The unimportant consequences to be deduced from the admission that
Cecrops might be Egyptian.--Attic Kings before Theseus.--The
Hellenes.--Their Genealogy.--Ionians and Achaeans Pelasgic.--Contrast
between Dorians and Ionians.--Amphictyonic League.
I. In allowing that there does not appear sufficient evidence to
induce us to reject the tale of the Egyptian origin of Cecrops, it
will be already observed, that I attach no great importance to the
dispute: and I am not inclined reverently to regard the innumerable
theories that have been built on so uncertain a foundation. An
Egyptian may have migrated to Attica, but Egyptian influence in Attica
was faint and evanescent;--arrived at the first dawn of historical
fact, it is with difficulty that we discover the most dubious and
shadowy vestiges of its existence. Neither Cecrops nor any other
Egyptian in those ages is recorded to have founded a dynasty in
Attica--it is clear that none established a different language--and
all the boasted analogies of religion fade, on a close examination,
into an occasional resemblance between the symbols and attributes of
Egyptian and Grecian deities, or a similarity in mystic ceremonies and
solemn institutions, which, for the most part, was almost indisputably
formed by intercourse between Greece and Egypt in a far later age.
Taking the earliest epoch at which history opens, and comparing the
whole character of the Athenian people--moral, social, religious, and
political--with that of any Egyptian population, it is not possible to
select a more startling contrast, or one in which national character
seems more indelibly formed by the early and habitual adoption of
utterly opposite principles of thought and action. [71]
I said that Cecrops founded no dynasty: the same traditions that bring
him from Egypt give him Cranaus, a native, for his successor. The
darkness of fable closes over the interval between the reign of
Cranaus and the time of Theseus: if tradition be any guide whatsoever,
the history of that period was the history of the human race--it was
the gradual passage of men from a barbarous state to the dawn of
civilization--and the national mythi only gather in wild and beautiful
fictions round every landmark in their slow and encumbered progress.
It would be very possible, by a little ingenious application of the
various fables transmitted to us, to construct a history of imagined
conquests and invented revolutions; and thus to win the unmerited
praise of throwing a new light upon those remote ages. But when fable
is our only basis--no fabric we erect, however imposing in itself, can
be rightly entitled to the name of history. And, as in certain
ancient chronicles it is recorded merely of undistinguished monarchs
that they “lived and died,” so such an assertion is precisely that
which it would be the most presumptuous to make respecting the shadowy
kings who, whether in Eusebius or the Parian marble, give dates and
chronicles to the legendary gloom which preceded the heroic age.
The principal event recorded in these early times, for which there
seems some foundation, is a war between Erechtheus of Athens and the
Eleusinians;--the last assisted or headed by the Thracian Eumolpus.
Erechtheus is said to have fallen a victim in this contest. But a
treaty afterward concluded with the Eleusinians confirmed the
ascendency of Athens, and, possibly, by a religious ceremonial, laid
the foundation of the Eleusinian mysteries. In this contest is
introduced a very doubtful personage, under the appellation of Ion (to
whom I shall afterward recur), who appears on the side of the
Athenians, and who may be allowed to have exercised a certain
influence over them, whether in religious rites or political
institutions, though he neither attained to the throne, nor seems to
have exceeded the peaceful authority of an ally. Upon the dim and
confused traditions relative to Ion, the wildest and most luxuriant
speculations have been grafted--prolix to notice, unnecessary to
contradict.
II. During this period there occurred--not rapidly, but slowly--the
most important revolution of early Greece, viz., the spread of that
tribe termed the Hellenes, who gradually established their
predominance throughout the land, impressed indelible traces on the
national character, and finally converted their own into the national
name.
I have already expressed my belief that the Pelasgi were not a
barbarous race, speaking a barbarous tongue, but that they were akin
to the Hellenes, who spoke the Grecian language, and are considered
the proper Grecian family. Even the dubious record of genealogy
(which, if fabulous in itself, often under the names of individuals
typifies the affinity of tribes) makes the Hellenes kindred to the
Pelasgi. Deucalion, the founder of the Hellenes, was of Pelasgic
origin--son of Prometheus, and nephew of Atlas, king of the Pelasgic
Arcadia.
However this may be, we find the Hellenes driven from Phocis, their
earliest recorded seat, by a flood in the time of Deucalion.
