In each of the first two alternatives there is the displacement of some population earlier than the one—Greek or Italian, as the case may be—which we supposed to have been immigrant.
In the three next there is the same; with the additional difficulty of fixing the point from which the migrations diverged.
In the last there is the enormous displacement requisite to account for the utter absence of any population transitional to the Hellenic and Italian north of the Po on one side, and the Peneus on the other.
But this—as, indeed, are all the others—is reducible to a question of displacement.
Now it is the last four of the previous alternatives that are the most complicated. They are also those to which the current opinions most incline. The term Thraco-Pelasgic indicates this: since it shows that, instead of deriving the Greeks from the Italians, or the Italians from the Greeks, both are deduced from a third population.
Upon this third population we must concentrate our attention; and define our ideas as to its conditions.
If continuous, it must have been of considerable magnitude: and even if isolated, it can scarcely have been very small. Now the greater we make it the more mysterious is its present non-existence.
It must have spoken a language intermediate in character to the Hellenic and Italian. Unless it did this it is of no avail. To be simply like the Greek is not enough; nor yet to be what is called Indo-European. It must be sufficiently transitional in character to act as a link.
It must have been either ancient Albanian, which it cannot have been, ancient Thracian, which it is unlikely to have been, or, some third language winding itself into continuity between the most south-western Thracians and the most north-eastern Illyrians,i.e., populations akin to the Skipetar.
So much for its conditions on the side of Greece. As it approached Italy they must been equally mysterious. Unless we suppose the Liburnians and Venetians to have spoken such a tongue it must have lapped round the area of the northern populations of the Adriatic, so as to be thrown considerably westwards. But, to all appearances, Circumpadane Etruria began where the Veneti and Liburni left off.
The special classical scholar best knows how far the Pelasgi—how far, indeed, any ancient populations—fulfil these conditions. Of course, by assuming an unlimited amount of displacement and migration they can be made to do so. But such assumed displacements may be illegitimately large. Whether they are so or notdepends upon the extent to which they are necessary.
Such is a sketch of the difficulties involved in the hypothesis that Greece and Italy were appropriated by similar populations by means of migrations byland.
A little consideration will show that by looking to theseaas the medium of communication we get rid of the gravest of the previous difficulties; though it must be admitted that we get another in the place of it. It may fairly be urged that conquests by sea are less complete and perfect than those by land; so that though they may be admitted as explanatory of settlements on the coast, they are insufficient to account for the reduction of the more inland and mountainous parts of a country. This is an objection as far as it goes: yet it would be hazardous to say that either Greece was more purely Hellenic, or Italy more exclusively Italian, at the beginning of their respective historical areas, than England was Anglo-Saxon in the reign of Alfred. Yet the Anglo-Saxon conquest was maritime.
That, at the very earliest dawn of the historical period, there was a great amount of Greek elements in Southern Italy is universally admitted; the only doubtful point being as to the way of explaining them. They fall into two classes—
1. Those that are accounted for by colonization from Greece to Italy within the historical period.
2. Those that are not so explained.
It is the latter upon which a partial confirmation of the doctrine of the present chapter is based.
a.The Æolus of Homer, who in spite of some difficulties of detail, we must look upon as the eponymus of Æolia, has his residence in the islands off the south coast of Italy; and, it must be remembered, that, except so far as this Æolus is the eponymus he is here considered to be, Homer knows nothing of the Æolians.
b.The Ionian Sea is the sea that washes the coasts of Italy, and not the sea which comes in contact with the shores ofIonianAsia.
c.Old geographical names, significant in the Greek language, are commoner in Southern Italy and Sicily, than in Greece itself; as Phalacrium Promontorium, Nebrodes Mons, Clibanus Mons, Petra, Xiphonia Promontorium, Crotalus Fluvius, &c. Nowhere are these commoner than in the Sicanian country, the part generally considered the most barbarian, but, more probably, the part where the character of the aborigines survived longest—Panormus, Ercta, Bathys Fluvius, Cetaria (probably a fishery), Drepanum, Selinus, Ægithallus. Almost all the islands have names more or less Greek, Strongyle, Phœnicodes, Ericodes, and agreat number ending in -usa, as Pithec-usa, &c. Ortygia, is mentioned by Hesiod.
d.The names which, in Greek, end in --οειςtake, in Southern Italy, the older forms in -ntum—asΜαλοεις, Maleventum;Σολοεις, Solventum.
e.The Greeks themselves recognise the existence of colonies planted by their forefathers in Italy long anterior to the beginning of the historical period,e.g., that of Cumæ, seventeen generations before the Trojan war. This may fairly be construed into an admission of their ignorance as to their origin.
f.The epithetMagnainMagna Græciaas applied to Southern Italy, is an adjective which in every other instance of its use, denotes themother country—thecolonybeing designated by the contrary epithetlittle.
g.Thecultusof the eminently Greek goddess, Demeter, was in the eminently Sikel district of Henna.
h.The recognition of Xuthus, the father of Ion, an eponymus strange to Hellenic Greece, as one of the six sons of Æolus, in the Sicilian genealogies, genealogies which are evidently of independent origin.—“Xuthus was king over the Leontine country which, even now, is called Xuthia; Agathyrnus, of the Agathyrnian country, who built the city called after him, Agathyrnus.”—Diod. Sic. v. 8.
The foregoing facts are unimportant and unsatisfactory if taken by themselves. Neither do they constitute the main argument in favour of the Italian origin of the Greeks. That lies in the necessity of effecting a geographical continuity between the Greek and Latin languages, and the inordinate difficulty of doing so by means of an extension of either of the areas northwards.
