Runes.
stage of development, have not wanted even so many as twenty letters, and have gradually allowed some of them to fall into disuse and be forgotten; an instance of this we find in the alphabet of the northern nations—the Gothic—which consisted only of sixteenrunes—called by new names; they have been handed down either directly from the Greek, or from the Greek through the Roman alphabet, and furnished with mystic meanings and with names peculiar to themselves.
Additional letters.
In languages where nicer distinctions of sound were called for than the original twenty Phœnician signs carried, a few fresh letters were added, but in no case has any quite new form been invented. The added letters have always been a modification of one of the older forms—either a letter cut in half, or one modified by an additional stroke or dot. In this way the Romans madeGout ofC, by adding a stroke to one of its horns.VandU,IandJwere originally slightly different ways of writing one letter, which have been taken advantage of to express a new sound when the necessity for a greater number of sound-signs arose;W, as its very name shows, is only a doubled form ofV. At first sight it seems a simple thing enough to invent a letter, but let us remember that such a thing as an arbitrarily invented letter does not exist anywhere. To create one out of nothing is a feat of which human ingenuity does not seem capable. Every single letter in use anywhere (we can hardly dwell on this thought too long) has descended in regular steps from the pictured object in whose name the sound it represents originally dwelt. Shape and sound were wedded together in early days by the first beginners of writing, and all the labour bestowed on them since has only been in the way of modification and adaptation to changed circumstances.No wonder that, when people believed a whole alphabet to have been invented straight off, they also thought that it took a god to do it. Thoth, the Great-and-great, with his emblems of justice and his recording pencil; Oannes, the Sea-monster, to whom all the wonders of the under-world lay open; Swift Hermes, with his cap of invisibility and his magic staff; One-eyed Odin, while his dearly purchased draught of wisdom-water was inspiring him still. No one indeed—as we see plainly enough now—but a hero like one of these, was equal to the task of inventing an alphabet.
Cuneiform writing.
Before we have quite done with alphabets, we ought to speak of another system of ancient writing, the cuneiform; which, though it has left no trace of itself on modern alphabets, is the vehicle which preserves some of the most interesting and ancient records in the world. The cuneiform or arrow-shaped character used by the ancient Chaldeans, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians, is supposed to owe its peculiar form to the material on which it was habitually graven by those who employed it. It arose in a country where the temples were built of unburned brick instead of stone, and the wedge-shaped form of the lines composing the letters is precisely what would be most easily produced on wet clay by the insertion and rapid withdrawal of a blunt-pointed stick or reed. Like all other systems, it began in rude pictures, which gradually came to have a phonetic value, in the same manner as did the Egyptian hieroglyphics. The earliest records in this character are graven on the unburned bricks of pyramidal-shaped temples, which a little before the time of Abraham began to be built by a nation composed of mixed Shemite, Cushite, and Scythian (i.e.Turanian) peoples round the shores of thePersian Gulf. The invention of the character is ascribed in the records to the Turanian race, the Accadians, who are always designated by the sign of a wedge, which was equivalent to calling them the writers, or the literary people. The Accadians discovered this writing; but it was taken up and wrought to much greater perfection by their successors, the Shemites. In their hands it became the vehicle in which the history of the two great empires of Babylon and Nineveh, and the achievements of ancient Persian kings, have come down to us. For when Nineveh fell before the Persians, they adopted the cuneiform writing of the Assyrians.
We have all seen and wondered at the minute writing on the Assyrian marbles and tablets in the British Museum, and stood in awe before the human-headed monster gods—
‘Their flanks with dark runes fretted o’er,’
‘Their flanks with dark runes fretted o’er,’
‘Their flanks with dark runes fretted o’er,’
whose fate, in surviving the ruin of so many empires, and being brought from so far to enlighten us on the history of past ages, can never cease to astonish us. When we look at them again, let us spare a thought to the history of the character itself. Its mysteries have cost even greater labour to unravel than hieroglyphics themselves. To the latest times of the use of cuneiform by the Achæmenidæ, pictorial, symbolic, and phonetic groups continued to be mixed together, and a system of determinative signs was employed to show the reader in what sense each word was to be taken. But this system of writing never reached the perfection attained by the Egyptian hieroglyphs. It never advanced to the use of what may be called true letters, never beyond the use of syllabic signs. So that in time it was superseded by alphabets descended from the Egyptian. The symbolism, too, of the cuneiform writing is verycomplex, and the difficulty of reading the signs used phonetically is greatly increased by the fact of the language from which they acquired their values (a Turanian one) being different from the Semitic tongue, in which the most important records are written.
Of other systems of writing, chiefly pictorial, known in the ancient world, such as the Hittite and the Cypriot—or, again, of the picture-writing of many other savage tribes beside the North American Indians, it is not necessary to speak. For we are not writing a history of alphabets, but of the acquisition of theartof writing by mankind.
Vortices of national life.
Atthis point, where we are bringing our inquiries to a conclusion, we would fain look a little nearer into the mists which shroud the past, and descry, were it possible, the actual dawn of history for the individual nations; would see, not only how the larger bodies of men have travelled through the prehistoric stages of their journey, but how, having reached its settled home, each people begins to emerge from the obscurity that surrounds its early days. What were the exact means, we ask, whereby a collection of nomadic or half-nomadic tribes separated, reunited, separated again, and developed upon different soils the qualities which distinguish them from all others? Whatis, in fact, the beginning of real national life?
The worlds which circle round the sun, or rather, the multitudinous systems of orbs which fill space, might pose a like inquiry. There was a time whenthesewhich are now distinct worlds were confounded as a continuous nebula, a thin vapour of matter whirling round in one unchanging circle. In time, their motion became less uniform, vortices—as the word is—set in, smaller bodies of vaporous matter which, still obeying the universal movement, set up internalmotions among themselves, and cooling, separated into separate orbs. How like is all this process to the history of nations! These, confounded once together in one unstable mass of wandering tribes, have in like manner separated from their nebulous brethren, and, setting up their internal vortices, have coalesced into nations. And yet as a system of planets, albeit with their own distinctive motions, do all revolve in one direction round one central force, so the different families of nations, which we may call the planets of a system, seem in like manner compelled by a power external to themselves in one particular course to play a particular part in the world’s history. The early stone-age Turanians, the Cushite civilizers of Egypt and Chaldæa, the Semitic people, may all be looked upon as different systems of nations, each with its mission to the human race. Thus, too, the Aryan people, after they had once become so separated as to lose all family remembrance, are found working together to accomplish an assigned destiny, migrating in every direction, and carrying with them everywhere the seeds of a higher civilization.
