Chapter 20

See A. A. Macdonell,History of Sanskrit Literature(1900) p. 411 f., and the references on p. 452; V. A. Smith,Early History of India(1904); Grünwedel,Buddhist Art in India(Eng. trans., edited by Dr Burgess, 1901); W. W. Tarn, “Notes on Hellenism in Bactria and India” inJourn. of Hell. Studies, xxii. (1902); Foucher,L’Art gréco-bouddhique du Gandhâra(1905).

(ii.)Iran and Babylonia.—The colonizing activity of Alexander and his successors found a large field in Iran where, up till his time, hardly any walled towns seem to have existed. Cities now arose in all its provinces, superseding inGreek cities.many cases native market places and villages, and holding the vantage-points of commerce. Media, Polybius says, was defended by a chain of Greek cities from barbarian incursion (x. 27. 3); in the neighbourhood of Teheran seem to have stood Heraclea and Europus. In Eastern Iran the cities which are its chief places to-day then bore Greek names, and looked upon Alexander or some other Hellenic prince as their founder. Khojend, Herat, Kandahar were Alexandrias, Merv was an Alexandria till it changed that name for Antioch. When the farther provinces broke away under independent Greek kings, a Eucratidēa and a Demetrias attested their glory. Even in a town definitely barbarian like Syrinca in 209B.C.there was a resident mercantile community of Greeks (Polyb. x. 31). The bulk of Greek historical literature having perished, and in the absence of both archaeological data from Iran, we can only speculate on the inner life of these Greek cities under a strange sky. One precious document is the decree of Antioch in Persis (about 206B.C.) cited in a recently discovered inscription (Kern,Inschr. v. Magnesia, No. 61; Dittenberger,Orient. gr. Inscr.i. No. 233). This shows us the normal organs of a Greek city,boulē,ecclesia,prytaneis, &c., in full working, with the annual election of magistrates, and ordinary forms of public action. But more than this, it throws a remarkable light upon the solidarity of the Hellenic Dispersion. The citizen body had been increased some generations before by colonists from Magnesia-on-Meander sent at the invitation of Antiochus I. The Magnesians are instigated by pan-hellenic enthusiasm. And we see a brisk diplomatic intercourse between the scattered Greek cities going on. It is especially the local religious festivals which bind them together. Antioch in Persis, of course, sends athletes to the great games of Greece, but in this decree it determines to take part in the new festival being started in honour of Artemis at Magnesia. The loyalty, too, expressed towards the Seleucid king implies a predominant interest in pan-hellenic unity, natural in colonies isolated among barbarians. A list is given (fragmentary) of other Greek cities in Babylonia and beyond from which similar decrees had come.

In the middle of the 3rd centuryB.C.Bactria and Sogdiana broke away from the Seleucid empire; independent Greek kings reigned there till the country was conquered by nomads from Central Asia (Sacae and Yue-chi) aGreek kingdoms.century later. Alexander had settled large masses of Greeks in these regions (Greeks, it would seem, not Macedonians), whose attempts to return home in 325 and 323 had been frustrated, and it may well be that a racial antagonism quickened the revolt against Macedonian rule in 250. The history of these Greek dynasties is for us almost a blank, and for estimating the amount and quality of Hellenism in Bactria during the 180 years or so of Macedonian and Greek rule, we are reduced to building hypotheses upon the scantiest data. Probably nothing important bearing on the subject has been left out of view in W. W. Tarn’s learned discussion (Journ. of Hell. Stud.xxii., 1902, p. 268 f.), and his result is mainly negative, that palpable evidences of an active Hellenism have not been found; he inclines to think that the Greek kingdoms mainly took on the native Iranian colour. The coins, of course, are adduced on the other side, being not only Greek in type and legend, but (in many cases) of a peculiarly fine and vigorous execution; and excellence in one branch of art is thought to imply that other branches flourished in the samemilieu. Tarn suggests that they may be a “sport,” a spasmodic outbreak of genius (seeBactriaand works there quoted). In these outlying provinces the national Iranian sentiment seems to have been most intense, and it is interesting to see that under Alexander Hellenism appeared as “belligerent civilization,” in the attempt to suppress practices like the exposure of the dying to the dogs (an exaggeration of Zoroastrianism) and, possibly also, abhorrent forms of marriage (Strabo xi. 517; Porphyr.De abstin.4. 21; Plut.De fort. Al.5).

The west of Iran slipped from the Seleucids in the course of the 2nd centuryB.C.to be joined to the Parthian kingdom, or fall under petty native dynasties. Soon after 130 Babylonia too was conquered by the Parthian, and Mesopotamia before 88. Then the reconquest of the nearer East by Oriental dynasties was checked by the advance of Rome. Asia Minor and Syria remained substantial parts of the Roman Empire till the Mahommedan conquests of the 7th centuryA.D.began a new process of recoil on the part of the Hellenistic power. In Babylonia, also, in Susiana and Mesopotamia, Hellenism had been established in a system of cities for 200 years before the coming of the Parthian. The greatest of all of them stood here—almost on the site of Bagdad—Seleucia on the Tigris. It superseded Babylon as the industrial focus of Babylonia and counted some 600,000 inhabitants (plebs urbana) according to Pliny,N.H.vi. § 122 (cf. Joseph.Arch.xviii. § 372, 374; for coins, probably of Seleucia, with the type of Tychē issued in the yearsA.D.43-44 see Wroth,Coins of Parthia, p. xlvi.). The list of other Greek cities known to us in these regions is too long to give here (see Droysen,loc. cit., and E. Schwartz in Kern’sInschr. v. Magnesia, p. 171 f.). In Mesopotamia, Pliny especially notes how the character of the country was changed when the old village life was broken in upon by new centres of population in the cities of Macedonian foundation (Pliny,N.H.vi. § 117; cf. K. Regling, “Histor. geog. d. mesopot. Parallelograms,” in Lehmann’sBeiträge, i. p. 442 f.).

We do not look in vain for notable names in Hellenistic literature and philosophy produced on an Asiatic soil. Diogenes, the Stoic philosopher (head of the school in 156B.C.), was a “Babylonian,”i.e.a citizen of Seleucia on theHellenic-Iranian culture.Tigris; so too was Seleucus, the mathematician and astronomer, being possibly a native Babylonian; Berossus, who wrote a Babylonian history in Greek (before 261B.C.) was a Hellenized native. Apollodorus, Strabo’s authorityfor Parthian history (c.80B.C.?), was from the Greek city of Artemita in Assyria. When the Parthians rent away provinces from the Seleucid empire, the Greek cities did not cease to exist by passing under barbarian rule. Gradually no doubt the Greek colonies were absorbed, but the process was a long one. In 140 and 130B.C.those of Iran were ready to rise in support of the Seleucid invader (Joseph.Arch.xiii. § 184; Justin xxxviii. 10.6-8). Just so, Crassus in 53B.C.found a welcome in the Greek cities of Mesopotamia. Seleucia on the Tigris is spoken of by Tacitus as being inA.D.36 “proof against barbarian influences and mindful of its founder Seleucus” (Ann.vi. 42). How important an element the Greek population of their realm seemed to the Parthian kings we can see by the fact that they claimed to be themselves champions of Hellenism. From the reign of Artabanus I. (128/7-123B.C.) they bear the epithet of “Phil-hellen” as a regular part of their title upon the coins. Under the later reigns the Tychē figure (the personification of a Greek city) becomes common as a coin type (Wroth,Coins of Parthia, pp. liii., lxxiv.). The coinage may, of course, give a somewhat one-sided representation of the Parthian kingdom, being specially designed for the commercial class, in which the population of the Greek cities was, we may guess, predominant. The state of things which prevails in modern Afghanistan, where trade is in the hands of a class distinct in race and speech (Persian in this case) from the ruling race of fighters is very probably analogous to that which we should have found in Iran under the Parthians.2That the Parthian court itself was to some extent Hellenized is shown by the story, often adduced, that a Greek company of actors was performing theBacchaebefore the king when the head of Crassus was brought in. This single instance need not, it is true, show a Hellenism of any profundity; still it does show that certain parts of Hellenism had become so essential to the lustre of a court that even an Arsacid could not be without them. Artavasdes, king of Armenia (54?-34B.C.) composed Greek tragedies and histories (Plut.Crass.33). Then the prestige of the Roman Empire, with its prevailingly Hellenistic culture, must have told powerfully. The Parthian princes were in many cases the children of Greek mothers who had been taken into the royal harems (Plut.Crass.32). Musa, the queen-mother, whose head appears on the coins of Phraataces (3/2B.C.-A.D.4) had been an Italian slave-girl. Many of the Parthian princes resided temporarily, as hostages or refugees, in the Roman Empire; but one notes that the nation at large looked with anything but favour upon too liberal an introduction of foreign manners at the court (Tac.Ann.ii. 2).