The weightiest objection to it is the following. If the southern Italians were so closely allied to the Greeks as the present doctrine makes them, how came the later colonists not to discover the affinity? Surely the settlers at Croton, Sybaris, Thurii, and the towns of Sicily, would not have failed to find out that they had cast their lot amongst cousins and kinsmen of their own stock, if such had actually been the case. They would have found out that the populations with which they came in contact spoke Greek—possibly with solecisms—but still Greek. I reply to this by stating that, if, in (say) the reign of Edward the Confessor, the English descendants of the Anglo-Saxon conquerors of Britain in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries had colonized the coasts of their mother country, they would not, unless they had hit upon a few exceptional localities, have found out, from the evidence of language or manners, that they had revisited the land of their fathers. The language had changed, and the populationhad been mixed and displaced. The Franks had conquered the tribes originally akin to the Saxons. Now that which the Franks did with the Saxons of Germany, the Lucanians and Bruttians seem to have done with the original Greeks of Italy. Such is the doctrine; such the chief objection to it; and such the answer.
Another arises from the following words:—κὑβιττον,λἑπορις,πατἱνη,κἁτινος,μοἱτον,γἑλυ, andνἑποδες. They are glosses from the Greek writers of Sicily. They arenotGreek. TheyareLatin—cubitus,lepus,patina,catinus,mutuum,gelu,nepotes. I admit this to be weighty. Nevertheless, as the Sicilian dialects are considered to connect the Greek with the Latin, their presence is not conclusive. Besides this, the Sikeli were, probably, more Italian than the Sikani.
There were Epirote (Skipetar) elements in Southern Italy; since several names were common to both sides of the Ionian Sea—Chaones, Molossi, Acheron, Pandosia.
There were Pelasgians (whatever the Pelasgians may have been) also; as is to be inferred from the mention of the slaves of the colonists being so called.
The name by which the south Italian stock, the parent stock of the Hellenes, is best denoted is uncertain. The adjectiveŒnotrian, from the Œnotri, is suggested.
It is wholly unnecessary to assume the existence of a new stock for the population of ancient Sicily. The south Italians seem to have extended themselves to the island, and when we first find them there, we also find fresh evidence of their Greek character, as has already been shown in the geographical names of the Sikanian area.
At the same time they must have fallen into two or more well-marked varieties; varieties which are easily accounted for. There were the earliest occupants of the island, and there were recent immigrants from Italy, differing from each other as the present Danes of Iceland do from the native Icelanders. For in this way I interpret the difference between theSik-eli and theSik-ani, not doubting that both come from the same root; although the authority of Thucydides is against this view.
Thucydides’s account is as follows. In the western part of the island were theSikani, from the river Sikanus, driven thence by the Iberians. Then came the Sikeli, driven from Italy by the Opiki. Thirdly, there were the Elymi of Eryx and Egesta, who were originally Trojans, but who escaped to Sicily, and settled themselves on the Sikanian frontier, having built the cities of Eryx and Egesta. A few Phocians (also from Troy) joined them, having first gone over toLibya. The Phœnicians held certain settlements on the southern coast; Motye, Soloeis, and Panormus. Lastly, came the Sikeliôts, or Greeks of Sicily, whose colonies were as follows—
a.Naxos from Khalcis in Eubœa; Leontini and Katana from Naxos.—Ionic.b.Syracuse from Corinth; Acræ, Casmenæ, and Camarina, from Syracuse.c.Megara from Megara; Trotilus and Selinus from Megara.—Doric.d.Gela from Rhodes and Crete; Akragas from Gela.—Doric.e.Zankle from the Campanian Cuma, itself Chalcidic in origin.—Ionic.
a.Naxos from Khalcis in Eubœa; Leontini and Katana from Naxos.—Ionic.
b.Syracuse from Corinth; Acræ, Casmenæ, and Camarina, from Syracuse.
c.Megara from Megara; Trotilus and Selinus from Megara.—Doric.
d.Gela from Rhodes and Crete; Akragas from Gela.—Doric.
e.Zankle from the Campanian Cuma, itself Chalcidic in origin.—Ionic.
A reference to his own text justifies our disbelief in the essential difference between the Sikani and the Sikeli, implied by Thucydides. That such was the case was the opinion of only the historian; whilst, on his own showing, it was not the opinion of the Sicanians themselves. After the Cyclopes and Læstrygones the “Sikani are the first inhabitants. As they say themselves, they are even earlier, beingautokhthones; but, in real truth, they are Iberians from the river Sikanus, driven out by the Ligyes; and from them the island as well was named Sikania, being first called Thrinakria.”[8]The Iberic doctrine is evidently an inference from the name of theriver; an inference which the incompatible opinion of the Sikanians themselves opposes, and, in my mind, outweighs. But the objections do not end here. The evidence of Diodorus is as follows;i.e., that Philistus supported the Thucydidean view, but that Timæus proved him wrong, and clearly showed that they were Autokhthones. Hence, the testimony that we set against that of Thucydides is the testimony of an equally competent local antiquary, though an inferior general historian: for less influence than this cannot well be attributed to the name of Timæus.
The statement respecting the Phocians is remarkable. It shows the existence of Greeks anterior to the colonial era; Greeks whose presence was inexplicable, except under the idea of a return from a doubtful expedition.
Who the Elymæans really were is uncertain. Assuming that they constituted a variety of the Sicilian population, and asking whence they may best be derived, the answer is Sardinia—Middle Italy, and Mauritania. In this latter case they belong to the original Libyan, Gætulian, Numidian or Mauritanian stock, rather than the Punic. Or they may have been Tuscans. Possibly, Phœniciansdirectfrom Phœnicia, or Canaanites, or Jews.
That true Mauritanians, as opposed to the Phœnicians of Carthage, existed, in at least oneSicilian locality, is a reasonable inference from the name of a town on the eastern coast—Thapsus. This is a word which now only occurs on the northern coast of Africa, but has a meaning in the modern Berber, wherethifsahmeanssand; a likely name for the low coast of the part which Virgil callsThapsum jacentem.
