CHAPTERIX.THE HELOT.Three days which I spent at Dar el Baida were occupied in a hot contest with my soldiers, and every person in the town seemed to have got involved on the one side or the other. They insisted on my returning straight by the sea-road to Rabat. The ingenuity and perseverance they displayed was of the highest order, considering that every step they took was a failure. Their object was to get back as soon as they could; but, as they dared neither leave nor constrain me, I successfully opposed thevis inertiæto all their devices. At last they gave in, declaring they were ready to accompany me when, where, and how I liked; but, just as we were setting forth, and were all assembled on horseback near the only gate, I discovered a fresh plot to frustrate a boar-hunt, which I had fixed for the following day.I slipped off my horse, and gliding round a corner, and otherways deceiving their vigilance or observation, I got away without being observed by any one, for the whole of the inhabitants were collected to see the start. There was but this one gate; but in my archæological researches I had discovered a part of the wall which was scalable: I made for it, got over, and dropped on the other side. After sitting on their horses’ backs for better than an hour, and fatiguing their poor necks, they got alarmed, instituted a search, ransacked the town, and were at their wits’ end, when a gardener entered the gate with his ass, bearing a load of mussels, which, he informed them “the Nazarene” had gathered on the rocks off the “point.” They now started in pursuit, accompanied by every person in the place who could muster a horse or mule. I was seated on the top of the promontory as they galloped up. I was prepared for a frantic scene, but the first glimpse, as their faces came in sight over the cheek of the hill, satisfied me that they had passed into a new phase. I had entered on the hereditary privileges of a saint or madman. I was adjured and entreated, and suffered myself to be lifted on the horse brought for me, and from that hour experienced nothing but affability, and the readiest assent to whatever I proposed. At the boar-hunt next day they mustered on foot, stripped off their sulams and haïks, ready to join in the sport, and one of them sent a bullet through a boar’s heart.After a few days spent in hunting, we were at our last bivouac before entering Rabat; and again amongst the Ziaïda, we entered a douar without parley, trusting to Sheik Tibi’s authority, but were bluntly told that they had “no room.” After some talk, our men marched out of the circle, and commenced unloading the camels fifty yards off. I was delighted at the thought of a quiet night away from the cattle, dogs, and “Lancasterian method;” but this was only a ruse. Presently a chief came out, and seized in his arms the pole, with the pendant roof ready to be stretched. Our people, after a simulated attempt to pitch, yielded, and tent and baggage were carried into the centre. Some of the tribe inquiring who and what we were, a grotesque attendant, with a face like a mask, and a mouth like a cavern, replied instantly, “This,” pointing to me, “furnishes the Sultan with guns, gunpowder, and balls, for he is a great friend of his. This,” pointing to Mr. Sernya, “is the representative of the seven kings of Christendom, and I am Abd Rachman of Sus.” I asked how it could come into his head, to say that I furnished guns and gunpowder to the Sultan? He answered, “I wished to make them know that it was good for us that you were here, and I spoke what they could comprehend.”Here was a living hieroglyphic, exactly the manner in which the old Egyptians took, to figure things in lines and drawings. What they looked to, was the phantasm produced upon the mind. Hanno, in his Periplus, the moment he turned Cape Spartel, comes upon flocks of pasturing elephants, and these elephants were unknown to the Egyptians, as they were unknown amongst the Greeks, until Alexander sent one home. Consider then the enormous prices paid for ivory; how completely the Phœnicians kept the ancients in ignorance of the sources of the supply even in their neighbourhood. But I refer to this, not on account of the ancient quadruped population of Mauritania, or the commerce of the Mediterranean, or the traffic of the Phœnicians, but as illustrating the hieroglyphic method of introducing me by my Breber attendant. The first notice that we have of the elephant, is amongst the Ethiopian tribute to Tothmas the Third; that is to say, I find there the elephant, though there are no signs of it in the figures. There are two bulls with curious little heads of Blackamoors between the horns, which at the extremity are divided as if they were antlers.