FOOTNOTES:

High excellence incompatible with artificiality.

The Homeric poems therefore mainly natural;

This it is which makes any systematic artificiality to my mind most improbable. The difference between the learned epic of a really reflective age and theIliadis illustrated by comparing with it theArgonauticsof Apollonius Rhodius, a great poet in his way, but unmistakably and lamentably artificial. I agree, therefore, with Thirlwall, that the Homeric poets described an age not very different from that in which they lived, and that the reason why widely varying societies, such as the democratic Athenian, or the modern European, can appreciate these pictures, is that they are not artificially constructed, but adapted from a real experience, drawn from very human nature, and reflecting permanent human passions[50:1]. The most unreal thing in the poems is of course their theology; and yet this became in after days perhaps more real than the rest by its universal adoption amongthe Greeks as the authoritative account of their gods.

but only generally true;

§ 26. The Homeric poems therefore give us a general picture of the state of the Greeks at a time shortly before the dawn of history; for such poems could hardly be composed and held together without writing, and when writing becomes diffused, history begins[51:1]. Still, the poets lived in an age not controlled by criticism, or subject to the verifications of study. Hence they could deal loosely with particulars, omit details that suited them not, and describe places poetically rather than topographically. So it is that the Catalogue of the Ships will not agree with the rest; and in many other cases there is evidence that the lays brought together were not weeded oftheir mutual inconsistencies, or compelled to conform strictly to the final plan.

and therefore variously judged by various minds.

It is therefore certain that according as critics lay stress on the great consistency of character and feeling in these poems, they will, as Mr. Gladstone does, exaggerate their historical value, and set them down as almost sober history. When the other spirit prevails, and we attend to the many flaws in plot and inconsistencies of detail, we shall have acute scholars, like Mr. Evelyn Abbott, denying that either the assertions or the omissions in the poems are evidence worth anything for any historical purpose. Yet even such sceptics will not refrain from drawing pictures of Greek life from these false and treacherous epics.

[30:1]Cf. his early chapters, especially i. pp. 43sq.Busolt's 2nd edition, now in the press, contains an exhaustive analysis of all the recent discoveries.

[31:1]The main causes of invented legends are: first, the glorification of national heroes; secondly, the desire of chronographers to obtain synchronisms, and make the heroes of one place contemporaneous with, and related to, those of another. In the former case it is generally an older or better known story which is transferred to the new case, with more or less modification; in the latter there may be deliberate fraud, as Holm has argued. Of all old Greek legend the chronology is the most suspicious part, because this has been invented in comparatively late times, and by learned men, not by, but for, the people.

[32:1]A fine specimen is the pedigree of the Ptolemies direct from Dionysus and Heracles, given by the historian Satyrus. Cf. C. Müller,Fragg. Histor. Graec., iii. 165. The substance of it is as follows: From Dionysus and Althea was born Dejanira, from her and Heracles, Hyllus, and from him in direct descent Kleodaos, Aristomachas, Temenos, Keisos, Mason, Thestios, Akoos, Aristodamidas, Karanos, Kœnos, Turimmas, Perdikkas, Philippos, Aerope, Alketas, Amyntas, Balakros, Meleager, Arsinoe. From her Lagus, Ptolemy Soter, &c., down to Philopator, the then reigning king. Hence, he adds, were derived the names of thedemesin the Dionysiacphyleat Alexandria, viz. Dejaniris, Ariadnis, &c.Here is a most instructive fabrication.

Here is a most instructive fabrication.

[33:1]Cf. Mommsen, R. G. i. 466-8.

[35:1]We have not a few instances in Greek polities—Megara, Borysthenes, Calymnos occur to me—where there still existed in late days magisterialβασιλεῖςand evenμόναρχοι. Cf.Bull. de Corr. hell.viii. 30; ix. 286.

[36:1]Hist. of Greece, chap. ii. sect. 3.

