Arcadians: first, by describing them as heavy armed, ἀγχιμάχηται:
secondly, by stating that they had no care for maritime pursuits.
In both respects their relation to the Trojans is remarkable. With
the exception of the Arcadians, the epithet ἀγχιμάχηται is nowhere
used except for the substantive Δάρδανοι, and the position of the
Dardanians in Troas very much corresponded with that of the Arcadians
in Greece. Again, the Trojans, as we know, were so entirely destitute
of ships, that Paris had to build them by way of special undertaking.
These resemblances tend to suggest a further likeness. As the Trojans
appear to have been peculiarly given to the pursuits of peace, it is
reasonable to suppose the poet had the same idea of the Arcadians. The
ἀγχιμάχηται is connected with the habits of settled cultivators. A
peasantry furnishes heavy infantry, while light troops are best formed
from a population of less settled habits and ruder manners. And as the
use of ships had much less to do with regular commerce than with piracy
and war,[151] so the absence of maritime habits tends, for the heroic
age, to imply a pacific character. In those days the principal purpose
of easy locomotion was booty: and there was no easy locomotion for
bodies of men, except by ships. Though inclosed by hills, Arcadia was a
horse feeding[152], therefore relatively not a poor country. In later
times it was, next to Laconia[153], the most populous province of the
Peloponnesus; and even in Homer, although its political position was
evidently secondary, it supplied no less than sixty ships with large
crews to each[154]. All this is favourable to the tradition which gives
it a Pelasgian character.
Again, the Arcadians were commanded by Agapenor the son of Ancæus[155].
He would appear not to have been an indigenous sovereign. For we
learn from a speech of Nestor in the twenty-third Book[156], that
games were celebrated at the burial of Amarynceus by the Epeans, in
which he himself overcame in wrestling Ancæus the Pleuronian. Ancæus
therefore was not an Arcadian but an Ætolian: and his son Agapenor was
probably either the first Arcadian of his race, or else a stranger
appointed by Agamemnon to command the Arcadians in the Trojan war.
Their having ships from Agamemnon, and a chief either foreign or of
non-Arcadian extraction, are facts which tend to mark the Arcadians as
politically dependent, and therefore _pro tanto_ as Pelasgian: for it
cannot be doubted that whatever in Greece was Pelasgian at the epoch
of the _Troica_, was also subordinate to some race of higher and more
effective energies.
Again. It will hereafter (I think) be found that the institution of
all gymnastic and martial games was Hellenic and not Pelasgic[157].
In the passage last quoted there is a very remarkable statement, that
there were present at the games Epeans, Pylians, and Ætolians: that is
to say, all the neighbouring tribes, except the Arcadians. Thus we have
a strong presumption established that these games were not congenial
to Arcadian habits: and if the same can be shown from other sources
with respect to the Pelasgians, there is a strong presumption that the
Arcadians were themselves Pelasgian.
Once more. In the sixth book Nestor relates, that in his youth the
Pylians and Arcadians fought near the town of Pheiæ and the river
Iardanos. The Arcadians were commanded by Ereuthalion, who wore the
armour of Areithous. Areithous had met his death by stratagem from
Lycoorgos, who appropriated the armour, and bequeathed it to his
θεραπών, or companion in arms, Ereuthalion. Nestor, on the part of the
Pylians, encountered Ereuthalion, and by the aid of Minerva defeated
him.
From this tale it would appear, first, that Lycoorgus was king of
Arcadia. His name savours of Pelasgian origin, from its relation to
Λυκαών of the later tradition respecting Arcadia, and to Lycaon son
of Priam, descended by the mother’s side from the Leleges; again, to
Lycaon the father of Pandarus; possibly also to the inhabitants of
Lycia. The allusion to his having succeeded by stratagem only, is very
pointed (148),
τὸν Λυκόοργος ἔπεφνε δόλῳ, οὔτι κράτεΐ γε,
and the terms employed appear to indicate a military inferiority: which
accords with the probable relation of the Arcadians, as Pelasgi, to
their Hellenic neighbours. And this again corresponds with the close
of the story; in which Nestor, fighting on the part of the Pylians who
were Achæan, and therefore Hellenic, conquers the Arcadian chieftain
Ereuthalion (Il. vi. 132-56).
