close geographical proximity to, if not indeed its identity with, the
first-named or Myrmidon Hellenes of Homer, appear to derive it from the
North, to dissociate it from the Pelasgic, and to unite it with the
Hellic stock.
7. Time passes on; we lose the guiding hand of Homer; but universal
tradition assures us that the Dorians, emerging, like those who had
preceded them, from the cradle of the nation, lead another and the last
great Hellenic migration southward; the Pelopids are driven from the
throne of that which may be termed the metropolitan region of Greece;
they migrate to an inferior seat, with their followers, and become the
obscure heads of a secondary State: and the name of Hellenes, belonging
to all the great Greek tribes in common, whether of Achæan, Æolid, or
Dorian blood or connection, becomes the grand historical designation of
the nation at large.
8. After perhaps eight hundred years of fame and freedom for Hellas,
the iron hand of Roman power descends upon her at a time when the old
Achæan name has revived by means of a democratic confederacy, and has
once more overspread[758] the Peloponnesus. From this time, Hellas
takes her place in history only as a minor portion of the Roman empire,
even while, by an inward process, she is asserting her intellectual
supremacy[759], and moulding the literature and philosophy of her
conquerors. But to them politically she is no more than an appendage of
the _Magna Græcia_, whose glory it is to be a part of imperial Italy,
and whose name the land of Homer’s song must now assume in virtue of a
double relationship; the first, that of their common social base, the
old Pelasgi, of whom the Greeks (Γραïκοὶ) were probably a part; and the
second, that of a more recent colonization. Thus the Graic or Greek
name, having existed, but never having emerged to what may be called
visibility in Hellas, travels round to it again by the route of Italy,
and finally becomes predominant in this its earliest seat.
Of this intermixture and succession of names dependent on the fusion of
races, and on political supremacy, we have sufficient example in our
own island. It has been inhabited by Britons, Romans, Angles, Saxons,
Jutes, Danes, and Normans. All came more or less as conquerors, one
following upon the other. But two names only have left their mark,
Britons and Angles: all the others, including the last or Norman
conquerors, are submerged. So it has been with the succession of
Pelasgians, Achæans, Hellenes, Greeks. Each of these names historically
superseded the one before it. Apart from them, by the high privilege
of Poetry, stand their names in another combination: the Iliad
and Odyssey shew us Danaans, Argeians, and Achæans, as in the main
synonymous before Troy: yet each with its own leaning, which makes
Δαναοὶ most properly and by preference ‘the soldiery,’ Ἀργεῖοι, ‘the
masses,’ and Ἀχαιοὶ, ‘the chiefs.’
It still remains to observe the immediately subsequent literary history
of these three great appellatives, which the _fiat_ of Homer made so
famous.
Hesiod and the minor Greek poets afford us the only satisfactory
illustration of actual usage, because the tragedians may probably have
sought, in treating heroic subjects, to employ the nomenclature of the
heroic age. The other poets spoke, of course, according to their own
respective ages.
In Hesiod we do not find Δαναοὶ at all: Ἀργεῖος only in the singular
for Juno: Ἀχαιοὶ is once used for the Greeks collectively, in a
retrospective passage referring to the assembly at Aulis[760]. He uses
Πανέλληνες[761] in the same poem with the same sense. An important
passage of Strabo[762] testifies, that both Hesiod and Archilochus were
acquainted with the use of the names Ἕλληνες and Πανέλληνες for the
Greeks at large; and refers to works of theirs, now lost, by way of
example as to the latter term. Both Ἕλλας and Ἕλληνες are freely used
in Simonides, who also has Ἀργεῖοι for the Argives only. And generally
these old writers, coming next after Hesiod, knew nothing of the use of
Ἀργεῖοι, or even of Ἀχαιοὶ, for the whole nation, while the word Δαναοὶ
is not found in them at all.
This is strongly confirmatory, as it appears to me, of the propositions
I have endeavoured to establish.
Among the tragedians the name Ἀχαιὸς, with its derivatives, used to
some extent by Æschylus, progressively declines: the Danaan name holds
its ground rather better, and Ἀργεῖος better still; though all are
eclipsed by the great historical name of Hellenes, which probably had
enjoyed an undisputed prevalence from the time of the Dorian conquest.
