clearly appear to have been works of their | ting the effects produced by them on the moral hands. The huge structures, remains of which and intellectual character, the religious or politare visible in many parts of Greece, in Epirus, ical condition of the Greeks. It required no Italy, and the western coast of Asia Minor, and little boldness to venture even to throw out a which are commonly described by the epithet doubt as to the truth of an opinion sanctioned Cyclopean, because, according to the Greek le- by such high authority, and by the prescription gend, the Cyclopes built the walls of Tiryns and of such a long and undisputed possession of the Mycenæ, might more properly be called Pelas-public mind; and perhaps it might never have gian, from their real authors. The legendary been questioned, if the inferences drawn from Cyclopes, indeed, are said to have been brought it had not provoked a jealous inquiry into the over from Lycia by Prætus, king of Argos, the grounds on which it rests. When, however, founder of Tiryns. But this tradition, whatev- this spirit was once awakened, it was perceived er may have been its foundation, is certainly that the current stories of these ancient settlenot a sufficient clew for tracing the style, as ments afforded great room for reasonable diswell as the name, to Argolis, nor a safe ground trust, not merely in the marvellous features for ascribing its origin to a different race from they exhibit, but in the still more suspicious the Pelasgians. The epithet most probably ex-fact that, with the lapse of time, their number presses nothing more than the wonder excited seems to increase and their details to be more by these gigantic works in the Greeks of a more accurately known, and that the farther we go refined age. It suggests, however, the point back the less we hear of them, till, on consultof view from which they may reflect some lighting the Homeric poems, we lose all traces of on the people to which they belong. The ear- their existence. We can here neither affect to liest of them are so rude, that they seem at first disregard the controversies that are still agitasight to indicate nothing more than a capacity ted on this subject, and repeat the common traconfined to undertakings which demanded much ditions without warning the reader of their 'toil and little skill, and a state of society settled questionable character, nor can we discuss the enough to encourage such exertions. In this arguments of either side. But as it seems posrespect, it matters little whether they were sible, and even necessary, to take a middle productions of free labour, or tasks imposed by course between the old and the new opinions, a foreign master. The gradual progress that it will be proper to explain why we cannot emmay be traced, through a series of easy transi- brace either with an unqualified assent. tions, from these shapeless masses to regular A slight inspection of the Greek stories about and well-contrived buildings, seems to show the foreign settlers seems sufficient to show that, in those of the rudest workmanship, the that neither the authority on which they rest, sense of symmetry, the most distinguishing fea- nor their internal evidence, is such as to satisfy ture in the Greek character, was only suppress- a cautious inquirer. We must here briefly noed in the struggle of an untaught people with tice their leading features. The principal colthe difficulties that beset the infancy of art. onies brought to Greece from the East are said The interval between the style, if it may be so to have been planted in Argolis, on the opposite called, of the most unsightly Cyclopean wall and side of the Saronic Gulf, and in Boeotia. The that of edifices like the treasury or tomb of At- Pelasgians were still masters of the plain of reus, is perhaps not so wide as that which sep- Argos when Danaus, driven out of Egypt by arates works of the latter class from what may domestic feuds, landed on the coast, was raised be conceived to have been the simplest form of to the throne by the consent of the natives, and the Doric temple; though they were much far-founded a town, afterward the citadel of Argos, ther removed from that stage in which necessity is still the parent of invention, utility its only guide, beauty its unsought, and, seemingly, accidental result. CHAPTER III. FOREIGN SETTLERS IN GREECE. In a comparatively late period-that which followed the rise of an historical literature among the Greeks we find a belief generally prevalent, both in the people and among the learned, that in ages of very remote antiquity, before the name and dominion of the Pelasgians had given way to that of the Hellenic race, foreigners had been led by various causes from distant lands to the shores of Greece, and there had planted colonies, founded dynasties, built cities, and introduced useful arts and social institutions before unknown to the ruder natives. The same belief has been almost universally adopted by the learned of modern times, many of whom, regarding the general fact as sufficiently established, have busied themselves in discovering fresh traces of such migrations, or in investiga and known by the Pelasgian name Larissa. He is said to have given his name to the warlike Danai, once so celebrated that Homer uses this as a general appellation for the Greeks, when that of Hellenes was still confined to a narrow range. The later Argives showed his tomb in their market-place, and many other monuments of his presence. The popular belief is confirmed by the testimony of Herodotus, who mentions the migration of Danaus without any distrust, and