Rise of Civilisation in Europe
Rise of Civilisation in Europe
“O
TUT of the East came Light” has been the text on which all great historians of civilisation have preached, from the authors of the Mosaic literature down through Greek and Roman times to our own. Hebrew writers have looked back to Mesopotamia; Greek writers to Egypt; Roman writers to Greece; writers of Western and Northern Europe and the New World to Rome, Greece, and Palestine. Their belief is justified in so far as it is based on two great facts. Man first found in the warm, alluvial valleys of Southern Asia and North-Eastern Africa the conditions of climate and soil most favourable to his upward progress from the savage state; and from these regions, so soon as with increase of numbers he was moved to migrate, his steps were turned by the geographical conditions surrounding his early homes, in a general way, westward. He knew not yet how to cross broad seas; deserts, sandy steppes, high mountains and tropical forests and swamps were equally deterrent. The Polar ice-sheet, which had extended in Pleistocene times to the Caspian, Black Sea, and Danube basins, and still lay, in the dawn of human civilisation, far south of its present limits, probably rendered, with its wide fringe of impassable moraine, forest, and tundra country, all the lands included in the present Empire of Russia singularly inhospitable. Whoso looks at the map of the Western Hemisphere, bearing these facts in mind, will see at once that the line of least resistance, and, indeed, the only possible line, led the men of the great sub-tropic river valleys towards and along the Mediterranean coasts.
Civilisation from Without
In so far, therefore, as European civilisation is a state of things due to influences from without, it is due to the East; but that is very far from the whole explanation of its origin. The impulse to rise above savagery has not always—not, indeed, usually—come to peoples from without; and probably in primitive time, when communications were slow and difficult to a degree which we can hardly realise, the origin of local culture was seldom or never to be accounted for thus. In modern days there have been obvious instances to the contrary; but even now it remains to be seen how far civilisations originated among absolutely barbarous peoples by contact with higher races are real and living growths. Examples of the modification and possible elevation of ancient indigenous societies by incoming aliens, such as have been seen in Mexico or Peru, India or Japan, Egypt or Barbary, are not in point; for in these cases local civilisations certainly existed long before the foreign influence. We must look to the history of the relations of white and negro, or other savage, races in the homes of the latter, and the results of such inquiries are far from conclusive. Does civilisation so originated grow and thrive? Do even the races thus civilised themselves any longer thrive and grow? Our antipodean colonies, and the story of the native races of North America, if there were no other instances, would not admit a categorical affirmative. Nay, rather, the evidence so far available tends to discount the permanence of transferred civilisation, and to throw doubt on the continued vitality of races so civilised.
The Escape from SavageryConditions Essential for Civilisation
It is necessary to raise this question at the outset of the present essay because it has been too often assumed, both implicitly and explicitly, by historians of our civilisation, that all the cultural development of Central, Western, and Northern Europe has been due to alien influence, exerted from the south and south-east, and mainly by the agency of the Greek, Græco-Roman, and Græco-Romano-Semitic (the Christian) systems. Maine’s famous dictum that “Nothing moves in the world which is not Greek in origin” has long dominated our thoughts. Yet that magnificent generalisation is contrarynot only to inherent probability, but to known fact. Escape from the savage state, as Buckle showed, depends in the first place on the existence of such conditions of geographical environment as favour the accumulation of wealth and the development of a leisured class—that is, such as conduce to the production of a good deal more than the minimum necessary for life. It can, therefore, have taken place wherever man found comparatively genial climate and remunerative soil, and, in process of time, made for himself, by clearing forests or draining swamps, an arable area which would feed him and his more abundantly than was absolutely necessary.
Where these conditions were presumably present it is unreasonable to suppose that the beginnings of civilisation were deferred age after age, until late in time some stimulus chanced to be imparted by an alien race or races which had, after all, advanced towards their own civilisation, albeit earlier, through the operation of similar conditions elsewhere. In the European areas inhabited by the Celtic and Germanic peoples, for instance, long before we have the slightest reason to believe that these can have come into intimate relation with the civilisations of the South and East, both climate and soil were unquestionably favourable, and local civilisations cannot but have been originated independently. As has been well said, “Man everywhere has the same humble beginnings”; and, up to a certain point, which is found to be, in fact, far later than the inception of some kind of culture, he will satisfy his primitive needs and desires in very much the same ways.
