He, by the necessity of natural order, originally united in his own person the great functions of
1. Father.
2. Teacher.
3. Priest.
4. King.
5. Proprietor.
6. Commander.
The severance of these offices successively would arrive sooner or later, according as the progress made in numbers and wealth was rapid or slow. Concentration of employments in a single hand marks the primitive condition or retarded movement of society, while the division of labour is the sign of more speedy and more advanced development. Even the annals of the people of Israel furnish instances in which we trace, at periods when these offices had undergone division under divine authority, vestiges of their former union. It appears that, besides Moses, who consecrated Aaron and his sons by divine command, Joshua, Samuel, and Saul[528] on certain occasions offered sacrifice. The exclusive character of priesthood has been impressed upon it, under Divine Revelation, by positive ordinance, and for a special purpose[529].
Order of Priests not Hellenic.
The Hellenes in Homer appear to exhibit it in its earlier state of union with the office of civil government; and the Pelasgians to display it as a function which has indeed become special and professional, but only on that self-acting principle which, in the progress of society, leads to division of labour.
If we suppose the case of two races, one of them inhabiting a rude and barren country in a state of perpetual poverty and warfare, and then recently, by a descent upon more fertile soils, brought into contact with civilised life: the other of them addicted from a much earlier period to pursuits of peace and industry, inhabiting plains, and accustomed to form agricultural settlements; there will be no cause for wonder upon our also finding that the latter of these races has a professional priesthood, while the former has none; but that the sacrificial office remains in the private dwelling with the father of the family, and on public occasions with the head of the civil government.
This appears to have been the state of facts as between the Trojans of Homer who had a priesthood, and the Hellenes who had none: and the difference may be principally referable to the different condition and history of the Pelasgian and the Hellic races: while other causes, belonging to the respective characters of the races, may have contributed their share towards the production of this curious result. Partly the greater personal energy and self-reliance of the Hellic tribes, but partly also the earlier and older ease, wealth, and fixity of the Pelasgians, are the probable reasons why, at the point of time exhibited in the writings of Homer, we find priesthood properly a Pelasgian, but not yet properly an Hellenic, and only to a limited extent an adoptive, institution.
Thus far, then, we have a presumption, to be greatly strengthened as I trust hereafter, that the Greek religion owed to the Hellenes its imaginative, and to the Pelasgians its sacerdotal and ceremonial development. And this presumption is, I think, in entire accordance with what we should reasonably anticipate, from relations otherwise known to have subsisted between the two races. I now pass on to the subject of language.
Contributions to language.
In attempting to illustrate the relations of Pelasgians to Hellenes through the medium of the affinities and contrasts between the Greek and Latin languages, I am aware that I venture upon ground which requires to be trodden with great circumspection. For the Latin nation may possibly have contained within itself some ethnical element not dissimilar to the Hellenic, as well as one substantially corresponding with the Pelasgian, factor of the Greek people. And again, there is a very extended relation of the two languages to a common root in the Sanscrit. The number of words traceable to such a root has recently been stated at 339 in the Greek, and 319 in the Latin tongues[530]. We must not then, it will justly be observed, infer from the simple fact of resemblance between a Greek and a Latin word, that the one has been borrowed or directly modified from the other.