All the Hellenic tribes recognise four special bonds of fraternity: first, they are of one common origin; secondly, they speak a common tongue; thirdly, they worship the same gods, and in the same modes and places; and fourthly, they cultivate a general uniformity in manners and disposition. They all send representative chiefs or elders to Dodona, and I presume to Delphi also, for the purpose of settling any common difference; and there they take a threefold oath, never to destroy any city that has ever been admitted into covenant with them; never to intercept the supply of water to any city of their fraternity, and always to unite to punish those who should violate their pledge.
Their principal god dwells at Dodona, and is named Zeus. They believe him to be the same as the Zeus of the Leleges and Pelasgians, whom the Curetes of Crete honour with songs and dances. Like Baal Chamaim, he is the god of the air and sky, and son of the heaven and the earth. He it was who, in the form of a bull, carried off the Phrygian goddess Europa to Crete; and on the south of the island, in the valley of a little river, Lethe, the Dorians have a city which I have never seen, but which they call Hellotis, where there is a plane-tree, under which Zeus and Europa are said to have reposed. Another town there is in the island, named Cnossus, founded, I believe, by the Phrygians, where Zeus has one of his places of abode.
Another deity, almost equally powerful, is Apollo, the archer and soothsayer. He is known as the Pythian prophet, and dwells at Delphi, where he is consulted about future events. He is held in especial veneration by the Dorians, whom he is said, under the form of a dolphin, to have conducted across the seas. Probably he may be the same as our Phœnician archer-god, Baal Chillekh, whom we have ourselves taught the Hellenes to worship, and it may be that because he taught them navigation, they represent him as a dolphin.
The mysterious Hermes, the god of the hidden forces of nature, is likewise an object of their high regard. It is not unlikely that they learnt his worship from the Egyptians; but whether it be so or not, it is quite certain that he has been known amongst them from a very remote antiquity.
The Cydonians have made them acquainted with Artemis, and we are ourselves leading them to the knowledge of Ashtoreth or Astarte, whom they are gradually learning to venerate above all their other divinities.
Of Beelzebub, Baal-Peor, El Adonai, Chemosh, or the Cabiri, the Hellenes know nothing. They are absolutely ignorant of the position of the Cabiri, and have no conception of guiding their course in sailing by the seventh Cabiros or Pole-star: to say the truth, they are very cowardly sailors, rarely venturing to lose sight of the shore. Their boats are large but very badly built, having no decks, ill-contrived rigging, and very defective arrangements for ballast; consequently they are equally unsteady whether they are impelled by oars or worked by sails. The people have little idea of distance; they are profoundly ignorant of the shape of the country, and are at once deterred from a voyage by the least stress of weather, or by the most insignificant current.
The towns are built in places that are difficult of access, and are rudely fortified with piles of uncemented stones. The houses are made either of rough stone, or of bricks that have been baked in the sun, and are very little better than cabins. The people are not at all skilful in any handicraft; and they can scarcely do more than manufacture their copper lance-heads, hatchets, breast-plates, and helmets, which, although very ill-formed, are covered with ornaments. They have no cavalry and very few archers, and rarely use swords in fighting; lances are their favourite weapons, and these are used by their chiefs either on foot or from the top of their chariots. In close combat they employ a kind of poignard, which very frequently is seen curved at the point into a kind of hook. By way of pastime, Hannibal and Chamai occasionally made Hanno practise with the sword, and on these occasions they would be surrounded by a group of Dorians, who were struck with wonder and admiration at the variety of the thrusts, passes, and parries of the fencing, as exhibited in the different practices of the Chaldeans, the Philistines, and the Israelites, and the dexterity they all alike required.
The shields which they use are round, and made of ox-hide, those of the chiefs being faced with copper and ornamented with paintings. Before we left the island, the Dorian king of Hellotis came to visit us, and for one of our bucklers of wrought bronze offered me five-and-twenty oxen; but I allowed him to have it for some agates, to be used in making jewellery, and for an enormous pair of boar's tusks which he had brought from the mainland, and which now adorn the temple of Ashtoreth at Sidon.
On the third day after our arrival in the island, one of the sailors, who had been struck by an arrow in the Egyptian engagement, died, the wound having gangrened. According to our national custom, I had all the ships hung with black, and made inquiry of the natives for some cavern in the neighbourhood where we could inter the body. They showed me a cave in the mountain side about thirty stadia distant, and were quite ready in any way to assist me, as they are themselves very careful about the burial of their dead; in fact, there is nothing of which they entertain a greater dread than of being deprived of funeral rites, and this is one great reason that deters them from venturing out far to sea.
