(1)—vv. 546-9.οἱ δ’ ἄρ’ Ἀθήνας εἶχον, ἐϋκτίμενον πτολίεθρον,δῆμον Ἐρεχθῆος μεγαλήτορος, ὅν ποτ’ Ἀθήνηθρέψε Διὸς θυγάτηρ, τέκε δὲ ζείδωρος Ἄρουρα,κὰδ δ’ ἐν Ἀθήνῃσ’ εἷσεν, ἑῷ ἐνὶ πίονι νηῷ.
(1)—vv. 546-9.
οἱ δ’ ἄρ’ Ἀθήνας εἶχον, ἐϋκτίμενον πτολίεθρον,δῆμον Ἐρεχθῆος μεγαλήτορος, ὅν ποτ’ Ἀθήνηθρέψε Διὸς θυγάτηρ, τέκε δὲ ζείδωρος Ἄρουρα,κὰδ δ’ ἐν Ἀθήνῃσ’ εἷσεν, ἑῷ ἐνὶ πίονι νηῷ.
There is a reading ofἈθήνηςforἈθηνῃσ’: it is disputed whetherτέκεapplies toδῆμονor to Erechtheus; whetherἑῷis to be understood of Erechtheus or ofMinerva; and again, what is the meaning ofπίονιas applied toνηῷ? The variety of lection is not material: the application ofτέκεis clearly to Erechtheus, as seems also that ofἑῷto Minerva[178]. Again, the application of the epithetπίονιto the temple is perhaps sufficiently supported by Od. xii. 346,πίονα νηὸν, and Il. v. 512,μάλα πίονος ἐξ ἀδύτοιο.
It does not appear that these lines, or the two which follow, were rejected by the Alexandrian critics, but the Pseudo-Herodotus, in the Life of Homer, c. 28, states that they were interpolated.
The objections from internal evidence are stated by Payne Knight[179].
1. That the Greeks had no temples at the time of theTroica.
2. That asἌρουραissuperficies non orbis Terræ, so it was not a known personification at the time of Homer.
As to the first of these, we hear of Trojan temples in the Iliad; probably also of the Greek temple of Apollo in Il. ix. 404; and of Greek temples in the Odyssey, beyond all reasonable doubt. We hear of Ætolian priests in Il. ix. 575; while it is not likely that there should have been priests without temples.
Again, the circumstances of the Greeks in the Iliad were not such as to lead to the mention of temples usually or frequently. Therefore this is not a ground of suspicion against the passage.
As to the second objection, it should be borne in mind that the Earth,Γαῖα, as well asἌρουρα, was apparently to Homer, not less than to the other ancients, a surface, not a solid (κυκλοτερὴς ὡς ἀπὸ τόρνου, Herod. iv. 36.) The objection really is, thatἌρουραmeans a particular class of ground, namely, arable or cultivable land; and that to personify this class of land by itself is artificial, far-fetched, and not in the manner of Homer.
To me it appears clear that it would be unnatural for us, but very doubtful whether it was so for Homer. We could not in poetry well treat Corn-field or Garden as a person: but the corn-bearing Earth (ζείδωρος Ἄρουρα) had for the Greeks in their early days a vividness of meaning, which it has not for us. To us, to the modern European mind, the gifts of Ceres are but one item in an interminable list of things enjoyable and enjoyed: to man when yet youthful, while in his first ruder contact with his mother Earth and the elements, while possessed of few instruments and no resources, this idea was as determinate, as it was likewise suggestive and poetical. The Latins have no word by which to render the wordἌρουραin its full meaning, thougharvummust have been taken from it, or from the same root with it. It nearly corresponds with the English ‘glebe’ in its proper use[180]. It signifies not only corn land, but all productive land, for instance, vine land, in Il. iii. 246. But to them, so pregnant was the idea, that besides a crop of epithets such asπολύφορβοςandτραφέρη, it threw off its own inverted image in the epithet, habitual with Homer, ofἀτρύγετοςforθάλασσα, the un-cornbearing sea. Now when the idea of corn land had been thus vividly conceived, the next step, that of viewingἌρουραasΓαῖα, was one not very hard to take. The objection seems to arise out of our unconsciouslyreading Homer in the false light of our own familiar associations.