Migrating into Thessaly, they expelled the Pelasgi; and afterward
spreading themselves through Greece, they attained a general
ascendency over the earlier habitants, enslaving, doubtless, the bulk
of the population among which they formed a settlement, but ejecting
numbers of the more resolute or the more noble families, and causing
those celebrated migrations by which the Pelasgi carried their name
and arts into Italy, as well as into Crete and various other isles.
On the continent of Greece, when the revolution became complete, the
Pelasgi appear to have retained only Arcadia, the greater part of
Thessaly [72], the land of Dodona, and Attica.
There is no reason to suppose the Hellenes more enlightened and
civilized than the Pelasgi; but they seem, if only by the record of
their conquests, to have been a more stern, warlike, and adventurous
branch of the Grecian family. I conclude them, in fact, to have been
that part of the Pelasgic race who the longest retained the fierce and
vigorous character of a mountain tribe, and who found the nations they
invaded in that imperfect period of civilization which is so
favourable to the designs of a conqueror--when the first warlike
nature of a predatory tribe is indeed abandoned--but before the
discipline, order, and providence of a social community are acquired.
Like the Saxons into Britain, the Hellenes were invited [73] by the
different Pelasgic chiefs as auxiliaries, and remained as conquerors.
But in other respects they rather resembled the more knightly and
energetic race by whom in Britain the Saxon dynasty was overturned:--
the Hellenes were the Normans of antiquity. It is impossible to
decide the exact date when the Hellenes obtained the general
ascendency or when the Greeks received from that Thessalian tribe
their common appellation. The Greeks were not termed Hellenes in the
time in which the Iliad was composed--they were so termed in the time
of Hesiod. But even in the Iliad, the word Panhellenes, applied to
the Greeks, testifies the progress of the revolution [74], and in the
Odyssey, the Hellenic name is no longer limited to the dominion of
Achilles.
III. The Hellenic nation became popularly subdivided into four
principal families, viz., the Dorians, the Aeolians, the Ionians, and
Achaeans, of which I consider the former two alone genuinely Hellenic.
The fable which makes Dorus, Aeolus, and Xuthus, the sons of Helen,
declares that while Dorus was sent forth to conquer other lands,
Aeolus succeeded to the domain of Phthiotis, and records no conquests
of his own; but attributes to his sons the origin of most of the
principal families of Greece. If rightly construed, this account
would denote that the Aeolians remained for a generation at least
subsequent to the first migration of the Dorians, in their Thessalian
territories; and thence splitting into various hordes, descended as
warriors and invaders upon the different states of Greece. They
appear to have attached themselves to maritime situations, and the
wealth of their early settlements is the theme of many a legend. The
opulence of Orchomenus is compared by Homer to that of Egyptian
Thebes. And in the time of the Trojan war, Corinth was already termed
“the wealthy.” By degrees the Aeolians became in a great measure
blended and intermingled with the Dorians. Yet so intimately
connected are the Hellenes and Pelasgi, that even these, the lineal
descendants of Helen through the eldest branch, are no less confounded
with the Pelasgic than the Dorian race. Strabo and Pausanias alike
affirm the Aeolians to be Pelasgic, and in the Aeolic dialect we
approach to the Pelasgic tongue.
The Dorians, first appearing in Phthiotis, are found two generations
afterward in the mountainous district of Histiaeotis, comprising
within their territory, according to Herodotus, the immemorial Vale of
Tempe. Neighboured by warlike hordes, more especially the heroic
Lapithae, with whom their earliest legends record fierce and continued
war, this mountain tribe took from nature and from circumstance their
hardy and martial character. Unable to establish secure settlements
in the fertile Thessalian plains, and ranging to the defiles through
which the romantic Peneus winds into the sea, several of the tribe
migrated early into Crete, where, though forming only a part of the
population of the isle, they are supposed by some to have established
the Doric constitution and customs, which in their later settlements
served them for a model. Other migrations marked their progress to
the foot of Mount Pindus; thence to Dryopis, afterward called Doris;
and from Dryopis to the Peloponnesus; which celebrated migration,
under the name of the “Return of the Heraclidae,” I shall hereafter
more especially describe. I have said that genealogy attributes the
origin of the Dorians and that of the Aeolians to Dorus and Aeolus,
sons of Helen. This connects them with the Hellenes and with each
other. The adventures of Xuthus, the third son of Helen, are not
recorded by the legends of Thessaly, and he seems merely a fictitious
creation, invented to bring into affinity with the Hellenes the
families, properly Pelasgic, of the Achaeans and Ionians. It is by
writers comparatively recent that we are told that Xuthus was driven
from Thessaly by his brothers--that he took refuge in Attica, and on
the plains of Marathon built four towns--Oenoe, Marathon,
Probalinthus, and Tricorythus [75], and that he wedded Creusa,
daughter of Erechtheus, king of Attica, and that by her he had two
sons, Achaeus and Ion. By some we are told that Achaeus, entering the
eastern side of Peloponnesus, founded a dominion in Laconia and
Argolis; by others, on the contrary, that he conducted a band, partly
Athenian, into Thessaly, and recovered the domains of which his father
had been despoiled [76]. Both these accounts of Achaeus, as the
representative of the Achaeans, are correct in this, that the
Achaeans, had two settlements from remote periods--the one in the
south of Thessaly--the other in the Peloponnesus.
