some cross wind out of his course into Ithaca. Now this implies that
his point of departure should be one from which by a single change of
wind he could easily be driven upon Ithaca. Again, Sicania must have
been a region known to the Ithacans, or else, instead of merely naming
it, he would have described it to Laertes, as he describes Crete to
Penelope[453].
Now, to fulfil these conditions, no other country than the one I have
named is available. It has only an open sea between it and Greece, and
a passage of some two hundred or two hundred and fifty miles, so that
a wind driving him from his course might readily carry him across. And
there is no other tract on the western side of the Adriatic, which is
so likely to have been intended by Homer. Iapygia, beyond the Tarentine
gulf, lies northward even of Scheria; and, like Scheria, so Iapygia
was, we may be assured, in the Outer or unknown sphere of geography for
Homer.
On the other hand, the Bruttian coast might well be known in Greece,
though by dim rumour, yet better than Sicily: first, because it was
nearer; and secondly, inasmuch as it did not in the same manner
present the appearance of an island, its bearings would be more easily
determined, and therefore its site was less likely to be mistaken.
Lastly, history assures us that the Sicanian name prevailed in Italy,
before it passed over into Sicily. Therefore the country of the Bruttii
is in all likelihood the Homeric Sicania.
But again, we hear in Homer of Σικελοὶ, though not of a Σικελία. The
Suitors advise Telemachus to send his guests to the Σικελοὶ[454] for
sale: adding that a good price, a renumerating price (ἄξιον), would
thus be obtained for them. On the other hand, a Sicelian female slave
is the wife of Dolios, and looks after Laertes in his old age[455].
From these passages we may infer,
1. That the country of the Σικελοὶ was within the remoter knowledge of
Ithacan seamen.
2. That they were a rich people; since they were able to pay a good
price for slaves.
The first point, as we have seen, would make the Σικελοὶ suitable
inhabitants of Sicania.
But likewise as to the second, Homer has given us some indications of
their wealth: (_a_) in the name Ἀφείδας (the open-handed) ascribed by
Ulysses to his father; (_b_) in that of Ἐπήριτος (object of contention)
assumed for himself; (_c_) perhaps also in the name Ἀλύβας, akin to
that of Ἀλύβη[456], where there was silver, and to that of Ἀρύβας a
rich Sidonian[457]. This name probably indicates the possession of
metallic mines, which for that period we may consider as a special sign
of advancement and opulence.
Then if we turn for a moment to the historic period, it is in this very
country that we find planted the great and luxurious cities of Sybaris
and Crotona[458].
Now as the people called Siceli, and the country called Sicania, are
thus placed in relations of proximity by Homer, so they continue
throughout all antiquity. The reports collected by Thucydides represent
the Sicanians as giving their name to Sicily, and displacing the former
name Trinacria, which is identical with the Homeric Thrinacie. At a
later time, the Sicilians passed from Italy into Sicily, and, as was
said, upon rafts; that is to say, across the strait, and consequently
from the country which, as I contend, is the Homeric Sicania. These
Siceli were rumoured to have overcome the Sicani, and to have again
changed the name of the island to Sicily. It is yet more material to
note, that Thucydides says there were still Siceli in Italy when he
himself lived: and he adds the tradition that Italus, a king of theirs,
gave his name to the Peninsula[459].
To these reports, which form a part of the account given by Thucydides,
we may add the statement of Dionysius, that the Σικελοὶ were the oldest
inhabitants of Latium, and were displaced by the Pelasgi[460]. This
implies their movement southward, and makes it probable that we should
meet them in Bruttium, on their way to Sicily, perhaps pressing, in
that region, upon the Sicani.
Such an hypothesis would be in entire agreement with Homer, who
evidently represents the Sicanian as older than the Sicelian name: for
the first had become territorial, when the latter was only tribal or
national. And all this is in agreement with Thucydides in the essential
point, that he makes the Sicanians precede the Siceli: while, though
the tradition he reports brings the Sicani from Spain under pressure
from the Ligures[461], he need not mean to exclude the supposition,
that they may have come by land down the Italian peninsula. Though it
is probably wrong to confound the Siceli with the Sicani[462], it would
thus on all hands appear, that they were but successive waves of the
tide of immigration advancing southward.
There is a further evidence that Homer meant to place Sicania within
the Greek maritime world, and not beyond it. It is this. In his
fabulous narrative to Laertes, Ulysses apprises the old man, that he
had seen his son five years before in Sicania, hopeful of reaching his
home[463]. Now this is a proof that the place was in the Inner or
known sphere of geography: for in the outer circle, as for instance at
Æolia, he never has any knowledge or reckoning of his own as to the
power of reaching home: it was Æolus who gave him the Zephyr to take
him home, not he who knew that if he got a Zephyr he would reach home.
