country, or to any of the races known to have inhabited it, or to any
employment or habit of life, or to any deity. It floats before us like
Delos on the Ægean, without any visible or discoverable root. And the
only question is, whether the slight positive evidence at our command
is not so limited, and so hemmed in on all sides by negatives, as to
determine the hypothesis that may be drawn from it to one particular
form, by forbidding us to move, except in one particular direction.
It is quite plain that the Danaan name must have had some root, lying
very deep in the history or legends of Greece: since it would not have
been possible for Homer, as a poet of the people, handling a subject
the most profoundly national, to describe the Greek army under any
name, except one associated with some of the most splendid, or the most
venerable, traditions of the country.
_Danaan name dynastic._
In one way alone could this name fulfil the required condition. If
its root was not territorial, nor tribal, nor religious, it could
only be personal. Was there, then, a Danaus known to the early
history of Greece, who founded a dynasty in its centre of power, at
a period anterior to the Hellenic history of the country, so as not
to be in competition with the honours of that race? If so, then it
is intelligible that the Greeks might be called Δαναοὶ by Homer. If
that dynasty had passed away, we can well understand why Δαναοὶ should
not be a name of contemporary Greeks as such: just as Καδμεῖοι was
not an admissible designation for contemporary Bœotians. Further, if
it had never been an historical appellative at all, but was the mere
reflection cast by the figure of a great primitive personage, and
incorporated, for the Poet’s purpose, in a designation made national
by him, then we can see how natural it was, that he should limit the
word altogether to an heroic and martial sense; just as Cambrian
for Welshman, or Caledonian for Scotchman, or Gael for Highlander,
or son of Albion for Englishman, would be an appellation naturally
appropriated to romance, or war, or any strain impregnated with a
strong vein of imagery or passion, but yet would not be suitable for
the purposes of pure history.
In this inquiry concerning the Danaan name, we must, I think, carry
along with us, as a cardinal element in the case, that which we know
from other sources respecting the manner in which Homer was wont to
veil all traces of the entry from elsewhere of races, persons, or
influences into Greece. It must never be forgotten, that, throughout
the whole of the poems, there is apparently not one single statement,
made to us with the intention of conveying information respecting
the colonization of Greece from abroad. It seems to be the Poet’s
intention that we should assume all Greek manners, institutions, and
races, to have sprung out of the very soil: and it is only accidentally
that he imparts to us any information or suggestion on this subject,
when he is in quest of some other purpose, and unawares lets fall a
gleam of light upon some foreign settlement or immigration.
All this is conformable to the course of natural feeling. Shakespeare
found it worth his while to sing of Lear, but not of Hengist and Horsa;
of the English in France, not of the Normans in England. And though
Danish invasions have not robbed our great Alfred of his fame, yet for
a long time, in order to guard its brilliancy, it may have been that we
coloured in our own favour the military history of the period. Arrivals
from abroad, in the early periods of the life of a nation, are usually
the conquests, in one form or another, of foreigners over natives: of
what is strange to the soil over what is associated with it. It can
hardly be, that such narratives should be popular. An abnormal instance
to the contrary may be found in the fable, which deduced the Julian
line in Rome from Æneas: but this was for poetry composed a thousand
years after the date of its narrative; composed when the line of
national continuity with those, whom Æneas was taken to have conquered,
had been completely broken; and composed for the ears of a court, when
the pulse of national life had become almost insensible. Even the
process, by which Hellenes mastered Pelasgians, is nowhere professedly
related by Homer; whose purpose it was to unite more closely the
elements of the nation, and not to record that they had once been
separate.
_Compared with the Cadmean._
Except in the one point, that the name Καδμεῖοι had had a clear and
undeniable place in prior history, there is a marked analogy between
the modes in which Homer treats the Cadmean and the Danaan stories.
