hills there are, indeed, some lovely wooded valleys,[3] like Tempe, but
in general it is a treeless country, and the eye enjoys, in summer at
least, a pure harmony of brown hills with deep blue sea and sky. The sea
is indigo, almost purple, and the traveller quickly sees the justice of
Homer’s epithet of “wine-dark.” Those brown hills make a lovely
background for the play of light and shade. Dawn and sunset touch them
with warmer colours, and the plain of Attica is seen “violet-crowned” by
the famous heights of Hymettus, Pentelicus, and Parnes. The ancient
Greek talked little of scenery, but he saw a nereid in every pool, a
dryad under every oak, and heard the pipe of Pan in the caves of his
limestone hills. He placed the choir of Muses on Mount Helicon, and,
looking up to the snowy summit of Olympus, he peopled it with calm,
benignant deities.
In this beautiful land lived the happy and glorious people whose culture
we are now to study. Some modernists, indeed, smitten with the
megalomania of to-day, profess to despise a history written on so small
a scale. Truly Athens was a small state at the largest. Her little
empire had a yearly revenue of about £100,000. It is doubtful whether
Sparta ever had much more than ten thousand free citizens. In military
matters, it must be confessed, the importance attached by historians to
miniature fleets and pigmy armies, with a ridiculously small casualty
list, does strike the reader with a sense of disproportion. But for the
politician it is especially instructive to see his problems worked out
upon a small scale, with the issues comparatively simple and the results
plainly visible. The task of combining liberty with order is in
essentials the same for a state of ten thousand citizens as for one of
forty millions. And in the realms of philosophy and art considerations
of size do not affect us, except to make us marvel that these tiny
states could do so much.
To a great extent we may find the key to the Greek character in her
favourite proverb, “No excess,” in which are expressed her favourite
virtues of _Aidōs_ and _Sophrosune_, reverence and self-restraint. “Know
thyself” was the motto inscribed over her principal shrine. Know and
rely upon thine own powers, know and regard thine own limitations. It
was such a maxim as this which enabled the Greeks to reach their goal of
perfection even in the sphere of art, where perfection is proverbially
impossible. They were bold in prospecting and experimenting, until they
found what they deemed to be the right way, and when they had found it
they followed it through to its conclusion. Eccentricity they hated like
poison. Though they were such great originators, they cared nothing for
the modern fetish of originality.
In politics also they looked for a definite goal and travelled
courageously along to find it. Herein they met with disastrous failures
which are full of teaching for us. But they reached, it may be said, the
utmost possibility of the city-state. The city-state was, as we have
seen, probably evolved by natural survival from the physical conditions
of the country. Being established, it entailed certain definite
consequences. It involved a much closer bond of social union than any
modern
[Illustration: PLATE III. THE VALE OF TEMPE
_English Photo Co., Athens_]
territorial state. Its citizens felt the unity and exclusiveness of a
club or school. A much larger share of public rights and duties
naturally fell upon them. They looked upon their city as a company of
unlimited liability in which each individual citizen was a shareholder.
They expected their city to feed and amuse them. They expected to divide
the plunder when she made conquests, as they were certain to share the
consequences if she was defeated. Every full citizen of proper age was
naturally bound to fight personally in the ranks, and from that duty his
rights as a citizen followed logically. He must naturally be consulted
about peace and war, and must have a voice in foreign policy. Also, if
he was to be a competent soldier he must undergo proper education and
training for it. There will be little privacy inside the walls of a
city-state; the arts and crafts will be under public patronage.
Inequalities will become hatefully apparent.
But for us, an imperial people, who have inherited a vast and scattered
dominion which somehow or other has got to be managed and governed, the
chief interest will centre in the question of how these city-states
acquired and administered their empires. Above all it is to Athens and
perhaps Rome alone that we can look for historical answers to the great
riddle for which we cannot yet boast of having discovered a
solution--whether democracy can govern an empire.
In Greek history alone we have at least three examples of empires.
Athens and Sparta both proceeded to acquire empire by the road of
alliance and hegemony, Athens being naval and democratic, Sparta
aristocratic and military. Both were despotic, and both failed
disastrously for different reasons. Then we have the career of Alexander
the Great and his short-lived but important empire, a career providing a
type for Cæsar and Napoleon, an empire founded on mere conquest.