[79]Now in this I read “Elephant.” The tusk in all ancient languages was calledhorn, the trunkhand. The painter had to represent a “bull with horns and hands.”[80]But as bulls had already horns, there was nothing remarkable therein. How to give a bull a hand was a matter of some difficulty. By placing the little human head upon the centre of the forehead, the symbolical character of horn and hand was achieved.During the discussion respecting our admission to the douar, the word “Helot,” was shouted out by a sharp lad, who insisted on taking me under his protection. This was the gist of the matter—we were Helots, and I wondered if it was some Spartan mode of expressing contempt. It was the very Spartan word, and the Helots of Laconica and the Kabyles of Algeria are derived from the distinction—of which I was now made aware—between the Ziaïdeel Gabaand the ZiaïdeHelots, and which I suppose would be more accurately rendered Ziaïdeel Gabaland Ziaïdeel Loto.Marmol speaks of them as a tribe; he says, “The whole country between Fez and Morocco is peopled with Beribas and Helots, who are a mixture of Africans and Arabs, besides other powerful Arab tribes who possess the country, and pasture their flocks between Fez and the sea. The two most powerful races of Mauritania and Tangitana, are the Ibue Maliks Sophean, and the Helots. They furnish 11,000 horse to the Sultan.”In our boar-hunting expeditions, we constantly stopped to gather blackberries from a tree between the olive and the myrtle, which, afterwards, when I had the opportunity of consulting authorities, I found to be the veryLotus.[81]Add to Loto the Arabic article, and you have at once Heloto, Helot. Unless I had been particular in my inquiries, I should have imagined that Heloto was the name of a people. A descriptive term derived from the tree may have therefore been applied in Greece, and mistaken by travellers in Sparta, or commentators at Athens, just as this has been mistaken by Marmol and Bochart.The turpentine-tree had also the same name,eloth, and it is curious that the same learned critic has derived the names of the two Jewish roots, from exactly the same distinction as that which prevails between the two branches of the Ziaïde. Eloth from the tree, Ezion Gaber from the rocky nature of the country.[82]He traces the etymology by a different process, which I will not follow. I content myself with the coincidence of results.There was a plant of the name as well as a tree. The Egyptian Lotus was a stock that came up by the water with a head like a poppy, containing grains like millet. They were allowed to ferment, and then dried and pounded. It was the lightest and pleasantest of bread when eaten warm; but, like Indian corn, became heavy and indigestible when cold. Those who lived on it suffered from no diseases of the stomach. It was therefore considered a cure for all these.The tree was the object of religious veneration, and was brought to Italy at a very early age.[83]It was planted in the temenas of temples. The deities so distinguished were those peculiarly Asiatic. One at the temple ofDiana Lucina, was four hundred and fifty years old in the time of Augustus: it was called Capellata, because theVestal Virginsbrought them and concentrated their hair. Another, equally remarkable for its enormous roots, stood by the temple of Vulcan. The word lotophagoi was derived from the tree, not the plant, for Pliny applies to the tree what Homer has said of the lotus and its fruit. The plant has played a part in nomenclature, such as no other can aspire to, not even the laurel, cedar, myrtle, platanus, or oak—giving its name to a people in Homeric time, and continuing to do so after thirty centuries. It may not therefore be so extravagant to look for traces of the name, to the north of the Mediterranean, whither not only the Phœnician rites, but the tree itself had been transplanted.The origin of the Helots is a mystery: the Doric conquerors of Laconia subjugated the original inhabitants, and these are distinguished into two classes, the Perioikoi, and the Helots; the Perioikoi, or “Dwellers around,” was a general term applying to the Messenians, and Laconians. The Helots being distinguished from them, must have been of a different race.