It is but fair to add, however, that in the present case the first move has been made from the anthropological side. The six lectures composing this volume were delivered during the Michaelmas Term of 1908, at the instance of the Committee for Anthropology, which from the outset of its career has kept steadily in view the need of inducing classical scholars to study the lower culture as it bears upon the higher. Anthropology, to be sure, must often divert its attention to lines of development branching off in many a direction from the track of advance that leads past Athens and Rome. For us, however, and consequently for our science, the latter remains the central and decisive path of social evolution. In short, the general orientation of Anthropology, it would seem, must always be towards the dawn of what Lecky so happily describes as ‘the European epoch of the human mind’.
Lastly, a word may be said in explanation of the title chosen. ‘Anthropology and the Classics’ is exactly suited to express that conjunction of interests of which mention has already been made—the conjunction so perfectly exemplified by the life-work of each contributor to the volume. But some myopic critic might contend that, however well fitted to indicate the scope of the work as a whole, the title hardly applies to this or that essay taken by itself. It surely matters little if this be so; yet is it so? Dr. Evans’s lecture is introductory. To gather impetus for our imaginative leap into the classical period we start, it is true, from the cave-man, but have already crossed the threshold in arriving at the Cretan. Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus—the claims of these to rank as classics are not likely to be assailed. There remain the Roman subjects, magic and lustration. In what sense are they classical? Now, to use the language of biology, whereas Greek literature is congenital, Roman literature is in large part acquired. Therefore it includes no ‘songs before sunrise’; for it the ‘father of history’ cannot be born again. Spirit no less than form is an importation. In particular, the magico-religious beliefs of Latium have lost their hold on the imitator of Greece and the Orient. Yet primal nature will out; and the Romans, moreover, were a pious people who loved to dwell on their origines. To appreciate the greatest of Latin classics, Virgil—to glance no further afield—one must at least have gained the right to greet him as fellow-antiquary. For the rest, these essays profess to be no more than vindemiatio prima, a first gleaning. When the harvest has been fully gathered in, it will then be time to say, in regard to the classics both of Greece and of Rome, how far the old lives on in the new, how far what the student in his haste is apt to label ‘survival’ stands for a force still tugging at the heart-strings of even the most sophisticated and lordly heir of the ages.
R. R. Marett.
CONTENTS
| LECTURE I | PAGE |
| The European Diffusion of Primitive Pictography and its Bearings on the Origin of Script. By A. J. Evans | [ 9] |
LECTURE II | |
| Homer and Anthropology. By A. Lang | [44] |
LECTURE III | |
| The Early Greek Epic. By G. G. A. Murray | [66] |
LECTURE IV | |
| Graeco-Italian Magic. By F. B. Jevons | [93] |
LECTURE V | |
| Herodotus and Anthropology. By J. L. Myres | [121] |
LECTURE VI | |
| Lustratio. By W. W. Fowler | [169] |