It may be remarked once for all, that this military inferiority is not
to be understood as if the Pelasgi were cowards, but simply as implying
that they gave way before tribes of more marked military genius or
habits than themselves; as at Hastings the Saxons did before the
Normans; or as the Russians did in the late war of 1854-6 before the
Western armies.
Lastly, the δῖος applied to Ereuthalion (Il. v. 319), accords with the
use of that epithet for the Pelasgi elsewhere.
Thus a number of indications from Homer, slight when taken separately,
but more considerable when combined, and drawn from _all_ the passages
in which Homer refers to Arcadia, converge upon the supposition that
the Arcadians were a Pelasgian people.
They are supported by the whole stream of later tradition; which placed
Lycaon, son of Pelasgus, in Arcadia, which uniformly represented the
Arcadians as autochthonic[158], and which made them competitors with
the Argives for the honour of having given to the Pelasgians their
original seat in the Peloponnesus.
Here too philology steps in, and lends us some small aid. The name
of Προσέληνοι, which the Arcadians took to themselves, and which is
assumed to mean older than the moon, appears, when so understood, to
express a very forced idea: it is difficult indeed to conceive how
such a name could even creep into use. But if we refer its origin to
πρὸ and Σελλοὶ or Σέλληνες, it then becomes the simple indication of
the historical fact we are looking for, namely, that they, a Pelasgic
population, occupied Arcadia before any of the Hellic or Sellic races
had come into the Peloponnesus.
From its rich pastures, Arcadia was originally well adapted for
Pelasgian inhabitants. Defended by mountains, it offered, as Attica
did through the poverty of its soil, an asylum to the refugees of that
race, when dispossessed from other still more fertile, and perhaps also
more accessible tracts of the Peloponnesus[159]. Hence it is easy to
account both for its original Pelasgian character, and for the long
retention of it.
We seem then to find the Arcadians of Homer (first) politically
dependent, and (secondly) commanded by a foreigner, but yet (thirdly)
valiant in war. It would thus appear that what they wanted was not
animal or even moral courage, but the political and governing element,
which is the main element in high martial talent. All this we shall
find, as we already have in some degree found, to be a Pelasgian
portraiture. And if it should seem to have been drawn with the aid of
conjecture, let it at any rate be observed that it is supported by
the Arcadian character in the historic ages. They appear from various
indications to have been for many generations the Swiss of Greece:
not producing great commanders, and obscure enough, until a very late
date, in the political annals of the country, but abounding in the
materials of a hardy soldiery, and taking service with this or that
section of the Greeks as chance might dictate. For in Xenophon they
boast that when any of the Greeks wanted auxiliaries (ἐπίκουροι) they
came to Arcadia to obtain them: that the Lacedæmonians took them into
company when they invaded Attica, and that the Thebans did the very
same when they invaded Lacedæmon[160]. And Thucydides tells us that,
in the Sicilian war, the Mantineans, with a portion of their brother
Arcadians, fought for hire with the Athenians on one side, while
another contingent from the very same State assisted the Corinthians,
who had come in force to aid in the defence of Syracuse against
them[161].
_The Graians: the Pelasgians and Ceres._
Two other circumstances, slight in themselves, still remain for notice.
1. It was through the authority and practice of the Romans that the
name of Greeks or Graians came ultimately to supplant that of Hellenes.
Out of this fact, which is the most important piece of evidence in our
possession, arises the presumption, that as it was the Pelasgians who
may be said to have supplied the main link between Greece and Italy,
and between the Hellenic and the Roman language, the Graians could not
but have been a branch or portion of that people. Now we know that the
Pelasgians were cultivators of the plains. Bœotia is, as we have seen,
indicated by Thucydides[162] as the richest plain[163] of Greece, and
on that account among the parts most liable to the displacement of
their inhabitants. It was therefore probably a plain where the Pelasgi
would have settled early and in numbers: and it deserves notice, that
the Catalogue[164] placing the town of Graia in Bœotia, places it where
we naturally assume a large, though now, as in Thessaly, subordinate
Pelasgian population to have existed.
