Problems in Greek history Part 6

The great and only patent of respectability in any Greek house or city of early times was foundation by a hero or the direct descendant of a hero; for the heroes were sons or grandsons of the G.o.ds, from whom all Greek n.o.bility was derived. The Homeric poems, in making or defining the Greek theology, also told of the great houses directly descended from Zeus or Heracles; and so a royal house which was descended from these personages, or a city founded by them, secured for itself a dignity recognized by all the race. To cite late historical instances: the Macedonian kings made good their claim to being Greeks and civilized men by showing their descent from the hero aeacus, whose descendants the aeacids figure so prominently in the legendary wars. The Romans, when first they came into contact with Greek culture, and felt at the same time their superior strength and their social inferiority, at once accepted and promoted the story invented for them at Pergamum or adapted for them in Sicily, that they were a colony of Trojans, led by aeneas, the child of Aphrodite by a mortal hero.

[Sidenote: h.e.l.lenistic cities.]

If these things took place in the dry tree of sober history, what must have taken place in the green? Every city was bound to have a heroic founder, and to have been established in almost mythical times. Even in late and reflecting days, as I have already mentioned (-- 16), when the successors of Alexander founded new towns in Syria and Asia Minor, stories continued to be invented alleging old h.e.l.lenic settlements of mythical heroes in these places, whose shrines were accordingly set up, and their wors.h.i.+p inst.i.tuted, to produce an appearance of respectability in upstart polities.

[Sidenote: Glory of short pedigrees.]

It is not usually felt by modern readers that in consequence of these sentiments the great thing was not to have a long pedigree for a family or city, but to have as short a pedigree as possible for its founder. To be the son or grandson of a G.o.d was splendid; to be his remote descendant was only to cling on to real n.o.bility like the younger and remoter branches of great English families. This will indicate how strong was the tendency to derive an early origin from a great and known descendant of the G.o.ds or their acknowledged sons. The subsequent history and fortunes of a city were comparatively vulgar, provided it was founded by a Heracleid,--the second or third in descent from Temenus or Hyllus. Hence the systematic habit of all early chronologers _of counting downwards from Heracles or the Trojan war_, and not upwards from their own days.

[Sidenote: The sceptics credulous in chronology.]

-- 29. I have already declared that I put more faith than the modern sceptical historians in the pictures of life and manners left us in Greek epic poetry, that I do not believe pure invention to be a natural or copious source for the materials of early poets. But the very sceptics to whom I here allude are in my mind quite too credulous on the matter of early chronology, and quite too ready to accept statements of accurate dates where no accurate dates can be ascertained[57:1].

[Sidenote: The current scheme of early dates.]

[Sidenote: The so-called Olympic register.]

[Sidenote: Plutarch's account of it.]

This is the main topic on which I claim to have shown strong reasons for rejecting what Grote, Curtius, and even the recent sceptical historians have accepted. They have all agreed in giving up such dates as 1184 B.C. for the siege of Troy, or 1104 B.C. for the Return of the Heracleids[58:1]; and yet they accept 776 for the first Olympiad, and 736 for the first colony (Naxos) in Sicily, on nearly the same kind of evidence. And they do this in spite of the most express evidence that the list of Olympiads was edited or compiled _late_ (after 400 B.C.), _and starting from no convincing evidence_, by Hippias of Elis. This pa.s.sage from Plutarch's _Life of Numa_, which I cited and expounded in an article upon the Olympiads in the _Journal of h.e.l.lenic Studies_ which I have reprinted in the Appendix to this book, is so capital that it shows either ignorance or prejudice to overlook its importance. 'To be accurate,' says Plutarch, 'as to the chronology [of Numa], is difficult, and especially what is inferred from the Olympic victors, whose register they say that Hippias the Eleian published late, starting from nothing really trustworthy[59:1].' Nor is it possible to hold that this was some sudden and undue scepticism in the usually believing Plutarch; for I showed at length that the antiquarian Pausanias, whose interest in very old things was of the strongest, could find at Olympia no dated monument older than the thirty-third Olympiad. If he had seen an old register upon stone, he would most certainly have mentioned it, nor can I find in any extant author any direct evidence that such a thing existed. I predicted confidently, when the recent excavations began, that no such list, or fragment of a list, would be found, and negatively at least, my prediction was verified[59:2].

