Problems in Greek history

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Title: Problems in Greek history

Author: John Pentland Mahaffy

Release Date: June 8, 2011 [EBook #36354]

Language: English

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PROBLEMS IN GREEK HISTORY

PROBLEMS

IN

GREEK HISTORY

BY

J. P. MAHAFFY, M.A., D.D.

Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Dublin; Knight (Gold

Cross) of the Order of the Redeemer; Hon. Fellow of

Queen's College, Oxford; Author of 'Prolegomena

to Ancient History,' 'Social Life in Greece,'

'A History of Classical Greek

Literature,' &c., &c.

London

MACMILLAN AND CO.

AND NEW YORK

1892

[All rights reserved]

Oxford

HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

PREFACE

Even since the following sheets were printed, the researches into prehistoric Greek life, and its relation both to the East, to the Homeric poems, and to the Greece we know in the 7th century B.C., have progressed, and we are beginning to see some light through the mist. I can refer the reader to two books, of which one has just been published in English. The other, the second edition of Busolt's History of Greece, though still in the press, will be accessible to those that read German in a few weeks. I prefer to cite the former—Schuchardt's account of Schliemann's Excavations—in its English form, as it is there enriched with an Introduction, and apparently a revision of the text, by Mr. Walter Leaf. This is the first systematic attempt to bring into a short compass, with the illustrations, and with some regard to chronology, the great body of facts discovered and hastily consigned to many large volumes by the gifted discoverer. There is, moreover, a separate chapter (vi.) which gathers these facts under a theory, not to speak of the acute and cautious criticism of Mr. Leaf, which will be found in the Introduction to the volume. The Introduction to Busolt's History, of which (by the author's courtesy) I have seen some 130 pages, contains a complete critical discussion of the same evidence.

Here is the general result in Busolt's own exposition (G. G. 2nd ed. pp. 113 sq.): 'The Homeric culture is younger than the Mykenæan, it is also simpler and in better proportion. The former had come to use iron for arms and tools, the latter is strictly in the age of bronze[vi:1]. If the culture of the Epics does show a lower stage of technical development, we perceive also a decline of oriental influences. In many respects, in matters of interment, dress and armour, the epic age contrasts with the Mykenæan, but in many points we find transitions and threads which unite the two civilizations. The Homeric palace shows remarkable agreements with those of Mykenæ and Tiryns. The Homeric heroes fight with sword, spear, and bow, like the Mykenæan. Splendid vases, too, and furniture, such as occur within the range of the Mykenæan culture, agree even in details with the descriptions of the Epos. The Epos, too, knows Mykenæ rich in gold, and the wealthy Odeomenos. In general the homes of the Mykenæan culture are prominent in the Iliad. The splendour of the Mykenæan epoch was therefore still fresh in the memory of the Æolians and Ionians when the Epos arose.

'If the life thus pictured in the Epos thus shows many kindred features to that of Mykenæ, the Doric life of the Peloponnesus stands in harsh contrast. Not in strong fortresses, but in open camps, do we find the Dorian conquerors. The nobles do not fight on chariots in the van, but serried infantry decides the combat[vii:1].

'It was about from 1550 to 1150, that Mykenæan culture prevailed, and was then replaced, as the legends asserted, by the Dorian invaders.'

Let us note that the earlier and ruder civilisation of Troy may be contrasted with that of Mycenæ, though both of them show successive stages—the later stage of the (second) city of Troy approaching to the intermediate stage of Tiryns, and indeed, forming an unbroken chain with this, Mycenæ, and even the later and more finished relics of prehistoric art found at Menidi and at Vaphio (Amyclæ). The whole series is homogeneous. The long-misunderstood palace of Troy is of the same kind in plan and arrangement as that of Tiryns and that of Mycenæ; the gold ornaments of Mycenæ are akin to those of Amyclæ; we stand in the presence of an old and organised civilisation which was broken off or ceased in prehistoric days, and recommenced on a different basis, and upon a somewhat different model, among the historical Greeks. And yet the prehistoric dwellers at Tiryns and Mycenæ had certainly some features in common with the later race. Not to speak of details such as the designs in pottery, or in the architecture of the simpler historic temples, they were a mercantile and a maritime people, receiving the products of far lands, and sending their own abroad; above all, they show that combination of receptivity and originality in their handicrafts which gives a peculiar stamp to their successors. While the ruder Trojan remains are said to show no traces of Phœnician importation, the Mycenæan exhibit objects from Egypt, from northern Syria, and from Phœnicia; while on the other hand all the best authorities now recognise in much of the pottery, and of the other handicrafts, intelligent home production, which can even be traced in exports along a line of islands across the southern Ægean and as far as Egypt. This latter fact, and the closer trade-relations with Hittite Syria than with Egypt or Phœnicia, are brought out by Busolt in his new Introduction.

In what relation do these facts, now reduced to some order, stand to the Homeric poems? According to Schuchardt they vindicate for our Homer an amount of historical value which will astonish the sceptics of our generation. In the first place, however, it is certain that Homer (using the name as a convenient abstraction) has preserved a true tradition of the great seats of culture in prehistoric days. He tells us rightly that Tiryns had gone by when Mycenæ took the lead, and that the civilisation of this great centre of power in Greece was kindred to that of Troy, an equally old and splendid centre, which however was destroyed by fire before it had attained to the perfection of the later stages of Mycenæan art. Homer also implies that seafaring connections existed between Asia Minor and Greece, and that early wars arose from reprisals for piratical raids, as Herodotus confirms.