[84]The fables, which strangers coming to Sparta report of their manners, and their introduction into public festivals, preserves to us distinct features and characters which, as Müller suggests, identify them with those people of Asia Minor who worshipped the Great Mother.Such a connexion might in some degree account for that very extraordinary event, the colonization of Cyrena by Spartans, which is the reverse of the current of ancient colonies. It furnishes also a key to the idea of the people of Judæa, of their relationship with the Spartans. When the Jews sent ambassadors to Rome, they directed them to go and salute their brethren at Sparta.Commentators and etymologists have endeavoured to explain the fact away, but the shout of the child in this sheepfold, while pointing, “There Helots;”[85]and “Here El Gaba!” seems to me to throw light upon portions of Greek history, which Thucydides has not elucidated, and which Potter and Fuller have not explained, and on passages of the Maccabees and Josephus, which Michaelis has amended and explained into nonsense and confusion.As to the name Helot, we are left equally in the dark. That it was not their own name for themselves is shown by the etymology suggested, and no one would accept it, but because he can find no other. The derivation from the townHelosis ungrammatical, and would only shift the difficulty of admitting its derivation from the participle of the verb “to capture;” the word, however, occurs in another shape. There was a festival called Heloteia—the Helotean—the festival of the Loto. It was held in Crete (a Phœnician settlement). It was to commemorate the rape of the Phœnician Europa. Here is a new puzzle. Again is introduced the easy expedient of the participle; then it is supposed that the Phœnicians called a virgin Helotes. Bochart exposes the absurdity of these suggestions, and remarks that Europa was no longer a virgin when she came to Crete. He derives it fromHalloth, Hebrew forepithalamium, forgetting his own objection of the minute before, and moreover that her marriage could not well be celebrated after her death; besides, there was another festival called Heloteia at Corinth, where there was no question of “virgin,” or of “capture,” or of “marriage.” It was held to commemorate the staying of a plague. Having then swept away all these suppositions, let us see what the Heloteia was. It was a festival in honour of Europa. Theboveswere carried in procession, and surrounded by anenormous wreathor garland, thirty feet in circumference. This garland had a name: it wasHellotis,Ἑλλωτίς.It was not uncommon to designate festivals after the garlands which surrounded the objects of veneration. That for the return of the Heraclidæ was calledStemmataïa, from the garlands round the figure of the rafts upon which they came into Peloponnesus. It is said, indeed, that the Hellotis was a garland of myrrh. The Loto is very like myrrh. The Greeks adopted the myrrh itself from the Easterns. It was appropriated to funeral ceremonies. It is mentioned by Nehemiah as one of the four trees used in the festival of the tabernacles, and classed with the palm, the olive, and the fir. In the traditions of Arabia, Adam fell from Paradise with three things—“A branch of myrrh, a date, and an ear of corn.”The word is found, little altered, scattered all over Greece. There is the district of Elatea in Epirus, Elatea city of Phocis, Helos in Laconia, Helos again in Macedonia, Laitæ on the Sperchius, and Hellopia is so often repeated, that it must have been a generic term. It applies to one third of the island of Eubœa. It is also a town there. It is found again to the south-east of the Pindus, and it is the name given to the district of Dordona. But it does not stand alone. The multitude of Phœnician and Hebrew names could never have been found there, unless it had been inhabited some time by tribes speaking the one or the other language; as for instance, the Laleges, the Bryges, and the Helots. The twin term to Loto has played a not less important part. It has penetrated into all the languages of Europe, and is spread over a large portion of what to the ancients was the known world. It is still to be traced in the name of the mountains, which were the limit between the Phœnician and Celtic races. We have it in Gabii of the Etruscans; we have it in the centre of Africa; we have in the Holy Land,Gaba,Geba,Gabala,Gibeon,[86]Gibbethon,Gibeah,[87]Gebal,[88]theGabenes. The Solymi in Asia Minor (who we are told spoke Hebrew) are called by Strabo (Καβάλλεις)Cabailes,[89]from the rugged nature of their country. Gabatha was a Hebrew term for rugged countries,[90]also for stones, thence for building, and thenceGebilwas builder; this was then used as an epithet of God—the “master-builder.”