And in like manner he is supplied with express directions by Calypso:
while Menelaus, not being absolutely beyond the known world, has no
instructions for his voyage from Proteus, who plays for him the part of
divine informant.
Thus then it appears, that Homer knew something of that part of the
Italian continent, which we may term the sole of the foot. Again,
if we look onward to the heel, Iapygia or Apulia, and observe its
proximity to Corcyra or Scheria, we shall perceive that mariners in
the time of Homer might take the route, which was afterwards pursued
by the Athenian fleet under Nicias and his colleagues. But this is
conjectural; and as Scheria was so faintly known, we must suppose
Apulia to have been still more faintly conceived. Beyond Apulia Homer
gives no sign of any acquaintance whatever with Italy. It therefore
at once appears possible that he had no idea of the junction by land
between the Greek and Italian peninsulas, and that he had imaged to
the northward only an expanse of sea. I postpone, however, the further
discussion of this subject.
_Epirus and the Thesproti._
_Epirus in Homer._
The Ithacan Suitors threaten to send Irus (Od. xviii. 84, 115), and
again Ulysses (Od. xxi. 307), to a certain lawless and cruel king
named Echetus; and in the two first passages we have the additional
indication ἤπειρόνδε. This expression used in Ithaca can refer to no
other mainland than that of the Greek Peninsula: of which even the
nearer parts[464] pass by that name.
As on the one hand Echetus is savage, and evidently foreign (for we
never find a Greek sold by Greeks as a slave to a Greek), he must be
beyond the Greek limit: doubtless beyond the Thesproti, who were allies
(ἄρθμιοι, Od. xvi. 427) of Ithaca. On the other hand, he could not
be remote, or the Suitors would not have spoken so glibly of sending
persons there. Hence we can hardly doubt, that this Echetus was a
sovereign in the region of Epirus, between Scheria and the Thesproti:
and the territorial name Ἤπειρος may thus be at least as ancient as the
Poet.
In like manner we find in the Sixth Odyssey a female slave named
Eurymedusa, in the household of Alcinous, the old nurse of Nausicaa.
She was brought by sea Ἀπείρηθεν, and is described as γρηῢς
Ἀπειραίη[465]. This is probably meant to indicate some part of the same
region.
Thus Epirus would appear to form, along with Scheria and Sicania,
Homer’s line of vanishing points, or extreme limits of actual
geography, towards the north-west and west of Greece. To trace these
vanishing points all round the circuit of his horizon, whenever it
can be done, is most useful towards establishing the fundamental
distinction between his Inner and Outer, his practical and poetical
geography. In order to mark that distinction more forcibly, I would, if
I might venture it, even call the former of these alone Geography, and
the latter his territorial Skiagraphy.
More nearly within the circle of every day intercourse with Greece than
the barbarous Echetus and his Epirus, and yet hovering near the verge
of it, are the Thesprotians of the Odyssey.
Ulysses, in the Fourteenth Book, in the course of his fabulous
narrative to Eumæus, relates that, when he was on his way from Crete
to Libya, the ship in which he was sailing foundered, but that, by the
favour of Jupiter, he floated on the mast for nine days, and, on the
tenth, reached the land of the Thesprotians.
_Thesproti in Homer._
This statement suffices to fix that people to the north of the gulf
of Ambracia (Arta). For had they lain to the south of that gulf, this
would not have been the first land for him to make, as it would have
been covered by the islands.
The narrative which follows is very curious. The Thesprotian king
Pheidon, according to the tale of Ulysses, took good care of him
without making him a slave (ἐκομίσσατο ἀπριάτην); which, as he was cast
helpless on the shore, common usage would apparently have justified,
and even suggested. The king’s son, who found him in his destitute
condition, had his share in this great kindness; for he took him home,
like Nausicaa, and clothed him. Here, says the tale, he heard news
of Ulysses, who had proceeded from thence to Dodona to inquire about
his fate, and had left much valuable property in trust with these
hospitable and worthy people. But he goes on to relate, still in the
assumed character, that, instead of keeping him to wait for Ulysses,
the Thesprotian king took advantage of the opportunity afforded by a
Thesprotian ship about to sail to Dulichium for corn, and dispatched
him by it as a passenger to his home. The crew, however, infected with
the kidnapping propensities of navigators, maltreated and bound him,
with the intention of selling him for a slave: but, when they landed on
the Ithacan beach to make a meal, he took advantage of the opportunity,
and made his escape[466].
