race and language, to the ethnological evidences afforded by the course
of migration from Central Asia over Europe.
Next, to the evidence of those among ancient authors, who have taken
notice of this diffusion in such a manner as in any degree to guide us
towards the sources of the great factors of the Greek nation.
After that, we will inquire whether the names themselves, which are
employed in Homer for the contemporary Greeks, can, by comparison with
cognate names elsewhere, afford us any light.
And lastly, whether in the quarter to which these lines of information
would lead us, we can discover any of those resemblances of manners
and character with the Greeks which, if found, would afford the most
satisfactory corroboration to the argument in favour of the derivation
of one from the other.
The labours of ethnologists have associated together in one great
family, at first called Indo-Germanic, and then Indo-European, but
threatening to expand even beyond the scope of that comprehensive name,
a mass of leading languages from the Celtic regions in the west to the
plains of India in the east.
_High German and Low German races._
This great family, says Dr. Donaldson[894], divides itself into two
groups. To these two groups respectively belong the Low German and the
High German tongues: the former spoken in the plain countries to the
north of Europe, the latter in the more mountainous countries to the
south. The Low German languages contain evidence of greater antiquity,
and those who speak them appear to have been driven onward in their
migrations by the High Germans following them: the latter entering
Europe by Asia Minor, the former to the north of the Euxine.
The distinction runs back to the earlier seat of the race in Ariana or
Iran, a portion of Asia which may be loosely defined as lying between
the Caspian and the Indian ocean to the north and south, the Indus
and the Euphrates to the east and west. Within these limits are to be
found two forms of language, holding the same relation to one another
as that which subsists between the High German and Low German tongues;
the first, corresponding with the High German, was spoken among the
countries of the south-west, where lies Persia proper, and the other in
its more northern and eastern portions, of which Media formed a central
part. The population of this great tract issued forth in the direction
of the south-east, over the northern parts of India; and again towards
Asia Minor and Europe, in the direction of the north-west. Those who
came first proceeded from Media, and supplied the base of what have
been called, the Low German nations: Sarmatians, Saxons, Getæ (or
Scythians or Goths). The language of these emigrants was that which,
when it assumed an organized or classical form, and with due allowance
for changes which the lapse of time must have introduced, became the
tongue now best represented, at least as a literary language, by the
Sanscrit.
The whole course of history seems to indicate a struggle of races in
that quarter of the world, which may be used to illustrate the present
inquiry. To a certain extent the scene of that struggle may be pointed
out on the map. From the Caspian towards the south, and from the
head of the Persian Gulf towards the north, the land soon rises to a
great general elevation, but with marked and also highly diversified
inequalities. Media would appear to have occupied the principal part of
the great central space, defined by the mountains which form the outer
line of this elevation. It corresponds with what is now the Province
of Irak, and Ispahan is its principal city. Here, says Malcolm[895],
we find the happiest climate that Persia can boast. To the south,
near the Gulf, the summer heat is overpowering: as the country rises
towards Shiraz the climate becomes temperate, and further improves as
we advance northward, until we approach the hills that divide Irak from
Mazenderan on the Caspian, where it deteriorates.
_The Province of Fars or Persia proper._
Immediately to the south of Irak, and touching the Persian gulf, a
little to the east of the Karoon and Jerokh, which are the eastern
tributaries of the great central rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, is
the Province of Fars, which ascends the hills to its capital town
Shiraz, and then extends in a north-easterly direction towards the
sandy deserts. This is the province[896] where the Persian race is
still to be found in its greatest purity; and from this tract the name
of Persia, attached by Europeans to the empire of Iran, is supposed
to be derived[897]. From Fars or Pars, for both forms are understood
to exist, is drawn the name Parsee, borne by the fire-worshippers,
who migrated for safety into India: and the same root appears to be
clearly traceable in the great Persian tribe of Pasargadæ, named by
Herodotus[898] as the leading tribe of the country. But though the
province of Fars now embraces a considerable range of country and
diversity of climate, all that is recorded of the ancient Persians
would seem to connect them particularly with its ruder and more
mountainous parts: for we have every reason to believe that Herodotus
spoke truly when he described the Persians, properly so called, as
poor, and their country as hard and barren in comparison with the rich
valleys of Media, which at an early date attracted and repaid the
labours of agriculture. It was inhabited, as Herodotus[899] says, κατὰ
κώμας, that is, in the Pelasgian fashion, at the time when Dejoces
acquired the throne.