His text affords evidence in support of these views. May it not be said that the phraseπάτρις Ἄρουρα[181]forpatriashows us a great step towards personification? In theΝεκυία(Od. xi. 489),ἐπάρουροςis equivalent to ‘alive;’ compare Il. xvii. 447. Again, Ulysses, the moment he escapes from the river mouth to the shore, kisses theζείδωρος Ἄρουρα[182]among the reeds: which seems to show an use of the term nearly synonymous withΓαῖαor earth. And again, praying for the glory of Alcinous[183], he says,
τοῦ μέν κεν ἐπὶ ζείδωρον ἄρουρανἄσβεστον κλέος εἴη.
τοῦ μέν κεν ἐπὶ ζείδωρον ἄρουρανἄσβεστον κλέος εἴη.
The fame of Alcinous could not be confined to fields. So the setting sun casts shadows on theἐρίβωλος Ἄρουρα[184]. In both cases the term so approximates to the meaning of Earth, doubtless by metonymy, as to be indistinguishable from it. Again Il. iv. 174,σέο δ’ ὄστεα πύσει Ἄρουρα. Surely the meaning here is Earth, for we are not to suppose Homer meant to say the bodies of his warriors would lie on the cultivable land only. But another passage brings us up to actual personification, that respecting Otus and Ephialtes
οὓς δὴ μηκίστους θρέψε ζείδωρος Ἄρουρα[185].
οὓς δὴ μηκίστους θρέψε ζείδωρος Ἄρουρα[185].
This objection toἌρουραtherefore will not hold good: and the passage cannot be condemned upon internal evidence. It is referred to by Plato, in the first Alcibiades[186].
(2)—Vss. 550, 1.ἐνθάδε μιν ταύροισι καὶ ἀρνείοις ἱλάονταικοῦροι Ἀθηναίων, περιτελλομένων ἐνιαυτῶν.
(2)—Vss. 550, 1.
ἐνθάδε μιν ταύροισι καὶ ἀρνείοις ἱλάονταικοῦροι Ἀθηναίων, περιτελλομένων ἐνιαυτῶν.
Some referμινto Minerva, and construe the passage with reference to the Panathenaic celebration. When so interpreted, as it is contended, the words betray a palpable anachronism.
Again it is alleged, (1) Homer does not in the Catalogue introduce general descriptions of the religious rites of Greece, and it is scarcely likely he should mention here a celebration, which he does not report to have had anything peculiar in its character. (2) From xi. 729 it appears that cows were sacrificed to Minerva, not bulls: (3) the tenour of the sentence directs us to Erechtheus, and it involves worship offered to a local hero.
With respect to the Panathenaica, a difficulty would undoubtedly arise, if we were obliged to suppose that it contained a reference to gymnastic games, which we have every reason to treat as having borne in the age of Homer a marked Hellenic character[187]. But the words imply no such reference. They speak, at the most, of no more than periodical sacrifices. This implies an established festival, and nothing beyond it. Now such a signification raises no presumption whatever against the genuineness of the passage: because we have one distinct and unquestionable case in Homer of an established festival of a deity, that namely of Apollo in the Odyssey. The day of the vengeance of Ulysses was theἑορτὴ τοῖο Θεοῖο ἁγνή[188].
So considering the passage, let us next examine the objection taken to it, that it involves hero-worship[189], which was not known in the Homeric age.
Now we have in the Odyssey, as well as here in the Iliad, cases of mortals translated to heaven and to the company of immortals.
In the Odyssey we have, for example, the case of Castor and Pollux, who enjoyed a peculiar privilege of life after death, and revisited earth in some mysterious manner on alternate days[190]. And this, too, although they were buried[191].
Theirτίμη πρὸς Ζηνὸςwas such that, as the passage in Od. xi. proceeds to state, they vied with deities;
τίμην δὲ λελόγχασ’ ἶσα θεοῖσιν.
τίμην δὲ λελόγχασ’ ἶσα θεοῖσιν.