Spontaneous Civilisation in Europe
Under certain conditions, known to have arisen independently in many different regions of the earth, articles of luxury and art, irrefragable witnesses to incipient civilisation, begin to be produced spontaneously. To what remote periods have not cave deposits thrown back the history of artistic effort in the valleys of Gaul? And what credit, in reason, can be given to Greece, or even to Rome, for the elaborate social order of the Teutonic tribes, which was of ancient standing when first the Romans penetrated beyond the Danube and Rhine? So well rooted in the soil, so potent and so widely diffused were the Teutonic and Celtic social systems, that in the history of our actual civilisation they are factors as worthy of consideration as the influences of Rome, Greece, or Palestine. If Græco-Roman Christianity came greatly to modify them in the end, they had, perhaps, ere that, modified Christianity itself hardly less; and the social superiority of the northern and western adherents of the now dominant religion is probably as much due to character and habits developed before ever its creed was formulated, as the dominance of the Turkish peoples in the Islamic system is undoubtedly due to social characteristics evolved in the oases and steppe-lands of Central Asia far back in the “Times of Ignorance.”
Let it, therefore, be understood that in the following pages it is not necessarily the whole origin of European civilisation that is being set forth, but the modification and heightening of probably pre-existent European culture by the first influences of the Nearer East which can be supposed to have reached it. Of these influences the effect is to some extent a matter of inference only. We cannot always, or, indeed, often, point with any assurance to actual results of their action. In great part we must still be content with little more than a demonstration that directly along certain lines of communication, or indirectly through certain intermediaries, the civilisations of the South could, or did, come into relation with European areas at an early age.
The Two Great Sea Routes
The sea routes which were most likely to be used in ruder ages by Levantine mariners, after leaving the Nile estuaries or the Syrian ports—which, as a matter of fact, are known to have been most used—are: that which followed the littoral of Asia Minor to Rhodes, whence it bifurcated, to Crete on the one hand, and to the Ægean isles and coasts on the other; or that striking across the narrow strait to Cyprus, and thence by way of Rhodes, or directly, to Crete. In connection with both these routes, the importance of Crete and Rhodes, and especially the former, must be obvious. Thence the Cyrenean and Carthaginian projections of Africa were reached with greater ease than by way of the littoral to west of Egypt, which, for some hundreds of miles, is desert, reef-girt, almost harbourless, and pitilessly vexed by an on-shore wind. From Carthage, Sicily and the Italianpeninsula were readily accessible, or the Gibraltar strait and the Iberian shores could be made after coasting a littoral much kinder to navigation than that between Egypt and the western bight of the Syrtis.
THE GREAT SEA ROUTES OF ANCIENT CIVILISATIONAlong the routes marked in this map lay the course of Ægean and Phœnician civilisation. The importance of Crete and Rhodes in the spreading of civilisation is clearly seen; they may be called the “half-way houses” between Mesopotamian culture, with its seat in the valley of the Euphrates, and Egyptian culture, in the valley of the Nile.
THE GREAT SEA ROUTES OF ANCIENT CIVILISATION
Along the routes marked in this map lay the course of Ægean and Phœnician civilisation. The importance of Crete and Rhodes in the spreading of civilisation is clearly seen; they may be called the “half-way houses” between Mesopotamian culture, with its seat in the valley of the Euphrates, and Egyptian culture, in the valley of the Nile.
The Two Great Land Routes
The land routes in chief were also two. The Nile valley, closed by desert on the western side, had comparatively easy access to the great natural road which, leading northwards through Syria, passes at first along the Palestinian littoral, and then through the central cleft between the Lebanons to the Orontes valley. Mesopotamian traders, following up the Euphrates till they had left the desert part of its course behind them, fell into this same road in the region of Aleppo and Antioch. Thence by the easy passes which turn the southern end of Mount Amanus, the combined caravans reached Tarsus, penetrated Taurus by the gap of the Cilician Gates, and found themselves on the plateau of Asia Minor with a choice of easy routes leading either to the rich western littoral, or the north-western straits, and from any and every point offering safe passage to South-eastern Europe. This was the only land route for Egyptian civilisation. But the Mesopotamian had an alternative one, leading by way of the upper Tigris valley to the north of Taurus and the Cappadocian plateau, whence it descended the Sangarius and debouched, like the first route, on either the north-western or the western coast of Anatolia.
The Royal Road up into Asia
In speaking of such land routes, we do not, of course, mean to imply the existence of any made road, nor even of a single track. When most definite, they probably resembled the Syrian Pilgrim Way—a skein of separate paths now spreading widely, now running into and across one another; and doubtless the early tracks diverged far more than this, and making great elbows, followed now one valley, now another, to meet again only after many days. One of the great lines from Mesopotamia to the western Anatolian coast, that described last in our enumeration, came to be defined more strictly than the rest, perhaps by the Kings of Nineveh and their “Hittite” rivals and allies in Cappadocia, and was known in the Persian era to the Greeks as the Royal Road “of all who go up into Asia.” But at the much earlier time with which we are most concerned, the influences of the East did not rush westward torrent-wise in one bed, but soaked slowly, finding a way now here, now there, in one general westward direction, and sending offshoots far out to right and left of the main streams.