[Sidenote: The date of Pheidon of Argos]

[Sidenote: revised by E. Curtius]

-- 30. It is curious, moreover, that on one point this traditional chronology had been rejected, and an important date in early Greek history revised, by Ernst Curtius; and yet he holds to the tradition in every other case. The date of Pheidon of Argos, the famous tyrant who first coined money in Greece, and who celebrated an Olympic contest in spite of Sparta and Elis, was placed by most of the old chronologers in 747 B.C., the eighth Olympiad, I believe, because Pheidon counted as the tenth from Temenus, the first Heracleid king of Argos. All the rational inferences, however, to be made from his life and work pointed to a much later date[60:1]; so that by a simple emendation the twenty-eighth Olympiad--also an irregular festival, according to Hippias' list--was subst.i.tuted; and thus Curtius has made a most instructive and interesting combination, by which this tyrant and his relation to Sparta become part of the rational development of Peloponnesian history.

[Sidenote: Since abandoned.]

[Sidenote: The authority of Ephorus]

There seems to be an agreement in the more recent historians[60:2] to abandon even this gain, and go back to the old date,--probably because such a step would imperil many other old dates, and cast the historians into the turmoil of revising their traditional views. For when you once root up one of these early dates, many others are bound to follow. The uncertainty and hesitation of the critics seem now to arise from doubts about the authority of Ephorus, from whom most of our knowledge is ultimately derived[61:1]. As I have elsewhere said, I regard this _Quellenkritik_ as little more than a convenient way of airing acuteness and learning, and therefore highly useful for theses or exercises of philological candidates for honours. But as regards what we can really trace to Ephorus, concerning the date of Pheidon, the reforms of Lycurgus, and other such questions, two separate inquiries must be satisfied before we accept his word: first, what doc.u.ments or other evidence were accessible to Ephorus; secondly, with what honesty and judgment did he use them? There are scholars who believe him implicitly, and even believe implicitly statements which they have fathered upon him by very doubtful inference. There are others who treat him with contempt. There is even a third cla.s.s which accepts him sometimes, and rejects him at others, because he will not fit in with their preconceived opinions.

[Sidenote: not first-rate.]

The question now before us is this: If Ephorus did put Pheidon in the eighth Olympiad, or about 747 B.C., upon what authority did he do so?

Had he any evidence to go upon different from that which we can still name and criticise? I will here add my opinion to the many which the reader of German can consult for himself. Ephorus was a pupil of Isocrates, brought up to consider style and effect the main objects of the historian. To this he added the usual prejudices of the Greek for his native city, Kyme, which he glorifies upon every occasion. Thus it is to Ephorus that we owe the absurd date of the founding of the Italian c.u.mae (1050 B.C.) as an evidence of the early greatness of the aeolic city. It has been shown by A. Bauer and by Busolt that, in telling the story of the Persian Wars, Ephorus (as appears in the second-hand Diodorus) not only rearranged facts in such order as seemed to him effective, but often invented details. Whenever he adds to the narrative of Herodotus, this seems to be the case. The night attack of the Greeks on the Persians at Thermopylae (Diod. xi. 9) is a signal instance of this, not to speak of the rhetorical display, which is so widely different from the admirable and simple narrative of Herodotus. All such early history, therefore, as depends upon Ephorus, is to me highly suspicious.

[Sidenote: Archias, the founder of Syracuse,]

There is another 'tenth Temenid,' specially connected in the legends with Pheidon as a contemporary and opponent, Archias of Corinth, who is said to have led the first colony to Sicily. I have no doubt that the same chronography which placed Pheidon in the eighth Olympiad (747 B.C.) placed Archias there, and, allowing for a few years of domestic struggles, sent him to Sicily in 735 B.C.[62:1] To my mind this legend is quite unhistorical, nay, it may possibly have falsified real history; for though it may have suited the national vanity of Antiochus of Syracuse and other old historians to magnify their own city by putting it first, or practically first, in the list, the whole situation points to a different course of events.

[Sidenote: a.s.sociated with legends of Corcyra and Croton.]

[Sidenote: Thucydides counts downward from this imaginary date.]