Thisτίμηmust have included honour paid on earth: to be in heaven, unless in connection with earth and its inhabitants, was not of itself aτίμη, much less was it theτίμηof the gods. The subject of hero-worship will be further examined in a later portion of this work: but for the present it appears sufficiently, that this comes near to hero-worship. The passage about Erechtheus is no more than a development of the expression relating to the Tyndarid brothers; and, though by some steps in advance of it, can hardly be rejected on this ground alone as spurious. All passages cannot be expected to express with precisely the same degree of fulness the essential ideas on which they are founded; and we are not entitled to cut off, on that ground alone, the one which happens to be most in advance.
But although the application to Erechtheus might not convict the passage, I very much question whether we ought so to apply it. It is quite against the general bearing of the passage, which would much more naturally refer it to Minerva. The reason for it is that cows or heifers were offered to her, and not rams or bulls. No doubt, in the particular cases mentioned to us, (Il. vi. 94, x. 292, xi. 729, and Od. iii. 382,) cows or heifers only are spoken of. But in Od. iii. 145 we aretold thatἑκατομβαὶwere to be offered to her, which we can hardly limit so rigidly: and considering that the cases of cows mentioned by Homer are all special, while this passage speaks of what was ordinary and periodical, I think we should pause before admitting that the application of the lines to Minerva is on this ground indefensible.
The wordπεριτελλομένων[192]is taken to mean not annual revolutions, but the revolutions of periods of years. I question the grounds of this interpretation: but, if it could be established, it would certainly rather weaken the passage; for Homer nowhere else mentions periodical celebrations of any kind divided by any number of years, and I doubt whether such an idea does not involve greater familiarity with numerical combinations than the Poet seems to have possessed.
Leaving these two lines subject to some doubt, but by no means fully convicted, let us proceed to the third and last of the contested portions of the passage.
(3)—Vss. 553-5.τῷ δ’ οὔπω τις ὁμοῖος ἐπιχθόνιος γένετ’ ἄνηρκοσμήσαι ἵππους τε καὶ ἀνέρας ἀσπιδιώτας·Νέστωρ οἶος ἔριζεν· ὁ γὰρ προγενέστερος ἦεν.
(3)—Vss. 553-5.
τῷ δ’ οὔπω τις ὁμοῖος ἐπιχθόνιος γένετ’ ἄνηρκοσμήσαι ἵππους τε καὶ ἀνέρας ἀσπιδιώτας·Νέστωρ οἶος ἔριζεν· ὁ γὰρ προγενέστερος ἦεν.
These lines were condemned by Zenodotus[193]upon the ground that we have no other mention of these gifts of Menestheus, and no example of his putting them in exercise. Mr. Payne Knight[194]also urges that Menestheus, here so commended with respect to chariots as well as infantry, does not even appear as a competitor in the chariot-race at the funeral games of Patroclus, although, in order to enlarge the competition, even the slow horses of Nestor are put in requisition.
The Scholiast answers, with regard to the first objection, and Heyne[195]accepts the defence as sufficient, that other persons are praised in the gross, of whom no details are given anywhere: as Machaon is calledἀριστεύωνin Il. xi. 506. But a mere general epithet is very different from a set passage of three lines expressing extraordinary preeminence in particular accomplishments.
Again, the word applied to Machaon is by no means one of abstract panegyric, but is itself a description of the activity in the field by which he was at the moment baffling the energies of Hector, and would, says the Poet, have continued to baffle them, had not Paris wounded him. Thus the word is not a vague epithet: the wordsπαῦσεν ἀριστεύοντα Μαχάοναsimply mean, that the manful exertions of Machaon were arrested.
There is another objection to the passage in the rather inflated character of its compliment to an undistinguished man. Even Nestor[196], it says, did not beat him, but only (ἔριζεν) vied with him: and this not as an abler, but only as an older, man.
On the other hand, some of the Scholiasts ingeniously suggest that these verses are given to Menestheus by way of compensation;τοῦτο χαρίζεται αὐτῷ, ἐπεὶ μὴ εὐδοκιμήσει ἐν ταῖς μάχαις[197]. But Homer does not usually deal out compensation, among the Greeks, by abstract praises, for the want of the honour earned by deeds: and all the other martial eulogies on chiefs in the Catalogue are well borne out in the poem.