In each of the two cases, general tradition tells us of a foreigner,
who enters Greece and founds a dynasty. This dynasty, after acting
powerfully on the destinies of the country for some generations, in
the course of time disappears, the name dying with it. All this,
in the first of the two instances, we have seen to be sufficiently
supported by inference and suggestion from Homer. Yet Homer never
mentions Cadmus, except as it were by chance, in the act of giving the
extraction of Leucothee[625]; nor states that he came from abroad;
nor that he founded a dynasty at all. He gives us Cadmus, father of
Leucothee, and Cadmeans, and lets us make of them what we can. So here
he gives us Danaans, and not indeed a Danaus, but a Danae, who is
presumably related to Danaus.
2. In Iliad xiv., Jupiter renders an account of his passion for various
women, all of them persons in the very highest positions; and among
these for Danae[626].
Δανάης καλλισφύρου Ἀκρισιώνης,
ἣ τέκε Περσῆα, πάντων ἀριδείκετον ἀνδρῶν.
_The line of Danae._
In this passage we have Danae exhibited as the head of a line of
sovereigns through Perseus, who occupied the most ancient and
most distinguished seat of power in Greece, that of the Eastern
Peloponnesus. From her, indeed, the derivation of sovereignty is
locally continuous down to the time of Homer. Perseus is the father
of Sthenelus[627], and Sthenelus of Eurystheus. Next to him, we find
Pelops in possession of the throne, with a new sceptre, betokening
a new sovereignty. That is to say, he was no longer a merely local
sovereign, whose highest honour it was to be first in that class,
_primus inter pares_; but he had also acquired an extensive supremacy,
reaching beyond his own borders, or those of the Achaic Argos, and
embracing all Greece, with a multitude of islands[628].
Such is the line of Danae downwards: beginning with a son, whose
paternal extraction we shall consider hereafter[629]. And her epoch,
as we shall see, is six generations before the Trojan war. For tracing
her upwards, we have no means from Homer, except such as are afforded
by the word Ἀκρισιώνη. The use of a patronymic which describes Danae
as the daughter (most probably) of Acrisius, in some degree makes it
likely that Acrisius either was the brother of Danaus, or otherwise
collaterally related, rather than directly descended from him. For,
had Danae herself been descended from Danaus, it seems improbable
that she would have drawn her patronymic from the less distinguished
Acrisius, unless Danaus was a very remote ancestor. But this is very
improbable: for seven generations before Troy form the utmost limit
of Homer’s historical knowledge; and where all besides falls within
that line, it is improbable that there should be a single exception
reaching greatly beyond it. And again, from the course of migration, it
is likely that we should find his oldest traditions in Asia, and not
in Europe. On the other hand, that Homer should stop short in tracing
the lineage onwards, just before he came to the foreign immigrant,
is in exact conformity with what he has done in omitting to connect
Œdipus and Epicaste[630] with Cadmus, or Pelops with Tantalus. In the
former of these two cases, the omission all the more cogently suggests
design, because Epicaste is the only woman introduced in the Νεκυΐα
without mention of her husband, among all those, eight in number, of
whose cases he gives us the detail. It is most probable, therefore,
that Homer meant the genealogy to stand as follows: and at the least,
it must not be thought that the text of Homer gives countenance either
directly or indirectly to those later fables, which throw back the
first Greek dynasties into a very remote antiquity.
1. Danaus = Acrisius
|
2. Danae
3. Perseus
4. Sthenelus
5. Eurystheus (= Hercules) = Pelops
6. Atreus = Thyestes
7. Agamemnon = Ægisthus.
_Epoch of the dynasty._
According to these presumptions, Danaus is contemporary with
Dardanus[631]: and also is just such a person as Homer’s poetic use of
the name Δαναοὶ would lead us to expect; one who came from abroad, and
is on that account kept in majestic shadow; one who founded a throne,
but did not introduce a race: one who may have given his people the
name of Δαναοὶ, as Cadmus gave that of Καδμεῖοι, for the time while
his dynasty was in power, but whose name disappeared, together with
its sway. We have, it will be remembered in Homer, no Homeric legends
of the period of the Danaids, so that we do not know whether the name
Δαναοὶ was then in any degree national or not.
