CHAPTER III.
Theoretical Chronology.
Transition to early history.
The Asiatic colonies.
§ 27. We may now pass from so-called legend to so-called early history. All students, from Thucydides downward, have held that shortly after the state of things described in Homer, important invasions and consequent dislocations of population began throughout Greece, so that what meets us in the dawn of sober history differs widely from what Homer describes. These various movements have their mythical name,—the return of the Heracleidæ; and their quasi-historical,—the invasion of Bœotia and Phocis by the Thessalians, and the invasion and conquest of Peloponnesus by the Dorian mountaineers. The pressure so produced drove waves of settlers to Asia Minor, where the coasts and islands were covered with Greek cities,—Æolian, Ionian, and Dorian. But these cities always claimed to be colonies from Greece, and told of mythical founders who led them to the East.
Late authorities for the details.
We have no early account of these Asiatic settlements. Their traditions were not apparently
discussed critically till the time of Ephorus, the pupil of Isocrates, who lived close to Alexandrian days; and we know part of what he said from quotations in Strabo and from the account given, rather irrelevantly, by Pausanias in the book on Achaia in his Tour, which was not composed till our second century. The metrical geography attributed to Scymnus of Chios[54:1] gives us some additional facts; but on the whole we may say that our account of all this early history is derived from late and very theoretical antiquarians. They did not hesitate to put these events into the tenth or eleventh century before Christ, but on what kind of evidence we shall presently discuss.
From the Asiatic settlements and from the rich cities in Eubœa (Chalcis and Eretria) went out more colonies to the coasts of Thrace and the Black Sea; but these are placed at such reasonable dates, in the seventh century, that we must be disposed to give them easier credence.
The colonization of the West.
§ 28. Intermediate between these two waves of colonization, both in date and in credibility of details, come the famous settlements in Sicily, of which a brief account is given by Thucydides at the opening of his sixth book; and it is no doubt the apparent precision of this account, and the general accuracy of the author, which has made this colonization of Sicily and Southern Italy one of the early portions of Greek history most readily
accepted by even the newest sceptics. It is quite extraordinary how the general seriousness and the literary skill of an author may make even practised critics believe anything he chooses to say[55:1].
The original authority.
Any one who reads with care the account of Thucydides will see that he cannot possibly be writing from his own knowledge or research, but from some older and far worse authority,—doubtless one of the chroniclers[55:2] or story-tellers who gathered, most uncritically, the early legends of various portions of the Greek world. It has long since been suggested, and with the strongest probability, that Thucydides' authority was the Syracusan Antiochus, who compiled the early annals of Sicily with the evident intention of enhancing the glory of his native city.
On what principles did these chroniclers proceed?
What was nobility in early Greece?
Macedonian kings.
Romans.
The great and only patent of respectability in any Greek house or city of early times was foundation by a hero or the direct descendant of a hero; for the heroes were sons or grandsons of the gods, from whom all Greek nobility was derived. The Homeric poems, in making or defining the Greek theology, also told of the great houses directly descended from Zeus or Heracles; and so a royal house which was descended from these personages,
or a city founded by them, secured for itself a dignity recognized by all the race. To cite late historical instances: the Macedonian kings made good their claim to being Greeks and civilized men by showing their descent from the hero Æacus, whose descendants the Æacids figure so prominently in the legendary wars. The Romans, when first they came into contact with Greek culture, and felt at the same time their superior strength and their social inferiority, at once accepted and promoted the story invented for them at Pergamum or adapted for them in Sicily, that they were a colony of Trojans, led by Æneas, the child of Aphrodite by a mortal hero.
Hellenistic cities.
If these things took place in the dry tree of sober history, what must have taken place in the green? Every city was bound to have a heroic founder, and to have been established in almost mythical times. Even in late and reflecting days, as I have already mentioned ([§ 16]), when the successors of Alexander founded new towns in Syria and Asia Minor, stories continued to be invented alleging old Hellenic settlements of mythical heroes in these places, whose shrines were accordingly set up, and their worship instituted, to produce an appearance of respectability in upstart polities.
Glory of short pedigrees.