On the whole, Mr. Payne Knight’s objection, and the judgment of the Alexandrine Critics, seem to leave this part of the passage in a state so questionable, that nothing ought to be rested on it. The best point inits favour is, that the Athenian Legates before Gelon are represented by Herodotus as confidently relying on it, when there would have been an interest on his part in demurring to its authority, for it was a question of military precedence that was at issue:τῶν καὶ Ὅμηρος ὁ ἐποποιὸς ἄνδρα ἄριστον ἔφησε εἰς Ἴλιον ἀπικέσθαι, τάξαι τε καὶ διακοσμῆσαι στράτον[198].
On the other hand, it may be observed with justice that the compliment here paid to Menestheus is the very best of which the case admitted; perhaps the only one that an interpolator would have been safe in selecting. For he would have known that any panegyric relating to strength or prowess in action would be conclusively belied by the rest of the poem in its entire tenour.
But while we cannot confidently rely upon these three lines, there appears to be no reason why we should not use the evidence supplied by the rest of the passage as most probably good historic matter. It undoubtedly represents a strong course of old local tradition[199]: for there was in Athens a most ancient temple dedicated to Minerva and Erechtheus in conjunction.
Review of the Homeric evidence.
The Homeric evidence then up to this point stands as follows with reference to Athens and the Athenian contingent, or the principal and picked men of it, whichever be the best term for the passage. They were
1. Ionians, Il. xiii. 685.
2.ἑλκεχίτωνες, ibid.
3. Autochthonous, Il. ii. 547.
4. Undistinguished in the war.
5. Under the special patronage of Pallas or Minerva, Il. ii. 546, and Od. xi. 323, where the epithetἱεράων, given to Athens, indicates a special relation to a deity.
The epithetἑλκεχίτωνεςsuggests unwarlike habits, and, though more faintly, it also betokens textile industry. It stands in marked contrast with theἀμιτροχίτωνες[200]of the valiant Lycians, whose short and spare tunic required no cincture to confine it. It corroborates the negative evidence afforded by the Iliad of some want of martial genius in the primitive Athens. It coincides with the tutelage of Pallas, for the Minerva of Homer has no more indisputable function than as the goddess of skilled industry[201]. All this tends to betoken that the inhabitants of the Homeric Attica were Pelasgian.
Again, the autochthonic origin, ascribed to the Athenians in the person of Erechtheus, amounts to an assertion that they were the first known inhabitants of the country: in other words, that they were Pelasgian.
The negative evidence is also important. There is nothing in Homer that tends to associate Athens with the Hellenic stem. The want of military distinction deserves a fuller notice.
It can hardly be without meaning, that of all the chiefs, considerable in the Iliad by their positions and commands, there are but two who are never named as in actual fight, or with any other mark of distinction, and these two are the heads of the two (as we suppose) emphatically Pelasgian contingents, from Athens and Arcadia respectively. Agapenor, who (being however of Ætolian extraction) leads the Arcadians, is named nowhere but in the Catalogue: Menestheus is repeatedly named, but never with reference to fighting. In the only part of the action of the poem where he is put forward, he shudders[202], and shows an anxiety for his personal safety, much more like a Trojan leader than aGreek one. Yet they were sole commanders, the first of no less than sixty ships, the second of fifty. There are no similar cases. The nearest to them are those (1) of Prothous[203], who commands 40 ships of the Magnesians, and Gourieus[204], who leads 22 of the Enienes and Perrhæbi: both of these are remote, Thessalian, and very probably Pelasgian tribes: (2) of Podarkes, who commands 40 ships, but only as deputy for his deceased brother Protesilaus, who is said to have been not only the elder, but the more valiant[205].
Agapenor, indeed, was evidently dependent in a peculiar sense on Agamemnon, in whose ships he sailed: but this could not affect his position as to personal prowess. The case of Menestheus is the more remarkable from this circumstance, that he is the only independent and single commander in charge of so many as fifty ships, who is not invested with the supreme rank ofΒασιλεὺςor King. His father Peteos is however calledΔιοτρεφὴς Βασιλεὺς(Il. iv. 338), which marks him as having probably been a person of greater importance.
