1
y
^VKCHAIC GEEECE
AND THE EAST.
IliGiiT Hon. W. E. (rLADSTOXE, M.P.,
IlKSIDKNT OK TIIF. SECTION FOH AIICIIAIC (iKKKOK AiND TIIK F.AST.
ocffoo
URL
ARCHAIC GREECE AND THE EAST.
However indulgent may be the audience that I have
the honour to address, some apology is unquestionably
necessary for the association of my name ^Yith the
work of an Oriental Congress. Ignorant of the
languages of the East, I am not cognizant of its
races, manners, and institutions, except at a period
which must still be termed pre-historic, although
some important parts of what belongs to it have,
during the present century, gradually acquired the
solidity of history. That, however, was the period
when, from a central point in Asia, population
radiated towards most, if not all, points of the com-
pass : under a kindred impulsion, but with incidents
and destinies infinitely various.
The oldest civilizations tolerably known to us are
those which appear to have sprung up with a marvel-
lous rapidity in the Babylonian plain and in the valley
of the Nile. With one or both of these was minis-
terially associated a navigating and buildhig race,
which touched the Persian Gulf eastwards and the
Mediterranean westwards, and probably kept 02')cn
and active the line of traffic and passage between
B
2107413
the two. Through this race seems to have been
distributed over the coasts of the great inland sea,
and beyond them, a knowledge of the arts. It
was this wealth of the East, which was thus
gradually and irregularly imparted, to relieve the
poverty and develop the social life of the West.
The receptivity, so to speak, of the different
countries and races lying within the circle of these
visits would appear to have been extremely
diversified, and the traces of the process are, for
the most part, fragmentary and casual. In one
case, and in one only, there is cast upon it the
light of a literary record. Of all that was said or
sung on the shores of the Mediterranean in those
shadowy times, nothing great or weighty has
survived, with the solitary, but inestimable and
splendid exceptions of the two works known as
the Poems of Homer. They alone (to use the lan-
guage of a great modern orator) have had buoy-
ancy enough to float upon the sea of time. In
them we see the life of those times, such as it was
actually lived. We see it as we see in some great
exhibition what is termed going machinery. They
exhibit to us, as their central object, in the forma-
tion stage of its existence, the nation which then
inhabited the Greek Peninsula, together with im-
portant, tliough isolat<jd or subordinate, traits of
other races and lands.
We have then before us the following group of
3
facts : — First, there is a great treasure of social art
and knowledge accumulated, pci-haps for the first
time, by human labour in the East. Secondly, we
have a seafaring people on the Syrian coast, filled with
the vivid energy of commerce, who left in different
shapes on every accessible shore the marks of im-
ported arts. Next we have obtained, during the
present century, a large access of independent
knowledge, which exhibits to us the particulars of
these Eastern civilizations in their original seats, and
which, as we shall see, has found its counterpart or
echo in some recent researches of Western archae-
ology. To this we have to add, from the Poems of
Homer, a delineation of what may fairly be called
contemporary life, which is so copious as to apparently
exhaust the whole circle of the simple experience of
those times, and to be indeed encyclopaedic.
It may seem, then, that we possess in the poems
rare and unrivalled means of interpreting the voice-
less treasures supplied from the various sister sources,
and of estimating now, somewhat less imperfectly
than heretofore, the aggregate of the original debt,
which Europe and the West owe to Asia and the
East.
And here I reach the point at which, if anywhere,
I may find an apology for my intervention in the
proceedings of an Oriental Congress. For what I
may fairly term a long and patient, though necessarily
often intermitted, study of the t€xt of Homer may
n i!
possibly enable me to offer a small and exotic con-
tribution to the great and many-sided purpose of tlie
present distinguished assembly.
In approaching my immediate subject, I. have
no other concern with the long and, in the main,
unprofitable group of controversies, known as the
Homeric question, than tliis— that I have to treat
the Poems as an integral mass of contemporary
testimony to the life, experience, and institutions of
a particular age and people ; to which they add other
collateral illustrations. Whatever speculators may
have fancied as to their origin and authorship, the
general rule has been to treat their contents as
an unity for practical purposes. AVhether the aim
has been to describe the Zeus or the Hermes of
Homer, or the ship, or the house of Homer, the
voice of the Poems has been accepted as one
authentic voice. The chief exception to that rule
has been made in the case of the glimpses of
other religions supplied by the Odyssey ; glimpses
which, in my firm opinion, do not impair, but
illustrate and confirm belief in that unity of mind
which has governed the composition of the Poems.