Thus, for poetical use, dealing with the events and characters of the
heroic age, they properly fall back upon the names which Homer employed.
_Its value as primitive history._
From these successions of name, whether the particular appellation be
founded upon lineage or upon physical incidents, it is not unreasonable
to hold that we may draw the outlines of a primitive history, at least
with more confidence and satisfaction than by efforts to compound and
piece together the miscellaneous and promiscuous traditions of many
ages and places, set wide apart from one another; in respect to which,
even where we have not to lament the gnawing power of Time, we, at
least, know that the faculties both of exaggeration and of invention,
stimulated by vanity, rivalry, and self-interest in many other forms,
have been at work. It is better to deal with slighter relics, of which
we know the _bona fides_, than with an abundance of such as have been
falsified. Besides, when we have effectually exhausted the power of
the first, we may much more profitably use the subsidiary lights which
the second will afford us. And the tendency of an attempt to invest
the Homeric text with an unequivocal supremacy, is to substitute for
complete and symmetrical systems, in which the hewn stone and the trash
are not distinguishable one from another, very slight and partial
indeed, but yet authoritative fragments and outlines, all the intervals
of which are filled up by avowed conjecture. This conjecture is
without a pretence to authority properly so called, but it is, at any
rate, both kept visibly apart from what is authoritative, and likewise
founded upon the suggestions which even fragmentary testimony, when
genuine and near the source, is well qualified to make.
And the succession of names is in effect of itself almost a political
history. For the names of nations are not arbitrarily changed, though
such things have been done to particular cities within the dominion of
particular states. The names of races, especially of races disposed,
like the Greeks, to knit themselves closely with the past, are
cherished as a material portion of their patrimony. When they alter,
it is for some great and commanding political reason. Such as, for
example, if some tribe or family, previously not advanced beyond its
fellows, in some great national exigency becomes invested with the
responsibility of acting for the whole body, and thus grows to be as
well its representative and organ in all external relations, as also
the representative of its inward life: or when some conquering dynasty
and host have by the strong hand entered in upon prior occupants of
the soil, and, reducing them to dependence or to servitude more or
less qualified, or narrowing the circle of their possessions, have
taken into their own custody, together with the best lands of the
country, the whole range of public affairs, and have imposed laws
upon the vanquished, and imparted to them manners. In this case, the
different elements are welded into a political unity, by a power
proceeding from that race which among them has possessed the greater
physical and martial force. But unless there be more than the merely
convulsive effort of conquest, unless deep roots be struck into the
soil, and sharper furrows drawn upon it than the spear alone can
carve, or than the wave of a mere deluge traces, unless, in a word,
there be a predominant organizing faculty, the effect will not be
permanent; and the crude mass of mere strength will sink down amid the
surrounding milder, but more enduring and more prevailing impulses.
In some instances it has been so: the body, which has been stronger
in the hand, has proved weaker in the intellectual and moral, that
is to say, the enduring, elements of power. The undying yet daily
influences and sympathies of peace wear down the convulsive vibrations,
which the shock of war and conquest have communicated to the social
fabric. Victory must end in possession, like toil in sleep. Possession
implies the dispersion of the conquerors, and, in such cases as these,
their free intermixture with the vanquished. Ties of neighbourhood,
of commerce, of marriage, ties belonging to all the transactions of
life, are gradually multiplied between the new comers and the old;
and by a gentle process, experience and opinion gradually decide, not
imperiously in the spirit of party, but insensibly for the benefit of
all, what laws, what manners, what language[763], what religion shall
predominate. The fate of the name follows that of the institutions and
habits with which it was connected; and the old designation prevails
ultimately over the new, or the new over the old, in proportion as the
older inhabitants have contributed a larger or a smaller share towards
the common national life resulting from the combination; in proportion
as the newly arrived receive more of impression than they impart, or
impart more than they receive.
FOOTNOTES:
[613] Strabo, pp. 372, 383.
[614] Il. ii. 494. xiii. 685. vid. sup. p. 243.
[615] Il. iv. 385. 191.
[616] Il. xi. 670-761.
[617] v. 759.
[618] Inf. p. 392.
