The Achæan name in Persia.
Again, we find that the name Ἀχαιοὶ was the great descriptive name of the Hellic races in the Homeric age. Yet it is without any note of an Hellic or European origin. Let us therefore see, whether in the East we can find anything that stands, even though at first sight disguisedly, in affinity with it. Now Herodotus tells us, that in the leading tribe of Pasargadæ there was a family (φρήτρη), from which came the Persian kings; the family of the Ἀχαιμενίδαι. Even if it were not easy to trace the mode of the relationship, it would seem inevitable to recognise a connection between the name Ἀχαιμένης, or whatever is the proper Persian root of this Greek patronymic, and those Ἀχαιοὶ whom we find at the head of the Greek races. This connection receives a singular illustration from Strabo, who in describing the Asiatic country called Aria, which gives a name to the Arian race, states that it has three cities called after their founders, Artacaena, Alexandria, and Achaia. Artacaes was a distinguished Persian, of the army of Xerxes. The name of Alexander speaks for itself. With respect to either of these, Strabo may be understood to speak of what may, from the respective dates, have been genuine historical traditions. But he knew and could know nothing of a Persian Achæus, as the founder of the third city. And the Greek Achæus, if he existed at all, belonged to another country, and to a pre-historic antiquity. The real force of the tradition which reports that these cities bore the names of their founders, seems, however, to be pretty obvious. It must surely mean this: that they had borne the same names at all times within the memory of man. Thus we have the Achæan name thrown back, by a local testimony subsisting in Strabo’s time, to a remote antiquity: there it finds a holding-ground in the Achæmenidæ of Herodotus: and both these authors become witnesses, I think, to the derivation of the Ἀχαιοὶ of Homer from Persia[920]. I do not mean that the Achæmenes, who, according to the Behistun Inscription, gave his name to the Achæmenidæ, was the father of the Achæans of the poems, for he appears to have lived only five generations before Darius. But the coincidence of name between the ruling family in Persia, and the dominant race in Greece, bears witness, in harmony with other testimonies, to a presumptive identity of origin.
It appears, too, that the name thus viewed may well have had its root in the ancient Arian language, if we judge from its extant forms. The word signifying ‘friends,’ according to Sir H. Rawlinson, is in Sanscrit sakhá, and in Persian hakhá.
“The name Achæmenes signifies ‘friendly,’ or ‘possessing friends,’ being formed of a Persian word hakhá, corresponding to the Sanscrit sakhá, and an attributive affix equivalent to the Sanscrit mat, which forms the nominative in man. H. R.[921]”
The word, then, if we may rely on this high authority, undergoes no other change, on passing into the Greek tongue, than the loss of the initial aspirate, (while the second is retained in χ,) and the addition of the Greek termination ος or ιος. In this description of a ruling race by their common bond as associates, there is something that resembles the European and feudal name of peers.
There is indeed another name still existing in Persia, that of the Eelliats or itinerant tribes, the form of which, and the circumstances under which it appears, will shortly be noticed[922].
We have now obtained various lights, which point out to us the Persians as the probable ancestry of the Greeks. It still remains to learn, whether from the history of ancient Persia we can raise a presumption that there were, through resemblances subsisting there, marked signs of affinity between the two.
The Persians according to Herodotus.
Herodotus has given us a remarkable, and apparently a careful, account of the ancient Persians, both as to religion and as to manners, which upon the whole both exhibits striking points of resemblance to Greece, and likewise tends to attach that resemblance to the Hellic rather than the Pelasgian race.
In making the comparison, we must allow specially for two sources of error. The Hellic tribes of Homer’s time had been probably for not less than eight or ten generations (since we trace the Dardanians on their own ground for seven generations, the Perseids and Æolids for six) detached from the parent stock, and might well have modified their character and customs, especially since they had mingled with the Pelasgians in the plains. And again, the account of Herodotus is later probably by 500 years or more, than the manners described in Homer. The Persians of his day had long been mixed with the Medes: and had, as he tells us[923], adopted their costume: probably much else along with it.