LAND ROUTES OF ANCIENT CIVILISATIONThe great natural roads along which lay the path of Egyptian and Mesopotamian culture are marked in white lines on this map. A study of the map, with a careful reading of this chapter, will make clear the way in which civilisation spread in Egypt and Babylon. It is along these lines that there are found evidences of the influence exerted upon Europe by the civilisation of the valley of the Nile and the Euphrates.LARGER IMAGE
LAND ROUTES OF ANCIENT CIVILISATION
The great natural roads along which lay the path of Egyptian and Mesopotamian culture are marked in white lines on this map. A study of the map, with a careful reading of this chapter, will make clear the way in which civilisation spread in Egypt and Babylon. It is along these lines that there are found evidences of the influence exerted upon Europe by the civilisation of the valley of the Nile and the Euphrates.
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[Western Part of Preceding Map]
[Western Part of Preceding Map]
[Eastern Part and Legend of Preceding Map]
[Eastern Part and Legend of Preceding Map]
Half-way Houses of Civilisation
It has been said that there is evidence of the routes just indicated having been, in fact, those most used. It is upon these lines, and no others, that we find certain remarkable focuses of early culture disposed as half-way houses between the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilisations on the one hand, and continental Europe on the other. These are, in relation to the sea routes, first, the prehistoric Ægean civilisation, focused from the first in Crete, but extended to all isles and peninsulas of South-eastern Europe from Cyprus to Sardinia and Spain; and, secondly, the Phœnician, originated on the Syrian coast, but focused also at a later time at a second point much farther west—namely, on that Carthaginian projection, whence lay easy sea-ways to Sicily and Italy and all the western seas. Hard by the Egyptian land route lay this same Phœnician society; while all about its point of junction with the Euphrates road, on both its continuations north-westward, and on the northern road from Mesopotamia so soon as this had passed Euphrates, was established the singular but as yet little understood civilisation which we call Hittite. How early we may assume the latter’s existence in North Syria is still doubtful; but since the discoveries of Winckler at Boghaz Keui, there is little question that it was focused in prehistoric time in Northern Cappadocia, whence its influence seems to have radiated southward to the confines of Palestine, and westward to Lydia and almost the shore of the Ægean Sea. It is to this North Cappadocian region that the Tigris route from Assyria and Babylonia, which was afterwards the Persian “Royal Road,” tended. Among these civilisations the most important for our present purpose is the Ægean, because its geographical area touched at some point all the westward roads, whether by sea or land; and, moreover, because it is the one which actual evidence both dates from the remotest antiquity and most clearly proves to have been operative on Europe, especially on the most expansive of its early cultures, the Hellenic. The recent exploration of Crete, due in the main to Messrs. Arthur Evans and Federico Halbherr, has enhanced enormously the significance of the civilisation revealed to the modern world at Hissarlik and Mycenæ by the faith and fervour of Henry Schliemann.
Far-back Evidences of Culture
We are now assured of certain facts of much moment to our inquiry. Firstly, that this civilisation was developed originally from its rudest beginnings within the Ægean area itself. This is proved by evidence of the uninterrupted evolution of fabrics and decoration, especially in ceramic ware, produced at Cnossus from the dawn of the historic Hellenic period right back to Neolithic time. At various points in this long retrocession we can place the Cnossian culture in synchronic relation with the Egyptian by the presence both of Egyptian objects in the Ægean strata, and Ægean in the Egyptian. These points correspond with the highest developments respectively of the New, Middle, and Old Pharaonic Empires—moments at which we should naturally expect to find evidence of international communication. The earliest point indicated by these synchronisms lies possibly as far back as the First Dynasty, if certain vases, exported apparently from the Ægean as vehicles for colouring matter, and found by Dr. Petrie at Abydos, are accepted as of the remote date to which their discoverer attributed them; but in any case the contemporaneity of some part of the Old Empire period with the Ægean civilisation is assured, and that, moreover, when the latter was already far advanced beyond its rudest origins, as represented by the contents of the thick strata of yellow clay which underlie the earliest structures at Cnossus.
The Ægean Civilisation is Native
Thus is the indigenous origin of Ægean civilisation assured. So also is the independence of its after development. The typical Cretan pottery, known as the “Kamares” style and lineally descended from Neolithic ware, which attained, about the acme of the Pharaonic Middle Empire a perfection both of fabric and ornament worthy of the highest ceramic products of any age, remained absolutely distinct. The same independence characterises a later ceramic product of the Ægean, a glazed ware with monochrome decoration, which went into Egypt abundantly under the Eighteenth Dynasty, and especially when Amenhotep IV., “Khuenaten,” was reigning in his new capital at Tell-el-Amarna. Nor is Ægean art distinctive only in its humbler products. The frescoes, theplaster reliefs, the chased work in precious metals, the ivory carvings, and the gem intaglios of the Ægean area, of which Sir Charles Newton said thirty years ago that they were not to be confounded with products of any other glyptic art, show the development and retention of an individual naturalistic style—a style which reacted on the fresco paintings of Egypt itself under Khuenaten. Finally, to clinch the proof of its independence with the strongest possible argument, the Ægean civilisation, as soon as it became articulate, evolved for itself, in Crete at any rate, a system of writing, displayed to us on some thousands of surviving clay documents, which was purely its own, and cannot be interpreted by comparison with any other known script.
