As to ritual and other resemblances.
Herodotus[939]also gives us a sketch of the Persian system as to ritual. Each person sacrificed for himself: without libation, music, garlands, or cakes: only in a becoming spot, and having the tiara wreathed usually with myrtle. When he had performed the essential part of the function, aMagusrecited a religious chant; and no one could perform sacrifice except in presence of aMagus. It is plain that we see here, if not, as Mr. Blakesley thinks[940], the confusion, at any rate the combination, of the genuine Persian with the Median ritual. The presence of the Magian was required, or let us suppose that it was simply usual: yet he did not offer the sacrifice. This was perhaps the compromise between the sacerdotal system of thePelasgians, and the independent or patriarchal principle of the Hellenes, who exhibit to us firstὑποφῆται, thenμάντιεςandθυοσκόοι, but who seem to know nothing, as among themselves, of priests.
Like the Hellic races, the Persians of old were remarkable for personal modesty. They did not practice any unnatural vice, until they learned it from Greece[941]. They placed an extremely high value on their own race, which they esteemed far before all others[942]. Different social relations among those who were intimate were marked by differences in the kiss[943]. Equals kissed with the mouths, unequals by the mouth of one on the cheek of the other: while persons greatly inferior fell prostrate. In the Odyssey, Ulysses kisses his son Telemachus (doubtless on the face) (Od. xvi. 190), and Penelope kisses Telemachus on the head and eyes (xvii. 39); but Ulysses kisses the king of Egypt, when he is a suppliant (xiv. 279) on the knees, and the slave Dolius on the hands (xxiv. 398): he kisses Eumæus and Philœtius on the head and hands, while they embrace, but do not kiss him (xxi. 224, 5). Dolius held the hand, and no more, of Ulysses. But the chief is kissed on the head and eyes by his grandmother (Od. xix. 417.)
Like the Greeks, the Persians shore the hair in mourning. They held lying to be the most disgraceful of all things. It was also disgraceful to be called a woman[944]. Again, the Persians in the time of Crœsus were highlanders[945], destitute of all the comforts of life, just as Achilles describes the Helli round Dodona. Like theκαρηκομόωντες Ἀχαιοὶ, they wore their hair long[946].
All these are points of similarity. Upon the other hand, there are two points of discrepancy, which may be noticed. The Persians had many wives and concubines: and they did not burn their dead. Upon the first of these points of discrepancy with the Greeks, the Persians were in harmony with, at least, the ruling race of Troas; and polygamy must always be an affair of ruling races, or of a select few.
A fragment of the old historian Xanthus[947]would lead us to suppose that they derived this habit from the Medes, who, according to that author, had no law of incest, and freely exchanged their wives.
On the second point, they differed from Troy: for the Trojans, like the Greeks, burned their dead.
It was also the Persian custom to introduce women to their banquets[948]. There is, however, a trace of this last-named practice at least in the Olympian banquets of Homer. And it is plain that Arete, the queen of Alcinous, was at the Phæacian banquet (Od. vii. 49, 50, 147, 8): but this may have been due to the unusual honour in which she was held (Od. vii. 67). More ordinarily the Greek women do not appear at meals with men.
Thus far we seem to be carried by the text of Herodotus standing alone. And it should be borne in mind, that Ctesias, as he is reported in Photius[949], though he condemns Herodotus as a teller of untruth, and contradicts him in his narrative, does not question his account of religion and manners.
Evidence of the Behistun Inscription.
But the discovery and deciphering by Rawlinson of the Behistun Inscription throws an additional light upon this question, and one highly confirmatory of thegeneral conclusions towards which we have tended. The Magian, called Smerdis[950]by Herodotus, appears in this Inscription under the name of Gomates: and it is now demonstrated, that the revolution which he wrought, or of which he took advantage, and which was reversed by Darius, was religious as well as political. For, says the Inscription, ‘when Cambyses had proceeded to Egypt, the state became irreligious.’ It is then related that Gomates obtained the empire. But, says Darius, ‘I adored Ormuzd. Ormuzd brought me aid.’ ‘Then did I, with faithful men, slay Gomates the Magian.... By the grace of Ormuzd I became king. Ormuzd gave me the empire.... The rites which Gomates the Magian had introduced I prohibited. I restored the chants, and the worship, to the State, and to those families, which Gomates the Magian had deprived of them.’ Thus Darius represents in this great transaction the Persian party and its religion, as against the Medians and the Magi. Hence arises a direct presumption that the Magi were properly a Median class, and were adopted into the Persian system, only in consequence of the connection and political amalgamation of the Persians with the Medes.