But this is a point on which it is unnecessary to
dwell.
In considering the contributions of the East to the
life and manners of the Achaians — for that is the
designation most properly attaching to the Homeric
forefathers of the Greek nation — I shall not begin
witli religion. "We are not now inquiring what
elements of religion were carried westwards by those
who progressively migrated from the central seat in
Asia ;. but what aggregate of all arts and knowledge,
after the first peopling of the Greek Peninsula, was
imparted to its inhabitants and their neighbours from
the stores of those Eastern civilizations which had
been developed during the intervening ages, and
through the medium generally of the Phoenicians ;
that is to say, of that navigating race, who were, to
all appearance, the exclusive intermediaries of inter-
course by sea between Asia and Europe.
It is recognized as a certainty that this people
formed the maritime arm of the great Egyptian
Empire. But commerce is comprehensive in its sym-
pathies, and disposes men rather to profit as neutrals
by the quarrels of other people than to share in them
as parties ; so a people like the Phoenicians would,
in the natural course of things, and regardless of
partisanships, be carriers from Babylon and Assyria,
or from any region with which they traded, as
well as from Egypt, with which they had a distinct
political relation.
But now is the time to make an observation of
vital importance with regard to the comprehensive
meaning that attaches in Homer to the Phoenician
name. AVhether the Achaian Greeks themselves
devised that name to describe a set of strangers who
frequented their coasts, we have no means of know-
iiig. It derives, however, no support or illustration
from the Pentateuch, or (as I believe) from the
monuments. But for Homer it seems to cover every-
thing found in the Achaian Peninsula that was of
foreign origin. Not that the poet is fond of tracing
the particulars of arts and manners to their Eastern
sources. The intense sentiment of nationality, which
led some Greek states of later days to covet the title
of Autochthons, was most of all intense in him ; and
it is, for the most part, by undesigned coincidences
alone, and by the careful co-ordination of particulars
sometimes brought together from afar, that we are
able to make out the large catalogue of Achaian
obligations to the East. But whether the question
be of persons settling in the peninsula, or of things
brought by or learned through maritime visitors who
came from the south-eastern corner of the Mediter-
ranean, all of these apparently had but one vehicle,
and that vehicle was the Phoenician ship. Con-
sequently all came to carry the Phoenician name,
or to run up into Phoenician association, for the
contemporary Achaian. Much as to the Turk of
later days every European was a Frank, so to the
Achaians of Homer all persons and things reaching
them over sea were bound up with this Phoenician
name. The designation accordingly covers not only
the bold mariners of the time, but everything for
which they were the purveyors, or supplied the
vehicle ; in a word, all Syrian, Assyrian, Egyptian,
and generally all Eastern meanings. What it indi-
cates is a channel ; and all that came through that
channel is embraced by it. This extended use
of the term would appear then to have a more
consistent basis than that which I have quoted as
a parallel usage. Europeans were all Franks in
Turkey by a metonymy which gave the designation
of the majority to the whole. Egyptians or Egyptian
subjects were reckoned as Phoenicians ((^otvt/ces),
because, all reaching the Achaians in Phoenician ships
and Phoenician company, they presented in this
particular a real unity of aspect.
Taken in this pervading sense, the first Phoenician
gift to the Greek Peninsula would appear to have
been one connected with civil institutions. We obtain
a view of it through the remarkable phrase Anax
andron. Nothing can be simpler than the meaning
of the two words. They signify not king of men,
but lord of men ; the word anax designating a class
and not an office.
The phrase is most commonly applied by Homer
to Asamemnon. But it is also used for five other
persons, and with indications which, though far
from complete, are abundantly sufficient to show
that it is not a merely ornamental invention of
the poet, but a note attaching strictly to particular
persons in virtue of some common quality or attri-
bute. It is not royal, and does not indicate
supremacy, for the word anax is wholly distinct
fr(^in basileus (a king), and only indicates in
Homer, as applied to men, the liiglier class of men,
or some notable member of that class. It is
heritable, for it is given both to Aineias and his
father Anchises. It does not go with powerful and
marked individualities ; for Agamemnon is only, as a
character, one of the second class among the great
chieftains, and all the others are lower in Homeric
rank. It is not national, for it is enjoyed by Trojan
princes. It is ancient ; we find it borne by Augeias
two full generations at least before the Trojan War.