The Achaeans were long the most eminent of the Grecian tribes.
Possessed of nearly the whole of the Peloponnesus, except, by a
singular chance, that part which afterward bore their name, they
boasted the warlike fame of the opulent Menelaus and the haughty
Agamemnon, the king of men. The dominant tribe of the heroic age, the
Achaeans form the kindred link between the several epochs of the
Pelasgic and Hellenic sway--their character indeed Hellenic, but their
descent apparently Pelasgic. Dionysius of Halicarnassus derives them
from Pelasgus himself, and they existed as Achaeans before the
Hellenic Xuthus was even born. The legend which makes Achaeus the
brother of Ion, tends likewise to prove, that if the Ionians were
originally Pelasgic, so also were the Achaeans. Let us then come to
Ion.
Although Ion is said to have given the name of Ionians to the
Atticans, yet long before his time the Iaones were among the ancient
inhabitants of the country; and Herodotus (the best authority on the
subject) declares that the Ionians were Pelasgic and indigenous.
There is not sufficient reason to suppose, therefore, that they were
Hellenic conquerors or Hellenic settlers. They appear, on the
contrary, to have been one of the aboriginal tribes of Attica:--a part
of them proceeded into the Peloponnesus (typified under the migration
thither of Xuthus), and these again returning (as typified by the
arrival of Ion at Athens), in conjunction with such of their
fraternity as had remained in their native settlement, became the most
powerful and renowned of the several divisions of the Attic
population. Their intercourse with the Peloponnesians would lead the
Ionians to establish some of the political institutions and religious
rites they had become acquainted with in their migration; and thus may
we most probably account for the introduction of the worship of Apollo
into Attica, and for that peaceful political influence which the
mythical Ion is said to have exercised over his countrymen.
At all events, we cannot trace, any distinct and satisfactory
connexion between this, the most intellectual and brilliant tribe of
the Grecian family, and that roving and fortunate Thessalian horde to
which the Hellenes gave the general name, and of which the Dorians
were the fittest representative and the most powerful section. Nor,
despite the bold assumptions of Mueller, is there any evidence of a
Hellenic conquest in Attica. [77]
And that land which, according to tradition and to history, was the
early refuge of exiles, derived from the admission and intercourse of
strangers and immigrants those social and political improvements which
in other states have been wrought by conquest.
IV. After the Dorians obtained possession of the Peloponnesus, the
whole face of Greece was gradually changed. The return of the
Heraclidae was the true consummation of the Hellenic revolution. The
tribes hitherto migratory became fixed in the settlements they
acquired. The Dorians rose to the rank of the most powerful race of
Greece: and the Ionians, their sole rivals, possessed only on the
continent the narrow soil of Attica, though their colonies covered the
fertile coast of Asia Minor. Greece thus reduced to two main tribes,
the Doric and the Ionian, historians have justly and generally
concurred in noticing between them the strongest and most marked
distinctions,--the Dorians grave, inflexible, austere,--the Ionians
lively, versatile, prone to change. The very dialect of the one was
more harsh and masculine than that of the other; and the music, the
dances of the Dorians, bore the impress of their severe simplicity.
