Problems in Greek history Part 3

[20:1] The original preface to his first volume marks out the limits which he duly attained.

[23:1] The first edition of Niebuhr's history appeared in 1811. The second, a wholly different and enlarged work, was published in 1827, and translated into English by Thirlwall and Hare in 1828. Grote quotes Niebuhr constantly, and takes from his Lectures on Ancient History more than from any other modern source.

[25:1] Thus Duncker's chapter on the Olympic games shows at once that he never was at Olympia, and does not understand the site.

[26:1] _Rambles and Studies in Greece_, p. 107. See also the excellent note in Duruy's _History_, ii. chap. vii. sect. 1, on the frequent exaggerations of the number of Athenian citizens, which never reached this high figure.

[26:2] Dr. Dorpfeld, with his new map before him, estimated the area for me the last time I was at Athens. He found that counting in every available s.p.a.ce, such as gangways, &c., 16,000 was the limit. It seems, therefore, highly probable that an average audience would not exceed 10,000. I cannot remember in Attic literature any allusion to crowding or want of room in this theatre.

[26:3] _Op. cit._, pp. 108-9. Duruy, at the opening of his twentieth chapter, has given excellent pictures and plans of the theatre in question.

CHAPTER II.

RECENT TREATMENT OF THE GREEK MYTHS.

[Sidenote: The newer histories.]

[Sidenote: Not justifiable without particular reasons.]

[Sidenote: Max Duncker.]

[Sidenote: Not suited to English readers.]

-- 14. We may now pa.s.s to the more modern treatment of the myths and mythical history of Greece. There are before us the essays of several men since the monumental work of Grote. First there is that of Ernst Curtius; then Duncker's (both translated into English); still more recently the shorter histories of Holm, Busolt, Hertzberg, and other Germans, not to speak of Sir George c.o.x's history and the first volume of that of Mr. Evelyn Abbott. In fact they are so many and so various that the production of a new work on Greek history requires some special justification. For the time has really come when we may begin to complain of new histories that are not new, but merely reproduce the old facts and the old arguments, without regard to what specialists have been doing to clear up particular questions. Duncker's large work, of which the earlier period of Greek history forms the closing part, is indeed an important book, and cannot be dismissed so easily. But if I may venture to speak out, I do not think it was worth translating into English. Scholars earnest and patient enough to read through it can hardly fail to have learned German, and therefore require no English version. I cannot believe that the English-speaking public will ever read it, nor do I think this should be expected. For in the first place the book is sadly deficient in style,--not merely in the graces of style, which are seldom attained by professional scholars, but in that higher quality of style produced either by burning pa.s.sion or delicate aesthetic taste. Duncker is not, like most of the English historians, a politician. To him despot and democracy are mere things to be a.n.a.lyzed.

Nor does he strive to advocate novel and picturesque views, like Ernst Curtius. His mind is so conservative that he rather takes a step backward, and reverts, especially in his chronology, to statements which of late seemed likely to be discarded as obsolete. He is always sensible and instructive; he has an excellent habit of making his authorities speak for themselves: but he wants _verve_ as well as originality in treating old, unsettled problems, though he has made some remarkable re-constructions of history from conflicting myths.

[Sidenote: Busolt and Holm.]

[Sidenote: Return to Grote.]

[Sidenote: Holm's postulate.]

The two best recent histories to which I have referred, Busolt's in 1885, Holm's in 1886 (I speak of the first volumes), are by no means so conservative as Duncker; Holm is as advanced in his scepticism as Grote; but, as I shall show in the sequel, their scepticism is still spasmodic, or shall I say varied with touches of credulity, which are probably the necessary relief of all scepticism. Nothing strikes the reader of these new Greek histories more forcibly than their abandonment of the combinations of the school of E. Curtius, and their return to the att.i.tude of Grote, whose decision concerning the utter untrustworthiness of legends for historical purposes they all quote with approval. The ground taken by Grote was the possibility of 'plausible fiction' which could not possibly be distinguished, as miraculous stories can, from sober history. Holm adds to this some excellent arguments showing the strong temptations to deliberate invention which must have actuated the old chronographers and genealogists[30:1]. Nevertheless, Holm devotes 200 12mo pages, Busolt 100 8vo, of their 'short histories' to the a.n.a.lysis and discussion of the legends and discoveries concerning pre-historic Greece, in the course of which they cannot avoid many inferences from very doubtful evidence. Holm very justly demands that historians should let the reader know in the stating of it, what has been handed down to us, and what is modern hypothesis, and claims to have observed this distinction himself. But there are traditions which are manifestly late and untrustworthy, such as that which fixes the dates of Arktinos and Eumelos, and tells us of written registers in the eighth century B.C., which he accepts without a due caution to his readers.

