A patient and learned French writer, M. Raoul Rochette,—who construes all the events of the heroic age, generally speaking, as so much real history, only making allowance for the mistakes and exaggerations of poets,—is greatly perplexed by the blank and interruption which this supposed continuous series of history presents, from the Return of the Herakleids down to the beginning of the Olympiads. He cannot explain to himself so long a period of absolute quiescence, after the important incidents and striking adventures of the heroic age; and if there happened nothing worthy of record during this long period,—as he presumes, from the fact that nothing has been transmitted,—he concludes that this must have arisen from the state of suffering and exhaustion in which previous wars and revolution had left the Greeks: a long interval of complete inaction being required to heal such wounds.[69]

Assuming M. Rochette’s view of the heroic ages to be correct, and reasoning upon the supposition that the adventures ascribed to the Grecian heroes are matters of historical reality, transmitted by tradition from a period of time four centuries before the recorded Olympiads, and only embellished by describing poets,—the blank which he here dwells upon is, to say the least of it, embarrassing and unaccountable. It is strange that the stream of tradition, if it had once begun to flow, should (like several of the rivers in Greece) be submerged for two or three centuries and then reappear. But when we make what appears to me the proper distinction between legend and history, it will be seen that a period of blank time between the two is perfectly conformable to the conditions under which the former is generated. It is not the immediate past, but a supposed remote past, which forms the suitable atmosphere of mythical narrative,—a past originally quite undetermined in respect to distance from the present, as we see in the Iliad and Odyssey. And even when we come down to the genealogical poets, who affect to give a certain measure of bygone time, and a succession of persons as well as of events, still, the names whom they most delight to honor and upon whose exploits they chiefly expatiate, are those of the ancestral gods and heroes of the tribe and their supposed contemporaries; ancestors separated by a long lineage from the present hearer. The gods and heroes were conceived as removed from him by several generations, and the legendary matter which was grouped around them appeared only the more imposing when exhibited at a respectful distance, beyond the days of father and grandfather, and of all known predecessors. The Odes of Pindar strikingly illustrate this tendency. We thus see how it happened that, between the times assigned to heroic adventure and those of historical record, there existed an intermediate blank, filled with inglorious names; and how, amongst the same society which cared not to remember proceedings of fathers and grandfathers, there circulated much popular and accredited narrative respecting real or supposed ancestors long past and gone The obscure and barren centuries which immediately precede the first recorded Olympiad, form the natural separation between the legendary return of the Herakleids and the historical wars of Sparta against Messênê,—between the province of legend, wherein matter of fact (if any there be) is so intimately combined with its accompaniments of fiction, as to be undistinguishable without the aid of extrinsic evidence,—and that of history where some matters of fact can be ascertained, and where a sagacious criticism may be usefully employed in trying to add to their number.

CHAPTER XIX.
APPLICATION OF CHRONOLOGY TO GRECIAN LEGEND.

I need not repeat, what has already been sufficiently set forth in the preceding pages, that the mass of Grecian incident anterior to 776 B. C. appears to me not reducible either to history or to chronology, and that any chronological system which may be applied to it must be essentially uncertified and illusory. It was, however, chronologized in ancient times, and has continued to be so in modern; and the various schemes employed for this purpose may be found stated and compared in the first volume (the last published) of Mr. Fynes Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici. There were among the Greeks, and there still are among modern scholars, important differences as to the dates of the principal events:[70] Eratosthenês dissented both from Herodotus and from Phanias and Kallimachus, while Larcher and Raoul Rochette (who follow Herodotus) stand opposed to O. Müller and to Mr. Clinton. That the reader may have a general conception of the order in which these legendary events were disposed, I transcribe from the Fasti Hellenica a double chronological table, contained in p. 139, in which the dates are placed in series, from Phorôneus to the Olympiad of Corœbus in B. C. 776,—in the first column according to the system of Eratosthenês, in the second according to that of Kallimachus.

“The following Table (says Mr. Clinton) offers a summary view of the leading periods from Phorôneus to the Olympiad of Corœbus, and exhibits a double series of dates; the one proceeding from the date of Eratosthenês, the other from a date founded on the reduced calculations of Phanias and Kallimachus, which strike out fifty-six years from the amount of Eratosthenês. Phanias, as we have seen, omitted fifty-five years between the Return and the registered Olympiads; for so we may understand the account: Kallimachus, fifty-six years between the Olympiad of Iphitus and the Olympiad in which Corœbus won.[71]

“The first column of this Table exhibits the current years before and after the fall of Troy: in the second column of dates the complete intervals are expressed.”