The rays of history are seen gradually spreading from Egypt up through Mesopotamia to the nations of Palestine—not yet the land of the Hebrews—then to Asia Minor, and so to Greece. That is the land-root of civilization. We are speaking rather of succession in time than of actual succession by inheritance. We cannot tell, at any rate, that Chaldæa was in any way indebted to Egypt for its early civilization, or Egypt to Chaldæa. But with the exception of that blank, the rest of the progress of civilization by inheritance does follow pretty clearly. The Assyrian Empire inherited from the old Babylonian Empire. And the nations of Palestine inherited from Egypt and Assyria both. On the borders of Asia Minor were two peopleswho commanded—for a time, at any rate—the trade routes from Palestine and Mesopotamia into Asia Minor. These two peoples were the Hittites[139]and the Phœnicians. One commanded the trade route by land, the other commanded it by sea. Of the first we know at present very little—little more than that they had a capital at Karkemish; that they commanded the navigation of the Orontes and the Upper Euphrates; and that they were at one time strong enough to stand at the head of a confederation of peoples who made war upon Egypt when at the summit of her power. There can be little doubt that the Hittites passed on to the peoples of Asia Minor, who were in blood nearly allied to the Greeks, some of the civilization of the Semitic peoples farther south, and that these peoples passed the same on to the Greeks of Asia Minor.
But of course the Phœnicians must still be reckoned as the great transporters of civilization from Egypt and from Asia to the rest of the world. They could hardly be said to possess a country; but they possessed cities of vast importance and no small magnificence along the coast of Palestine—Lamyra, Aradus, Byblos, Sydon, Tyre. From these centres went out that boundless maritime enterprise which made the Phœnicians the trading people of the world. Very early—in pre-historic ages—the Phœnicians had possessed themselves of Cyprus. From that point to the Grecian coast of Asia Minor, or to the coasts and islands on either side of the Ægean, was an easy transition; then on to the Mediterranean, to Sicily and Italy, but more especially to the island of Sardinia; or again to Egypt and the farther coasts of Africa on to Spain, and finally, through the Pillars of Heracles, to the far-off ‘tin islands’ of the west, which were, it is likely enough, the British Isles. This is, in brief, the picture ofthe doings of the Phœnicians long before the days of history had begun to dawn upon the Aryan nations of the Mediterranean.
If we desire to get any idea of the process by which the separation of the Aryan peoples became completed, we must put quite upon one side the idea of a nation as we see it now. Now, when we speak the word, we think of a political unit subject to one government, stationary, and confined within pretty exact limits of space. But very different were the nations during the process of their formation; there was scarcely any political unity among them, their homes were unfixed, their members constantly shifting and changing combinations, like those heaps of sand we see carried along in a cyclone. Let us, then, forget our political atlases, with their different colours and well-marked boundaries, and think not of the inanimate adjunct of a nation, the soil on which it happens to dwell, but of the nation as the men of whom it is made up. The earliest things we discern are those vortices set up in the midst of a homogeneous people, an attractive power somewhere in the midst of them which draws them into closer fellowship. It acts like the attractive power of a crystal in selecting from any of the surrounding matters the fragments most suited to its proper formation. Thus the earliest traditions of a people are generally the history of some individual tribe from which the whole nation feigns itself descended; either because of its actual pre-eminence from the beginning, the power it had of drawing other tribes to share its fortunes, or because, out of many tribes drawn together by some common interest or sentiment, the bards of later days selected this one tribe from among the others, and adopted its traditions for their own. If we remember this, much that would otherwise appear a hopeless mass of contradiction and ambiguity is capable of receiving a definite meaning.
The Greeks.
The first rays of European history shine upon the island-dotted sea and bounding coasts of the Ægean. Here sprang into life the Greek people, who have left behind so splendid a legacy of art and philosophy. These, as has been already said, made their entry into Europe traversing the southern shores of the Euxine, along which passed, still as one people, the ancestors of the Greeks and the Italians. The former, at all events, seem to have delayed long upon their route, and it was upon these shores, or perhaps rather in the tableland of ancient Phrygia, that first began the separation of two races who reunited to form the Greek nation. Some, the older race, the Pelasgi, made their way to the Hellespont, and by that route into European Greece; the others, the Ionians as they subsequently became, passed onward to the sea-shore of Asia Minor, and, tempted no doubt by the facilities of the voyage, crossed from this mainland to the neighbouring islands, which lie so thickly scattered over the Ægean that the mariner passing from shore to shore of Asiatic and European Greece need never on his voyage lose sight of land. They did not, however, find these islands deserted, or occupied by savages only. The Phœnicians had been there beforehand, as they were beforehand upon almost every coast in Europe, and had made mercantile stations and established small colonies for the purposes of trading with the Pelasgi of Greece. The adventurous Ionians were thus brought early into contact with the advanced civilization of Asia, and from this source gained in all probability a knowledge of navigation, letters, and some of the Semitic mythical legends. Thus while the mainland Greeks had altered little of the primitive culture, the germs of a Hellenic civilization, of a Hellenic life, were being fostered in the islands of the Ægean. We see this reflected in manyGreek myths—in the legend, for example, of Minôs and his early Cretan kingdom; in the myth of Aphroditê springing from the sea by Cythera; and in the worship of Phœbus Apollo which sprang up in Delos. Legend spoke of two Minôses—one, the legislator of Crete, representative of all that was most ancient in national policy, and for that reason transferred to be the judge of souls in Hell; the second, he who made war against the Athenians, and compelled them to pay their dreadful yearly tribute of seven youths and seven maidens to be devoured of the Minotaur in the Cretan labyrinth. Until Theseus came. No doubt the two Minôses are but amplifications of one being, who, whether mythical or historical, is an echo in the memory of Greeks of the still older Cretan kingdom. In both tales Minôs has a dreadful aspect; perhaps because this ‘Lord of the Isles’ had been inimical to the early growing communities of the mainland.
