Traditions of Deucalion.
The genealogy of Idomeneus runs thus[298]; ‘Jupiter begot Minos, ruler of Crete. Minos begot a distinguished son, Deucalion. Deucalion begot me, a ruler over numerous subjects in broad Crete.’
Here it is to be remarked,
1. That while Minos and Idomeneus, the first and third generations, are described as ruling in Crete, Deucalion of the second is not so described.
2. That Idomeneus is nowhere described as having succeeded to the throne of his grandfather Minos, but only as being a ruler in Crete: and that, as we have seen, from the qualified conjunction of Meriones with him in the command, perhaps also from the limited range of the Cretan towns in the Catalogue, there arises a positive presumption that he had succeededonly to a portion of the ancient preeminence and power of his ancestor.
Now there is no direct evidence in Homer connecting Deucalion with Thessaly. The later tradition, however, places him there: and this tradition may probably claim an authority as old as that of Hesiod. A fragment of that poet[299], with the text partially corrupt, speaks of Locrus, leader of the Leleges, as among those whom Jupiter raised from the earth for Deucalion. This reference to Locrus immediately suggests the name of the Locrian race, and so carries us into the immediate neighbourhood of Thessaly; and the general purport of the words is to express something a little like the later tradition about Deucalion, which had that country for its scene. Combining this with the negative evidence afforded by the Homeric text, we thus find established a communication seemingly direct between Crete under Minos, and Thessaly, to which country we have already found it probable that Deucalion immigrated, and where he may have reigned.
The usual statement is, that the name Deucalion was common to two different persons, one the son of Minos, and the other the king of Thessaly. But we must be upon our guard against the device of the later Greek writers, who at once unravelled the accumulated intricacies that had gradually gathered about their traditions, and enlarged the stock of material for pampering vanity, and exciting the imagination, by multiplying the personages of the early legends. As regards the case now before us; the tradition, which makes Hellen son of the latter of these Deucalions, would certainly make him considerably older than he could be if ason of Minos. It must be admitted, that Homer repeats the name of Deucalion, for a Trojan so called is slain by Achilles in Il. xx. 478. It has pleased the fancy of the poet there to use the names of a number of dead heroes to distinguish the warriors who fell like sheep under the sword of the terrible Achilles: we find among them a Dardanus, a Tros, and a Moulius; and it is so little Homer’s practice to use names without a peculiar meaning, that we may conjecture he has done it, in preference to letting Achilles slaughter a crowd of ignoble persons, in order that in every thing his Protagonist might be distinguished from other men. But the poet seems to take particular care to prevent any confusion as to his great Greek, and indeed as to all his great living, personages. I am not aware of more than one single passage in the Iliad[300], among the multitude in which one or other of the Ajaxes is named, where there can be a doubt which of the two is meant. It is exceedingly unlikely that if a separate Deucalion of Thessaly had been known to Homer, he should not have distinguished him from the Deucalion of Crete. This unlikelihood mounts to incredibility, when we remember (1) that this other Deucalion of Thessaly is nothing less than the asserted root of the whole Hellenic stock, and (2) that the poet repeatedly uses the patronymic Deucalides as an individual appellation for Idomeneus, whereas the adverse supposition would make all the Achæans alikeΔευκαλίδαι. We may therefore safely conclude at least, that Homer knew of no Deucalion other than the son of Minos.
Of Rhadamanthus and the Phæacians.
We come now to Rhadamanthus, who is thrice mentioned by Homer. Once[301], as born of the same parents with Minos[302]. Once, as enjoying like him honours fromJupiter beyond the term of our ordinary human life: for he is placed amidst the calm and comforts of the Elysian plain. The third passage is remarkable. It is where Alcinous[303]promises Ulysses conveyance to his home, even should it be farther than Eubœa, which the Phæacian mariners consider to be their farthest known point of distance, and whither they had conveyed Rhadamanthus,
ἐποψόμενον Τίτυον, Γαιήιον υἱόν·
ἐποψόμενον Τίτυον, Γαιήιον υἱόν·
on his way to visit, or inspect, or look after, Tityus. This Tityus we find in theνεκυίαsuffering torture for having attempted violence upon Latona[304], as she was proceeding towards Pytho, through Panopeus. Panopeus was a place in Phocis, on the borders of Bœotia, and on the line of any one journeying between Delos and Delphi.