[619] Od. iv. 184, 296.
[620] See inf. sect. ix.
[621] Il. vi. 292. Od. xxii. 227.
[622] Il. iii. 199 et alibi.
[623] Il. iii. 236. Od. xi. 298.
[624] Inf. pp. 410, 11.
[625] Od. v. 333.
[626] Il. xiv. 319.
[627] Il. xix. 116.
[628] Il. ii. 108.
[629] Inf. sect. x.
[630] Od. xi. 271.
[631] See inf. sect. ix.
[632] Fragm. of the Danais, Düntzer, Fragm. der Epischen Poesie, p. 3.
It has been argued by E. Curtius (_Ionier vor der Ionischen Wanderung_,
pp. 11-13), that there were settlers on the Egyptian sea-board,
belonging to the Ionian race, and to the same stock with the Hellenes.
From among such settlers, whether Ionian or not, it seems likely that
the immigrants from Egypt to Greece might have proceeded.
[633] Il. vi. 158.
[634] Hes. Fragm. lviii. and Scut. Herc. 216. 229.
[635] Sup. sect. iii.
[636] Eurip. Ar. Fr. ii. 7.
[637] Od. i. 344.
[638] Il. ii. 108.
[639] Il. iii. 75, 258.
[640] Il. vi. 224.
[641] Il. vii. 363.
[642] Il. xii. 70.
[643] Il. i. 254, and vii. 124.
[644] Il. xi. 770.
[645] Od. xi. 166 and 481. See also Od. xxiii. 68.
[646] Od. xiii. 249.
[647] Od. xxi. 107.
[648] Od. xv. 223.
[649] Od. xv. 238.
[650] See also Il. xiii. 378. Od. xv. 224, 239.
[651] Il. ix. 141, 283.
[652] Il. xix. 115.
[653] Od. iii. 249.
[654] It is curious that Strabo should say in viii. 6, that Homer often
marks Ἄργος by the epithet ἵππιον, as well as ἱππόβοτον, when the
former word does not occur at all in the Homeric Poems.
[655] Il. xv. 332.
[656] Od. xi. 281. E. Curtius (‘Ionier,’ p. 22 et seqq.) connects
Iasus, Amphion, Iaolkos, Jason, with the Ionian race.
[657] Il. vi. 224.
[658] Il. ii. 530.
[659] Strabo viii. p. 371.
[660] Heyne on Il. i. 270. Buttmann Lexil. in voc. Crusius ad locc.
[661] Suppl. 277.
[662] See Scott and Liddell, in voc. Damm Lex. Hom. in voc. Crusius Il.
xxiii. 30. Nitzsch on Od. ii. 11, and Hermann quoted by him.
[663] Orchomenus und die Minyer, p. 119. See also E. Curtius ‘Ionier,’
p. 17.
[664] Strabo found in his own time, and has reported it as the custom
of the ‘moderns,’ that the Argive plain passed by the name of Ἄργος,
and not the city only.
[665] Cramer’s Greece, i. 197. 385. ii. 10. Strabo ix. p. 440.
[666] Il. xxiv. 437.
[667] Od. iv. 606.
[668] Il. v. 196. viii. 560.
[669] Grote’s Hist.
[670] See _Museum Criticum_, vol. i. p. 536, and Marsh’s Horæ
Pelasgicæ, p. 70.
[671] Steph. Lex.
[672] Carm. I. vii. 15.
[673] See Nitzsch on Od. i. 38 for his etymology of Argeiphontes; but
not for his etymology of Argus, which he simply refers to Argos.
[674] Soph. Fr. 288.
[675] Od. viii. 578.
[676] In loc.
[677] Il. ii. 110, 256. xv. 733. xii. 419.
[678] Sup. p. 353, 4.
[679] Il. i. 196.
[680] Inf. p. 417.
[681] Od. xi. 45.
[682] Il. iv. 52.
[683] Od. iv. 35.
[684] Od. iv. 515.
[685] Il. vi. 158.
[686] Il. xix. 122.
[687] Il. xxiii. 470.
[688] Od. iii. 309.
[689] Il. xiv. 115.
[690] Ov. Met. ix. 96.
[691] Gen. iii. 1.