Lastly, on the same small canvas we have a momentous phase of the
eternal and still-continuing conflict between East and West and their
respective habits of civilisation. These pages will describe the
aggression and repulse of the East.
I
ÆGEAN CIVILISATION
Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona.
HORACE.
A NEW CHAPTER OF HISTORY
It is the misfortune of historians to be liable to attacks at both
extremities. On the one hand time is continually adding postscripts to
their “Finis,” and on the other hand the archæologist is constantly
making them tear up and rewrite their first chapters. In Greek history
especially the spade has proved mightier than the pen. We are now only
certain that the first page of any Greek history written ten years ago
must be defective; we are not yet quite sure what to put in its place.
Any moment, it seems, the explorer may turn up something which will make
a difference of a thousand years or so in our earliest chronology. There
are in the Cretan museum scores of clay tablets inscribed with an
unknown writing which only await an interpreter to confound and
illuminate us all. Forty years ago eminent writers like Gladstone and
Freeman were still looking to Homer for their ideas of the primitive
European and his civilisation. Strange indeed were the results that
followed. In politics we were to believe that the earliest Greeks
settled their affairs at a public meeting where elders and princes made
persuasive speeches, and radicalism, though not unknown, was sternly
discouraged. A benevolent monarchy, hereditary in the male line, was
supposed by Sir Henry Maine to be the form of government common to
primitive Europe and modern England. Literature was believed to have
begun with elaborate epic poems written in hexameters of exquisite
variety and extreme subtlety. The primitive woman was believed to have
been the object of chivalrous and romantic esteem. Strangest of all,
religion in this primitive world was held to have included the cheerful
bantering of anthropomorphic gods and goddesses. We were to suppose that
the European began by laughing at his gods and ended by worshipping
them.
[Illustration: Tablet of Cretan Linear Script, from Cnossos]
Then in the seventies came the redoubtable Dr. Schliemann, most erudite
of sappers, and dug into the hill at Hissarlik to see if he could find
the bones of Hector and the ruins of Troy. Troy he found in abundance,
five Troys, at least, one on the top of another. He called the second
from the bottom the city of Priam, and then he crossed over with his
spades and picks to look for what might be left of Agamemnon at Mycenæ.
Sure enough, he presently startled the learned world by a telegram to
the King of Greece saying that he had found the tomb of Agamemnon. Quite
certainly he had found some very important things--things, as we shall
soon see, far more interesting and valuable to history than if they had
belonged, as Schliemann thought, to the King of all the Greeks. But the
point is that for many years to come all the excavators who worked on
Greek soil started with the false belief that Homer was the beginning of
all things and that their discoveries were illustrating Homer. We now
know that the excavations at Mycenæ and the poems of Homer represent two
entirely different civilisations, neither of them primitive. We are now
in a position to throw the beginnings of European culture in the
Mediterranean basin centuries--nay, whole millenniums--farther back than
our fathers’ wildest dreams could carry them. The history of European
civilisation is no longer a traceable progression from Homer to Tennyson
or from Odysseus to Captain Peary, but a long cycle of rising and
decaying cultures with periods of darkness intervening. For this
revolution in our ideas the responsible weapon is the humble but
veracious spade.
CRETE, THE DOORSTEP OF EUROPE
We are to picture the primitive tribes of the world as continually
moving under the double pressure of the wolf in their bellies and the
enemy at their backs--moving, in the main, north and west, as climatic
conditions relented before them. So long as they were in this nomadic
stage little progress could be made in civilisation; tents must form
their houses, and their goods could be only such trifles of necessary
pots and pans as they could carry. But when the moving tribe reached the
sea it was compelled to halt and settle. Thus it is that civilisation
begins in the oases of the desert, on the north coasts of Africa, and in
the isles of Greece. Settled by force, and to some degree protected by
nature, they could begin to accumulate possessions, and to improve them
with art. They could begin to build houses, and develop morals and
polities.
