peoples makes its appearance from the north to take its share in the
history of nations. For centuries they had lagged behind the coast and
maritime races, but now they stepped in with all the greater impress
of sheer natural force, and all that was transformed and reformed as a
consequence of their conquering march, had a durability which lasted
throughout the whole period of Greek history. This is the reason that
in contradistinction to the “Heroic Age” ancient historians begin the
historical period with the first deeds of the Dorians.
But, for all that, the information concerning these deeds is none the
less scanty. On the contrary: as this epoch approaches, the old sources
dry up, and new ones are not opened. Homer knows nothing of the march of
the Heraclidæ [_i.e._, descendants of Heracles or Hercules]. The Achæan
emigrants lived entirely in the memory of past days, and cherished it
beyond the sea in the faithful memorials of song. For those who remained
behind, who had to submit themselves to a strange and powerful rule, it
was no time for poetry. The Dorians themselves have always been sparing
in the matter of tradition; it was not their way to use many words about
what they had done; they had not the soaring enthusiasm of the Achæan
race, and still less were they capable of spinning out their experiences
at a pleasing length, in the fashion of the Ionians. Their inclination
and ability were directed to practical existence, to the fulfilment of
definite tasks, to earnest occupations.
Thus, then, the great incidents of the Dorian emigration were left to
chance tradition, of which all but a few faint traces have been lost,
and this is why our whole information on the conquest of the peninsula
is as poor in names as in facts. For it was only at a later date, when
the national epos itself had long died out, that an attempt was made to
recover the beginnings of Peloponnesian history.
But these later poets could no longer find any fresh and living fountain
of tradition; nor is theirs that pure and unrestrained delight in the
images of the olden time, which constitutes the very breath of life in
the Homeric poem; but there is a conscious effort to fill out the gaps
in tradition, and to join the torn threads connecting the Achæan and the
Dorian period. They sought to unify the legends of various places, to
restore the missing links, to reconcile contradictions; and thus arose
a history of the march of the Heraclidæ, in which things that had come
about gradually and in the course of centuries, were related together
with dogmatic brevity.
The Dorians crossed over from the mainland in successive troops,
accompanied by their wives and children; they spread slowly over the
country; but wherever they gained a footing the result was a complete
transformation of the conditions of life by their agency. They brought
with them their household and tribal institutions; they clung with
tenacious obstinacy to their peculiarities of speech and custom; proud
and shy, they held aloof from the other Greeks, and instead of becoming
absorbed, as the Ionians did, into the older population, they impressed
on the new home the character of their own race. The peninsula became
Dorian.
But this transmutation came about in a very varied fashion; it did
not start from one point, but had three chief centres. The legend
of the Peloponnesus has expressed it in this wise: three brothers,
Temenus, Aristodemus, and Cresphontes, who were of the race of Heracles
[Hercules], the old rightful heir to the dominion of Argos, asserted the
claims of their ancestor. They offered common sacrifices on the three
altars of Zeus Patrous and cast lots among themselves for the various
lordships in the country. Argos was the principal lot, and it fell to
Temenus; Lacedæmon, the second, came to the children of Aristodemus, who
were minors, whilst the beautiful Messenia passed, by craft, into the
third brother’s possession.
This tale of the drawing of lots by the Heraclidæ, arose in the
Peloponnesus after the states had assumed their peculiar constitution.
It contains the reasons, derived from the old heroic past, for the
erection of the three metropolitan towns; the mythical authority for
the Peloponnesian claims of the Heraclidæ, and for the new state
organisation. The historical kernel of the legend is that, from the very
beginning, the Dorians represented, not the interests of their own race,
but the interests of their leaders, who were not Dorians, but Achæans;
this is why the god, under whose authority the division of the land was
made, was none other than the ancient god of the race of Æacidæ. Further,
the foundation of the legend lies in the fact that the Dorians, in order
to gain possession of the three chief plains of the peninsula, divided,
soon after their arrival into three hosts.
Each had its Heraclid as leader of the people. Each was composed of
three races, the Hylleans, Dymanes, and Pamphylians. Each host was an
image of the entire race. Thus the whole subsequent development of
Peloponnesian history depended on the manner in which the different
hosts now established themselves in the new regions; on the extent to
which, in the midst of the ancient people of the country and in spite of
the subservience of their forces to foreign leadership, they remained
faithful to themselves and their native customs; and on the method by
which mutual relations were established.
MESSENIA
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1100-1000 B.C.]]