There is in this legend the geographical indistinctness, and even confusion, which we commonly find where Homer dealt with places lying in the least beyond the range of his own experience or that of his hearers, as was the case with Phæacia. If Tityus was in Panopeus, the proper way to carry Rhadamanthus was by the Corinthian gulf. But from various points in the geography of the Odyssey, it may, in my opinion, be gathered, that Homer had an idea, quite vague and indeterminate as to distance, of a connection by sea between the north of the Adriatic, and the north of the Ægean, either directly, or from the sea of Marmora: and it suited his representation of the Phæacians, and best maintained their as it were aerial character, to give them an unknown rather than a known route. However that might be, if we look into the legend in order to conjecture its historicbasis, it appears to suggest the inferences which follow:
1. That according to tradition, the empire or supremacy of Minos, which may in some points have resembled that afterwards held by Agamemnon, embraced both Corcyra and likewise middle Greece, where Panopeus and Pytho or Delphi lay.
We must, however, presume the empire of Minos to have been in great part insular. There were contemporary kingdoms on the mainland, which give no sign of dependence upon it.
2. That the Phæacians acted as subjects of Minos in carrying Rhadamanthus by sea from one part of the dominions of that king to another.
3. That Rhadamanthus went to punish Tityus as an offender within the realm of Minos, and did this on the part and in lieu of Minos himself.
4. That though he was not Greek by birth, his person, and family, and empire were all Greek in the view of Homer.
This conjectural interpretation of the legend derives support from many quarters.
It is in thorough harmony, as to the extended rule of Minos, with the Eleventh Odyssey, which represents Minos as acting in the capacity of a sovereign in the shades below; which also exhibits, as suffering judicially the punishments that he awarded, offenders connected with various portions of Greek territory, and among them this very Tityus.
Minos: post-Homeric tradition.
It is now time to look to the post-Homeric traditions.
The extent of the sway of Minos is supported by the tradition of Pelasgus, in the Supplices of Æschylus[305], which represents the whole country from (probably)Macedonia to the extreme south of the peninsula, as having been formerly under one and the same sway. The empire of Minos may have been magnified into this tradition.
The authority of Thucydides is available for the following points[306]:—
1. That Minos was the earliest known possessor of maritime power: thus harmonising with the hypothesis that the Phæacians, whose great distinction was in their nautical character, were acting as his subjects when they carried Rhadamanthus.
2. That his power extended over the Grecian sea, or Ægean (Ἑλληνικὴ θάλασσα) generally (ἐπὶ πλεῖστον); thus indicating a great extent of sway.
3. That he appointed his children to govern his dominions on his behalf (τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ παῖδας ἡγεμόνας ἐγκαταστήσας): which supports the idea that his brother Rhadamanthus may have acted for him at a distance.
4. That he drove the Carians out of the islands of the Ægean. This statement receives remarkable confirmation from Homer, who makes the islands up to the very coast of Caria contributors to the force of the Greek army: while Lesbos and others, situated farther north, and more distant from Crete, appear to have been, like Caria itself, in the Trojan interest.
In the Minos ascribed to Plato[307]we find the tradition of his direct relations with Attica, which were well known to the theatre. This supports the notice in Homer of the marriage contracted between Theseus and his daughter Ariadne.
Aristotle[308], like Thucydides, asserts the maritime power of Minos and his sovereignty over the islands,and adds, that he lost or ended his life in the course of an expedition to conquer Sicily[309].
Herodotus[310], like Thucydides, treats Minos as the first known sovereign who had been powerful by sea. He states, that Minos expelled his brother Sarpedon from Crete, and that Sarpedon with his adherents colonised Lycia, which was governed, down to the time of the historian himself, by laws partly Cretan[311]: and he also delivers the tradition that Minos was slain in an expedition against Sicily at Camicus, afterwards Agrigentum. A town bearing his name remained long after in the island.
Euripides laid the scene of his Rhadamanthus in Bœotia: and a Cretan colony is said to have established the Tilphosian temple there[312]. Höck finds traces of a marked connection between Crete and that district[313].
Minos: Laconian and Cretan laws.
