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RECENT ENGLISH HISTORIANS OF ANCIENT GREECE.*

(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 190.)

AFTER the return of the Heraclidæ which Thirlwall Euemerizes into a Doric invasion and conquest, requiring "many years, probably many generations," for its consummation, and Grote disposes of among the mythes of the legendary agewe pass at once to the definite region of Historical Greece. Not that even here we are entirely freed from uncertainty, but the races and institutions at which we arrive are real and tangible, though in some cases-that of Lycurgus is a well-known instance-a cloud may still hang about their founders. We can always be pretty sure what laws, customs, and form of government existed in each place at a particular time, though something fabulous may still cling to the individual personages of the period. It is here, accordingly, that Mr. Grote takes occasion to bring in his sketch of Grecian geography. Something of the kind is generally considered a necessary introduction to a history: we confess to having some doubts of its indispensability. Arnold's most valuable and interesting work on Rome contains no geographical account of Italy; and yet, singularly enough, Arnold himself has elsewhere insisted on the importance and necessity of the ordinary course; nay, more, he illustrates its value by immediate reference to Italy, the natural features of which he proceeds to describe in his most felicitous manner. A good map is certainly always a requisite, and with this probably most readers would be satisfied. We half suspect that few persons, except conscientious reviewers like ourselves, peruse these geographical introductions. Both our authors are full and accurate in this part of their work; Grote, the more spirited and inter

esting of the two, as he has the greater dexterity in rendering a dry subject attractive, and illustrates his details by noting the differences as well as the resemblances of climate, natural productions, cultivation, &c., in Ancient and Modern Greece.

And now before treating of the Peloponnesian Dorians, we have one more troublesome subject to adjust or get over in some way. Every student of Greek and Roman history has been more than once brought to a stand by the Pelasgi, an extinct people who seem to have been used as a convenient solution for all the problems in the archæology of the nations around the Mediterranean, much as electricity was once employed in physical philosophy to account for all unknown phenomena. The anxious inquirer, after laboring to shape some definite and consistent conclusion out of the various conflicting statements of ancient writers, and the still more conflicting inferences drawn from every one of these statements by modern scholars, generally has to end by confessing himself hopelessly puzzled. Whoever has worked through Niebuhr, and Thirlwall, and Malden, and Michelet-whoever has tried to form a coherent opinion of his own on the principal questions in dispute: whether the Pelasgians spoke Greek, or something very different from Greek; whether Herodotus ought to have written Croton where he wrote Creston, or Dionysius ought to have quoted Creston where he quoted Croton; whether the Tyrsenian Pelasgians came from Greece to Italy or vice versa, or whether they ever were in Italy at all; whether the real name of the people whom we know through the Romans as Etruscans was Rasena, or whether these Rasena

* A History of Greece, by the Right Rev. CONNOP THIRLWALL. London: Longman & Co. 1835, 1844. A History of Greece, by GEO. GROTE, Esq. London: John Murray. 1846-7.

+ Lectures on Modern History, pp. 123, 124, 125, 128, 129.

Prof. Malden, of the London University, who began a History of Rome for the "Library of Useful knowledge" in 1830. The early numbers were remarkably promising, but under the fatality which seems to attend histories of Rome, it stopped short after the fifth.

only exist in a wrong reading*-whoever has blundered through all this, is struck with agreeable surprise, not unmingled with something like triumphant satisfaction, to find that Mr. Grote "shoots" these troublesome Pelasgi as unceremoniously as if they were so much rubbish. This is his summary method of dispatching them :