The new states were in part, also new territories, as was, for instance,
Messenia. For in the Homeric Peloponnesus there is no country of this
name: its eastern portion where the waters of the Pamisus connect a
higher and lower plain with one another, belongs to the lordship of
Menelaus, and the western half to the kingdom of the Neleïdes which has
its centre on the coast. The Dorians came from the north into the upper
plain, and there obtained a footing in Stenyclarus. Thence they spread
farther and drove the Thessalian Neleïdes towards the sea. The high,
island-like ocean citadel of old Navarino, seems to have been the last
spot on the coast where the latter maintained themselves, till finally,
being more and more closely pressed, they forsook the land for the sea.
The island-plain of Stenyclarus now became the kernel of the newly-formed
district, and could thence be called Messene--that is, the middle or
inner country.
With the exception of this great supplanting of one nation by another
the change was effected more peacefully than in most other quarters. At
least the native legend knows nothing of forcible conquest. A certain
portion of arable land and pasture was to be given up to the Dorians; the
remainder was to be left to the inhabitants in undisturbed possession.
The victorious visitors laid claim to no special and favoured position;
the new princes were by no means regarded as foreign conquerors, but
were received with friendliness by the nation as relatives of the
ancient Æolian kings, and on account of the dislike to the house of the
Pelopidæ. With full confidence they and their following settled among the
Messenians, and evidently with the idea that under their protection the
old and new inhabitants might peacefully amalgamate into one community.
But after this their relations did not develop in the same harmless
manner. The Dorians believed themselves betrayed by their leaders, and in
consequence of a Dorian reaction Cresphontes found himself compelled to
overthrow the old order of things; to abolish equality before the law;
to unite the Dorians in one close society in Stenyclarus, and to make
this place the capital of the country, while the rest of Messenia was
reduced to the position of a conquered district. The disturbances went
on. Cresphontes himself became the victim of a bloody insurrection; his
family were overthrown and no Cresphontidæ followed. Æpytus succeeded.
He is by name and race an Arcadian, brought up in Arcadia whence he
penetrated into Messenia, then on the verge of dissolution. He gave
order and direction to the development of the country, and hence its
subsequent kings are called Æpytidæ. But the whole direction henceforth
taken by the history of the country is different, non-Dorian, unwarlike.
The Æpytidæ are no soldier-princes, but creators of order, and founders
of forms of religious worship. And these forms are not those of the
Dorians, but decidedly non-Dorian, old Peloponnesian, like those of
Demeter, Æsculapius, the Æsculapidæ. The high festival of the country was
a mystery-service of the so-called “great deities” and unknown to the
Dorian race, while at Ithome, the lofty citadel of the country, which
raises its commanding height between the two plains of the district,
ruled the Pelasgic Zeus, whose worship was considered the distinctive
mark of the Messenian people.
Scanty as are the relics preserved of the history of the Messenian
country, some very important facts undoubtedly underlie them. From
the first a remarkable insecurity reigned in this Dorian foundation;
a deep gulf between the commander of the army and the people, which
had its origin in the king’s connection with the ancient pre-Achæan
population. He did not succeed in founding a dynasty, for it is only in
subsequent legend, which here, as in the case of all Greek pedigrees,
seeks to disguise a violent break, that Æpytus is made to be the son of
Cresphontes. But the warlike Dorian nation must have become so weakened
by internal conflicts, that it was not in a position to assert itself;
the transformation of Messenia into a Dorian country was not carried
into effect, and thus the main lines of its history were determined. For
rich though the district was in natural resources, uniting as it did two
of the finest watersheds with a coast stretching between two seas and
well provided with harbours; yet the development of the State was from
the first unfortunate. There was here no complete renewal, no powerful
Hellenic revival in the district.
It was with far different success that a second host of Dorian warriors
pressed down the long valley of the Eurotas, which from a narrow gorge
gradually widens to the smiling plain of cornfields at the foot of
Taygetus, the “Hollow Lacedæmon.” There is no Greek territory in which
one plain is so decidedly the very kernel of the whole as it is here.
Sunk deep between rugged mountains and severed from the surrounding
country by high passes, it holds in its lap all the means of comfort and
well-being. Here on the hillocks on the Eurotas above Amyclæ the Dorians
pitched their camp, from which grew up the town of Sparta, the youngest
city of the plain.
If the Dorian Sparta and the Achæan Amyclæ existed for centuries side by
side, it is manifest that no uninterrupted state of war continued during
this period. Here, no more than in Messenia, can a thorough occupation of
the whole district have taken place, but the relations between the old
and new inhabitants must have been arranged by agreement. Here, too, the
Dorians dispersed through different places and mingled with the foreign
nation.