The conflict of race between a bold highland people of superior
energies, and the more advanced, but also more relaxed inhabitants
of the more favoured district, is indicated even amidst the
indistinctness of the earliest efforts of history. Ethnologically the
general character of the movement is that of a pressure, to adopt the
language of Dr. Donaldson[900], of the High upon the Low Iranians; I
would be understood, however, to signify by the terms High and Low a
distinction in language and not one in altitude of site. The overthrow
of the Median empire by the Persians, related in different forms by
Ctesias and Herodotus, and again in Holy Scripture, whatever be its
chronological epoch, may be taken as a great crisis in the struggle,
at which the High Iranians established themselves in the country of
the Low, and in permanent political ascendancy among them. The Magian
revolution, doubtless a great reaction against this ascendancy, was of
short duration. The invasion of Media by the Scythians, which Herodotus
has reported as proceeding from beyond the Euxine and the Palus
Mæotis, but which was more probably from the east of the Caspian[901],
indicates, it is probable, another form of this reaction. This invasion
took place under Cyaxares, the grandson of Dejoces: and we may perhaps
consider Media as having at this time received Persian influences,
possibly by the immigration of groups of Persian families, before the
general ascendancy of that race, just as we see the Æolid houses, and
the family of Perseus, finding their way into Southern Greece before
the days of the Achæan race, and of the general Hellenic ascendancy in
the country.
The resemblance of the modern Persian to the modern High German
language has been observed[902]: and it has even been thought
probable, for reasons which will presently be considered, that the
German name may have been derived from that quarter. The Hellic
ingredient of the Greek tongue is referred to a similar origin. On the
other hand, we are told that a traveller[903], taking a popular rather
than a scientific view of language, has noticed the strong resemblance
between the Latin and the modern Sclavonian forms. Again, the structure
of the Latin language, from its repelling certain more modern
tendencies of the Greek, is taken to indicate an antiquity beyond that
of the Greek: and there is also an opinion that the older Greek forms,
like the Latin, bear marks of correspondence with the Sclavonic. All
this would tend to sustain the belief that the Pelasgians, who formed
the older portion, and the basis, of the population of Italy and
Greece, were offshoots from the old, or Low Iranian tribes: and that
the more recent element was High Iranian or Persian.
_Relation of Germans to Celts._
Ethnological affinities, illustrative of what has here been advanced,
have not escaped the attention of the Greek and Roman writers. What
Strabo has said on this subject is particularly deserving of notice.
His derivation of the German name from the Latin word _Germanus_ may
indeed be passed by as a notion which cannot be maintained, although it
is supported by the opinion of Tacitus[904], that the name was recent:
since even Roman inscriptions show, that it existed three hundred years
before that historian. It is however very remarkable, that Strabo
asserts the Germans and the Celts to have been nearly associated:
μικρὸν ἐξαλλάττοντες τοῦ Κελτικοῦ φύλου τῷ τε πλεονασμῷ τῆς
ἀγριότητος, καὶ τοῦ μεγέθους, καὶ τῆς ξανθότητος, τἄλλα δὲ παραπλήσιοι
καὶ μορφαῖς, καὶ ἤθεσι, καὶ βίοις ὄντες[905].
_And to Hellenes._
Now, the result of all that we have drawn from Homer thus far would
be to connect the Celts with the Pelasgi, with Media, and with the
Low Iranian countries: the ‘Germans’ with the Helli and with Persia.
Observe, then, how the differences, noted by Strabo between Celts and
‘Germans,’ correspond with the Homeric differences between Helli and
Pelasgi. First, as to ἀγριότης: let us call to mind the history of the
name Ἀργεῖος; the use of Ἄγριος as an early Hellic proper name; the
absence of names of this class among the Pelasgians; the rude manners
of the Helli and the Pheres; the pacific habits, wealth, and advanced
agriculture of the Pelasgian populations. Then as to stature: how this
gift has Diana for its goddess, how it is a standing and essential
element of beauty for women as well as men, how the Greek Chiefs in the
Third Iliad are distinguished from the crowd by size,
ὥς μοι καὶ τόνδ’ ἄνδρα πελώριον ἐξονομήνῃς,
ὅστις ὅδ’ ἐστὶν Ἀχαιὸς ἀνὴρ ἠΰς τε μέγας τε[906],
and how Achilles, the bravest and mightiest chief of this army, was the
first also in beauty and in size; for Ajax is always recorded as next
to him, and at the same time as before all others[907]; except Nireus,
who was beautiful, but who as a soldier was mere trash.