Some advanced kinds of handicraft, such as the inlaying of metals, which have been brought to light in Mycenæan work, are specially prominent in the Homeric poems. It is hard to conceive the nucleus of the poems having originated elsewhere than in the country where Mycenæan grandeur was still fresh. The legend which brings the rude Dorians into Greece about 1100 B.C. (the date need not be so early) accounts for the disappearance of this splendour, and the migration of the Achæans with their poems to Asia Minor. So far Mr. Leaf agrees, as well as with the theory of Fick, that the earliest poems were composed, not in Ionic, but in the old dialect of Greece, which may be called Æolic, provided (he adds) we do not identify it with the late Æolic to which it has been reduced by Fick. It is added by Schuchardt that the great body of Nostoi seems irreconcilable with E. Curtius' theory that the lays were composed for the early Æolic settlers, who made Asia Minor their permanent home; so that the Trojan War may really have been a mercantile war of Mycenæ against the Trojan pirates, who were outside the zone of the Mycenæan trade-route, but may have seriously injured it. Mr. Leaf justly points out that the obscure islands along this route, Cos, and Carpathus, together with Rhodes, in which Mycenæan wares have been found, are counted by the Homeric Catalogue as Achæan allies of Mycenæ, while the (Carian) Cyclades, though much larger and perhaps more populated, are ignored.

So far the case for the early date and historic basis of Homer seems considerably strengthened by recent research. Nevertheless, the marked contrasts between the Mycenæan Greeks and the society in Homer create a great difficulty. Some of these have been removed by the aid of (perhaps legitimate) ingenuity, but differences of dress, of burial customs, in the use of iron, &c., remain. The seafaring too of the Homeric Greeks does not seem to me at all what we may infer the Mycenæan seafaring to have been. Minos, or somebody else, must have suppressed piracy, and prehistoric trading cannot have been so exclusively in the hands of the Phœnicians. The Old Mycenæans were perfectly ignorant of the art of writing, a fact which seems to preclude any systematic dealing with the Phœnicians, though Busolt rather infers from it a want of personal intercourse with the Hittites, and a mere reception of Asiatic luxuries through rude and semi-hostile Sidonian adventurers. Busolt thinks we can follow down prehistoric art through its various steps to that which leads into the Homeric epoch, but as yet such a gradual transition seems to me not clearly shown; I cannot but feel a gulf between the two. Either therefore the original poets of the Iliad were separated by a considerable gap of time from the life they sought to describe—there may have been a period of decadence before the Dorians appeared—or the Ionic recension was far more trenchant than a mere matter of dialect, and by omission or alteration accommodated the already strange and foreign habits of a bygone age to their own day; or else the Alexandrian editors have destroyed traces of old customs far more than has hitherto been suspected[xi:1].

It does not therefore appear to me that the antiquity of the Homer which we possess is materially established by these newer researches. That the earliest lays embodied in the Iliad were very old has never been doubted by any sane critic, and has always been maintained by me on independent grounds. But I now think it likely that the great man who brought dramatic unity into the Iliad, and who may have lived near 800 B.C., did far more than merely string together, and make intelligible, older poems. He made the old life of Mycenæ into the newer Ionic life of Asia Minor. I am sorry to disagree with Mr. Leaf when he calls that Ionic society 'democratic to the core.' Any one who will read what even Pausanias records of its traditions will see that it was aristocratic to the core, and quite as likely to love heroic legends as any other Greek society of that day.

I must not conclude this Preface without acknowledging the constant help of my younger colleagues in correcting and improving what I write. Of these I will here specify Mr. L. Purser and Mr. Bury.

Trinity College, Dublin,

February, 1892 .

FOOTNOTES:

[vi:1] 'In the whole range of the Mykenæan culture, there have only been found in the later graves of the lower city, and in the beehive tomb of Vaphio, remains of some finger-rings of iron, used for ornaments. Iron tools and weapons were unknown to the Mykenæans—in spite of Beloch's opinion to the contrary. In the Iliad bronze is mentioned 279 times, iron 23; in the Odyssey they are named 80 and 25 times respectively, but the use of the later metal was far more diffused than the conventional style of the Epos betrays. Iron weapons are indeed only mentioned in the Iliad IV, 123; VII, 141, 144; and XVIII, 34. Books IV and VII are undoubtedly of later origin. Still the use of iron for tools was known throughout the whole Homeric age, and was gradually increasing during the growth of the Epos.'

[vii:1] Probably, Busolt adds in the sequel, the use of iron weapons by the Dorian invaders may have been one cause of their victory. But it seems to me mainly to have been the victory of infantry over cavalry, and thus a very early type of the decisive day at Orchomenus, when the Spanish infantry of the Grand Catalan Company destroyed Guy de la Roche and his Frankish knights, and seized the country as their spoil.

[xi:1] This last clause is suggested by the fragment of the Iliad, published in my Memoir on the Petrie Papyri, which shows, in thirty-five lines, five unknown to modern texts. Cf. Plate III and p. 34 of that Memoir.

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