ARGOS
The third state has its kernel in the plain of the Inachus, which was
regarded as the portion of the first-born of the Heraclidæ. For the fame
of Atrides’ might, though it was chiefly fixed at Mycenæ, also extended
over the state which was founded on the ruins of the Mycenæan kingdom.
The nucleus of the Dorian Argos was on the coast, where between the sandy
estuary of the Inachus, and that of the copious stream of the Erasinus,
a tract of firm land rises in the swampy soil. Here the Dorians had
their camp and their sanctuaries; here their commander Temenus had died
and had been buried before he had seen his people in secure possession
of the upper plain; and after him this coast town preserved the name of
Temenium. Its situation shows that the citadels and passes farther inland
were maintained by the Achæans with a more steadfast resistance, so that
the Dorians were for a long time compelled to content themselves with a
thoroughly disadvantageous situation. For it was only by degrees that the
whole strip of shore was rendered habitable, and the swampy character of
the soil was, according to Aristotle, the main reason why the sovereign
town of the Pelopidæ was placed so far back in the upper plain. Now by
the advance of the Dorian might, the high rock citadel of Larissa also
became the political centre of the district, and the Pelasgian Argos at
its foot, which had been the oldest place of assembly for the population,
was once more the capital. It came to be the seat of the reigning family
of the line of Temenus, and the starting-point for the further extension
of their power.
This extension did not result from the uniform conquest of the district
and the annihilation of the earlier settlements, but from the despatch of
Dorian bands which established themselves at the chief points between the
Ionian and Achæan populations. This was also effected in different ways,
more or less violent, and radiating in two directions, on the one side
towards the Corinthian, on the other towards the Saronic Sea.
Low passes lead from Argos into the Asopus Valley. Rhegnidas the Temenid
led Dorian armies into the upper valley, where, under the blessing of
Dionysus, flourished the old Ionian Phlius, while Phalces chose the
lower vale at whose entrance, Sicyon, the ancient capital of the coast
district of Ægialea, spread itself over a stately plateau. At both places
a peaceful division of the soil appears to have taken place; and the same
was the case in the neighbourhood of the Phliasians, at Cleonæ.
It must be confessed that it is incredible that, in this narrow and
thickly populated territory, lordless acres were to be found with which
to satisfy the strangers’ desire for territory, and even more so that
the former land-owners willingly vacated their hereditary possessions;
but the sense of the tradition is that only certain wealthy families
were compelled to give place in consequence of the Dorian immigration,
whilst the rest of the population continued in their former situation and
were exempted from political change. The passion for emigration which
had taken possession of the Ionian families throughout the north of the
peninsula softened the effects of the transfer. The hope of finding
fairer homes and a wider future beyond the sea, drove them to a distance.
Thus Hippasus the ancestor of Pythagoras, left the narrow valley of
Phlius to find in Samos a new home for him and his.
In this way it came about that good arable lands were left unoccupied in
all the coast districts, so that the governments of the small states,
which either retained their power or entered upon it in the place of
the emigrants, were able to portion out fields and hand them over to
the members of the warrior race of Dorians. For the latter were not
anxious to overthrow the ancient order and to assert new principles
of government, but only required a sufficiency of landed property for
themselves and their belongings, together with the civil rights that
belonged to it. Therefore the similarities between their worship of
gods and heroes were utilised as a means of forming peaceful bonds of
union. Thus it is expressly declared of Sicyon that from ancient times
the Heraclidæ had ruled in this very place: therefore Phalces, when he
penetrated thither with his Dorians, had allowed the ruling family to
retain its offices and titles and had come to an understanding with it by
peaceful agreement.
Towards the coast of the Saronic Gulf marched two hosts from Argos,
under Deïphontes and Agaios, who transformed the old Ionian Epidaurus
and Trœzen into Dorian towns; but from Epidaurus the march was continued
to the isthmus, where, in the strong and important city of Corinth,
whose citadel was the key of the whole peninsula, the series of Temenid
settlements found its limit.
These settlements unquestionably form the most brilliant part of the
warlike march of the Dorians through the Peloponnesus. By the energy of
these Dorians and their leaders of the race of Hercules, who must have
joined in these undertakings in specially large numbers, all parts of
the many sections into which the country was split up were successfully
occupied, and the new Argos, stretching from the island of Cythera as far
as the Attic frontiers, far exceeded the bounds of the modest settlements
on the Pamisus and Eurotas. For even if the leaders of the armies had
not everywhere founded new states, still those existing had all become
homogeneous by the acceptance of a Dorian element, which formed the
military and preponderating section of the population.