And what is true of the commanders is true also of the troops. Athens, and with her Arcadia, may justly be regarded as the only two undistinguished in Homer among those states of Greece which afterwards attained to distinction. For among the States which acquired fame in the historic ages, Argolis, Achaia, and Laconia hold through their chiefs very high places in the poem: Elis and Bœotia are conspicuous in the anterior traditions which it enshrines. Only Attica and Arcadia fail in exhibiting to us signs of early pre-eminence in the arts of war: which in a marked manner confirms the suppositions we have already obtained, as to the Pelasgian character of their inhabitants.
A sign, though a more uncertain one, that points in the same direction, is afforded by the choice of Athens, on the part of Orestes[206], as his place of habitation during the tyranny of Ægisthus in Mycenæ. The displaced, if they do not fly to the strong for protection, go among those who are weaker, and where they may most easily hold their ground, or even acquire power afresh. In other words, in the case before us, an Hellenic exile would very naturally betake himself among a Pelasgian people.
While however the indications of a predominating Pelasgian character among the Athenians at the epoch of theTroicaappear to be varied and powerful, I must admit that they are crossed by one indication, which is at first sight of an opposite character, I mean that which is afforded by their name. Even though we were to surrender the entire passages in the Catalogue respecting them, it would still be difficult to contend that the name of Athens and of Athenians is forged in six other places of the poems where one or the other of them is found, besides that there is a second allusion to Erechtheus in the Odyssey. Here we have then, attached to a people whom we suppose Pelasgian, a name connecting them immediately with a deity commonly reputed to be of strong Hellic propensities: connecting them, indeed, in a manner so special as to be exclusive, because no other city or population in Homer takes its name from a deity at all. This indicates a relation of the closest description: and it is quite independent of the suspected passage, which represents Minerva as the nurse or foster-mother of Erechtheus.
Athenian relations with Minerva.
Now it will be found, upon close examination, thatMinerva plays a very different part in the Iliad from Juno, the great protectress of the Greeks, and from Neptune, their actual comrade in fight. The difference even at first sight is this, that theirs appears to be a national, hers more a personal and moral sentiment. In Juno, it is sympathy with the Greeks as Greeks; in Neptune, antipathy to the Trojans as Trojans: but both cases are plainly distinguishable from the temper and attitude of Minerva.
Her protection of Ulysses, whose character is the human counterpart of her own, is the basis of the whole theurgy of the Odyssey, and is also strongly marked in theΔολώνεια. Again, she comes, in the first book[207], at the instance of Juno, to restrain and guide Achilles: for Juno, it is stated, loved both Agamemnon and Achilles alike; which may imply, that this was not the exact case with Minerva. So again, she inspires Diomed[208]for the work of hisἀριστεῖα, with a view to his personal distinction[209]. On each of the two occasions when the two goddesses come down together from heaven, it is Juno that makes the proposal. When Minerva prompts Pandarus to treachery, it is by the injunction of Jupiter, issued on the suggestion of Juno[210]. In the seventh book, however, she descends of herself on seeing that the Greeks lose ground, tells Apollo that she was come, as he was, with the intention to stay the battle[211], and the result of their counsel is one of the single fights (that between Hector and Ajax), which were sure to issue in glory to the Greek heroes. Still she has not the rabid virulence against Troy which distinguishes Juno, which makes her exact the decision for its destruction in the Olympian assembly, and which leads Jupiter to say toher sarcastically, that if she could but eat Priam and his children and subjects raw, then her anger would be satiated.
In fact, Juno has all the marks of a deity entirely Hellic: both in the passionate character of her attachment, and in the absence of all signs whatever of any practical relation between her and the Trojan people.
It is not so with Pallas. Pitilessly opposed to the Trojans in the war, she is nowhere so identified with the Greeks as to exhibit her in the light of one of those deities, whose influence or sympathies were confined to any one place or nation. Her enmity to Troy is mythologically founded on the Judgment of Paris[212]: but it has a more substantive ethical ground in the nature of the quarrel between the two countries.
Unlike Juno and Neptune, she was regularly worshipped at Troy, where she had a priestess of high rank, and a temple placed, like that of Apollo, on the height of Pergamus.
Distinct proof, however, that Minerva was neither originally at war with the Trojans, nor unknown to them by her beneficial influences, is afforded by the case of Phereclus son of Harmonides, the carpenter; this Phereclus was the builder of the ships of Paris, and was a highly skilled workman[213]by her favour,
ἐξόχα γάρ μιν ἐφίλατο Πάλλας Ἀθήνη.