The myths of Aphroditê and Apollo have been already commented upon as enfolding within them the history of their origin. Aphroditê is essentially an Asiatic divinity; she springs to life in a Phœnician colony. But Phœbus Apollo is before all things the god of the Ionian Greeks; and astheirfirst national life begins in the islands,hisbirth too takes place in one of these, the central one of all, Delos. In Homer, Delos, or Ortygia, is feigned to be the central spot of the earth.
Thus the Greeks were from the beginning a commercial people. Before their history began, there is proof that they had established a colony in the Delta of the Nile; and the frequent use of the wordJavan[140]in the Bible—which here stands for Ionians—shows how familiar was their name tothe dwellers in Asia. Wherever these mariners came in contact with their brethren of the continent, they excited in them the love of adventure, and planted the germs of a new life, so that it was under their paramount influence that these primitive Greeks began to coalesce from mutually hostile tribes into nations. In Northern Greece it was that the gathering together of tribes and cities first began. These confederations were always based primarily upon religious union, the protection of a common deity, a union to protect and support a common shrine. They were called Amphictyonies, confederations of neighbours, a name which lived long in the history of Greece. These amphictyonies seem first to have arisen in the north. Here too the wordsHellenic,Hellenes, first spring up as national epithets. Hellas never extended farther north than the north of Thessaly, and was naturally marked off from foreign countries by Olympia and Pierus. But the term spread southwards till it embraced all Greek-speaking lands to the extremity of the peninsula, and over the islands of the Ægean, and the coast of Asia Minor, on to the countless colonies which issued from Greek shores; for Hellas was not a geographical term, it included all the peoples of true Hellenic speech, and distinguished them from thebarbaroi, the ‘babblers,’ of other lands.
The two great nations of the Græco-Italic family kept up some knowledge of each other after they had forgotten the days of their common life, and, strange to say, in days before either of the two races had come to regard itself as a distinct people, each was so regarded by the other. The Italians classed the Greeks in the common name of Græci or Graii, and the Greeks bestowed the name of Ὀπικός upon the nation of the Italians. It is curious to reflect upon the different destinies which lay ahead of these two races, whocame under such similar conditions into their new homes. Whether it were through some peculiarity in their national character, or a too-rapid civilization, or the two great influences of a changeful character and adventurous life, the Greeks never cemented properly together the units of their race; the Italians, through a much slower process of integration, lived to weld their scattered fragments into the most powerful nation the world has ever seen.
The Romans.
This second half, then, of the Græco-Italic family, crossing the Hellespont like (or with) the first dwellers in Greece proper, proceeded onwards until, skirting the shores of the Adriatic, they found out a second peninsula, whose fertile plains tempted them to dispute the possession of the land with the older inhabitants. Who were these older inhabitants? In part they must have been those lake-dwellers of northern Italy to whom reference was made in our second chapter, and who were evidently closely allied to the stone-age men of Switzerland; but besides these we have almost no trace of the men who were dispossessed by the Italic tribes, and these last, who pushed to the farthest extremity of the peninsula, must have completely absorbed, or completely exterminated, the aborigines. The process by which the Italians spread over the land is altogether hidden from us. Doubtless their several seats were not assigned to the different branches at once, or without bloodshed. Though still no more than separate tribes, we are able to divide the primitive Italians into stocks of which the southern most resembled the ancient type of the Pelasgic family; those in the centre formed the Latin group; while north of these (assuming that they, too, were Aryans) lay the Etruscans, the most civilized of all the three. At this time the tribes seem to have acknowledged no common bond, nothing corresponding to the word Hellenichad sprung up to unite their interests: existence was as yet to the strongest only. And while the land was in this chaotic state, one tribe, or small confederacy of tribes, among the Latin people began to assert its pre-eminence. We see them dimly looming through a cloud of fable, daring, warlike, unscrupulous in their dealings with their neighbours, firm in their allegiance to each other. This tribe gradually increased in strength and proportions till, from being a mere band of robbers defending themselves within their rude fortifications, they grew in the traditions of their descendants, and of the other tribes whom in course of time they either subdued or absorbed, to be regarded as the founders of Rome. They did not accomplish their high destiny without trials and reverses. More powerful neighbouring kingdoms looked on askance during the days of their rise, and found opportunity more than once to overthrow their city and all but subdue their state. Their former brethren, the Celts,[141]who had been beforehand of all the Aryan races in entering Europe, and now formed the most powerful people in this quarter of the globe, several times swept down upon them like a devastating storm. But after each reverse the infant colony arose with renewed Antæan vigour.
Thus in Italy, the development from the tribal to the national state was internal. No precocious maritime race awoke in many different centres the seeds of nationality; rather this nationality was a gradual growth from one root, the slow response to a central attractive force. The energy of Rome did not go out in sea adventure, or in the colonization of distant lands; but it was firmly bent to absorb the different people of her own peninsula, people of like blood with herself, but in every early stage of culture from analmost nomadic condition to one of considerable advancement in the arts of peace.
The Celts.