THESEION TEMPLE, ATHENS: DORIC ORDER OF ARCHITECTUREThe perfection of the Hellenic style, derived from Ægean architecture. 5th century B.C.
THESEION TEMPLE, ATHENS: DORIC ORDER OF ARCHITECTURE
The perfection of the Hellenic style, derived from Ægean architecture. 5th century B.C.
TEMPLE OF WINGLESS VICTORY: IONIC ORDERThe perfection of the second Hellenic style, refined from the Doric, probably in the first place by Asiatic Greeks. Fifth century B.C.
TEMPLE OF WINGLESS VICTORY: IONIC ORDER
The perfection of the second Hellenic style, refined from the Doric, probably in the first place by Asiatic Greeks. Fifth century B.C.
The Contact of Early Civilisations
Secondly, it is now known that this civilisation, of remote indigenous origin and independent development, reached a very high point of achievement in many respects which afford the best-known tests of culture—namely, in its artistic products, extant examples of which offer ample evidence of wonderfully close study of natural forms, of mastery of decorative principles and their execution, and of a sort of idealistic quality, which has been rightly called “a premonition of the later Hellenic”; also, in architectural construction and the organisation of domestic comfort, as displayed in the palaces at Cnossus and Phæstus, with their superposed stories, their broad stairways of many flights, their rich ornament, their arrangements for admitting air and light, and their astonishing systems of sanitation and drainage. The written documents found, though still undeciphered, plainly attest an advanced knowledge of account-keeping and correspondence. The frescoes and gem scenes, as well as many surviving objects of luxury, attest the existence of a leisured and pleasure-loving class; and, lastly, the tribute-tallies of Cnossus support the inference which is legitimately drawn from the uniformity of certain material objects all over the Ægean area at certain periods—notably that contemporaneous with the earlier part of the Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty—and also from the wide range of certain place-names, that there was an extensive imperial organisation. The centre of this empire, as well as the original focus of the civilisation, was almost beyond question in Crete. The prejudice in favour of other focuses raised by the priority of Ægean discoveries elsewhere, especially those made in the Argolid, has been greatly weakened by demonstration of the superior catholicity and quality of Cretan culture, and by recognition of the failure of Mycenæ to offer evidence of anything like the same antiquity. And no more need be said here to counteract it than that, if Buckle’s statement of the climatic and geographical conditions necessary to the first development and upward progress of culture be sound, those conditions were never present in plenitude anywhere in the Ægean area except in Crete. There are found in the most conspicuous degree the combination of these geographical features—large tracts of fertile and deep lowland soil; mountains so situated as to cause abundant precipitation, and so high as to store snow against the early summer; absence of both swamps and desert areas; and a climate not prone to extremes.
What Crete has Taught us
Like all other high civilisations the Ægean both borrowed and lent. Since its debts could be contracted only with contemporary cultures as high as its own, they were owed mainly to Egypt and Babylonia, while its loans went out chiefly to lower civilisations further removed than itself from the eastern centres, those, namely, of the European continent. As regards Egypt, something has been said already of its intercourse with the Ægean in all ages of the latter’s prehistoric period. The evidence of that intercourse, known even before the exploration of Crete, was fairly abundant, though limited almost entirely to later ages of Ægean culture, often called particularly “Mycenæan.” The “pre-Cretan” case was set forth very concisely in a paper read before the Royal Society of Literature in 1897 by Professor Flinders Petrie, who enumerated the objects of Egyptian fabric or style found on Ægean sites, notably at Mycenæ, and in Cyprus and Rhodes; and of objects of Ægean style or fabric found in Egypt, notably at Thebes, Memphis and Tell-el-Amarna and in the Fayum. One word of warning only may be added—that the occurrence of such imported objects, especially if they be of the amulet class, on a site of a certain date does not necessarily imply exact contemporaneity with the period at which the objects were actually produced; for they may well have been carried hither and thither in the stream of trade for some time ere coming to rest, and been long preserved afterwards. Some of the Cypriote and Rhodian tombs, for example, in which scarabs and other Egyptian objects of the Eighteenth Pharaonic Dynasty have been found, are probably considerably later than that dynasty.