This ingenious fable is referred to, and in part repeated in subsequent
passages of the poem[467], with no material addition, except that the
country is called (πίων δῆμος xix. 271) a rich one.
But another passage[468], quite independent of all the former, adds
a highly characteristic incident. Antinous, the insolent leader of
the Suitors, is sharply rebuked by Penelope, and is reminded that
his father Eupeithes had come to the palace as a fugitive from the
Ithacan people, dependent on Ulysses for deliverance from their wrath.
The reason of their exasperation was, that Eupeithes had joined
the buccaneering Taphians in a piratical expedition against the
Thesprotians, who were allies of Ithaca.
We have here a very remarkable assemblage of characteristics, which all
tend to prove, and I think very sufficiently prove, the Pelasgianism
of the Thesprotians. The humane and genial reception of the stranded
sea-farer is in exact accordance with the behaviour of the Egyptian
king[469], and his people to him on a previous occasion. The fact that
he was not enslaved, suggests it as most probable, that there were no
slaves in the Thesprotian country: which would entirely accord with
the position of the Pelasgians, as themselves not the conquerors of a
race that had preceded them, but the first inhabitants of the spots
they occupied in the Greek peninsula. The richness of their country
is further in harmony with the account of Egypt, and with their
addiction to agricultural pursuits. The feigned deposit by Ulysses of
his metallic stores with them proves, that they were not a predatory,
and therefore proves, for that period, that they were not a poor
people. The name Pheidon, or thrifty, given to the king, agrees with
the character which, as we shall elsewhere find, attaches in a marked
manner to Pelasgian proper names. And lastly, they were the subject of
attack by Taphian buccaneers; which tends to show their unoffending and
unaggressive character.
On the other side, we find them trading by sea to Dulichium: and we
find the crew of the trader attempting to kidnap Ulysses. But as the
Pelasgians were not in general navigators, it may very well have
happened that the trade of the country had fallen into the hands of
some distinct, possibly some Lelegian, or even some Hellenic race,
which may have settled there for the purpose of carrying on a congenial
employment, and which, like other traders of the time, would be ready
upon occasion to do a turn in the way of piracy. It is to be remembered
that there was a Thesprotian[470] Ephyre; which proves, as I believe,
an early infusion of some race connected with the Hellenic stem.
I conclude, therefore, from Homer, that the Thesprotians were
Pelasgian. And this conclusion is strongly sustained by the
extra-Homeric tradition. Herodotus states, that they were the parent
stock from whence descended the Thessalians[471], a report which I only
follow to the extent of its signifying an affinity between the early
settlers on the two sides of Mount Pindus. And Dionysius[472] appears
to imply the opinion, that they were Thesprotian Pelasgians who settled
in Italy.
I have already stated, that I can hardly think Homer points out to
us more than one Dodona in the Iliad and Odyssey respectively. At
the same time, if the supposition of two Dodonas be admissible, the
circumstances suggested by him would help to account for it. For the
Dodona of the Iliad is described as Pelasgic and also Hellic: that
is, as we must I think suppose, having been Pelasgic, it had become
Hellic. The Dodona of the Odyssey (on this supposition) is Thesprotian,
that is to say Pelasgic, only. The solution would then be, that the
Pelasgians of the original Dodona, when displaced, claimed to have
carried their oracle along with them, while the Hellic intruders in
like manner set up a counter-claim to have retained it in its original
seat. The history of Christendom supplies us with cases bearing no
remote analogy to this, in connection with the removal of a great seat
of ecclesiastical power.
_Cadmeans._
_Cadmeans in Homer._
We have seen that the name of Ino Leucothee is sufficiently identified
with a circle of Phœnician and outer-world traditions. And, as her
name and position give us directly, or by suggestion, the principal
testimony borne by Homer to Cadmus her father, this will be the most
convenient place for considering his connection with Greece.
We are justified, I think, in at once assuming, first, from his
relation to Ino, that he was Phœnician; secondly, from the deification
of his daughter, that he was a ruler or prince. And thirdly, Ino
appears to Ulysses in his distress as a protecting deity. Now as, when
mortal, she had been Phœnician by extraction, and as she thus shows her
sympathies with the Hellenic race, we must assume a link between these
two facts. They would be associated in an appropriate manner, if the
family of Cadmus her father had become naturalized in the possession of
a Greek sovereignty.
