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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 imperisha

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 :-ble 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

"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, determined the polygonal style of archinor enabling us to explain-what would be the tecture." Now we have always conreal historical problem-how or from whom sidered the whole Pelasgic question more the Hellens acquired that stock of dispositions, valuable in reference to Latin, than in referaptitudes, arts, &c., with which they began ence to Greek history, (though the gene=their career. Whoever has examined the many ral opinion, we are aware, tends the other conflicting systems respecting the Pelasgifrom the literal belief of Clavier, Larcher and way:) and we are well disposed to adopt Raoul Rochette, (which appears to me at least Mr. Grote's two main propositions-that the most consistent way of proceeding,) to the the Pelasgic language was not by any interpretative and half incredulous processes means Greek, and that it is impossible to applied by abler men, such as Niebuhr, o O. predict with anything like accuracy what Müller, or Dr. Thirlwall, will not be displeased element, if any, of the Hellenic civilization with my resolution to decline so insoluble a and character was due to the Pelasgi; problem. No attested facts are now present to us-none were present to Herodotus and Thu- and it is for these very reasons-because cydides even in their age-on which to build we agree with him so far-that we regret trustworthy affirmations respecting the ante- his having handled the subject with such Hellenic Pelasgians; and where such is the brevity, and not given us some of the case, we may without impropriety apply the re- prevalent views upon it, even though he mark of Herodotus respecting one of the the-ended by rejecting them all. Considered ories 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 bear ings. 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.

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 a 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 Turseni 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 (woons xαpaxrpa) 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 τεκμαι póμsvov, probably a misprint. + Muller's Dorians, i. 1-5.

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.)

upon the improbability of one language
Mr. Grote, after some judicious remarks
being totally displaced by another, as He-
rodotus supposed to be the case with the
Pelasgian in Attica, accepts with confi-
dence the Greek historian's statement of
what he heard with his own ears-the bar-
baric language spoken by the Pelasgi ex-
tant in his day-and observes on Thirl-
wall's softening away of this statement:
"To
suppose that a man who, like Hero-
dotus, 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 non-
Hellenic, 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
uşual accuracy of discrimination :--

tive mode of speech) are common to both these
“The words γλώσσης χαρακτήρ (distine-
passages, [of Herodotus,] but their meaning in
the one and the other is to be measured by ref-
erence to the subject-matter of which the au-
accompany them-especially the word Bapa-
thor 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 Bap Sapes
is to be determined by reference to the other
two words: the reverse is in my judgment cor-
rect. Bápẞapos is a term definite and une-
quivocal, but yλwoons xapaxrip varies
cording to the comparison which you happen
at the moment to be making, and its meaning
is here determined by its conjunction with Sap-
Bapos. When Herodotus was speaking of

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

supposition that Pelasgic and Greek (i. e. Hellenic) were different languages, removes this difficulty at once. The speculation 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- | erly point out the differences of speech among them, as so many different xapaxrйpes yλwo75; 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 diferent χαρακτήρες γλώσσης ; it being understood that the difference was such as might subsist among persons all Italians. But there is also a xapaxrip woons of Greek generally (abstraction made of its various dialects and diversities) as contrasted with Persian, those distinguishing institutions and habits Phoenician or Latin—and of Italian generally, which prevailed among the Greeks generalas contrasted with German or English. It is this comparison which Herodotus is taking ly in spite of local differences—are well when he describes the language spoken by the summed up by Mr. Grote: community of people of Kreston and Plakia, and which he sacrifices and religious festivals; traditional notes by the word Bápapov as opposed to community of blood; a sturdy spirit of EXλvxóv: it is with reference to this com- individual independence, strongly contrastparison that xapaxrip yλwoons in the fifty- ing with the Asiatic feeling of unlimited seventh chapter is to be construed. The word obedience to one man; the non-existence BapBapos is the usual and recognized antithe- of polygamy and child-traffic; a religious sis of Exλny or 'EXλnvixós. It is not the horror of castration, and generally of all least remarkable part of the statement of Herodotus, that the language spoken at Krêstôn mutilation of the person, alive or dead; on the other hand, exposure of the person and at Plakia was the same, though the places were so far apart from each other. This in gymnastic contests, &c., which the Eastidentity of itself shows that he meant to speak ern nations regarded as most unseemly.* of a substantive language, not of a strange If we were asked what was the most strikjargon. I think it, therefore, certain, that He-ing trait of Hellenic character—that which rodotus pronounces the Pelasgians of his day to explains and includes the greatest number speak a substantive language different from Greek; but whether differing from it in a greatof their national peculiarities-we should er or less degree, (e. g. in the degree of Latin say that it was their respect for the huor of Phoenician,) we have no means of decid- man body, for the mere physical person. ing."-Grote, vol. ii. Note on pp. 352, 353. 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

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 ing those authorities unexceptionable) independent nouns, throwing no light on the structure of the connection with another people of authen- tongue; and from the inscriptions nothing has been tic 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, Varro 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!