[91]Thus,Gavel-kind[92]andGibelee, tobacco (lotchia),Cybelewith her crown of towers,[93]theGabellesof France andCabals, Caballus, Cheval, Cavalry, &c.; the strength of the Cabyle is estimated at the number of horse.[94]As the Ziaïda are called Heloto from the woody country, so were their cognate tribes in Laconia; and as the Ziaïda are called Gaba from the rocky country,[95]so were their cognate tribes, the Solymi, in Asia Minor.The numbers of the tribes were given me as follows:Ziaïda et Gaba.Tents.Ouled Talca}100Ouled CalifaOuled Taninia}700Ouled YahiaOuled Zada}300Ouled HamedDruri Ouled Tarfea300Beni Oura3001700Ziaïda Helota.Ouled Arif}500Ouled TiremOuled Kidamia1506502350The province of Shonayea contains theZiaïda2300Mediuna6000Zien Usualem8000Herris}16,000AliEmdacraEnsub4000Buris36,00072,300The province pays 70,000 ducats. Tedlu pays the same, and is composed ofBeni Heran.Ismala.Beni Calif.Ouled Efkar-Kiber.Beni Efkar Segir.Beni Zamia.Ouled Smir.Oniti Urbah.Beni Mousa.Beni Sepkdan.Beni Melal.Beni Madan.Ducala without the Brebers pays the same.[79]This group may be seen in plaster, full size, in the British Museum.[80]Heeren quotes the hand-like horns, in support of a theory of his, that the Africans artificially trained the horns of cattle, and he infers from the absence of the elephant in this procession, that that animal had not then been rendered serviceable to man.“Long-horned cattle, whose heads are ornamented with the hands and heads of Negroes, probably artificial. They would scarcely have decapitated their own people to adorn their offering to a foreign prince.”—Wilkinson’sThebes,vol. ii. p.224.[81]Ὁ δὲ καρπὸς ἡλικὸς κύαμος πεπαίνεται δὲ ὥσπερ οἱ βότρυες, μεταβάλλων τὰς χροιάς. Φύεται δὲ καθάπερ τὰ μύρτα παράλληλα, πύκνος ἐπὶ τῶν βλαστῶν, ἐσθιόμενος δὲ ἐν τοῖς Λωτοφάγοις καλουμένοις γλυκὺς, ἡδὺς, καὶ ἀσινής.—Theophr.l. iv. c.4.[82]“NomenElathetiamElothest a terebinthis, quæ arbor est frequens, &c.”—Chanaan,lib. i. c.43.“A vicinia talis alicujusῥαχίαςdicta estAzion Gaber.”—Ibid.[83]The wood was used for the handles of swords and daggers, and for musical instruments; the bark served to colour leather, the root to dye wool.—Pliny,Nat. Hist.l. xxi. c.21.Virgil speaks of the myrtle as furnishing weapons for war, and the Swiss still use it for dyeing and tanning.[84]By submitting to Spartan discipline, Helots became Spartans.—Zelesapud Stob. Florileg, 40, 8.In the Messinian war, a Helot was taken to replace each Spartan who had fallen. They were calledEpunactæ.[85]Chrest. Arabevii.-xi. p.285.[86]“A city situated on a hill.”—Dennis.[87]There were two places so called. “It is certain there was a place calledGibeahon ahillnear Kerjath Jearim.”—Onnon.[88]The same name occurs in Josephus:Gibalene—Gabale—Pliny. From the same place Solomon had his stone cutters,Giblites.—Brown.See Wilson’s “Lands of the Bible,”vol. ii. p.40.[89]Derived by Bochart from גבליהGabala.[90]Φοῖνιξ δὲ γλῶσσα Γάδαρα λέγει τοὺς λιθοστρώτους, ὡς οἱ Ἑβραῖοι Γαβαθὰ τοποὺς λιθοστρώτους.—Tzetzes,Chil.8Hist.216.[91]Master-builder, algabil אלגאבל; whence Heliogabalus.[92]Gavel-kind, a word Arabic and Teutonic, signifying what it is, “tribe-children.”[93]The name is attempted to be derived fromκύπτω, because she made her followers bow their heads. This is nonsensical. I have shown elsewhere thatkuptoandtuptocome from the Moorish termtapia.Gaballa, in the old Spanish dictionaries, is given formarket-place. Thealcavalawas ten per cent. imposed at the market on all sales.[94]From the Arabic we havehack,nag, andhorse.Haca, a camel in the seventh year;naga, a she-camel;hors, an epithet of fleetness; whence also, perhaps,hoarne.[95]The country theyat presentinhabit is neither woody nor rocky. I at first took the wordgabaforgarb, west.