And, lastly, as to the auburn hair, which was with Homer in such
esteem. Menelaus is ξανθός (_passim_); so is Meleager (Il. ii. 642);
so is Rhadamanthus (Od. iv. 564); Agamede (Il. xi. 739); Ulysses (Od.
xiii. 399, 431); lastly, Achilles (Il. i. 197). But never once, I
think, does Homer bestow this epithet upon a Pelasgian name. None of
the Trojan royal family, so renowned for beauty, are ξανθοί: none of
the Chiefs, not even Euphorbus[908], of whose flowing hair the Poet has
given us so beautiful and even so impassioned a description. Nothing
Pelasgian, but Ceres[909] the καλλιπλόκαμος, is admitted to the honour
of the epithet. It could hardly be denied to the goddess of the ruddy
harvest:
Excutit et flavas aurea terra comas[910].
Now Tacitus, describing the Germani, gives them _truces et cærulei
oculi, rutilæ comæ, magna corpora_[911]. His treatise supplies many
other points of comparison.
It is obvious, to compare the names of Scythæ, Getæ, Gothi, Massagetæ,
Mœsi, Mysi, as carrying the marks of their own relationship; and the
reader will find in Dr. Donaldson’s New Cratylus[912] the various
indications recorded by ancient writers of the extension of the Medians
over Northern Egypt: namely, from Herodotus (v. 9), Pliny (Hist. Nat.
vi. 7), and Diodorus (ii. 43). The last of these authors recognises
the similarity of tongue between Greeks and Hyperboreans (ii. 47):
and Clemens Alexandrinus, after reciting a series of inventions which
the Greeks owed to the barbarians, records among them the saying of
Anacharsis, whom some of the Greeks placed among their ‘seven wise
men,’ and adds ἐμοὶ δὲ πάντες Ἕλληνες Σκυθίζουσι[913].
And again, Herodotus (i. 125) gives us a list of names belonging to the
different tribes of Persia: the Persia, that is to say, of his own day.
Six of these are settled or agricultural, and four nomad. Of the six,
the Pasargadæ are the first. Then come the Μαράφιοι and Μάσπιοι. Three
more follow, of whom one is named Γερμάνιοι. The precise correspondence
of name immediately suggests that the modern Germans derive their
appellation from this Persian tribe. But it is customary to derive that
name from _wehr_ and _man_, or from _heer_ and _man_, thus giving it a
military sense: and it is also observed[914] that, if it had borne this
sense in the time of Herodotus, he would probably have assigned to it a
higher place in his list. But he does not give us to understand, that
he means to point out these tribal names as being the descriptive names
of the various classes in one and the same homogeneous community, or
as having, in any degree, the character of caste. To the first three,
indeed, he assigns a political supremacy: for they were the tribes by
whose means Cyrus effected his designs. But the idea of particular
employments, and social duties, does not seem to belong even to these,
and there is no sign of it with the others. It may have been that the
Γερμάνιοι meant martial, as Κεφάλληνες seems to have meant Head or
Chief Hellenes, and yet that, as the latter were not the chiefs of all
the Hellenes, so the former were not the soldiery of all Persia. Again,
as the Δωριέες of Homer lay undistinguished in the Hellenic mass,
yet afterwards, and on the very same arena, attained to a long-lived
supremacy, so, and yet more naturally, may it have happened that a
tribe, secondary in Persia itself, may have taken or acquired the lead
in a northward and westward migration from it, and may have given its
name to the people, which afterwards coagulated (so to speak) around
that migration.
_Traces in Homer of the Persian name._
There are not wanting either Homeric or post-Homeric traces of a
connection between early Greece and Persia. In Homer, Perseus, father
of a line of Peloponnesian kings, is the son of Jupiter and Danae[915].
A son of Nestor bears the same name[916]. We have also the name
Περσεφόνεια, wife of Aidoneus or Pluto, and Perse, daughter of Oceanus,
who bears Circe and Æetes to Ἠέλιος, the Sun[917].