It is not usually felt by modern readers that in consequence of these sentiments the great thing was not to have a long pedigree for a family or city, but to have as short a pedigree as possible for its founder. To be the son or grandson of a god was
splendid; to be his remote descendant was only to cling on to real nobility like the younger and remoter branches of great English families. This will indicate how strong was the tendency to derive an early origin from a great and known descendant of the gods or their acknowledged sons. The subsequent history and fortunes of a city were comparatively vulgar, provided it was founded by a Heracleid,—the second or third in descent from Temenus or Hyllus. Hence the systematic habit of all early chronologers of counting downwards from Heracles or the Trojan war, and not upwards from their own days.
The sceptics credulous in chronology.
§ 29. I have already declared that I put more faith than the modern sceptical historians in the pictures of life and manners left us in Greek epic poetry, that I do not believe pure invention to be a natural or copious source for the materials of early poets. But the very sceptics to whom I here allude are in my mind quite too credulous on the matter of early chronology, and quite too ready to accept statements of accurate dates where no accurate dates can be ascertained[57:1].
The current scheme of early dates.
The so-called Olympic register.
Plutarch's account of it.
This is the main topic on which I claim to have shown strong reasons for rejecting what Grote, Curtius, and even the recent sceptical historians
have accepted. They have all agreed in giving up such dates as 1184 B.C. for the siege of Troy, or 1104 B.C. for the Return of the Heracleids[58:1]; and yet they accept 776 for the first Olympiad, and 736 for the first colony (Naxos) in Sicily, on nearly the same kind of evidence. And they do this in spite of the most express evidence that the list of Olympiads was edited or compiled late (after 400 B.C.), and starting from no convincing evidence, by Hippias of Elis. This passage from Plutarch's Life of Numa, which I cited and expounded in an article upon the Olympiads in the Journal of Hellenic Studies which I have reprinted in the [Appendix] to this book, is so capital that it shows either ignorance or prejudice to overlook its importance. 'To be accurate,' says Plutarch, 'as to the chronology [of Numa], is difficult, and especially what is inferred from the Olympic victors, whose register they say that Hippias the Eleian published late, starting from
nothing really trustworthy[59:1].' Nor is it possible to hold that this was some sudden and undue scepticism in the usually believing Plutarch; for I showed at length that the antiquarian Pausanias, whose interest in very old things was of the strongest, could find at Olympia no dated monument older than the thirty-third Olympiad. If he had seen an old register upon stone, he would most certainly have mentioned it, nor can I find in any extant author any direct evidence that such a thing existed. I predicted confidently, when the recent excavations began, that no such list, or fragment of a list, would be found, and negatively at least, my prediction was verified[59:2].
The date of Pheidon of Argos
revised by E. Curtius
§ 30. It is curious, moreover, that on one point this traditional chronology had been rejected, and an important date in early Greek history revised, by Ernst Curtius; and yet he holds to the tradition
in every other case. The date of Pheidon of Argos, the famous tyrant who first coined money in Greece, and who celebrated an Olympic contest in spite of Sparta and Elis, was placed by most of the old chronologers in 747 B.C., the eighth Olympiad, I believe, because Pheidon counted as the tenth from Temenus, the first Heracleid king of Argos. All the rational inferences, however, to be made from his life and work pointed to a much later date[60:1]; so that by a simple emendation the twenty-eighth Olympiad—also an irregular festival, according to Hippias' list—was substituted; and thus Curtius has made a most instructive and interesting combination, by which this tyrant and his relation to Sparta become part of the rational development of Peloponnesian history.
Since abandoned.
The authority of Ephorus
There seems to be an agreement in the more recent historians[60:2] to abandon even this gain, and go back to the old date,—probably because such a step would imperil many other old dates, and cast the historians into the turmoil of revising their traditional views. For when you once root up one of these early dates, many others are bound to follow. The uncertainty and hesitation of the critics seem now to arise from doubts about the authority of Ephorus,
from whom most of our knowledge is ultimately derived[61:1]. As I have elsewhere said, I regard this Quellenkritik as little more than a convenient way of airing acuteness and learning, and therefore highly useful for theses or exercises of philological candidates for honours. But as regards what we can really trace to Ephorus, concerning the date of Pheidon, the reforms of Lycurgus, and other such questions, two separate inquiries must be satisfied before we accept his word: first, what documents or other evidence were accessible to Ephorus; secondly, with what honesty and judgment did he use them? There are scholars who believe him implicitly, and even believe implicitly statements which they have fathered upon him by very doubtful inference. There are others who treat him with contempt. There is even a third class which accepts him sometimes, and rejects him at others, because he will not fit in with their preconceived opinions.
not first-rate.