According to the post-Homeric tradition, Danaus was an Egyptian[632],
brother of Ægyptus. He migrated into Greece, and became king of Argos.
Acrisius and Prœtus were reputed to be his great-grandsons.
In Homer, too, we have an Acrisius and a Prœtus: but Prœtus is
contemporary with Bellerophon, two generations before the _Troica_, so
that he is later by four generations than Acrisius, and later by at
least four than Danaus.
The more recent tradition, contradicting Homer positively in this, as
in so many instances, carries Prœtus back to the time of Acrisius, and
then, paying some respect to the interval between Prœtus and Danaus,
gives compensation by thrusting Danaus himself three generations
further back.
Of the posterity of the Homeric Prœtus we hear nothing, and with him
the Danaid line, prolonged in a junior branch, may have expired.
Tradition places him on the throne of Tiryns. His holding a separate
sovereignty in Argolis is not of itself in conflict with the Homeric
account of the Perseids, who reigned at Mycenæ; because we find in
Argos itself a separate sovereignty under Diomed at the epoch of the
_Troica_. But the terms used are peculiar. Prœtus ruled over Ἀργεῖοι;
πολὺ φέρτερος ἦεν
Ἀργείων· Ζεὺς γάρ οἱ ὑπὸ σκηπτρῷ ἐδάμασσεν[633].
The account of Eurystheus in the Nineteenth Book may, however, imply
that he was king of all the Ἀργεῖοι: and at first sight there is some
conflict here, because both Eurystheus and Prœtus may be said to
date two generations before the _Troica_. The solution is probably
as follows. The passion of Antea, wife of Prœtus, for Bellerophon,
suggests that her husband was more advanced in life than Bellerophon,
whom, as the grandfather of Glaucus, we may take as justly representing
in time the second generation before the war. On the other hand, as
Eurystheus was the contemporary of Hercules, and Hercules had a son,
as well as grandsons in the war, we may assume Eurystheus to have been
junior to the generation, as Prœtus was its senior; so that they need
not have been contemporary princes.
The historic place assigned to Danaus, either as we might fix it from
Homer, or as the later tradition would determine it, keeps him clear
of the earliest Hellic traditions in southern Greece. None of these
can well be carried back beyond Sisyphus; and Sisyphus stands at five
generations before the war, while Danaus cannot be less than seven. Had
Homer made Danaus synchronise with the earlier Hellic sovereignties, it
would have been, in my view, a presumption against his Egyptian origin,
or his existence altogether. For an Egyptian stranger was little likely
to attain to power, where Hellenes were already in the field: the more
energetic genius would subdue the less vigorous. The expulsion of the
Hellenic Bellerophon, and the plot against his life, may really have
been connected with the political jealousies of the Danaids towards
the formidable new-comers of the Æolid stem: nor do I read the fable
of Jupiter with Danae otherwise than as a veil, used to give dignity
to the commencement of an Hellic sovereignty, which, in the person of
Perseus, partly succeeded, partly supplanted, the Danaid throne.
Danaus has been mentioned by Hesiod, the first among the later
authorities. This poet states, that he relieved Argos from drought: an
operation which harmonises well with the tradition that brings him from
a country dependent on the irrigation of the Nile, as the conditions of
cultivation there could not but lead at an early date to care in the
management of water. He likewise calls Perseus by the name of Δαναίδης,
and also terms him the son of Danae[634].
The only point of connection between the Danaids and the Argive or
Argeian name is, that Prœtus, the last of the Danaids, reigns over
Argeians. But this is at a period when the Perseid house, which was
evidently Hellenic, has already become the first in rank among the
Greek thrones, and has given, as is probable, the Argeian name to the
people of Eastern Peloponnesus. The whole evidence, therefore, throws
the Danaan name, with all its incidents, back to a period anterior to
that of Argeians and of Achæans.