even learned in Egypt the name of the city from which he came and the historian's evidence appears to be backed by an independent tradition which he found existing at Rhodes, that Danaus had landed there on his passage, and founded a temple of Minerva at Lindus, to which, in the sixth century B.C., Amasis, king of Egypt, sent offerings in honour of its Egyptian origin. This is the naked abstract of the tradition; and, when so related, stripped of all its peculiar circumstances, it may seem perfectly credible, as well as amply attested. On the other hand, the popular legend exhibits other features, apparently original, and not to be separated from its substance, which are utterly incredible, and can scarcely be explained without transporting the whole narrative out of the sphere of history into that of religious fable. | Leleges. But this solitary and ill-attested leAll authors agree that Danaus fled to Greece, gend, which was manifestly occasioned by the accompanied by a numerous family of daughters ancient rivalry of the Carian and Lelegian races, (fifty is the received poetical number), to escape cannot serve to prove the Egyptian origin of from the persecution of their suiters, the sons the latter people, which seems not to have been of his brother Ægyptus. This is an essential suspected by any other ancient authors. In part of the story, which cannot be severed from Attica we meet with reports of more than one the rest without the most arbitrary violence. Egyptian colony. The first, led by Cecrops, is The Danaids, according to Herodotus, founded said to have found Attica without a king, desothe temple at Lindus, and instructed the Pelas-lated by the deluge which befell it a century begian women at Argos in the mystic rites of fore, in the reign of Ogyges. If we may beDemeter. To them, too, was ascribed the dis- lieve some writers of the latest period of Greek covery of the springs or the wells which re- literature, Cecrops gave his own name to the lieved the natural aridity of the Argive soil. land, and on the Cecropian rock founded a new Before Herodotus, Eschylus had exhibited on city, which he called Athens, after the goddess the Attic stage the tragical fate of the sons of Athené, whom, with the Romans, we name Ægyptus, who had pursued the fugitives to Minerva. To him is ascribed the introduction Greece, and, after forcing them to the altar, not only of a new religion of pure and harmless were slain by their hands. A local legend re- rites, but even of the first element of civil socilated that Lerna, the lake or swamp near Argos, ety, the institution of marriage; whence it may had been the scene of the murder, and that the be reasonably inferred that the savage natives heads of the suiters were there buried, while learned from him all the arts necessary to civtheir bodies were deposited in a separate monu-ilized life. But, notwithstanding the confidence ment.* One of the main streams of Lerna derived its name from Amymoné, one of the sisters, to whom Neptune, softened by her beauty, had revealed the springs which had before disappeared at his bidding. This intimate connexion between the popular legend and the peculiar character of the Argive soil, which exhibited a striking contrast between the upper part of the plain and the low grounds of Lerna, must be allowed to give some colour to the conjecture of the bolder critics, who believe the whole story of Danaus to have been of purely Argive origin, and to have sprung up out of these local accidents, though all attempts hitherto made to explain its minuter features seem to have failed. The Argive colonies in the east of Asia Minor might be conceived to have contributed something towards the form which it finally assumed, even before Egypt was thrown open to the Greeks. But the historian cannot decide between these contending views, and must resign himself to the uncertainty of the fact, unless it can be maintained by some stronger evidence, or more satisfactorily explained. If we could consent to swell the list of the foreign settlers with the conjectures of modern critics, we should not consider the arrival of Danaus as an insulated fact. We might have spoken of Inachus, who is called the first King of Argos, and is said to have given his name to its principal river: hence, in the mythical genealogies, he is described as a son of Oceanus, the common parent of all rivers. Yet on this ground it has sometimes been supposed that he too came to Greece across the sea. We as little venture to rely on such inferences as to construe the fabled wanderings of Io, the daughter of Inachus, into a proof that, even before the time of Danaus, intercourse subsisted between Greece and Egypt. If, however, we turn northward of the Isthmus, we find another Egyptian prince at Megara, where, according to the tradition which Pausanias heard there, Lelex, having crossed over from Egypt, founded the dynasty which succeeded that of Car, the son of Phoroneus, and gave his name to the * Apollod., ií., 1, 5, 11. Pausanias (ii., 24, 2) inverts the story. with which this story has been repeated in modern times, the Egyptian origin of Cecrops is extremely doubtful. It is refuted by the silence of the elder Greek poets and historians; and, even in the period when it became current, is contradicted by several voices, which describe Cecrops as a native of the Attic soil: and the undisguised anxiety of the Egyptians to claim the founder of Athens for their countryman could excite the distrust even of a writer so credulous and uncritical as Diodorus.