Agamemnon was the fourth^ ruler in his family
since, apparently under Pelops, it first became
connected with Greece ; while the Dardanian line,
in which we find it, was the senior of the two royal
branches in Troas, and is carried upwards from the
time of the AVar through six generations. Shall we
suppose the A7iax andrOn to have been the Governor
or Satrap, sent over sea from Egypt at the climax of
its power when it ruled the Greek Peninsula and the
neighbouring regions at a period preceding, by an
interval we cannot yet define, the age of the Trojan
War ? We should thus find an explanation consistent
witli all the facts for a phrase which certainly
requires an explanation, and which otherwise cries
out for it in vain.
This phrase supplies us wath the oldest his-
toric note of settled and regular government in
» II. ii. 104-8.
Greece. Not only because we find it associated with
kingship, but because we find organised, under
Augeias who had borne it, the peaceful institution
of the Games,^ which we know to have attracted
bards as well as horses from neighbouring districts.
As we have no trace of any struggle connected
with the Egyptian invasion, it may he that the
foreign rule, loose in its character, after the manner
of Asiatic rule, was easily established over a popula-
tion living by agriculture, and dwelling village-wise
{komedoii) ; and that, under the larger organizations
thus created by degrees, may first have grown that
consciousness of strength, and that capacity of pro-
gress, which led, after a time, even to national
reaction as^ainst the foreimer.
This reaction took the various forms of the
Theban and the Trojan wars, of the Colchian
expedition, and probably also of an Achaian share
in the now historically known combination of eman-
cipated or struggling neighbour States against
Egypt in the time of Merephthah. This remark,
however, requires something of detailed exposi-
tion. It is not from Homer himself that we
are to expect any willing indication of the pre-
valence at a former time in his already glorious
country of a foreign rule. Yet we are not wholly
without evidence from extraneous sources of a con-
nexion between the title of Anax amlrOn and the
' II. xi. 098, sqq.
10
great Egyptian Empire. For example, we learn
from the Egyptian monuments that in the fourth
year of Rameses 11. , at the close of the 15th
century B.C., the Dardanians of Troas fought as
allies in the armies of Egypt under Maurnout, King
of the Hittites, and that after a series of years they
returned to their own country. Nothing could be
more natural than that, in virtue of this political
connexion, the ruling Dardanian line, which pre-
served its separate existence down to the period of
the Trojan War, should be invested with an Egyptian
title.
In the case of the Pelopids, we find ourselves pro-
vided, by the discoveries of Schliemann at Mycenae,
with evidence of a different class, but tending with
the highest degree of likelihood to the same result.
In the Agora at Mycense, Dr. Schliemann discovered
four tombs ^, of which Mr. Newton said that we must
rest content with the " reasonable presumption " that
they contained Royal personages ; and as to which I
believe that no one now disputes their belonging to
the heroic and prehistoric age. If so, they surely
also belonged to the house which during that age
ruled in Mycenae — namely, the house of Pelops.
In a preface to Dr. Schliemann's '^ volume on his
discoveries there, I have set forth a number of con-
siderations connected with the Poems, which there is
1 Mycenae, Preface, p. xxvii.
'^ pp. xxiv. xxviii. tcq.
11
not time to notice here, but wliicli tend towards the
conclusion that one of these tombs may contain the
remains of an historical Agamemnon himself. But
it is enough for my present purpose to observe that
the title of Anax andron was descendible from father
to son, and that it is accorded in the poems to
personages altogether secondary — viz., Eumelos, II.
xxiii. 288, 354, and Euphetes, xv. 352; who is
nowhere else mentioned by Homer— in all likelihood
on this especial ground.
We must, therefore, suppose it probal)ly to have
been inherited by Agamemnon ; and there is no
counter evidence to impair the reasonable conclusion
that the sovereigns buried in these tombs belonged
to a line having the title of Anax andron.
But, on the other hand, these sepulchres offer us
numerous and clear notes of connexion wdth the
usages of the Egyptian Empire. Among these are
the presence in one of the sepulchres of the scales for
weishino; the actions of the deceased, which recall
the Book of the Dead ; the use of gold leaf, which
was found as it had been laid over the countenances
now long decayed ; the position of five bodies
stretched in a long but narrow tomb, not along
but across it, with inconvenient compression from
lack of space, but in the direction of east and west,^
and facing westwards according to the usage of
Egyptian burial. Such, in fact, is the strength of
1 MycencC, p. 295.
12
Egyptian association as to these tombs, and other-
wise established by the Mycenian remains, as to
leave little room for reasonable doubt on its existence.