"If any man is inclined to call the unknown ante-Hellenic period of Greece by the name of Pelasgic, it is open for him to do so; but this is a name carrying with it no assured predicates, no way enlarging our insight into real history, nor enabling us to explain what would be the real historical problem-how or from whom the Hellens acquired that stock of dispositions, aptitudes, arts, &c., with which they began their career. Whoever has examined the many conflicting systems respecting the Pelasgifrom the literal belief of Clavier, Larcher and Raoul Rochette, (which appears to me at least the most consistent way of proceeding,) to the interpretative and half incredulous processes applied by abler men, such as Niebuhr, or O. Müller, or Dr. Thirlwall, will not be displeased with my resolution to decline so insoluble a problem. No attested facts are now present to us-none were present to Herodotus and Thucydides even in their age-on which to build trustworthy affirmations respecting the anteHellenic Pelasgians; and where such is the case, we may without impropriety apply the remark of Herodotus respecting one of the theories which he had heard for explaining the inundation of the Nile by a supposed connection with the ocean-that the man who carries up his story into the invisible world, passes out of the range of criticism.'" Vol. ii., pp. 346, 7.

Certainly this is the pleasantest and most convenient way of getting rid of these Pelasgi; but after all, is it doing full justice to them and to ourselves? It strikes us that a student who began with and depended upon Mr. Grote, would be likely to underrate the importance of the question, at least as much as some enthusiastic speculators have overrated it, and to form a most inadequate idea of its bearings. He would find nothing about the extent of ground covered by Pelasgic traces and traditions-in Greece Proper, in Macedonia, around the Hellespont, in

Mr. Grote is unusually liberal to the Rasena. He alludes to their existence without the least doubt or suspicion, at the close of the very chapter in which he has been making a clear sweep of the Pelasgi, the Græci, and the ante-Hellenic people generally.

the islands of the Archipelago, in Asia Minor, in Italy-nothing about the Pelasgic names, such as Larissa,* that occur in various parts of Greece-nothing about the Tyrseni, and their connection with Greece on the one hand and Etruria on the other-nothing about those imperishable and extraordinary relics, the Cyclopean structures, except indeed Mr. Grote's offhand disposal of them by adopting the conjecture of a German Professor, that "the character of the Greek limestone determined the polygonal style of architecture." Now we have always considered the whole Pelasgic question more valuable in reference to Latin, than in reference to Greek history, (though the general opinion, we are aware, tends the other way:) and we are well disposed to adopt Mr. Grote's two main propositions-that the Pelasgic language was not by any means Greek, and that it is impossible to predict with anything like accuracy what element, if any, of the Hellenic civilization and character was due to the Pelasgi; and it is for these very reasons--because we agree with him so far-that we regret his having handled the subject with such brevity, and not given us some of the prevalent views upon it, even though he ended by rejecting them all. Considered as mere mythes, the traditions about the Pelasgi are sufficiently interesting to deserve repetition at any rate. The old story, for instance, which represented them as a people specially persecuted by the wrath of the gods, has something very impressive and poetical in it. Michelet, who never lets à legend lose any of its romance in passing through his hands, has worked it up in a series of striking tableaux.

The classical passage respecting the Pelasgic tongue, and the few places where it was yet spoken in the time of Herodotus, is the fifty-seventh chapter of Clio:

* That Larissa is "the city of the Lar," or prince, and that the Tyrseni derived their name of

tower-builders" (rúpois, rúppis, turris,) from their architectural propensities, seem to us as natural and well-founded case of ethnical etymology as any on record.

+ It is but fair to say, however, that Mr. Bunbury, an accurate and accomplished scholar, whose opinions are formed on his own observation of the country, has come to the same conclusion respecting the Cyclopean remains in Italy. Classical Museum, vol. ii., p. 147.

"What language the Pelasgians spoke I am not able positively to affirm. But if one must give an opinion, arguing from the Pelasgians still extant at present, those who inhabit the town of Creston beyond the Tyrseni, (who were once neighbors to the people now called Dorians, and then dwelt in the territory now called Thessaliotis,) and those who founded Placia and Scylace on the Hellespont, (who were fellow-inhabitants with the Athenians,) and all the other towns which were Pelasgic, and changed their name-if one must give an opinion arguing from these, the Pelasgi spoke a barbarian language. If then all the Pelasgians were like these, the Athenians who were Pelasgi must have changed their language along with their transformation into an Hellenic people; for we know that the Crestonians do not speak the same tongue with any of those who live around them, neither do the Placians, but they speak the same with each other. It is clear, then, that they have preserved the same characteristic form of speech (γλώσσης χαρακτῆρα) which they brought with them on emigrating into these places."