Crete has largely reinforced this evidence, not only by throwing it back to a much earlier time than that of the Eighteenth Dynasty, but by proving that in its later periods Ægean art had come to be considerably modified, both in forms and in motives and treatment of decoration, by the art of Egypt. We have then to do, not merely with mutually imported objects, but, much more than was previously understood, with the mutual action of influences—the strongest possible proof of close intercourse. On the Ægean side, our sole concern at present, are now found scenes represented in fresco-painting or metal-work—for example, the mural scene with a river and palms at Cnossus, and the well-known cat-hunting scene inlaid on a Mycenæan poniard—and also decorative motives which are of obvious Egyptian parentage. Other motives proclaim their alien origin by more or less mistaken treatment. The best instance in point is the use made of the lotus motive in Greece and the isles, where the flower was never domiciled.
PALLAS ATHENA, THE MAIDEN GODDESS OF ATHENSOne of the chief glories of the art of ancient Greece left to the modern world. Athena was the goddess and protectress of Athens, and her statue stood at the height of the Acropolis, dominating the city.LARGER IMAGE
PALLAS ATHENA, THE MAIDEN GODDESS OF ATHENS
One of the chief glories of the art of ancient Greece left to the modern world. Athena was the goddess and protectress of Athens, and her statue stood at the height of the Acropolis, dominating the city.
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THE SUPREME MONUMENT OF ANCIENT GREECE LEFT TO THE MODERN WORLDThe Venus of Milo, one of the noblest examples of Greek art, and one of the most famous statues extant. Found at Milo, in Crete, about 100 B.C., and now in the Louvre, Paris.LARGER IMAGE
THE SUPREME MONUMENT OF ANCIENT GREECE LEFT TO THE MODERN WORLD
The Venus of Milo, one of the noblest examples of Greek art, and one of the most famous statues extant. Found at Milo, in Crete, about 100 B.C., and now in the Louvre, Paris.
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Influence of Egypt and Mesopotamia
For influences of the Mesopotamian civilisation we have to look in the main to the early civilisations of Syria and Asia Minor; but evidence is not wholly wanting on Ægean sites. A Babylonian cylinder came to light at Cnossus; the fashion of dress, especially female, as shown in Ægean frescoes and gems, is very like the Babylonian, from whatever primitive garments it had been developed; and in other respects also the intaglio class of Ægean art products shows at least as much Mesopotamian as Egyptian influence. It has borrowed the decoration of both cylinders and scarabs; but it provesits essential independence all the time by never adopting the forms of either of those characteristic alien vehicles of glyptic art.
Religious Ideas of Early Times
Lastly, in the most important of all aspects of early civilisation—the religious—we now know that the Ægean approximated very closely to the old civilisations to south and east of it. The main idea of its cult was that which seems to have been the oldest and the most dominant in such cults—namely, the worship of the reproductive force of Nature. This idea was embodied, as soon as divinities were imagined in human shape, in feminine form, the desired relation of divinity to humanity being expressed by the addition of a son-consort. How far other features of this cult, common to the south-eastern lands—such as the descent of the son to the human race, his periodical death at the hands of the latter, and his joyful resurrection—were present, we do not yet know. It would probably be false to ascribe the presence of this cult idea in Ægean civilisation to any foreign influence, for it seems to be a necessary expression of the religious sense of many peoples, and is as likely to have been as indigenous in the case of Rhea and Zeus (to give the Divine pair their possible Ægean names) as in those of Isis and Osiris, or Ashtaroth and Tammuz-Adon. But we may note first that here was a vital bond of affinity between the Ægean folk and their mainland neighbours on east and south, and second, that long before historic Hellenic times, the former had arrived at that essential condition of progressive civilisation, an anthropomorphic conception of divinity.
The Greek Debt to Ægean Civilisation
Enough has now been said to show that Ægean civilisation was both a broad channel through which influences of Asiatic and Egyptian culture could and did flow, and also in itself of such importance as to be likely to exert influence on nascent civilisation in Europe. To see whether it did so, we look first to the culture which succeeded it in its own area, the Hellenic culture of the historic age, about whose action, exerted indirectly on all subsequent civilisation, there is no possible doubt. And at the outset stress must be laid on the fact that we are dealing, in respect of the two civilisations in question, with one and the same geographical area. There is here no question of alien influences dependent on short or long communications by sea or land. The Hellenic race, if indeed to be distinguished from all elements in the earlier Ægean, came into the very domain of the latter, and experienced by actual contact the full force of the pre-existent culture. This being so, the probability of heavy debts having been contracted by the later culture to the earlier is enormous; and it becomes all but certainty when the few facts which we know about the early history of the Hellenic peoples proper come to be considered in the light of ascertained general laws governing the relations of intermingled races.
Emerging of Historic Hellenism
It is clear that the Hellenic tradition of a great descent of peoples from the north into mainland Greece and the western isles, about 1000B.C., enshrines substantial fact. These peoples, possessed of iron weapons, were superior to the Ægean folk in war, but evidently inferior in the softer social arts. The Greeks called them Dorians, a name afterwards associated with the most distinctive, but the least cultivated, of the historic races of the peninsula—a race, however, possessed in its full form of the conception of the city-state; which implied the subordination of the individual to the corporate body, and was the chief social message to be taught thereafter by the Greek to the world.