The sentiment of veneration which pervaded their national character
taught the Dorians not only, on the one hand, the firmest allegiance
to the rites of religion--and a patriarchal respect for age--but, on
the other hand, a blind and superstitious attachment to institutions
merely on account of their antiquity--and an almost servile regard for
birth, producing rather the feelings of clanship than the sympathy of
citizens. We shall see hereafter, that while Athens established
republics, Sparta planted oligarchies. The Dorians were proud of
independence, but it was the independence of nobles rather than of a
people. Their severity preserved them long from innovation--no less
by what was vicious in its excess than by what was wise in its
principle. With many great and heroic qualities, they were yet harsh
to enemies--cruel to dependants--selfish to allies. Their whole
policy was to preserve themselves as they were; if they knew not the
rash excesses, neither were they impelled by the generous emotions,
which belong to men whose constant aspirations are to be better and to
be greater;--they did not desire to be better or to be greater; their
only wish was not to be different. They sought in the future nothing
but the continuance of the past; and to that past they bound
themselves with customs and laws of iron. The respect in which they
held their women, as well as their disdain of pleasure, preserved them
in some measure from the licentiousness common to states in which
women are despised; but the respect had little of the delicacy and
sentiment of individual attachment--attachment was chiefly for their
own sex [78]. The Ionians, on the contrary, were susceptible,
flexile, and more characterized by the generosity of modern knighthood
than the sternness of ancient heroism. Them, not the past, but the
future, charmed. Ever eager to advance, they were impatient even of
the good, from desire of the better. Once urged to democracy--
democracy fixed their character, as oligarchy fixed the Spartan. For,
to change is the ambition of a democracy--to conserve of an oligarchy.
The taste, love, and intuition of the beautiful stamped the Greeks
above all nations, and the Ionians above all the Greeks. It was not
only that the Ionians were more inventive than their neighbours, but
that whatever was beautiful in invention they at once seized and
appropriated. Restless, inquisitive, ardent, they attempted all
things, and perfected art--searched into all things, and consummated
philosophy.
The Ionic character existed everywhere among Ionians, but the Doric
was not equally preserved among the Dorians. The reason is evident.
The essence of the Ionian character consisted in the spirit of change
--that of the Dorian in resistance to innovation. When any Doric
state abandoned its hereditary customs and institutions, it soon lost
the Doric character--became lax, effeminate, luxurious--a corruption
of the character of the Ionians; but no change could assimilate the
Ionian to the Doric; for they belonged to different eras of
civilization--the Doric to the elder, the Ionian to the more advanced.
The two races of Scotland have become more alike than heretofore; but
it is by making the highlander resemble the lowlander--and not by
converting the lowland citizen into the mountain Gael. The habits of
commerce, the substitution of democratic for oligarchic institutions,
were sufficient to alter the whole character of the Dorians. The
voluptuous Corinth--the trading Aegina (Doric states)--infinitely more
resembled Athens than Sparta.
It is, then, to Sparta, that in the historical times we must look
chiefly for the representative of the Doric tribe, in its proper and
elementary features; and there, pure, vigorous, and concentrated, the
Doric character presents a perpetual contrast to the Athenian. This
contrast continued so long as either nation retained a character to
itself;--and (no matter what the pretences of hostility) was the real
and inevitable cause of that enmity between Athens and Sparta, the
results of which fixed the destiny of Greece.
Yet were the contests of that enmity less the contests between
opposing tribes than between those opposing principles which every
nation may be said to nurse within itself; viz., the principle to
change, and the principle to preserve; the principle to popularize,
and the principle to limit the governing power; here the genius of an
oligarchy, there of a people; here adherence to the past, there desire
of the future. Each principle produced its excesses, and furnishes a
salutary warning. The feuds of Sparta and Athens may be regarded as
historical allegories, clothing the moral struggles, which, with all
their perils and all their fluctuations, will last to the end of time.
V. This period is also celebrated for the supposed foundation of that
assembly of the Grecian states, called the Amphictyonic Confederacy.
Genealogy attributes its origin to a son of Deucalion, called
Amphictyon. [79]
This fable would intimate a Hellenic origin, since Deucalion is the
fabled founder of the Hellenes; but out of twelve tribes which
composed the confederacy, only three were Hellenic, and the rest
Pelasgic. But with the increasing influence of the Dorian oracle of
Delphi, with which it was connected, it became gradually considered a
Hellenic institution. It is not possible to decipher the first
intention of this league. The meeting was held at two places, near
Anthela, in the pass of Thermopylae, and Delphi; at the latter place
in the spring, at the former in the autumn. If tradition imputed to
Amphictyon the origin of the council, it ascribed to Acrisius, king
of Argos [80], the formation of its proper power and laws. He is said
to have founded one of the assemblies, either that in Delphi or
Thermopylae (accounts vary), and to have combined the two, increased
the number of the members, and extended the privileges of the body.