* Not content with Cecrops, they pretended to have sent out Erechtheus with a supply of corn for the relief of their Attic kinsmen, who rewarded his munificence with the crown; he, in return, completed his work of beneficence by founding the mysteries of Eleusis on the model of those which were celebrated in Egypt in honour of Isis. A third Egyptian colony was said to have been led to Attica by Peteus only one generation before the Trojan war. The arguments of the Egyptians seem to have been as weak as their assertions were bold. The least absurd was that which they derived from the Oriental character of the primitive political institutions of Attica. But some more distinct marks of Egyptian origin would be necessary to countervail the tacit dissent of the Greek authors, who might have been expected to be best informed on the subject. Nor is their silence to be ex-, plained by the vanity of the Athenians, who were accustomed, indeed, to consider themselves as children of the Attic soil, but were not, on that account, reluctant to believe that their land had been early visited by illustrious strangers. We purposely abstain from insisting on the result of mythological inquiries, which tend to show that both Cecrops and Erechtheus are fictitious personages, and that they belong entirely to a homesprung Attic fable. Such attacks would be wasted on tales which scarcely present the semblance of an historical foundation.+ The opinion of a foreign settlement in Boeotia | the mysterious Cabiri, decisive marks of a Pe lasgian origin; insist upon the inland position of Thebes as inconsistent with the ordinary character of a Phoenician settlement; and consider the epithet of the Tyrian Cadmus as a chronological error, which betrays the late rise of the story, the authors of which substituted Tyre for the elder Sidon. As if to increase our is undoubtedly supported by much better authority. That Cadmus led a Phoenician colony into the heart of the country, and founded a town called Cadmea, which afterward became the citadel of Thebes, was a tradition which had certainly been current in Boeotia long before the time of Herodotus, who not only confirms it by the weight of his own judgment-perplexity, an ingenious attempt has been made which is not here biased, as in the case of Da- to prove that the Cadmeans were a Cretan colnaus, by the Egyptian priesthood-but also by ony.* some collateral evidence. He had ascertained that one of the most celebrated Athenian families traced its origin to the companions of Cadmus; that another division of them had been left behind in the Isle of Thera; and that his kinsman Thasus had given his name to the island where the Phoenicians opened the gold mines which were still worked in the days of the historian. These may, indeed, so far as Cadmus is concerned, be considered as mere ramifications of the Theban legend, not more conclusive than the tradition that followers of Cadmus settled in Euboea. But they at least prove that Phoenicians had very early gained a footing on the islands and shores of Greece. Thebes boasted of having received the precious gift of letters from her Phoenician colonists; and Herodotus adopts this opinion after a diligent inquiry, which ought not to be wholly disregarded, because he was deceived by some montaments which were either forged or misinterpreted. The Oriental derivation of the name of Cadmus is, indeed, as uncertain as the original import of that of Phoenix, which Hellanicus gives to his father, but which was used by the Greeks as one of the proper names of their native heroes. Thebes likewise showed what were thought to be the traces of Phoenician worship; and the story of the Sphinx, whatever may have been its origin, may seem to point, if not to Phoenicia, at least towards the East. On the other hand, modern writers find, in the legends of Cadmus and his consort Harmonia, in their connexion with Samothrace, and with denden Kunst, p. 26, f., from the Attic religion and art, par- 407) *Cadmus was said to have dedicated a statue of Athene at Thebes, with the title of Onga; on which Pausanias (1x., 12, 2) observes that this name, which is Phoenician (compare Steph. Byz., Oykała and Xvd), contradicts the opinion of those who hold Cadmus to have been, not a Phouician, but an Egyptian. There is still another celebrated name which we must add to this list, before we proceed to consider the subject in a different point of view. According to a tradition which appears to be sanctioned by the authority of Thucydides, Pelops passed over from Asia to Grecce with treasures which, in a poor country, afforded him the means of founding a new dynasty. His descendants sat for three generations on the throne of Argos: their power was generally acknowledged throughout Greece, and, in the historian's opinion, united the Grecian states in the expedition against Troy. The renown of their ancestor was transmitted to posterity by the name of the southern peninsula, called after him Peloponnesus, or the Isle of Pelops. The region of Asia from which Pelops came is not uni formly described, any more than the motives of his migration. Most authors, however, fix his native seat in the Lydian town of Sipylus where his father Tantalus was fabled to have reigned in more than mortal prosperity, till he abused the favour of the gods, and provoked them to destroy him. The poetical legends varied as to the marvellous causes through which the abode of Pelops was transferred from Sipylus to Pisa, where he won the daughter and the crown of the bloodthirsty tyrant nomaus, as the prize of his victory in the chariot-race. The authors who, like Thucydides, saw nothing in the story but a political