Such slight notices in Western literature do not give us any penetrating view into the operation of Hellenism among the Iranians. As an expression of the Iranian mind we have the Avesta and the Pehlevi theological literature. Unfortunately in a question of this kind the dating of our documents is the first matter of importance, and it seems that we can only assign dates to the different parts of the Avesta by processes of fine-drawn conjecture. And even if we could date the Avesta securely, we could only prove borrowing by more or less close coincidences of idea, a tempting but uncertain method of inquiry. Taking an opinion based on such data for what it is worth, we may note that Darmesteter believed in the influence of the later Greek philosophy (Philonian and Neo-platonic) as one of those which shaped the Avesta as we have it (Sacred Books of the East, iv. 54 f.), but we must also note that such an influence is emphatically denied by Dr L. Mills (Zarathushtra and the Greeks, Leipzig, 1906). Outside literature, we have to look to the artistic remains offered by the region to determine Hellenic influence. But here, too, the preliminary classification of the documents is beset with doubt. In the case of small objects like gems the place of manufacture may be far from the place of discovery. The architectural remains are solidlyin situ, but we may have such vast disagreement as to date as that between Dieulafoy and M. de Morgan with respect to domed buildings of Susa, a disagreement of at least five centuries. It is enough then here to observe that Iran and Babylonia do, as a matter of fact, continually yield the explorer objects of workmanship either Greek or influenced by Greek models, belonging to the age after Alexander, and that we may hence infer at any rate such an influence of Hellenism upon the tastes of the richer classes as would create a demand for these things.

For gems see “Gobineau” in theRev. archéol., vols. xxvii., xxviii. (1874); Ménant,Recherches sur la glyptique orientale, ii. 189 f.; E. Babelon,Catalogue des camées de la Bibl. Nat.(1897), p. 56; A. Furtwängler,Die antiken Gemmen, pp. 165, 369 ff.; Figurines: Heuzey,Fig. ant. du Louvre(1883) p. 3; J. P. Peters,Nippur, ii. 128; Military standard: Heuzey,Comptes rendus de l’Acad. d. Inscr.(1895) p. 16;Rev. d’Assyr.v. (1903), p. 103 f. Alabaster vase: Sykes,Ten Thousand Miles in Persia, p. 445. In the case of the architectural remains, the Greek tradition is obvious at Hatra (Jacquerel,Rev. archéol., 1897 [ii.], 343 f.), and in the relics of the temple at Kingavar (Dieulafoy,L’Art antique de la Perse, v. p. 10 f.).

If any vestige of Hellenism still survived under the Sassanian kings, our records do not show it. The spirit of the Sassanian monarchy was more jealously national than that of the Arsacid, and alien grafts could hardly have flourishedSassanian empire.under it. Of course, if Darmesteter was right in seeing a Greek element in Zoroastrianism, Greek influence must still have operated under the new dynasty, which recognized the national religion. But, as we saw, the Greek influence has been authoritatively denied. At the court a limited recognition might be given, as fashion veered, to the values prevalent in the Hellenistic world. The story of Hormisdas in Zosimus is suggestive in this connexion (Zosim.Hist. nov.ii. 27). Chosroes I. interested himself in Greek philosophy and received its professors from the West with open arms (Agath. ii. 28 f.); according to one account, he had his palace at Ctesiphon built by Greeks (Theophylact. Simocat. v. 6).

But the account of Chosroes’ mode of action makes it plain that the Hellenism once planted in Iran had withered away; representatives of Greek learning and skill have all to be imported from across the frontier.

For Hellenism in Babylonia and Iran, see the useful article of M. Victor Chapot in theBull. et mémoires de la Soc. Nat. des Antiquaires de Francefor 1902 (published 1904), p. 206 f., which gives a conspectus of the relevant literature.

(iii.)Asia Minor.—Very different were the fortunes of Hellenism in those lands which became annexed to the Roman Empire.

In Asia Minor, we have seen how, even before Alexander, Hellenism had begun to affect the native races and Persian nobility. During Alexander’s own reign, we cannot trace any progress in the Hellenization of the interior,Greek cities of the Diadochi.nor can we prove here his activity as a builder of cities. But under the dynasties of his successors a great work of city-building and colonization went on. Antigonus fixed his capital at the old Phrygian town of Celaenae, and the famous cities of Nicaea and Alexandria Troas owed to him their first foundation, each as an Antigonia; they were refounded and renamed by Lysimachus (301-281B.C.). Then we have the great system of Seleucid foundations. Sardis, the Seleucid capital in Asia Minor, had become a Greek city before the end of the 3rd centuryB.C.The main high road between the Aegean coast and the East was held by a series of new cities. Going west from the Cilician Gates we have Laodicea Catacecaumene, Apamea, the Phrygian capital which absorbed Celaenae, Laodicea on the Lycus, Antioch-on-Meander, Antioch-Nysa, Antioch-Tralles. To the south of this high road we have among the Seleucid foundations Antioch in Pisidia (colonized with Magnesians from the Meander) and Stratonicea in Caria; in the region to the north of it the most famous Seleucid colony was Thyatira. Along the southern coast, where the houses of Seleucus and Ptolemy strove for predominance, we find the names of Berenice, Arsinoë and Ptolemais confronting those of Antioch and Seleucia. With the rise of the Attalid dynasty of Pergamum, a system of Pergamene foundation begins to oppose the Seleucid in the interior, bearing such names as Attalia, Philetaeria,Eumenia, Apollonis. Of these, one may note for their later celebrity Philadelphia in Lydia and Attalia on the Pamphylian coast. The native Bithynian dynasty became Hellenized in the course of the 3rd century, and in the matter of city building Prusias (the old Cius), Apamea (the old Myrlea), probably Prusa, and above all Nicomedia attested its activity. While new Greek cities were rising in the interior, the older Hellenism of the western coast grew in material splendour under the munificence of Hellenistic kings. Its centres of gravity to some extent shifted. There was a tendency towards concentration in large cities of the new type, which caused many of the lesser towns, like Lebedus, Myus or Colophon, to sink to insignificance, while Ephesus grew in greatness and wealth, and Smyrna rose again after an extinction of four centuries. The great importance of Rhodes belongs to the days after Alexander, when it received the riches of the East from the trade-routes which debouched into the Mediterranean at Alexandria and Antioch. In Aeolis, of course, the centre of gravity moved to the Attalid capital, Pergamum. It was the irruption of the Celts, beginning in 278-277B.C., which checked the Hellenization of the interior. Not only did the Galatian tribes take large tracts towards the north of the plateau in possession, but they were an element of perpetual unrest, which hampered and distracted the Hellenistic monarchies. The wars, therefore, in which the Pergamene kings in the latter part of the 3rd century stemmed their aggressions, had the glory of a Hellenic crusade.

