The Persians[958] are still noted for hospitality and love of display: for highly refined manners and great personal beauty. They have still an intense love of poetry, of song, and also of music, while their practice of this art is rude and simple: they still associate poetry (sometimes licentious, as in the Eighth Odyssey) with recitation and the banquet; and, when Malcolm wrote, printing was still unknown among the useful arts of the country. They are passionately fond of horses, much given to the chase and to the practice of horse-racing[959]. Men of letters are esteemed, and their society valued, even as in the Odyssey the Bard is among those whom men are accustomed to invite to dinner[960]. On the occasion of a marriage they celebrate prolonged feasts of three days for the poor, and from that up to thirty or forty days for the highest classes. Amidst great depravity, much of filial piety and of maternal influence remains[961]. It is observed that they do not usually allude to women by name[962]. There is an approach to this abstinence in the Homeric poems; where names of men, and likewise of goddesses, in the vocative are frequent, but I am not sure that we have any instances of a woman addressed by her proper name throughout the Iliad or Odyssey. But certainly one of the most curious notes of similarity is that, together with their high and refined politeness, they retain a liability, when under great excitement, to a sort of cannibal ferocity. A recent writer states[963] the following anecdotes. A few years ago, the chieftain of a tribe slew in a feud the chieftain of another. Shortly afterwards he was attacked while on a journey, taken after vigorous resistance, and put to death. His heart, if we may believe the recital, was then roasted, and was eaten by the mother of his former victim. And again; the husband of a beautiful young woman had been slain by a rival chief. The widow, who had been much attached to the dead warrior, would minutely describe the incidents of the catastrophe, and then, lifting up her hands to heaven, would pray to Ali to deliver the murderer into her hands, ‘that having cut out his heart, I may make it into kibabs, and eat it before I die.’ These are certainly most pointed proofs that Homer has proceeded with his usual veracity, as an observer and chronicler of man, when he shocks us by making Achilles wish he could eat Hector, and Hecuba wish she could eat Achilles; nay, even when he yet further proves that this idea was familiar to his race and age, by making Jupiter tell Juno, she would, he believes, be well content to eat Priam and all his sons.
The Eelliats: Media and the Pelasgi.
To appreciate fully, however, the resemblances of Greek and Persian, we must take the latter as he is found in the military tribes of the province of Pars or Fars. The members of these tribes are chiefly horsemen, all soldiers, and all brigands. But they abhor the name and character of thief; plunder is redeemed by violence in their eyes, and it is evidently accompanied with the practice of a generous and delicate hospitality. Elsewhere in Persia many degrading customs prevail, and women are regarded chiefly with a view to sensual use; but among these military tribes they are more highly valued, and are of remarkable modesty and chastity; yet they have an innocent freedom in their good offices to strangers[964], which at once recalls the Greek maidens of the Odyssey. Adultery is capitally punishable. Alexander the Great endeavoured to bring these tribes to settle, and to adopt agricultural habits; but they have defied his efforts, and still remain like the old Helli of the hills, when they hung over the Pelasgians of the valleys. It is to be observed, that they are particularly mentioned in the Eteo-Persian province of Fars: and further, that they bear the name Eelleat[965], which at least presents a striking resemblance to that of the Helli. The aspirate would pass into the doubled ε, like ἡλιος into ἠελιος, or ἕδνα into ἔεδνα. So Helli is the equivalent of Eelli.
In sum, the ancient Persians, like the Helli, were of Arian race, of highland character and habits, inhabitants of a rude country: apparently children of Japhet, akin closely to the Hellenes, and less palpably to the Osci and Umbri.
The Medians were civilly in a more advanced stage of social life, and were possessed of greater wealth, but endowed with inferior energies. They are presumed by many to have been of the race of Ham: to have peopled Egypt, and to be akin to the ancient Sicani, to the Basques, the Esthonians, the Lapps, and the Finns of modern Europe. For the purposes of this inquiry, they are to be regarded as in all likelihood the immediate fountain-head of the wide-spread Pelasgian races.
We began under the warning of Mr. Grote: and I fear that we end under the implied ban of another very able and recent writer, Dr. Latham[966]. He considers that we have been put in possession of no facts with respect to the Pelasgi more than those three, so slight and so incapable of effective combination, which are recognised by Mr. Grote[967]. But the principle he lays down is that, by which I wish to be tried. He says, the scholar finds a ποῦ στῶ in the dictum of this or that author, but the sound ethnologist ‘on the last testified fact:’ he demands for his basis ‘the existing state of things as either known to ourselves, or known to contemporaries capable of learning them at the period nearest the time under consideration.’ It appears to me that the text of Homer, so far as it goes, answers this demand: that his accounts of Pelasgian, Hellene, and Achæan, when we can get at them, and when we take into view his epoch and means of information, come clearly within the meaning of ‘testified facts’ in regard to that particular subject matter. I admit that, from their incidental and often unconscious nature, there is a great liability to error in the attempt to elicit them: but my assertion is, that the ground under foot is sound; and that, though we may go astray while travelling it, yet we are not attempting to tread upon a quicksand. As to the success with which this principle has here been applied, I am not too sanguine; but I contend earnestly for the principle itself, because I believe that it will, when admitted, legitimately work out its own results, and that they will make no unimportant addition to the primary facts of that great branch of philosophy, the history, and most of all the early history, of man.
[ADDENDA.]
Page [106]. On the possible migration of the Dodonæan oracle, see below, p. [238].
P. [126]. On the theory of Curtius respecting the Ionians, see p. [480].