I take first the relation between Achilles and his instructors. Chiron was the teacher of Achilles in the surgical art, while Phœnix had charge of his higher education. Surgery and war would obviously go together. But Chiron too gave his father the ashen spear from Pelion, which none but Achilles could wield: he was the most civilized (δικαιότατος) of the Centaurs, the one to whom the ideas of right, on which society is founded, were most congenial. But he seems to dwell on Mount Pelion, not like Phœnix, in the court of Peleus; he is, therefore, without doubt, a huntsman, and is in fact a link between the old and rude, and the new and more civilized life of the Hellic tribes.
Again. Of the Hellic legends of Homer, which are not in all very numerous, two have hunting for their subject: as,
1. That of the Calydonian Boar in Il. ix.
2. That of the visit of Ulysses to the court of Autolycus, in Od. xix.
Now these two legends are the only ones in the poems, that do not relate to war. Though the Trojans dwelt by Ida, we never hear of their hunts: but their princes feed sheep upon its slopes, or tend horses in the plain below.
Evidence as to hunting.
Even apart from particular evidence, we might presume that, if the nation derived its warlike turn from a Hellic source, so it must likewise have been with hunting, which was next of kin to war.
Lastly, if this supposition be correct, it helps to account for what is otherwise an anomaly in the poems. Diana fights on the Trojan side: yet we find no evidence that she was worshipped among the Trojans, or even known to them in the character, in which she has the greatest mythical celebrity. She is mentioned but once, I think, among them; it is by Andromache, and that is as having put a period to her mother’s life[589], nowhere in her character as a huntress. But among the Greeks she constantly appears otherwise than as in connection with death. Her epithets, ἀγροτέρη, κελαδεινὴ, ἰοχέαιρα, are far more suitable to the huntress, than to the more solemn function of the ministry of Death among human beings. Again, Helen is compared to her in appearance. The calamities of the Kalydonians came upon them in consequence of their neglect as to her worship on a particular occasion[590]; and the particular punishment inflicted is the sending a wild boar upon them. Nausicaa[591] is elaborately compared to her, and in this simile she is described as hunting in Taygetus and Erymanthus. Thus while among the more Pelasgic Trojans, she appears only in virtue of the relation to death which (we shall find) she holds from a traditive source[592]; it is the Hellic influence, which superadds the mythical and imaginative attributes of the beautiful huntress: and which, in so doing, supplies a marked proof of the addiction of the Hellic tribes to that pursuit.
Evidence as to navigation.
It is not easy to judge whether the turn of the Greeks for navigation ought to be referred in any degree to a Pelasgian source. Plainly, if there was such a source, it was not the main one. We have seen that only the most elementary words connected with propulsion by rowing, appear to bear any sign on them of proceeding from that stock. We cannot argue from the maritime excellence of the Athenians at a much later date to their nautical character in the time of Homer, on account of the important ethnical changes, which in the mean time they had gradually, but most thoroughly, undergone. On the other hand, our finding the pure Pelasgian population of Arcadia resorting to the inland country, and wholly destitute of ships, affords a negative indication. A stronger, and indeed very remarkable one, is supplied by the total want of ships among the Trojans, notwithstanding that their situation was one highly favourable to the acquisition of maritime power. Yet Paris needed to have ships built for him in order to effect his tour[593], and the building of them appears in the Iliad as having been an event of much note in Troy. On the other hand, Homer is full of indications of the locomotive tendencies of the Hellic races. Among these may be mentioned, the wide circle embraced in the adventures of Hercules: the offer of Menelaus[594] to accompany Telemachus on a journey about Greece: the sojourn of Neoptolemus[595] in Scyros: the frequent visits of Idomeneus[596] to Sparta before the war: the marriage of Theseus[597] to a daughter of the king of Crete: the journey of Nestor[598] into Thessaly: the pleasure visits of Autolycus to Ithaca, and of the young Ulysses[599] to Autolycus: the evident familiarity of the Poet with the idea of travelling to recover debts[600]: the existence of places of wide resort for Games and Oracles[601]: the custom of assembling from a group of districts at the funerals of great men[602]: nay, the very choice of the voyages of Ulysses for the subject of so great a part of the Odyssey, and the lengthened tour of Menelaus. And while the Pelasgians appear to be akin to the land-loving Egyptians, we have found the Hellenes to be strongly sympathetic in character with the Phœnicians, the great masters of navigation in the heroic age.