Archias, when on his way, is said to have left a party to settle at Corcyra; he is also said to have helped the founder of Croton. It is surely improbable that Greek adventurers in search of good land and convenient harbours should fix on Sicily, pa.s.sing by the sites of Tarentum, Sybaris, Croton, and Locri. That these sites were fully appreciated is shown by the flouris.h.i.+ng cities which the legend a.s.serts to have been founded in the generation succeeding the origin of Syracuse. Will any unprejudiced man believe all this most improbable history? The one fact which the old chronologers of Syracuse could not get over was this: from time immemorial Greek s.h.i.+ps arriving in Sicily offered sacrifices at the temple of Apollo Archegetes at Naxos. Hence Naxos must have been the first settlement. In the following year, says Thucydides, Syracuse was founded; and then all the dates which he copies from his authority--most likely Antiochus--are, as usual, downward from the date of Syracuse, and almost all in numbers divisible by five.

I will pause a moment, and give the reader a summary of the conclusions to which critical scholars in general have given their a.s.sent. It is conceded that Thucydides must have used Antiochus of Syracuse as his princ.i.p.al source in narrating the archaeology of Sicily. This opinion, first stated by Niebuhr, has been argued out fully by Wolfflin, and accepted with some reluctance by Holm, Cla.s.sen (the best editor of Thucydides), and Busolt[64:1].

[Sidenote: Antiochus of Syracuse]

[Sidenote: not trustworthy;]

[Sidenote: his dates illusory,]

Even the language of Thucydides in these chapters shows phrases which we recognize in the fragments of Antiochus cited by Strabo. The prominence of Syracuse, the city of Antiochus, and the mention of the const.i.tutions of the new cities, are also features pointing to the work of Antiochus.

In his special article Busolt has shown with great acuteness that all the later authorities, cited by some in support of Thucydides' data, really rest upon him or upon Antiochus[64:2]. What was the character of this author? He was an early contemporary of Herodotus, and is never cited by the ancients as a specimen of critical ac.u.men, but rather as possessing special knowledge on an outlying part of the Greek world. We have, moreover, his opening words quoted by Dionysius of Halicarna.s.sus[65:1], which are most important in the present connection: [Greek: Antiochos Xenophaneos tade synegrapse peri Italies ek ton archaion logon ta pistotata kai saphestata]. In other words he used oral tradition for his facts, and this he also did in his account of early Sicily[65:2]. He was, at best, one of the most serious, if you please, of the _logopoioi_, or chroniclers, who are always being contrasted with critical historians such as Thucydides. Such being the state of the facts, we are compelled to accept as our only authority for the early traditions concerning Sicily this solitary chronicler, who seems to have had no difficulty in fixing dates centuries before the first immigration of the Greeks. In a loose thinker of this kind, patriotism may be fairly a.s.signed as a strong moving cause in determining his facts and dates.

Indeed, when Archias is said by this Antiochus to have aided at the founding of Croton, Grote and Holm are quite ready to set it down to his desire to magnify Syracuse. When Ephorus of Kyme sets down the Italian colony of his city (c.u.mae) at 1050 B.C., all critical historians reject this date upon the same ground. If this criticism be indeed valid, are we only to use it when we choose, or to apply it generally? Busolt shows (in his article) that the actual year of the founding of Syracuse (and hence of the other Sicilian colonies) cannot be regarded as certain.

Surely he and his brother critics stop short illogically, and refrain from pus.h.i.+ng their doubts as far as they are bound to do. To me not only the exact year, but the exact generation--it is by generations and round numbers that Antiochus counted--is quite uncertain; and we are thrown back on arguments from general probability such as those which I have indicated.

[Sidenote: though supported by Thucydides,]

[Sidenote: who is not omniscient.]

-- 31. It is the authority of Thucydides which has imposed upon the learned an artificial chronology. The scholar is often wanting in acuteness. There are, I suppose, plenty of philologers who believe Thucydides far more implicitly than their Bible, and because he appears careful and trustworthy in contemporary affairs, actually a.s.sume that he must be equally credible in matters wholly beyond his ken. I suppose they imagine, though they do not state it, that the historian consulted State archives in Sicily, and set down his conclusions from a careful a.n.a.lysis of their evidence. We have no trace or mention of any such systematic archives; and if the historian indeed confined himself to these, what shall we say to his a.s.sertion that the Sikels pa.s.sed from Italy to Sicily just three hundred years before the advent of the Greeks? How could he know this? But the solemn manner of the man and his habitual reticence concerning his authorities have wonderfully imposed upon the credulity of the learned.