The question now before us is this: If Ephorus did put Pheidon in the eighth Olympiad, or about 747 B.C., upon what authority did he do so? Had he any evidence to go upon different from that which we can still name and criticise? I will here add my opinion to the many which the reader of German can consult for himself. Ephorus
was a pupil of Isocrates, brought up to consider style and effect the main objects of the historian. To this he added the usual prejudices of the Greek for his native city, Kyme, which he glorifies upon every occasion. Thus it is to Ephorus that we owe the absurd date of the founding of the Italian Cumæ (1050 B.C.) as an evidence of the early greatness of the Æolic city. It has been shown by A. Bauer and by Busolt that, in telling the story of the Persian Wars, Ephorus (as appears in the second-hand Diodorus) not only rearranged facts in such order as seemed to him effective, but often invented details. Whenever he adds to the narrative of Herodotus, this seems to be the case. The night attack of the Greeks on the Persians at Thermopylæ (Diod. xi. 9) is a signal instance of this, not to speak of the rhetorical display, which is so widely different from the admirable and simple narrative of Herodotus. All such early history, therefore, as depends upon Ephorus, is to me highly suspicious.
Archias, the founder of Syracuse,
There is another 'tenth Temenid,' specially connected in the legends with Pheidon as a contemporary and opponent, Archias of Corinth, who is said to have led the first colony to Sicily. I have no doubt that the same chronography which placed Pheidon in the eighth Olympiad (747 B.C.) placed Archias there, and, allowing for a few years of domestic struggles, sent him to Sicily in 735 B.C.[62:1]
To my mind this legend is quite unhistorical, nay, it may possibly have falsified real history; for though it may have suited the national vanity of Antiochus of Syracuse and other old historians to magnify their own city by putting it first, or practically first, in the list, the whole situation points to a different course of events.
associated with legends of Corcyra and Croton.
Thucydides counts downward from this imaginary date.
Archias, when on his way, is said to have left a party to settle at Corcyra; he is also said to have helped the founder of Croton. It is surely improbable that Greek adventurers in search of good land and convenient harbours should fix on Sicily, passing by the sites of Tarentum, Sybaris, Croton, and Locri. That these sites were fully appreciated is shown by the flourishing cities which the legend asserts to have been founded in the generation succeeding the origin of Syracuse. Will any unprejudiced man believe all this most improbable history? The one fact which the old chronologers of Syracuse could not get over was this: from time immemorial Greek ships arriving in Sicily offered sacrifices at the temple of Apollo Archegetes at
Naxos. Hence Naxos must have been the first settlement. In the following year, says Thucydides, Syracuse was founded; and then all the dates which he copies from his authority—most likely Antiochus—are, as usual, downward from the date of Syracuse, and almost all in numbers divisible by five.
I will pause a moment, and give the reader a summary of the conclusions to which critical scholars in general have given their assent. It is conceded that Thucydides must have used Antiochus of Syracuse as his principal source in narrating the archæology of Sicily. This opinion, first stated by Niebuhr, has been argued out fully by Wölfflin, and accepted with some reluctance by Holm, Classen (the best editor of Thucydides), and Busolt[64:1].