In the Elymæan country were two rivers, one calledSimoïs, and the otherScamander. How they came to be called so is unknown. The effect was to engender the story of the Trojan colony; unless, indeed, we choose to argue that such a phenomenon proves too much, and is evidence in favour of the reality of a Trojan war, and a subsequent dispersion of Trojan colonists. Or they have been SardinianTli-enses.
The Carthaginian blood in Sicily was certainly foreign, and the Elymæan was probably so. That of the Sikels was allied to the older Sikanian; perhaps, as the Danish of the Northmen in England was to that of the Anglo-Saxons. Such were the elements that cameintothe island. But, according to our hypothesis, there was an efflux out of it, to Æolian and Ionian Greece, and, perhaps, to some of those parts of Asia and the Ægean sea-board, which are claimed by the Hellenes as colonies from their own shores. Subsequent to this there went on the contest between the Sikani and Sikeli, even as the struggle between theDanes and Saxons went on in Alfred’s time; whilst Sikeliot Greeks and Phœnicians were making settlements on the coasts, and meditating a contest for the supremacy over both. First from Sicily and Southern Italy to Greece; then from Greece to Sicily and Southern Italy—such is the hypothetic line of migration, analogies to which may be found elsewhere. Sumatra, for instance, and the Malaccan Peninsula are considered to stand in the same relation. The island (Sumatra) is first peopled from the Peninsula, the tribes then occupying it being comparatively rude and savage. But, in the island, civilization increases, just as the South Italians are supposed to advance in their social condition when transplanted to Hellenic soil. Thirdly, the islanders (the Sumatrans), after the development of a powerful kingdom, make settlements on the mother-country (the Peninsula of Malacca), and (an important circumstance in our criticism) partly from the effect of changes upon themselves, and partly from changes in the parent stock, no recognition of the original affinity takes place. The aborigines of Malaya look upon their sovereigns of the sea-coast as strangers, themselves being considered what a Greek would callbarbarians. The true affinity is only known to the European ethnologists. So far, then, is the present hypothesis from being deficient in analogies to support it.
The historical period begins with the contest between the Greeks and the Carthaginians as to who should hold in vassalage the Sikeli and Sikani; with a subordinate series of jealousies between the Doric and Ionic branches of the Greeks. Until about 300B.C., the struggle is, comparatively, uncomplicated. Afterwards, however, the free introduction of mercenaries from Southern Italy, of Opican, Samnite, and Lucanian origin, engenders new elements of admixture. The Carthaginian power attains its height about this time. Then the island becomes the battle-field between the two republics, and from 250B.C., to 450A.D.(in round numbers), a period of 700 years, Sicily is a Roman province.
That the legionaries and officials were Roman in their political relations only, is nearly certain. Ethnologically they must have been chiefly South Italian. And the female part must have been native Sicilian. What does this mean—Greek, Carthaginian, Sikanian, or Sikelian? Any one in particular, or a little of each? The paramount fact for this question is the evidence to the existence of Sikeli and Sikani up to the reduction of the island. From then we hear no more of them: not, however, because they are known to have become extinct, but because their relations to Greece have ceased, and the historians who might mention them are wanting. Rome had nocontemporary literature; and when it had, the Sicilian was known only as opposed to the Roman; for the writers use the wordSiculi, in a general sense, making no distinction between theSikel, theSikan, and theSikeliot. They were treated, however, as Greeks, not as barbarians; and the Latin language was not forced upon them. This is an inference from more than one expression in Cicero’s Oration against Verres, where they are spoken of as Greek.—“Novum est in Siculis, quidem, et in omnibus Græcis monstri simile.”—ii. 11. 65. Again, “Itaque eum non solum patronum istius insulæ sed etiamsoterainscriptum vidi Syracusis.”—Ibid.63.
If the Romans disturbed the ethnology but little, the question is reduced to the extent to which the Greek colonies either displaced the earlier inhabitants, or effected an intermixture. Of Ducetius, a Sikel king, powerful in the middle of the island, we hear in the times between Gelon and the Athenian invasion; and of other less important chiefs (some with Greek names), we hear until the first Punic war. They are always, however, Sikel. Of the Sikanians, Elymæans, and the so-called Phocian Greeks, little or nothing is said. At the downfall of the Roman Empire, Sicily seems to have been Greek in speech, and Sikelo-Sikanian, strongly crossed with Greek, in blood. Then came the piracies of Gensericand his Vandals; then the invasion of the Goths of Theodoric; then the island is reconquered by Belisarius as a general of theEasternempire; none of which events were of much ethnological importance. Not so the events of the ninth century. The Arab conquest was a physical as well as a moral influence.
A.D.827-878.