When from the Greeks and Romans we turn to the Celts and Teutons, we must descend much lower in the records of history before we can get any clear glimpse at these. The Celts, who were probably the first Aryans in Europe, seem gradually to have been forced farther and farther west by the incursions of other peoples. At one time, however, we have evidence that they extended eastward, at least as far as the Rhine, and over all that northern portion of Italy—now Lombardy and part of Sardinia—which to the Romans went by the name of Cisalpine Gaul. The long period of subjection to the Roman rule which Gaul experienced, obliterated in that country all traces of its early Celtic manners, and we are reduced for our information concerning these to the pages of Roman historians, or to the remains of Celtic laws and customs preserved in the western homes of the race. The last have only lately received a proper attention. The most primitive Irish code—the Brehon laws—has been searched for traces of the primitive Celtic life. From both our sources we gather that the Celts were divided into tribes regarded as members of one family. These clans were ruled over by chiefs, whose offices were hereditary, or very early became so. They were thus but slightly advanced out of the most primitive conditions,—they cannot be described as a nation. Had they been so, extensive and warlike as they were, they would have been capable of subduing all the other infant nationalities of Aryan folk. As it was, as mere combinations of tribes under some powerful chieftain (Cæsar describes just such), they gave trouble to the Roman armies even under a Cæsar, and were in early days the most dreadful enemies of the Republic. Under Brennus, they besieged and took Rome,sacked the city, and were only induced to retire on the payment of a heavy ransom. A hundred years later, under another Brennus, they made their way into Thrace, ravaged the whole country, and from Nicomedes, King of Bithynia, obtained a settlement in Asia Minor in the district which from them received the name of Galatia. The occurrence of those two chiefs named Brennus shows us that this could hardly have been a mere personal name. It is undoubtedly the Celtic Brain, a king or chieftain, the same from which we get the mythic Bran,[142]and in all probability the Irish O’Brien. The recognition of the Celtic fighting capacity in the ancient world is illustrated by another circumstance, and this is more especially interesting to us of the modern world, whose army is so largely made up of Celts from Ireland and Scotland (Highlanders). Hierôn I., the powerful tyrant of Syracuse, founded his despotism, as he afterwards confessed, chiefly upon his standing army of thirty thousand Gaulish mercenaries whom he kept always in his pay.
For the rest, we know little of the internal Celtic life and of the extent of its culture. Probably this differed considerably in different parts, in Gaul for instance, and in Ireland. The slight notices of Gaulish religion which Cæsar and Pliny give refer chiefly to its external belongings, to the hereditary sacerdotal class, who seem also to have been the bardic class; of its myths and of their real significance we know little more than what can be gathered by analogy of other nations. We may assert that their nature-worship approached most nearly to the Teutonic form among those of all the Aryan peoples.
Peculiarly interesting to us are such traces as can be
The Teutons.
gleaned of the Teutonic race. The first time we have seen that they show themselves upon the stage of history is possibly in company with the Celts, supposing for a moment that the Cimbri, who in company with the Teutones, the Tigurini, and the Ambrones were defeated by Marius (B.C.101), were Celts.[143]What branch of the German family (if any) the Teutones were, is quite uncertain. Again, in the pages of Cæsar we meet with several names of tribes evidently of German origin. The Treviri, the Marcomanni (Mark men, men of the march or boundary), Allemanni (all-men, or men of the great or the mixed[144]nation), the Suevi (Suabians), the Cherusci—men of the sword, perhaps the same asSaxons, whose name has the same meaning.
It is not till after the death of Theodosius at the end of the fourth century of our era that the Germans fill a conspicuous place on the historical canvas. By this time they had come to be divided into a number of different nations, similar in most of the elements of their civilization and barbarism, closely allied in languages, but politically unconnected, or even opposed. Most of these Teutonic peoples grew into mighty nations and deeply influenced the future of European history. It is therefore right that we pass them rapidly in review. 1. The Goths had been long settled in the region of the Lower Danube, chiefly in the country called Mœsia, where Ulfilas, a Gothic prince who had been converted to Christianity, returned to preach to his countrymen, became a bishop among them, and by his translation of the Bible into their tongue, the Mœso-Gothic, has left a perpetual memorial of the language. During the reign ofHonorius, the son of Theodosius, a portion of this nation, the West-or Visi-goths, quitted their home and undertook under Alaric (All-king) their march into Italy, thrice besieged and finally took Rome. Then turning aside, they founded a powerful kingdom in the south of Gaul and in Spain. A century later the East-Goths (Ostro-Goths), under the great Theodoric (People’s-king) again invaded Italy and founded an Ostrogothic kingdom upon the ruins of the Western Empire. 2, 3, 4, 5. The Suevi, Alani, Burgundians, and Vandals crossed the Rhine in 405, and entered Roman territory, never again to return to whence they came. The Burgundians (City-men) fixed their abode in East-Central Gaul (Burgundy and Switzerland), where their kingdom lasted till it was subdued by the Franks; but the other three passed on into Spain, and the Vandals (Wends[145]) from Spain into Africa, where they founded a kingdom. 6. The Franks (Free-men), having been for nearly a century settled between the Meuse and the Scheldt, began under Clovis (Chlodvig, Hludwig, Lewis) (A.D.480) their career of victory, from which they did not rest until the whole of Gaul owned the sway of Merovingian kings. 7. The Longobardi (Long-beards, or men of the long borde, long stretch of alluvial land), who after the Ostrogoths had been driven out of Italy by the Emperor of the East, founded in defiance of his power a second Teutonic kingdom in that country—a kingdom which lasted till the days of Charlemagne. 8. And last, but we may safely say not least, the Saxons (Sword-men, fromseaxa, a sword), who invaded Britain, and under the name of Angles (Engle) founded the nation to which we belong, the longest-lived of all those which rose upon the ruins of the Roman Empire.
The condition of the German people, even so late as the time when they began their invasion of the Roman territory, was far behind that of the majority of their Aryan fellows. It is likely that they were little more civilized than the Greeks and Romans were, in days when they lived together as one collection of tribes. For the moment when we catch sight of these—the Greeks and Romans—in their new homes, we see them settled agriculturists, with no trace left of their wandering habits. It was not so with the Teutons: they knew agriculture certainly, they had known it before they separated from the other peoples of the European family (for the Greek and Latin words for plough reappear in Teutonic speech[146]); but they had not altogether bid adieu to their migratory life—we see them still flowing in a nebulous condition into the Roman lands. Even the Tartars of our day—the very picture of a nomadic people—practise some form of agriculture. They plant buckwheat, which, growing up in a few months, allows them to reap the fruits of their industry without tying them long to a particular spot. The Teutons were more stationary than the Tartars, but doubtless they too were constantly shifting their homes—choosing fresh homesteads, as Tacitus says they did, wherever any spot, or grove, or stream attracted them. The condition of society called the village community, which has been described in a former chapter, though long abandoned by the cultivated Greeks and Romans, was still suitable to the exigencies oftheirlife; but these exigencies imposed upon it some fresh conditions. Their situation, the situation of those who made their way into the western countries of Europe, was essentially that of conquerors; for they must keep in subjection the original inhabitants, whether Romans or Celts; and so all their socialarrangements bent before the primary necessity of maintaining an effective war equipment. Age and wisdom were of less value to the community than youthful vigour. The patriarchal chief, chosen for his reputation for wisdom and swaying by his mature counsels the free assemblies of the states, gives place with them to the leader, famous for his valour and fortunes in the field, by virtue of which he exacts a more implicit obedience than would be accorded in unwarlike times, until by degrees his office becomes hereditary; the partition of the conquered soil among the victors, and the holding of it upon conditions of military service, conditions which led so easily to the assertion of a principle of primogeniture, and thence, by slow but natural stages, to the conditions of tenure known asfeudal; these are the marks of the early Teutonic society.