Thus geography has made it exceedingly probable that Crete will play a
momentous part in the earliest history of Europe. That island lies like
a doorstep at the threshold of Europe. If civilisation was to rise with
the sun in the East, out of the extremely ancient civilisations of Egypt
and Babylon, by way of those earliest carriers to the world’s markets,
the Phœnicians of Tyre and Sidon, clearly this island of Crete would be
their stepping-stone to Europe. Thus we reason, knowing it to be the
truth. But we should never have learnt the truth from literature. In
Homer, for example, Crete is of little importance. It was famous for its
“ninety cities” and its mixed nationalities, and it was known as the
former realm of Minos. There, too, the father of all craftsmen, Dædalus,
had fashioned a wondrous dancing-place. But we might almost gather from
the pages of Homer that it was a land whose glory had departed already.
And that is the truth. Outside Homer, Crete, though insignificant in
history, takes a much more important place in mythology and legend. For
religion Crete was the birthplace of Zeus, the king of the gods. In the
history of law-making it plays a very important part, for Minos of Crete
was said to be the first law-giver, and he was placed as the judge of
the dead by later mythology. In religion it produced Epimenides, the
early exorcist, and in music Thaletas. Then many ancient historians give
us a tradition of early naval empires in Greek waters. Thalassocracies
they were called, and that of Crete stands at the head of the list.
Finally, those fortunate Englishmen whose introduction to Greece has
come through the wonderful “Heroes” of Charles Kingsley know the story
of the Cretan labyrinth and that fearsome beast the Minotaur. They know
the story of Theseus: how the Athenians of the earliest times had to
send tribute every year of their fairest youths and maidens to King
Minos of Crete, until one year the prince Theseus besought old Ægeus,
his royal father, to let him go among the number in order to stop this
cruel sacrifice; how he went at last, and how the Cretan princess,
Ariadne, loved him and gave him a weapon and a clue to the labyrinth,
and how he slew the dreadful monster and deserted his princess and
returned home; but how he forgot also to hoist the signal of his safety,
so that the old king, seeing black sails to his ship, cast himself
headlong from the rock in his misery, and gave a name to the Ægean Sea.
In old days we read it as a beautiful Greek romance; now we think it
very likely that the Athenians in early days did have to pay tribute--
septena quotannis
corpora natorum
--to the empire of Minos. Sir Arthur Evans, the explorer of Cnossos,
thinks that he has discovered the labyrinth, and perhaps even the
Minotaur, in his excavations at Cnossos. Anyhow, he has discovered a
civilisation previously almost unknown to history. As these new
discoveries centre in Crete, the excavators have naturally taken Crete
as the fount and origin of it all, and call their new old world
“Minoan,” just as the followers of Dr. Schliemann called their
discoveries “Mycenæan.” The two cultures are not distinct; Mycenæan
objects mainly represent one or two of the later stages of Minoan
culture. But as similar objects have been found in many parts of the
Eastern Mediterranean, and as it is just possible (though not very
probable) that even more wonderful discoveries of a similar kind may be
made elsewhere, and as the relation of Minos to these earliest periods
is by no means established, we had better be cautious and adopt the most
general name of those which have been applied to this culture and call
it “Ægean,” or “Pre-Achæan,” or “Bronze Age.” We may quite fairly use
one name for all this world of prehistoric civilisation before Homer,
although it covers an enormous space of time and may be divided into
many distinct chapters or phases; because, after all, there is a clear
line of ancestry between the earliest of the art forms and the latest,
indicating that the artists were of the same blood, however many times
their cities might be destroyed and their works buried under the soil.
It is so distinct, so continuous, and so widely distributed that we are
safe in believing that it was the work of one people spread all over the
islands and coasts of the Mediterranean. Ægean civilisation has been
found in Crete, on the coasts of Asia Minor, on the mainland of Greece,
in Egyptian tombs, in Sicily, on the coast of Italy, at Torcello near
Venice, at Bologna, and in Spain. Etruscan art seems to be essentially
akin to it. Cyprus has long been known as a centre of Ægean
civilisation, and is at the present moment yielding fresh treasures to
the archæologist. But nowhere has it been discovered in such perfect
continuity and splendour as in Crete.