“With a fleet of one hundred ships and an army of seven hundred horse, and ten thousand foot, the Arabs landed at Mazara, but after some partial victories, Syracuse was delivered by the Greeks, and the invaders reduced to the necessity of feeding on the flesh of their own horses; in their turn they were relieved by a powerful reinforcement of their brethren of Andalusia: the largest and western part of the island was gradually reduced, and the commodious harbour of Palermo was chosen for the seat of the naval and military power of the Saracens. Syracuse preserved about fifty years the faith which she had sworn to Christ and to Cæsar. In the last and fatal siege, her citizens displayed some remnant of the spirit which had formerly resisted the powers of Athens and Carthage. They stood above twenty days against the battering-rams and catapultæ, the mines and tortoises of the besiegers; and the place might have been relieved, if the mariners of the imperial fleet had not been detained at Constantinople in building a churchto the Virgin Mary. The deacon, Theodosius, with the bishop and clergy, was dragged in chains from the altar to Palermo, cast into a subterranean dungeon, and exposed to the hourly peril of death or apostasy; his pathetic, and not inelegant complaint, may be read as the epitaph of his country. From the Roman conquest to this final calamity, Syracuse, now dwindled to the primitive isle of Ortygia, had insensibly declined; yet the relics were still precious; the plate of the cathedral weighed five thousand pounds of silver; the entire spoil was computed at one million of pieces of gold (about four hundred thousand pounds sterling), and the captives must have out-numbered the seventeen thousand Christians who were transported from the sack of Tauromenium into African servitude. In Sicily, the religion and language of the Greeks were eradicated; and such was the docility of the rising generation, that fifteen thousand boys were circumcised and clothed on the same day with the son of the Fatimite caliph. The Arabian squadrons issued from the harbours of Palermo, Biserta, and Tunis; a hundred and fifty towns of Calabria and Campania were attacked and pillaged; nor could the suburbs of Rome be defended by the name of the Cæsars and apostles. Had the Mahometans been united, Italy must have fallen an easy and glorious accession to theempire of the prophet; but the caliphs of Bagdad had lost their authority in the west; the Aglabites and Fatimites usurped the provinces of Africa; their emirs of Sicily aspired to independence, and the design of conquest and dominion was degraded to a repetition of predatory inroads.”[9]
A.D. 1029, Aversa was founded; a fact common to the history of both Sicily and Southern Italy; from which the rule of the Normans in Sicily, Apulia, and Calabria dates. Its details are those of a romance; the deeds of a small but unscrupulous body of adventurers, too few to impress any new character on the stock with which they came in contact. Still they require mention, though but a handful of men. They were of mixed blood themselves; Scandinavian on the fathers’, French on the mothers’, side; French, too, in speech. They were recruited by heterogeneous accessions from Southern Italy.
“Si vicinorum quis perniciosus ad illosConfugiebat, eum gratanter suscipiebant:Moribus et linguâquoscunque venire videbantInformant propriâ, gens efficiatur ut una.”[10]
“Si vicinorum quis perniciosus ad illosConfugiebat, eum gratanter suscipiebant:Moribus et linguâquoscunque venire videbantInformant propriâ, gens efficiatur ut una.”[10]
A.D.1204.
The beginning of the thirteenth century sees the break-up of the Norman power, and Sicily transferred to the empire; oneof the more notable facts of this transfer being the removal of sixty thousand Saracens to Nocera, in the south of Italy.Saracen, however, though it means Mahometan, by no means, necessarily, means Arab. Then we have the dominion of the French, ending with the Sicilian Vespers, and the death of eight thousand of them. Catalonians, Genoese, Modern Greeks, and Albanians (?) complete the list of the elements of intermixture in Sicily; notwithstanding which, and notwithstanding all the previous immigrations, I believe the basis of the stock to be Sikel chiefly, and next to Sikel, Greek.
A.D.400.
A.D.406.
A.D.476-490.
With continental Italy the elements of admixture, until the time of Odoacer, were due to the barbarian legions in the service of Rome, rather than to the inroads of any barbarian conquerors; since Alaric, with his Visigoths, Radagaisus, with his medley of Slavono-Germans, Genseric with his Vandals, and Attila with his Huns, made but ephemeral impressions. Of the army, however, of Radagaisus, a large proportion was sold as slaves. Odoacer’s conquest was somewhat more permanent; whilst the elements he introduced are uncertain. Reasons, however, may be given for referring the Skiri, at least, and possibly the Heruli and Rugii to the same stock as the Huns and Bulgarians—the Turk, a stock from whichfew grafts were transplanted to Italy; though a Bulgarian colony in Samnium was existing in the time of the Lombards, and possibly a few other similar offsets besides.
A.D.490-553.
The Gothic conquest, however, was not only permanent, but it was the first of three from the same stock. Themselves, probably, of mixed blood, having taken it up during their various settlements on the Lower and Middle Danube, from the Slavonians and Turks of the countries with which they came in contact, the Ostrogoths, to the amount of not less than two hundred thousand, settled in the most favoured parts of the country, and, dominant as they were amongst a population of serfs, must have played much the same part in Italy as the Normans did in England. And when Italy is recovered by Narses and Belisarius, more than one hundred and fifty years after, they are only ejected from power—not bodily put out of the land.
As has been stated already, they were only the first of three—we may say of four—hordes of invaders, each of which was more or less Germanic; for the Lombard dominion rapidly succeeded the Ostrogoth, and, besides this, partial invasions of Bavarians, Suabians, and Alemanni were, for a time, successful. But the Lombards ruled over all Italy with the exception of the Exarchate ofRavenna, till the conquest by Charlemagne, and over the present kingdom of Naples, under the name of the Duchy of Beneventum, until the Norman Conquest. Of all the Germanic elements, the Lombard is possibly the greatest. But it was no pure strain.
A.D.774.
The infusion of Slavonic and Turk blood amongst the followers of Alboin was considerable.
For Calabrian and Apulian Italy the history is nearly the same as that of Sicily.
Now, if after the sketch of these numerous elements of intermixture we ask which part of Italy is most Roman, the answer gives but a small proportion of that illustrious blood. Taking the narrowest view of the question, and distinguishing the Latin area from the Oscan, Umbrian, and Etruscan, the amount is inordinately insignificant—and Rome itself was but a mixture. By generalizing, however, our language, and makingRomanidentical withItalian, we gain a larger area, coinciding pretty closely, though not exactly, with the States of the Church. This is the least mixed part of Italy, as well as the most Italian; the least mixed because it is south of the pre-eminently German, and north of the pre-eminently Arab area of invasion, and the most Italian, because the original basis was Umbrian, and Sabine rather than Etruscan, Gallic, Ligurian, or Œnotrian.
