history, it is fortunate that we are furnished with a guide so
unerring as Homer, whose general accuracy of observation, and
minuteness of description, are such as to afford a copious source of
information respecting almost everything connected with the times in
which he composed his work: and who, being nearly contemporary with
the events which he relates, and, indeed, with the earliest matter
for record in Greece, cannot fall into mistakes and anachronisms in
arts, or manners, or government, as he might have done had he lived
at a more advanced and refined period[120].
It was said of a certain Dorotheus, that he spent his whole life in
endeavours to elucidate the meaning of the Homeric word κλισίη. Such a
disproportion between labour and its aim is somewhat startling; yet it
is hardly too much to say, that no exertion spent upon any of the great
classics of the world, and attended with any amount of real result, is
really thrown away. It is better to write one word upon the rock, than
a thousand on the water or the sand: better to remove a single stray
stone out of the path that mounts the hill of true culture, than to
hew out miles of devious tracks, which mislead and bewilder us when we
travel them, and make us more than content if we are fortunate enough
to find, when we emerge out of their windings, that we have simply
returned to the point in our age, from which, in sanguine youth, we set
out.
As rules of the kind above propounded can only be fully understood when
applied, the application of them has accordingly been attempted, in the
work to which these pages form an Introduction. In this view, it may be
regarded as their necessary sequel. I commit it to the press with no
inconsiderable apprehension, and with due deference to the judgments
of the learned: for I do not feel myself to have possessed either
the fresh recollection and ready command of the treasures of ancient
Greece, or the extended and systematic knowledge of the modern Homeric
literature, which are among the essential requisites of qualification
to deal in a satisfactory manner with the subject. I should further
say, that the poems of Homer, to be rightly and thoroughly sounded,
demand undoubtedly a disengaged mind, perhaps would repay even the
study of a life. One plea only I can advance with confidence. The work,
whatever else it be, is one which has been founded in good faith on
the text of Homer. Whether in statement or in speculation, I have
desired and endeavoured that it should lead me by the hand: and even my
anticipations of what we might in any case expect it to contain have
been formed by a reflex process from the suggestions it had itself
supplied:
Oh degli altri poeti onore e lume!
Vagliami il lungo studio, e il grande amore
Che m’ ha fatto cercar lo tuo volume;
Tu sei lo mio maestro, e il mio autore[121].
* * * * *
Finally, though sharing the dissatisfaction of others at the
established preference given among us to the Latin names of deities
originally Greek, and at some part of our orthography for Greek names,
I have thought it best to adhere in general to the common custom, and
only to deviate from it where a special object was in view. I fear
that diversity, and even confusion, are more likely to arise than any
benefit, from efforts at reform, made by individuals, and without
the advantage either of authority or of a clear principle, as a
groundwork for general consent. I am here disposed to say, ‘οὐκ ἀγαθὸν
πολυκοιρανίη;’ and again with Wordsworth,
‘Me this unchartered freedom tires.’
Yet I should gladly see the day when, under the authority of Scholars,
and especially of those who bear rule in places of education,
improvement might be effected, not only in the points above mentioned,
but in our solitary and barbarous method of pronouncing both the Greek
and the Latin language. In this one respect the European world may
still with justice describe the English at least as the _penitus toto
divisos orbe Britannos_.
FOOTNOTES:
[93] Mure, ii. 282.
[94] Mure, ii. 286.
[95] Od. viii. 499.
[96] Exc. i. ad Æn. ii.
[97] Hist. of Greece, chap. i. sect. iv. p. 62. 4to.
[98] Ibid. sect. iii. p. 47.
[99] History of Greece, vol. i. p. 146; chap. vi. Introd.
[100] Minos, 12, in Plato’s Works.
[101] Preface, p. xi.
[102] Ibid. p. xii.
[103] Vol. i. p. 2.
[104] An accomplished critic in the Quarterly Review July, (1856)
treats this renunciation as one of Mr. Grote’s main titles to praise.
[105] Grote’s Hist., vol. i. pp. 58, 9, 72.
[106] I. vii. 2 and 3.
[107] Hes. Fragm. xxviii. from Tzetzes ad Lyc. 284.
[108] Hermann, Griech. Staats-Altherthum, Sect. 8.
[109] See the list in Clinton, F. H. Vol. I., p. 46, note.
[110] See inf. II. Sect. 2.
[111] Mure, Lit. Greece, vol. i., p. 39, n.
[112] Hes. Op. 157.
[113] Od. iv. 561-9.
[114] Bp. Thirlwall’s Hist. of Greece, chap. v.
[115] Herod, ix. 73.