This transformation had started from Argos, and consequently all these
settlements stood in a filial relation to the mother city, so that we may
regard Argos, Phlius, Sicyon, Trœzen, Epidaurus, and Corinth as a Dorian
hexapolis forming a confederation like that in Caria.
Moreover this organisation was not an entirely new one. In Achæan times
Mycenæ had formed with Heræum the centre of the country; in the Heræum
Agamemnon had received the oath of fealty from his vassals. This was why
the goddess Hera [Juno] is said to have preceded the Temenidæ to Sicyon,
when they sought to revive the union between the towns which had become
estranged from one another. Thus here also the remodelling was connected
with the ancient tradition.
But now a central point for the confederacy was found in the worship of
Apollo, which the Dorians had found established in Argos and had merely
reconstituted, in the guise of the Delphic or Pythian god, through whose
influence they had become an active people and under whose auspices
they had hitherto been led. The towns sent their yearly offerings to
the temple of Apollo Pythæus, which stood in Argos at the foot of the
Larissa, but the mother city possessed the rights of a chief town as well
as the government of the sanctuary.
In the meantime the size of Argos and the splendour of her new
foundations, constituted a dangerous superiority. For the extension of
power implied its division, and this was in the highest degree increased
by the natural peculiarities of the Argive territory, which is more
broken than any other Peloponnesian country.
In regard to the internal relations of the different states, great
complications prevailed from the time that the older and younger
population had mutually arranged themselves. For where the victory of the
Dorians had been decided by force of arms, the old occupants had been
driven from rights and possessions; an Achæo-Dorian town was formed and
none were citizens save those belonging to the three tribes.
But in most cases it was otherwise. For example where, as in Phlius
and Sicyon, a prosperity founded on agriculture, industrial activity,
and commerce already existed; there the population did not, at least
for any length of time, submit to be oppressed and thrust on one side.
They remained no nameless and insignificant mass, but were recognised
as forming one or several tribes, side by side with the three Dorian
divisions, though not with the same rights. Where, therefore, more than
three _phylæ_ or tribes are met with; where, besides the Hylleans,
Dymanes and Pamphylians, there are also mentioned “Hyrnethians” as in
Argos, or “Ægialæans” (shore people) as in Sicyon, or a “_Chthonophyle_”
(which was perhaps the tribal name of the natives in Phlius), it may be
concluded that the immigrants had not left the older people entirely
outside the newly-founded commonwealth, but had sooner or later given
them a certain recognised standing. However insignificant the latter
might be, it was still the germ of important developments, and the
existence of such co-tribes suffices to indicate a peculiar history for
those states in which they occur.
Originally the various tribes also occupied different localities. As
the diverse sections of the army had been separated in the camp, so the
Pamphylians, the Dymanes and the Hylleans had their special quarters
in Argos, and these long subsisted as such; when the Hyrnethians were
admitted into the municipal commonwealth, they formed a fourth quarter.
How long a period generally elapsed before the various elements of
the population became amalgamated, is most clearly shown by the fact
that places like Mycenæ continued their quiet existence as Achæan
communities. Here the ancient traditions of the age of the Pelopidæ lived
on undisturbed on the very spot where they had been enacted; here the
anniversary of Agamemnon’s death was celebrated year after year at the
place of his burial, and even during the Persian War, we see the men of
Mycenæ and Tiryns, mindful of their old hero kings, as they take their
part in the national quarrel against Asia.
Thus under the Dorian influence three new states were founded in the
south and east of the peninsula, namely Messenia, Laconia, and Argos,
which differed greatly even at the outset, and early diverged upon
separate lines.
ARCADIA
At the same time great changes were taking place on the remote west
coast. The states north and south of the Alpheus with which Homer is
acquainted, were overthrown and Ætolian families, who honoured Oxylus as
their ancestor, founded new lordships on the territory of the Epeans and
Pylæans. These foundations had no apparent connection with the marches of
the Dorian armies, and it is only a legendary poem of later date which
speaks of Oxylus as having stipulated for the western land as his share
in reward for services rendered to the Dorians. This betrays that it
was a subsequent invention, by the fact that the new settlements on the
peninsula are represented in this and similar fables as a result of a
great and carefully planned undertaking; a representation which stands in
complete contradiction to the facts of history. And when it is further
related that the Dorians were conducted by their crafty leader, not along
the flat coast road but across country through Arcadia, so that they
might not be roused to envy or tempted to break their compact altogether,
by the sight of the tracts of land conceded to Oxylus; this is but a tale
invented with the object of explaining the erection of a state in Elis
independently of the Dorian immigration, and the grounds for it are to be
sought in the circumstance that the whole west coast, from the straits by
Rhium down to Navarino, is distinguished by easy tracts of level country,
such as are scarcely found elsewhere in Greek territory.