Three days which I spent at Dar el Baida were occupied in a hot contest with my soldiers, and every person in the town seemed to have got involved on the one side or the other. They insisted on my returning straight by the sea-road to Rabat. The ingenuity and perseverance they displayed was of the highest order, considering that every step they took was a failure. Their object was to get back as soon as they could; but, as they dared neither leave nor constrain me, I successfully opposed thevis inertiæto all their devices. At last they gave in, declaring they were ready to accompany me when, where, and how I liked; but, just as we were setting forth, and were all assembled on horseback near the only gate, I discovered a fresh plot to frustrate a boar-hunt, which I had fixed for the following day.
I slipped off my horse, and gliding round a corner, and otherways deceiving their vigilance or observation, I got away without being observed by any one, for the whole of the inhabitants were collected to see the start. There was but this one gate; but in my archæological researches I had discovered a part of the wall which was scalable: I made for it, got over, and dropped on the other side. After sitting on their horses’ backs for better than an hour, and fatiguing their poor necks, they got alarmed, instituted a search, ransacked the town, and were at their wits’ end, when a gardener entered the gate with his ass, bearing a load of mussels, which, he informed them “the Nazarene” had gathered on the rocks off the “point.” They now started in pursuit, accompanied by every person in the place who could muster a horse or mule. I was seated on the top of the promontory as they galloped up. I was prepared for a frantic scene, but the first glimpse, as their faces came in sight over the cheek of the hill, satisfied me that they had passed into a new phase. I had entered on the hereditary privileges of a saint or madman. I was adjured and entreated, and suffered myself to be lifted on the horse brought for me, and from that hour experienced nothing but affability, and the readiest assent to whatever I proposed. At the boar-hunt next day they mustered on foot, stripped off their sulams and haïks, ready to join in the sport, and one of them sent a bullet through a boar’s heart.
After a few days spent in hunting, we were at our last bivouac before entering Rabat; and again amongst the Ziaïda, we entered a douar without parley, trusting to Sheik Tibi’s authority, but were bluntly told that they had “no room.” After some talk, our men marched out of the circle, and commenced unloading the camels fifty yards off. I was delighted at the thought of a quiet night away from the cattle, dogs, and “Lancasterian method;” but this was only a ruse. Presently a chief came out, and seized in his arms the pole, with the pendant roof ready to be stretched. Our people, after a simulated attempt to pitch, yielded, and tent and baggage were carried into the centre. Some of the tribe inquiring who and what we were, a grotesque attendant, with a face like a mask, and a mouth like a cavern, replied instantly, “This,” pointing to me, “furnishes the Sultan with guns, gunpowder, and balls, for he is a great friend of his. This,” pointing to Mr. Sernya, “is the representative of the seven kings of Christendom, and I am Abd Rachman of Sus.” I asked how it could come into his head, to say that I furnished guns and gunpowder to the Sultan? He answered, “I wished to make them know that it was good for us that you were here, and I spoke what they could comprehend.”
Here was a living hieroglyphic, exactly the manner in which the old Egyptians took, to figure things in lines and drawings. What they looked to, was the phantasm produced upon the mind. Hanno, in his Periplus, the moment he turned Cape Spartel, comes upon flocks of pasturing elephants, and these elephants were unknown to the Egyptians, as they were unknown amongst the Greeks, until Alexander sent one home. Consider then the enormous prices paid for ivory; how completely the Phœnicians kept the ancients in ignorance of the sources of the supply even in their neighbourhood. But I refer to this, not on account of the ancient quadruped population of Mauritania, or the commerce of the Mediterranean, or the traffic of the Phœnicians, but as illustrating the hieroglyphic method of introducing me by my Breber attendant. The first notice that we have of the elephant, is amongst the Ethiopian tribute to Tothmas the Third; that is to say, I find there the elephant, though there are no signs of it in the figures. There are two bulls with curious little heads of Blackamoors between the horns, which at the extremity are divided as if they were antlers.[79]Now in this I read “Elephant.” The tusk in all ancient languages was calledhorn, the trunkhand. The painter had to represent a “bull with horns and hands.”[80]But as bulls had already horns, there was nothing remarkable therein. How to give a bull a hand was a matter of some difficulty. By placing the little human head upon the centre of the forehead, the symbolical character of horn and hand was achieved.
