This is strongly confirmatory, as it appears to me, of the propositions I have endeavoured to establish.
Among the tragedians the name Ἀχαιὸς, with its derivatives, used to some extent by Æschylus, progressively declines: the Danaan name holds its ground rather better, and Ἀργεῖος better still; though all are eclipsed by the great historical name of Hellenes, which probably had enjoyed an undisputed prevalence from the time of the Dorian conquest. Thus, for poetical use, dealing with the events and characters of the heroic age, they properly fall back upon the names which Homer employed.
Its value as primitive history.
From these successions of name, whether the particular appellation be founded upon lineage or upon physical incidents, it is not unreasonable to hold that we may draw the outlines of a primitive history, at least with more confidence and satisfaction than by efforts to compound and piece together the miscellaneous and promiscuous traditions of many ages and places, set wide apart from one another; in respect to which, even where we have not to lament the gnawing power of Time, we, at least, know that the faculties both of exaggeration and of invention, stimulated by vanity, rivalry, and self-interest in many other forms, have been at work. It is better to deal with slighter relics, of which we know the bona fides, than with an abundance of such as have been falsified. Besides, when we have effectually exhausted the power of the first, we may much more profitably use the subsidiary lights which the second will afford us. And the tendency of an attempt to invest the Homeric text with an unequivocal supremacy, is to substitute for complete and symmetrical systems, in which the hewn stone and the trash are not distinguishable one from another, very slight and partial indeed, but yet authoritative fragments and outlines, all the intervals of which are filled up by avowed conjecture. This conjecture is without a pretence to authority properly so called, but it is, at any rate, both kept visibly apart from what is authoritative, and likewise founded upon the suggestions which even fragmentary testimony, when genuine and near the source, is well qualified to make.
And the succession of names is in effect of itself almost a political history. For the names of nations are not arbitrarily changed, though such things have been done to particular cities within the dominion of particular states. The names of races, especially of races disposed, like the Greeks, to knit themselves closely with the past, are cherished as a material portion of their patrimony. When they alter, it is for some great and commanding political reason. Such as, for example, if some tribe or family, previously not advanced beyond its fellows, in some great national exigency becomes invested with the responsibility of acting for the whole body, and thus grows to be as well its representative and organ in all external relations, as also the representative of its inward life: or when some conquering dynasty and host have by the strong hand entered in upon prior occupants of the soil, and, reducing them to dependence or to servitude more or less qualified, or narrowing the circle of their possessions, have taken into their own custody, together with the best lands of the country, the whole range of public affairs, and have imposed laws upon the vanquished, and imparted to them manners. In this case, the different elements are welded into a political unity, by a power proceeding from that race which among them has possessed the greater physical and martial force. But unless there be more than the merely convulsive effort of conquest, unless deep roots be struck into the soil, and sharper furrows drawn upon it than the spear alone can carve, or than the wave of a mere deluge traces, unless, in a word, there be a predominant organizing faculty, the effect will not be permanent; and the crude mass of mere strength will sink down amid the surrounding milder, but more enduring and more prevailing impulses. In some instances it has been so: the body, which has been stronger in the hand, has proved weaker in the intellectual and moral, that is to say, the enduring, elements of power. The undying yet daily influences and sympathies of peace wear down the convulsive vibrations, which the shock of war and conquest have communicated to the social fabric. Victory must end in possession, like toil in sleep. Possession implies the dispersion of the conquerors, and, in such cases as these, their free intermixture with the vanquished. Ties of neighbourhood, of commerce, of marriage, ties belonging to all the transactions of life, are gradually multiplied between the new comers and the old; and by a gentle process, experience and opinion gradually decide, not imperiously in the spirit of party, but insensibly for the benefit of all, what laws, what manners, what language[763], what religion shall predominate. The fate of the name follows that of the institutions and habits with which it was connected; and the old designation prevails ultimately over the new, or the new over the old, in proportion as the older inhabitants have contributed a larger or a smaller share towards the common national life resulting from the combination; in proportion as the newly arrived receive more of impression than they impart, or impart more than they receive.
SECT. IX.
On the Homeric title ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν.
Difference between Epithets and Titles.
Both in modern society, and in the forms of modern language, the distinction is a familiar one, which separates between descriptive affixes or epithets, and titles properly so called.
A descriptive affix, be it substantive, like Δαναοὶ αἰχμηταὶ, or adjective, like Δαναοὶ φιλοπτόλεμοι, describes a quality, and challenges from the reader, like any other phrase conveying an idea, assent to the justice of its description. These descriptive affixes have a tendency, from repeated use, to grow into formulæ, and then at length they approximate to the nature of titles.