[116] Encom. Hel. 21 et seq.
[117] Il. iii. 144.
[118] Il. i. 262.
[119] See Od. iv. 12.
[120] Lord Aberdeen’s Inquiry, p. 62. (1822.)
[121] Inferno, I. 32.
II. ETHNOLOGY.
SECT. I.
_Scope of the Inquiry._
I now proceed to attempt, in a series of inquiries, the practical
application of the principles which have been stated in the preliminary
Essay. The first of these inquiries might on some grounds be deemed
the most hazardous. It is an inquiry into the Early Ethnology and
Ethnography of Greece: or the Composition of the Greek nation, and
the succession and Distribution of its races, according to the text
of Homer. The religion, the politics, the manners, the contemporary
history, of the Iliad and Odyssey, may justly be considered to form
essential parts of the plan of the Poet, and to have been distinctly
contemplated by his intention. But into anterior legends he only dips
at times: and of the subject of the succession and distribution of
races it probably formed no part of his purpose to treat at all; so
that in the endeavour to investigate it we are entirely dependent, so
far as he is concerned, upon scattered and incidental notices.
But here it is, that the extraordinary sureness and precision of the
mind of Homer stands us in such admirable stead. Wherever, amidst the
cloud and chaos of pre-Homeric antiquity, he enables us to discern a
luminous point, that point is a beacon, and indicates ground on which
we may tread with confidence. The materials, which at a first glance
appear upon the face of the poems to be available for our purpose,
may indeed be but slender. But the careful gathering together of many
dispersed indications, and the strict observation of their relative
bearings has this effect, that each fragment added to the stock may
both receive illustration from what is already known, and may give
it in return, by helping to explain and establish relations hitherto
doubtful or obscure. And as the total or gross accumulation grows, the
nett result increases in a more rapid ratio: as a single known point
upon a plane tells us of nothing besides itself, but two enable us
to draw a line, and three a triangle, and each further one as it is
added to construct a multitude of figures: or as in the map-puzzles,
constructed to provoke the ingenuity of children, when once a very few
countries have been laid in their right places, they serve as keys to
the rest, and we can lay out with confidence the general order. Even so
I am not without hope that, as to some parts at least of this ethnical
examination, the Homeric indications may, when brought together,
warrant our applying to them words used by Cicero for another purpose:
_est enim admirabilis continuatio seriesque rerum, ut aliæ ex aliis
nexæ, et omnes inter se aptæ conligatæque videantur_[122].
I must not, however, step over the threshold of the investigation
without giving warning, that we have to meet at the outset an opinion
broadly pronounced, and proceeding from a person of such high authority
as Mr. Grote, our most recent historian of Greece, to the effect that
these inquiries are futile. This intimation is so important that it
shall stand in his own words. “In going through historical Greece,”
says Mr. Grote, “we are compelled to accept the Hellenic aggregate
with its constituent elements as a primary fact to start from,
because the state of our information does not enable us to ascend any
higher. By what circumstances, or out of what pre-existing elements,
this aggregate was brought together and modified, we find no evidence
entitled to credit[123].” And then, in condemnation particularly of
Pelasgic inquiries, he resumes: “if any man is inclined to call the
unknown ante-Hellenic period of Greece by the name of Pelasgic, it is
open to him to do so: but this is a name carrying with it no assured
predicates, no way enlarging our insight into real history, nor
enabling us to explain--what would be the real historical problem--how
or from whom the Hellens acquired that stock of dispositions,
aptitudes, arts, &c. with which they began their career.... No
attested facts are now present to us--none were present to Herodotus
and Thucydides even in their age, on which to build trustworthy
affirmations respecting the ante-Hellenic Pelasgians.”
In answer to these passages, which raise the question no less broadly
than fairly, it may first be observed, that at least Herodotus and
Thucydides did not think what we are thus invited to think for them,
and that of the judgment of the latter, as an inquirer into matters of
fact, Mr. Grote has himself justly expressed the highest opinion[124].
Mr. Grote, placing in one category all that relates to the legendary
age, finds it as a whole intractable and unhistorical, with a
predominance of sentimental attributes quite unlike the practical
turn and powers of the Greek mind in later times[125]. But has not
this disturbance of equilibrium happened chiefly because the genuine
though slender historic materials of the heroic age, supplied by the
poems of Homer, have been overborne and flooded by the accumulations
made by imagination, vanity, resentment, or patriotism, during a
thousand years? Even of the unsifted mass of legend, to which the
distinguished historian refers, it may be doubted, whether it is not,
when viewed as a whole, bewildering, formless, and inconsistent, rather
than sentimental. It has been everywhere darkened by cross purposes,
and by the unauthorized meddling of generations, which had ceased to
sympathize with the heroic age. At any rate, I crave permission to try
what we can make of that age in the matter of history, by dealing first
and foremost with him who handled it for the purposes of history, apart
from those, I mean the after poets, tragedians, and logographers, to
whom it was little more than a romance.