[36:2]Holm (G. G. i. 125) admits this motive for the Germans: 'Im Grunde leugnet man phönizische Siedelungen in Griechenland besonders deswegen, weil man nicht will, dass die Griechen jenen Leuten Wichtiges verdanken'—that is to Semites. He himself asserts early contacts, and thinks their influence upon Greece but trifling.The general body of opinion in Germany seems to agree with what I have cited from Duruy in the text. The words just quoted may serve to put the English reader upon his guard against thesubjectivetone of many of the most learned modern studies on Greek history.

The general body of opinion in Germany seems to agree with what I have cited from Duruy in the text. The words just quoted may serve to put the English reader upon his guard against thesubjectivetone of many of the most learned modern studies on Greek history.

[37:1]On this cf. Adler's remarkable preface to Schliemann'sTiryns.

[39:1]Cf. myProlegomena to Ancient History, Longmans, 1872. Areductio ad absurdumwhich attained serious attention, in spite of its patent jocoseness, appeared in an early number of the Dublin UniversityKottabos.

[39:2]Accordingly, some use was made of the exceptional and alarming phenomena, such as thunder-storms and eclipses, to supply a more reasonable and adequate cause for the violent transitions from terror and grief to joy, which the theory demanded. But it was the regular daily phenomena which figured in the leadingrôleof the comparative mythologers.

[40:1]A History of Greek Classical Literature(3rd ed.), Macmillan, 1891. The history of K. O. Müller has since been re-edited and supplemented by Heitz, but in a very different style.

[42:1]Duruy, in speaking of the controversy as to the site (is it Hissarlik, or Bunarbaschi?), says that even this will never be settled, in spite of the striking discoveries by which Dr. Schliemann has shown that Hissarlik was a prehistoric city, and the total absence of any evidence for a city upon the other site. And Duruy is probably right, because on these matters writers are too often pedants, who, if once committed to a theory, will not accept the most convincing evidence that they have been mistaken. They seem to think the chief merit of a scholar is to maintain an outward show of impeccability, and therefore hold the candid confession of a mistake to be not honourable, but disgraceful. Duruy himself inclines to follow E. Curtius, who holds the wrong opinion. Holm (i. 96) sees clearly that in the light of Schliemann's discoveries there can hardly remain a doubt that Hissarlik was the site which the Homeric poets had in view, though their details may be inaccurate. This conclusion would have been universally accepted, had not certain scholars pledged themselves to the other site.

[43:1]It has since been treated in a separate form by Professor Jebb. The third edition of myGreek Literature, being still more recent (1891), gives additional material.

[46:1]Das Homerische Epos aus den Denkmälern erläutert, 1884.

[47:1]Probably a generation will pass away before it is appreciated; or it may soon pass into oblivion, to be rediscovered by some future thinker. All the newer histories agree in disapproving it, but chiefly on the authority of the philologers. Most of these are committed, both by tradition and by their own special researches, to the theory of anatural mixtureof dialects at Smyrna, the border town of Æolic and Ionic settlements.

[47:2]I understand that Mr. W. Leaf, one of the highest English authorities, agrees generally with Fick on this problem. On the other hand, the Provost of Oriel, as he informs me, does not see his way to accept it.

[48:1]Thus at the end of a famous epigram on Thermopylæ composed in Laconian Greek, and reformed into literary language,χιλιάδες τέτορεςremained, becauseτέσσαρεςwould not scan. Fick has now applied his theory to the early Lyric poets, and even printed a revised text of most of them inBezzenberger's Beiträge, xi, xiii, and xiv, &c. I have criticised the newer developments of his theory in the third ed. of myGreek Literature.

[48:2]Evelyn Abbott,History of Greece, i. 158seqq.I cannot but suspect that the account of the diet of the Homeric chiefs—great meals of roast meat, and no fish—is a piece of deliberate archaism, which contradicts all we know of any historical Greeks from the earliest to the present days. The Greeks were probably never a meat-eating race, and even the early athletes trained on cheese (cf. myRambles and Studies, p. 290). The poets knew all about fishing, for it appears in a simile, and yet in no case does fish, the great delicacy of Attic days, appear upon a Homeric table.