The minor dynasties of non-Greek origin, the native Bithynian and the two Persian dynasties in Pontus and Cappadocia, were Hellenized before the Romans drove the Seleucid out of the country. In Bithynia the upper classes seem toNative dynasties.have followed the fashion of the court (Beloch iii. [i.], 278); the dynasty of Pontus was phil-hellenic by ancestral tradition; the dynasty of Cappadocia, the most conservative, dated its conversion to Hellenism from the time when a Seleucid princess came to reign there early in the 2nd centuryB.C.as the wife of Ariarathes V. (Diod. xxxi. 19. 8). But Hellenism in Cappadocia was for centuries to come still confined to the castles of the king and the barons, and the few towns.

When Rome began to interfere in Asia Minor, its first action was to break the power of the Gauls (189B.C.). In 133 Rome entered formally upon the heritage of the Attalid kingdom and became the dominant power in theHellenism under Roman sway.Anatolian peninsula for 1200 years. Under Rome the process of Hellenization, which the divisions and weakness of the Macedonian kingdoms had checked, went forward. The coast regions of the west and south the Romans found already Hellenized. In Lydia “not a trace” of the old language was left in Strabo’s time (Strabo xiv. 631); in Lycia, the old language became obsolete in the early days of Macedonian rule (see Kalinka,Tituli Asiae minoris, i. 8). But inland, in Phrygia, Hellenism had as yet made little headway outside the Greek cities. Even the Attalids had not effected much here (Körte,Athen. Mitth.xxiii., 1898, p. 152), and under the Romans, the penetration of the interior by Hellenism was slow. It was not till the reign of Hadrian that city life on the Phrygian plateau became rich and vigorous, with its material circumstances of temples, theatres and baths. Among the villages of the north and east of Phrygia, Hellenism “was only beginning to make itself felt in the middle of the 3rd centuryA.D.” (Ramsay in Kuhn’sZeitsch. f. vergleich. Sprachforschung, xxviii., 1885, p. 382). Gravestones in this region as late as the 4th century curse violators in the old Phrygian speech. The lower classes at Lystra in St Paul’s time spoke Lycaonian (Acts xiv. 11). In that part of Phrygia, which by the settlement of the Celtic invaders became Galatia, the larger towns seem to have become Hellenized by the time of the Christian era, whilst the Celtic speech maintained itself in the country villages till the 4th centuryA.D.(Jerome, Preface to Comment, inEpist. ad Gal.book ii.; see J. G. C. Anderson,Journ. of Hell. Stud.xix., 1899, p. 312 f.). Cappadocia at the beginning of the Christian era was still comparatively townless (Strabo xii. 537), a country of large estates with a servile peasantry. Even in the 4th century its Hellenization was still far from complete; but Christianity had assimilated so much of the older Hellenic culture that the Church was now a main propagator of Hellenism in the backward regions. The native languages of Asia Minor all ultimately gave way to Greek (unless Phrygian lingered on in parts till the Turkish invasions; see Mordtmann,Sitzungsb. d. bayer. Ak.1862, i. p. 30; K. Holl inHermes, xliii., 1908, p. 240 f.). The effective Hellenization of Armenia did not take place till the 5th century, when the school of Mesrop and Sahak gave Armenia a literature translated from, or imitating, Greek books (Gelzer in I. v. Müller’sHandbuch, vol. ix. Abt. i. p. 916.)

(iv.)Syria.—In Syria, which with Cilicia and Mesopotamia, formed the central part of the Seleucid empire, the new colonies were especially numerous. Alexander himself had perhaps made a beginning with Alexandria-by-IssusSeleucid empire.(mod. Alexandretta), Samaria, Pella (the later Apamea), Carrhae, &c. Antigonus founded Antigonia, which was absorbed a few years later by Antioch, and after the fall of Antigonus in 301, the work of planting Syria with Greek cities was pursued effectively north of the Lebanon by the house of Seleucus, and, less energetically, south of the Lebanon by the house of Ptolemy. In the north of Syria four cities stood pre-eminent above the rest, (1) Antioch on the Orontes, the Seleucid capital; (2) Seleucia-in-Pieria near the mouth of the Orontes, which guarded the approach to Antioch from the sea; (3) Apamea (mod. Famia), on the middle Orontes, the military headquarters of the kingdom; and (4) Laodicea “on sea” (ad mare), which had a commercial importance in connexion with the export of Syrian wine. Of the Ptolemaic foundations in Coele-Syria only one attained an importance comparable with that of the larger Seleucid foundations, Ptolemais on the coast, which was the old Semitic Acco transformed (mod. Acre). The group of Greek cities east of the Jordan also fell within the Ptolemaic realm during the 3rd centuryB.C., though their greatness belonged to a somewhat later day. The whole of Syria was brought under the Seleucid sceptre, together with Cilicia, by Antiochus III. the Great (223-187B.C.). Under his son, Antiochus IV. Epiphanes (175-164), a fresh impulse was given to Syrian Hellenism. In 1 Maccabees he is represented as writing an order to all his subjects to forsake the ways of their fathers and conform to a single prescribed pattern, and though in this form the account can hardly be exact, it does no doubt represent the spirit of his action. Other facts there are which point the same way. We now find a sudden issue of bronze money by a large number of the cities of the kingdom in their own name—an indication of liberties extended or confirmed. Many of them exchange their existing name for that of Antioch (Adana, Tarsus, Gadara, Ptolemais), Seleucia (Mopsuestia, Gadara) or Epiphanea (Oeniandus, Hamath). At Antioch itself great public works were carried out, such as were involved in the addition of a new quarter to the city, including, we may suppose, the civic council chamber which is afterwards spoken of as being here. With the ever-growing weakness of the Seleucid dynasty, the independence and activity of the cities increased, although, if, on the one hand, they were less suppressed by a strong central government, they were less protected against military adventurers and barbarian chieftains. Accordingly, when Pompey annexed Syria in 64B.C.as a Roman province,Roman period.he found it a chaos of city-states and petty principalities. The Nabataeans and the Jews above all had encroached upon the Hellenistic domain; in the south the Jewish raids had spread desolation and left many cities practically in ruins. Under Roman protection, the cities were soon rebuilt and Hellenism secured from the barbarian peril. Greek city life, with its political forms, its complement of festivities, amusements and intellectual exercise, went on more largely than before. The great majority of the Hellenistic remains in Syria belong to the Roman period. Such local dynasties as were suffered by the Romans to exist had, of course, a Hellenistic complexion. Especially was this the case with that of the Herods. Not only were such marks of Hellenism as a theatre introducedby Herod the Great (37-34B.C.) at Jerusalem, but in the work of city-building this dynasty showed itself active. Sebaste (the old Samaria), Caesarea, Antipatris were built by Herod the Great, Tiberias by Herod Antipas (4B.C.-A.D.39). The reclaiming of the wild district of Hauran for civilization and Hellenistic life was due in the first instance to the house of Herod (Schürer,Gesch. d. jüd. Volk.3rd ed., ii. p. 12 f.). In Syria, too, Hellenism under the Romans advanced upon new ground. Palmyra, of which we hear nothing before Roman times, is a notable instance.

As to the effect of this network of Greek cities upon the aboriginal population of Syria, we do not find here the same disappearance of native languages and racial characteristics as in Asia Minor. Still less was this the caseGreek culture in Syria.in Mesopotamia, where a strong native element in such a city as Edessa is indicated by its epithetμιξοβάρβαρος. The old cults naturally went on, and at Carrhae (Harran) even survived the establishment of Christianity. The lower classes at Antioch, and no doubt in the cities generally, were in speech Aramaic or bilingual; we find Aramaic popular nicknames of the later Seleucids (K. O. Müller,Antiq. Ant.p. 29). The villages, of course, spoke Aramaic. The richer natives, on the other hand, those who made their way into the educated classes of the towns, and attained official position, would become Hellenized in language and manners, and the “Syrian Code” shows how far the social structure was modified by the Hellenic tradition (Mitteis,Reichsrecht und Volksrecht in den öst. Provinzen des röm. Kaiserreichs, 1891; Arnold Meyer,Jesu Muttersprache, 1896). Of the Syrians who made their mark in Greek literature, some were of native blood,e.g.Lucian of Samosata.