During the discussion respecting our admission to the douar, the word “Helot,” was shouted out by a sharp lad, who insisted on taking me under his protection. This was the gist of the matter—we were Helots, and I wondered if it was some Spartan mode of expressing contempt. It was the very Spartan word, and the Helots of Laconica and the Kabyles of Algeria are derived from the distinction—of which I was now made aware—between the Ziaïdeel Gabaand the ZiaïdeHelots, and which I suppose would be more accurately rendered Ziaïdeel Gabaland Ziaïdeel Loto.
Marmol speaks of them as a tribe; he says, “The whole country between Fez and Morocco is peopled with Beribas and Helots, who are a mixture of Africans and Arabs, besides other powerful Arab tribes who possess the country, and pasture their flocks between Fez and the sea. The two most powerful races of Mauritania and Tangitana, are the Ibue Maliks Sophean, and the Helots. They furnish 11,000 horse to the Sultan.”
In our boar-hunting expeditions, we constantly stopped to gather blackberries from a tree between the olive and the myrtle, which, afterwards, when I had the opportunity of consulting authorities, I found to be the veryLotus.[81]
Add to Loto the Arabic article, and you have at once Heloto, Helot. Unless I had been particular in my inquiries, I should have imagined that Heloto was the name of a people. A descriptive term derived from the tree may have therefore been applied in Greece, and mistaken by travellers in Sparta, or commentators at Athens, just as this has been mistaken by Marmol and Bochart.
The turpentine-tree had also the same name,eloth, and it is curious that the same learned critic has derived the names of the two Jewish roots, from exactly the same distinction as that which prevails between the two branches of the Ziaïde. Eloth from the tree, Ezion Gaber from the rocky nature of the country.[82]He traces the etymology by a different process, which I will not follow. I content myself with the coincidence of results.
There was a plant of the name as well as a tree. The Egyptian Lotus was a stock that came up by the water with a head like a poppy, containing grains like millet. They were allowed to ferment, and then dried and pounded. It was the lightest and pleasantest of bread when eaten warm; but, like Indian corn, became heavy and indigestible when cold. Those who lived on it suffered from no diseases of the stomach. It was therefore considered a cure for all these.
The tree was the object of religious veneration, and was brought to Italy at a very early age.[83]It was planted in the temenas of temples. The deities so distinguished were those peculiarly Asiatic. One at the temple ofDiana Lucina, was four hundred and fifty years old in the time of Augustus: it was called Capellata, because theVestal Virginsbrought them and concentrated their hair. Another, equally remarkable for its enormous roots, stood by the temple of Vulcan. The word lotophagoi was derived from the tree, not the plant, for Pliny applies to the tree what Homer has said of the lotus and its fruit. The plant has played a part in nomenclature, such as no other can aspire to, not even the laurel, cedar, myrtle, platanus, or oak—giving its name to a people in Homeric time, and continuing to do so after thirty centuries. It may not therefore be so extravagant to look for traces of the name, to the north of the Mediterranean, whither not only the Phœnician rites, but the tree itself had been transplanted.
The origin of the Helots is a mystery: the Doric conquerors of Laconia subjugated the original inhabitants, and these are distinguished into two classes, the Perioikoi, and the Helots; the Perioikoi, or “Dwellers around,” was a general term applying to the Messenians, and Laconians. The Helots being distinguished from them, must have been of a different race.[84]
The fables, which strangers coming to Sparta report of their manners, and their introduction into public festivals, preserves to us distinct features and characters which, as Müller suggests, identify them with those people of Asia Minor who worshipped the Great Mother.