Without calling these invaders by any one name, or supposing Northern folk to have made then their first appearance in the Ægean area, we may safely see in this Greek tradition the record of a cataclysmic change out of which historic Hellenism was to issue at the last. In proof of the invader’s inferiority in the useful arts we have the undoubted fact that the command of the Greek seas, formerly held by Cretans and other Ægean folk, passed for some centuries into Semitic hands—the hands of those Sidonian Phœnicians whose coming, but as yet incomplete, “thalassocracy,” is reflected in the most important of contemporary documents, the Homeric lays, and, under the lead of the Tyrians, was to grow greater yet. To illustrate their inferiority in the luxurious arts we have the dry, uninventive style of artistic decoration known as the “Geometric,” which also lasted for some centuries. It is evident that the newcomers were conquering soldiers, who destroyed, but could not of their own virtue create.
A GREAT CITY OF ANCIENT CIVILISATION: THE BUILDING OF CARTHAGE BY DIDOFrom the painting by Turner, in the National Gallery.LARGER IMAGE
A GREAT CITY OF ANCIENT CIVILISATION: THE BUILDING OF CARTHAGE BY DIDO
From the painting by Turner, in the National Gallery.
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Now, the course of events after all such conquests, if permanent but not exterminative, is the same. The rude military invaders, finding themselves deficient in woman-folk, take not only slaves but wives from the civilised people of the soil. The resultant children tend more and more, as time goes on, to be influenced by their native mothers. In them previous culture begins to revive, and ere many generations are past, so completely is the new race assimilated by the old that the language in general use is that not of the conquerors but of the conquered.
Hellas and its ConquerorsThe New Civilisation in Greece
For a crucial instance we need look no further than to the after history of the Norman invaders of Britain; and we might almost assume, were there no actual memorials of the fact, that the civilisation which arose anew in the Ægean area, after the tumultuous period reflected in the Homeric lays and the Greek tradition of early Asiatic colonisation, was largely influenced by what had been there in the Ægean Age. There is, however, proof that such was indeed the fact. As will presently be pointed out, the long period of unrest had allowed other alien influences to enter Hellas notably the Semitic from Phœnicia. But beside what appears to be Asiatic, and also beside what was new and distinctively Hellenic in the historic culture, which became prominent from the ninth century onwards (and this includes such all-important features as the conceptions of a supreme Father-God, and of the city-state—an idea of social order as obdurate to southern influences as our own Germanic social order has proved)—beside all this, the “non-Hellenic” elements in the civilisation are almost entirely such as may be referred to Ægean prototypes. Hellenic art, which flourished pre-eminently among the non-Dorian inhabitants, is distinguished from Eastern art by just those distinctive qualities of both realism and idealism which distinguished the highest art of the Ægean Age. Hellenic religion has for its oldest, most universal, and most popular deities various feminine impersonations, indistinguishable from the earlier Mother-Goddess. The chief of these is the unwedded Artemis-Aphrodite, supreme patroness of life all through the historic period of pagan Greece, the essential features of whose cult are still dominant in the observance of the Greek peasant-worshippers of the Christian Virgin. Hellenic cult is full of interesting survivals of the Tree and Stone ritual amply attested in Ægean cult. Hellenic custom retained many traces of a matriarchal system, appropriate to a society exclusively devoted to the Great Mother, whom Hellas took in name and actual primitive form to her pantheon under the names of Rhea and Kybéle. The Dorian and Ionian styles of architecture can be directly affiliated to the Ægean as revealed in Mycenæan tombs and Cnossian frescoes, and the Greek house is a development of the earlier domestic plan. Certain notable exceptions go far to prove the rule. The dress of the upper class, and the fashion of body-armour and weapons, seem to have been determined henceforth by the new folk. These are just the features in civilisation which conquering invaders would naturally introduce and retain. It is hardly necessary to add that if Ægean civilisation seriously influenced that of historic Hellas, it seriously influenced at second hand that of Western and Central Europe.