ἐξόχα γάρ μιν ἐφίλατο Πάλλας Ἀθήνη.
The name of Harmonides may be fictitious; but the relation to Pallas deserves remark, if we assume Troy to have been fundamentally Pelasgian; and it affords a strong presumption, that there was nothing in the character of Minerva to prevent her being propitious to a Pelasgian country. Her attributes as the goddess of industry, or more strictly, in our phrase, of manufacture, were indeed in no special harmony with the character of the Pelasgians, as she had nothing to do with works of agriculture: but neither was there any antagonism between them.
There is also something that deserves notice in the speech in which Minerva expresses to Juno her resentment at the restraint put upon her by Jupiter. She accuses him of forgetting the services she had so often rendered to Hercules when he was oppressed by the labours that Eurystheus had laid upon him, and declares that it was she who effected his escape from Hades[214]. Now this has all the appearance of being the fabulous dress of the old tradition, which reports that the children of Hercules had taken refuge in Attica, and had been harboured there; that Eurystheus invaded the country in consequence of the protection thus given, and that he was slain while upon the expedition. It seems therefore possible, that this reception of the Heraclids may have had something to do with the special relation, at the epoch of theTroica, between Athens and Minerva as its tutelary goddess? In connection with Hercules personally, the Iliad affords us another mark that friendly relations might subsist between Troy and Pallas. She, in conjunction with them,
Τρῶες καὶ Πάλλας Ἀθήνη[215],
Τρῶες καὶ Πάλλας Ἀθήνη[215],
erected the rampart in which Hercules took refuge from the pursuing monster.
But the full answer to the objection is of a wider scope, and is to be found in the general character of this deity, which did not, like inferior conceptions, admit of being circumscribed by the limits of a particular district or people.
It will hereafter be shewn, that, like Latona and Apollo in particular, Minerva in Pagan fiction represents a disguised and solitary fragment of the true primeval tradition[216]. All such deities we may expect to find, and we do find, transmitted from the old Pelasgians into the mythologies both of Greece and Rome, or those common to Pelasgian and Hellene. We expect to find, and we do find, them worshipped both among the Greeks and among the Trojans as gods, not of this or that nation, but of the great human family. In theory, exclusive regard to the one side or the other comports far better with the idea of such deities as represent unruly passions or propensities of our nature like Mars and Venus, or Mercury; or chief physical forces like Neptune; or such as, like Juno, are the sheer product of human imagination reflected upon the world above, and have no relation to any element or part of a true theology. But the Homeric Jupiter, in so far as he is a representative of supreme power and unity, and the Pallas and Apollo of the poems by a certain moral elevation, and by various incidents of their birth or attributes, show a nobler parentage[217].
In the capacity of a traditive deity, Minerva is with perfect consistency worshipped alike among Trojans and Greeks, Hellenic and Pelasgian tribes. There is nothing strange, then, in our finding her the patroness of a Pelasgian people. The only strangeness is her being (if so she was) more specially their patroness than of any other people. The very fact that, for the purposes of the war, Homer gives her to the Greeks, might perhaps have prepared us to expect that we should find her special domicile among the Hellic portions of that nation: but it supplies no absolute and conclusive reasonfor such a domicile. But I close the discussion with these observations. In the first place, the Pelasgian character of the Athenians in early times is established by evidence too strong to be countervailed by any such inference as we should be warranted in drawing to a contrary effect from the special connection with Minerva. Again, it may be that the connection of both with Hercules may contain a solution of the difficulty. But lastly, if, as we shall find reason to believe, the traditive deities were the principal gods of ancient Greece, and if the entrance of the Hellic tribes brought in many new claimants upon the divine honours, it may after all seem not unreasonable that we should find, in one of the most purely Pelasgian States, the worship of this great traditive deity less obscured than elsewhere by competition with that of the invaders, and consequently in more peculiar and conspicuous honour.
An examination of the etymology of certain names in Homer will hereafter, I trust, confirm these reasonings on the Athens of the heroic age: with this exception, we may now bid adieu to the investigation of the Homeric evidence of Pelasgianism in Attica.
Post-Homeric evidence.