Such a connexion might in some degree account for that very extraordinary event, the colonization of Cyrena by Spartans, which is the reverse of the current of ancient colonies. It furnishes also a key to the idea of the people of Judæa, of their relationship with the Spartans. When the Jews sent ambassadors to Rome, they directed them to go and salute their brethren at Sparta.
Commentators and etymologists have endeavoured to explain the fact away, but the shout of the child in this sheepfold, while pointing, “There Helots;”[85]and “Here El Gaba!” seems to me to throw light upon portions of Greek history, which Thucydides has not elucidated, and which Potter and Fuller have not explained, and on passages of the Maccabees and Josephus, which Michaelis has amended and explained into nonsense and confusion.
As to the name Helot, we are left equally in the dark. That it was not their own name for themselves is shown by the etymology suggested, and no one would accept it, but because he can find no other. The derivation from the townHelosis ungrammatical, and would only shift the difficulty of admitting its derivation from the participle of the verb “to capture;” the word, however, occurs in another shape. There was a festival called Heloteia—the Helotean—the festival of the Loto. It was held in Crete (a Phœnician settlement). It was to commemorate the rape of the Phœnician Europa. Here is a new puzzle. Again is introduced the easy expedient of the participle; then it is supposed that the Phœnicians called a virgin Helotes. Bochart exposes the absurdity of these suggestions, and remarks that Europa was no longer a virgin when she came to Crete. He derives it fromHalloth, Hebrew forepithalamium, forgetting his own objection of the minute before, and moreover that her marriage could not well be celebrated after her death; besides, there was another festival called Heloteia at Corinth, where there was no question of “virgin,” or of “capture,” or of “marriage.” It was held to commemorate the staying of a plague. Having then swept away all these suppositions, let us see what the Heloteia was. It was a festival in honour of Europa. Theboveswere carried in procession, and surrounded by anenormous wreathor garland, thirty feet in circumference. This garland had a name: it wasHellotis,Ἑλλωτίς.
It was not uncommon to designate festivals after the garlands which surrounded the objects of veneration. That for the return of the Heraclidæ was calledStemmataïa, from the garlands round the figure of the rafts upon which they came into Peloponnesus. It is said, indeed, that the Hellotis was a garland of myrrh. The Loto is very like myrrh. The Greeks adopted the myrrh itself from the Easterns. It was appropriated to funeral ceremonies. It is mentioned by Nehemiah as one of the four trees used in the festival of the tabernacles, and classed with the palm, the olive, and the fir. In the traditions of Arabia, Adam fell from Paradise with three things—“A branch of myrrh, a date, and an ear of corn.”
The word is found, little altered, scattered all over Greece. There is the district of Elatea in Epirus, Elatea city of Phocis, Helos in Laconia, Helos again in Macedonia, Laitæ on the Sperchius, and Hellopia is so often repeated, that it must have been a generic term. It applies to one third of the island of Eubœa. It is also a town there. It is found again to the south-east of the Pindus, and it is the name given to the district of Dordona. But it does not stand alone. The multitude of Phœnician and Hebrew names could never have been found there, unless it had been inhabited some time by tribes speaking the one or the other language; as for instance, the Laleges, the Bryges, and the Helots. The twin term to Loto has played a not less important part. It has penetrated into all the languages of Europe, and is spread over a large portion of what to the ancients was the known world. It is still to be traced in the name of the mountains, which were the limit between the Phœnician and Celtic races. We have it in Gabii of the Etruscans; we have it in the centre of Africa; we have in the Holy Land,Gaba,Geba,Gabala,Gibeon,[86]Gibbethon,Gibeah,[87]Gebal,[88]theGabenes. The Solymi in Asia Minor (who we are told spoke Hebrew) are called by Strabo (Καβάλλεις)Cabailes,[89]from the rugged nature of their country. Gabatha was a Hebrew term for rugged countries,[90]also for stones, thence for building, and thenceGebilwas builder; this was then used as an epithet of God—the “master-builder.”[91]Thus,Gavel-kind[92]andGibelee, tobacco (lotchia),Cybelewith her crown of towers,[93]theGabellesof France andCabals, Caballus, Cheval, Cavalry, &c.; the strength of the Cabyle is estimated at the number of horse.[94]As the Ziaïda are called Heloto from the woody country, so were their cognate tribes in Laconia; and as the Ziaïda are called Gaba from the rocky country,[95]so were their cognate tribes, the Solymi, in Asia Minor.