I trust that the recent examples of men so learned and able as Bishop
Thirlwall and K. O. Müller, neither of whom have thought subjects
of this kind too uninviting to reward inquiry, may avail both to
prevent the interposition of a preliminary bar to the discussion, and
to protect it against an adverse prejudgment. By anticipation I can
reasonably make no other answer to a condemnatory sentence, than that
which is conveyed in the words ‘let us try.’ But at any rate, _est
operæ pretium_: the stake is worth the venture. He would be indeed a
worthless biographer who did not, so far as his materials carried him,
pursue the life of a hero back to the nursery or even the cradle: and
the same faithful and well-grounded instincts invest with a surpassing
interest all real elucidation of the facts and ideas, that make up the
image of the Greek nation either in its infancy or even in its embryo.
There are three and only three names of ordinary use in the Iliad,
by which the poet designates the people that had been banded together
against Troy. This same people afterwards became famous in history,
perhaps beyond all others, first by the name of Hellenes, which was
self-applied; and secondly by the name of Greeks, which they acquired
from their Italian conquerors and captives. Greece is now again become
Hellas.
These names, prominent far beyond all others, are,
1. Δαναοὶ, Danaans.
2. Ἀργεῖοι, Argeians or Argives.
3. Ἀχαιοὶ, Achæans.
They are commonly treated as synonymous. It appears at least to have
been assumed that they are incapable of yielding any practical results
to an attempt at historic analysis and distribution. To try this
question fully, is a main part of my present purpose. Thus much at
least is clear: that they seem to be the equivalents, for the Troic
period, of the Hellenic name in later times.
But there are other names, of various classes, which on account of
their relations to the foregoing ones it is material to bring into view.
First, there are found in Homer two other designations, which purport
to have the same effect as the three already quoted. They are
1. Παναχαιοὶ, Panachæans.
2. Πανέλληνες, Panhellenes.
Next come three names of races, whose relations to the foregoing
appellations will demand scrutiny. These are
1. Πελασγοὶ, Pelasgians.
2. Ἕλληνες, Hellenes.
3. Θρῇκες, Thracians, or rather Thraces.
Lastly, there are a more numerous class of names, which are local in
this sense, that Homer only mentions them in connection with particular
parts of Greece, but which being clearly tribal and not territorial,
stand clearly distinguished from the names which owed, or may have
owed, their origin to the different cities or districts of the country,
such as Phocian (Il. ii. 517), Rhodian (654), Elian (Il. xi. 670), or
Ithacan (Odyssey _passim_): and likewise from the names which already
were, or afterwards came to be, in established connection with those
of districts, though they have no appearance of having been originally
territorial: such as Arcadian (Il. ii. 603, 611), Bœotian (Il. ii.
494), Athenian (Il. ii. 546, 551).
Of the class now before us there are some which are of importance in
various degrees with regard to the views of primitive history to be
gathered from the Homeric poems. As such I rank
1. Καδμεῖοι, Cadmeans, in Thebes, Il. iv. 388 and elsewhere: and with
this, as an equivalent, Καδμείωνες, Il. iv. 385 and elsewhere.
2. Ἰάονες, Ionians, in Athens, Il. xiii. 685.
3. Δωριέες, Dorians, in Crete, Od. xix. 177. A town Dorion is also
mentioned in the Catalogue as within the territories of Nestor, Il. ii.
594.
4. Κεφάλληνες, Cephallenes, in the islands under Ulysses, Il. ii. 631.
5. Ἐφυροὶ, Ephyri, in Thessaly, Il. xiii. 301.
6. Σελλοὶ or Ἑλλοὶ, Helli, in northern Thessaly, Il. xvi. 234.
7. Καύκωνες, Caucones, in southern Greece, Od. iii. 366: (and among the
Trojan allies, Il. x. 429, xx. 329.)
8. Ἐπεῖοι, Epeans, in Elis, Il. ii. 619, and on the opposite or
northern coast and islands of the Corinthian Gulf: compare Il. ii. 627,
and xiii. 691.
9. Ἄβαντες, Abantes, in Eubœa, Il. ii. 536.
10. Μυρμίδονες, Myrmidones, in Phthia, Il. ii. 684.
11. Κουρῆτες, Curetes, in Ætolia, Il. ix. 529.