transaction, related that Pelops had been driven from his native land by an invasion of Ilus, king of Troy ;t and hence it has very naturally been inferred that, in leading the Greeks against Troy, Agamemnon was merely avenging the wrongs of his ancestor. On the other hand, it has been observed that, far from giving any countenance to this hypothesis, Homer, though he records the genealogy by which the sceptre of Pelops was transmitted to Agamemnon, nowhere alludes to the Asiatic origin of the house. As little does he seem to have heard of the adventures of the Lydian stranger at Pisa. The zeal with which the Eleans maintained this part of the story, manifestly with a view to exalt the antiquity and the lustre of the Olympic games, over which they presided, raises a natural suspicion that the hero's connexion with the East may have been a fiction, occasioned by a like interest, and This distrust is conpropagated by like arts. firmed by the religious form which the legend was finally made to assume, when it was combined with an Asiatic superstition, which found its way into Greece after the time of Homer. The seeming sanction of Thucydides loses almost all its weight when we observe that he does not deliver his own judgment on the question, but merely adopts the opinion of the Pelo * Welcker, Ueber eine Kretische Colonie in Theben. † Puus., ii., 22, 3. By Kruse, Hellas, i., p. 485 ponnesian antiquarians, which he found best case indeed required, but which would not have adapted to his purpose of illustrating the progress of society in Greece. There can scarcely be a more irksome or unprofitable labour than that of balancing arguments of this nature, and watching the fluctuation of the scales, as a new conjecture is thrown in on either side. We turn with impatience from this ungrateful task, to make a few genoral remarks, which may, perhaps, assist the reader in appreciating the comparative value of these traditions. We must repeat that none of these stories, considered by themselves, have any marks of truth sufficient to decide the conviction of a scrupulous inquirer; nor can their number be safely held to make up for their individual deficiency in weight. Yet there are other grounds which seem to justify the belief, that at least they cannot have been wholly destitute of historical foundation. Even if we had no such distinct accounts of particular persons and events, it would be scarcely possible to doubt that, at a period long prior to that represented by the Homeric poems, migrations must have taken place from various parts of the East to the shores of Greece. We have sufficient evidence that, in the earliest times, Greece was agitated by frequent irruptions and revolutions, arising out of the flux and reflux of the nations which fought and wandered in the countries adjacent to its northeastern borders. We have ample reason to believe that, during the same period, the western regions of Asia were not in a more settled state. Such movements appear to be indicated by the history of the Phrygians, who are said to have passed out of Europe into Asia Minor, which, nevertheless, was most probably their earlier seat; by the expedition of the Amazons, which left such deep traces in the legends of Attica and the neighbouring countries; perhaps by that of the fabulous Memnon, which the Greek poets connected with the siege of Troy.* It cannot surprise us, that, while Macedonia and Thrace were a highway, or a theatre of war, for flying or conquering tribes, other wanderers should have bent their course to Greece across the Ægean. Its islands appear from time immemorial to have been the steps by which Asia and Europe exchanged a part of their unsettled population. Thus, in the remotest antiquity, we find Carians occupying both sides of the Saronic Gulf; and Sicyon derived one of its most ancient names from a people who are described as among the earliest inhabitants of Cyprus, Rhodes, and Crete.t When, thus prepared to contemplate Greece as a land, not secluded from the rest of the world, but peculiarly open and inviting to foreign settlers, we again consider the stories of the various colonies said to have been planted there by strangers from the East, we are struck by some coincidences which cannot have been the result of design, and which, therefore, bespeak a favourable hearing. It is on the eastern side of Greece that, with the solitary and doubtful exception of Pelops, we find these colonies planted; a restriction which the nature of the * See an essay on this subject in the Philological Museum, No. iv. Telchinia, Steph. Byz, Trλxís, Paus., ii., 5, 6, and ix, 19, 1. Diod., v., 55. been observed by religious fraud or patriotic Diod., Fr., xl. At If + According to Goar's reading, a dynasty of Hellenic shepherds occurs in Syncellus, p. 114 (ed. Bonn). Paus., ix., 12, 2. Conon., 37. longer be startled by the inland position of his new capital, and shall have no occasion for the fanciful conjecture, that he chose it with a view to form a commercial communication between distant parts of the coast, a destination of which we find not the slightest hint in the ancient legends of Thebes. jecture as to the influence they exerted on the Greek mythology. The name of the Phoenicians raises another question. The expedition of Cadmus manifestly represents the maritime adventures of his countrymen; but it leaves us in doubt whether the Phoenician settlements ascribed to It seems to be only in some such sense as his followers are to be referred to the shepherds that here explained, that it is possible to con- who were expelled from Egypt, or to the comceive Egyptian colonies