It is the custom among archæologists to divide early culture into
periods, according to the weapons in use. Accordingly we say that the
Ægean periods extend from the Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age, meaning
that the earliest of these Ægean potsherds are found in conjunction with
polished flint weapons and tools, while along with the latest we find a
few rare pieces of iron, but mostly bronze of a very high finish and
workmanship. Such finds are dated very roughly by the level at which
they lie, because it is a curious but certain fact that the level of
ground once built over is constantly rising through accretions of dust
and débris. Anyhow, it will be clear to every one that when, as at Troy
and Cnossos, we find a series of buildings each superimposed upon the
ruins of another, we can trace the history of such a site from early to
late with certainty. Sometimes it is possible also to get a date by
examining foreign objects found on the same site, such as gems bearing
the cartouche or sign-royal of Egyptian kings. Only we must bear in mind
that such little objects are easily displaced and often preserved for
many centuries, so that great care must be used in taking them as
evidence. Also, serious conflicts are still going on between the
Egyptologists, and their dates are by no means ascertained facts at
present.
PROGRESS OF ÆGEAN CULTURE
I have said that the prehistoric culture revealed by the excavations in
Crete and elsewhere forms a continuous and progressive history from the
Stone Age to the Iron Age. Sir Arthur Evans, indeed, has divided his
discoveries into nine periods, from “Early Minoan I.” to “Late Minoan
III.” Without being quite so precise, let us attempt to sketch a
history of “prehistoric” civilisation on Greek soil, taking Crete as the
centre of influence.
[Illustration: Black Vase from Cyprus]
“Neolithic man” in Crete, though his weapons and tools were but polished
stones, and far as he was behind his Neolithic brothers of Central
Europe, had already begun to design patterns upon his pottery. Like
Nature abhorring a vacuum, he traced zigzags, triangles, and chevrons
upon the plastic clay, scratching or pricking lines and dots with a
point of bone or stone, and sometimes filling the holes and scratches
with white gypsum to show up the pattern. The body of his vases was
generally black and shiny. Bucchero nero, as the Italian archæologists
call it, is found in the Neolithic strata all over Southern Europe.
[Illustration: Plan of Neolithic House]
His house was generally of mud and wattles, but there are some examples
of stone-built houses on a rectangular plan. In Thessaly, where
Neolithic culture survived right through the flourishing periods of art
in Crete and Mycenæ, they have even found Neolithic houses with three
rooms and the sockets for wooden pillars. Caves were still used as
dwellings, and there is also a round type of hut, derived, no doubt,
from the still more primitive tent of skin and wickerwork. Of the
religion of the Late Stone Age we know nothing, except that they buried
their dead with care in tombs resembling their
[Illustration: PLATE IV.--ASSYRIAN RELIEF: KING ASSUR-NASIR-PAL (9TH
CENTURY B.C.) _Mansell & Co._]
dwelling-places. Archæology has a rough method of assigning dates by
allowing about a thousand years for every three feet of deposited earth;
on this reckoning we may date the Neolithic period in Crete anywhere
before 4000 B.C.
Then gradually comes the beginning of the Bronze Age. All civilisation
may be regarded as a progress in tools and weapons. Nowhere is the
history of Europe traced with a clearer pen than in its armouries. As
the guns of Crécy foretold the passing of chivalry, so the discovery of
that alloy of copper and tin, which produced a metal soft enough to
mould and hard enough to work with, meant a step forward for
civilisation. At first, of course, bronze is rare and costly; it is
confined to short dagger-blades and spear-points. Along with the
earliest bronze we find an advance in the pottery, paint used to trace
the patterns, though the designs are still those of dot and line;
experiments are being made with colours and glazes. In experiment is the
germ of progress; the conventional artists of the East imitate and
sometimes improve their models, but they seldom make experiments. In
Assyria and Egypt they have produced wonderful and beautiful works of
art.[4] But with them art is ornament; there is no ideal, no striving to
get nearer to the truth of things. The Oriental sculptor soon loses
touch with Nature, and as his technique advances learns only the
language of convention.
So in the forms and designs of the pottery we watch a steady upward
march, the progress growing faster as the standard of achievement rises.