More important, however, than any isolated facts are the resemblances of the Lacedæmonian and Cretan politics, noticed by Aristotle[314], in combination with the admission always made by the Lacedæmonians, that their lawgiver Lycurgus initiated the Cretan institutions[315], and with the universal Greek tradition that in Crete, first of all parts of Greece, laws and a regular polity had been established by Minos. Again, in the Dialogue printed among the works of Plato, the author of it seeks to establish the fundamental idea of law: puts aside the injurious statements of the tragedians who represented Minos as a tyrant, declares his laws to have been the oldest and the best in Greece, and themodels from which the prime parts of the Laconian legislation had been borrowed[316].
Among the resemblances known to us appear to be
1. The division between the military and the agricultural part of the community.
2. Theπερίοικοιof Crete, holding the same relation to the Cretans, as the Helots to the Spartans, and like them cultivating the land.
3. The institution ofσυσσίτιαin both countries.
4. The organism of the government: the five ephors corresponding with the tenκοσμοὶof Crete, and theβουλὴbeing alike in both.
There also still remain etymological indications that Minos was the person who raised some tribe or class to preeminence in Crete, and depressed some other tribes or classes below the level of the free community. In Hesychius we read,
μνοῖα, οἰκετεία.μνῆτοι, δοῦλοι.μνῶα, δουλεία.
μνοῖα, οἰκετεία.
μνῆτοι, δοῦλοι.
μνῶα, δουλεία.
And Athenæus quotes from the Cretica of Sosicrates,τὴν μὲν κοινὴν δουλείαν οἱ Κρῆτες καλοῦσι μνοίαν· τὴν δὲ ἰδίαν ἀφαμιώτας· τοὺς δὲ περιοίκους, ὑπηκόους[317]. He also says, that, according to Ephorus, the general name for slave in Crete wasκλαρώτης, and that it was derived from the custom of apportioning the slaves by lot. This remarkably fixes the character of Cretan slavery as owing its rise to some institutions public in the highest sense, for merely private slavery could not, it would appear, have had an origin such as to account for the name. It thus indirectly supports the idea implied inμνοίαandμνῆτοι, that it was derived from Minos. Athenæus[318]again, quoting theCreticæ glossæof Hermon, gives us the wordsμνώτας, τοὺς εὐγενεῖς(otherwise readἐγγενεῖς)οἰκέτας, and thus pointing to the reduction to servitude of some of the previously free population of the country.
There can be little doubt that it was the Pelasgic part of the population which thus succumbed before the more active elements of Cretan society, and which continued in the manual occupation of husbandry, while war, policy, and maritime pursuits became the lot of their more fortunate competitors. For is it difficult to divine which were those more active elements, since Homer points out for us among the inhabitants of Crete at least two tribes, the Achæans and the Dorians, of Hellic origin. Bishop Thirlwall points also to a Phœnician element in Crete, and to Homer as indicating the Phœnician origin of Minos. This is suggested not only by his birth, and by his maritime preeminence, but by Homer’s placing Dædalus in Crete[319]. For that name directly establishes a connection with the arts that made Sidon and Phœnicia so famous. The later tradition, indeed, places Dædalus personally in relations with Minos, as having been pursued by him after he had fled to Sicily[320].
Elsewhere I have shown reason for supposing that a second of the five Cretan nations, namely, theΚύδωνες, was Pelasgian: and there is a curious tradition, which supports this hypothesis. According to Ephorus[321], there were solemn festivals of the slave population, during which freemen were not permitted to enter within the walls, while the slaves were supreme, and had the right of flogging the free; and these festivals were held in Cydonia, the city of theseΚύδωνες.
Our belief in a Cretan empire of Minos, founded onthe evidence of the Poems, and sustained by the statement of Thucydides, need not be impaired by the fact that we find little post-Homeric evidence directly available for its support. In early times the recollection of dynasties very much depended on the interest which their successors had in keeping it alive. Now the Minoan empire was already reduced to fragments at the time of theTroica. The supremacy over Greece was then in the hands of a family that held the throne of the Perseids and the Danaids, a throne older than that of Minos himself, though in his time probably less distinguished: a throne whose lustre would have been diminished by a lively tradition of his power and greatness. And it was from the Pelopids that the Dorian sovereigns of Sparta claimed to inherit. Therefore the great Greek sovereignty, from theTroicaonwards, had no interest in cherishing the recollection of this ancient part of history; on the contrary, their interest lay in depressing it; and under these circumstances we need not wonder that, until the inquiring age of Greek literature and philosophy, when Athens gained the predominance, the traces of it should have remained but faint. But the traces of Cretans have been found extensively dispersed both over the islands, and on the coasts of the Ægean[322].
