IV. CHAP. historians, such as Herodotus and Thucydides. But, on such a subject, the authority of the best Greek writer is of very little weight. It is not too bold a surmise, that, if no such person as Hellen had ever existed, his name would sooner or later have been invented; and there is nothing in the few actions ascribed to him, to diminish our suspicions of his reality. But though we seem to be fully justified in considering the genealogy given by Hesiod as a fabrication, perhaps not much earlier than the poet's time, it does not follow that it ought to be discarded as utterly groundless. Such genealogies express an ancient, and a more or less authentic, opinion about national relations, which always deserves attention, and, where it is not opposed by stronger evidence, must be allowed to preponderate. Our conviction that Hellen and his immediate progeny are fictitious personages, needs not prevent us from using the indications afforded by their pedigree in tracing the propagation of the main branches of the Hellenic race. The reputed founder of the nation is sometimes called a son of Zeus, but more frequently either a son or a brother of Deucalion.1 When we consider the part which Deucalion fills in the Greek mythology, we perceive that these accounts differ very slightly in substance. Deucalion is celebrated in fable for the great flood which happened in his time, and for the new race which sprang up to replenish the desolated earth, from the stones which he and his wife Pyrrha, by command of the Delphic oracle, threw behind them on mount Parnassus. When therefore Hellen is termed the son of Deucalion, it would seem that nothing more is meant, than when his origin is immediately referred to the father of gods and men : both legends proclaim his high antiquity, and appear 68. 1 Hellen and Deucalion, sons of Prometheus and Clymene, Schol. Pind. Ol. ix. Hellen, son of Zeus, Apollod. i. 7. 2. 7. IV. to prevent us from carrying our researches further CHAP. backward. But though Deucalion is in all probability a mere symbol of the flood itself, other traditions are connected with his name, which may throw some light on the origin of the Hellenic nation. As in the fable Deucalion brings his new people down from Parnassus, so he is related to have crossed over into Thessaly from the regions adjacent to Parnassus, leading a host composed of Curetes and Leleges, and other tribes which then dwelt there. This tradition, though reported by a late writer, accords so well with others resting on higher authority, that it is entitled to attention. It leads us to conclude that the people afterwards called Hellenes, came from the West; and we are confirmed in this belief, by finding names differing very slightly from that of Hellen among the most ancient tribes of Epirus. Here, according to The HelAristotle2, about Dodona and the Achelous, lay the ancient Hellas; "for," he adds, "the Sellians dwelt there, and the people who were then called Græcians, but now Hellenes." By the Sellians, he means the people who, in the Iliad, are mentioned as the ministers of the Dodonæan, Pelasgian, Jove. Pindar had used the form Hellians for the same name: another, only varying the termination, must have been that of Hellopes; for the country about Dodona was celebrated by Hesiod for the richness of its pastures, under the name of Hellopia.3 The sanctuary of Dodona itself was called Hella1; and a temple legend, different from that which Herodotus heard there, spoke of Hellus, a woodcutter, to whom the sacred dove had revealed the oracular oak.5 It seems scarcely possible to resist the inference, that it was from this tribe, and not from any single ancestor, 1 Dionys. Hal. i. 17. Compare the account of Diodorus, xiv. 113. 2 Meteor. i. 14. 4 Heysch. Ελα Ἑλλά, 3 Fr. xxxix. 5 Philostr. Im. ii. 33. lenes in Epirus. CHAP. IV. Tribes of which the nation was composed. that the Hellenes derived their name, though Thucydides may be right in supposing that in this form it was first heard in Thessaly.1 But beyond this point we have no distinct trace to guide us. We have no means of determining the exact relation between the two tribes which Aristotle mentions as both inhabiting the ancient Hellas. We can only suspect that they were akin to each other and to the Pelasgians, the ancient possessors of Dodona and of all Epirus. The name of the Græcians2 must once have been widely spread on the western coast; for it appears to have been that by which its inhabitants were first known to the Italians on the opposite side of the Ionian sea, who gave it a much wider meaning, with which it was transmitted to the Romans, and through them has descended to us. As little can we venture to guess in what manner these ancient Hellenes of Dodona were intermingled with the