Nor is the passage in which Aristotle notices the Γραικοὶ adverse
to the belief that they were a Pelasgian race. He states that the
deluge of Deucalion was in the ancient Hellas: which is the country
reaching from Dodona to the Achelous (αὕτη δ’ ἐστὶν ἡ περὶ τὴν Δωδώνην
καὶ τὸν Ἀχελῷον). This may include either great part, or the whole,
of Thessaly: whether we understand it of the little and Thessalian
Achelous, near Lamia, which was within thirty _stadia_ of the
Spercheus[165]: or of the great Achelous, which skirted the western
border of that country, and whose line of tributaries was fed from the
slopes of Pindus. If we understand the Dodona of Epirus, this will give
a considerable range of country, all of it outside Thessaly. Aristotle
proceeds to say, that there dwelt the Selli, and those then called
Γραικοὶ but now Hellenes (καὶ οἱ καλούμενοι τότε μὲν Γραικοὶ νῦν δὲ
Ἕλληνες). Thus he describes as Γραικοὶ those who, together with the
Selli, were the inhabitants of the country that Homer calls Pelasgic
Argos: so that according to him the Γραικοὶ were not Sellic: and the
time, when they were thus neighbours of the Selli, was the pre-Hellenic
time. This is nearly equivalent to an assertion by Aristotle that the
Graians were Pelasgic, for we know of no other pre-Hellenic race in
Thessaly[166].
2. In vv. 695, 6 we find that (Πύρασος) Pyrasus in Thessaly (probably
deriving its name from πυρὸς wheat, grain), is described as Δήμητρος
τέμενος: and it is the only ground consecrated to Ceres that Homer
mentions. It is material that this should be in Thessaly, the
especially Pelasgic country: for both slight notices in Homer, and
much of later tradition, connect the Pelasgi in a peculiar manner with
the worship of that deity. For example, Pausanias mentions a temple of
Δημήτηρ Πελασγὶς[167] at Corinth even in his own time. This connection
in its turn serves to confirm the character of the Pelasgi as a rural
and agricultural people.
So far as this part of the evidence of Homer is concerned, it goes to
this only, that with the aid of Hesiod it serves to exhibit Ceres in
direct relations with two countries; both with Thessaly, and, as will
now be shown, with Crete; in which also, as we know from Homer (brought
down by Hesiod to a later date), the Pelasgian name still remained when
it had apparently been submerged elsewhere in Greece; and in which
therefore it may be inferred that the Pelasgian element was more than
usually strong and durable.
In the fifth Odyssey[168] we are told that Ceres fell in love with a
son of Iasus (Iasion, in Hesiod Iasios), whom she met νειῷ ἐνὶ τριπόλῳ;
in what country Homer does not say, but Hesiod, repeating the story,
adds it was in Crete, Κρήτης ἐν πίονι δήμῳ[169]. Thus the double
connection is made good.
Over and above this, the name Iasus goes of itself to establish a
Pelasgian origin.
1. Because Ἴασον Ἄργος is an old name for the Peloponnesus, or else
a large portion of it; whereas the Hellenic name was, as we know,
Ἀχαικὸν Ἄργος. And the Ἰασίδαι reigned in Orchomenus[170] two or three
generations before the Neleids. This probably touches a period when
no Hellic tribes had, as far as we know, found their way into the
Peloponnesus[171], and when the dynasties even of the middle and north
were, as is probable, chiefly Pelasgian.
2. Because Ἴασος[172] was the name of one of the Athenian leaders, and
the Athenians were, as we shall find, manifestly Pelasgian. His father
Sphelus is also the son of Boucolus, a name which will be shown to be
of Pelasgic and not Hellenic character[173].
3. Because Dmetor the son of Iasus was the ruler of Cyprus at the
epoch of the Troica, and that island seems to have stood in an
anomalous relation of half-dependence to Agamemnon, which is best
capable of explanation if we suppose it to have been inhabited by a
population still retaining its Pelasgian character. To this question I
shall shortly have occasion to return in a more full consideration of
the case of Cyprus.