Antiochus of Syracuse
not trustworthy;
his dates illusory,
Even the language of Thucydides in these chapters shows phrases which we recognize in the fragments of Antiochus cited by Strabo. The prominence of Syracuse, the city of Antiochus, and the mention of the constitutions of the new cities, are also features pointing to the work of Antiochus. In his special article Busolt has shown with great acuteness that all the later authorities, cited by some in support of Thucydides' data, really rest upon him or upon Antiochus[64:2]. What was the character of this author? He was an early contemporary
of Herodotus, and is never cited by the ancients as a specimen of critical acumen, but rather as possessing special knowledge on an outlying part of the Greek world. We have, moreover, his opening words quoted by Dionysius of Halicarnassus[65:1], which are most important in the present connection: Ἀντίοχος Ξενοφάνεος τάδε συνέγραψε περὶ Ἰταλίης ἐκ τῶν ἀρχαίων λόγων τὰ πιστότατα καὶ σαφέστατα. In other words he used oral tradition for his facts, and this he also did in his account of early Sicily[65:2]. He was, at best, one of the most serious, if you please, of the logopoioi, or chroniclers, who are always being contrasted with critical historians such as Thucydides. Such being the state of the facts, we are compelled to accept as our only authority for the early traditions concerning Sicily this solitary chronicler, who seems to have had no difficulty in fixing dates centuries before the first immigration of the Greeks. In a loose thinker of this kind, patriotism may be fairly assigned as a strong moving cause in determining his facts and dates. Indeed, when Archias is said by this Antiochus to have aided at the founding of Croton, Grote and Holm are quite ready to set it down to his desire to magnify Syracuse. When Ephorus of Kyme sets down the Italian colony of his city (Cumæ) at 1050 B.C., all critical historians reject this date upon the same ground. If this criticism be indeed valid,
are we only to use it when we choose, or to apply it generally? Busolt shows (in his article) that the actual year of the founding of Syracuse (and hence of the other Sicilian colonies) cannot be regarded as certain. Surely he and his brother critics stop short illogically, and refrain from pushing their doubts as far as they are bound to do. To me not only the exact year, but the exact generation—it is by generations and round numbers that Antiochus counted—is quite uncertain; and we are thrown back on arguments from general probability such as those which I have indicated.
though supported by Thucydides,
who is not omniscient.
§ 31. It is the authority of Thucydides which has imposed upon the learned an artificial chronology. The scholar is often wanting in acuteness. There are, I suppose, plenty of philologers who believe Thucydides far more implicitly than their Bible, and because he appears careful and trustworthy in contemporary affairs, actually assume that he must be equally credible in matters wholly beyond his ken. I suppose they imagine, though they do not state it, that the historian consulted State archives in Sicily, and set down his conclusions from a careful analysis of their evidence. We have no trace or mention of any such systematic archives; and if the historian indeed confined himself to these, what shall we say to his assertion that the Sikels passed from Italy to Sicily just three hundred years before the advent of the Greeks? How could he know this? But the solemn manner of the man and his habitual reticence concerning his authorities
have wonderfully imposed upon the credulity of the learned.
Credulity in every sceptic.
Nobody rates Thucydides higher than I do, wherever he is really competent to give an unbiassed opinion. His accuracy is not, to my mind, impeached by the fact that he is found to have made a slovenly copy of a public document lately recovered on the Acropolis[67:1]. The variations, though many, are trifling, and do not affect the substance of the document. Yet this may do more to discredit him with the pedants than what seems to me dangerous credulity in larger questions. He is hardly to be blamed; no man escapes entirely from the prejudices of his age. The most sceptical in some points, as I have already noticed[67:2], let their credulity transpire in others. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, whose whole life was spent in framing sceptical arguments against early history, is found to accept the unity of authorship and unity of design of the Homeric poems. Grote, so careful and precise in accepting documents, subscribes to the genuineness of the Platonic Letters, which no other competent scholar admits; and so I suppose that in every sceptic, however advanced, some nook of belief will be found, often far less rational than the faith he has rejected.
Its probable occurrence in ancient critics.
Value of Hippias' work.
Even Eratosthenes counts downward.
Clinton's warning.