Such germs of literary life as the Teutons possessed were enshrined in ballads, such as all nations possess in some form. The re-echoes of these have come down to us in the earliest known poems by men of Teutonic race, all of which are unfortunately of very recent date. All are distinguished by the principle of versifying which is essentially Teutonic; the trusting of the cadence, not to an exact measurement of syllables or quantities, but to the pauses or beats of the voice in repetition, the effect of these beats being heightened by the use of alliteration. Poems of this true Teutonic character, though many of them in their present shape are late in date, are the well-known old German lay ofHadubrand and Hildebrand, the old Scandinavian poems which we call Eddic poems, our old English poemBeowulf, and theBard’s Taleand theFight of Finnesburg, and finally that long German poem called theNibelungen, or say the poem out of which this long one has been made. These poems repeat old mythic legends, many of whichhave for centuries been handed down from father to son, and display the mythology and religion of our German ancestors, such as in a former chapter we endeavoured to sketch them out. Slight as they are, they are of inestimable value, in that they help us to read the mind of heathen Germany, and to weigh the significance of the last great revolution in Europe’s history—a revolution wherein we, through our ancestors, have taken and through ourselves are still taking part, and in which we have therefore so close an interest.
But having carried the reader down to this point, our task comes to an end. Even for Europe, the youngest born as it were in the world’s history, when we have passed the epoch of Teutonic invasion, the star of historysera rubenshas definitely risen. Nations from this time forward emerge more and more into the light, and little or nothing falls to the part of pre-historic study.
⁂ For the convenience of the reader, authorities are cited whenever it is possible in an English form, and if not in an English, in a French.
Christy and Lartet,Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ.Davis and Thurnam,Crania Britannica.Dawkins,Cave Hunting.Dawkins,Early Man in Britain.Evans,Stone Implements of Great Britain.Evans,Bronze Implements of Great Britain.Geikie,The Great Ice Age.Greenwell,British Barrows.Keller,The Lake-Dwellings of Switzerland(trs. Lee).Lyell,Antiquity of Man.Lubbock,Pre-historic Times.Mortillet,Origine de la Navigation et de la Pêche.Mortillet,Promenades Préhistoriques à l’Exposition.Mortillet,Le Préhistorique, L’Antiquité de l’homme.Montelius,La Suède Préhistorique.Tylor,Anthropology.Tylor,Early History of Mankind.Tylor,Primitive Culture.Troyon,Habitations Lacustres.Worsaae,The Pre-history of the North(trs. Simpson).
And numerous articles in the Archæological and Anthropological journals of England, France, and Germany.
Pp. 8, and14-15.Antiquity of Man.—The question concerningthe history of Palæolithic man which presses the most immediately for solution, is that which has been just touched upon here: whether the variety of animal remains with which the remains of men are found associated, do really point to an immensely lengthened period of his existence, in this primitive state. We have said that human bones are found associated with those of the mammoth (Elephas primigenius), those of the woolly rhinoceros, and with the remains of other animals whose existence seems to imply a cold-temperate, or almost frigid, climate; at another place, or a little lower in the same river bed (the higher gravel beds are the oldest), we may find the bones of the hippopotamus, an animal which in these days is never found far away from the tropics. The conclusion seems obvious: man must have lived through the epoch of change—enormously long though it was—from a cold to an almost tropical climate. Some writers have freely accepted this view, and even gone beyond it to argue the possibility of man having lived through one of the great climatic revolutions which produced an Ice Age. (See the arguments on this head in Mr. Geikie’sIce Age.) And in a private letter, written from the West Indies, Kingsley says that he sees reason for thinking that man existed in the Miocene Era. (SeeLife of Kingsley.)
On the other hand, these rather startling theories have not yet received theirimprimaturfrom the highest scientific authorities. There are many ways in which they clash with the story which the stone-age remains seem to tell of man’s primitive life. For instance, the civilization of the caves is to all appearance in advance of that of the drift-beds; and yet, as we have seen (p. 18), the cave men must have existed during the earlier part of the stone age, that of the mammoth. Here we see evidences of a decided improvement, an advance; whereas between the drift-remains associated with the mammoth and those associated with the hippopotamus are seen few or none.
P. 9.Cave-drawings or carvings.—The best representations of these are to be found in the work of Christy and Lartet given above.
P. 19. The ideas which savages or primitive men associate with drawings or representations of things (as also with thenamesof things) are sometimes exceedingly complex and difficult of apprehension—for us. This the following example may show:—
In the earliest Egyptian tombs the beautiful and realistic drawings have long attracted the attention of archæologists, both on account of their intrinsic merit, and from the curious contrast which they present to the more conventional religious drawing and sculpture of a later date. Though the drawings of the first class are found exclusively upon the walls of tombs, they have apparently no connection either with ideas of death or with religious observances. They seem to represent merely the earthly and secular life of the entombed man: here he is superintending his labourers at their work, here he is hunting, here he is reclining at the banquet and watching the performances of fools or dancing-girls. This is what a mere study of the drawings suggests. A more complete study of the inscriptions which accompany them have, however, convinced Egyptian archæologists that the object of these wall-paintings is not merely decorative or representative, in the sense in which drawings are representative to us. Their essential use is what we may call magical. They are believed to contain (and this is a universal savage belief as touching drawings or sculptures of any kind) some elements of the things they represent. Thus the tomb-paintings would be a kind ofdoublesof the things which the deceased enjoyed in this life. And they would be placed in the tomb in order that thedoubleof the deceased (what the Egyptians called hiska) might enjoy the usufruct of them in the new state.