The best cornland lies at the foot of the Erymanthus Mountains, a broad
plain through which the Peneus flows and which is surrounded by vine-clad
hills stretching towards the neighbouring groups of islands. At the spot
where the Peneus issues from the Arcadian mountains and flows into the
coast-plain there rises on the left bank a stately height which looks
clear over land and island sea and on this account was called in the
Middle Ages, Calascope, or Belvidere. This height was selected by the
Ætolian immigrants as their chief citadel; it became the royal fortress
of the Oxylidæ and their following, into whose hands fell the best
estates.
From here the Ætolian state, under the territorial name of Elis spread
southward over the whole low country, where on the banks of the Alpheus
the Epeans and Pylæans had once fought out those petty feuds of which
Nestor was so fond of telling. On the decay of that maritime kingdom of
the Neleidæ which was attacked on the south by the Messenian Dorians
and on the north by the Epeans, Ætolian tribes pressed forward from the
interior of the island; these were the Minyans who being expelled from
Taygetus took possession of the mountains which run farthest in the
direction of the Sicilian Sea from Arcadia. Here they settled themselves
in six fortified towns, united by a common worship of Poseidon; Macistus
and Lapreus, were the most distinguished. Thus between the Alpheus and
the Neda, in what was afterwards the so-called Triphylia, or “country of
three tribes,” a new Minyan state was formed.
Finally the nucleus of a new state was also planted in the valley of the
Alpheus, where scattered families of Achæans under Agorius of Helice
allied themselves with Ætolian houses, and founded the state of Pisa.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1000 B.C.]]
Thus on the western coast, partly through conquest by the northern
tribes and partly by arrivals from other parts of the peninsula, three
new states arose, namely Elis, Pisa, and Triphylia; and in this way the
whole coast district of the Peloponnesus was gradually newly populated
and partitioned out afresh. Only in the district in the heart of the
peninsula, did the country remain undisturbed in its existing state.
Arcadia was regarded by the ancients as a pre-eminently Pelasgian
country, and here it was thought the autochthonic condition of the
aboriginal inhabitants had been longest preserved and had suffered the
least disturbance. Nevertheless the native legends themselves distinctly
indicate that here also immigrations took place, interrupting the uniform
condition of Pelasgian life, and occasioning a fusion of races, of
different character and origin. Here too there is no mistaking the epoch
at which, as in all other Greek states, the historical movement began.
After Pelasgus and his sons, Arcas, as ancestor of the Arcadians, stands
at the beginning of a new era in the prehistoric life of the country. But
Arcadians were to be found in Phrygia and Bithynia as well as in Crete
and Cyprus, and the fact that colonists from the islands and shores of
the eastern sea ascended into the highlands of the Peloponnesus that
they might settle there in the beautiful valleys, is manifested by many
tokens. The Cretan myths about Zeus are repeated in the closest manner
of the Arcadian Lycæum; Tegea and Gortys are Cretan as well as Arcadian
towns, with identical forms of worship, ancient legends connect Tegea
and Paphos and the Cyprian dialect, which has only very recently been
learnt from the native monuments, shows a great likeness to the Arcadian.
Arcadians were known as navigators both in the western and in the eastern
sea, and Nauplius, the hero of the oldest Peloponnesian seaport town
appears as the servant of the Tegeatic kings, to whose house Argonauts
like Ancæus also belong.
There are remains of old traditions, which show that even the interior of
the Peloponnesus was not so remote or isolated as is commonly supposed;
that here too there were immigrations and that in consequence in the
rural districts, and particularly in the fruitful ravines of the eastern
side, a series of towns grew up, which, on account of the natural
barriers of their frontiers, early formed isolated city domains; such
as those of Pheneus, Stynphalus, Orchomenus, Cleitor and afterwards the
towns of Mantinea, Alea, Caphyæ, and Gortys. In the southwest portion of
Arcadia, in the forest range of Lycæum, and in the valley of the Alpheus
were also to be found ancient fortress towns, such as Lycosura; but these
fortresses never became political centres of the districts. The mass of
the people remained scattered and were only connected with the community
by very slight bonds.