We can only interpret this legend by the probable supposition, that
the date of holding the same assembly at two different places, at
different seasons of the year, marks the epoch of some important
conjunction of various tribes, and, it may be, of deities hitherto
distinct. It might be an attempt to associate the Hellenes with the
Pelasgi, in the early and unsettled power of the former race: and this
supposition is rendered the more plausible by the evident union of the
worship of the Dorian Apollo at Delphi with that of the Pelasgian
Ceres at Thermopylae [81]. The constitution of the league was this--
each city belonging to an Amphictyonic state sent usually two
deputies--the one called Pylagoras, the other Hieromnemon. The
functions of the two deputies seem to have differed, and those of the
latter to have related more particularly to whatsoever appertained to
religion. On extraordinary occasions more than one pylagoras was
deputed--Athens at one time sent no less than three. But the number
of deputies sent did not alter the number of votes in the council.
Each city had two votes and no more, no matter how many delegates it
employed.
All the deputies assembled,--solemn sacrifices were offered at Delphi
to Apollo, Diana, Latona, and Minerva; at Thermopylae to Ceres. An
oath was then administered, the form of which is preserved to us by
Aeschines.
“I swear,” runs the oath, “never to subvert any Amphictyonic city--
never to stop the courses of its waters in peace or in war. Those who
attempt such outrages I will oppose by arms; and the cities that so
offend I will destroy. If any ravages be committed in the territory
of the god, if any connive at such a crime, if any conceive a design
hostile to the temple, against them will I use my hands, my feet, my
whole power and strength, so that the offenders may be brought to
punishment.”
Fearful and solemn imprecations on any violation of this engagement
followed the oath.
These ceremonies performed, one of the hieromnemons [82] presided over
the council; to him were intrusted the collecting the votes, the
reporting the resolutions, and the power of summoning the general
assembly, which was a convention separate from the council, held only
on extraordinary occasions, and composed of residents and strangers,
whom the solemnity of the meeting congregated in the neighbourhood.
VI. Throughout the historical times we can trace in this league no
attempt to combine against the aggression of foreign states, except
for the purposes of preserving the sanctity of the temple. The
functions of the league were limited to the Amphictyonic tribes and
whether or not its early, and undefined, and obscure purpose, was to
check wars among the confederate tribes, it could not attain even that
object. Its offices were almost wholly confined to religion. The
league never interfered when one Amphictyonic state exercised the
worst severities against the other, curbing neither the ambition of
the Athenian fleet nor the cruelties of the Spartan sword. But, upon
all matters relative to religion, especially to the worship of Apollo,
the assembly maintained an authority in theory supreme--in practice,
equivocal and capricious.
As a political institution, the league contained one vice which could
not fail to destroy its power. Each city in the twelve Amphictyonic
tribes, the most unimportant as the most powerful, had the same number
of votes. This rendered it against the interest of the greater states
(on whom its consideration necessarily depended) to cement or increase
its political influence and thus it was quietly left to its natural
tendency to sacred purposes. Like all institutions which bestow upon
man the proper prerogative of God, and affect authority over religious
and not civil opinions, the Amphictyonic council was not very
efficient in good: even in its punishment of sacrilege, it was only
dignified and powerful whenever the interests of the Delphic temple
were at stake. Its most celebrated interference was with the town of
Crissa, against which the Amphictyons decreed war B. C. 505; the
territory of Crissa was then dedicated to the god of the temple.
VII. But if not efficient in good, the Amphictyonic council was not
active in evil. Many causes conspired to prevent the worst excesses
to which religious domination is prone,--and this cause in particular.
It was not composed of a separate, interested, and permanent class,
but of citizens annually chosen from every state, who had a much
greater interest in the welfare of their own state than in the
increased authority of the Amphictyonic council [83]. They were
priests but for an occasion--they were citizens by profession. The
jealousies of the various states, the constant change in the
delegates, prevented that energy and oneness necessary to any settled
design of ecclesiastical ambition. Hence, the real influence of the
Amphictyonic council was by no means commensurate with its grave
renown; and when, in the time of Philip, it became an important
political agent, it was only as the corrupt and servile tool of that
able monarch. Still it long continued, under the panoply of a great
religious name, to preserve the aspect of dignity and power, until, at
the time of Constantine, it fell amid the ruins of the faith it had
aspired to protect. The creed that became the successor of the
religion of Delphi found a mightier Amphictyonic assembly in the
conclaves of Rome. The papal institution possessed precisely those
qualities for directing the energies of states, for dictating to the
ambition of kings, for obtaining temporal authority under spiritual
pretexts--which were wanting to the pagan.