That evidence certainly receives much confirmation, positive and negative, from without. In the first place, though Hesiod supplies us with an Hellen, and with a Dorus and Æolus among his sons, he says not a word of an Ion; and the tradition connecting Ion with Hellen through Xuthus is of later date: probably later than Euripides, who makes Ion only the adopted son of Xuthus an Achæan[218], and the real son of Creusa, an Erectheid; with Apollo, a Hellic, but also a Pelasgian deity, for his father. Again, in the legendary times we do not hear of the Athenians as invaders and conquerors, which was the character of the Hellic tribes, but usually as themselves invaded; for example, by Eurystheus from the Peloponnesus.
In ancient tradition generally, the Athenians appear on the defensive against Bœotians[219], Cretans, or others. And the reputed Pylian and Neleid descent of the Pisistratid family is a curious illustration of the manner in which Attica was reported to have imported from abroad the most energetic elements of her own population[220], and also of the (so to speak) natural predominance of Hellic over Pelasgic blood.
Thucydides[221]informs us, that the Athenians were first among the Greeks to lay aside the custom of bearing arms, and to cultivate ease and luxury. Of this we have perhaps already had an indication in the wordsἑλκεχίτωνες.
He also states that, on account of the indifferent soil[222], which offered no temptation comparable to those supplied by the more fertile portions of Greece, there was no ejection of the inhabitants from Attica by stronger claimants.Τὴν γοῦν Ἀττικὴν, ἐκ τοῦ ἐπὶ πλεῖστον διὰ τὸ λεπτογέων ἀστασίαστον οὖσαν, ἄνθρωποι ᾤκουν οἱ αὐτοὶ ἀεί.This is simply stating in another form what was usually expressed by declaring them autochthons. It is part of their Pelasgian title.
A remarkable passage in Herodotus covers the whole breadth of the ground that has here been taken; and it is important, because no doubt it expresses what that author considered to be the best of the current traditions, founded in notoriety, and what Crœsus likewise learned upon a formal inquiry, undertaken with a view to alliances in Greece, respecting the origin ofthe Athenians. Herodotus, like Homer, makes the Athenians Ionian; and in conformity with the construction here put upon Homer, he declares the Ionians not to be Hellenic, but to be Pelasgian[223]. The Attic people, he goes on to say, having once been Pelasgian became Hellenic[224]. According to some opinions[225], this change occurred when the Ionians came into Attica: but the evidence of Homer, I think, makes Athens Ionian at the same epoch when it is Pelasgian. I therefore construe the statement of Herodotus as signifying that the Athenians, in the course of time, received among themselves Hellenic immigrants from the more disturbed and changeful parts of Greece, and these immigrants impressed on Attica, as they had done on other states[226], the Hellenic character and name; only with the difference that, instead of a conflict, and the subjugation of the original inhabitants, there came a process of more harmonious and genial absorption, and in consequence, a development of Greek character even more remarkable for its fulness than in any other Grecian race. Even in the case of Attica, however, the Hellenic character was not finally assumed without a collision, though perhaps a local and partial one only, which ended in the ejectment of the Pelasgians. This conflict is reported to us by Herodotus from Hecatæus[227], and if we find that in it, according to the Athenian version of the story, the Pelasgians were the wrong-doers, it is probably upon the ground that the winner is always in the right: and the Athenians had the more need of a case, because their policy demanded a justification, when, under Miltiades, they followed the Pelasgians to Lemnos, and again subdued them there. Each versionof the Attican quarrel contains indications of being related to the truth of the case: for the Pelasgians are made to declare, that the Athenians drove them out from the soil of which they were the prior occupants, and which they cultivated so carefully as to arouse their envy, while the Athenians alleged that when, before the days of slavery, their children went to draw water at the Nine-Springs (Ἐννεάκρουνοι), the Pelasgians of the district insulted them. What more likely than that, when the Hellenic part of the population was coercing the other portion of it into servitude, their resentment should occasionally find vent in rustic insolence to boys and maidens?