The Lycians.
To complete the statement of this part of the case, it is necessary to turn to another country, holding, with its inhabitants, a very peculiar position in the Iliad. The attentive reader of the poem must often inquire, with curiosity and wonder, why it is that Homer everywhere follows the Lycian name with favour so marked, that it may almost be called favouritism. At every turn, which brings that people into view, we are met by the clearest indications of it: and few of Homer’sindications, none of his marked indications, are without a cause and an aim.
Sarpedon, the Lycian commander in chief, performs the greatest military exploit on the Trojan side that is to be found throughout the poems[323]. That he does not obscure the eminence of Hector is only owing to the fact, that his share in the action of the poem is smaller, not to its being less distinguished. Everywhere he plays his part with a faultless valour, a valour set off by his modesty, and by his keen sense of public duty according to the strictest meaning of the term[324]; Jupiter, his father, sheds tears of blood for his coming death; and he is in truth the most perfect as well as the bravest man on the Trojan side. Glaucus, his second in command, is inferior to no Trojan warrior save Hector, though in the exchange of the arms with Diomed Homer has, as usual, reserved the superiority to the Grecian intellect.
The distinctions awarded to the Lycian people are in full proportion to those of their king Sarpedon. They formed one only among the eleven divisions of the auxiliary force, but the Lycian[325]name, and theirs only[326], evidently on account of their eminence, is often used to signify the entire body. In the great assault on the Greek trench and rampart, Sarpedon their leader commands all the allies, and chooses as his lieutenants Glaucus, and Asteropæus a Pæonian, but not the Pæonian general[327]. They are never mentioned with any epithet except of honour: and to them is applied thetermἀντίθεοι[328], which is given to no other tribe or nation in the Iliad, and in the Odyssey only to the Phæacians[329]; to these last it appertains doubtless on account of their relationship to the immortals. The Lycian attack in the Twelfth Book is the one really formidable to the Greeks[330], and in the rout of the Sixteenth Book we are told, that ‘not even the stalwart (ἴφθιμοι) Lycians’ held their ground after the death of Sarpedon[331]. They alone are appealed to in the name of that peculiar and sacred sentiment of military honour calledαἰδὼς, which, with this single exception, seems to be the exclusive property of the Greeks[332].
It is difficult to account for this glowing representation, so consistently carried through the poem, except upon the supposition, that Homer regarded the Lycians as having some peculiar affinity or other relation with the Greeks; and that he on this account raised them out of what would otherwise more naturally have been a secondary position.
There are many signs of a specific kind, that this was actually his view of them.
1. To make Sarpedon the son of Jupiter was at once to establish some relationship with the Greek races.
2. The legend of Bellerophon, delivered on the field of battle, was not required, nor is it introduced, merely to fill up the time during which Hector goes from the camp to the city. It required no filling up: but Homer turns the interval to account by using it to give us this interesting chapter of archaic history, doubtless in order to illustrate, as all his other legends do, the beginnings and early relations of the Hellenic races. Accordingly we find that Antea, wife of Prœtus the Argive king, wasa Lycian: that a familiar intercourse subsisted between the two courts, such as probably and strongly implies that the nations had other ties: and lastly that an Æolid line of sovereigns, descended through Sisyphus, were the actual governors of Lycia at the period of theTroica.
3. The very same ideas of kingship and its offices, which prevailed in Greece, are expressed by Sarpedon in his speech to Glaucus[333], and there is an indication of free institutions which enlarges the resemblance. The force of this circumstance will be more fully appreciated, when we shall have examined the Asiatic tinge which is perceptible in the institutions of Troy itself.
4. Besides the Æolid sovereignty, the etymology of the names of Lycian warriors connects itself not only with the Greek race, but with the Hellic element in that race[334].
5. On the other hand Apollo, whom we shall hereafter find to be the great Pelasgian, though also universal, god, is even, according to Homer, in close and peculiar connection with Lycia, although he is not localized there by Homer as he is in the later tradition. First as beingλυκηγενής. Secondly as the great bowman: while Lycia was so eminent in this art, that Æneas, addressing Pandarus with a compliment on his skill, says no man before Troy can match him, and perhaps even in Lycia there may not be a better archer[335]. Thirdly, this Pandarus the archer, and son of Lycaon, received the gift of his bow from Apollo himself[336]: and says, that Apollo prompted or instructed him, as he came from Lycia[337]. It may, however, be reasonably questioned, whether we are here to understand the Lycia of the South, or the district of kindred name inTroas. In any case, Apollo in Lycia would be no more than the counterpart of Minerva in Pelasgian Athens.