[Sidenote: Credulity in every sceptic.]

n.o.body rates Thucydides higher than I do, wherever he is really competent to give an unbia.s.sed opinion. His accuracy is not, to my mind, impeached by the fact that he is found to have made a slovenly copy of a public doc.u.ment lately recovered on the Acropolis[67:1]. The variations, though many, are trifling, and do not affect the substance of the doc.u.ment. Yet this may do more to discredit him with the pedants than what seems to me dangerous credulity in larger questions. He is hardly to be blamed; no man escapes entirely from the prejudices of his age.

The most sceptical in some points, as I have already noticed[67:2], let their credulity transpire in others. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, whose whole life was spent in framing sceptical arguments against early history, is found to accept the unity of authors.h.i.+p and unity of design of the Homeric poems. Grote, so careful and precise in accepting doc.u.ments, subscribes to the genuineness of the Platonic _Letters_, which no other competent scholar admits; and so I suppose that in every sceptic, however advanced, some nook of belief will be found, often far less rational than the faith he has rejected.

[Sidenote: Its probable occurrence in ancient critics.]

[Sidenote: Value of Hippias' work.]

[Sidenote: Even Eratosthenes counts _downward_.]

[Sidenote: Clinton's warning.]

This truth, which applies to modern scholars so signally, applies no less to the ancient critics of the Greek legends. When we find that Thucydides accepts a piece of ancient history like this account of the Greek settlement of Sicily, we must first of all be sure that he is not the victim of a fit of acquiescence in an older chronicler. When we hear that Aristotle and Polybius, two great and sceptical men, accepted the Olympiads, we must first know exactly what they said about the earlier dates[68:1], and then we must be a.s.sured that they did not simply acquiesce in the work of Hippias. For this Hippias was clearly a man writing with a deliberate policy. He must produce a complete catalogue; he must make his doc.u.ments conform to it. And so there is evidence in Pausanias that he not only succeeded in his purpose, but that he modified or re-wrote certain inscriptions which we may suppose did not suit his purpose. I refuse to put faith in such an authority, and I refuse to accept as the first real date in Greek history an epoch fixed by all the Greek chronologers in a downward calculation from the Trojan war,--as may be seen even in the scientific and accurate Eratosthenes.

His fragments, written at a time when there really existed Greek science, in a day rich with all the learning of previous centuries, still manifest the old faith in the Trojan war, the Return of the Heracleids, the colonization of Ionia, and the guardians.h.i.+p of Lycurgus, as events to be fixed both absolutely and in relation to one another, and to serve as a basis for all the succeeding centuries down to the day of real and contemporary records. 'In these early dates and eras,' says Fynes Clinton in a remarkable pa.s.sage[69:1], 'by a singular error in reasoning, the authority of Eratosthenes is made to be binding upon his predecessors; while those who come after him are taken for original and independent witnesses in matters which they really derived from his chronology. The numbers given by Isocrates for the Return of the Heracleidae[69:2] are repeated three times, and are more trustworthy; and yet the critics try to correct them by the authority of Eratosthenes.'

-- 32. What, then, is the outcome of all this discussion?

[Sidenote: Summary of the discussion.]

The first three stages of Greek history are, so to speak, isolated, and separated by two blank periods, one of which has to this day remained a great gulf, over which no bridge has yet been constructed. Over the second, which immediately precedes proper history, the Greeks made a very elaborate bridge, which they adorned with sundry figures recovered from vague tradition and arranged according to their fancy. But it is only after this reconstructed epoch of transition that we can be sure of our facts.

[Sidenote: The stage of pre-Homeric remains.]

[Sidenote: Prototype of the Greek temple.]

The first stage is that represented by the pre-historic remains, which, though they are plainly very various in development, and therefore probably in age, are yet by most of us cla.s.sed together as 'without father, mother, or descent,' discovering to us the earliest civilization in Greek lands. But to a.s.sert this foundling character is perhaps too sceptical a position. For there can hardly be any likelihood that the Eastern parentage of this early luxury, suggested by the legends, will hereafter be disproved. And now even the most extreme advocates of Greek originality must allow this early intercourse with, and influence of, the older civilizations. As to their effects upon historic Greek art, there seemed to be a gap between the bee-hive tomb or fortress-wall and the pillared temple, which was a 'great gulf fixed,' till Dr. Schliemann found the doorways of the palace of Tiryns. They are all planned like a temple _in antis_,--the earliest form, from which the _peripteral_ easily follows. And early vases are adorned with rude figures which may be copies of old models such as those found at Mycenae. But the intermediate steps are still hopelessly obscure.