This truth, which applies to modern scholars so
signally, applies no less to the ancient critics of the Greek legends. When we find that Thucydides accepts a piece of ancient history like this account of the Greek settlement of Sicily, we must first of all be sure that he is not the victim of a fit of acquiescence in an older chronicler. When we hear that Aristotle and Polybius, two great and sceptical men, accepted the Olympiads, we must first know exactly what they said about the earlier dates[68:1], and then we must be assured that they did not simply acquiesce in the work of Hippias. For this Hippias was clearly a man writing with a deliberate policy. He must produce a complete catalogue; he must make his documents conform to it. And so there is evidence in Pausanias that he not only succeeded in his purpose, but that he modified or re-wrote certain inscriptions which we may suppose did not suit his purpose. I refuse to put faith in such an authority, and I refuse to accept as the
first real date in Greek history an epoch fixed by all the Greek chronologers in a downward calculation from the Trojan war,—as may be seen even in the scientific and accurate Eratosthenes. His fragments, written at a time when there really existed Greek science, in a day rich with all the learning of previous centuries, still manifest the old faith in the Trojan war, the Return of the Heracleids, the colonization of Ionia, and the guardianship of Lycurgus, as events to be fixed both absolutely and in relation to one another, and to serve as a basis for all the succeeding centuries down to the day of real and contemporary records. 'In these early dates and eras,' says Fynes Clinton in a remarkable passage[69:1], 'by a singular error in reasoning, the authority of Eratosthenes is made to be binding upon his predecessors; while those who come after him are taken for original and independent witnesses in matters which they really derived from his chronology. The numbers given by Isocrates for the Return of the Heracleidæ[69:2] are repeated three times, and are more trustworthy; and yet the critics try to correct them by the authority of Eratosthenes.'
§ 32. What, then, is the outcome of all this discussion?
Summary of the discussion.
The first three stages of Greek history are, so to speak, isolated, and separated by two blank periods, one of which has to this day remained a great gulf,
over which no bridge has yet been constructed. Over the second, which immediately precedes proper history, the Greeks made a very elaborate bridge, which they adorned with sundry figures recovered from vague tradition and arranged according to their fancy. But it is only after this reconstructed epoch of transition that we can be sure of our facts.
The stage of pre-Homeric remains.
Prototype of the Greek temple.
The first stage is that represented by the pre-historic remains, which, though they are plainly very various in development, and therefore probably in age, are yet by most of us classed together as 'without father, mother, or descent,' discovering to us the earliest civilization in Greek lands. But to assert this foundling character is perhaps too sceptical a position. For there can hardly be any likelihood that the Eastern parentage of this early luxury, suggested by the legends, will hereafter be disproved. And now even the most extreme advocates of Greek originality must allow this early intercourse with, and influence of, the older civilizations. As to their effects upon historic Greek art, there seemed to be a gap between the bee-hive tomb or fortress-wall and the pillared temple, which was a 'great gulf fixed,' till Dr. Schliemann found the doorways of the palace of Tiryns. They are all planned like a temple in antis,—the earliest form, from which the peripteral easily follows. And early vases are adorned with rude figures which may be copies of old models such as those found at Mycenæ. But the intermediate steps are still hopelessly obscure.
Degrees in this stage.
The earliest and rudest of these remains are not in Greece, but at the island of Santorin, under the lava, and in the fort of Ilion (Troy) excavated by Dr. Schliemann[71:1]. The more developed, both in architectural skill and in ornamental designs, are in Argolis (Mycenæ, Tiryns) and in Attica (Spata, Menidi). As I have already mentioned, this civilization does not appear to be the same as that of the epic poems, and the verdict of the learned declares that it dates from a long anterior epoch. What occurred in Greece between the epoch of this curious pre-Hellenic and, partially at least, imported culture, and the age of Homer, none of us can as yet do more than guess[71:2]. But the fact that the popular poetry chose for the scenes of its adventures the very sites of this pre-historic culture, seems to show that the importance of Troy, Mycenæ, and Tiryns either lasted down to the 'epic' time, or was so recent as to hold the popular imagination.
Probably not so old as is often supposed.
Mr. Petrie's evidence.
On the whole, therefore, I am disposed to consider
these pre-historic splendours as not so extravagantly old,—surviving, perhaps, till 1000 B.C.; though of course the Trojan remains may be far older than the Mycenæan. Duncker, in his very careful discussion[72:1], thinks the end of this period came about 1100 B.C. I look upon this, in an author who is always liberal with his figures, as a substantial agreement with me, but I can now add a remarkable corroboration. Mr. Flinders Petrie, coming fresh from a prolonged and scientific study of Egyptian art-remains, has examined with care the pre-historic collections in Greece, and has established[72:2] (1) a very early and widespread communication between the peoples of the Ægean and Egypt; (2) a close similarity, both in materials and workmanship, between the Mycenæan ornaments and the Egyptian of about 1200-1000 B.C. The Egyptian pottery, &c., from dynasties earlier or later than this epoch show marked contrasts, and are easily to be distinguished. At the same time, I protest against making the rudeness of pottery in itself, without any corroboration, a proof of great antiquity. For there is such a thing as neo-barbarism, especially in pottery; and moreover, simple people will go on for a thousand years making their plain household utensils in the same form and with the same decoration.