Thus the whole of Arcadia consisted of a numerous group of municipal
and rural cantons. It was only the former which could attain historical
importance, and among them especially Tegea, which lying as it did in
the most fertile part of the great Arcadian plateau, must from the
earliest times have assumed something of the position of a capital city.
Thus it was a Tegeatic king, Echemus, the “steadfast,” who is said to
have prevented the Dorians from entering the peninsula. Yet the Tegeatæ
never succeeded in giving a unity to the whole island. Its natural
conformation was too multi-form, too diversified, and too much cut up by
high mountain ridges into numerous and sharply defined portions for it to
be able to attain to a common territorial history. It was only certain
forms of worship, with which customs and institutions were bound up,
that were universal among the whole Arcadian people. These were, in the
north country the worship of Artemis Hymnia, and in the south that of
Zeus Lycæus, on the Lycæum, whose summit had been honoured as the holy
mountain of Arcadia from primeval Pelasgian times.
The country was in this condition when the Pelopidæ founded their states;
and so it still remained when the Dorians invaded the peninsula. A wild,
impracticable mountain country, thickly populated by a sturdy people,
Arcadia offered little prospect of easy success to races in search of
territory, and could not detain them from their attempts on the river
plains of the southern and western districts. According to the legend
they were granted a free passage through the Arcadian fields. Nothing was
changed except that the Arcadians were pushed farther and farther back
from the sea, and therefore driven farther and farther from the advance
Hellenic civilisation.
If we take a glance at the peninsula as a whole, and the political
government which, in consequence of the immigration, it acquired for
all time, we shall find, first, the interior persisting in its former
condition unshaken, secondly, three districts, Lacedæmon, Messenia, and
Argos, which had undergone a thorough metamorphosis directly due to the
immigrating races; and finally the two strips of land along the north and
west coasts, which had been left untouched by the Dorians, but in part
were resettled by the ancient tribes whom the Dorians displaced, as was
the case with Triphylia and Achæa, and in part transformed by arrivals of
another kind, as happened at Elis.
Thus complicated were the results which followed the Dorian
migration. They show sufficiently how little we have here to do with
a transformation effected at one blow, like the result of a fortunate
campaign. After the races had long wandered up and down in a varying
series of territorial disputes and mutual agreements, the fate of the
peninsula was gradually decided. Only when men had forgotten the tedious
period of unrest and ferment, which memory can adorn with no incidents,
could the reconstitution of the peninsula be regarded as a sudden turn of
events by which the Peloponnesus had become Dorian.
Even in those districts which the invaders especially contended for and
occupied, the transformation of the people into a Dorian population was
only effected very gradually and in a very imperfect fashion. How could
it have been otherwise? Even the conquering hosts themselves were not of
purely Dorian blood, but intermixed with people of all sorts of races.
Nor was it as Dorians but as relatives of the Achæan princes that the
leaders of their armies laid claim to power and rule. Thus Plato saw in
the march of the Heraclids a union between Dorians and Achæans, dating
from the times of the movement of the Greek peoples, and how little
unity originally existed between the commander and his men is shown by a
series of undoubted facts. For no sooner had the force of the warriors
won a firm footing in the districts, than the interests of Heraclids and
Dorians diverged and such dissensions broke out as either endangered or
nullified the whole success of the colony.
The leaders sought to effect amalgamation of the old and new populations,
that they might thus attain a broader foundation for their power and
place themselves in a position independent of the influence of the Dorian
warriors. Everywhere do we find the same phenomena, and most distinctly
in Messenia. But in Laconia also, the Heraclids made themselves detested
by their warriors, by trying to assimilate the non-Dorian to the Dorian
people, and in Argolis we see the Heraclid Deïphontes, whose name is
thoroughly Ionic, allied with Hyrnetho, who is the representative of the
original population of the coast district. It is this same Deïphontes
who helps to establish the throne of the Temenids in Argos, to the
indignation of the other Heraclids and of the Dorians: here, therefore,
their new kingdom undoubtedly rests on the support of the pre-Dorian
population.
Thus the bonds between the Heraclids and the Dorians were loosened in all
three countries, soon after their occupation. The political institutions
were established in spite of the Dorians, and if the newly imported
popular force was to have a fruitful and beneficial effect on the soil
of the country, it required the art of a wise legislation to conciliate
opposition and regulate the forces which threatened to destroy it. The
first example of such legislation was given, as far as we know, on the
island of Crete.
DORIANS IN CRETE
Dorians in considerable numbers had passed over into Crete from Argos and
Laconia, and if in other cases islands and seacoast were not a soil on
which the Dorian races felt at home, here it was otherwise.