[Sidenote: The modern att.i.tude.]

-- 15. I think, moreover, that even the most trenchant of sceptics does not consistently deny that there must be some truth in legendary history, though we may not be able to disentangle it from miracles and misunderstandings. And when once we have abandoned Grote's position, and hold it more probable that old legends are based on facts than purely invented, nothing will prevent the sanguine student from striving to pick out for himself the facts and making a probable, if not a certain, sketch of the otherwise unrecorded _incunabula_ of a nation's history.

[Sidenote: Pure invention a rare occurrence;]

[Sidenote: plausible fiction therefore not an adequate cause.]

This view and these attempts are based upon an ascertained truth in the psychology of all human societies. Just as people will accommodate a small number of distinct words to their perpetually increasing wants, and will rather torture an old root in fifty ways than simply invent a new combination of sounds for a new idea; so in popular legends the human race will always attach itself to what it knows, to what has gone before, rather than set to work and invent a new series of facts. Pure invention is so very rare and artificial that we may almost lay it aside as a likely source for _old_ legends[31:1]; and we may a.s.sume either a loose record of real facts, or the adoption and adaptation of the legends of a previous age, as our real, though treacherous, materials for guessing pre-historic truth. This is the reason why we later students have not adhered without hesitation to the sceptical theory that plausible fiction _may_ account for all the Greek myths, and we look for some stronger reason to reject them altogether.

[Sidenote: Cases of deliberate invention,]

[Sidenote: at Pergamum,]

[Sidenote: which breed general suspicion of marvellous stories.]

-- 16. There are cases, for example, where we can see distinct reasons why people in a historic age should have invented links to attach themselves to some splendid ancestry. Just as the heralds of our own day are often convicted of forging the generations which connect some wealthy upstart with an ancient house, so it is in Greek history. No larger and more signal instances of this can be found than the barefaced genealogies made by the learned in the days of Alexander's successors[32:1], when any of the new foundations,--Antioch, Seleucia, &c.,--wanted to prove themselves ancient h.e.l.lenic cities, re-settled upon a mythical foundation. Not different in spirit were the Pergamene fabrications, which not only invented a mythical history for Pergamum, but adopted and enlarged the Sicilian fables which connected a Pergamene hero, aeneas, with the foundation of Rome[33:1]. What capital both the Ilians and the people of Pergamum made out of these bold mendacities, is well known. I shall return in due course to another remarkable instance, which I have set before the world already, where a great record of Olympic games was made up at a late date by a learned man in honour of Elis and Messene. Later Greek history does show us some of these deliberate inventors,--Lobo the Argive, Euhemerus the Messenian, and a few more; a list which the Greeks themselves augmented by adding the travellers who told wonderful tales of distant lands which conflicted with h.e.l.lenic climate and experience. But here too the Greeks were over-sceptical, and rejected, as we know, many real truths only because they found them marvellous. In the same way, modern inquirers who come to estimate the doubtful and varying evidence for older history must be expected to differ according to the peculiar temper of their minds.

[Sidenote: Example of a trustworthy legend from Roman history.]

-- 17. But perhaps the reader will desire to hear of a case where a legend has conveyed acknowledged truth, rather than the multifarious cases where it may lead us into error. I will give an instance from Roman history, all the more remarkable from the connection in which it is found.

[Sidenote: Niebuhr, Arnold, Mommsen.]

That history, as we all know, used to commence with a pretty full account of the seven kings, who ruled for very definitely stated periods. The difficulties in accepting this legend were first shown by Niebuhr; and then came Arnold, who told again the legend as a mere nursery tale, refusing to call it history. Mommsen, in his very brilliant work, goes further, and omits the whole story contemptuously, without one word of apology. The modern reader who refers to his book to know who the kings of Rome were, would find one casual and partial list, no official chapter. I am not sure that Mommsen names most of them more than once in any pa.s.sing mention.

[Sidenote: The _rex sacrorum_ at Rome.]

But does it follow that Mommsen denies there ever were kings at Rome?