One may notice the great part taken by natives of the Phoenician cities in the history of later Greek philosophy, and in the poetic movement of the last centuryB.C., which led to fresh cultivation of the epigram. Greek, in fact, held the field as the language of literature and polite society. Possibly at places like Edessa, which for some 350 years (tillA.D.216) was under a dynasty of native princes, Aramaic was cultivated as a literary language. There was a Syriac-speaking church here as early as the 2nd century, and with the spread of Christianity Syriac asserted itself against Greek. The Syriac literature which we possess is all Christian.

But where Greek gave place to Syriac, Hellenism was not thereby effaced. It was to some extent the passing over of the Hellenic tradition into a new medium.We must remember the marked Hellenic elements in Christian theology. The earliest Syriac work which we possess, the book “On Fate,” produced in the circle of the heretic Bardaisan or Bardesanes (end of the 2nd century), largely follows Greek models. There was an extensive translation of Greek works into Syriac during the next centuries, handbooks of philosophy and science for the most part. The version of Homer into Syriac verses made in the 8th century has perished, all but a few lines (R. Duval,La Litt. syriaque, 1900, p. 325).

(v.)The relation of the Jews to Hellenismin the first century and a half of Macedonian rule is very obscure, since the statements made by later writers like Josephus, as to the visit of Alexander to Jerusalem or the privileges conferredThe Jews.upon the Jews in the new Macedonian realms are justly suspected of being fiction. It has been maintained that Greek influence is to be traced in parts of the Old Testament assigned to this period, as, for instance, the Book of Proverbs; but even in the case of Ecclesiastes, the canonical writing whose affinity with Greek thought is closest, the coincidence of idea need not necessarily prove a Greek source. The one solid fact in this connexion is the translation of the Jewish Law into Greek in the 3rd centuryB.C., implying a Jewish Diaspora at Alexandria, so far Hellenized as to have forgotten the speech of Palestine. Early in the 2nd centuryB.C.we see that the priestly aristocracy of Jerusalem had, like the well-to-do classes everywhere in Syria, been carried away by the Hellenistic current, its strength being evidenced no less by the intensity of the conservative opposition embodied in the party of the “Pious” (Assideans,Ḥasīdīm).

Under Antiochus IV. Epiphanes (176-165) the Hellenistic aristocracy contrived to get Jerusalem converted into a Greek city; the gymnasium appeared, and Greek dress became fashionable with the young men. But when Antiochus, owing to political developments, interfered violently at Jerusalem, the conservative opposition carried the nation with them. The revolt under the Hasmonaean family (Judas Maccabaeus and his brethren) followed, ending in 143-142 in the establishment of an independent Jewish state under a Hasmonaean prince. But whilst the old Hellenistic party had been crushed the Hasmonaean state was of the nature of a compromise. The Mosaic Law was respected, but Hellenism still found an entrance in various forms. The first Hasmonaean “king,” Aristobulus I. (104-103), was known to the Greeks as Phil-hellen. He and all later kings of the dynasty bear Greek names as well as Hebrew ones, and after Jannaeus Alexander (103-76) the Greek legends are common on the coins beside the Hebrew. Herod, who supplanted the Hasmonaean dynasty (37-34B.C.) made, outside Judaea, a display of Phil-hellenism, building new Greek cities and temples, or bestowing gifts upon the older ones of fame. His court, at the same time, welcomed Greek men of letters like Nicolaus of Damascus. Even in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, he erected a theatre and an amphitheatre. We have already noticed the work done by the Herodian dynasty in furthering Hellenism in Syria (see Schürer,Gesch. des jüdisch. Volkes, vols. i. and ii.). Meanwhile a great part of the Jewish people was living dispersed among the cities of the Greek world, speaking Greek as their mother-tongue, and absorbing Greek influences in much larger measure than their brethren of Palestine. These are the Jews whom we find contrasted as “Hellenists” with the “Hebrews” in Acts. They still kept in touch with the mother-city, and indeed we hear of special synagogues in Jerusalem in which the Hellenists temporarily resident there gathered (Acts vi. 9). A large Jewish literature in Greek had grown up since the translation of the Law in the 3rd century. Beside the other canonical books of the Old Testament, translated in many cases with modifications or additions, it included translations of other Hebrew books (Ecclesiasticus, Judith, &c.), works composed originally in Greek but imitating to some extent the Hebraic style (like Wisdom), works modelled more closely on the Greek literary tradition, either historical, like 2 Maccabees, or philosophical, like the productions of the Alexandrian school, represented for us by Aristobulus and Philo, in which style and thought are almost wholly Greek and the reference to the Old Testament a mere pretext; or Greek poems on Jewish subjects, like the epic of the elder Philo and Ezechiel’s tragedy,Exagogē. It included also a number of forgeries, circulated under the names of famous Greek authors, verses fathered upon Aeschylus or Sophocles, or books like the false Hecataeus, or above all the pretended prophecies of ancient Sibyls in epic verse. These frauds were all contrived for the heathen public, as a means of propaganda, calculated to inspire them with respect for Jewish antiquity or turn them from idols to God.

For Jewish Hellenism see Schürer,op. cit.iii.; Susemihl,Gesch. der griech. Lit. in der Alexandrinerzeit, ii. 601 f.; Willrich,Juden und Griechen(1895),Judaica(1900); Hastings’Dict. of the Bible, art. “Greece”;Encyclop. Biblica, art. “Hellenism”; Pauly-Wissowa, art. “Aristobulus (15)”; also the work of P. Wendland cited above.

Through the Hellenistic Jews, Greek influences reached Jerusalem itself, though their effect upon the Aramaic-speaking Rabbinical schools was naturally not so pronounced. The large number of Greek words, however, in the language of the Mishnah and the Talmud is a significant phenomenon. The attitude of the Rabbinic doctors to a Greek education does not seem to have been hostile till the time of Hadrian. The sect of the Essenes probably shows an intermingling of the Greek with other lines of tradition among the Jews of Palestine.

See Schürer ii. 42-67, 583; S. Krauss,Griech. u. latein. Lehnwörter im Talmud(1898);Jewish Encyclopedia, art. “Greek Language.”

(vi.)In Egyptthe Ptolemies were hindered by special considerations from building Greek cities after the manner of the other Macedonian houses. One Greek city they found existing, Naucratis; Alexander had called AlexandriaPtolemaic kingdom.into being; the first Ptolemy added Ptolemais as a Greek centre for Upper Egypt. They seem to have suffered no other community in the Nile Valley with the independent life of a Greek city, for the Greek and Macedonian soldier-colonies settled in the Fayum or elsewhere had no political self-existence. And even at Alexandria Hellenism was not allowed full development. Ptolemais, indeed, enjoyed all the ordinary forms of self-government, but Alexandria was governed despotically by royal officials. In its population, too, Alexandria was only semi-Hellenic; for besides the proportion of Egyptian natives in its lower strata, its commercial greatness drew in elements from every quarter; the Jews, for instance, formed a majority of the population in two out of the five divisions of the city. At the same time the prevalent tone of the populace was, no doubt, Hellenistic, as is shown by the fact that the Jews who settled there acquired Greek in place of Aramaic as their mother-tongue, and in its upper circles Alexandrian society under the Ptolemies was not only Hellenistic, but notable among the Hellenes for its literary and artistic brilliance. The state university, the “Museum,” was in close connexion with the court, and gave to Alexandria the same pre-eminence in natural science and literary scholarship which Athens had in moral philosophy.