The epic stage.
The earliest historical stage.
§ 33. As regards the second stage, or 'epic age,' I have already, in my Greek Literature, shown
ample reasons for not dating it very early; and further researches since made rather confirm this view. The personages described seem to belong to the ninth century before Christ; but it was gone before the poets brought together their work into the famous epics which were the opening of Greek literature. The Iliad and the Odyssey therefore seem to me to describe the second, then already bygone, stage of Greek history, which was certainly separated by a gap from the third. This last begins with the contemporary allusions of the earliest lyric poets, Archilochus, Callinus, Tyrtæus,—none of whom were earlier than 700 B.C., and who more probably lived from 660 B.C. onward[73:1].
According to the theory of the Greeks, which is not yet extinct, three centuries separated this real history from the epic period, when the Trojan heroes and their singers lived; and even among recent critics there are some who wish to place the composition of the Iliad as far back as 900 B.C.
The gap between Homer and Archilochus.
Old lists suspicious, and often fabricated.
No chronology of the eighth century B.C. to be trusted.
I do not believe in so huge a gap in Greek
literature. It seems to me impossible that the stream of original epic should have dried up long before Archilochus arose towards the middle of the seventh century B.C. And here it is that the moderns have been deceived by the elaborate construction of four centuries of history made by the Greeks to fill the void between the events of the Iliad and the events of the earliest history. In the seventh century we have contemporary allusions to Gyges, king of Lydia, known to us from Assyrian inscriptions; we have yearly archons at Athens, and a series of priestesses at Argos; presently we have historical colonies and many other real evidences on which to rely. But before 700 B.C. it is not so. Some stray facts remained, as when Tyrtæus tells us that he fought in the second Messenian war, and that the first had been waged by the grandfathers of his fellow-soldiers[74:1]. The double kingship of Sparta was there, though I am at a loss to know how we can trust a list of names coming down from a time when writing was not known[74:2].
Nay, we have even distinct examples of fabricated lists. Hellanicus wrote concerning the list of the priestesses at Argos,—in after days a recognized standard for fixing events. But this list reached back far beyond the Trojan war, as it started with Io, paramour of Zeus. The name of the priestess marking the date of the war was solemnly set down. The lists of the Spartan kings came straight down from Heracles. Again, at Halicarnassus has been found a list on stone of twenty-seven priests, starting from Telamon, son of Poseidon, and bringing back the founding of the city to 1174 B.C.[75:1] The tail of this list also was historical; the beginning must have been deliberately manufactured! From such data the early history of Greece was constructed[75:2]. Lycurgus is a half-mythical figure, and probably represents the wisdom of several lawgivers. But however individual cases may be judged, in chronology all the early dates are to be mistrusted, and to reconstruct the Greece of the eighth century B.C. requires as much combination and as much imagination as to construct a real account of the Homeric age. I am convinced that two capital features in the usual Greek histories of the eighth century, the
reign of Pheidon and the colonization of Sicily, belong, not to that century, but to the next.
Cases of real antiquity.
Let not the reader imagine that he finds in me one of those who delight in reducing the antiquity of history, and who advocate the more recent date in every controversy. There are nations whose culture seems to be undervalued in duration; to me, for example, those arguments are most convincing[76:1] which place the great Sphinx at the Pyramids in an epoch before any written records, even in Egypt, so that it remains a monument of sculptured art many thousand years before the Christian era. But the Greeks were mere children in ancient history, and they knew it[76:2].
FOOTNOTES:
[54:1] Printed in C. Müller's Geographi Graeci.
[55:1] We shall soon come to a similar instance in Xenophon's Anabasis.
[55:2] The Greek name is λογοποιοί, seldom λογογράφοι, which usually means a speech-writer. Cf. below, [§ 31], a passage from Clinton which also applies here.
[57:1] The solitary exception is Sir G. Cox, whose History of Greece has found little favour, in spite of its originality. He will not set down any date earlier than 660 B.C. as worthy of acceptance; and I think he is right. But he also rides the solar theory of the myths to death, and so repels his reader at the very outset of his work.