ATHENS IN THE HEIGHT OF HER CIVILISATION: THE MARKET PLACE RECONSTRUCTED WITH THE ACROPOLIS IN THE BACKGROUNDLARGER IMAGE
ATHENS IN THE HEIGHT OF HER CIVILISATION: THE MARKET PLACE RECONSTRUCTED WITH THE ACROPOLIS IN THE BACKGROUND
LARGER IMAGE
Other Ægean Influences in EuropeCommercial Communication with Europe
Hellenic civilisation, however, was perhaps not the only medium through which Ægean influence affected inner Europe. In Scandinavian tomb-furniture certain presumably foreign decorative motives, notably the returning spiral and thetriquetra, which are identical with characteristic Ægean types, make their appearance in the first part of the local Bronze Age; and these have been noticed also, at a slightly later period, in the art of early Ireland, at that time the most civilised of the British Isles. In point of form also some Northern weapons in bronze resemble those of the Far South. If the spiral motive stood alone, the affiliation of this distant decorative art to the Ægean would be very doubtful, since Nature, whether through the forms assumed by vegetable tendrils or animal horns, or through those of shavings of wood or metal, might easily have suggested the ornament independently. But taken together with other related motives, and the evidence of assimilation of weapon-forms, these spirals raise a presumption in favour of an early obligation of North Europe to Ægean civilisation. A possible explanation of this fact, if fact it be, has been found in the communication whichappears to have been created by the Ægean demand for Baltic amber; and early ways for this traffic have been traced by Dr. Arthur Evans up the Adriatic, and also overland from the Ægean shores to the Danube basin, whence, from a point near the later Carnuntum, a combined route ran up the Moldau to the Elbe system. Further, it is the opinion of Professor Montelius and some other archæologists that not only certain bronze forms and decorative motives, but the usage of this metal itself was derived in Scandinavia from the south, somewhere before 1000B.C.Since pure copper and pure tin hardly occur in Sweden among objects of this age, it has been held that the bronze was imported ready made in the mass. But Sweden contains large natural copper deposits, and tin is also found; and, therefore, this opinion is not universally accepted. Indeed, some authorities reverse the debt, and actually derive Ægean knowledge of bronze from Europe. If, however, the first derivation be ever proved, we shall have to refer the first use of metal weapons—an enormous step forward in social progress—in North and Central Europe to the Southern civilisations, such as the Egyptian, which had certainly known and used bronze for at least a thousand years before we find it in Sweden. It is sometimes maintained that Cyprus was the first, and long the sole, source of copper, which travelled north by way of Asia Minor and the Ægean to Hungary and inner Europe; but this is not proved. In any case, for some reason, bronze seems to have become known to the Scandinavians and Danes earlier than to the Gallic peoples.
Influences in Western Europe
Yet more evidence is there of possible Ægean communication with Central Europe after the introduction of iron, which seems not to have reached Scandinavia till almost the Christian Era. Transylvanian, Russian, and Balkan graves have yielded to recent explorers abundance of both weapons and decorated articles of personal use and adornment, closely resembling fabrics in the later periods of Ægean civilisation. Further into the European continent we have again the various evidence of the early Iron Age graves of the Salzkammergut on the south-eastern fringe of the Bavarian plain. This “Hallstatt” culture, as it is called, from the location of the chief cemetery, presents both in character and development an extraordinarily close parallel to that of the Ægean Geometric Age. About the same period we know also that a civilisation was in progress in the fertile lands round the head of the Adriatic, which is called Veneto-Illyrian, and shows even stronger evidence of Ægean influence than the Hallstatt culture; as, indeed, might be expected, if it be remembered that in Southern and Central Italy, as well as Sicily, forms and decoration, obviously learned from Ægean civilisation, as well as actual imported Ægean objects, had been plentiful ever since the bloom of the Ægean age. A visit to the local collections in Syracuse, Bari, and Ancona, will establish this fact to the satisfaction of any archæologist. These two civilisations, that of the Salzkammergut and that of the North Adriatic lands, have important bearing on the development of all Western Europe; for we know that the Celtic peoples, who penetrated south of the Alps in the sixth and fifth centuriesB.C., learned much from both, and especially from the second; and graves, furnished after they had been pressed back again into Switzerland and Gaul, show abundant evidence of what is called “sub-Ægean” influence—that is, of form and ornament probably derived ultimately from Ægean culture, but indirectly, or after undergoing considerable degradation. Through various subsequent intermediaries, notably the Belgic tribes, these derivatives passed ultimately to our own islands, and we find their influence operative on early English art.
Civilisations Help One Another
At the same time it is necessary to add that this derivation of the higher developments of mid-European and Scandinavian culture in the Bronze and Early Iron ages from the influence of Ægean civilisation is far from certain, whatever be the case for the Adriatic lands. Knowledge obtained since Dr. Evans and Dr. Montelius first expressed their views, especially in regard to the so-called Neolithic or “Butmir” pottery, which has a very wide range in South-Eastern Central Europe, has not strengthened their case, but rather tended to suggest that the continental culture developed independently to, though in a parallel direction with, that of the southern peninsulas and isles. Ifthis view ultimately prevail, it will illustrate the opinion, to which we personally incline, that the derivation of civilisations, one from another in early times, is the exception and not the rule, except in respect of minor matters.