Probably in no other country, except Judaea, did Hellenism encounter as stubborn a national antagonism as in Egypt. The common description of “the Oriental” as indurated in his antagonism to the alien conqueror here perhaps has some truth in it. The assault made upon the Macedonian devotee in the temple of Serapis at Memphis “because he was a Greek” is significant (Papyr. Brit. Mus.i. No. 44; cf. Grenfell,Amherst Papyr.p. 48). And yet even here one must observe qualifications The papyri show us habitual marriage of Greeks and native women and a frequent adoption by natives of Greek names. It has even been thought that some developments of theEgyptianreligion are due to Hellenistic influence, such as the deification of Imhotp (Bissing,Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 1902, col. 2330) or the practice of forming voluntary religious associations (Otto,Priester und Tempel, i. 125). The worship of Serapis was patronized by the court with the very object of affording a mixed cultus in which Greek and native might unite. In Egypt, too, the triumph of Christianity brought into being a native Christian literature, and if this was in one way the assertion of the native against Hellenistic predominance, one must remember that Coptic literature, like Syriac, necessarily incorporated those Greek elements which had become an essential part of Christian theology.

From the Ptolemaic kingdom Hellenism early travelled up the Nile into Ethiopia. Ergamenes, the king of the Ethiopians in the time of the second Ptolemy, “who had received a Greek education and cultivated philosophy,” brokeEthiopia.with the native priesthood (Diod. iii. 6), and from that time traces of Greek influence continue to be found in the monuments of the Upper Nile. When Ethiopia became a Christian country in the 4th century, its connexion with the Hellenistic world became closer.

(vii.)Hellenism in the West.—Whilst in the East Hellenism had been sustained by the political supremacy of the Greeks, in ItalyGraecia captahad only the inherent power and charm of her culture wherewith to win her way. AtGreek culture in the Roman world.Carthage in the 3rd century the educated classes seem generally to have been familiar with Greek culture (Bernhardy,Grundriss d. griech. Lit.§ 77). The philosopher Clitomachus, who presided over the Academy at Athens in the 2nd century, was a Carthaginian. Even before Alexander, as we saw, Hellenism had affected the peoples of Italy, but it was not till the Greeks of south Italy and Sicily were brought under the supremacy of Rome in the 3rd centuryB.C.that the stream of Greek influence entered Rome in any volume. It was now that the Greek freedman, L. Livius Andronicus, laid the foundation of a new Latin literature by his translation of theOdyssey, and that the Greek dramas were recast in a Latin mould. The first Romans who set about writing history wrote in Greek. At the end of the 3rd century there was a circle of enthusiastic phil-hellenes among the Roman aristocracy, led by Titus Quinctius Flamininus, who in Rome’s name proclaimed the autonomy of the Greeks at the Isthmian games of 196. In the middle of the 2nd century Roman Hellenism centred in the circle of Scipio Aemilianus, which included men like Polybius and the philosopher Panaetius. The visit of the three great philosophers, Diogenes the “Babylonian,” Critolaus and Carneades in 155, was an epoch-making event in the history of Hellenism at Rome. Opposition there could not fail to be, and in 161 asenatus consultumordered all Greek philosophers and rhetoricians to leave the city. The effect of such measures was, of course, transient. Even though the opposition found so doughty a champion as the elder Cato (censor in 184), it was ultimately of no avail. The Italians did not indeed surrender themselves passively to the Greek tradition. In different departments of culture the degree of their independence was different. The system of government framed by Rome was an original creation. Even in the spheres of art and literature, the Italians, while so largely guided by Greek canons, had something of their own to contribute. The mere fact that they produced a literature in Latin argues a power of creation as well as receptivity. The great Latin poets were imitators indeed, butmereimitators they were no more than Petrarch or Milton. On the other hand, even where the creative originality of Rome was most pronounced, as in the sphere of Law, there were elements of Hellenic origin. It has been often pointed out how the Stoic philosophy especially helped to shape Roman jurisprudence (Schmekel,Philos. d. mittl. Stoa, p. 454 f.).

Whilst the upper classes in Italy absorbed Greek influences by their education, by the literary and artistic tradition, the lower strata of the population of Rome became largely hellenized by the actual influx on a vast scale of Greeks and hellenized Asiatics, brought in for the most part as slaves, and coalescing as freedmen with the citizen body. Of the Jewish inscriptions found at Rome some two-thirds are in Greek. So too the early Christian church in Rome, to which St Paul addressed his epistle, was Greek-speaking, and continued to be till far into the 3rd century.

III. Later History.—It remains only to glance at the ultimate destinies of Hellenism in West and East. In the Latin West knowledge of Greek, first-hand acquaintance with the Greek classics, became rarer and rarer asThe middle ages.general culture declined, till in the dark ages (after the 5th century) it existed practically nowhere but in Ireland (Sandys,History of Classical Scholarship, i. 438). In Latin literature, however, a great mass of Hellenistic tradition in a derived form was maintained in currency, wherever, that is, culture of any kind continued to exist. It was a small number of monkish communities whose care of those narrow channels prevented their ever drying up altogether. Then the stream began to rise again, first with the influx of the learning of the Spanish Moors, then with the new knowledge of Greek brought from Constantinople in the 14th century. With the Renaissance and the new learning, Hellenism came in again in flood, to form a chief part of that great river on which the modern world is being carried forward into a future, of which one can only say that it must be utterly unlike anything that has gone before. In the East it is popularly thought that Hellenism, as an exotic, withered altogether away. This view is superficial. During the dark ages, in the Byzantine East, as well as in the West, Hellenism had become little more than a dried and shrivelled tradition, although the closer study of Byzantine culture in latter years has seemed to discover more vitality than was once supposed. Ultimately the Greek East was absorbed by Islam;Islam.the popular mistake lies in supposing that the Hellenistic tradition thereby came to an end. The Mahommedan conquerors found a considerable part of it takenover, as we saw, by the Syrian Christians, and Greek philosophical and scientific classics were now translated from Syriac into Arabic. These were the starting-points for the Mahommedan schools in these subjects. Accordingly we find that Arabian philosophy (q.v.), mathematics, geography, medicine and philology are all based professedly upon Greek works (Brockelmann,Gesch. d. arabischen Literatur, 1898, vol. i.; R. A. Nicholson,A Literary History of the Arabs, 1907, pp. 358-361). Aristotle in the East no less than in the West was the “master of them that know”; and Moslem physicians to this day invoke the names of Hippocrates and Galen. The Hellenistic strain in Mahommedan civilization has, it is true, flagged and failed, but only as that civilization as a whole has declined. It was not that the Hellenistic element failed, whilst the native elements in the civilization prospered; the culture of Islam has, as a whole (from whatever causes), sunk ever lower during the centuries that have witnessed the marvellous expansion of Europe.

Authorities.—For the inner history of Hellenism after Alexander, the general historical literature dealing with later Greece and Rome supplies material in various degrees. See works quoted in articlesGreece,History;Rome,History;Ptolemies;Seleucid Dynasty;Bactria, &c.Different elements (literature, philosophy, art, &c.) are dealt with in works dealing specially with these subjects, among which those of Susemihl, Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Erwin Rohde and E. Schwartz are of especial importance for the literature; those of Schreiber and Strzygowski for the later Greek art.Sketches of Hellenistic civilization generally are found in J. P. Mahaffy’sGreek Life and Thought(1887),The Greek World under Roman Sway(1890);The Silver Age of the Greek World(1906); Julius Kaerst,Gesch. d. hellenist. Zeitalters(Band ii., publ. 1909); and in Beloch’sGriechische Geschichte, vol. iii. (for the century immediately succeeding Alexander). R. von Scala’s “The Greeks after Alexander,” in Helmolt’sHistory of the World(vol. v.), covers the whole period from Alexander to the end of the Byzantine Empire. P. Wendland’sHellenistisch-römische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen zu Judentum u. Christentum(1907) is an illuminating monograph, giving a conspectus of the material. For Hellenistic Egypt, Bouché-Leclercq,Histoire des Lagides, vol. iii. (1906).