to have been ever mercial people who, at a later period, covered planted in Greece: for the expedition of Sesos- the coasts of Africa and Spain with their colotris, even if admitted to be an historical event, nies. The foundation of Thebes might most can scarcely serve as a foundation for the story. probably be attributed to the former; but it We would not decide, indeed, whether, among must have been the mercantile spirit of Tyre, the earliest inhabitants of Greece, some of to- or Sidon, that was attracted by the mines of tally different race from these Phoenician fugi- Cyprus, Thasus, and Eubœa. The precise tives may not have taken nearly the same date of the first opening of the intercourse becourse; but settlers of purely Egyptian blood, tween Phoenicia and Greece is wholly uncercrossing the Ægean, and founding maritime cit-tain; but we see no reason for doubting that it ies, appears to be inconsistent with everything existed several centuries before the time of we know of the national character. Here, how- Homer, and we are inclined to consider this as ever, a new question arises. It is in itself of the most powerful of all the external causes very little importance whether a handful of that promoted the progress of civilized life, and Egyptians or Phoenicians were or were not introduced new arts and knowledge in the islmingled with the ancient population of Greece. ands and shores of the Egean. It has been All that renders this inquiry interesting is the suspected, not without a great appearance of effect which the arrival of these foreigners is probability, that the Phoenicians are often desupposed to have produced on the state of soci- scribed in the legends of the Greek seas under ety in their new country. Herodotus represents different names. Thus the half-fabulous race the greater part of the religious notions and called the Telchines exhibits so many features practices of the Greeks, the objects and forms which remind us of the Phoenician character, of their worship, as derived from Egypt. When that it is difficult to resist the conviction that we consider that among the Greeks, as in most they are the same people, disguised by popular other nations, it was religion that called forth and poetical fictions. Cyprus seems to have their arts, their poetry, perhaps even their phi- | been looked upon as their most ancient seat; losophy, it will be evident how many interesting but they are equally celebrated in the traditions questions depend on this; and as it is the de- of Crete and Rhodes; and Sicyon, as has been gree in which the religious and intellectual cul- observed, derived one of its names from them. ture of the Greeks was derived from foreign These stations exactly correspond to the course sources that constitutes the whole importance which the Phoenicians must be supposed to have of the controversy, so it is the point on which pursued, when they began their maritime adthe decision must finally hinge. But neither ventures in the Mediterranean, as the mythical the study of Greek mythology, nor the history attributes of the Telchines do to their habits of Greek art, has yet arrived at such a stage of and occupations. The Telchines were fabled maturity as to enable the historian to pronounce to be the sons of the sea, the guardians of Powith confidence on the rival hypotheses, one of seidon in his childhood; they were said to have which fetches from the East what the other re- forged his trident, and Saturn's sickle. In gards as the native growth of the Grecian soil. general, to them are ascribed the first labours The difficulty is much increased if we interpret of the smithy, the most ancient images of the the traditions about the Egyptian colonies in gods; and by a natural transition they came to that which appears to be their most probable be viewed as sorcerers, who could assume all sense. We know something about the religion kinds of shapes, could raise tempests, and and the arts of the Egyptians, and of the Phoe-afflict the earth with barrenness: and they nicians on the coast of Syria. But as to the seem even to have retained a permanent place Phoenician conquerors of Egypt, we have no in- in the popular superstitions as a race of maliformation to ascertain the relation in which cious elves. It can scarcely be doubted that they stood to the natives, and how far they these legends imbody recollections of arts inwere qualified to be the bearers of all that He- troduced or refined by foreigners, who attractrodotus believed Egypt to have imparted to ed the admiration of the rude tribes which they Greece. The author from whom Diodorus visited. It may be questioned whether the drew his account of Danaus and Cadmus,† as-policy of the Phoenicians ever led them to aim cribed their expulsion to the resentment and at planting independent colonies in the islands alarm excited in the Egyptians by the profane- or on the continent of Greece; and whether ness of the strangers, who neglected their rites, they did not content themselves with establishand threatened the total subversion of the na-ing factories, which they abandoned when their tional religion. If there is any truth in this statement, they must have been very ill fitted to instruct the Pelasgians in the Egyptian mysteries, and a boundless field is opened for con attention was diverted to a different quarter. In their early expeditions, the objects of piracy and commerce appear to have been combined in the manner described by Homer and Herodotus. But it is highly probable that, wherever they came, they not only introduced the produets of their own arts, but stimulated the in |