Diodorus Siculus has handed down a tradition respecting Cadmus[473],
which is important from its combination with circumstantial evidence;
and which is in harmony with Homer, as it appears to represent the
Phœnician immigrant at a well known and natural resting-place on his
way towards Greece. It is to the effect, that Cadmus put into Rhodes,
built there a temple of Neptune (and here we should remember the
worship, and, as some think, the temple of Neptune[474] in Scheria),
established a line of hereditary priests, and deposited offerings to
Minerva of Lindos. Among these, there remained in after-times a finely
wrought kettle or caldron, executed in an antique style of art, and
bearing an inscription in the Phœnician character.
In connection with the name of Cadmus, we have the Homeric designations
of Καδμεῖοι and Καδμείωνες. They appear to be synonymous: but the
patronymical form of the latter corroborates the opinion that there
was an individual Cadmus from whom the names proceeded, that they were
properly dynastic, and not names taken from a nation or extended race.
We have next to inquire as to the period within which this race of
Cadmeans held sway in Bœotia, the district where alone we hear of them.
When did they begin, and when did they close?
The extra-Homeric tradition would throw Cadmus back to one of the very
earliest periods, which would appear to be included within Homer’s
knowledge upwards. The generations are arranged as follows:
1. Cadmus.
2. Polydorus.
3. Labdacus.
4. Laius.
5. Œdipus.
6. Eteocles and Polynices.
The last-named brothers are contemporaries of Tydeus. It follows that
Cadmus is placed seven generations before the Trojan war; he is made
contemporary with Dardanus, and he appears in Greece about three and a
half generations before Minos came to Crete.
Now this is not the presumption, to which the Homeric text would
give rise. For it does not seem likely that, if a family of an
active race like the Phœnicians made their way into Greece, and
managed to establish a sovereignty within it seven generations before
the _Troica_, upwards of a century should elapse before any other
adventurer was found to repeat so advantageous a process.
Further, the Cadmeans were in Thebes. But Cadmus was not its founder.
It was founded, as we are told in the Eleventh Odyssey[475], by Zethus
and Amphion, sons of Jupiter and of Antiope, daughter of Asopus: two
persons who have thus, on both sides of their parentage, the signs
of being the first known of their own race in the country. From the
appearance of Antiope in the Νεκυΐα, where none but Hellenic and
naturalized Shades are admitted, we may infer that Amphion and Zethus
were not Pelasgian but Hellene. Again, as they _first_ founded and
fortified Thebes, they must have preceded Cadmus there. What then was
their probable date?
In the Νεκυΐα, so far as regards the women, Homer gives some appearance
of meaning to introduce the persons and groups in chronological order.
The first of them all is Tyro[476], who seems to have been of the
family of Æolus, and to have lived about four generations before the
_Troica_.
The next is Antiope, mother of Amphion and Zethus.
After her come (1) Alcmene, mother of Hercules,
(2) Epicaste, mother of Œdipus, and
(3) Chloris, mother of Nestor.
All of whom belong to a period three generations before the war.
After these follow Leda and Ariadne, with others whose epoch the text
of Homer does not enable us to fix. But Ariadne, the bride of Theseus,
and aunt of Idomeneus (the μεσαιπόλιος), stands at about one generation
and a half before the war: and Leda, as the mother of Castor and Pollux
who were dead, and of Helen whose marriageable age dated from so many
years before the action of the Iliad, as well as of Clytemnestra,
belongs to about the same date.
On the whole therefore it would appear, from the signs of chronological
order, that Antiope can hardly have been older than Tyro, and therefore
can only have been about four, and her sons about three generations
before the War. We have no vestiges of their race in Homeric history,
except that, in the Nineteenth Odyssey[477], there is recorded the
death of Itylus, the son of Zethus, in his boyhood. The Amphion Iasides
of Od. xi. 283, must be another person. But, if this reasoning be
sound, Cadmus, who succeeds to them in Thebes, was probably much more
recent than the later tradition makes him, and may have come into
Greece only a short time before Minos.
His name appears to have been given as a dynastic name to his subjects,
or the ruling class of them, and to have continued such under his
descendants. For not only does it appear to have begun with him, but
with the fall of the family it at once disappears.
In five different places of the poems, Homer has occasion to refer to
occurrences, which took place at Thebes under the Cadmean dynasty,
in the time of Œdipus and of his sons: and in these five passages he
employs the names Καδμεῖοι and Καδμείωνες no less than eight times for
the people, while he never calls them by any other name[478].