6. The prevalence of that Lycian name in other quarters, such as Arcadia, of a marked Pelasgian character, further supports the supposition that Lycia had probably a Pelasgian race for the bulk of its population, holding the same subordinate relation to another race as we find in corresponding cases. In Arcadia[338]Pausanias reports a Lycaon son of Pelasgus; a Lycosura, the city he founded; Lyceon, the hill where it stood; and Lycea, the games he established.
All this evidence combines to show some correspondence between Lycia and Greece, as to the constituent elements of the population. The agreement could not have been perfect: for the records of the Lycian language, I believe, show a prevalence of other elements than the Greek. But we have thus a reason to suppose, that the community of architecture and other arts which has been found to subsist between the two countries, was not merely dependent on later colonisation, but was owing to an affinity of races and similarity of manners which dates from the heroic age.
Lastly, the fragments of Homeric evidence respecting the Lycians are combined by a later tradition, which links them to Crete, the main subject of our recent inquiry. According to this tradition, there was a Sarpedon earlier than the Sarpedon of theTroica, who, besides being son of Jupiter, was brother to Minos. He is said to have been expelled, with his adherents, by that sovereign from Crete; to have repaired to Lycia, and to have colonised that country, or a part of it. In the time of Herodotus, as we have seen, it retained laws of Cretan, that is to say of Greek, origin. And at two later periods of its history, far remote fromHomer and from one another, its inhabitants signalised themselves by the most desperate valour in defence of Xanthus, its capital[339].
For the origin of the group of names, havingΛύκοςor some similar word for their root, it seems most natural to infer its identity with the Latinlucus, essentially the same withlupus, and to presume that it had a Pelasgic source, but that the word corresponding with it, probablyΛύκος, meaning a wood or grove, had become obsolete in the later Hellenic tongue. There is every reason for a supposition of this kind, as these words, etymologically connected, evidently hang round some common centre, which centre has reference to primitive and to Pelasgic life, as well as to the somewhat specially Pelasgic deity Apollo. Nor is it strange that the root of a name associated with the Pelasgi should have been lost to the Greek tongue, while the name itself remains: we have another example in Larissa.
But if there was such a word, with such a meaning, the link, which may perhaps connect it with Pelasgic life, is evident. For the first agricultural settlers must often be, as such, in a greater or less degree, dwellers in woods. It may be said that in the United States, at the present day, the proper name for an agricultural settler is ‘backwoodsman.’ In British colonies of Australia, they, who pass beyond the limits of existing settlement, in order to extend it, are said to go into the bush. Thus the idea at the root of the Lycian name is in all probability twin, or rather elder brother, to that which properly would indicate the agricultural settler.
It is however plain, that we cannot look to any thing simply Pelasgian in the Lycian population, as supplying the motive which has induced Homer to give the Lycians a marked preference over other populations, themselvesof a Pelasgian character. This preference must be due to the other element, which associates them especially with the Hellenic race. And we may not irrationally suppose it to be founded on any one of such causes as these: the special connection in the royal line between the two countries: a larger infusion of the more lordly blood into a subordinate Lelegian or Pelasgian body in Lycia, just as in Greece, than in Troas and Asia Minor generally: or lastly, a more palpable and near connection between the dominant caste in Lycia and those Persian highlanders, from among whom may have proceeded[340]the forefathers of the Hellenic tribes. Everywhere we see this race branching forth, and, by an intrinsic superiority, acquiring a predominance over the races in prior occupation. Whether the stock came to Lycia by land, or from the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, it may be hard even to conjecture: but there is one particular note of relationship to Persia, which Lycia retains more clearly than Greece, and that is the high estimation in which, to judge from the connection with Apollo and from Il. v. 172, the use of the bow was held in that country. The case was the same in Persia. According to Herodotus, one of the three essential articles of education in Persia was the use of the bow[341]; and he is not contradicted by Ctesias, who calls him in most things a liar and a fabulist[342]. We must not, indeed, rely too strongly upon a circumstance like this. Cyaxares the Median had the art taught to his sons by Nomad Scythians[343]. We may however observe that alike on the Trojan and the Grecian side we never hear of the bow except in the hands of highborn persons, such as Paris, Pandarus, Teucer: and, in the games, Meriones[344].