But if the Danai were thus before the Ἀργεῖοι and before the Ἀχαιοὶ,
whom did they follow?
_Post-Homeric tradition._
The evidence of Æschylus in the Supplices supports the tradition
which makes them immediately follow the Pelasgi[635], or which, more
strictly, represents their name as the first of those borne by the
Greek nation after it had ceased to be simply Pelasgic.
By Euripides was conveyed a kindred tradition, that Danaus, having come
to Argos, colonized the city of Inachus; and that the Peloponnesians,
previously called Pelasgiotes, were thereafter called Danai[636].
Πελασγιῶτας δ’ ὠνομασμένους, τὸ πρὶν
Δαναοὺς καλεῖσθαι νόμον ἔθηκ’ ἀν’ Ἑλλάδα.
These traditions, received through the tragedians, coincide with the
evidence of the Homeric text. For this text, in the first place,
clearly throws the Danaan line farther back than that of any of the
Hellic tribes. Secondly, by negative evidence, no where employing the
Danaan name in the pre-Troic legends, he leaves us to infer that it
must have been the oldest, and the most remote from common use, of his
three great appellations. Thirdly, Homer supplies us with no other name
which there is the smallest ground for inserting between the Danaans
and the ancient Pelasgi, of whom we have found traces, direct and
indirect, in so many places of the poems.
Thus, then, although we can plead little but conjecture from Homer with
respect to the person Danaus, we seem to be justified in concluding
from his testimony, that the appellation was dynastic, that the dynasty
was pre-Hellenic, and that it stands in chronological order next to the
Pelasgic time.
The name Ἀργεῖοι is the next with which we have to deal: and this
name, applicable to persons, is so evidently founded on the name
Ἄργος, applicable to territory, that with this latter word we must of
necessity begin the investigation; just as in order to arrive at the
meaning of the term Hellenes, we were obliged to begin with Hellas.
_Applications of the name Argos._
And the word Ἄργος is so important, and as it were central, in the
geography of Homer, that we had better first consider what are the
various forms of expression which Homer uses when he wants to express
in words the entire territory of the Greek nation:
1. We have already seen that he appears to use for this purpose the
combined force of the names Hellas and Argos;
ἀνδρὸς, τοῦ κλέος εὐρὺ καθ’ Ἑλλάδα καὶ μέσον Ἄργος[637].
2. He employs other combinations for the like purpose. The first
is that of Ἄργος, extended by the epithet πᾶν, and joined with the
islands. These words taken together embrace the whole Empire of
Agamemnon:
πολλῇσιν νήσοισι, καὶ Ἄργει παντὶ ἀνάσσειν[638].
3. And again, with the proper name Ἀχαïὶς,
Ἄργος ἐς ἱππόβοτον, καὶ Ἀχαïίδα καλλιγύναικα[639].
This is spoken by the Trojan herald of the possible adjustment of the
quarrel, upon which, he says, we shall dwell quietly in Troy, and
_they_ will return to Argos and Achæis. By “they” he means all the
Greeks, therefore the country to which they return means all Greece.
4. It may be a question whether Ἄργος, in combination with μέσος,
includes the whole of Greece, as in the speech of Diomed to Glaucus:
τῷ νῦν σοι μὲν ἐγὼ ξεῖνος φίλος Ἄργεï μέσσῳ
εἰμὶ, σὺ δ’ ἐν Λυκίῃ[640].
5. It is also a question, what is the geographical force of Argos, even
when standing alone. It is manifestly wide in certain passages. Thus
Paris mentions the κτήματα,
ὅσσ’ ἀγόμην ἐξ Ἄργεος ἡμέτερον δῶ[641]:
and Polydamas, speaking of the possible destruction of the Greek army,
νωνύμνους ἀπολέσθαι ἀπ’ Ἄργεος ἐνθάδ’ Ἀχαιούς[642].
a line repeated elsewhere. On the other hand, the word in some places
has undoubtedly a limited meaning only.
