to the Shepherds who were expelled from Egypt, or to the commercial people who, at a later period, covered the coasts of Africa and Spain with their colonies. The foundation of Thebes might, most probably, be attributed to the former: but it must have been the mercantile spirit of Tyre, or Sidon, that was attracted by the mines of Cyprus, Thasus, and Eubœa. The precise date of the first opening of the intercourse between Phoenicia and Greece is wholly uncertain; but we see no reason for doubting that it existed several centuries before the time of Homer, and we are inclined to consider this as the most powerful of all the external causes that promoted the progress of civilised life, and introduced new arts and knowledge in the islands and shores of the Egean. It has been suspected, not without a great appearance of probability, that the Phoenicians are often described in the legends of the Greek seas under different names. Thus the half-fabulous race called the Telchines exhibits so many features which remind us of the Phoenician character, that it is difficult to resist the conviction that they are the same people, disguised by popular and poetical fictions.1 Cyprus seems to have been looked upon as their most ancient seat; but they are equally celebrated in the traditions of Crete and Rhodes; and Sicyon, as has been observed, derived one of its names from them. These stations exactly correspond to the course which the Phoenicians must be supposed to have pursued, when they began their maritime adventures in the Mediterranean, as the mythical attributes of the Telchines do to their habits and occupations. The Telchines were fabled to be the sons of the sea, the guardians of Poseidon in his childhood: they were said to have forged his trident, and Saturn's sickle. In general, to them are ascribed the first labours of the smithy, 1 See Hoeck, Kreta, i. pp. 345-356. CHAP, III. CHAP. III. the most ancient images of the gods; and by a natural transition they came to be viewed as sorcerers, who could assume all kinds of shapes, could raise tempests, and afflict the earth with barrenness: and they seem even to have retained a permanent place in the popular superstitions as a race of malicious elves. It can scarcely be doubted that these legends embody recollections of arts introduced or refined by foreigners, who attracted the admiration of the rude tribes which they visited. It may be questioned whether the policy of the Phoenicians ever led them to aim at planting independent colonies in the islands or on the continent of Greece; and whether they did not content themselves with establishing factories, which they abandoned when their 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 Phoenicians they came, they not only introduced the products of on Greece. their own arts, but stimulated the industry and in Influence of the vention of the natives, explored the mineral and vegetable riches of the soil, and increased them by new plants and methods of cultivation. Undoubtedly also their sojourn, even where it was transient, was not barren of other fruits some of which were perhaps rather noxious than useful. There are several parts of the Greek mythology which bear strong marks of a Phoenician origin1; and as we know that the character of their own superstition was peculiarly impure and atrocious, it seems by no means incredible, that many of the horrid rites which are described as prevailing at an early period in Greece, were derived from this source. Beside Egypt and Phoenicia, it is possible that the 1 This is admitted even by Mueller, History of the Literature of Greece, c. ii. $4., with regard to Aphrodite; and it seems equally difficult to deny it as to Hercules. CHAP. III. tion of the Pelops. Phrygians may be entitled to some share in the honour of having contributed toward the cultivation of Greece. In the intricate legends of the Greek Archipelago we find names of fabulous beings, of a nature akin to the Telchines, and apparently standing in nearly the same relation to the Phrygians as the Telchines to the Phoenicians. Such are the Corybantes, and the Idæan Dactyls, who are connected on the one hand with the arts, on the other with the worship, of Phrygia. It might even be a not un- Explanatenable hypothesis, to suppose that Pelops, if he was legend of indeed a foreigner, belonged to the same stock; especially as we hear of Idean Dactyls at Pisa. But perhaps it may not be necessary to go so far in order to explain the common story, without absolutely rejecting it. As the Pelasgians belonged no less to Asia than to Europe, so Pelops and his sister Niobe, who is the daughter of the Argive king Phoroneus as well as of the Lydian Tantalus (for it is idle to distinguish these mythical personages), may perhaps with equal truth be considered as natives of either continent and this appears to have been, in substance, Niebuhr's solution of the difficulty. We will not attempt to pierce further into the night of ages: we will only suggest that some traditions of the tribes which first settled in Greece may have been retained and transmitted in an altered form as accounts of subsequent expeditions and migrations: though what has been said, seems sufficient to show that the received opinion as to the foreign colonists had an independent historical groundwork. 