tribes who are said to have accompanied Deucalion into Thessaly, even if we could depend upon the accuracy of the tradition which mentions their names. That part of it indeed which concerns the Leleges, is apparently confirmed by the combined testimony of Aristotle and Hesiod; the former of whom related, that they once inhabited Acarnania, together with the Curetes, and afterwards received the name of Locrians; and the latter, that they were led by Locrus, being the people whom Jupiter raised from the earth, and gave to Deucalion. But since we find them described as the earliest settlers in Euboea, Boeotia, and Laconia, no less than in Acarnania, there seems to be no reason for thinking that they migrated from the west toward the east of Greece, rather than in the contrary direction; though it is easy to imagine how a legend IV. of such a migration might arise. The name of the CHAP. Curetes also is found not only in Acarnania, but in Euboea, and in Crete, where however they are de- The Cuscribed not as a people, but as the fabulous attend- retes. ants of Jupiter, who watched over his infancy, or else as his real ministers, who celebrated his worship with dances in armour, like the Salii at Rome. Some of the ancients observed, that as the name was a descriptive epithet, being used by Homer for young warriors, it cannot prove that the Curetes of Crete, Eubœa, and Acarnania, belonged to the same race.1 Yet this identity of name, and variety of settlements, have suggested the thought that the Cretan Curetes, of whom we find some faint traces in the early traditions of Elis2, may have wandered to the west of Greece, carrying with them the germs of civilisation which they had received from the Phoenicians, and, having first settled in Acarnania, may, in Thessaly, have become the real fathers of the Hellenic nation.3 According to our view, it is a strong objection to this hypothesis, that the name of the Curetes, instead of continuing to be the predominant one, is entirely lost, or rather never heard of, in Thessaly. On the whole, it seems to be a hopeless undertaking to attempt to define the elements of which the Thessalian Hellenes were composed. All that appears to be established by the uniform tenor of the most authentic traditions, is, that they entered Thessaly from the west, and we find sufficient ground for believing that they had previously occupied the fertile territory of Dodona. We shall see that, in a later age, the people from which Thessaly took its name migrated from the same region; and it is not improbable, that both 1 Strabo, x. p. 467. 2 Paus. v. 7. 6. 8. 1. First, Hercules and the Curetes; afterwards, his descendant Clymenus, fifty years after Deucalion's flood, — both legends immediately connected with the fabulous institution of the Olympic games. 3 Plass. Geschichte Griechenlunds, i. p. 201. CHAP. IV. events may have arisen from a like cause-the pressure of new tribes issuing from the north. It is true that one difficulty is left, which we are unable to remove. It is not easy to explain how it happened that the people, whom we suppose to have been the ancestors of the warlike Hellenes, are described in the Iliad as the peaceful and austere prophets of Jupiter. But our ignorance on this subject cannot unsettle what is otherwise established on sufficient evidence. The origin of the Hellenes is a question of much diffusion of less importance than the manner in which they spread, the Hellenic from the little tract which they first occupied, over General view of the nation. A new population. the country which was finally named after them. Their earliest seats lay in the south of Thessaly, near the foot of mount Othrys, the part of Greece first called Hellas: it was believed by some to have contained a city of the same name, founded by Hellen, whose tomb was shown in the neighbouring town of Melitea, to which he was said to have transferred his abode.1 But before the name of Hellas had extended beyond this little district, the people seems to have gained a footing in almost every part of the country afterwards so called. The ancients agree in describing the diffusion of the Hellenes as an event which effected an important change in the condition and character of the inhabitants of Greece, but they give us very scanty information as to the nature and progress of this revolution. Before we endeavour to trace its course, we will notice what seem to be its most prominent features. It is scarcely possible to comprehend the rise and growth of the Hellenic nation, without considering it in two points of view, both of which are confirmed as well by high authority as by intrinsic probability. On the one hand, it cannot be denied, that the Hellenic population of Greece included some new ele 1 Strabo, ix. p. 432. |