When Homer makes Perseus the son of Jupiter, he certainly implies of
this sovereign, as of Minos, that he had no known paternal ancestry,
and perhaps that he falsely claimed a maternal one, in the country
where he attained to fame. But further, it very decidedly appears from
the use of the word Ἀργεῖοι for the subjects of the Perseids, and from
the intense attachment of the Homeric Juno to that family, that they
were an Hellenic house, following upon the probably Egyptian dynasty of
the Danaids. With them appears to begin what Homer esteems to be the
really national history. Perseus therefore probably may have brought
his name direct from among the Hellenes of the north. Why should it not
have come to the Helli from Persia? Let it be recollected that we have
two other links with the east supplied: one in Perse, daughter of the
Eastern Oceanus, and bride of the Sun, the other in Persephoneia, whose
ἄλσεα, as I hope to show in treating of the Outer Geography, are in the
same quarter.
In Herodotus we find a tradition that Perseus visited Cepheus[918],
the Persian king, at the period when the people were called by the
Greeks Cephenes; that he married his daughter Andromeda, and had
a son, Perses, who remained behind him, succeeded Cepheus, and
gave his name to the country. This tale has the appearance of a
palpable fiction, intended to cover what may have been a fact; that
Perseus--who in Homer has himself all the appearance of an immigrant
into Peloponnesus--was a stranger, and derived his name from that of
the Persians. Now this was the version current among the Persians;
who reported that Perseus, born one of themselves, became an Hellene,
but that his ancestors had not been Hellenes. To this Persian account
Herodotus appears to give his own adhesion: and he states that the
Greeks reckoned Hellenic kings up to Perseus[919], but that before
him they were Egyptian. This is in entire harmony with what can be
gathered from the indirect, but consistent and converging, notices
supplied by Homer. And again, the whole mass of the later reports
concerning Perseus keep him in close relation with that outer circle
of traditions, which I have designated as Phœnician; with the Gorgons
of Hades, with Tartessus on the Ocean, with Æthiopia and Atlas.
Lastly; the continuance of the name as a royal name, down to the very
extinction of nationality in Greece--for the last Macedonian king was
a Perseus--may probably be connected with a stream of tradition, that
drew from Persia the oldest of the national monarchs.
_The Achæan name in Persia._
Again, we find that the name Ἀχαιοὶ was the great descriptive name of
the Hellic races in the Homeric age. Yet it is without any note of
an Hellic or European origin. Let us therefore see, whether in the
East we can find anything that stands, even though at first sight
disguisedly, in affinity with it. Now Herodotus tells us, that in the
leading tribe of Pasargadæ there was a family (φρήτρη), from which
came the Persian kings; the family of the Ἀχαιμενίδαι. Even if it
were not easy to trace the mode of the relationship, it would seem
inevitable to recognise a connection between the name Ἀχαιμένης, or
whatever is the proper Persian root of this Greek patronymic, and those
Ἀχαιοὶ whom we find at the head of the Greek races. This connection
receives a singular illustration from Strabo, who in describing the
Asiatic country called Aria, which gives a name to the Arian race,
states that it has three cities called after their founders, Artacaena,
Alexandria, and Achaia. Artacaes was a distinguished Persian, of the
army of Xerxes. The name of Alexander speaks for itself. With respect
to either of these, Strabo may be understood to speak of what may, from
the respective dates, have been genuine historical traditions. But he
knew and could know nothing of a Persian Achæus, as the founder of the
third city. And the Greek Achæus, if he existed at all, belonged to
another country, and to a pre-historic antiquity. The real force of
the tradition which reports that these cities bore the names of their
founders, seems, however, to be pretty obvious. It must surely mean
this: that they had borne the same names at all times within the memory
of man. Thus we have the Achæan name thrown back, by a local testimony
subsisting in Strabo’s time, to a remote antiquity: there it finds a
holding-ground in the Achæmenidæ of Herodotus: and both these authors
become witnesses, I think, to the derivation of the Ἀχαιοὶ of Homer
from Persia[920]. I do not mean that the Achæmenes, who, according to
the Behistun Inscription, gave his name to the Achæmenidæ, was the
father of the Achæans of the poems, for he appears to have lived only
five generations before Darius. But the coincidence of name between
the ruling family in Persia, and the dominant race in Greece, bears
witness, in harmony with other testimonies, to a presumptive identity
of origin.