Again, in a political point of view, we have the Persians clearly exhibited as standing in the same relation to the Medes, which the Helli held to the Pelasgi. The needy highlanders[951]come down upon and overpower the richer and more advanced inhabitants of the central valleys: under the Magian upstart, the latter take advantage of the absence of the sovereign to rebel, but they are, after a short interval, finally put down.
The political system of Darius.
Darius, having obtained the throne, and establishedthe Persian supremacy, proceeded to organize the empire; and he appears to have displayed in this great sphere the same thoroughly political mind as the Hellenic races exhibited in their diminutive, but still extraordinary polities. He divided the empire by a cadastral system, under provincial governors; and he established everywhere fixed rates of tribute. These were great departures from the old Greek form of sovereignty: but we are now five centuries later than the heroic age: and, besides, we must remember that the paternal and everywhere fixed forms of government, which will suffice for very small states, are not always applicable to large ones. Yet, as we learn from Herodotus, the innovations of Darius were much resented by the Persians, who under Cyrus, and even under Cambyses, knew nothing of fixed rates of taxation, but offered benevolences (δῶρα) to the throne[952]; and a saying came into vogue, that Cyrus was a father, Cambyses an autocrat (δεσπότης), and Darius a tradesman (κάπηλος).
‘Landlord of England art thou now, not King[953].’
‘Landlord of England art thou now, not King[953].’
We seem to have here an emphatic testimony to the original identity of the Persian and Hellic, or Hellenic ideas of government.
It is also worthy of remark, that in the case of Minos, who seems to have held a large and disjointed empire, we have traditional, and even Homeric indications of some proceeding not wholly unlike this of Darius. For this prince, according to Thucydides, governed the islands through his sons, that is, by a provincial organization under local officers[954]; in Homer we find Rhadamanthus acting at a distance, probably on hisbehalf; and we may perhaps hence conceive, that there was truth in the tradition, afterwards so odious, that he imposed tribute upon the then Pelasgian Attica. Minos indeed was a reputed Phœnician: but in Homer the Phœnician and Persian traditions are closely combined, and the poet appears to have treated Phœnicia as the medium, perhaps even the symbol, of much that was Persian. Even geographically I believe that he placed the two countries in very close proximity.
It seems probable also, that we may consider the long continued application of the termΒασιλεὺςby the Greeks to the Persian kings, as having reference to an original identity of race and manners. It had been their own original name for a monarch. When the ancient monarchies passed away, so did the name from their usage; and the possessor of singlehanded power among the Greeks, having in all cases obtained it by the suppression of liberty, came to be calledτύραννος; but the wordΒασιλεὺςcontinued to be used with reference to Persia, where the chain of traditions had not been broken, and where monarchy had never ceased to prevail; so that there had been no reason for a change of usage, or for a deviation from the ancient respect and reverence towards the possessor of a throne. Again, the traditional throne of Lacedæmon continued to be held byΒασιλεῖς[955].
For the wordΒασιλεὺςwas one of no ordinary force; and down to a very late date it must have been surrounded with venerable recollections. It was borne by the emperors of Constantinople, and even at times stickled for by them, as a title distinguishing them from the emperors of the West. Though essentially Greek, itwas also written in the Latin character. Unlike the wordRex, it appears never to have been applied to any ruler who exercised a merely derivative power. It travelled so far westward as to our own island: and King Edgar, in a charter, calls himselfAnglorum Basileus, omniumque Regum, Insularum, Oceanique Britanniam circumjacentis, cunctarumque nationum, quæ infra eam includuntur, Imperator et Dominus[956].
Hellenic traits in modern Persia.
Even now, after so many centuries of vicissitude, the Persian presents numerous points of resemblance, perhaps more than we can find in Modern Greece itself, to the primitive and heroic Greek of Homer. Upon the whole, without doubt, he stands upon a lower level. Lying, drunkenness, unnatural vice[957], the degradation of women, are all now rife in Persia. But such things were to be expected after so many ages of estrangement from the revealed knowledge of God, of moral contamination, and of political depression and misgovernment. But with allowance on these accounts, and on the score of the changes to Magianism and Mahometanism, the old features are still retained, and they present to our view abundant presumptions of identity.