12. Φλεγύαι, Phlegyæ, in Thessaly, Il. xiii. 301.
13. Φῆρες, in Thessaly, Il. i. 267, 8, ii. 733, 4.
And lastly it may be mentioned that in the single word Γραῖα, used (Il.
ii. 498) to designate one of the numerous Bœotian towns, we have an
isolated indication of the existence in the heroic times of the germ of
the names _Greece_ and _Greek_, which afterwards ascended to, and still
retain, such extraordinary fame.
The Homeric text will afford us means of investigation, more or less,
for the greater part of these names, but the main thread of the inquiry
runs with these five; Pelasgians, Hellenes, Danaans, Argeians, Achæans.
In conjunction with the present subject, I shall consider what light
is thrown by Homer on the relations of the Greeks with other races not
properly Greek: the Lycians, the Phœnicians, the Sicels, the Egyptians,
the people of Cyprus, and finally the Persians. The name of the Leleges
will be considered in conjunction with that of the Caucones.
FOOTNOTES:
[122] Cic. de Nat. Deor. i. 4.
[123] Grote’s Hist. vol. ii. pp. 349-51, part ii. ch. 2.
[124] Preface p. ix.
[125] Preface p. xvii.
SECT. II.
_The Pelasgians; and with these_,
_a._ Arcadians. _b._ Γραικοὶ or Græci. _c._ Ionians. _d._ Athenians.
_e._ Egyptians. _f._ Thraces. _g._ Caucones. _h._ Leleges.
It will be most convenient to begin with the case of the Pelasgians:
and the questions we shall have to investigate will be substantially
reducible to the following heads:
1. Are the Pelasgians essentially Greek?
2. If so, what is their relation to the Hellenes, and to the integral
Greek nation?
3. What elements did they contribute to the formation of the composite
body thus called?
4. What was their language?
5. What was the derivation of their name?
6. By what route did they come into Greece?
The direct evidence of the Homeric poems with respect to the Pelasgians
is scattered and faint. It derives however material aid from various
branches of tradition, partly conveyed in the Homeric poems, and partly
extraneous to them, particularly religion, language, and pursuits.
Evidence legitimately drawn from these latter sources, wherever it is
in the nature of circumstantial proof, is far superior in authority to
such literary traditions as are surrounded, at their visible source,
with circumstances of uncertainty.
_The Pelasgians._
I. The first passage, with which we have to deal, is that portion of
the Catalogue of the Greek armament, where Homer introduces us to the
contingent of Achilles in the following lines:
Νῦν αὖ τοὺς ὅσσοι τὸ Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος ἔναιον,
Οἵ τ’ Ἄλον οἵ τ’ Ἀλόπην οἵ τε Τρηχῖν’ ἐνέμοντο,
Οἵ τ’ εἶχον Φθίην ἠδ’ Ἑλλάδα καλλιγύναικα,
Μυρμιδόνες δὲ καλεῦντο καὶ Ἕλληνες καὶ Ἀχαιοὶ,
Τῶν αὖ πεντήκοντα νεῶν ἦν ἀρχὸς Ἀχιλλεύς[126].
All evidence goes to show, that Thessaly stood in a most important
relation to the infant life of the Greek races; whether we consider it
as the seat of many most ancient legends; as dignified by the presence
of Dodona, the highest seat of religious tradition and authority to
the Greeks; as connected with the two ancient names of Helli and
Pelasgi: or lastly in regard to the prominence it retained even down
to and during the historic age in the constitution of the Amphictyonic
Council[127]. All these indications are in harmony with the course of
Greek ethnological tradition.
Now the Catalogue of the Greek armament is divided into three great
sections.
The first comprises Continental Greece, with the islands immediately
adjacent to the coast, and lying south of Thessaly. The second consists
of the Greek islands of the Ægean. The third is wholly Thessalian: and
it begins with the lines which have been quoted.
_The Pelasgians: Pelasgic Argos._
What then does Homer mean us to understand by the phrase τὸ Πελασγικὸν
Ἄργος in this passage? Is it
1. A mere town, or town and district, like Alos, Alope, and others
which follow; or is it
2. A country comprising several or many such?
And if the latter, does it describe
1. That country only over which Peleus reigned, and which supplied the
Myrmidon division; or
2. A more extended country?
First let us remark the use of the article. It is not the manner of
Homer to employ the article with the proper names of places. We may
be sure that it carries with it a distinctive force: as in the Trojan
Catalogue he employs it to indicate a particular race or body of
Pelasgians[128] apart from others. Now the distinctive force of the
article here may have either or both of two bearings.
1. It may mark off the Argos of the Pelasgians from one or more other
countries or places bearing the name of Argos.