And thus we have the title ^of Anax andron once
more placed in relation with Egypt, since it clearly
subsisted in the Pelopid line, and since individuals
of that line were in all likelihood the occupants of
Mycenian sepulchres. The title itself is of so marked
a character that we arc led to connect the assumption
of it with some great event, and such an event would
undoubtedly be the first mission of Pelops, or the
first head of the Pelopid house, to bear rule on
behalf of Egypt in the Greek Peninsula.
If these conjectures be correct, and if an Eastern
Empire imparted in various quarters of the North
and West the first germ of a civil society extending
beyond the scale of the village community, it is
matter of extreme interest to note the differences of
mode and of result with which the gift was received
by different races and regions. If we judge by the
lenf^h of the genealogies in Homer, Troas was the
seat of States older than any in the Achaian Penin-
sula, those, namely, of Ilion and Dardania. It is in
Dardania only, the older of the two, that we find the
Ana,x andron. And it is true that we have no de-
tailed account of Dardanian manners and institutions.
Wc ha\'c, however, this detail in the case of
Troy, and we have no reason to assume a substantial
difference between them. But as between Trojan and
13
Achaian, in tlic political department, we find marked
differences all along tlie line. The Trojan State lias
indeed a King and an Assembly, but they do not
present so much as the beginnings of free speech, of
real deliberation, or of national life. The bribes of
Paris appear to supply the main motive power. All
is coloured with an Asiatic hue. And so among the
Phaiahes, where the colour of the description is not
Hellenic but Phoenician. A recent American com-
mentator^ remarks on the absoluteness of Alcinous
in his kingship, there being assemblies, but no
debate ; only immediate acquiescence in the views
of the King. But in the Achaian communities,
whether at peace, as in Ithaca, or in the camp before
Troy, we recognize the elements of the grand con-
ceptions I have named. They may not indeed be
fully and consistently developed, but they are visi])le
everywhere in their outline, and they reach even up
to the point where we find that the will of the
supreme chieftain is liable to be checked in a regular
manner by other judgments ; liable, we may almost
say, to be out-voted. So that when, at nearly the
lowest point in the fluctuating fortunes of the army,
Agamemnon has proposed to abandon the expedition,
he is resolutely resisted in debate by Diomed, and the
general feeling of the soldiery compels him to give-
way. ^
^ ]\Ierria:a, riiocnician Episode, un Od. vii. 2.
- II. ix. 46, scq.
14
Here we have exhibited in a particular case the
essential character of the Achaian receptivity. What
the East had the faculty of conceiving, but not of
developing, the more elastic and vigorous nature of
the Achaian Greek took over as an imparted gift,
and then by its own formative genius opened out,
enlarged, and consolidated in the form and with
the effect of an original endowment. I shall pre-
sently endeavour to unfold this proposition in a
diversity of particulars.
It will naturally be asked if the Egyptian Empire
left upon once subject lands a trace of departed
authority in the title Anax andron, did it not impress
on the traditions of the Achaian race any note of its
own conception of kingship, and of the remarkable
connection whicli it had established between royalty
and divinity ? The oldest dynasty given by Manetho
is said to have been of the gods and demigods. The
list of Egyptian kings on the Turin papyrus begins
with a line of deities, the last of whom is Horus.^
The divine name Ra, incorporated in the names of
kings, carries downward into historic time the
memory of this belief ; and it is not surprsing that
we should find a pretty distinct trace of the same
belief in the Homeric Poems. I refer to his use
of the two phrases DiotrepJies^ Zeus-nurtured, and
Diogenes, Zeus-born. The first of these is applied
to the race of the Phaiahes, with the distinct
* Rawlinson, Herod, ii. 337 .