Candaules.) For with the Lydians, and we may *Herodotus, Clio, 10, (the story of Gyges and 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 Asiatic 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.

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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

* History of Rome,
P. 70.

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 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

We

dar, which we cannot dismiss better than in Mr. Grote's words, that "it is scarcely of any value." Thirlwall's modified position, that many of the individual Spartan institutions may be traced in other Doric states, is no wise inconsistent with the assertion that there were also elements of the Lycurgan constitution peculiar to itself. We may suppose that Lycurgus detected those qualities in the Dorian character, which rendered it particularly well adapted to receive certain institutions;

while, as Mr. Grote well observes, it was the very singularity of these institutions that made them work so impressively on the Grecian mind. Thus both sides are partially right: Muller in the theory that the Dorians generally had a capacity for a military-oligarchical system of government; Grote in the fact that Sparta was the only Doric state in which this idea was fully developed. The people whose institutions most nearly resembled those of Sparta were the Cretans. On this resemblance it may be interesting to compare two distinguished authorities, Aristotle and Polybius. The

former observes :

"The social arrangements of the Cretans are analogous to those of the Laconians; for the latter have their ground cultivated by Helots, and the former by Pericci, and both have public tables; indeed, the Laconians used to call these tables, not phiditia as now, but andria, as the Cretans do, whence it is evident that this custom came from Crete. The political arrangements are also analogous, for the Ephori correspond exactly to the officers called Cosmu in Crete, except that the Ephori are five in number, and the Cosmi ten; and the Laconian Senate is equivalent to the Cretan Council. The office of king formerly existed

in Crete; afterwards it was abolished, and the Cosmi have the chief command in war. All have a right to vote at the popular assembly, but this assembly has no power to do anything except ratify the decrees of the Council and Cosmi. The public messes are better managed by the Cretans than by the Laconians, for in Lacedæmon each individual contributes his appointed portion, and if he fail to do this, the law excludes him from participating in the priv ileges of citizenship; but in Crete, the prodace of the earth, the cattle, the public revenues, and the tributes paid by the Perioci, are all appropriated, one half for religious expenses and other public services, the other for the public tables, so that all, men, women, and child

* Muller's Dorians, ii. 1, 8. Grote, ii. 456.

ren, are supported from a common fund.* But the institution of the Cosmi is even worse the Ephoralty, namely, that the election is a than that of the Ephori; for the main evil of

mere matter of chance, is also true of the Cosmi, but the compensating expedient which exists in the former case, does not exist in the latter. In Lacedæmon, as the office is open to all, the people, having a share in the supreme authority, desire the maintenance of the constitution; but the Cretans choose their Cosmi, families, and the Council from those who have not from the whole people, but from certain served as Cosmi."+

Polybius wonders "how the most distinguished prose writers of antiquity could have said that the Cretan government was similar to, nay, identical with the Lacedæmonian," and proceeds to mention three very important points of difference :—

"The peculiarities of the Lacedæmonian constitution are, first, the regulations respecting the acquisition of land, of which no one has more than another, but all the citizens must have an equal share of the territory belonging to the state; secondly, their estimation of money, the pursuit of which was from the first dishonorable among them, and consequently, rivalry in wealth has been entirely extirpated dæmonian kings preserve an hereditary sucfrom the community; thirdly, that the Lacecession, and the senators hold office for life, and these two manage all state affairs. But with this, for their laws suffer every man to acquire the Cretans everything is the very opposite of as much land as he can, and money is prized by them to such a degree, that the acquisition of it is considered not only necessary but most meritorious. And generally, the tendency to mean traffic and avarice is so prevalent in the country, that the Cretans alone of all men see nothing base in money-making. Moreover, their offices are annual, and their government arranged on democratic principles.”‡

* A tolerable approximation to Fourierism, which did not prevent the Cretans from being terribly quarrelsome and disorderly among themselves, as we learn from this very same chapter of Aristotle a little further on.

† Politics, ii. 10.

Polybius, vi. 45-6. The historian's astonishment that a people should see nothing disgraceful in the acquisition of money, is in accordance with the spirit of antiquity. Mr. Grote, in the appendix to his chapter on the Solonian Constitution, (iii. 215,) after tracing the gradual change of moral feeling in this respect, adds, that to do so is highly instructive, the more so as that general basis of sentiment of which the antipathy against lending money on interest is only a particular case, still prevails largely in society, and directs the current of moral approbation and disapprobation. With

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