Piedmont, perhaps, is the next in order of comparative purity; at least, as far as modern intermixture is concerned: the oldest basis being Ligurian.
In Lombardy the elements are Umbrian, Etruscan, Gallic, Roman, Ostrogoth, and Lombard; in the Venetian territory, Umbrian, Etruscan, Gallic, Roman, Ostrogoth, Lombard, andSlavonic(Liburnian); in the kingdom of Naples, Ausonian and Œnotrian, with Greek, Arab, and Norman superadditions.
IMPORTANCE OF CLEARNESS OF IDEA RESPECTING THE IMPORT OF THE WORD “RACE.”—THE PELASGI.—AREA OF HOMERIC GREECE.—ACARNANIA NOT HELLENIC.—THE DORIANS.—EGYPTIAN, SEMITIC, AND OTHER INFLUENCES.—HISTORICAL GREECE.—MACEDONIANS.—GREECE UNDER ROME AND BYZANTIUM.—INROADS OF BARBARIANS.—THE SLAVONIC CONQUEST.—RECENT ELEMENTS OF ADMIXTURE.
IMPORTANCE OF CLEARNESS OF IDEA RESPECTING THE IMPORT OF THE WORD “RACE.”—THE PELASGI.—AREA OF HOMERIC GREECE.—ACARNANIA NOT HELLENIC.—THE DORIANS.—EGYPTIAN, SEMITIC, AND OTHER INFLUENCES.—HISTORICAL GREECE.—MACEDONIANS.—GREECE UNDER ROME AND BYZANTIUM.—INROADS OF BARBARIANS.—THE SLAVONIC CONQUEST.—RECENT ELEMENTS OF ADMIXTURE.
ITmay safely be said that the difficult question as to the relative influences of the external effects of soil, climate, physical conditions, the admixture of foreign blood, and the introduction of foreign examples on the one side, and those of what is calledraceon the other, never rises to a greater degree of importance than it does in the ethnology of Ancient Greece. For, in our current language, we considerraceto mean certain original differences of organization, faculties, and capacities stamped upon different divisions of the human species from the beginning; innate qualities, as distinguished from mere developments; internal elements of the original material upon which the external agencies of climate, soil, and examples act in the differentdegrees of its receptivity, as contrasted with the various agencies themselves; and in this current language, many writers, who would shrink from the conclusions to which the term logically leads, unconsciously indulge. I sayunconsciously, because it is nearly certain that, out of ten writers who talk aboutrace, and assign to the word a meaning essentially the same as the one just exhibited, nine would be unwilling to deny the unity of our species—unity meaning descent from the same pair. Yet between this and a system of special interpositions the advocate of the effects of race has no alternative. How can there be two original capabilities for the reception of either moral or physical influences, and the evolution of intellectual phenomena out of them, in different members of a family descended from a single pair?
All that can have had a beginning since the beginning of the species itself is the manifestation of the several capacities by outward and appreciable signs. The capacity itself must have existed from the first; and the writer who considers that too great weight is attached to external accidents, and too little to innate qualities, unless he admit either the doctrine of a multiplicity of protoplasts, or extra-natural changes in the faculties of the progenitors of certain favoured nations, when he talks aboutrace, onlythrows back the evolution of the distinctive characters of the populations he may be considering to some period more or less early. If the remote ancestors of the Greeks and the remote ancestors of the Turks be referable to some common parentage, it is mere verbiage to refer the differences between them torace, as an ultimate and primary cause. It is no cause, but, itself, an effect—an effect of influences immeasurably early in their actions, but still an effect. For it is evident that ofrace, as it is called, there can be but three causes—original difference of parentage, preternatural changes in the faculties or organization of certain members of one common family, or the operation of the ordinary agencies of climate, nutrition, and ideas.
I neither deny nor assert that any one of these three causes is the true one. I only draw attention to a remarkably common inconsistency. A very little amount of ethnological literature will satisfy any one who makes the search that the number of writers who write aboutrace, and who are, nevertheless, wholly unprepared for either of the first two explanations of its origin, is very great. So that they admit the third, and the third only. If so, why make so much of the distinction?
In the special question before us we are in great danger of overvaluing this undefined element;imagining that intellectual pre-eminence of the highest kind was the original endowment of a section of mankind called Hellenes. That these Hellenes were so favoured is certain, but that they were araceat all is doubtful. Unless the necessity of connecting the Latin and Greek languages in geography as well as in philology have been overvalued, and, along with it, the difficulty of doing so by any simple extension of the two areas, the natural inference from the necessary consequences of a maritime migration follows as a matter of course, viz., the probability of the blood on the mother’s side having been different from that of the father—the one Italian, the other native to the soil. If so, there is an Hellenic language, an Hellenic literature, an Hellenic influence in the world’s history. But there is no Hellenic stock. The tongue belongs to Hellas, and the blood to Italy.
Subject, then, to the correctness of the Italian hypothesis, what was the native stock of Hellas? Pelasgic. What means this? The proper place for this inquiry is the chapter on the ethnology of Turkey, for in two Turkish localities only have any Pelasgi existed within the historical period. A negative statement, however, will find place here. Whatever the Pelasgi were, they were not, at one and the same time, the earliest occupants of Hellas, anda population belonging to the same class with the Hellenes. The reasons which lie against making the Hellenes aboriginal to Greece lie also against any other Hellenoeid population.
The magnitude of the earliest historical Hellenic area is of importance. Let Greece under the leadership of Agamemnon be as truly Hellenic as Kent and Essex were Anglo-Saxon in the reign of Alfred. What does it prove in the way of the occupants being aboriginal? As little as the English character of the counties in question at the time referred to. Four centuries—or even less—of migration may easily have given us all the phenomena that occur; for the area is smaller than the kingdom of Wessex, or Northumberland, and the country but little more impracticable.