Of later tradition, there is abundance to connect Ceres with the
Pelasgians: their character as tillers of the soil, and hers as the
giver of grain: the worship of her at Eleusis, dating from time
immemorial, and purporting to be founded upon rites different from
those in vogue at a later epoch: this too taken in connection with the
Pelasgian origin of Athens, and its long retention of that character.
In the ancient hymn to Ceres, estranged from Jupiter and the other
gods, she comes to Eleusis, and there herself founds the worship; and
she announces in her tale that she was come from Crete:
νῦν αὖτε Κρήτηθεν, ἐπ’ εὐρέα νῶτα θαλάσσης,
ἤλυθον, οὐκ ἐθέλουσα[174].
I even venture to suggest it as possible that the existence of a
τέμενος (or land devoted to the service of any deity) at all, affords
a presumption of a Pelasgic population and institutions. For we find
only three other cases of such endowments: all in places strongly
marked with a Pelasgic character. One is that of the river Sperchius
in Thessaly: a second that of Venus in Cyprus; and the third that of
Jupiter in Gargarus[175].
_The Ionians._
The notices of the Ionians contained in Homer are faint and few: but
they are in entire contradiction with the prevailing tradition.
The word Ἰάονες occurs only once in the poems, where we find the five
contingents of Bœotians, Ionians, Locrians, Phthians, and Epeans,
united in resisting, but ineffectually, Hector’s attack upon the
ships. They are here termed ἑλκεχίτωνες[176], an epithet which is
unfortunately nowhere else employed by the poet. The order in which
they are named is,
1. Bœotians,
2. Ionians,
3. Locrians,
4. Phthians,
5. Epeans.
A description thus commences in three parts, of which the first is
(689-91),
οἱ μὲν Ἀθηναίων προλελεγμένοι· ἐν δ’ ἄρα τοῖσιν
ἦρχ’ υἷος Πετεῶο, Μενεσθεύς· οἱ δ’ ἅμ’ ἕποντο
Φείδας τε Στιχίος τε, Βίας τ’ ἐΰς·
The second describes the leaders of the Epeans: the third of the
Phthians, and these, it says, meaning apparently the Phthian force,
fought in conjunction with the Bœotians, μετὰ Βοιωτῶν ἐμάχοντο
(700). No Bœotian leaders are named: the absence of Oilean Ajax, who
officially led the Locrians, is immediately accounted for by saying
that he was with his inseparable friend, the Telamonian chief.
These Ἰάονες ἑλκεχίτωνες then were the προλελεγμένοι, a chosen band
of the Athenian force; or else they were the force composed of men
picked among the Athenians. But no distinguished quality or act of
war is recounted of the Athenians, either here or elsewhere in the
Iliad. They are simply called μηστῶρες ἀüτῆς,[177] but this is a mere
general epithet, has no reference to any particular conduct, and is not
sustained by any relation of their feats in arms. The five divisions
above named fight in order to be beaten by the Trojans: and we may be
sure that Homer does not produce the flower of the Greeks for such a
purpose. Nor has the Athenian chief Menestheus any distinction whatever
accorded to him, even in the much questioned passage of the Catalogue,
except that of being excellent at marshalling forces.
_The Athenians in the Catalogue._
The passage Il. ii. 546-56, describing the Athenians in the Catalogue,
is of so much historical interest through the various points it
involves, as to deserve a particular consideration, which it may
best receive in this place. Upon it depends some part of the Homeric
evidence relating to the signs of a Pelasgian origin.
Three lines of it must in any case be allowed to remain, in order to
describe the Athenian contingent and its commander.
οἱ δ’ ἄρ’ Ἀθήνας εἶχον, ἐϋκτίμενον πτολίεθρον ... (v. 546.)
τῶν αὖθ’ ἡγεμόνευ’ υἷος Πετεῶο Μενεσθεύς. (552.)
τῷ δ’ ἅμα πεντήκοντα μέλαιναι νῆες ἕποντο. (556.)
To the supposition that this jejune _minimum_ represents the passage
in its original form, it is certainly an objection, that in no other
place of the whole Catalogue has Homer dispatched quite so drily and
summarily any important division of the force.