This seems tolerably plain; yet in the face of it O. Muller lays down as a fundamental hypothesis that "the Pelasgi were Greeks, and spoke the Grecian language." We shall not enter into an examination of his reasons for so doing, preferring to quote Dr. Thirlwall's opinion, both because it falls more immediately within our present purpose to compare him with Mr. Grote, and because this comparison furnishes an amusing instance of the directly opposite inferences which two learned men will draw from the very same passage :—

"This language Herodotus describes as barbarous, and it is on this fact he grounds his general conclusion as to the ancient Pelasgian tongue. But he has not entered into any details that might have served to ascertain the manner or degree in which it differed from the Greek. Still the expressions he uses would have appeared to imply that it was essentially foreign, had he not spoken quite as strongly in another passage, where it is impossible to ascribe a similar meaning to his words. In enumerating the dialects that prevailed among the Ionian Greeks, he observes that the Ionian cities in Lydia agree not at all in their tongue with those of Caria; and he applies the very same term to these dialects, which he had before used in speaking of the remains of the

* Mr. Grote quotes τεκμαιρομένοις for τεκμαιpóuevov, probably a misprint.

+ Muller's Dorians, i. 1-5.

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Pelasgian language.* This passage affords a measure by which we may estimate the force of the word barbarian in the former. Nothing more can be safely inferred from it, than that the Pelasgian language which Herodotus heard on the Hellespont and elsewhere, sounded to him a strange jargon, as did the dialect of Ephesus to a Milesian, and as the Bolognese does to a Florentine."-(Thirlwall, vol. i., p. 53.)

Mr. Grote, after some judicious remarks upon the improbability of one language being totally displaced by another, as Herodotus supposed to be the case with the Pelasgian in Attica, accepts with confidence the Greek historian's statement of what he heard with his own ears-the barbaric language spoken by the Pelasgi extant in his day-and observes on Thirlwall's softening away of this statement: "To suppose that a man who, like Herodotus, had heard almost every variety of Greek in the course of his long travels, as well as Egyptian, Phoenician, Assyrian, Lydian, and other languages, did not know how to distinguish bad Hellenic from nonHellenic, is, in my judgment, inadmissible; at any rate, the supposition is not to be adopted without more cogent evidence than any which is here found." And he continues the argument in a note, with his usual accuracy of discrimination :-

tive mode of speech) are common to both these “The words γλώσσης χαρακτήρ (distincpassages, [of Herodotus,] but their meaning in the one and the other is to be measured by reference to the subject-matter of which the auaccompany them—especially the word Bapßathor is speaking, as well as to the words which pog in the first passage. Nor can I think, with Dr. Thirlwall, that the meaning of Bapßapos is to be determined by reference to the other two words: the reverse is in my judgment correct. Bápßapos is a term definite and unequivocal, but yλwoons xapaxrip varies according to the comparison which you happen at the moment to be making, and its meaning is here determined by its conjunction with BápSapos. When Herodotus was speaking of

The passage referred to here by Dr. Thirlwall is in Clio, 142, where Herodotus says of the Ionic Greek cities, that "they do not all use the same tongue, but four different varieties." Miletus, Myus and Priene have one, Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedus, Teos, Clazomen and Phococa another, the Chians and Erythraeans a third, and the Samians a fourth. "These are their four characteristic forms of speech."

lation is an interesting one, but to pursue it here, would involve us in too long a digression, especially as we have yet to notice Mr. Grote's other and most important conclusion respecting the Pelasgi, in which we also coincide with him, viz., that it is impossible to determine which (if any) of the elements of Hellenic civilization and character are referable to them.