Different elements (literature, philosophy, art, &c.) are dealt with in works dealing specially with these subjects, among which those of Susemihl, Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Erwin Rohde and E. Schwartz are of especial importance for the literature; those of Schreiber and Strzygowski for the later Greek art.

Sketches of Hellenistic civilization generally are found in J. P. Mahaffy’sGreek Life and Thought(1887),The Greek World under Roman Sway(1890);The Silver Age of the Greek World(1906); Julius Kaerst,Gesch. d. hellenist. Zeitalters(Band ii., publ. 1909); and in Beloch’sGriechische Geschichte, vol. iii. (for the century immediately succeeding Alexander). R. von Scala’s “The Greeks after Alexander,” in Helmolt’sHistory of the World(vol. v.), covers the whole period from Alexander to the end of the Byzantine Empire. P. Wendland’sHellenistisch-römische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen zu Judentum u. Christentum(1907) is an illuminating monograph, giving a conspectus of the material. For Hellenistic Egypt, Bouché-Leclercq,Histoire des Lagides, vol. iii. (1906).

(E. R. B.)

1See, among recent writers, on one side Kaerst,Gesch. des hellenist. Zeitalters, pp. 97 f., and on the other Beloch,Griech. Gesch., iii. [i.] 1-9; Kretschmer,Einleitung in die Gesch. d. griech. Sprache, p. 283 f.; O. Hoffmann,Die Makedonen, ihre Sprache u. ihr Volkstum(1906).2“Ce sont les Tadjik de l’Afghanistan qui constituent les trente-deux corps de métier, qui tiennent boutique, expédient les marchandises, représentent, en un mot, la vie industrielle et commerciale de la nation. Ce sont aussi les Tadjik des villes qui forment la classe lettrée, et qui ont empêché les Afghans de retomber dans la barbarie.” (Reclus,Nouvelle Géograph. univ.ix. p. 71.)

2“Ce sont les Tadjik de l’Afghanistan qui constituent les trente-deux corps de métier, qui tiennent boutique, expédient les marchandises, représentent, en un mot, la vie industrielle et commerciale de la nation. Ce sont aussi les Tadjik des villes qui forment la classe lettrée, et qui ont empêché les Afghans de retomber dans la barbarie.” (Reclus,Nouvelle Géograph. univ.ix. p. 71.)

HELLER, STEPHEN(1815-1888), Austrian pianist and composer, was born at Pest on the 15th of May 1815. (Fétis’s dictionary says 1814, but this is almost certainly wrong.) He was at first intended for a lawyer, but at nine years of age performed so successfully at a concert that he was sent to Vienna to study under Czerny. Halm was his principal master, and from the age of twelve he gave concerts in Vienna, and made a tour through Hungary, Poland and Germany. At Augsburg he had the good fortune to be befriended when ill by a wealthy family, who practically adopted him and gave him the opportunity to complete his musical education. In 1838 he went to Paris, and soon became intimate with Liszt, Chopin, Berlioz and their set, among whom was Hallé, throughout his life an indefatigable performer of Heller’s music. In 1849 he came to England and played a few times, and in 1862 he appeared with Hallé at the Crystal Palace. He outlived the great reputation he had enjoyed among cultivated amateurs for so many years, and was almost forgotten when he died at Paris on the 14th of January 1888. His pianoforte pieces, almost all of them published in sets and provided with fancy names, do not show very startling originality, but their grace and refinement could not but make them popular with players and listeners of all classes.

HELLESPONT(i.e.“Sea of Helle”; variously named in classical literatureἙλλήσποντος,ὁ Ἕλλης πόντος,Hellespontum Pelagus, andFretum Hellesponticum), the ancient name of the Dardanelles (q.v.). It was so-called from Helle, the daughter of Athamas (q.v.), who was drowned here. SeeArgonauts.

HELLEVOETSLUIS,orHelvoetsluis, a fortified seaport in the province of South Holland, the kingdom of Holland, on the south side of the island of Voorne-and-Putten, on the sea-arm known as the Haringvliet, 5½ m. S. of Brielle. It has daily steamboat connexion with Rotterdam by the Voornsche canal. Pop. (1900), 4152. Hellevoetsluis is an important naval station, and possesses a naval arsenal, dry and wet docks, wharves and a naval college for engineers. Among the public buildings are the communal chambers, a Reformed church (1661), a Roman Catholic church and a synagogue.

HELLÍN,a town of south-eastern Spain, in the province of Albacete, on the Albacete-Murcia railway. Pop. (1900), 12,558. Hellín is built on the outskirts of the low hills which line the left bank of the river Mundo. It possesses the remains of an old Roman castle and a beautiful parish church, the masonry and marble pavement at the entrance of which are worthy of special notice. The surrounding country yields wine, oil and saffron in abundance; within the town there are manufactures of coarse cloth, leather and pottery. Sulphur is obtained from the celebrated mining district of Minas del Mundo, 12 m. S., at the junction between the Mundo and the Segura; and there are warm sulphurous springs in the neighbouring village of Azaraque. Hellín was known to the Romans who first exploited its sulphur as Illunum.

HELLO, ERNEST(1828-1885), French critic, was born at Tréguier. He was the son of a lawyer who held posts of great importance at Rennes and in Paris, and was well educated at both places, but took to no profession and resided much, for a time, in his father’s country-house in Brittany. A very strong Roman Catholic, he appears to have been specially excited by his countryman Renan’s attitude to religious matters, and coming under the influence of J. A. Barbey d’Aurevilly and Louis Veuillot, the two most brilliant crusaders of the Church in the press, he started a newspaper of his own,Le Croisé, in 1859; but it only lasted two years. He wrote, however, much in other papers. He had very bad health, suffering apparently from spinal or bone disease. But he was fortunate enough to meet with a wife, Zoe Berthier, who, ten years older than himself, and a friend for some years before their marriage, became his devoted nurse, and even brought upon herself abuse from gutter journalists of the time for the care with which she guarded him. He died in 1885. Hello’s work is somewhat varied in form but uniform in spirit. His best-known book,Physionomie de saints(1875), which has been translated into English (1903) asStudies in Saintship, does not display his qualities best.Contes extraordinaires, published not long before his death, is better and more original. But the real Hello is to be found in a series of philosophical and critical essays, fromRenan, l’Allemagne et l’athéisme(1861), throughL’Homme(1871) andLes Plateaux de la balance(1880), perhaps his chief book, to the posthumously publishedLe Siècle. The peculiarity of his standpoint and the originality and vigour of his handling make his studies, of Shakespeare, Hugo and others, of abiding importance as literary “triangulations,” results of object, subject and point of view.

HELMERS, JAN FREDERIK(1767-1813), Dutch poet, was born at Amsterdam on the 7th of March 1767. His early poems,Night(1788) andSocrates(1790), were tame and sentimental, but after 1805 he determined, in company with his brother-in-law, Cornelis Loots (1765-1834), to rouse national feeling by a burst of patriotic poetry. HisPoems(2 vols., 1809-1810), but especially his great workThe Dutch Nation, a poem in six cantos (1812), created great enthusiasm and enjoyed immense success. Helmers died at Amsterdam on the 26th of February 1813. He owed his success mainly to the integrity of his patriotism and the opportune moment at which he sounded his counterblast to the French oppression. His posthumous poems were collected in 1815.