6. Again, we find the word Ἀχαίïς γαῖα, used apparently with the
intention of signifying the whole Greek country; as in the first Iliad
by Nestor;
ὦ πόποι, ἢ μέγα πένθος Ἀχαίïδα γαῖα ἱκάνει[643].
7. And we have the same word Ἀχαίïς without γαῖα, both in the Iliad and
the Odyssey.
For instance, when Nestor and Ulysses were collecting the Greek forces,
they were
λαὸν ἀγείροντες κατ’ Ἀχαίïδα πουλυβότειραν[644].
And Ulysses, addressing his mother in the Shades beneath, says,
οὐ γάρ πω σχέδον ἦλθον Ἀχαίïδος, οὐδέ πω ἀμῆς
γῆς ἐπέβην[645].
To proceed first with what is most clear, I think it may be taken
for certain that Ἀχαίïς, with or without the affix γαῖα or αἶα[646],
means nothing less than the whole of Greece in the passages where
Homer uses this appellative alone. One passage, indeed, taken alone,
affords decisive proof for itself that even the islands are included.
Telemachus[647] thus describes his mother as unrivalled in Greece:
οἵη νῦν οὐκ ἔστι γύνη κατ’ Ἀχαίïδα γαῖαν
οὔτε Πύλου ἱερῆς, οὔτ’ Ἄργεος, οὔτε Μυκήνης,
οὔτ’ αὐτῆς Ἰθάκης, οὔτ’ ἠπείροιο μελαίνης.
For here are clearly enumerated as among the parts of Ἀχαίïς, several
Peloponnesian states, the island of Ithaca, and the continent,
evidently meaning that to the North of the Corinthian gulf.
And yet it may remain true that, though commonly meaning Greece at
large, Ἀχαίïς may still have a more special connection with the South,
as the whole of this island is called Britain, whereas the name has
been derived especially from its southern inhabitants.
But in the passages numbered (1) and (3) we find the whole of Greece
designated by the use, not of one, but of two expressions: in the first
case they are,
1. Ἕλλας.
2. μέσον Ἄργος.
In the second they are,
1. Ἄργος.
2. Ἀχαίïς.
And with these we may compare the expression, evidently meant to cover
all the Greeks, in Il. ii. 530, under the names
1. Πανέλληνες.
2. Ἀχαιοί.
Now there are here three ways in which the words may be used so as to
convey their joint sense, which I assume to be that of Greece _entire_:
viz.
1. That each word should cover a part, the two parts together making up
the whole, _i.e._ that the words should be used distributively.
2. That each should cover the whole, and that the words should be used
cumulatively.
3. That one of the words should apply to a part of Greece only, and
should be overlapped as it were by the other, that other meaning the
whole.
Now as Ἀχαίïς uniformly means all Greece in eight passages where it
stands alone, this will naturally govern its sense in the two passages,
where it is joined copulatively with Ἄργος. We shall also hereafter
see the local use of the Ἀχαιοὶ so diffused, that it would hardly be
possible to suppose any other meaning. Thus, then, we have one point
fixed, from which to operate upon others.
But what does the Ἄργος ἱππόβοτον mean?
It is demonstrable that in Homer the word Ἄργος has several meanings.
1. It is a city, as in Il. iv. 51,
ἤτοι ἐμοὶ τρεῖς μὲν πολὺ φίλταται εἰσὶ πόληες
Ἄργος τε, Σπάρτη τε, καὶ εὐρυάγυια Μυκήνη.
τὰς διαπέρσαι κ.τ.λ.