In passing, it may deserve remark, that the Lycians alone, of all tribes or nations on either side, appear not under two leaders merely, but two kings, in the strict sense. I do not however believe that this indicates a political peculiarity. The origin of it may probably be found in the legend of Bellerophon, to whom, after his high exploits and great services, the reigning sovereign gave half his kingdom[345]. Now that king is nowhere stated to have had a son: and if we suppose a failure of issue in his own direct line, and the succession of one of the two descendants of his daughter to each moiety of the realm, it at once accounts for the exceptional position of Sarpedon and Glaucus.
The suppositions then towards which we are led are, that Minos was of Phœnician origin, that he came to Crete and acquired the sovereignty, that he ruled over a mixed population of Cretans, Pelasgians, and Hellic tribes, that he organised the country and established an extended supremacy, especially maritime and insular, beyond its limits; which however we must not consider as involving the consistent maintenance of sovereignty according to modern ideas, and which is in no degree inconsistent with the rule of Danaids or Perseids in Peloponnesus. Lastly, that in giving form to his social institutions, he depressed the Pelasgian element of Cretan society, and laid, in political depression, the foundations of their subsequent servitude.
Cyprus.
If this be so, it is worth while further to observe, that there are traces of a somewhat analogous history in Cyprus, another acknowledged stepping-stone, according to Homer[346], between Greece and the East.
In the Seventeenth Book of the Odyssey[347], Ulysses, in one of his fictitious narrations, states to the Suitors, that the Egyptians, who had taken him prisoner andreduced him to slavery, then made a present of him to theirξεῖνοςDmetor, a descendant of Iasus, who ruled ‘with might,’ that is, with considerable power over Cyprus (ὃς Κύπρου ἶφι ἄνασσεν); the same expression as he uses in the Eleventh Book with respect to Amphion, the Iasid, in Orchomenus. From all we know of the Iasian name[348], it may be inferred that this was a Pelasgian dynasty, and if so, then without doubt that it ruled over a Pelasgian people.
Ulysses does not mention the time of this transaction; and it must be remembered, that he spoke in the character of an aged person, so that the scene might be laid (so to speak) thirty or forty years back, and therefore long before the expedition to Troy.
But in the Eleventh Book of the Iliad[349], we find Agamemnon putting on a breastplate, which was evidently a marvel of workmanship, with its plates on plates of different metals, and its six dragons flashing forth the colours of the rainbow. Now we must observe, first, that this was evidently meant to be understood as a Sidonian or Phœnician work: secondly, that it was presented to Agamemnon by Cinyres of Cyprus, to conciliate his favour (—χαριζόμενος βασιλῆï, perhaps we might render it, to win the favour ofhisking—) upon the occasion of his hearing that the king was collecting an armament against Troy. That is to say, it was to compound with him for not appearing in person to join the Greek forces. Here then we must infer that there was some vague allegiance, which was due, or which at least might be claimed, from Cyprus to Agamemnon, under theπολλῇσιν νήσοισι[350].
Now we know nothing of the Pelopids before theTroicaas conquerors: and especially, it would be difficult to apply the supposition that they were such in relation to a place so distant. Therefore the political connection, whatever it may have been, could probably rest upon an ethnical affinity alone; and, as we know nothing of any Hellic element in this quarter, that affinity seems to presume the Pelasgian character of the population. The inference, which may thus be drawn, coincides with that already suggested by the name of Iasus.
We may however justly be curious to learn what conditions they were which gave to Cinyres, and so far as we know to Cinyres alone, among princes, this very peculiar attitude at a critical juncture. It is obvious, that in proportion as his situation was remote from the Greek rendezvous, and from the scene of action, the service became more burdensome: but on the other hand, in proportion as he was distant from the centre of Achæan power, he was little likely to be coerced. How comes it then that Agamemnon had over Cinyres an influence which he does not seem to have possessed over the tribes of Macedonia and Thrace, though these lay nearer both to him, and to the way between him and the Troad, which he had to traverse by sea?