[692] See inf. p. 410.
[693] Sup. p. 357.
[694] See inf. sect. ix.
[695] Il. i. 2, 12, 15, 17, 22.
[696] Il. i. 42.
[697] Il. i. 81.
[698] See sup. p. 380.
[699] Hist. Gr. Lit. xv. 5. vol. ii. p. 77.
[700] Il. i. 15, 22.
[701] i. 26-32.
[702] i. 42.
[703] i. 118.
[704] ii. 354.
[705] Il. i. 123, 127.
[706] i. 237.
[707] i. 78.
[708] iii. 167, 226.
[709] Od. x. 14.
[710] Od. iii. 188, 9.
[711] Od. xiv. 96.
[712] Od. xxiv. 377, and 205-7.
[713] Od. xvi. 118.
[714] Od. xix. 394.
[715] Od. iv. 798.
[716] Od. xvii. 205-7.
[717] Od. ix. 22.
[718] Od. xviii. 299.
[719] Od. xxii. 243.
[720] Od. xxi. 210. xxiv. 354. 377. 428.
[721] Od. i. 394. 401. ii. 87. 90. 106. 112. 115. xviii. 301, et alibi.
[722] Od. ii. 51. xvi. 122.
[723] Od. ii. 386. xv. 545.
[724] Od. xvi. 114.
[725] Od. xxiv. 463.
[726] Od. ii. 7.
[727] Od. viii. 11.
[728] Il. ii. 624.
[729] Od. xix. 175-7.
[730] Il. iii. 232.
[731] Il. xi. 671, 94, 732, 7. xi. 687, 724, 37, 53, 59.
[732] Il. ii. 562.
[733] Pausanias ii. 321.
[734] Il. ix. 300.
[735] Il. i. 85-91.
[736] B. viii. c. 1. p. 333.
[737] Hom. Il. vol. vii. p. 711.
[738] See inf. sect. ix.
[739] Sup. p. 352.
[740] Polyb. b. ii. c. 38.
[741] Müller, Dorians, ii. 11. 6.
[742] Il. ii. 653. 665. 678. v. 628.
[743] Müller ii. 11. 10.
[744] Sup. p. 88.
[745] Inf. sect. x.
[746] Il. vi. 154, 5.
[747] Ibid. 191.
[748] Od. xi. 235-7.
[749] Inf. sect. ix.
[750] Fragm. xxviii.
[751] Il. vi. 154, 197, 206.
[752] Il. i. 250.
[753] Il. ii. 714.
[754] Sup. p. 364.
[755] Thuc. iv. 78.
[756] On Od. iii. 4.
[757] Il. ii. 101-8.
[758] Polyb. ii. c. 38.
[759] Hor. Ep. II. i. 156. _Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit._
[760] Ἔργα, ii. 269.
[761] Ibid. ii. 146.
[762] Strabo, viii. 6. p. 370.
[763] The mode of this process, with reference to language, is
beautifully exhibited for the case of Spain, in Ticknor’s Spanish
Literature, Appendix A. (vol. iii.)
SECT. IX.
_On the Homeric title ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν._
_Difference between Epithets and Titles._
Both in modern society, and in the forms of modern language, the
distinction is a familiar one, which separates between descriptive
affixes or epithets, and titles properly so called.
A descriptive affix, be it substantive, like Δαναοὶ αἰχμηταὶ, or
adjective, like Δαναοὶ φιλοπτόλεμοι, describes a quality, and
challenges from the reader, like any other phrase conveying an idea,
assent to the justice of its description. These descriptive affixes
have a tendency, from repeated use, to grow into _formulæ_, and then at
length they approximate to the nature of titles.
But a title is quite a different thing from a descriptive affix. A
title is the current coin of language, which is intended to pass from
mouth to mouth without examination. It is like a pronoun, having for
its office simply to indicate, or to stand for, a particular person. It
is the index of a rank or office, a thing determinate in its nature,
like an unit of number: and it has no relation, when once fixed as a
title, to personal character, though in its origin it may have been
founded on the real or presumed existence of personal qualities. Like a
descriptive affix, a title may be either adjective, as ‘most noble,’ or
substantive, as ‘marquis.’