2. It is a limited territory, probably such as was afterwards the State
of Argolis. For when Telemachus is quitting Sparta, Theoclymenus joins
him[648], φεύγων ἐξ Ἄργεος. And again, when Melampus quitted Pylos, he
came to Argos:
ὁ δ’ ἄλλων ἵκετο δῆμον
Ἄργος ἐς ἱππόβοτον[649].
The first proves that Sparta was not included in the geographical name
Ἄργος: the second proves the same of Pylos: and this too is the Ἄργος
ἱππόβοτον.
The same phrase is used in Od. iii. 263, of Ægisthus, who endeavours to
corrupt Clytemnestra,
μυχῷ Ἄργεος ἱπποβότοιο.
Here Mycenæ is plainly meant by the μυχὸς, and the Ἄργος ἱππόβοτον is
Argolis, or something like it.
This district, including Mycenæ, was the head quarter of the Greek
power. Now we find that the whole dominion of Priam was named Τροίη,
while including many cities and much territory, and the name Τροίη
was also sometimes applied to the capital, of which the proper name
was Ilion. So Venezia at the present day means both a city and a
territory, even though the city is outside the territory; the only
distinction lying in the use or non-use of the article. Therefore it
was sufficiently natural, that the Trojan herald should name the whole
from the most excellent part, and so identify them: and on the other
hand, it would not be otherwise than natural, were he to name the
most excellent part, and likewise to name the whole, without verbally
distinguishing them.
So that in Il. iii. 75, 258, the phrase Ἄργος ἐς ἱππόβοτον, according
to what has preceded, may either mean,
1. The part of the Peloponnesus containing Argos and Mycenæ as its
head quarter, (and then the line must be interpreted in the third of
the modes above pointed out; as we might now say, ‘we visited Rome and
Italy.’)
2. Or it may mean the whole of Greece, by transfer from its capital
part, and then the line must be interpreted in the second mode, as
might now be said, ‘to our Green Erin, our Ireland mother of the brave.’
The English ‘and’ would indeed mar the sense: but the Greek καὶ is much
more elastic, and may be equivalent to the Italian _ossia_, or to the
sign =.
I doubt if there be any passage in Homer where the word Argos stands
alone, or with a characteristic epithet such as ἱππόβοτον, and where
it requires any other sense than one of the three just given--the
city--the north east of Peloponnesus--and (by metonymy) all Greece.
When Nestor (Il. ii. 348) denounces those Greeks who should think of
returning home before the mind of Jupiter is known, and calls returning
Ἄργοσδε ἰέναι, it seems indisputable that we must construe Ἄργος Greece.
When Paris says he brought the κτήματα from Argos, the most natural
construction is, as the place was Sparta, and therefore not Argos in
the narrow sense, from which he took them, that he means by Argos to
signify Greece.
When Sisyphus dwells at Ephyre, μυχῷ Ἄργεος ἱπποβότοιο, the word means
the north eastern district Peloponnesus[650].
The word Ἄργος in the Catalogue (ii. 559) most probably means the city
only.
As it is plain that in some passages it cannot mean the Peloponnesus,
and as that meaning does not appear to be supported by superior
probability in any place, such a meaning ought not to be admitted.
_Achaic and Iasian Argos._
It is another question how we ought to construe the phrases μέσον
Ἄργος--Ἀχαιïκὸν Ἄργος, used four times--and Ἴασον Ἄργος.
The two latter are evidently analogous to Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος, which we
have already found to mean Thessaly.
Of the four passages where we read the phrase Ἀχαιïκὸν Ἄργος, the
two first[651] relate to the return of Agamemnon and the Greeks, and
appear to admit therefore either of the limited sense of a portion of
Peloponnesus as the most eminent part, or of the extended one of all
Greece, better than of the intermediate one of Peloponnesus itself,
with which neither Agamemnon, nor the whole body of the Greeks, had
any separate and defined relation, as they had with the dominions of
Agamemnon in the capacity of their supreme Chief, and perhaps with
those of the Pelopid family jointly, so as to include Menelaus.