The numbers of the tribes were given me as follows:
The province of Shonayea contains the
The province pays 70,000 ducats. Tedlu pays the same, and is composed of
Ducala without the Brebers pays the same.
[79]This group may be seen in plaster, full size, in the British Museum.
[80]Heeren quotes the hand-like horns, in support of a theory of his, that the Africans artificially trained the horns of cattle, and he infers from the absence of the elephant in this procession, that that animal had not then been rendered serviceable to man.
“Long-horned cattle, whose heads are ornamented with the hands and heads of Negroes, probably artificial. They would scarcely have decapitated their own people to adorn their offering to a foreign prince.”—Wilkinson’sThebes,vol. ii. p.224.
[81]Ὁ δὲ καρπὸς ἡλικὸς κύαμος πεπαίνεται δὲ ὥσπερ οἱ βότρυες, μεταβάλλων τὰς χροιάς. Φύεται δὲ καθάπερ τὰ μύρτα παράλληλα, πύκνος ἐπὶ τῶν βλαστῶν, ἐσθιόμενος δὲ ἐν τοῖς Λωτοφάγοις καλουμένοις γλυκὺς, ἡδὺς, καὶ ἀσινής.—Theophr.l. iv. c.4.
[82]“NomenElathetiamElothest a terebinthis, quæ arbor est frequens, &c.”—Chanaan,lib. i. c.43.
“A vicinia talis alicujusῥαχίαςdicta estAzion Gaber.”—Ibid.
[83]The wood was used for the handles of swords and daggers, and for musical instruments; the bark served to colour leather, the root to dye wool.—Pliny,Nat. Hist.l. xxi. c.21.
Virgil speaks of the myrtle as furnishing weapons for war, and the Swiss still use it for dyeing and tanning.
[84]By submitting to Spartan discipline, Helots became Spartans.—Zelesapud Stob. Florileg, 40, 8.
In the Messinian war, a Helot was taken to replace each Spartan who had fallen. They were calledEpunactæ.
[85]Chrest. Arabevii.-xi. p.285.
[86]“A city situated on a hill.”—Dennis.
[87]There were two places so called. “It is certain there was a place calledGibeahon ahillnear Kerjath Jearim.”—Onnon.
[88]The same name occurs in Josephus:Gibalene—Gabale—Pliny. From the same place Solomon had his stone cutters,Giblites.—Brown.See Wilson’s “Lands of the Bible,”vol. ii. p.40.
[89]Derived by Bochart from גבליהGabala.
[90]Φοῖνιξ δὲ γλῶσσα Γάδαρα λέγει τοὺς λιθοστρώτους, ὡς οἱ Ἑβραῖοι Γαβαθὰ τοποὺς λιθοστρώτους.—Tzetzes,Chil.8Hist.216.
[91]Master-builder, algabil אלגאבל; whence Heliogabalus.
[92]Gavel-kind, a word Arabic and Teutonic, signifying what it is, “tribe-children.”
[93]The name is attempted to be derived fromκύπτω, because she made her followers bow their heads. This is nonsensical. I have shown elsewhere thatkuptoandtuptocome from the Moorish termtapia.Gaballa, in the old Spanish dictionaries, is given formarket-place. Thealcavalawas ten per cent. imposed at the market on all sales.
[94]From the Arabic we havehack,nag, andhorse.Haca, a camel in the seventh year;naga, a she-camel;hors, an epithet of fleetness; whence also, perhaps,hoarne.
[95]The country theyat presentinhabit is neither woody nor rocky. I at first took the wordgabaforgarb, west.