The Hellenic national characteristics

the twelve Ionic cities in Asia, he might prop- | supposition that Pelasgic and Greek (i. e. erly point out the differences of speech among Hellenic) were different languages, rethem, as so many different xapaxrõpss yλwo-moves this difficulty at once. The specuons; the limits of difference were fixed by the knowledge which his hearers possessed of the persons about whom he was speaking; the Ionians being all notoriously Hellens. So too an author describing Italy might say that Bolognese, Romans, Neapolitans, Genoese, &c., had different χαρακτῆρες γλώσσης ; it being understood that the difference was such as might subsist among persons all Italians. But there is also a xapanrip yawoons of Greek generally (abstraction made of its various dialects and diversities) as contrasted with Persian, Phoenician or Latin-and of Italian generally, as contrasted with German or English. It is this comparison which Herodotus is taking when he describes the language spoken by the people of Krêstôn and Plakia, and which he notes by the word Bapßapov as opposed to Ἑλληνικόν : it is with reference to this comparison that xapaxrp woons in the fiftyseventh chapter is to be construed. The word Báp Bapos is the usual and recognized antithesis of Exλny or 'EXλnvixós. It is not the least remarkable part of the statement of Herodotus, that the language spoken at Krêstôn and at Plakia was the same, though the places were so far apart from each other. This identity of itself shows that he meant to speak of a substantive language, not of a strange jargon. I think it, therefore, certain, that Herodotus pronounces the Pelasgians of his day to speak a substantive language different from Greek; but whether differing from it in a greater or less degree, (e. g. in the degree of Latin or of Phoenician,) we have no means of deciding."-Grote, vol. ii. Note on pp. 352, 353.

those distinguishing institutions and habits which prevailed among the Greeks generally in spite of local differences—are well summed up by Mr. Grote: community of sacrifices and religious festivals; traditional community of blood; a sturdy spirit of individual independence, strongly contrasting with the Asiatic feeling of unlimited obedience to one man; the non-existence of polygamy and child-traffic; a religious horror of castration, and generally of all mutilation of the person, alive or dead; on the other hand, exposure of the person in gymnastic contests, &c., which the Eastern nations regarded as most unseemly.* If we were asked what was the most striking trait of Hellenic character that which explains and includes the greatest number of their national peculiarities-we should

say

that it was their respect for the human body, for the mere physical person. The human form was something sacred to them. Hence they regarded the Eastern punishments of cutting off the hands and feet, putting out the eyes, and the practice (for it was not even exclusively a pun

ing those authorities unexceptionable) independent nouns, throwing no light on the structure of the tongue; and from the inscriptions nothing has been

The barbaric or non-Hellenic character of the Pelasgian language has then the best grounds for being admitted as a fact. But it is curious to observe, that while this fact breaks up many of the supposed affinities between the Pelasgi and the historical Greeks, it seems to strengthen their connection with another people of authentic history-the Etrusci. One of the stand-gathered except that aifil ril or avil ril means vixit ard objections to the Pelasgic origin of the Etrusci is, that if their language were Pelasgian we ought to be able to trace in the Etruscan inscriptions extant some decided similitude to Greek, and no such resemblance can be discovered.* But the

Malden, p. 76. Niebuhr, vol. i., p. 111.

Of the Etruscan language, scarcely anything is known with certainty.

The words which we find quoted by Festus, Varto and other Roman authorities, are (even suppos

annos, or annos vixit, for antiquarians have not been able to satisfy themselves which is which. Donaldson's attempts to explain the inscriptions (Varronianus, ch. 5) are more ingenious than satisfactory. Take, as rather a favorable specimen of them, ril, a year, connected with pew, to flow, from the regular flowing of time!

