It was to Attica, however, that was reserved the offices of exhibiting in the fullest degree the manysidedness of the Greek character: and the efficient cause, by which she was fitted to fulfil this function, probably may have been that constant infusion of new blood by the successive immigrations of the different Greek races, without the absolute displacement of any of them on a large scale, which, as we have seen, Thucydides remarks to have been her special characteristic. Hence she always exhibited both the ancient and the fresh; both, too, in the highest degree; urging, like Arcadia, the autochthonic origin of her population, which must refer to its Pelasgic element; contending with that state, and with Argos[607], for the honour of the traditions touching Pelasgus and the worship of Ceres; but richer at the same time than any other Greek State, in the varied aggregate of the qualities, which the composite or entire Greek mind appears to have owed to Hellic infusion. Hence the breadth of the transition which, according to Herodotus[608], she had made from the Pelasgic to the Hellenic character: and yet she had made it without any visible breach in the continuity of her social and political traditions.
Though Thessaly was the country in which, to all appearance, the Hellic tribes, coming down from the poverty and rudeness of their highland life, first began to develope their amazing powers, and to acquire civilization, yet it was rather, so to speak, their caravansera or halting house, than their abode.
The Helli, thus travelling through Hellas, give it a name, and receive from it one in return; so that when they pass on to the southward, they are no longer Helli but Hellenes, and have only a secondary and derivative relation to their original home and stock. It is intelligible, that they should not wish to claim too close a kindred with the ἀνιπτόποδες χαμαίευναι of Homer[609], although most ready to own the relationship in solemn appeals to the ancient seat of Jupiter. Even in Homer’s time, they had advanced very far ahead of the habits thus ascribed to them: for when the Greek chiefs return from the Doloneia, they first wash in the sea, then pass into the bath, and thirdly are anointed, before they begin their well-earned meal[610].
The rapidity of their growth in numbers, and of their propagation southwards, might be due to their having settled on a fertile plain; while necessities, arising from the vicissitudes of climate, would be the probable and less copious cause of migration from the hills. But in any case, whether from the rapidity of their passage through Thessaly, or from their having actually occupied no more than a small portion of it, they left it in the Homeric, and apparently also in the Hesiodic period, still partly impressed, as they must have found it, with the Pelasgic name[611]. The prolonged existence of this appellation indicates in part perhaps the predominance of the Pelasgic element in this country, in part the fugacious character of the Hellic settlement, of which only the Achæan portion lived through the historic times in such a degree of force as to maintain its visible identity: this, too, according to post-Homeric tradition, was peopled by the Myrmidons from the south, and not directly from the region of the Helli.
Thessaly, then, was the nursery or cradle of the Hellic or Hellenic races, but it was no more. Consequently with the lapse of time, as it wanted the true mixture of ingredients, Thessaly became less and less Greek in its essential habits and sympathies: while from its preserving a federal constitution, under a federal head, the τάγος, we may also refer to its more Pelasgian character the apparent fact, that it was not so liable to political change, or νεωτέρισις, as were the less Pelasgian parts of Greece. When, after centuries of vicissitude, the outward notes of its original blood were almost gone, Pelasgian feeling still survived: for Thucydides relates that, when Brasidas entered Thessaly at the head of the Lacedæmonian army, he found the mass of the people attached by affection to the Athenian cause, and had to rely on aristocratic influence to furnish him with guides[612].
SECT. VIII.
On the three greater Homeric appellatives.
a. Danaans. b. Argives. c. Achæans.
We now come to the great Homeric appellatives, Danaan, Argive, and Achæan. As Thucydides has said (i. 3), Δαναοὺς δὲ ἐν τοῖς ἔπεσι, καὶ Ἀργείους, καὶ Ἀχαιοὺς ἀνακαλεῖ. Why has the great historian arranged the three names in this order? It cannot be with reference to the comparative frequency of their use: for the first is employed the smallest number of times, and the third is by far the most frequent. For the present let us postpone seeking after the cause; and simply note it as probable, even if no more than probable, that there is a cause.
Modes of formation for Names of Peoples.