1 He observes (Kleine Schriften, p. 370. note), “The migration of Pelops signifies nothing more than the affinity of the peoples on both sides of the Ægean." CHAP. CHAPTER IV. Tendency of the Greeks to tion. THE HELLENIC NATION. Tendency of the Greeks to Personification. — Caution required in treating the Heroic Genealogies. The Hellenes in EpiTribes of which the Nation was composed. rus. The Curetes. General View of the Diffusion of the Hellenic The Baotian Æolis. Eolians in the South of Thessaly. The Minyans. The Minyean Orchomenus. Eolians at Corinth.-In Elis.-In Pylus.- In Messenia. In Ætolia. - In Locris. General Character of the Eolian Settlements. Origin of the Dorians. Their Struggles with the Lapiths. - Dorians in the North-east of Thessaly. - Conquest of the Southern Doris. - Adventures of Xuthus. The Achæans in Thessaly and Peloponnesus. -Their Relation to the Hellenes. - Reasons for thinking them a Branch of the Pelasgians. They They are blended with the Eolians in Thessaly. - Establishment of an Eolian Dynasty among the Achæans of Argolis. - Achæans in Laconia. Origin of the Ionians. Their Relation to the Hellenes. Their Establishment in Attica. - Antiquity of the Ionian Settlements in Peloponnesus. — Early Distinctions among the Ionians in Attica. Mixture of Hellenes with Ionians in Attica. Migrations to and from Eubœa. Ionian Dialect. A VERY slight acquaintance with the works of the authors from whom we have received our accounts of personifica the earliest ages of Grecian history, will be sufficient to lead any attentive reader to observe the extreme proneness of the Greeks to create fictitious persons for the purpose of explaining names, the real origin of which was lost in remote antiquity. Almost every nation, tribe, city, mountain, sea, river, and spring, CHAP. IV. known to the Greeks, was supposed to have been named after some ancient hero, of whom, very often, no other fact is recorded. These fictions manifestly sprang up not accidentally, but from the genius of the people, which constantly tended to embody the spiritual, and to personify the indefinite. When therefore we are seeking, not for poetry, but for historical facts, we cannot but feel a great distrust of every such legend, and the more, in proportion to the distance of the period to which it carries us back. On the other hand, it would be rash to pronounce that every legend which refers the origin and the name of a Greek tribe to an individual, is on that account incredible. Causes may certainly be imagined, through which the name of a chief might sometimes be transferred to his people.1 But still it will always Caution be the safest rule to withhold our belief from such required in treating the traditions, whenever they are not supported by inde- heroic pendent trustworthy evidence; and we shall have the stronger reason for rejecting them, the earlier the period to which they relate, and the more obscure the person whose name they record. This remark applies with full force to the heroes from whom the Greeks believed their whole nation and its main branches to have derived their origin. "Of Hellen," Hesiod sang, "sprang the justice-dealing kings, Dorus and Xuthus, and the warlike Æolus; of Æolus, Cretheus, and Athamas, and wily Sisyphus, Salmoneus the unjust, and the proud Perieres." The opinion that Hellen was the founder of the Hellenic race was not merely spread by the poets, and received by the vulgar, but was adopted, apparently with full conviction, by grave 1 One may conceive that a land, or a town, might take its name from a powerful chief, and afterwards give it as an epithet to the people. [This was written without recollection of Gibbon's remark, (Decl. and Fall, c. lxiv. note *,) “Zagatai gave his name to his dominions of Mawrenahar or Transoxiana, and the Moguls of Hindostan, who emigrated from that country, are styled Zagatais by the Persians. This certain etymology, and the similar example of Uzbek, Nogai, &c., may warn us not absolutely to reject the derivations of a national from a personal name."] genealogies. |