Titles evidently presume a certain progress in the organization of
political society; while descriptive epithets must be used, in order to
meet the purposes of human speech, even in its first stages.
This degree of progress must have been attained in the time of Homer;
for the use of titles in the poems, as well as of descriptive
epithets, can be clearly made out.
Among the descriptive epithets of Homer we find, of substantives,
ἡγεμόνες, ἀριστῆες, and also βασιλεῖς, ἀοιδοί. Of adjectives, applied
to classes, σκηπτοῦχοι (βασιλῆες), ὑπερμενέες (βασιλῆες), θεῖοι
(ἀοιδοί): and applied to persons, ἐχεφρὼν Πηνελόπεια, Τηλέμαχος
πεπνυμένος, πολύμητις Ὀδύσσευς: and many more.
In modern phraseology, duke, earl, baron, knight, esquire, are titles:
nobles, clergy, freeholders, burgesses, are descriptive phrases. Of a
descriptive epithet or affix which has grown to be a title, we may find
instances among those just cited; knight (_knecht_) meant originally
a servant, then a person performing particular service to the king;
and esquire (_scudiero_, _écuyer_) meant a person who bore the arms
of a knight, particularly his shield. In process of time these became
titles. Again, words may hang doubtfully upon the confine between title
and epithet; as the much criticised expressions of the English Common
Prayer Book, ‘(our) most religious and gracious (king).’
We find in Homer that the word βασιλεὺς, a king, had already begun to
pass from the function of a mere descriptive word towards that of a
title; for, though rarely, he attaches it to the names of individuals,
besides freely using it without them; and it is an usual note of
titles properly so called, that they can, even if substantives, either
be combined with the name of the person, or, in addressing them,
substituted for it. In the Iliad we find Ἀλεξάνδρῳ βασιλῆι, and in the
Odyssey Ἔχετον βασιλῆα. Again, we find βασίλεια used in the Odyssey in
the vocative[764], which in like manner marks it as a title.
The word ἄναξ, again, in Homer, which must on no account be confounded
with βασιλεὺς[765], is commonly a descriptive epithet, nearly
equivalent to our word _lord_, and, like it, having an extraordinary
elasticity of sense; for as a person may now be lord, so he might then
be ἄναξ, of a kingdom, a people, a field, a mine, a slave, a horse,
or a dog. Instances are countless. Sometimes the meaning is lord, or
master, relatively to a particular object, as of the horses of Nestor,
οἱ δὲ ἄνακτος ὑποδδείσαντες ὁμοκλὴν....[766]
Sometimes it means in the abstract a class of persons,
οἷοί τε ἀνάκτων παῖδες ἔασιν.[767]
where the ἀνάκτων παῖδες nearly corresponds with our ‘children of the
higher orders,’ i.e. the masters of slaves.
On the other hand, in reference to the immortals, ἄναξ is sometimes a
title: as in Il. xvi. 233,
Ζεῦ ἄνα, Δωδώναιε, Πελασγικέ.
_Examples of titles._
There are, however, in Homer various words which are undoubtedly and
uniformly titular. Such are in particular the adjectives Διοτρεφὴς
and Διογενὴς, which are very nearly equivalent in power to the phrase
‘Royal Highness’ of the present day. They commonly accompany the name
of the individual, or of the class, to which they belong: and they are
confined, with one single exception, in the Iliad, to persons of the
highest known rank, that of βασιλεὺς or king. The exception is Phœnix,
who is in one place addressed by Achilles as γέραιε Διοτρεφές. But
Achilles says this χαριζόμενος, when petting and coaxing the old man,
and therefore the instance does not destroy the force of the general
rule.
In one place we have ὁ Διογενὴς[768] used for Achilles in the third
person without his name: which still more strikingly marks the word
as a title. Also Διοτρεφὴς is not unfrequently used in the vocative,
without, as well as with, the name of the person to whom it is
addressed. It may possibly be worth notice, that these words, Διοτρεφὴς
and Διογενὴς, are never applied to Agamemnon, as if they had, again
like the phrase ‘Royal Highness,’ a limit upwards as well as downwards,
and were not applicable to the supreme head of the nation. There is
indeed one passage where Agamemnon is addressed as Διοτρεφὴς, but it is
in the universally suspected[769] νεκυΐα of the Twenty-fourth Odyssey.