[50:1]Holm gives a very ingenious solution of the difficulty, which is, I think, quite original. He thinks that the Æolic and Ionic settlers who were driven out by the Dorian immigration carried with them recollections and traditions of the splendour of the pre-Doric Mycenæ, Orchomenos, &c. In Asia Minor they sang of these old glories, clothing the old kings and heroes of the land, and the cities they had left, in the dress and manners of the Ionia of their own day. Thus their picture is true traditionally, for we know that the palaces of Greece were in the places they describe; their pictures of manners were also true, in another sense, of the society in which they actually lived.

[51:1]When once composed, they could be easily enoughrememberedby trained guilds of reciters. It is therefore the composition, and the transmission as large unities, which imply, in my opinion, that use of writing which the poets avoid attributing to the society they depict as one of the past. If we could determine the date of the first fluent use of writing in Ionia, I think we could also determine the date of the creation of theIliadas an artistic whole. At the same time I think it right to caution the reader, that he need not assume lapidary inscriptions to mark the first stage. This has been very justly pointed out by Mr. E. Abbott, and it is here most important; for we have no extant inscription on stone which can be surely attributed to a date earlier than 600B.C., and I am convinced that had such use of writing been in common use earlier, we should long since have found evidence of it. Probably the first writing seen and learned by the Greeks was that of the Phœnician traders, who kept their accounts either on papyrus or perhaps on wood. Thus theIliadmay have been composed with the aid of writing, and yet there may have been no contemporary records on stone.

Theoretical Chronology.

Transition to early history.

The Asiatic colonies.

§ 27. We may now pass from so-called legend to so-called early history. All students, from Thucydides downward, have held that shortly after the state of things described in Homer, important invasions and consequent dislocations of population began throughout Greece, so that what meets us in the dawn of sober history differs widely from what Homer describes. These various movements have their mythical name,—the return of the Heracleidæ; and their quasi-historical,—the invasion of Bœotia and Phocis by the Thessalians, and the invasion and conquest of Peloponnesus by the Dorian mountaineers. The pressure so produced drove waves of settlers to Asia Minor, where the coasts and islands were covered with Greek cities,—Æolian, Ionian, and Dorian. But these cities always claimed to be colonies from Greece, and told of mythical founders who led them to the East.

Late authorities for the details.

We have no early account of these Asiatic settlements. Their traditions were not apparentlydiscussed critically till the time of Ephorus, the pupil of Isocrates, who lived close to Alexandrian days; and we know part of what he said from quotations in Strabo and from the account given, rather irrelevantly, by Pausanias in the book on Achaia in hisTour, which was not composed till our second century. The metrical geography attributed to Scymnus of Chios[54:1]gives us some additional facts; but on the whole we may say that our account of all this early history is derived from late and very theoretical antiquarians. They did not hesitate to put these events into the tenth or eleventh century before Christ, but on what kind of evidence we shall presently discuss.

From the Asiatic settlements and from the rich cities in Eubœa (Chalcis and Eretria) went out more colonies to the coasts of Thrace and the Black Sea; but these are placed at such reasonable dates, in the seventh century, that we must be disposed to give them easier credence.

The colonization of the West.

§ 28. Intermediate between these two waves of colonization, both in date and in credibility of details, come the famous settlements in Sicily, of which a brief account is given by Thucydides at the opening of his sixth book; and it is no doubt the apparent precision of this account, and the general accuracy of the author, which has made this colonization of Sicily and Southern Italy one of the early portions of Greek history most readilyaccepted by even the newest sceptics. It is quite extraordinary how the general seriousness and the literary skill of an author may make even practised critics believe anything he chooses to say[55:1].

The original authority.

Any one who reads with care the account of Thucydides will see that he cannot possibly be writing from his own knowledge or research, but from some older and far worse authority,—doubtless one of the chroniclers[55:2]or story-tellers who gathered, most uncritically, the early legends of various portions of the Greek world. It has long since been suggested, and with the strongest probability, that Thucydides' authority was the Syracusan Antiochus, who compiled the early annals of Sicily with the evident intention of enhancing the glory of his native city.

On what principles did these chroniclers proceed?

What was nobility in early Greece?