Years
before
the Fall
of Troy.		 Years
intervening
between the
different
events.		 B. C.
Eratosth.		B. C.
Kallimach.
(570)[72] Phoroneus, p. 19 287 (1753)(1697)
(283) Daneus, p. 73 33 (1466)(1410)
Pelasgus V. p. 13, 88
(250) Deukalion, p. 42 50 (1433)(1377)
(200) Erechtheus 50 (1383)(1327)
Dardanus, p. 88
(150) Azan, Aphida, Elatus 20 (1333)(1277)
130 Kadmus, p. 85 30 13131257
(100) Pelops 22 (1283)(1227)
78 Birth of Hercules 36 12611205
(42) Argonauts 12 (1225)(1169)
30 First Theban war, p. 51, h. 4 12131157
26 Death of Hercules 2 12091153
24 Death of Eurystheus, p. 106, x. 4 12071151
20 Death of Hyllus 2y 9m 12031147
18 Accession of Agamemnon 2 12001144
16 Second Theban war, p. 87, 1 6 11981142
10 Trojan expedition (9y 1m) 9 11921136
Years
after
the Fall
of Troy.
Troy taken 7 11831127
8 Orestes reigns at Argos in the 8th year 52 11761120
60 The Thessali occupy Thessaly 20 11241068
The Bœoti return to Bœotia in the 60th yr.
Æolic migration under Penthilus
80 Return of the Heraclidæ in the 80th year 29 11041048
109 Aletes reigns at Corinth, p. 130, m. 1 10751019
110 Migration of Theras 21 10741018
131 Lesbos occupied 130 years after the æra 8 1053997
139 Death of Codrus 1 1045989
140 Ionic migration 60 years after the Return 11 1044988
151 Cymê founded 150 years after the æra 18 1033977
169 Smyrna, 168 years after the æra, p. 105, t. 131 1015959
299
300 Olympiad of Iphitus 108 884828
52
408 Olympiad of Corœbus . . 776776
352

Wherever chronology is possible, researches such as those of Mr. Clinton, which have conduced so much to the better understanding of the later times of Greece, deserve respectful attention. But the ablest chronologist can accomplish nothing, unless he is supplied with a certain basis of matters of fact, pure and distinguishable from fiction, and authenticated by witnesses both knowing the truth and willing to declare it. Possessing this preliminary stock, he may reason from it to refute distinct falsehoods and to correct partial mistakes: but if all the original statements submitted to him contain truth (at least wherever there is truth) in a sort of chemical combination with fiction, which he has no means of decomposing,—he is in the condition of one who tries to solve a problem without data: he is first obliged to construct his own data, and from them to extract his conclusions. The statements of the epic poets, our only original witnesses in this case, correspond to the description here given. Whether the proportion of truth contained in them be smaller or greater, it is at all events unassignable,—and the constant and intimate admixture of fiction is both indisputable in itself, and, indeed, essential to the purpose and profession of those from whom the tales proceed. Of such a character are all the deposing witnesses, even where their tales agree; and it is out of a heap of such tales, not agreeing, but discrepant in a thousand ways, and without a morsel of pure authenticated truth,—that the critic is called upon to draw out a methodical series of historical events adorned with chronological dates.

If we could imagine a modern critical scholar transported into Greece at the time of the Persian war,—endued with his present habits of appreciating historical evidence, without sharing in the religious or patriotic feelings of the country,—and invited to prepare, out of the great body of Grecian epic which then existed, a History and Chronology of Greece anterior to 776 B. C., assigning reasons as well for what he admitted as for what he rejected,—I feel persuaded that he would have judged the undertaking to be little better than a process of guesswork. But the modern critic finds that not only Pherekydês and Hellanikus, but also Herodotus and Thucydidês, have either attempted the task or sanctioned the belief that it was practicable,—a matter not at all surprising, when we consider both their narrow experience of historical evidence and the powerful ascendency of religion and patriotism in predisposing them to antiquarian belief,—and he therefore accepts the problem as they have bequeathed it, adding his own efforts to bring it to a satisfactory solution. Nevertheless, he not only follows them with some degree of reserve and uneasiness, but even admits important distinctions quite foreign to their habits of thought. Thucydidês talks of the deeds of Hellên and his sons with as much confidence as we now speak of William the Conqueror: Mr. Clinton recognizes Hellên, with his sons Dôrus, Æolus, and Xuthus, as fictitious persons. Herodotus recites the great heroic genealogies down from Kadmus and Danaus, with a belief not less complete in the higher members of the series than in the lower: but Mr. Clinton admits a radical distinction in the evidence of events before and after the first recorded Olympiad, or 776 B. C.,—“the first date in Grecian chronology (he remarks, p. 123) which can be fixed upon authentic evidence,”—the highest point to which Grecian chronology, reckoning upward, can be carried. Of this important epoch in Grecian development,—the commencement of authentic chronological life,—Herodotus and Thucydidês had no knowledge or took no account: the later chronologists, from Timæus downwards, noted it, and made it serve as the basis of their chronological comparisons, so far as it went: but neither Eratosthenês nor Apollodôrus seem to have recognized (though Varro and Africanus did recognize) a marked difference in respect of certainty or authenticity between the period before and the period after.