It appears, too, that the name thus viewed may well have had its root
in the ancient Arian language, if we judge from its extant forms.
The word signifying ‘friends,’ according to Sir H. Rawlinson, is in
Sanscrit _sakhá_, and in Persian _hakhá_.
“The name Achæmenes signifies ‘friendly,’ or ‘possessing friends,’
being formed of a Persian word _hakhá_, corresponding to the Sanscrit
_sakhá_, and an attributive affix equivalent to the Sanscrit mat,
which forms the nominative in _man_. H. R.[921]”
The word, then, if we may rely on this high authority, undergoes no
other change, on passing into the Greek tongue, than the loss of the
initial aspirate, (while the second is retained in χ,) and the addition
of the Greek termination ος or ιος. In this description of a ruling
race by their common bond as associates, there is something that
resembles the European and feudal name of peers.
There is indeed another name still existing in Persia, that of the
Eelliats or itinerant tribes, the form of which, and the circumstances
under which it appears, will shortly be noticed[922].
We have now obtained various lights, which point out to us the Persians
as the probable ancestry of the Greeks. It still remains to learn,
whether from the history of ancient Persia we can raise a presumption
that there were, through resemblances subsisting there, marked signs of
affinity between the two.
_The Persians according to Herodotus._
Herodotus has given us a remarkable, and apparently a careful, account
of the ancient Persians, both as to religion and as to manners, which
upon the whole both exhibits striking points of resemblance to Greece,
and likewise tends to attach that resemblance to the Hellic rather than
the Pelasgian race.
In making the comparison, we must allow specially for two sources of
error. The Hellic tribes of Homer’s time had been probably for not
less than eight or ten generations (since we trace the Dardanians on
their own ground for seven generations, the Perseids and Æolids for
six) detached from the parent stock, and might well have modified their
character and customs, especially since they had mingled with the
Pelasgians in the plains. And again, the account of Herodotus is later
probably by 500 years or more, than the manners described in Homer. The
Persians of his day had long been mixed with the Medes: and had, as he
tells us[923], adopted their costume: probably much else along with it.
_The comparison as to religious belief._
The Persians, says Herodotus[924], have no temples, altars, nor statues
of the gods. Tacitus[925] gives a like account of the Germans. Of these
Homer only enables us to trace altars with clearness as having been
adopted by the Hellenic races at the period of the _Troica_. But the
tendency to sacerdotal development among the Pelasgi may have had its
counterpart in ‘the symbolism and complicated ceremonial of Media[926].’
They worship Jupiter from high places. So did Hector. We have no reason
to make the same assertion of the Trojans generally: but the place
given to Jupiter on Ida, and the whole Olympian fabric, probably also
the plan of scaling heaven by heaping mountains one on another, all
belong to the same train of thought.
They, if we are to adopt the statement, call the whole circuit of the
heaven by the name of Jupiter. This same is the share of the universe,
which, in the Homeric mythology, falls to the lot of Jupiter, and the
name Ζεὺς is said to be identical with the Sanscrit _Dyaus_, meaning
‘the sky[927]:’ a sense which we find in the _sub dio_ and _sub Jove_
of the Latin writers, belonging to the Augustan age. This elemental
conception of him, however, is probably more Median than Persian.
They did not originally worship Venus (ἀρχῆθεν); but they learned the
worship of her from others, apparently the Medes or Assyrians. This
remarkably accords with the case of the Hellenes of Homer, who seem
only to have been drawing towards, rather than to have accepted fully,
the worship of Venus in his time[928].
They considered fire to be a god[929]: differing in this from the
Egyptians, who held it to be an animal.
So we find that the worship of Vulcan appears to be Hellic more than
Pelasgian, and that the fable of his origin distinctly points to what
was for Homer the farthest east[930].
They paid a particular reverence to rivers[931]. Of this we have the
amplest evidence in Homer among the Greeks as to Alpheus, Spercheus,
and the River of Scheria: rivers, too, were honoured by a more distinct
personification than was attributed to other natural objects. The
Scamander is, indeed, similarly treated. But this is an exception
to the general mode of representation: and no other Trojan River is
actively personified[932]. Simois is addressed (Il. xxi. 308) by
Scamander; but is himself a mute.