Hence, if we sufficiently recognise the smallness of the Hellenic area, no difficulties against the doctrine of an original non-Hellenic population will arise on the score of its magnitude. It was as easily convertible from non-Hellenic to Hellenic as Cumberland and Northumberland have been from British to English.
And that that area was actually very small indeed is evident to any inquirer who will take up the measure of it without any prepossessions in favour of its magnitude, and limit his Hellas to those parts only which can be shown to havebeen Greek; in order to do which he must draw no undue inferences in favour of the identity of the Hellenic and Phrygian languages from the negative fact of Homer saying nothing about interpreters; build nothing on the ubiquity of the Pelasgi, every one of whose migrations is as unsupported by historical evidence, as the migration of Æneas to Italy, or that of Antenor to Venice; and, lastly, satisfy himself with the “Catalogue of the Ships,” as the earliest geographical notice of ancient Greece. I think that this list is more likely to contain populations which were not Hellenic than to omit any that were; and, with the single exception of the Acarnanians, I imagine that this is the current opinion. The Acarnanians alone of all the Hellenes are said to have taken no part in the Trojan war; and on the strength of their non-intervention we hear of them some nine hundred years afterwards, putting in a claim for the good offices of the Romans, the supposed descendants of those Trojans whom the other Hellenes so cruelly conquered, and the Acarnanians so generously left alone. Yet it by no means follows that because the Acarnanians were Greeks during the Peloponnesian war, they were Greeks in the ninth centuryB.C., any more than it follows that because the men of Monmouth are English at the present moment they were soduring the heptarchy. What should we say to the writer who, in the reign of Queen Victoria, should say that the only people of England who took no part in the wars of the Saxons against the Britons were the Cornishmen? Surely we should accuse him of an anachronism, and suggest the fact of his Cornishmen having been at the time in question, no Saxons at all, butBritons. The same reason applies to the statements concerning the Acarnanians; inasmuch as it is highly probable that they are absent from the Homeric list of Greeks, because they were other than Greek in respect to their nationality. It was only when the Greek frontier extended itself northwards that they became Hellenized. Then, too, it was that the later writers who fancied that they must always have been what they were in their own days, superadded the doctrine of their having been Hellenic to the fact of their non-appearance in the Homeric catalogue. For it must be remembered that, even in the third centuryB.C.—nay even at the present moment—the Acarnanians are a frontier population, in contact with the non-Hellenic Illyrians of old, and the non-Hellenic Skipetars of the nineteenth century. It must also be remembered that notice of their absence from Troy is nowhere to be found in the Homeric poems. No passage runs to the effect “thatthe Acarnanians alone took no share in the war under the walls of sacred Ilion, but remained ingloriously at home.” If it were so, the previous hypothesis would be futile.
Upon the whole, I think that Acarnania was in the same category with the nearly opposite island of Corcyra—Greek in the time of the historian, but not Greek in the time of the Homeric poems.
So little, however, depends upon this view of the character of the earliest Acarnanians that the notice of them is rather an episodical piece of detail, than anything affecting the general question of the size of Homeric Greece. It may have contained Acarnania, and still have been small enough for the purposes suggested,i.e., small enough to have been converted from non-Hellenic to Hellenic within a very few centuries.
On the eastern side of Greece the most northern members of the confederation are the Thessalians and Perrhæbi; but whether the latter were Hellenic is uncertain. We may admit them, however, to have been so. Macedon and Thrace were, certainly,non-Hellenic; so much so, that it is only by first peopling them with Pelasgi, and then making the Pelasgi what may be called Hellenoeid—or Greek-like—that the semblance of any close ethnological affinity with the true and undoubted Greeks of the Homeric confederacy can be obtained.
If we leave the continent and turn to the islands, the greater part of the Cyclades and Sporades are in the same predicament with Acarnania. In the “Catalogue of the Ships,” Crete, Rhodes, Syme, Carpathus, Cos, Nisuros, and the Calydnian Islands are alone named.
Such are the reasons for believing that the true and undoubted Hellenic area, was, at the time of the Homeric poems, quite small enough to have received the whole of its population from some other country, and that by means of boats and ships.
The two elements of the Hellenic population in its simplest form, are—1. The native; 2. The Italian; either of which may have been more or less mixed; though the proof of it is impracticable, and the analysis out of the question.
One of the tribes of the ancient Skipetar area was the Hylleis; and one of the Doric heroes was Hyllus. I connect these names, the latter being the eponymus to the former. When the Dorians conquer Peloponnesus, Hyllus assists them. This suggests the likelihood of those immigrants whose first settlements were on the northern side of the Saronic Gulf, and who from thence effected conquests southwards and elsewhere, having done so in alliance with certain members of the Illyrian, Epirote, or Skipetar stock. If so, the Dorian conquests were onlypartially Hellenic, so that there is, at least, an element of intermixture here.
Others are referable to the eastern coast. Asia Minor, Egypt, and Phœnicia all contributed to mix the Hellenic blood. In respect to Asia Minor we may relegate the account of the descent of Pelops on Peloponnesus to the region of unsatisfactory traditions, and still have a large amount of facts in favour of the infusion of Eastern blood from this quarter being considerable. These lie in the character of the islanders of the Ægean. Whatever else they may have been, they were partially Carian on one side, and partially Greek on the other.
The claims of Egypt to have contributed to the Greek stock have been closely criticized by Colonel Mure. His broad position, that the introduction of foreign settlers is generally followed by visible and definite influences on the language, is carried to, perhaps, an undue extent, since, to take an example from our own history, the effect of the Danes in England is by no means commensurate with their real importance as invaders. Or, perhaps, his views are limited to the criticism of a nation’s literature; in which case a foreign settlement, which gave nothing new to the speech of the people, to their arts, to their records, or to their mythology, would, to the historian of its literature, be no foreignsettlement at all. The ethnologist is, to a certain degree, in the same position; but only to a certain degree. At any rate, however, the fact of an Egyptian element in the early Hellenic population is an important point in the ancient commerce of the Mediterranean, even if it be nothing more.