Crete is rather a continent than an island. With the wealth of resources
of every kind which distinguishes the country, the Cretan towns were able
to preserve themselves from the restlessness belonging to the life of a
seaport, and quietly to unfold the new germs of life which the Dorians
brought to the island. Here, too, they came as invaders: massed in great
hosts they overpowered the island people, whom no bonds of union held
together. We find Dorian tribes in Cydonia, the first place in which
the new arrivals from Cythera established themselves. Then Knossos, and
especially Lyctus, whose Dorian people hailed from Laconia, became the
chief towns of the new settlement.
The Dorians had here reached the land of an ancient civilisation,
whose fertility was not yet exhausted. They found towns with definite
constitutions and families well versed in the art of rule. State
government and religious worship had here, under quieter conditions,
retained their original connection and in especial the religion of
Apollo, administered by the old priestly families, displayed its
organising, civilising, and intellectual influence in entirety. The
Dorians brought nothing but their tempestuous courage and the strength
of their spears; compared with the Cretan nobility they were the merest
children in all that concerns the art of government and legislation.
They demanded land and left it to others to find out the ways and means
of satisfying their requirements, for the overthrow of the ancient
government signified nothing to them. But that the Dorians nevertheless
did not behave as reckless conquerors; that they did not overturn the
ancient state and found new ones, is manifest from the mere fact that the
organisation of Dorian Crete is nowhere referred to a Dorian originator.
On the contrary, Aristotle testifies that the inhabitants of the Cretan
town of Lyctus, where the Dorian institutions were most completely
developed, preserved the existing institutions of the country; according
to unanimous tradition, there was no break, no gap between the Dorian and
the pre-Dorian period; so that the name of Minos, the representative of
Cretan civilisation, could be associated both with the old and the new.
Patrician houses whose rights had come down to them from the royal
period, remained in possession of the government. Now as formerly it was
from them that the ten chief rulers of the state, “the Kosmoi,” were
taken in the different towns; from them that the senate was chosen, whose
members retained their dignity for life and were answerable to none.
These families held rule in the towns when the Dorians invaded them.
They concluded treaties with them, which took account of the interests
of both sides, they made themselves subservient to the foreign power, by
assigning the immigrants a sufficient share of the land which the state
had to dispose of, not without the accompanying obligation of military
service and the right, as the fighting portion of the community, to a
voice in all important decisions but especially when it was a question of
war and peace.
The Dorians took their place as the fighting element in the state.
For this reason, the boys as they grew up, were placed under state
discipline; united in troops; trained according to regulation, in the
public gymnasia, and schooled in the use of weapons; they were inured
to hard living and prepared by warlike games for real combats. Thus,
remote from all effeminate influences, the military qualities peculiar
to the Dorian race were to be imparted; there was also, however, some
intermixture of Cretan customs, as for instance, the use of the bow,
which was previously unknown to the Dorian. The grown youths and men,
even if they possessed households of their own, were expected to be
sensible first of all of the fact that they were comrades in arms, and
prepared to march at any moment as though in a camp. Accordingly at the
men’s daily meal they sat together by troops, as they served in the army,
and in the same way they slept in common dormitories. The costs were
met through the state from a common chest, but this chest was supplied
by each delivering the tenth part of the fruit of his possession to the
fraternity to which he belonged, and this tithe was then handed over to
the state chest. In return, the state undertook to support the warriors,
as well as the women who had charge of the house with the children and
servants, in times both of peace and war. I believe it is plain that we
have here an arrangement agreed on by treaty between the older and newer
members of the state.
In order, however, that the Dorian fighting element might be able to
devote itself wholly to its calling, its members had to be entirely
exempt from the necessity of personally cultivating their share of the
soil; otherwise they would not only have been impoverished by its neglect
in war-time, but in peace they would have been detained from military
exercises, and the equally valuable hunting excursions after the
plentiful game of the Ida Mountains. Consequently the work of agriculture
was imposed on a special class of men, who, by the chance of war, had
fallen into the condition of servitude and were deprived of civil rights.
When and how this element of serfdom was formed, is not indicated; but
there were two classes of them. The one tilled those fields which had
been preserved by the state as public property; these were the so-called
Mnoetæ; the others, the Clarotæ dwelt on the lands which had passed by
donation into the hereditary possession of the immigrants. The Dorian
landowners were their masters and had the right to demand of them the
fruit of the field at a fixed date, while it was their duty to see that
the soil was properly improved, so that nothing might be lost to the
state. Otherwise the military class lived without care, unconcerned for
the maintenance of existence, and could say, as the proverbial lines of
the Cretan Hybrias have it, “Here are my sword, spear and shield; my
whole treasure; herewith I plough and gather the harvest.”