2. Even independently of the epithet, the article may be rightly
employed, if Argos itself be not strictly a proper name, but rather a
descriptive word indicating the physical character of a given region.
Thus ‘Scotland’ is strictly a proper name, ‘Lowlands’ a descriptive
word of this nature: and the latter takes the article where the former
does not require or even admit it. And now let us proceed to make our
selection between the various alternatives before us.
Whichever of the two bearings we give to the article, it seems
of itself to preclude the supposition that a mere town or single
settlement can be here intended: for nowhere does Homer give the
article to a name of that class.
Secondly, in almost every place where Homer speaks of an Argos, he
makes it plain that he does not mean a mere town or single settlement,
but a country including towns or settlements within it. The exceptions
to this rule are rare. In Il. iv. 52 we have one of them, where he
combines Argos with Sparta and Mycenæ, and calls all three by the name
of cities. The line Il. ii. 559 probably supplies another. But in a
later Section[129] the general rule will be fully illustrated.
It will also clearly appear, that the name Argos is in fact a
descriptive word, not a proper name, and is nearly equivalent to our
‘Lowlands’ or to the Italian ‘campagna.’
Thirdly: in many other places of the Catalogue, Homer begins by placing
in the front, as it were, the comprehensive name which overrides and
includes the particular names that are to follow; and then, without any
other distinctive mark than the use of the faint enclitic copulative
τε, proceeds to enumerate parts included within the whole which he has
previously named. Thus for instance
οἱ δ’ Εὔβοιαν ἔχον ...
Χαλκίδα τ’ Εἰρετρίαν τε κ.τ.λ.
v. 535, 6.
‘Those who held Eubœa, both Chalcis and Eretria’.... Or in the English
idiom we may perhaps write more correctly, ‘Those who held Eubœa, that
is to say Chalcis, and Eretria’ ... and the rest.
Again,
οἱ δ’ εἶχον κοιλὴν Λακεδαίμονα κητώεσσαν
Φᾶρίν τε Σπάρτην τε ...
v. 581, 2.
‘Those who held channelled Laconia, abounding in wild beasts, namely,
the several settlements of Pharis and Sparta,’ and the rest.
So with Arcadia, v. 603, and Ithaca, v. 631.
We may therefore consider the verse 681,
Νῦν αὖ τοὺς, ὅσσοι τὸ Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος ἔναιον·
as prefatory, and I print it, accordingly, so as to mark a pause.
But, again, is it prefatory only to the division of Achilles, and
is it simply the integer expressing the whole territory from which
his contingent was drawn, or is it prefatory to the whole remainder
of the Catalogue, ending at v. 759, and does it include all the nine
territorial divisions described therein? There is no grammatical or
other reason for the former alternative, while various considerations
recommend the latter.
There is no sign in the poems of any connection between Achilles with
his Myrmidons, or between the kingdom of his father Peleus, and any
particular part of Thessaly under the name of Argos, or Pelasgic Argos.
Although the division of Achilles did not embrace the whole of the
Phthians[130], yet Phthia appears to be the proper description of his
territory, so far as it has a collective name: and there are signs,
which will be hereafter considered, that the name of Phthia itself was
embraced and included within the wider range of another name.
Again, the Pelasgic name, as will be further observed, is not in Homer
specially connected with the South of Thessaly, where the realm of
Peleus lay, but rather with the North, the towns and settlements of
which are enumerated, not in the first, but in the later paragraphs of
this portion of the Catalogue.
In the invocation of the Sixteenth Book, to which reference will
shortly be made, Achilles at once addresses Jupiter as Pelasgic, and as
dwelling afar (τηλόθι ναίων): therefore, the special Thessalian seat of
the god could not be in the dominions of Peleus.
We have observed, again, in the earlier parts of the catalogue various
collective names, afterwards explained distributively, for the various
contingents: but there is not one of this class of names employed
for any of the Eight Divisions which follow that of Achilles. They
all seem to bear the form of particular distributive enumerations,
belonging to the comprehensive head of Pelasgic Argos or Thessaly.
There is also something in the obvious break in the Catalogue,
signified by the words
νῦν αὖ τοὺς ὅσσοι ...
which indicate, as it were, a completely new starting point. There
is nothing else resembling them. They form the introduction to a new
chapter of the lists, after a geographical transition from the islands:
and there is no reason for these marked words, if Pelasgic Argos was
either a mere town district, or a local sovereignty, but a very good
reason, if Pelasgic Argos meant that great integral portion of the
Greek territory, the vale of Thessaly, the particular parts of which
the Poet was about to set forth in so much detail.