I admit the likelihood sagaciously suggested by Colonel Mure, of the parts between Syria and Egypt being, in reality, Semitic[11]rather than Egyptian, yet passing for Egyptian in the eyes of a Greek; so that much which is really Phœnician, or Jewish, may have been considered as Coptic. Nevertheless, a few fragmentary facts seem to indicate a true introduction of Egyptian ideas and blood.
a.The name of the cityThebæ, common to both Greece and Egypt, is one of these.
b.The reproach cast in the teeth of Achilles in respect to Penthesilea by Thersites, which can only be alluded to here, but which is explained in Herodotus[12]by a reference to Egyptian manners is another.
c.The wordBarbaros, which the evidence of Herodotus, combined with the fact of the native name of the Africans immediately to the south of Egypt beingBerberat the present moment,induces me to consider it as an absolute Egyptian word.
d.The wordAfricais easily explained by supposing that the Egyptians took it from theAfernations of Abyssinia, and so gave it the Greeks, but it is not explicable by deducing it from a Semitic source.
e.The namesIolchosandColchis.—How comes Jason, in sailing from a part of Thessaly namedIolchos, to reach a part of Asia with a name all but identical? or, changing the expression, how comes the Colchos of the Black Sea which Jason visits, to have had a name so like that of the birthplace of the hero who visits it? These things, however little they may be set down to the chapter of accidents, are rarely accidental. Yet they cannot be connected with each other. The evidence, however, of Herodotus to the existence of Egyptian customs in Colchis (evidence which, although it will not prove the identity of the Georgian stock with the Egyptian, suggests the idea of a partial settlement) supplies an explanation. BothColchosandIolchosmay have been Egyptian.
Farther remarks upon the assumption that the Phœnicians only (and not the Egyptians) were a maritime people, will occur in the ethnology of Crete.
The influences from Syria and Palestine wereeither Phœnician or Jewish, and by no means exclusively Phœnician. The selling of the sons and daughters of Judah into captivity beyond the sea, is a fact attested by Isaiah. Neither do I think that the eponymus of the ArgiveDanaiwas other than that of the Israelite tribe of Dan; only we are so used to confine ourselves to the soil of Palestine in our consideration of the history of the Israelites, that we treat them as if they wereadscripti glebœ, and ignore the share they may have taken in the ordinary history of the world. Like priests of great sanctity, they are known in the holy places only—yet the seaports between Tyre and Ascalon, of Dan, Ephraim, and Asher, must have followed the history of seaports in general, and not have stood on the coast for nothing. What a light would be thrown on the origin of the namePelop-o-nesus, and the history of thePelop-id family, if abonâ fidenation ofPelopes, with unequivocal affinities, and cotemporary annals, had existed on the coast of Asia! Who would have hesitated to connect the two? Yet with the Danai and the tribe of Dan this is the case, and no one connects them.
In these remarks I by no means say that the resemblance is not accidental; although my opinion is against it being so. I only say that a conclusion which would have been suggested ifthe tribe of Dan had been Gentiles has been neglected because they were Jews.
That the alphabet and the weights and measures of Greece are Phœnician is likely enough; indeed, from the extent to which the habit of circumcision was strange to the Hellenes, the evidence is in favour of the coasts of Phœnicia, and the Philistine country having supplied a larger immigration than those of the Holy Land. In respect to the infusion itself of Semitic blood, whatever may have been the details of its origin, it was considerable; and has generally been admitted to have been so.
The absolute admixture of Thracian and Phrygian blood on the soil of Hellas, anterior to the Macedonian conquest, is a complex question.
If the Pelasgi belonged to either of these families, it was, of course, exceedingly great. But the ethnological position of the Pelasgi has yet to be considered. Even if they did not, an important question still stands over; since the influence of the Thracian bards and the Phrygian musicians, however much it has been either wholly or partially doubted by late writers, was admitted by the ancient Greeks themselves. Then there is the Trojan war, an event, which, however fabulous in its details, has some basis in fact. Lastly, there is the belief at the beginning of the historical period of the existence of Thraciansin Bœotia. All, however, upon these points that is indicated at present is the caution against excluding Thracian blood from Hellas on the mere strength of its barbaric character. It is also added that, until the ethnology of Thrace has been dealt with, the evidence in favour of the Italian origin of the Greek language is incomplete.
The extent of the Hellenic area at the date of the Homeric “Catalogue of Ships,” has been given. The majority of the Ægean islands were, then, other than Greek. On the coasts, however, of Asia Minor portions of what was afterwards Ionia had been colonized. Teos, for instance, and Smyrna are mentioned by name; on the other hand, the division of the colonized portions intoÆolia,Ionia, andDorisis unnoticed—probably it was unknown and non-existent. There are Dorians, however, in Crete. The Hellenes are simply a population of Thessaly, the Pelasgi allied to the Trojans, and circumscribed in area. Danaoi, Argeoi, and Achaioi are the nearest approaches to an equivalent to the subsequent termHellenes.