[58:1] The arguments of Busolt (G. G. i. 86) which I had intended to discuss, will be antiquated by the appearance of his 2nd edition, which is now in the press, and which discusses the prehistoric conditions by the light of evidence which has accrued since the first publication of his important work. But for the printers' strike (November, 1891) I should probably have been able to quote his revised and amended views. Holm's appears to me a reasonable view. After stating that Apollodorus (ii. 7), Diodorus (4, 33), Plato (Legg. iii. 6, 7), and Isocrates (Archidam. 119) are all at variance, he adds (i. 181): 'One of these is just as historical as the other; the current traditions are not better than the accounts of Plato and of Isocrates; they are all mere tales (Sagen) which can neither be proved or refuted.' Here we have the attitude of Grote, pure and simple, but applied to a quasi-historical period.
[59:1] Will it be believed that E. Curtius paraphrases this remark (ἀπ᾽ οὐδενὸς ὁρμώμενον ἀναγκαίου πρὸς πίστιν) by 'zuerst wissenschaftlich bearbeitet von Hippias'?
[59:2] It is an axiom, to which I shall revert, that all sceptics have their credulous side; and so we find that Mr. Evelyn Abbott, a learned and able man, who will not accept anything as real fact from the Homeric poems, takes with childish faith the list in Eusebius, and tells us that there we can read the names of the actual victors from 776 B.C. to 221 A.D.! (History of Greece, i. 246.) And he adds, with charming naïveté, that the alleged fact of one thousand years' record of foot-races 'would be incredible if it were not true. But it is true,' etc. That a critical historian should tell us these things dogmatically, without touching upon any of the difficulties involved, can only be accounted for by the theory that he was following some authority he respected, such as Duncker, without thinking the matter out for himself.
[60:1] I notice that older scholars, such as Newton, in his Chronology, and Mitford, show quite a wholesome scepticism concerning Pheidon's date, which they are disposed to bring down even lower than Curtius proposes.
[60:2] E. g. Duncker, Abbott, Duruy, Busolt (i. 140) with the recent literature cited, Holm (i. 256).
[61:1] The reader may consult a long list of tracts on the credibility of Ephorus, and the accuracy with which our extant Greek authors cited him, with the general conclusions to be inferred, in Busolt (i. 97 and elsewhere) or Holm (i. 11-15).
[62:1] Though the Return of the Heracleids was placed by Eratosthenes in 1104 B.C., older authorities, just as competent, placed it later. Thus Isocrates, in three of his orations, delivered 366-342 B.C., repeats that the Dorians had now been four hundred years in Peloponnesus. Applying this round number, we obtain 1066-1042 for the Return of the Heracleids. The tenth generation, according to Greek counting, down from this date for Temenus, would give us 760-730 B.C. This may be the very computation by which the dates of Archias and Pheidon were fixed. Duncker (i. 139) thinks the Dorians cannot have come before 1000 B.C. If he reasoned like a Greek, and held Pheidon to be the tenth Temenid, he would straightway put him below 700 B.C.
[64:1] The last has given a summary of the arguments in his History, pp. 224, 241, and in the Rhein. Museum for 1885, pp. 461 seq.
[64:2] That Hippys of Rhegium lived during the Persian Wars, and wrote Σικελικα, is stated by Suidas only and without any evidence.
[65:1] Arch. i. 12.
[65:2] Diod. xii. 71. I now repeat these facts, which I had urged long ago, from the recent summary of Busolt (op. cit. p. 224).
[67:1] It is the treaty which he professes to give verbatim in v. 47, with which the reader may compare the actual, though somewhat mutilated text in C. I. A. i. Suppl. 46b.
[68:1] The excerpt alluding to Polybius (printed in his text as vi. 2, 2) merely asserts that in the book of Aristodemus of Elis it was stated that no victors were recorded till the twenty-eighth Olympiad, when Corœbus the Elean won and was recorded as the first victor; from which time the Olympiads were then reckoned. Aristotle is reported to have called Lycurgus the founder (fr. 490). Aristodemus was later than Hippias (cf. above, [p. 58]); and still it is to his book, and not to old registers, that the Greek writers refer. The recurrence of the 28th as an improper Olympiad shows that this number had some important place in the whole discussion. I think it likely that Corœbus really belonged to the twenty-eighth after 776, and not to that year. The oldest actual record of a victor which Pausanias could find was from Ol. 33, and this he describes as of extraordinary antiquity. Other details are given in the [Appendix].