Macedonian kings.

Romans.

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 gods, from whom all Greek nobility 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 Æacus, whose descendants the Æacids 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 Æneas, the child of Aphrodite by a mortal hero.

Hellenistic 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 Hellenic settlements of mythical heroes in these places, whose shrines were accordingly set up, and their worship instituted, to produce an appearance of respectability in upstart polities.

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 god wassplendid; to be his remote descendant was only to cling on to real nobility 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 gods 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 chronologersof counting downwards from Heracles or the Trojan war, and not upwards from their own days.

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].

The current scheme of early dates.

The so-called Olympic register.

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 historianshave accepted. They have all agreed in giving up such dates as 1184B.C.for the siege of Troy, or 1104B.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 compiledlate(after 400B.C.),and starting from no convincing evidence, by Hippias of Elis. This passage from Plutarch'sLife of Numa, which I cited and expounded in an article upon the Olympiads in theJournal of Hellenic Studieswhich I have reprinted in theAppendixto 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 fromnothing 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].

The date of Pheidon of Argos

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 traditionin 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 747B.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 substituted; 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.

Since abandoned.

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 thisQuellenkritikas 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 documents 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 class which accepts him sometimes, and rejects him at others, because he will not fit in with their preconceived opinions.

not first-rate.

The question now before us is this: If Ephorus did put Pheidon in the eighth Olympiad, or about 747B.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. Ephoruswas 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 Cumæ (1050B.C.) as an evidence of the early greatness of the Æolic 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 Thermopylæ (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.

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 (747B.C.) placed Archias there, and, allowing for a few years of domestic struggles, sent him to Sicily in 735B.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.

associated with legends of Corcyra and Croton.

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, passing by the sites of Tarentum, Sybaris, Croton, and Locri. That these sites were fully appreciated is shown by the flourishing cities which the legend asserts 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 ships arriving in Sicily offered sacrifices at the temple of Apollo Archegetes atNaxos. 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 assent. It is conceded that Thucydides must have used Antiochus of Syracuse as his principal source in narrating the archæology of Sicily. This opinion, first stated by Niebuhr, has been argued out fully by Wölfflin, and accepted with some reluctance by Holm, Classen (the best editor of Thucydides), and Busolt[64:1].

Antiochus of Syracuse

not trustworthy;

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 constitutions 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 contemporaryof Herodotus, and is never cited by the ancients as a specimen of critical acumen, but rather as possessing special knowledge on an outlying part of the Greek world. We have, moreover, his opening words quoted by Dionysius of Halicarnassus[65:1], which are most important in the present connection:Ἀντίοχος Ξενοφάνεος τάδε συνέγραψε περὶ Ἰταλίης ἐκ τῶνἀρχαίων λόγων τὰ πιστότατα καὶ σαφέστατα. 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 thelogopoioi, 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 assigned 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 (Cumæ) at 1050B.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 pushing 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.

though supported by Thucydides,

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 assume 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 analysis 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 assertion that the Sikels passed 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 authoritieshave wonderfully imposed upon the credulity of the learned.

Credulity in every sceptic.

Nobody rates Thucydides higher than I do, wherever he is really competent to give an unbiassed 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 document lately recovered on the Acropolis[67:1]. The variations, though many, are trifling, and do not affect the substance of the document. 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 authorship and unity of design of the Homeric poems. Grote, so careful and precise in accepting documents, subscribes to the genuineness of the PlatonicLetters, 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.

Its probable occurrence in ancient critics.

Value of Hippias' work.

Even Eratosthenes countsdownward.

Clinton's warning.

This truth, which applies to modern scholars sosignally, 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 assured 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 documents 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 thefirst 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 guardianship 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 passage[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 Heracleidæ[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?

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.

The stage of pre-Homeric remains.

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 classed together as 'without father, mother, or descent,' discovering to us the earliest civilization in Greek lands. But to assert 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 templein antis,—the earliest form, from which theperipteraleasily follows. And early vases are adorned with rude figures which may be copies of old models such as those found at Mycenæ. But the intermediate steps are still hopelessly obscure.

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