This is the simplestmagicuse of the copies or representation of things in early Egyptian tombs. But the idea of the makers of these drawings seems often to be more complicated than this. The drawings by being placed in the tombs are supposed to give thekaof the deceased (notin the tomb, but far away in the land of shades) the enjoyment of the doubles of the things which he enjoyed in life. In this instance the drawings are not the actual possessions which the dead man has, but they correspond to, or influence, or in a certain sense create in the land of shades new possessions, the doubles of the old.
These subtle and complex notions are by no means to be expressed by the conventional wordsmagic,animism, etc., loosely thrown about by anthropologists.
Pp. 47and52.Weaving.—The art of platting, which carries in it the germ of the art of weaving, is of immemorial, undiscoverable antiquity. There can hardly have been a time when men did not weave together twigs or reeds to form a rude tent covering—a primitive house. And one proof of the immense antiquity of this practice is given by the numerous names for twigs, reeds, etc., in different languages which are derived from words signifying to twist or weave. The wordweaveitself (Ger.weben) is connected with a Sanskrit rootvê, meaning much the same thing; and we find this same rootvêappearing again in the Latin,vimena twig, andvitis, a vine, the last so named from its tendrils, which we should judge were used for platting before they were used for producing grapes. From the same root, again, and for the same reason, are derived the Latinviburnum, briony; the Slavonicwetle, willow; the Sanskritvetra, reed. The Latinscirpus, reed, and the Greek γρῖφος, a net, are allied; but these may not be instances quite in point.
Such rude platting as this is a very different thing from the elaborately woven cloths found among the remains of the lake-villages, whose construction involves also the art ofspinning.
P. 54. The view put forward in this chapter concerning the race of the neolithic men in Europe, is that which seems to the writer most consistent withallthe facts known, concerning the distribution of pre-historic man. As was said in the Preface, the students in different branches of pre-historic inquiry have not begun yet to collate sufficiently the results of their researches, and their opinions sometimes clash. We have to reconcile the pre-historic anthropologist and the ethnologist with the student of comparative philology. Most of the former are agreed that the earliest inhabitants of this quarter of the globe were most allied in character to the Lapps and Finns; and were consequently of what we have distinguished (Chapter V.) as the yellow-skinned family. But they arefar from agreed that the bronze-using men were not of the same race; and some (Keller for instance) are violently opposed to the notion that the substitution of metal for stone was a sudden transition, and due to foreign importation. In some instances there is evidence that the change was gradual.
But the evidence on the other side is stronger. The human remains found with the bronze weapons are generally clearly distinguishable (in formation of skull, etc.) from those associated with the implements of stone. The funeral rites of the bronze-age men were as a rule different from those of the stone-age men; for while the former generally buried their dead, the latter seem generally to have burnt theirs (see Grimm,Ueber das Verbrennen der Leichen). Now we have strong reason for believing that the Aryan races (see Chapters IV., V.) practised this sort of interment; and we have further reason for thinking that the use of metals was known to them before their entry into Europe (see Pictet,Les Origines Indo-Européennesand Grimm,Geschichte der deut. Sprache). Moreover, these Aryans unless their original home were in Europe (seep. 99,note), must have come in at some time, and when they did come, they must have produced an entire revolution in the life of its inhabitants. No time seems so appropriate for their appearance as that which closes the age of stone.
This theory does not preclude the possibility of, in many places, a side-by-side existence of stone users and bronze users, or even a gradual extension of the art of metallurgy; and these conditions would be especially likely to arise in such secluded spots as the lake-dwellings. Therefore, Dr. Keller’s arguments are not impeached by the theory that the Aryans were the introducers of bronze into Europe.
Bopp,Comparative Grammar of the Sanskrit Zend, etc.(trs.).Bréal,Principes de Philologie Comparée.Geiger,Contributions to the History of the Development of the Race(trs.).Grimm,Geschichte der deutschen Sprache.Grimm,Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache.Kuhn,Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung.Müller, Max,Lectures on the Science of Language.Müller, Max,Sanskrit Literature.Peile,Introduction to Greek and Latin Etymology.Pictet,Les Origines Indo-Européennes.Sayce,Introduction to the Science of Language.Wilson,Introduction to the Rig Veda Sanhita.
Agreeably to the plan enunciated in the first chapter (pp. 4-6) I have used up all the more generally admitted facts and theories to form what seemed to me a reasonable account of the growth of language; to form an account too which should subserve one great end of this volume, by stimulating the thoughts of the reader at the same time that it pointed out the nature of the evidence upon which conclusions are founded, thereby preparing the reader to pursue the enquiry upon his own account.
The science of Comparative Philology is, however, in too unripe a condition to allow us to speak with dogmatic assurance with regard to its inferences; even those which seem fundamental have been, and may again, be called in question. It is right here, therefore, to remind the reader that it is quite upon the cards that further research may end by upsetting the generally accepted theory of the growth of inflexions in language. Even now there is a school of philologists and anthropologists that denies the premise upon which this theory rests—theradicalorigin of all language. This school maintains that, instead of speech beginning in monosyllabic root-sounds, as is generally supposed, it begins in extremely elaborate and complicated sounds which are in fact nothing else than sentences; that it is only by the wear and tear of use that the sentence has got split up into its component sounds, which have then taken the character of monosyllabic roots.
This theory was first set on foot by a writer (Waitz) who is an anthropologist rather than a student of language, and it might be distinguished as the anthropological theory of the origin of speech. We have no space here for a full discussion of its merits. It will be enough to indicate someà prioriarguments in its favour.
1. It would make the language of primitive man analogous to a state of things which many people think they have discovered as typical of the most primitive savages—namely, a state of society which, in its customs, marriage laws, etc., differs from modern society in being not more simple, but infinitely more complex.
2. This supposed original expressive sentence and its subsequent analysis would have considerable analogy to what we ourselves have just seen is the history of writing, which begins with a more or less elaborate picture; then the parts of the picture are split up, and by the wear and tear of frequent use these parts are added together in separate items to form picture-writing, which is quite a different thing from picturing, and which is the immediate parent of writing as we know it. An analogy of this kind cannot be without weight.
On the other hand, it must be pointed out that the strongest arguments in favour of this view are theà prioriarguments. True, we do not know enough of the languages of the world to speak with dogmatic assurance. But the history of all the languages which have been closely studied points away from the anthropological theory.