But when we come down to the time of the war, this dynasty has
disappeared with Eteocles and Polynices: the country of Bœotia, which
it had once governed, seems to have lost its cohesion, and its troops
are led by a body of no less than five chiefs. And now, whenever Homer
has occasion to refer to the inhabitants of the country, they are never
Καδμεῖοι or Καδμείωνες, but they are Βοιωτοί. The words Βοιωτὸς and
Βοιώτιος are found nine times in the Iliad.
Nations called by a name which is derived from a national source, are
likely to retain it longer than those which are designated dynastically
from the head of a ruling family: as they must change their dynasties
more frequently than they can receive new infusions of race and blood,
powerful enough to acquire a predominance over the old.
Strabo indeed says[479], that Homer calls the Cadmeans of the Troic
war by the name of Minyæ. But no Minyæ are named in Homer at all,
although he speaks of the Ὀρχόμενος Μινυήïος, and of the ποταμὸς
Μινυήïος in Peloponnesus, and though there was perhaps there also a
Minyan Orchomenos. Even if Minyæ were named in Homer as a race, it
would be strange that Homer should without a reason alter, for the
period of the war, that use of the Cadmean name, to which he adheres
elsewhere so strictly, as to show that he is acting on a rule. Whereas
the transition to Βοιωτοὶ is not only intelligible, but politically
descriptive.
Upon the foregoing facts we may found several observations:
1. The Cadmean name would seem to be strictly dynastic: as it makes its
first appearance on the spot where Cadmus has reigned, and disappears
at the same point, along with the extinction of his family.
2. The use of the Cadmean name by Homer, compared with his departure
from it, each having appropriate reference to the circumstances of
different epochs, appears to be a marked example of a careful and
historic manner of handling local names with reference to the exact
circumstances of place, time, and persons, and not in the loose manner
of later poetry.
3. Our whole view of Cadmus and the Cadmeans from Homer has been
attained by circuitous inference: and, presuming it to be a just
one, we have here a very singular example of the poet’s reticence
with respect to all infusion of foreign blood and influence into his
country.
FOOTNOTES:
[415] Od. xi. 260.
[416] Od. xi. 568.
[417] Od. iv. 564.
[418] Il. ii. 824; and xii. 19.
[419] Od. iii. 320-2; and xiv. 257.
[420] Od. xiv. 231, 243-8.
[421] Od. xiv. 237; Il. xiv. 321.
[422] Od. i. 105; ii. 180.
[423] Od. i. 183.
[424] Od. xv. 425.
[425] Od. xv. 415.
[426] See Wood on Homer, p. 48.
[427] Od. xvii. 383.
[428] Nägelsbach, Homerische Theologie 80-3.
[429] There were columns outside the doors, for example, of the palace
of Ulysses in Ithaca. Od. xvii. 29. This construction of the metaphor
would come nearly to the same point, by making it mean the doors of
Ocean.
[430] Hermann Opusc. vii. 253. Nägelsbach, ii. 9, note.
[431] Blakesley’s Introduction to Herodotus, p. xiv.
[432] Strabo iii. 2. 13, 14. pp. 149, 50.
[433] Mure, Greek Literature, i. 510.
[434] Il. xv. 630. xvii. 21. ii. 723.
[435] Il. xxii. 15.
[436] Il. iii. 365.
[437] Od. xx. 201.
[438] Il. xxiii. 439.
[439] Od. i. 52 and x. 137.
[440] Od. iv. 460.
[441] Od. xvii. 248.
[442] Od. iv. 410.
[443] Od. x. 289.
[444] As perhaps does Amphitrite, mentioned four times in the Odyssey,
never in the Iliad.
[445] I shall consider further the construction of Il. xiv. 321, as it
bears on the connection of Minos with Phœnicia, in treating the subject
of the Outer Geography.
[446] Od. xv. 252, 3.
[447] Od. x. 492.
[448] Nägelsbach ii. 9.
[449] See Studies on Religion, sect. iii.
[450] I have given the accepted, and perhaps the more probable meaning;
but the word is also well adapted to signify the _tidal_ Ocean. In the
Mediterranean, as is well known, the tidal action is not perceived.
[451] Thucyd. vi. 42, 44.
[452] Od. xxiv. 304-8.
[453] Od. xix. 172.
[454] Od. xx. 383.
[455] Od. xxiv. 211, 366, 389.
[456] Il. ii. 857. Schönemann Geog. Hom. p. 31.
[457] Od. xv. 426.
[458] Cramer’s Italy, ii. pp. 354, 391.
[459] Thucyd. vi. 2.
[460] Dionys. i. 9.
[461] Thuc. ibid.