Curves and circles take the place of zigzags and triangles. The potter
plays tricks with the colour of his clay, daubs it with red, burns it in
patches. In these strata we begin to find imitations of the human form,
rude images or “idols,” possibly the votive offerings which represent
the worshipper in substitution for human sacrifice. These become
conventionalised, as everything connected with religion tends to do,
into queer fiddle-shaped, goggle-eyed figures. All the Cretan artists
insisted on the waist to a degree which would seem to the modern
shop-girl an exaggeration. Even in Egypt the small waist was regarded as
a characteristic of the Keftiu--the men from the Isles of the Sea. The
broad shoulders of the men no doubt are intended to symbolise strength.
Along with vases and “idols” are found seals whose emblems show traces
of the influence of Egypt under the Sixth Dynasty (? 2540 B.C.).
[Illustration: Terra-cotta Figure, from Petsofà]
Now we take a great upward leap into the “Middle Minoan” periods of Sir
Arthur Evans. Here we find the earliest writing of Europe, clay tablets
inscribed with a pictographic script. The clay figures are extremely
elaborate presentments of the costume of the day; and a highly elaborate
costume it is. Colour is freely employed on idols and pottery. The
patterns pass into spirals, and occasionally there is direct imitation
of Nature--goats, beetles, and (as the classical Greeks would say) other
birds.
[Illustration: Terra-cotta Idol, from Troy]
Now we are among the earlier palaces of Cnossos. Each period now seems
to have ended with a disaster, after which art rose again triumphantly
above the ruins, to begin where it had left off before the invader came
to destroy the palace and shrines of its patrons. Here we find the
“Kamáres” ware, a style of pottery to which we can perhaps for the first
time apply honest expressions of admiration. It is often as thin as
eggshell china. Its shapes are extremely varied and graceful; among them
the precise form of the modern tea-cup is common, and beautiful dishes
for
[Illustration: Votive Terra-cotta, from Petsofà. (Full size)]
offerings which resemble the modern épergne. A lustrous black glaze
generally forms the background; on it designs are painted in matt
colours, white, red, and sometimes yellow. The designs are still chiefly
conventional patterns of stripes and spirals. The potter’s wheel is by
now in common use, as we see from the greater symmetry and accuracy of
the lines. It is suggested that this ware in its thinness and its
patterns was inspired by metalwork. It must not be forgotten that the
archæologist only finds what the looting pirate has despised. The gold
and the bronze have been taken and only the humble potsherds left.
[Illustration: Kamáres Cup]
[Illustration: Kamáres “Hole-mouthed” Jar]
In the stage we have been describing the general colour effect of the
vase was the artist’s first consideration. Presently (after another
catastrophe) a new spirit begins to appear, the desire to imitate the
forms of Nature. With increasing naturalism the potter reverts to
simpler colours, despairing, it would seem, of the attempt to reproduce
the colours of his models. Neither greens nor blues could be managed in
earthenware. Fortunately, however, a new material is discovered which
serves the purpose. This is a kind of faience or porcelain. The idea was
imported from Egypt, but a native factory was set up in the palace of
Cnossos, and we even find the steatite moulds by which the patterns were
impressed. The naturalism is extremely skilful and effective. One of the
most beautiful examples is illustrated.[5] It is the favourite motive of
an animal suckling her young, constantly found as a heraldic type on
coins and seals. Here it is evidently drawn from a direct study of
Nature, so living is the pose, so faithful is the expression of
[Illustration: Fig. 1. Snake Goddess.]
[Illustration: Fig. 2. Wild Goat and Young.
Plate 5. FAÏENCE FROM THE TEMPLE REPOSITORY OF THE SECOND PALACE,
CNOSSOS, CRETE.]
the muscles. It is probably a failing of archæologists to see religion
everywhere they go. It is certain that the suckling motive was in after
times associated with the worship of maternal deities such as Hera. It
is certain also that the prehistoric Cretan did worship powers of
fecundity in human and animal form. But we need not transform this
she-goat into a goddess. I much prefer to be sure that this prehistoric
Cretan loved and studied the wild creatures of his native hills and his
native blue sea. Art and Nature are hand in hand now on vases and gems
also. We have seal types bearing wolves’ heads, owls and shells, scenes
from the boxing-ring and the bull-ring. The writing has progressed from
mere pictographs to a linear script. It is astonishing to find the
Cretan of 1911 B.C. writing, as we write to-day, with pen and ink.