The doctrine thus propagated by Herodotus concerning Attica is even more strongly represented in Strabo as respects its Ionian character.Τὴν μὲν Ἰάδα τῇ παλαίᾳ Ἀτθίδι τὴν αὐτὴν φαμέν· καὶ γὰρ Ἴωνες ἐκαλοῦντο οἱ τότε Ἀττικοὶ, καὶ ἐκεῖθεν εἰσιν οἱ τὴν Ἀσίαν ἐποικήσαντες Ἴωνες, καὶ χρησάμενοι τῇ νῦν λεγομένῃ γλώττῃ Ἰάδι[228]. The poverty of their soil kept them, he adds, apart as of a different race (ἔθνος), and of a different speech (γλώττη).
And thus again Herodotus reports that the same letter which the Dorians called San, the Ionians called Sigma. Is not this more than a dialectic difference, and does it not indicate a deeper distinction of race?[229]
The connection of the Pelasgians with ancient Attica will receive further illustration from our inquiry hereafter into the general evidence of the later tradition respecting that race.
Egypt and the Pelasgians.
If we are to venture yet one step further back, and ask to what extraneous race and country do the Pelasgicages of Greece appear particularly to refer us as their type, the answer, as it would seem, though it can only be given with reserve, must be, that Egypt and its people appear most nearly to supply the pattern. A variety of notes, indicative of affinity, are traceable at a variety of points where we find reason to suspect a Pelasgian character: particularly in Troy, and in the early Roman history, more or less in Hesiod and his school, and in certain parts of Greece. Many of these notes, and likewise the general character that they indicate, appear to belong to Egypt also.
The direct signs of connection between Egypt and Greece are far less palpable in Homer, than between Greece and Phœnicia. We have no account from him of Egyptians settled among the Greeks, or of Greeks among the Egyptians. The evidence of a trading intercourse between the two countries is confined to the case of the pseudo-Ulysses, who ventures thither from Crete under circumstances[230]which seem to show that it was hardly within the ordinary circle of Greek communications. He arrives indeed in five days, by the aid of a steady north-west wind: but a voyage of five days[231]across the open sea, which might be indefinitely prolonged by variation or want of wind, was highly formidable to a people whose only safety during their maritime enterprises lay in the power of hauling up their vessels whenever needful upon a beach. It was near twice the length of the voyage to Troy[232]. Hence we find that Menelaus was carried to Egypt not voluntarily, but by stress of weather: and Nestor speaks with horror of his crossing such an expanse, a passage that even the birds make but once a year[233]. If this bedeemed inconsistent with the five days’ passage, yet even inconsistency on this point in Homer would be a proof that the voyage to Egypt was in his time rare, strange, and mysterious to his countrymen, and so was dealt with freely by him as lying beyond experience and measurement.
There is nothing in Homer absolutely to contradict the opinion that Danaus was Egyptian; but neither is there anything which suffices conclusively to establish it. And if he considered the Egyptians to approach to the Pelasgian type, this may cast some slight doubt on the Egyptian origin of Danaus. The Poet certainly would not choose a Pelasgian name, unless fully naturalized, for one of the characteristic national designations of the Achæans. But he is too good a Greek to give us particular information about any foreign eminence within his fatherland. It seems, however, possible that in the nameἀπίη, given to Peloponnesus, there may lie a relation to the Egyptian Apis. Apis was the first of the four divine bulls of Egypt[234]; and the ox was the symbol of agriculture which, according to the tradition conveyed by Æschylus[235], Danaus introduced into the Peloponnesus.
The paucity of intercourse however between Greece and Egypt in the time of Homer does not put a negative on the supposition that there may have been early migration from the latter country to the former.
It has been questioned how far the ancient Egyptians were conversant with the art of navigation. The affirmative is fully argued by Mr. M’Culloch[236]in his commentaries on Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. But it is plain that the Egyptians were not known to Homer as a nautical people. Not only do we neveron any occasion hear of them in connection with the use of ships, but we hear of the plunder of their coast by pirates, when they confined themselves to resistance by land. This want of nautical genius agrees with all that we learn of them in Holy Scripture. And it places them in marked resemblance to the Pelasgian races generally: to the Arcadians[237]; to the Trojans; to the early Romans, who paid no serious attention to the creation of a fleet until the second Samnite War B.C. 311, or, as Niebuhr thinks, then only first had a fleet at all[238]: and again, to the landsmanlike spirit of Hesiod, who calls himself