From the Homeric age until the approach of the Persian war, our notices of the Hellenes are so nearly limited to the Greeks of Asia, that the state of Thessaly, Bœotia, Attica, and the Peloponnesus—European and Continental Greece—isobscure; Athens, however, and Sparta are the parts that then command notice; not Miletus, Smyrna, or Lesbos.Hellas, too, as a collective name, has been developed. On the coast of Asia there is an Æolis, a Doris, and an Ionia, all of which the Hellenes look upon as settlements from corresponding parts of Greece, and there is division of the Hellenes themselves, of considerable political importance, into two classes—the Dorian and Ionian. These differences between their own age and the Homeric, the great historians of the Golden Age of Greek literature explained as they best could. Are we bound to admit their explanation? Not for the Pelasgi, because we can get no definite doctrine at all concerning them. Nor yet, in my mind, for the Doric, Æolic, and Ionic migrations in their details. I cannot believe that the Ionic dialect ever came out of Greece; holding, that nothing but a most undue deference to authority and opinion can deduce it directly from any older form of the Attic. And this is but one objection out of many. Indeed I submit to the reader’s consideration the doctrine that the differences expressed by the terms in question, are best explained and accounted for by supposing, either—
1. A difference between the original Italian populations; or—
2. A difference in the elements which were supplied in Greece itself.
Thus—admixture and alliance with the original population of Thessaly and South Macedon, rather than with that of Epirus may have determined the Æolian character; admixture and alliance with the South Epirotes rather than the Thessalians, the Doric; Semitic elements the Ionic. In the first and last instances, there may also have been a different starting-point from Italy; the Ionians being derived from the coast that gave its name to the Ionian Sea, the Æolians from the district to which Æolus was the eponymus.
That such results as these, wearing, perhaps, the garb of paradoxes, are in strong contrast to the recognized doctrines of the best Greek historians is undoubted. No reader, however, should dismiss them until he has satisfied himself that he has discussed the question ethnologically as well as historically; until he has clearly seen the extent whereto the reasoning which the palæontological geologist applies to the antiquities of the earth’s crust (reasoning wholly independent of historical testimony) is applicable to the archæology of the human species also; and (lastly and most especially) until having fully appreciated the necessity of making the geographical and philological connections of the Latin and Greek languagescoincide, he has experienced the difficulty of doing so in the face of the phenomena presented by the present distribution of the Skipetar, Dalmatian, Croatian, and other interjacent populations.
There is, then, a Greek language, a Greek literature, a Greek influence in literature; all beyond doubt. But there is no equally undoubted Greek stock. As far as there is such an entity, the speech is in Hellas, and the blood in Italy.
Up to a certain time the Hellenic influence has a northern direction, and acts upon certain populations originally barbarous, so as imperfectly to Hellenize them. Such is the case with Ætolia and Macedon. Afterwards, however, the direction of these influences changes, and Ætolia and Macedon contribute to dis-Hellenize (if so hybrid a word may be allowed) Greece. Before they do this, however, they have been taken out of the category of barbarism; just as would be the case if Anglo-Saxon England were reconquered by the half-Anglicized Ireland of the nineteenth century, and just as wouldnothave been the case had it been conquered by the Ireland of Brian Ború. Rome, too, respected the land that she had reduced; so that the physical history of Greece remains but slightly altered until the period of the Gothic, Hun, and Slavonic invasions. Andeven Alaric but ravaged the soil and destroyed life. We nowhere find proofs of any introduction of Gothic blood. Nor yet of Hun. It is the Slavonic stock that has given Greece its greatest foreign element.
Why is it that when we compare a map of Modern with one of Ancient Greece, such a small proportion of the old classical names, either modified or unmodified in form, can be found? Such is, undoubtedly, the case. Yet subject to Turkey as Greece was until the present century, the majority of the new names is not Turkish. On the contrary, they are chiefly Slavonic. The language of the later Byzantine writers explains this.[13]
As early as the last quarter of the sixth century (A.D.582), the movements set in towards Greece; Thrace and Macedon being overrun by Slavonians. The details here, however, are obscure, and there is an occasional confusion of the Slaves with the Avars. The latter nation, however, seems to have made no notable settlement in Southern Greece at least. In the latter half of the seventh century, Thessaly, Epirus, several of the islands, and parts of Asia Minor were overrun. In the ninth, Macedon is calledSlavonia (Σκλαβἱνια). In the eleventh, Athens is sacked, and the inhabitants driven to take refuge in the isle of Salamis. Under Constantine Porphyrogeneta, the presence of an Hellenic population is an exception. “In Macedon,” he writes, “the Scythians dwell, instead of the Macedonians.” Again, “the whole country is Slavonized.”
But the most remarkable passage is the following, which shows that a Slavonic population is so far the rule that where an approach to the ancient population is found it is dealt with as a remarkable phenomenon; and that by a Greek writer:—“It must be known that the inhabitants of the settlement (κἁστρον) Maina, are not of the race of the aforesaid Slaves, but of the old Romans, and even till the present time, they are called by their neighboursHellenes, from having been originally Pagans and idolatrers like the old Hellenes.”—De Adm. Imp.I.50.
Latin writers, equally with the Greek, considered Greece to be Slavonic:—“Inde (i.e., Sicilia) navigantes venerunt ultra mare Adrium ad urbemManafasiamin Sclavinica terra.”—From a Journal of St. Willibald, the writer of which, by Manafasia, means Napoli diMalvasiain the Morea.
More than this. The details of some of these Slavonic populations are given; so that we knowthat there were Ezeritæ and Milengi in the Morea, with Dragovitæ, Sagudatæ, Velegezetæ, Verzetæ, and others in Northern Greece.
In diminished numbers, the representatives of the old Laconians exist at the present time.A.D.1573, they had fourteen, they have now but three, villages—Prasto, or the ancient Prasiæ, Kastanitza, and Silina. With the exception of their dialect, the Romaic of modern Hellas is said to be spoken with considerable uniformity over the whole of Greece.
Without investigating the difficult question as to the proportion of Slavonic elements, it may fairly be said that Ancient Greece is the area of a greatly, and Modern Greece that of an inordinately, mixed stock. To this mixture, Italians, Albanians, and other populations of modern Europe have added.