Far from it. For there were laws and ordinances, lasting into historical times, which would be wholly inexplicable had they not come down from a monarchy. Thus there remained a priest of great dignity, though of little importance, whose very t.i.tle--_rex sacrorum_--shows that his office was created to perform those priestly functions once performed by the abolished kings, and not otherwise provided for in the reformed const.i.tution. The fact therefore a.s.serted by the famous legend, that there were once kings in Rome, is established to the satisfaction of any reasonable man by the evidence of surviving usages.

[Sidenote: The king-archon at Athens.]

In the same way we have at Athens legends of kings, but all of such antiquity as to make us hesitate in believing them, had there not survived into historical days the _king-archon_, whose name and functions point clearly to their being a survival of those kingly functions which were thought indispensable on religious or moral grounds, even after the actual monarchs had pa.s.sed away[35:1].

The legends, therefore, which tell of a gradual change from a monarchy to an aristocracy, and a gradual widening of the Government to embrace more members by making its offices terminable, are no mere plausible fictions, but an obscure, and perhaps inadequate, yet still real account of what did happen in Attica in the days before written records existed.

[Sidenote: Legends of foreign immigrants.]

[Sidenote: Corroborative evidence of art, but not of language.]

-- 18. Larger and more important is the great body of stories which agree in bringing Phnician, Egyptian, and Asianic princes to settle in early Greece, where they found a primitive people, to whom they taught the arts and culture of the East. To deny the general truth of these accounts now would be to contradict facts scientifically ascertained; it is perfectly certain that the Greek alphabet is derived from the Phnician, and it is equally certain that many of the artistic objects found at Orchomenos, in Attica, and at Mycenae, reveal a foreign and Oriental origin. At the same time Duruy, in the luminous discussion he has devoted to the subject[36:1], shows that, however certain the early contact with the East, there is hardly any trace in Greece of the language of any non-h.e.l.lenic conquerors, as there is, for example (he might have added), in the names of the letters, which mostly bear in Greece their Semitic names. He thinks, therefore, that although early Asianic Greeks were the real intermediaries of this culture, they merely stimulated the latent spark in the natives, which shows itself in certain original non-Asiatic features which mark pre-historic Greek remains. But those who in their enthusiasm for Greece go even further in rejecting any foreign parentage for the higher Greek art[36:2], will now no longer deny that the occurrence of amber, ostrich-eggs, and ivory, which surely were not all imported in a rude or unmanipulated condition, prove at least the lively traffic in luxuries which must have existed, and which cannot exist without many other far-reaching connections.

[Sidenote: Corroboration of legends in architecture.]

There are even lesser matters, where legends might seem only to set before us the difficulty of harmonizing conflicting statements; and yet archaeology finds that there is something real implied. Thus the legend which a.s.serts that the older Perseids were supplanted by the Pelopids in the dominion of Mycenae is in striking agreement with the fact that there are two styles of wall-building in the extant remains, and that the ruder work has actually been re-faced with the square hewn blocks of the later builders[37:1].

-- 19. But we have here been dealing with political legends, which are less likely than genealogical or adventurous legends to excite the imagination, and so to be distorted from facts. Let us turn to consider some of these latter.

[Sidenote: Explanation of myths by the solar theory.]

[Sidenote: The a.n.a.logy of Indian and Persian mythology,]

When we approach such a story as the rape of Helen by Paris, the consequent expedition of the Greeks, and the siege of Troy, we are confronted, or at least we were confronted a few years ago, with a theory which professed to explain all such stories as mere modifications or misunderstandings of the great phenomena of Nature expressed in pictorial language. The break of day, the conquest of the Sun over the morning mists, his apparent defeat at night, and the victory of the Powers of Darkness,--all this was supposed to have affected so powerfully the imaginations of primitive men that they repeated their original hopes and fears in all manner of metaphors, which by and by became misinterpreted, and applied to the relations, friendly or hostile, of the various superhuman powers known as G.o.ds or heroes.

Helen, if you please, was the Dawn, carried off by Paris, the Powers of Night, and imprisoned in Troy. Achilles was only the Sun-G.o.d, who struggles against the Night, and after a period of brilliancy succ.u.mbs to his enemies. It appeared that in the _Vedas_ and the _Zend-Avesta_, which may be regarded as older cousins of the Greek mythologies, the names of the G.o.ds pointed clearly to their original connection with solar phenomena, and some of the Greek names were shown to be merely the Greek forms of the same words.