*Herodotus, Clio, 10, (the story of Gyges and Candaules.) For with the Lydians, and we may say with all the other barbarian nations, it is a great disgrace even for a man to be seen naked." An analogous difference in European and Asiatie ideas of propriety is observable at the present day. The tight dress of the Frank is an abomination to the Moslem: it has the same effect to him that the appearance of a woman in man's clothes has to us.

ishment) of castration, not merely as bar- | Pelasgic, was adopted by them from the barities, but as positive impieties. Hence, Pelasgi. But this distinction, even if too, the immense importance they attached thoroughly established throughout, would to the burial of the dead, and the whole lead to nothing certain beyond itself. treatment of the corpse after death. With this was naturally connected the cultivation of physical excellence, and the study of physical beauty: so far from the form being concealed as something to be ashamed of, it was rather to be exhibited and contemplated. We see the highest development of this feeling in the anthropomorphic character of their religion, and its expression in their marvellous works of art; but the germ of the sentiment is traceable before art existed: it runs through the whole Homeric psychology.

With Homer the body is the man; the souls are mere shades that flit about. The life of the poorest laborer on earth is preferable to a sovereignty in the realms below. We detect this in the very first lines of the Iliad. Achilles' wrath has sent many brave souls of heroes to Hades, and made themselves a prey to dogs. Here a modern writer would directly reverse the personality.

Now how far can this, or any other trait of Grecian character and civilization, be deduced from the Pelasgi? Malden thinks that the physical element was Hellenic, and the intellectual Pelasgic.* And certainly, according to tradition, the Athenians were of almost pure Pelasgic descent. But then it is also traditionary that some of the rudest and least intellectual Greek tribes, such as the Arcadians, were, to use Malden's own words, "pure Pelasgians rendered Hellenic only by gradual assimilation to their neighbors." So that here we are at a dead lock. The only thing really known about the civilization of the Pelasgi is, that they were people of an architectural turn, who built massive fortifications; beyond this we have no right to affirm anything positively. That part of the Greek institutions where there is most hope of our being able to detect and separate the Pelasgian element, is their theology. Thus there seems good reason to suppose that Apollo was the original chief divinity of the Hellenes, and that Zeus (Jupiter) whose head-quarters at Dodona are unanimously allowed to be

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We are not sorry to quit this perplexing theme, and hasten on to the next resting place the foundation of the Spartan commonwealth, and the institutions of Lycurgus; although Mr. Grote previously dispatches the early history of Argos, and in this respect his arrangement is to be preferred to Dr. Thirlwall's, as it is pretty evident that Argos was at first the leading power in the Peloponnesus, and that the ascendency of Sparta was an event of later date. At this point, the proper commencement of our politico-historical inquiries, it is curious to note the different views and methods of proceeding adopted by our two historians. Both are disposed to be critical and skeptical, as our readers have already had abundant opportunity of perceiving; but their doubts take a different turn.

Grote receives the institutions as having a definite reality and establishment at a very early period, but is incredulous about the law-giver, his opinion of whom .coincides with Muller's, that "we have absolutely no account of him as an individual person." Thirlwall admits the personality of Lycurgus, and considers the chronological discrepancies in the various accounts of him inconsiderable, while he believes that every important part of the institutions had existed previous to his time, and that his work was one of readjustment, not of creation.. Mr. Grote's view has this recommendation, if no other, that it is conformable to the method of dealing with the early Roman history adopted by Niebuhr and Arnold. With the able historian and panegyrist of the Dorians, C. O. Muller, our authors agree and disagree alternately. Grote, as we said above, follows him in regard to Lycurgus, but is directly opposed to him (and consequently to Thirlwall, whose opinion is substantially the same as Muller's) as to the non-peculiarity of the Spartan institutions. Muller, whose work displays throughout the strongest pro-oligarchical, pro-Dorian and anti-Ionian bias, represents the laws of Sparta as the true Doric institutions, and Sparta as the full Doric type. The only authority he deigns to give for this is a passage in Pin

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