Again, the first argument in favour of Waitz’s theory is itself clearly founded upon a paradox. It can scarcely be seriously maintained that while we can trace the growth of implements, such as spears and knives, from the simplest possible form upwards, such implements as speech and social laws have been ready made in a highly complex form. Argument number two serves to expose the grossness of this paradox. It would be as reasonable to maintain that mankind had begun by drawing pictures before they learnt to draw the elements out of which the pictures were composed.
The whole theory, therefore, belongs to the category of theories which explainobscurum per obscurius. It may be, and no doubt is, practically impossible to explain in anynaturalway how speech arose. But at all events it is easier to understand how it may have arisen in a simple form and grown to one more complex, than to imagine it beginning in a complex state and by detrition resolving into simple elements.
P. 68.Consonantal and vowel sounds.—The fact that even in Aryan roots the consonants have more weight than the vowel sounds will be evident merely from the instances given in the course of this and the following chapter—fly,flee,flew(wis here a vowel sound);night,Nacht;knight,Knecht;Raum,room;asmi,esmi(eimi),sum, etc. This general rule holds good for almost all languages, and seems necessarily to do so from the stronger character of the consonantal and the weaker character of the vowel sounds.
But therelativeimportance of vowels and consonants is very different in different classes of language. In the Aryan tongues the essential root is made up of vowels and consonants, and the variations upon the root idea aregenerallyexpressed by additions to the root and not by internal changes in it. In this way, as we saw, most grammatical inflexions are made: hom-o, hom-inis, am-o, am-abam, τύπτω, ἒτυτον, ἒτυψον, etc. But in Semitic languages the root consists of the consonants only, and the inflexions are produced by internal changes, changes of the vowels which belong to a consonant. For example, in Arabic the three consonantsk-t-l(katl) represent the abstract notion of the act of killing. From them we getkátil, one who kills;kitl(pl.aktal), an enemy;katala, he slew;kutila, he was slain. Fromz-r-b(zarb), the act of striking;zarbun, a striking (in concrete sense);zarábun, a striker;zaraba, he struck;zuriba, he was struck. Compare these with occido, occidi, occisor, or with τύπτω, τέτυφα, etc., and we see that in the Aryan tongues the radical remains almost unchanged, and the inflexions are madeab extra; but in the Semitic language the inflexions are made by changes of vowel sound within the framework of the root consonants.
The usual grammatical root in Arabic is composed of three consonants, as in the examples given above. Most of the Semitic languages are in too fully formed a state to allow us to see whether or no these roots, which are of course at the least dissyllabic, grew up out of single sounds; but a comparison with some languages of the Semitic family (e.g.Egyptian) which are still near to their early radical state, show us that they have probably done so.
The Coptic language, which is the nearest we can get to thetongue of the ancient Egyptians, is extremely interesting in that it displays the processes of grammar formation, as has just been said, in a more intelligible shape than we find in the higher Semitic tongues.
P. 98. We are here speaking, be it remembered, of families oflanguage. The ethnology of a people is not necessarily the same as its language; so that when we speak of a family of language including the tongues of a certain number of races, we do not imply that they were wholly of the same ethnic family. This caution is especially necessary as regards the earliest great pre-historic nations who seem to have been what are called Cushites—anything but pure Semites (see Chapter V.)—but whose languages may properly be ranged in the Semitic family. The Egyptian, for instance, was more nearly monosyllabic than any other Semitic tongue (Chapter XIII.); yet such inflexions as it has show an evident relationship with Hebrew and other Semitic languages (see Appendix to Bunsen’sEgypt’s Place in Universal History).
Brugsch,Recueils de Monuments Égyptiens.Brugsch,Histoire d’Égypt.Brugsch,Matériaux pour servir, etc.Bunsen,Egypt’s Place, etc. (ed. Dr. Birch).Ebers,Egyptian History.Flower, W. H.,Races of Men.Legge,Chinese Classics, with Introduction, etc.Lenormant,Manual of the Ancient History of the East(trs.).Lepsius,Chronologie der Egypten.Mariette Pasha,Abrégé de l’Histoire d’Égypte.Maspero,Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient.Maury,Le Livre et l’Homme.Rawlinson,Herodotus, with Notes.Rawlinson,Five Great Monarchies, etc.Rougé (Vte. de),Examen de l’Ouvrage de M. Bunsen.Sayce,Ancient Empires of the East.Tylor,Anthropology.
P. 119. The word Turanian is untenable as an ethnic term. It can be used—though with a somewhat loose signification—to distinguish those languages which are in the agglutinative stage. But the reader must be careful not to suppose that it comprises a class of nearly allied peoples, as the Aryan and Semitic families of language, upon the whole, do. The only race which includes the Turanian peoples of Europe and Asia includes also those who speak monosyllabic languages: this is the yellow race, and is of course a division of the widest possible kind.
P. 122. Touching the relationship of the Egyptians to the negroes a variety of opinions are held. There can be no question that their types of face forbid us to doubt that there was some relationship between them; while the representations of negroes upon the ancient monuments of Egypt show that from the remotest historical period there was a marked distinction between the peoples, and that from that early time till now the negroes have not changed in the smallest particular of ethnical character. On the other hand, many people consider the Egyptians and the Accadians to have been essentially the same people, the Cushites—or as some call them Hamites—a race which perhaps anciently spread from Susiana across Arabia and the Red Sea to Abyssinia and Egypt.
P. 123. The namesChaldæanandAssyrianare used with a variety of significations by Orientalists, and in a way likely to be confusing to the general reader. He will do well, therefore, to bear the following facts in mind:—
1. The Tigris and the Euphrates, after both taking their rise in the Caleshîn Dagh mountain in the Armenian highlands, soon separate by a wide sweep, the Euphrates flowing south-west and towards the Mediterranean, the Tigris flowing south-east towards the Persian Gulf. But instead of flowingintothe Mediterranean, the Euphrates again turns first due south, then south-east, so that it thenceforward flows parallel with the Tigris. They approach nearer and nearer, until about Bagdad they are separated by some twenty miles only; but herethey once more begin to increase the distance between them, and do not again approach until just before they unite to fall into the Persian Gulf. In ancient days they never united, as the Persian Gulf spread more than a hundred miles farther inland than it does to-day.