[69:1] Fasti Hell., vol. ii. p. vii.
[69:2] Cf. above, § 30, [note].
[71:1] I incline, with Mr. Bent, to place the remains of Santorin before those of Hissarlik, even though they may be in some respects superior in development. As is obvious, the culture of one place need not keep pace with that of another. But the total disappearance from the legends of any mention of the eruption which must have disturbed the whole Ægean Sea, compared with the living memories of Troy, is to me a proof that the latter and its destruction must be far more recent than the former. Mr. E. Abbott, who refers to Bent's Cyclades, is disposed to the other view (History of Greece, i. 43); and so are Duruy (vol. i. chap. ii. § 1) and Holm.
[71:2] Many writers put the Dorian immigration and the resulting changes of population, and emigration to Asia Minor, in the gap.
[72:1] i. 131. Busolt, as he informs me, now agrees with this view.
[72:2] In two remarkable articles (Hellenic Journal for 1890 and 1891).
[73:1] The date of Archilochus, the earliest of the historical figures among Greek poets, used to be fixed about 709 B.C. The researches of Gelzer, Das Zeitalter des Gyges, make it certain that this date is wrong, and must be reduced to at least 670 B.C.; for Archilochus names Gyges in an extant fragment, and Gyges appears on a cuneiform inscription as the vassal of an Assyrian king whose time is determinable. Moreover, an eclipse which Archilochus mentions seems to be that in April, 647 B.C., which was total at Thasos, where the poet spent his later years. Even the conservative Duncker (vol. ii. p. 175, English ed.) adopts these arguments. Nevertheless, some recent histories still acquiesce in the exploded date!
[74:1] The connected history was, however, not set down then, but by a late epic poet, Rhianus, and a late prose historian, Myron, both of whom Pausanias, who gives us what we now know of these wars, criticises severely, saying that the prose author is the worse of these bad or incomplete authorities (Pausanias, iv. 6), since he conflicts with Tyrtæus. How modern historians in the face of this passage can set down fixed dates for these wars, beginning with 785 B.C., passes my comprehension.
[74:2] It is perhaps the most extraordinary fact in the results of the excavations pointed out to me by Mr. Sayce, that in none of the early Greek tombs or treasures discovered have we a single specimen of early writing, though both Egyptians and Phœnicians, who supplied so much to them, must have been long familiar with that art. The author of the Sixth Book of the Iliad refers once to writing as a strange or mysterious thing, and yet on a folded tablet, which could not have been used at the origin of writing, or indeed till far later times.
[75:1] C. I. G. 2655.
[75:2] These inventions were produced at a comparatively late period, and therefore do not conflict with what I said of the rarity of invention in a primitive age which had no theories to support.
[76:1] I allude to the views of M. G. Maspero, in his admirable Archéologie égyptienne.
[76:2] We have now positive evidence that the Athenians registered their public acts on stone as early as 570-560 B.C. On the Acropolis has been found (in 1884) the broken slab which contained the decree as to the legal status of the first cleruchs sent to Salamis upon its conquest by Athens. (See the article of Koehler in the Mittheilungen of the German Institute at Athens, vol. ix. p. 117 sq., and the Bull. de Corresp. hell. xii. 1 sq. where Foucart comments upon the inscription.) Three conditions are implied: (1) the cleruch is assimilated to Athenian citizens, as to taxes and military service, though he is bound to reside on Salamis and not leave his land. This was no doubt a novelty, and distinguishes the Athenian cleruch from the older colonist who had gone to Pontus or Magna Græcia. (2) If he did not reside, or while he did not, he must pay a special absentee's tax to the State. (This is understood differently by Koehler and by Busolt, G. G. i. 548.) The original number of cleruchs was apparently 500 (Foucart op. cit. ibid.). (3) If he defaulted in his payment there was a fine of thirty drachmæ—a very small penalty, even regarding the modest means of the early Greek states.