The Vigorous Hittite Civilisation
Two other intermediary civilisations of the South-east remain to be considered—the Hittite and the Phœnician. The first is still, unfortunately, very little known to us, and we are hardly in a position to say much about its influence on Europe until more small objects of use and ornament have been discovered on Hittite sites. The general facts so far ascertained, which make such influence probable, are these. This civilisation, characterised and distinguished from all others by a very individual art, and by a system of writing apparently independent of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian systems, but in its later development showing kinship to Mediterranean systems, lay across all the mainland routes from inner Asia and Egypt to South-eastern Europe. Its monuments have been found scattered thickly from the valley of the Syrian Orontes northwards, to within 150 miles of the Black Sea, and westward to the last passes which lead down from the Anatolian plateau to the Ægean littoral. So far as we can judge at present, its place of origin was Cappadocia, but its later focus was possibly in North Syria; while its period of florescence ranges back from about the sixth centuryB.C.for at least a thousand years.
It was, as we know from many written records, in frequent collision with both Egypt and Assyria, and in its southern home and latest period came under Mesopotamian domination. As is to be expected, therefore, its monuments show very strong Mesopotamian, and less strong Egyptian, influence. At the last, indeed, those of North Syria approximate very closely indeed to the contemporary Assyrian of the Sargonid Age. At the same time, however, they retain sufficient individuality never to be mistaken for other than Hittite; they represent facial types, dress, and fashion of arms which are peculiar; and the inscriptions they bear are always couched in a script having no relation to cuneiform writing.
Europe and Hittite Influence
This vigorous civilisation, occupying the great land bridge from Asia into Europe in the dawn of the historic Hellenic period, and eminently receptive of Mesopotamian influences, cannot but have been a medium through which these reached the Ægean Sea, and so told on Europe. But this did not take place to any appreciable extent in what is known as the prehistoric period. The Cretan products, and those of the other Ægean Isles and mainland Greece, betray very little Mesopotamian influence, and none that we can reasonably trace to the Hittites. So far as we can see, the Ægean culture was much more ancient than the Hittite, and if there was kinship between them we are bound, on the evidence, to derive the latter from the former, and not vice versa. There is a certain relation between late Ægean art and products of inland Asia Minor, but it indicates influence passing eastward rather than westward; and even on the remoter Ægean sites of Asia Minor—Hissarlik, for instance—non-Ægean traces are but slight, and do not suggest the influence of a strong civilisation focused inland.
The Hittite Pathway of CivilisationPart Played by the Phœnicians
In the early Hellenic Age, on the other hand, we have to note considerable Mesopotamian influence on Greek culture, and, at the same time, certain evidence of counter influence, both sub-Ægean and Græco-Lydian, on Mesopotamia, which is as yet not fully understood. But whether both or either of these respective influences were transmitted through the Hittite civilisation is still very doubtful. The Egyptian influence on archaic Anatolia, especially on Rhodes, and even on the Greek mainland, seems clearly to have come by way of the sea; and considering the part which the Phœnicians had been playing for some time previously as transmitters of things eastern, there is a probable alternative westward route for Mesopotamian influence also. In Cyprus, at any rate, this influence, which at a certain period has left strong traces, certainly came for the most part through the western Semites. The claim of the Hittites, however, is not to be denied altogether. Their script seems undoubtedly to have been the parent of the Lycian and other local Anatolian systems. Phrygian art and writing attest Græco-Lydian influence inland; Ionian culture was certainly not unaffected by the Lydian in which many students recognise a western offshoot of the Hittite; and there are a few features in Ionian cult and in cult representations which seem to be owedrather to the religious system of the central plateau than to that native to the Ægean area. In this state of suspense we must leave the question, adding only these final remarks, that Greek tradition itself ascribed some of the arts and luxuries of its civilisation—for example, the coining of money—to Lydian invention, and also affiliated to Lydia a whole western culture, that of Etruria; while it is an undoubted fact that a Mesopotamian standard of weight-currency travelled to the Ægean, and thence affected all western commerce, but by what channel we do not certainly know. There is an unknown quantity in all this problem—viz., Lydia. We have reason to suspect the latter of a considerable influence on early Hellenic civilisation, both as creator and transmitter, but must await further evidence.
The part played by the Phœnicians in transmitting influences of civilisation from East to West is far more certain, and is now much better understood than it was a few years ago. Much vague exaggeration of it has been swept away by recent demonstration that there is practically nothing of probable Phœnician origin in the remains of the Ægean culture. The script of the latter is wholly independent; the typical Phœnician vehicles of glyptic art, the cylinder and the scarab, were never naturalised in the early Ægean; the whole path of the latter’s artistic development was distinct; and the Ægean religious representations, once regarded as Semitic, are now seen to be native. On the other hand, decadent and derived Ægean forms and motives appear among the earliest Phœnician known to us. Influence, if it passed at all, between the Ægean and the Syrian coast lands, in the prehistoric age, moved from west to east.