The remainder of the passage falls into three portions, of which the
first is separable from the two others, and the first with the second
is also separable from the third. They are as follows:
(1)--vv. 546-9.
οἱ δ’ ἄρ’ Ἀθήνας εἶχον, ἐϋκτίμενον πτολίεθρον,
δῆμον Ἐρεχθῆος μεγαλήτορος, ὅν ποτ’ Ἀθήνη
θρέψε Διὸς θυγάτηρ, τέκε δὲ ζείδωρος Ἄρουρα,
κὰδ δ’ ἐν Ἀθήνῃσ’ εἷσεν, ἑῷ ἐνὶ πίονι νηῷ.
There is a reading of Ἀθήνης for Ἀθηνῃσ’: it is disputed whether τέκε
applies to δῆμον or to Erechtheus; whether ἑῷ is to be understood of
Erechtheus or of Minerva; and again, what is the meaning of πίονι as
applied to νηῷ? The variety of lection is not material: the application
of τέκε is clearly to Erechtheus, as seems also that of ἑῷ to
Minerva[178]. Again, the application of the epithet πίονι to the temple
is perhaps sufficiently supported by Od. xii. 346, πίονα νηὸν, and Il.
v. 512, μάλα πίονος ἐξ ἀδύτοιο.
It does not appear that these lines, or the two which follow, were
rejected by the Alexandrian critics, but the Pseudo-Herodotus, in the
Life of Homer, c. 28, states that they were interpolated.
The objections from internal evidence are stated by Payne Knight[179].
1. That the Greeks had no temples at the time of the _Troica_.
2. That as Ἄρουρα is _superficies non orbis Terræ_, so it was not a
known personification at the time of Homer.
As to the first of these, we hear of Trojan temples in the Iliad;
probably also of the Greek temple of Apollo in Il. ix. 404; and of
Greek temples in the Odyssey, beyond all reasonable doubt. We hear
of Ætolian priests in Il. ix. 575; while it is not likely that there
should have been priests without temples.
Again, the circumstances of the Greeks in the Iliad were not such as to
lead to the mention of temples usually or frequently. Therefore this is
not a ground of suspicion against the passage.
As to the second objection, it should be borne in mind that the
Earth, Γαῖα, as well as Ἄρουρα, was apparently to Homer, not less
than to the other ancients, a surface, not a solid (κυκλοτερὴς ὡς ἀπὸ
τόρνου, Herod. iv. 36.) The objection really is, that Ἄρουρα means a
particular class of ground, namely, arable or cultivable land; and that
to personify this class of land by itself is artificial, far-fetched,
and not in the manner of Homer.
To me it appears clear that it would be unnatural for us, but very
doubtful whether it was so for Homer. We could not in poetry well
treat Corn-field or Garden as a person: but the corn-bearing Earth
(ζείδωρος Ἄρουρα) had for the Greeks in their early days a vividness of
meaning, which it has not for us. To us, to the modern European mind,
the gifts of Ceres are but one item in an interminable list of things
enjoyable and enjoyed: to man when yet youthful, while in his first
ruder contact with his mother Earth and the elements, while possessed
of few instruments and no resources, this idea was as determinate, as
it was likewise suggestive and poetical. The Latins have no word by
which to render the word Ἄρουρα in its full meaning, though _arvum_
must have been taken from it, or from the same root with it. It nearly
corresponds with the English ‘glebe’ in its proper use[180]. It
signifies not only corn land, but all productive land, for instance,
vine land, in Il. iii. 246. But to them, so pregnant was the idea,
that besides a crop of epithets such as πολύφορβος and τραφέρη, it
threw off its own inverted image in the epithet, habitual with Homer,
of ἀτρύγετος for θάλασσα, the un-cornbearing sea. Now when the idea
of corn land had been thus vividly conceived, the next step, that of
viewing Ἄρουρα as Γαῖα, was one not very hard to take. The objection
seems to arise out of our unconsciously reading Homer in the false
light of our own familiar associations.