Plainly this fact cannot be referred to metrical considerations, even
as to Διοτρεφὴς, because either in the genitive, or in the vocative,
it would easily have been made available: especially in the latter
inflexion, for Agamemnon is addressed vocatively some five and twenty
times in the poems. I admit that Ulysses may allude to him in the line,
θυμὸς δὲ μέγας ἐστὶ Διοτρεφέος βασιλῆος[770].
But the phrase here is more abstract than personal: it is perhaps as we
should say, ‘our royal master.’
The word βασιλεὺς may have borne originally a merely descriptive
character. But it has only partial traces of that character still
adhering to it, as it is used in the Iliad. The chief note of such a
sense, that I can find, is, that it is used in the comparative and
superlative to distinguish the Pelopid house from the other kings.
Agamemnon is βασιλεύτατος, Il. ix. 69, and Menelaus is evidently
intended in the βασιλεύτερος of Il. x. 239; where Diomed is bidden to
choose the best man, irrespectively of rank, and not to tie himself to
the βασιλεύτερος.
As the Odyssey represents a period of political disorganization,
brought about by the long absence of the chiefs, it is not surprising
that we find the word βασιλεὺς, and its proper epithet Διοτρεφὴς, used
in this poem with greater laxity. The βασιλῆες and the Διοτρεφεῖς[771],
are here not the kings but the aristocracy of Scheria, and of the
dominions of Ulysses: and it is a compliment paid to Telemachus by
Theoclymenus, when he says[772],
ὑμετέρου δ’ οὐκ ἔστι γένος βασιλεύτερον ἄλλο
ἐν δημῷ Ἰθάκης.
Yet even here the special and official sense of βασιλεὺς remains: no
one is ever called individually a βασιλεὺς unless he is on the throne,
though Antinous is said to resemble one of the king-class,
βασιλῆι γὰρ ἀνδρὶ ἔοικας[773].
And the same Antinous sarcastically expresses his hope, that Jupiter
will not make Telemachus βασιλεὺς in Ithaca, notwithstanding his right
of succession by birth[774]. If βασιλεὺς only indicated a certain
station, Telemachus without doubt was βασιλεὺς already.
The sense proper to it in Homer is that in which, for some thousands of
years, it appears to have maintained a world-wide celebrity.
_Common interpretations of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν._
And now as respects the constructions which have been put upon the
phrase ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. It is not noticed by Heyne or by Crusius. Of the
translators I have already spoken. As regards the Lexicographers,
Scott and Liddell say ‘Agamemnon _as general-in-chief_ is specially
ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, while Orsilochos is called ἄναξ ἄνδρεσσιν in Il. v.
546;’ but the phrase is πολέεσσ’ ἄνδρεσσιν ἄνακτα, which I take to be
simply equivalent to ἀνάσσοντα, and to have no relation to a phrase or
_formula_.
Damm[775] says it indicates supreme dignity united with military
command.
Again; Mure[776] remarks, that in common with ποιμὴν λαῶν and κρείων,
‘it denotes the office of any king or chieftain, but more particularly
that of a supreme ruler or commander.’
That these explanations are entirely beside the mark, I am convinced
after a somewhat minute consideration.
In answer to Damm, I would observe that the phrase was applied to
Æneas, who was a commander, but not a sovereign: it was applied to
Anchises, who was a sovereign, but not a commander; it was applied to
Eumelus, who was neither a sovereign, nor a warrior of any note, and
who commanded no more than eleven ships.
It does not then depend upon the highest degree either of military or
of civil elevation.
Nor does it in all cases attach to divine descent, even though that
descent be from Jupiter; nor even if it be immediate or next to
immediate: as among the living, Sarpedon the son of Jupiter has it not,
neither has Polypœtes his grandson (Il. ii. 740). So, among the dead,
it is not given either to Hercules or to Rhadamanthus[777], sons of
Jupiter. If, as is probable, reputed extraction from Jupiter in all
cases attached to it, it was a remote and not a near extraction, and
thus the title was the ornament of an antique lineage; certainly divine
descent was not the immediate qualification for the particular dignity.