The territory enclosed between these two great streams, with the addition of some territory to the east of the Tigris and west of the Euphrates, is that which the Greeks called Mesopotamia. Lower Mesopotamia begins about the point where the streams approach the nearest, and this Lower Mesopotamia is the territory distinguished by the nameChaldæa.
Territorially this Chaldæa was in ancient days divided into two districts—Shûmir in the south, and Accad in the north.
The earliest known inhabitants of these districts were a Turanian race, who from their territorial possessions should properly be called the Shûmir-Accadians or Shûmiro-Accadians. But it is common to call them simply Accadians (or Accad), and their language, an agglutinative or Turanian one, Accadian likewise.
Here therefore is the first element of confusion—between the smaller territorial division, Accadia, and the larger ethnic division, which includes all the primitive inhabitants of Chaldæa.
2. But there mingled with these primitive Accadians a Semitic race, and gradually transformed them, so that the speech of the country changed from being a Turanian or agglutinative, to being a Semitic and inflected language.
Now, these Semitic people are probably the Chaldæans of the Bible; at any rate the Bible seems to take no account of the primitive Turanian stock. Its Chaldæans are a people allied by nationality to the Shemites, though perhaps so far mixed with an earlier stock as to be what we may call proto-Semitic.
Here is the second element of confusion, a confusion between the unchanged land of Chaldæa and the two races who in succession inhabited it.
3. Finally, the language of the Semitic (or proto-Semitic) Chaldæans was practically the same as that of the people who rose into a nation in Upper Mesopotamia, viz. the Assyrians. The Assyrians, as is said in Chapter V., founded an empire which overthrew the ancient Chaldæan or Babylonian empire,—for from its largest town the empire is also called the Babylonian—and was in its turn overthrown by an alliance between the revolted Babylon and the King of Media.
The third element of confusion then arises from applying to the language of the Semitic Chaldæans the name Assyrian, which involves no participation in the empire of the Assyrians.
It is probable that these elements of confusion have not always been avoided in the preceding chapters. But with the aid of this note they will no longer present difficulties to the reader.
It will be seen that both the Egyptians and Chaldæans of Genesis, chap. x., are a Semitic people so far as regards the character of their language, and belong in the main to the white race. So far as regards their ethnic character, they were probably more mixed than the peoples (Hebrews, Assyrians proper, etc.) who are called the children of Shem, and therefore we may call them proto-Semitic.
The term Hamitic is altogether misleading, and had better be unused in ethnical classifications. The real meaning, if we follow the intention of its use in the Bible, is to distinguish from the purer Semites (Hebrews, Moabites, etc.) what we may call the proto-Semites; that is, a number of races, such as the Egyptians and Chaldæans, as well as the Canaanites generally, who spoke Semitic languages, but were very probably of impure blood, very likely of Semitic and Turanian intermixture. If the word Hamitic be used to include the rest of the inhabitants of the world who were not Semitic or Aryan, then, though it will not be very useful, no objection can be taken to its employment. But in that case we shall be obliged, forming our classification by the known rather than by the unknown, to include the Canaanites (who spoke Semitic languages) in the Semitic family; and this will be in direct contradiction to the use of Hamitic in the Bible narrative.
Coulanges,La Cité Antique.Grimm,Deutsche Rechts-Alterthümer.Lavalaye,La Propriété et ses Formes Primitives.Maine,Ancient Law.Maine,Village Communities.Maine,Early Institutions.Maurer,Geschichte der Dorf-Verfassung.Nasse,Agricultural Communities of the Middle Ages(translated by Ouvry).Pictet,Les Origines Indo-Européennes.
In the account here given of the two most important social forms, the patriarchal family and the village community, the endeavour has been rather to present such a picture of them as may exhibit their chief peculiarities in a sufficiently clear and striking manner, than to enter into a minute examination of the various remains from which the picture has been constructed. It must not be supposed, however, that the representations here given can be completely verified from existing information. They are rather to be looked upon as typical of what these forms may have been in their earliest stage and under favourable circumstances. We only meet with traces of them when undergoing decay. Although the writer fully recognizes the importance of the researches of McLellan and others concerning the earlier conditions of society, no attempt has been made to give an account of the results which have been arrived at in this field of inquiry. Two reasons may be assigned for this omission. Firstly, the intrinsic difficulties of treating the subject in a manner suitable to the ‘general reader’ are, it is conceived, a sufficient excuse for the omission. Secondly, the results at present attained are so vague that the mere statement of them would be valueless without entering into great detail. All that can as yet fairly be regarded as established is either that the Aryan and Semitic races have at one time possessed social customs and practices similar to those which are found in the most barbarous people; or that they have during some period of their history so far amalgamated with, or been influenced by, other races that had just emerged from this state, as to absorb into their traditions and customs traces of a social condition of a much lower and more primitive kindthan that in which we first find them. If we try to form any conception of what the earlier state may have been, we at once see that the results at present attained are almost purely negative. All that can be predicated is that at one time a large proportion of the human race didnotpossess the notions of the family and the marriage tie which were entertained by people in the patriarchal state; that they didnottrace blood relationship in the same way. What particular customs immediately preceded or led to the patriarchal family, whether this latter is to be considered as the original social type, and the lower forms are to be regarded as derived from it, orvice versâ—to these questions no satisfactory answer can at present be given.
Each step indeed in social change is to be looked upon, to a great extent, as simply a phenomenon to be noted, the causes for which it is impossible to determine accurately. This is especially the case with the village community. The extent of its distribution would incline one to the belief that it is a natural or necessary result of a certain stage of social development; while the elaborate and artificial nature of its construction points to the probability of some common origin from which its developments might be traced. The greatest difficulty, however, lies in trying to assign to this institution its due effect on civilization: for it is frequently found in close combination with institutions to which its spirit seems most strongly opposed. Thus while we find it flourishing among the Germanic tribes, we also discover among them a tendency to the custom of primogeniture much more marked than is discoverable among other Aryan races. Yet this custom scarcely seems to find a place in the pure village community beyond the limits of each individual household. At the same time the patriarchal power was certainly less among the Germans than among the early Romans, and probably also less than among the Slavs.