His text affords evidence in support of these views. May it not be
said that the phrase πάτρις Ἄρουρα[181] for _patria_ shows us a great
step towards personification? In the Νεκυία (Od. xi. 489), ἐπάρουρος
is equivalent to ‘alive;’ compare Il. xvii. 447. Again, Ulysses,
the moment he escapes from the river mouth to the shore, kisses the
ζείδωρος Ἄρουρα[182] among the reeds: which seems to show an use of the
term nearly synonymous with Γαῖα or earth. And again, praying for the
glory of Alcinous[183], he says,
τοῦ μέν κεν ἐπὶ ζείδωρον ἄρουραν
ἄσβεστον κλέος εἴη.
The fame of Alcinous could not be confined to fields. So the setting
sun casts shadows on the ἐρίβωλος Ἄρουρα[184]. In both cases the
term so approximates to the meaning of Earth, doubtless by metonymy,
as to be indistinguishable from it. Again Il. iv. 174, σέο δ’ ὄστεα
πύσει Ἄρουρα. Surely the meaning here is Earth, for we are not to
suppose Homer meant to say the bodies of his warriors would lie on
the cultivable land only. But another passage brings us up to actual
personification, that respecting Otus and Ephialtes
οὓς δὴ μηκίστους θρέψε ζείδωρος Ἄρουρα[185].
This objection to Ἄρουρα therefore will not hold good: and the passage
cannot be condemned upon internal evidence. It is referred to by Plato,
in the first Alcibiades[186].
(2)--Vss. 550, 1.
ἐνθάδε μιν ταύροισι καὶ ἀρνείοις ἱλάονται
κοῦροι Ἀθηναίων, περιτελλομένων ἐνιαυτῶν.
Some refer μιν to Minerva, and construe the passage with reference to
the Panathenaic celebration. When so interpreted, as it is contended,
the words betray a palpable anachronism.
Again it is alleged, (1) Homer does not in the Catalogue introduce
general descriptions of the religious rites of Greece, and it is
scarcely likely he should mention here a celebration, which he does not
report to have had anything peculiar in its character. (2) From xi.
729 it appears that cows were sacrificed to Minerva, not bulls: (3)
the tenour of the sentence directs us to Erechtheus, and it involves
worship offered to a local hero.
With respect to the Panathenaica, a difficulty would undoubtedly
arise, if we were obliged to suppose that it contained a reference to
gymnastic games, which we have every reason to treat as having borne in
the age of Homer a marked Hellenic character[187]. But the words imply
no such reference. They speak, at the most, of no more than periodical
sacrifices. This implies an established festival, and nothing beyond
it. Now such a signification raises no presumption whatever against
the genuineness of the passage: because we have one distinct and
unquestionable case in Homer of an established festival of a deity,
that namely of Apollo in the Odyssey. The day of the vengeance of
Ulysses was the ἑορτὴ τοῖο Θεοῖο ἁγνή[188].
So considering the passage, let us next examine the objection taken
to it, that it involves hero-worship[189], which was not known in the
Homeric age.
Now we have in the Odyssey, as well as here in the Iliad, cases of
mortals translated to heaven and to the company of immortals.
In the Odyssey we have, for example, the case of Castor and Pollux,
who enjoyed a peculiar privilege of life after death, and revisited
earth in some mysterious manner on alternate days[190]. And this, too,
although they were buried[191].
Their τίμη πρὸς Ζηνὸς was such that, as the passage in Od. xi. proceeds
to state, they vied with deities;
τίμην δὲ λελόγχασ’ ἶσα θεοῖσιν.
This τίμη must have included honour paid on earth: to be in heaven,
unless in connection with earth and its inhabitants, was not of
itself a τίμη, much less was it the τίμη of the gods. The subject
of hero-worship will be further examined in a later portion of this
work: but for the present it appears sufficiently, that this comes
near to hero-worship. The passage about Erechtheus is no more than a
development of the expression relating to the Tyndarid brothers; and,
though by some steps in advance of it, can hardly be rejected on this
ground alone as spurious. All passages cannot be expected to express
with precisely the same degree of fulness the essential ideas on which
they are founded; and we are not entitled to cut off, on that ground
alone, the one which happens to be most in advance.