The Persians[958]are still noted for hospitality and love of display: for highly refined manners and great personal beauty. They have still an intense love of poetry, of song, and also of music, while their practice of this art is rude and simple: they still associate poetry (sometimes licentious, as in the Eighth Odyssey) withrecitation and the banquet; and, when Malcolm wrote, printing was still unknown among the useful arts of the country. They are passionately fond of horses, much given to the chase and to the practice of horse-racing[959]. Men of letters are esteemed, and their society valued, even as in the Odyssey the Bard is among those whom men are accustomed to invite to dinner[960]. On the occasion of a marriage they celebrate prolonged feasts of three days for the poor, and from that up to thirty or forty days for the highest classes. Amidst great depravity, much of filial piety and of maternal influence remains[961]. It is observed that they do not usually allude to women by name[962]. There is an approach to this abstinence in the Homeric poems; where names of men, and likewise of goddesses, in the vocative are frequent, but I am not sure that we have any instances of a woman addressed by her proper name throughout the Iliad or Odyssey. But certainly one of the most curious notes of similarity is that, together with their high and refined politeness, they retain a liability, when under great excitement, to a sort of cannibal ferocity. A recent writer states[963]the following anecdotes. A few years ago, the chieftain of a tribe slew in a feud the chieftain of another. Shortly afterwards he was attacked while on a journey, taken after vigorous resistance, and put to death. His heart, if we may believe the recital, was then roasted, and was eaten by the mother of his former victim. And again; the husband of a beautiful young woman had been slain by a rival chief. Thewidow, who had been much attached to the dead warrior, would minutely describe the incidents of the catastrophe, and then, lifting up her hands to heaven, would pray to Ali to deliver the murderer into her hands, ‘that having cut out his heart, I may make it into kibabs, and eat it before I die.’ These are certainly most pointed proofs that Homer has proceeded with his usual veracity, as an observer and chronicler of man, when he shocks us by making Achilles wish he could eat Hector, and Hecuba wish she could eat Achilles; nay, even when he yet further proves that this idea was familiar to his race and age, by making Jupiter tell Juno, she would, he believes, be well content to eat Priam and all his sons.
The Eelliats: Media and the Pelasgi.
To appreciate fully, however, the resemblances of Greek and Persian, we must take the latter as he is found in the military tribes of the province of Pars or Fars. The members of these tribes are chiefly horsemen, all soldiers, and all brigands. But they abhor the name and character of thief; plunder is redeemed by violence in their eyes, and it is evidently accompanied with the practice of a generous and delicate hospitality. Elsewhere in Persia many degrading customs prevail, and women are regarded chiefly with a view to sensual use; but among these military tribes they are more highly valued, and are of remarkable modesty and chastity; yet they have an innocent freedom in their good offices to strangers[964], which at once recalls the Greek maidens of the Odyssey. Adultery is capitally punishable. Alexander the Great endeavoured to bring these tribes to settle, and to adopt agricultural habits; but they have defied his efforts, and stillremain like the old Helli of the hills, when they hung over the Pelasgians of the valleys. It is to be observed, that they are particularly mentioned in the Eteo-Persian province of Fars: and further, that they bear the name Eelleat[965], which at least presents a striking resemblance to that of the Helli. The aspirate would pass into the doubledε, likeἡλιοςintoἠελιος, orἕδναintoἔεδνα. So Helli is the equivalent of Eelli.
In sum, the ancient Persians, like the Helli, were of Arian race, of highland character and habits, inhabitants of a rude country: apparently children of Japhet, akin closely to the Hellenes, and less palpably to the Osci and Umbri.
The Medians werecivillyin a more advanced stage of social life, and were possessed of greater wealth, but endowed with inferior energies. They are presumed by many to have been of the race of Ham: to have peopled Egypt, and to be akin to the ancient Sicani, to the Basques, the Esthonians, the Lapps, and the Finns of modern Europe. For the purposes of this inquiry, they are to be regarded as in all likelihood the immediate fountain-head of the wide-spread Pelasgian races.