HELMERSEN, GREGOR VON(1803-1885), Russian geologist, was born at Laugut-Duckershof, near Dorpat, on the 29th of September (O.S.) 1803. He received an engineering training and became major-general in the corps of Mining Engineers. In 1837 he was appointed professor of geology in the mining institute at St Petersburg. He was author of numerous memoirs on the geology of Russia, especially on the coal and other mineral deposits of the country; and he wrote also some explanations to accompany separate sheets of the geological map of Russia. His geological work was continued to an advanced age, one of the later publications beingStudien über die Wanderblöcke und die Diluvialgebilde Russlands(1869 and 1882). Most of his memoirs were published by the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St Petersburg. He died at St Petersburg on the 3rd of February (O.S.) 1885.

HELMET(from an obsolete diminutive of O. Fr.helme, mod.heaume; the English word is “helm,” as in O. Eng., Dutch and Ger.; all are from the Teutonic basehal-, pre-Teut.kal-, to cover; cf. Lat.celare, to hide, Eng. “hell,” &c.), a defensive covering for the head. The present article deals with the helmet during the middle ages down to the close of the period when body armour was worn. For the helmet worn by the Greeks and Romans seeArms and Armour.

The head-dress of the warriors of the dark ages and of the earlier feudal period was far from being the elaborate helmet which is associated in the imagination with the knight in armour and the tourney. It was a mere casque, a cap with or without additional safeguards for the ears, the nape of the neck and the nose (fig. 1). By those warriors who possessed the means to equip themselves fully, the casque was worn over a hood of mail, as shown in fig. 2. In manuscripts, &c., armoured men are sometimes portrayed fighting in their hoods, without casques, basinets or other form of helmet. The casque was, of course, normally of plate, but in some instances it was a strong leather cap covered with mail or imbricated plates. The most advanced form of this early helmet is the conical steel or iron cap with nasal (fig. 2), worn in conjunction with the hood of mail. This is the typical helmet of the 11th-century warrior, and is made familiar by the Bayeux Tapestry. From this point however (c.1100) the evolution of war head-gear follows two different paths for many years. On the one hand the simple casque easily transformed itself into thebasinet, originally a pointed iron skull-cap without nasal, ear-guards, &c. On the other hand the knight in armour, especially after the fashion of the tournament set in, found the mere cap with nasal insufficient, and theheaume(or “helmet”) gradually came into vogue. This was in principle a large heavy iron pot covering the head and neck. Often a light basinet was worn underneath it—or rather the knight usually wore his basinet and only put the heaume on over it at the last moment before engaging. The earlier (12th century) war heaumes are intended to be worn with the mail hood and have nasals (fig. 3). Towards the end of the 13th century, however, the basinet grew in size and strength, just as the casque had grown, and began to challenge comparison with the heavy and clumsy heaume. Thereupon the heaume became, by degrees, the special head-dress of the tournament, and grew heavier, larger and more elaborate, while the basinet, reinforced with camail and vizor, was worn in battle. Types of the later, purely tilting, heaume are shown in figs. 4 and 5.

The basinet, then, is the battle head-dress of nobles, knights and sergeants in the 14th century. Its development from the 10th-century cap to the towering helmet of 1350, with its long snouted vizor and ample drooping “camail,” is shown in fig. 6,a,b,candd, the two latter showing the same helmet with vizor down and up. But the tendency set in during the earlier years of the 15th century to make all parts of the armour thicker. Chain “mail” gradually gave way to plate on the body and the limbs, remaining only in those parts, such as neck and elbows, where flexibility was essential, and even there it was in the end replaced by jointed steel bands or small plates. The final step was the discarding of the “camail” and the introduction of the “armet.” The latter will be described later. Soon after the beginning of the 15th century the high-crowned basinet gave place to thesaladeorsallet, a helmet with a low rounded crown and a long brim or neck-guard at the back. This was the typical headpiece of the last half of the Hundred Years’ War as the vizored basinet had been of the first. Like the basinet it was worn in a simple form by archers and pikemen and in a more elaborate form by the knights and men-at-arms. The larger and heavier salades were also often used instead of the heaume in tournaments. Here again, however, there is a great difference between those worn by light armed men, foot-soldiers and archers and those of the heavy cavalry. The former, while possessing as a rule the bowl shape and the lip or brim of the type, and always destitute of the conical point which is the distinguishing mark of the basinet, are cut away in front of the face (fig. 7a). In some cases this was remedied in part by the addition of a small pivoted vizor, which, however, could not protect the throat. In the larger salades of the heavy cavalry the wide brim served to protect the whole head, a slit being made in that part of the brim which came in front of the eyes (in some examples the whole of the front part of the brim was made movable). But the chin and neck, directly opposed to the enemy’s blows, were scarcely protected at all, and with these helmets a large volant-piece or beaver (mentonnière)—usually a continuation of the body armour up to the chin or even beyond—was worn for this purpose, as shown in fig. 7b. This arrangement combined, in a rough way, the advantages of freedom of movement for the head with adequate protection for the neck and lower part of the face. Thearmet, which came into use about 1475-1500 and completely superseded the salade, realized these requirements far better, and later at the zenith of the armourer’s art (about 1520) and throughout the period of the decline of armour it remained the standard pattern of helmet, whether for war or for tournament. It figures indeed in nearly all portraits of kings, nobles andsoldiers up to the time of Frederick the Great, either with the suit of armour or half-armour worn by the subject of the portrait or in allegorical trophies, &c. The armet was a fairly close-fitting rounded shell of iron or steel, with a movable vizor in front and complete plating over chin, ears and neck, the latter replacing the mentonnière or beaver. The armet was connected to the rest of the suit by the gorget, which was usually of thin laminated steel plates. With a good armet and gorget there was no weak point for the enemy’s sword to attack, a roped lower edge of the armet generally fitting into a sort of flange round the top of the gorget. Thus, and in other and slightly different ways, was solved the problem which in the early days of plate armour had been attempted by the clumsy heaume and the flexible, if tough, camail of the vizored basinet, and still more clumsily in the succeeding period by the salade and its grotesque mentonnière. As far as existing examples show, the wide-brimmed salade itself first gave way to the more rounded armet, the mentonnière being carried up to the level of the eyes. Then the use (growing throughout the 15th century) of laminated armour for the joints of the harness probably suggested the gorget, and once this was applied to the lower edge of the armet by a satisfactory joint, it was an easy step to the elaborate pivoted vizor which completed the new head-dress. Types of armets are shown in fig. 8.

Theburgonet, often confused with the armet, is the typical helmet of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In its simple form it was worn by the foot and light cavalry—though the latter must not be held to include the pistol-armedchevaux-légersof the wars of religion, these being clad in half-armour and vizored burgonet—and consisted of a (generally rounded) cap with a projecting brim shielding the eyes, a neck-guard and earpieces. It had almost invariably a crest or comb, as shown in the illustrations (fig. 9). Other forms of infantry head-gear much in vogue during the 16th century are shown in figs. 10 and 11, which represent themorionandcabassetrespectively. Both these were lighter and smaller than the burgonet; indeed much of their popularity was due to the ease with which they were worn or put on and off, for in the matter of protection they could not compare with the burgonet, which in one form or another was used by cavalry (and often by pikemen) up to the final disappearance of armour from the field of battle about 1670. Fig. 9bgives the general outline of richly decorated 16th-century Italian burgonet which is preserved in Vienna. The archetype of the burgonet is perhaps the casque worn by the Swiss infantry (fig. 9a) at the epoch of Marignan (1515). This was probably copied by them from their former Burgundian antagonists, whose connexion with this helmet is sufficiently indicated by its name. The lower part of the more elaborate burgonets worn by nobles and cavalrymen is often formed into a complete covering for the ears, cheek and chin, and connected closely with the gorget. They therefore resemble the armets and have often been confused with them, but the distinguishing feature of the burgonet is invariably the front peak. Various forms of vizor were fitted to such helmets; these as a rule were either fixed bars (fig. 9c) or mere upward continuations of the chin piece. Often a nasal was the only face protection (fig. 9d, a Hungarian type). The latest form of the burgonet used in active service is the familiar Cromwellian cavalry helmet with its straight brim, from which depends the slight vizor of three bars or stout wires joined together at the bottom.