What they learned was the use of weapons and self-command; their art,
discipline, and obedience, obedience of the younger to the older, of the
soldier to his superior, of all to the state. Higher and more liberal
culture appeared unnecessary and even dangerous, and we may suppose that
the ruling families of Crete had intentionally laid down a one-sided and
narrow education for the Dorian community, in order that they might not
feel tempted to outstep their soldierly calling, and contest the guidance
of the state with the native races.
Beside these however there remained on the peninsula a considerable part
of the older population, whose position was entirely unaffected by the
Dorian immigration; the people on the mountains and in the rural towns,
who were dependent on the larger cities of the island and paid according
to an ancient usage a yearly tax to their governments; and rural peasants
and cattle-breeders, tradesmen, fishers, and sailors who had nothing to
do with the State except willingly to submit to its ordinances, and to
pursue their occupations in a peaceful fashion.
It is on the whole, an unmistakable fact that a Greek state organisation
of a very remarkable character was here called into being, and formed a
combination in which old and new, foreign and native, were amalgamated;
an organization which Plato judged worthy to form the groundwork for
the plan of his ideal state. For here we actually have the latter’s
three classes: the class equipped with the wise foresight becoming
the rulers of the state; the class of “guards,” in which the virtue
of courage, with exclusion from a more liberal development by means
of art and science, was the object to be attained; and, finally, the
industrial class, the element which provided the necessaries of life,
and to which a disproportionately larger amount of arbitrary freedom was
permitted; it had but to provide for the physical support of itself and
the community generally. The first and third classes might have formed
the state by themselves, inasmuch as they sufficiently represented the
mutual relations of governing and governed. Between the two the guards,
or armed element, had thrust itself in, to the increase of stability
and durability. On this wise it came to pass that Crete was the first
country to succeed in assigning to the Dorian race a share in the ancient
community, and thus for the second time the island of Minos became a
typical starting-point for the Hellenic state organisation.
The later Crete is also better known to us by the effects which proceeded
from it, than in its internal condition like a heavenly body the
abundance of whose light is measured by its reflection on other objects.
Crete became for the Hellenes the cradle of a complicated civilisation.
Thence sprang a series of men who founded the art of sculpture in the
peculiar Hellenic form, and strewed its seeds in all Greek countries--for
Dipœnus and Scyllis, the earliest masters in marble sculptures, derived
their origin from Crete, the home of Dædalus. Other Cretans distinguished
themselves as masters in the art of divination, and as singers and
musicians who, educated in the service of Apollo, obtained such power
over the human soul, that they were summoned by foreign states to
interpose their aid in a disordered condition of the community and lay
the foundations of a sound system of government. These Cretan masters,
such as Thaletas and Epimenides, are not, however, sprung from the Dorian
race any more than are the sculptors; the new shoots had sprouted from
the old root of native culture, even if the admixture of various Greek
races had essentially contributed to the impulse of new vital activity.
In spite of the fact that the population of Crete received such a
reinforcement and that she had so well understood how to employ it to
strengthen her states, none the less, after the time of Minos, she
never again attained to a political influence extending over all her
shores. The chief cause lies in the condition of the island which made
the formation of a great state an impossibility. The territories of the
various towns among which the Dorians were divided, Cydonia in the west,
Knossos and Lyctus in the north and Gortys in the south of the island,
held suspiciously aloof from one another, or were at open feud; thus
the Dorian strength was squandered in the interests of petty towns.
Added to this that the Dorians, when they immigrated across the sea, of
course came only in small bands, and for the most part, unaccompanied
by women, so that for this reason alone they could not retain their
racial characteristics to the same extent as on the mainland. Finally,
even in the seats of Dorian habitation across the sea, we sometimes
find, that not all three races, but only one of them had settled in the
same town; thus in Halicarnassus there were only Dymanes; in Cydonia,
as it seems, only Hylleans. Thus a fresh dispersal and weakening of the
Dorian strength must have supervened, and it is easy to understand why
the continental settlements of the Dorians, especially those of the
Peloponnesus, still remained the most important and the ones fraught with
most consequence for history.
In the Peloponnesus, however, it was, once again, at a single point that
a Dorian history of independent and far-reaching importance developed
itself. And that point was Sparta.[c]
[Illustration: GREEK COIN]
[Illustration]