The hypothesis, that the population of Cyprus was purely or generally Pelasgian, appears to square remarkably with the facts. For then, upon the one hand, they would naturally be disinclined to interfere on behalf of the Greeks in a war where all purely Pelasgian sympathies would (as we must for the present take for granted) incline them towards Troy.
But further, we find among other notes of the Pelasgians this, that they were characterised by a want of nautical genius, while the more enterprising character of the Hellenes at once made them, and haskept them down to this very day, an eminently maritime people; and Homer himself, with his whole soul, evidently gloried and delighted in the sea. If then the population of Cyprus was Pelasgian, we can readily understand how, notwithstanding its sympathies and its remoteness, it might be worth the while of its ruler to propitiate Agamemnon by a valuable gift in order to avert a visit which his ships might otherwise be expected to pay; and how the Pelopid power over Cyprus, as an island, might be greater than over nearer tribes, which were continental.
It may aid us to comprehend the relation between Cyprus and Agamemnon, if we call to recollection the insular empire which Athens afterwards acquired.
There is another sign, which strongly tends to connect Cyprus with the Pelasgian races, especially those which belong to Asia. It is the worship of Venus, who had in that island her especial sanctuary, and who, upon her detection in the Odyssey[351], takes refuge there. In the war, she is keenly interested on the Trojan side: and the Trojan history is too plainly marked with the influence of the idea, that exalted her to Olympian rank. That Venus was known mythologically among the Hellenic tribes, we see from the lay of Demodocus. That she was worshipped among them, seems to be rendered extremely improbable by the fact, that Diomed wounds her in hisἀριστεῖα[352]. We must consider her as a peculiarly, and perhaps in Homer’s time almost exclusively Pelasgian deity; and her local abode at Paphos may be taken as a marked sign, accordingly, of the Pelasgianism of Cyprus.
We have already seen Agapenor, a stranger, placed by Agamemnon in command of the Pelasgian forces ofArcadia; and Minos, a stranger, acquire dominion over the partially, and perhaps mainly, Pelasgian population of Crete. It seems probable, that Cyprus in this too affords us a parallel. We have the following considerations to guide us in the question. First, the Pelasgians, not being a maritime, were consequently not a mercantile people. Secondly, from the description of the gift sent by Cinyres, we must understand it, on account of the preciousness of its materials and its ornaments, to have been a first rate example of the skill of the workers in metal of the period. Such things were not produced by Pelasgians; and we must, to be consistent with all the other Homeric indications, suppose this breastplate to have been of Sidonian or Phœnician workmanship. This supposition connects Cinyres himself with Phœnicia, while his people were Pelasgian. Again, on examining his name we find in it no Pelasgian characteristics; but it appears to be Asiatic, and to signify a musical instrument with strings, which was used in Asia[353]. All this makes it likely, upon Homeric presumptions, that he was a Phœnician, or a person of Phœnician connections, and that into his hands the old Pelasgic sovereignty of Minos had passed over from the Iasid family, which had reigned there shortly before theTroica.
The Homeric tradition with respect to Cinyres is supported to some extent from without[354]. Apollodorus so far agrees with it as to report, that Cinyres migrated from the neighbouring Asiatic continent into Cyprus with a body of followers, founded Paphos, and married the daughter of the king of the island. Apollodorus, Pindar, and Ovid, all treat Cinyres in a way whichespecially connects him with the worship of Venus, as though he had introduced it into the island; and it is observable, that the points at which we find this deity in contact with the race are all in Asia, or on the way from it, that is to say, Troas, Cyprus, and lastly, Cythera: as if it were not original to the Greeks, but engrafted, and gradually taking its hold. Sandacus was, according to Apollodorus, the father of Cinyres, and had come from Syria into Cilicia.
The process which we thus seem to see going forward in the Pelasgian countries, and which was probably further exemplified in the Greek migrations to the coast of Asia Minor, was grounded in the natural, if we mean by the natural the ordinary, course of things. In the last century, John Wesley said, that the religious and orderly habits of his followers would make them wealthy, and that then their wealth would destroy their religion. So in all likelihood it was the peaceful habits of the Pelasgians that made their settlements attractive to the spoiler. They thus invited aggression, which their political genius and organization were not strong enough to repel; and the power of their ancient but feeble sovereignties passed over into the hands of families or tribes more capable of permanently retaining it, and of wielding it with vigour and effect.