The above are of course only the main types. Some writers class all remaining examples either as casques or as “war-hats,” the latter term conveniently covering all those helmets which resemble in any way the head-gear of civil life. For illustrations of many curiosities of this sort, including the famous iron hat of King Charles I. of England, and also for examples of Russian, Mongolian, Indian and Chinese helmets, the reader is referred to pp. 262-269 and 285-286 of Demmin’sArms and Armour(English edition 1894). The helmets in brass, steel or cloth, worn by troops since the general introduction of uniforms and the disuse of armour, depend for their shape and material solely on considerations of comfort and good appearance. From time to time, however, the readoption of serviceable helmets is advocated by cavalrymen, and there is much to be said in favour of this. The burgonet, which was the final type of war helmet evolved by the old armourers, would certainly appear to be by far the best head-gear to adopt should these views prevail, and indeed it is still worn, in a modified yet perfectly recognizable form, by the German and other cuirassiers.

HELMHOLTZ, HERMANN LUDWIG FERDINAND VON(1821-1894), German philosopher and man of science, was born on the 31st of August 1821 at Potsdam, near Berlin. His father, Ferdinand, was a teacher of philology and philosophy in the gymnasium, while his mother was a Hanoverian lady, a lineal descendant of the great Quaker William Penn. Delicate in early life, Helmholtz became by habit a student, and his father at the same time directed his thoughts to natural phenomena. He soon showed mathematical powers, but these were not fostered by the careful training mathematicians usually receive, and it may be said that in after years his attention was directed to the higher mathematics mainly by force of circumstances. As his parents were poor, and could not afford to allow him to follow a purely scientific career, he became a surgeon of the Prussian army. In 1842 he wrote a thesis in which he announced the discovery of nerve-cells in ganglia. This was his first work, and from 1842 to 1894, the year of his death, scarcely a year passed without several important, and in some cases epoch-making, papers on scientific subjects coming from his pen. He lived in Berlin from 1842 to 1849, when he became professor of physiology in Königsberg. There he remained from 1849 to 1855, when he removed to the chair of physiology in Bonn. In 1858 he became professor of physiology in Heidelberg, and in 1871 he was called to occupy the chair of physics in Berlin. To this professorship was added in 1887 the post of director of the physico-technical institute at Charlottenburg, near Berlin,and he held the two positions together until his death on the 8th of September 1894.

His investigations occupied almost the whole field of science, including physiology, physiological optics, physiological acoustics, chemistry, mathematics, electricity and magnetism, meteorology and theoretical mechanics. At an early age he contributed to our knowledge of the causes of putrefaction and fermentation. In physiological science he investigated quantitatively the phenomena of animal heat, and he was one of the earliest in the field of animal electricity. He studied the nature of muscular contraction, causing a muscle to record its movements on a smoked glass plate, and he worked out the problem of the velocity of the nervous impulse both in the motor nerves of the frog and in the sensory nerves of man. In 1847 Helmholtz read to the Physical Society of Berlin a famous paper,Über die Erhaltung der Kraft(on the conservation of force), which became one of the epoch-making papers of the century; indeed, along with J. R. Mayer, J. P. Joule and W. Thomson (Lord Kelvin), he may be regarded as one of the founders of the now universally received law of the conservation of energy. The year 1851, while he was lecturing on physiology at Königsberg, saw the brilliant invention of the ophthalmoscope, an instrument which has been of inestimable value to medicine. It arose from an attempt to demonstrate to his class the nature of the glow of reflected light sometimes seen in the eyes of animals such as the cat. When the great ophthalmologist, A. von Gräfe, first saw the fundus of the living human eye, with its optic disc and blood-vessels, his face flushed with excitement, and he cried, “Helmholtz has unfolded to us a new world!” Helmholtz’s contributions to physiological optics are of great importance. He investigated the optical constants of the eye, measured by his invention, the ophthalmometer, the radii of curvature of the crystalline lens for near and far vision, explained the mechanism of accommodation by which the eye can focus within certain limits, discussed the phenomena of colour vision, and gave a luminous account of the movements of the eyeballs so as to secure single vision with two eyes. In particular he revived and gave new force to the theory of colour-vision associated with the name of Thomas Young, showing the three primary colours to be red, green and violet, and he applied the theory to the explanation of colour-blindness. His great work onPhysiological Optics(1856-1866) is by far the most important book that has appeared on the physiology and physics of vision. Equally distinguished were his labours in physiological acoustics. He explained accurately the mechanism of the bones of the ear, and he discussed the physiological action of the cochlea on the principles of sympathetic vibration. Perhaps his greatest contribution, however, was his attempt to account for our perception of quality of tone. He showed, both by analysis and by synthesis, that quality depends on the order, number and intensity of the overtones or harmonics that may, and usually do, enter into the structure of a musical tone. He also developed the theory of differential and of summational tones. His work onSensations of Tone(1862) may well be termed theprincipiaof physiological acoustics. He may also be said to be the founder of the fixed-pitch theory of vowel tones, according to which it is asserted that the pitch of a vowel depends on the resonance of the mouth, according to the form of the cavity while singing it, and this independently of the pitch of the note on which the vowel is sung. For the later years of his life his labours may be summed up under the following heads: (1) On the conservation of energy; (2) on hydro-dynamics; (3) on electro-dynamics and theories of electricity; (4) on meteorological physics; (5) on optics; and (6) on the abstract principles of dynamics. In all these fields of labour he made important contributions to science, and showed himself to be equally great as a mathematician and a physicist. He studied the phenomena of electrical oscillations from 1869 to 1871, and in the latter year he announced that the velocity of the propagation of electromagnetic induction was about 314,000 metres per second. Faraday had shown that the passage of electrical action involved time, and he also asserted that electrical phenomena are brought about by changes in intervening non-conductors or dielectric substances. This led Clerk Maxwell to frame his theory of electro-dynamics, in which electrical impulses were assumed to be transmitted through the ether by waves. G. F. Fitzgerald was the first to attempt to measure the length of electric waves; Helmholtz put the problem into the hands of his favourite pupil, Heinrich Hertz, and the latter finally gave an experimental demonstration of electromagnetic waves, the “Hertzian waves,” on which wireless telegraphy depends, and the velocity of which is the same as that of light. The last investigations of Helmholtz related to problems in theoretical mechanics, more especially as to the relations of matter to the ether, and as to the distribution of energy in mechanical systems. In particular he explained the principle of least action, first advanced by P. L. M. de Maupertuis, and developed by Sir W. R. Hamilton, of quaternion fame. Helmholtz also wrote on philosophical and aesthetic problems. His position was that of an empiricist, denying the doctrine of innate ideas and holding that all knowledge is founded on experience, hereditarily transmitted or acquired.

The life of Helmholtz was uneventful in the usual sense. He was twice married, first, in 1849, to Olga von Velten (by whom he had two children, a son and daughter), and secondly, in 1861, to Anna von Mohl, of a Würtemberg family of high social position. Two children were born of this marriage, a son, Robert, who died in 1889, after showing in experimental physics indications of his father’s genius, and a daughter, who married a son of Werner von Siemens. Helmholtz was a man of simple but refined tastes, of noble carriage and somewhat austere manner. His life from first to last was one of devotion to science, and he must be accounted, on intellectual grounds, one of the foremost men of the 19th century.

Back to Index Next