We began under the warning of Mr. Grote: and I fear that we end under the implied ban of another very able and recent writer, Dr. Latham[966]. He considers that we have been put in possession of no facts with respect to the Pelasgi more than those three, so slight and so incapable of effective combination, which are recognised by Mr. Grote[967]. But the principle he lays down is that, by which I wish to be tried. He says, the scholar finds aποῦ στῶin thedictumof this orthat author, but the sound ethnologist ‘on the last testified fact:’ he demands for his basis ‘the existing state of things as either known to ourselves, or known to contemporaries capable of learning them at the period nearest the time under consideration.’ It appears to me that the text of Homer, so far as it goes, answers this demand: that his accounts of Pelasgian, Hellene, and Achæan, when we can get at them, and when we take into view his epoch and means of information, come clearly within the meaning of ‘testified facts’ in regard to that particular subject matter. I admit that, from their incidental and often unconscious nature, there is a great liability to error in the attempt to elicit them: but my assertion is, that the ground under foot is sound; and that, though we may go astray while travelling it, yet we are not attempting to tread upon a quicksand. As to the success with which this principle has here been applied, I am not too sanguine; but I contend earnestly for the principle itself, because I believe that it will, when admitted, legitimately work out its own results, and that they will make no unimportant addition to the primary facts of that great branch of philosophy, the history, and most of all the early history, of man.
Page106. On the possible migration of the Dodonæan oracle, see below, p.238.
P.126. On the theory of Curtius respecting the Ionians, see p.480.
P.153. The wealth of Egyptian Thebes was known to Achilles; see Il. ix. 381.
P.167. The Birth of Minos will be more fully discussed in connection with the Outer Geography of the Odyssey. On the ancient and extensive influence of Phœnicia upon Crete, see Höck’s Creta, vol. i. pp. 68 and seqq.
P.186. On the wordlupus, see Müller’s Dorians, II. vi. 8, 9, for its relation toλευκὸς,λυκὴ,λυκηγενὴς, or light-born, andlux.
P.306. In general confirmation of what has been said above on the subject of language, I may refer to theRömische Geschichte[968]of Mommsen, which had not come under my eye when the Seventh Section went to press.
His conclusions are;
1. That the Greek and mid-Italian languages correspond, in what touches the rudiments of the material life of man.
2. That in the higher region of the mind, of religion, and of advanced polity, this correspondence wholly fails.
3. That the Græco-Italic agrees with the Sanscrit down to the pastoral stage of society only, and ceases with the commencement of the agricultural and settled stage.
4. That the abstract genius of the Roman religion bears a relation to the Greek anthropophuism, like that of the full-formedIndian mythology to the metaphysical scheme of the Zendavesta.
He appears to me to cast the balance overmuch on the Roman side: but his statement will well repay an attentive consideration.
He supplies the following words, which I would add to the lists I have given above. They generally corroborate the conclusions at which I have arrived.
χόρτοςhortus.κέγχροςcicer.μελίνηmilium.πολτὸςpuls.μύληmola.ἄξωνaxis.ἄμ-αξαποίνηpœna.κρίνω,κρίμαcrimen.ταλάωtalio.χίτωνtunica.
And, belonging to the higher domain—
σκύτοςscutum (with an alteration, or progression of sense).λόγχηlancea.τέμενοςtemplum.
Among these, the relationship ofτέμενοςand templum seems to require further proof.
I have to add the wordκῆλον, which seems to be in nearer correspondence thanβέλοςis withtelum. On the other side, I may noteἄορ, fora sword, andὄχος,ὄχημα, fora chariot, as among the words not in correspondence.
P.311. AddΦείδιππος. Il. ii. 768.
P.313. The statement as to the persons slain by Hector and Mars is inaccurate. The seven first names are, so far as the text informs us, undistinguished, except Teuthras, who is calledἀντίθεος; and among these seven we have no name,which is clearly of Hellic etymology. But the nine others belong to a different part of the action (Il. xi. 301-4), and are expressly calledἡγεμόνες(or officers, Il. ii. 365): and among these, while we have four names of Hellic complexion, Dolops and Opheltius are the only two which can be positively assigned to the Pelasgian class.
P.380. While I have stated the second sense of the wordἌργοςaccording to what appears to me to be the balance of the evidence, I admit it to be a doubtful point whether we ought rather, with Strabo (p. 365), to understand it preferably as capable of meaning the entire Peloponnesus.