15
intention of representing them as of the kin-
dred of the gods ; ^ and in the Iliad we have it
used to signify the kings of cities as a class.^ It is
nowhere otherwise employed except in a line ^ where
it has been allowed to supplant an old and I
believe legitimate reading, and where it is little
better than senseless. Once, in the singular, it is
applied caressingly by Achilles to his instructor,
Phoinix/ But it may be stated generally that both
words are confined in Homer to Royal personages
with a remarkable strictness ; and, as if further to
impress on them the characters of titles, the favourite
usage of them is in the vocative. Conformably with
the sense of these remarkable epithets, the ances-
tries of the Homeric Kings often run up to Zeus ;
sometimes to Poseidon, and this probably in his
character as a god supreme in his own proper regions
and mythologies. It seems easy here to perceive a
real connexion with the Egyptian idea and practice.
But again, we have to notice that the transplanta-
tion into Achaian Greece of the Asiatic or Egyptian
notion did not imply continuing confinement within
its bounds. The poet availed himself of the vener-
able character thus accorded to the bearers of civil
authority, the basis of which he always regards as
divine ; but this did not lead him into the region of
despotic ideas. Nothing can be less like the Eastern
despot than an Achaian King, who has to rely upon
1 0(1. V. 278. -II. ii.60. ^ j], i^^ 430. * H. ix. 603.
16
reason, upon free speech, upon the assembly, as prin-
cipal governing forces ; and who seems to supply an
historic basis for the succinct but very remarkable
description given by Thucydides of the early Greek
rulers as kings upon stipulated conditions.^
But before proceeding to details, I will describe
certain impressions, strictly relevant to the present
subject, which have resulted from my long study of
the poems, and which, if they be correct, would prove
that Homer himself had an energetic and also a
methodical conception of the obligations of his
country to the East. It is, I believe, generally
admitted that in Achilles, the protagonist of the
Iliad, we have a superb projection of the strictly
Hellenic character, magnified in its dimensions to the
utmost point consistent with the laws of poetical
probability. In the epithet Hellenic is conveyed
that wonderful receptivity which first accepted and
then transmuted the Eastern rudiments of civilization.
But, by the side of this Hellenic form of character,
there is another at once its sister, its rival, and its
complement ; and, as the Iliad is the triumphal
procession of the one, so the Odyssey is the deathless
monument of the other. It is remarkable that the
poet has placed these two, different as they are,
in relations of close sympathy and attachment, so
that they never clash ; while, of the two next Achaian
heroes, Diomed has no point of personal contact with
1 Time. i. 13.
17
Achilles (offering, indeed, to carry on the war witli-
out him), and Ajax becomes involved in a deadly
feud with Odysseus. The distinctness of the two
gfeat dominating characters enables them to fit
into, to integrate one another, and jointly to ex-
press the entire mental and moral aggregate of
the race. There was indeed a third ethnical in-
gredient, the Pelasgian, which perhaps had to bide
its time for its own proper development. For the
Homeric and heroic picture, Achilles and Odysseus
between them expressed all that was great, signal,
and formative in Achaianism. We may perhaps sum
up the greatness of Achilles in this, that he ex-
pressed a colossal humanity. What was it that he
did not express ? He did not express, and Odysseus
did, the many-sided, the all-accomplished, the all-
enduring man : the polutropos, the jyolumetis^ the
demon, the poluttls, the polumekanos, the poikilo-
metis, the poluphron, the ddiphron, the talasiphron —
in whom this is perhaps above all remarkable, that
the completeness of his structure, the firmness of his
tissue, raised his passive even up to the level of his
active qualities.
Let us look a little round the circumference of
the man. In battle he is never foiled. In counsel
he is supreme. His oratory is like the snow flakes
of the winter storm. Victor in the severe strength-
contests of the Twenty-third Iliad, he conquers also
among the Pliaiakes in their game of skill. This is
a specimen only; and lie tells tliem he is no bad
hand at any of the athletics practised among men/
He is the incomparable bowman, who performs a
feat otherwise beyond human strength. His is the
spirit of boundless patience wdiich enforces silence
in the cavity of the horse. But the range of his
accomplishments also includes every manual art. In
the island of Caliipso he appears as the ship carpenter.
As the ploughman he can challenge a haughty suitor
to compete with him in harvesting corn all day till
nightfall without a meal, or in drivino; the straifjlit
and even furrow with a team of powerful oxen.^ In
his own palace, he Imilt his chamber after the Phoe-
nician manner, that is, with great hewn stones.^ It
was reared over a full-grow^n olive tree, which he
cut at a proper height, and then shaped the stump
into his nuptial bed. Into this he wrought inlaying
of gold, of silver, and of ivory, and this opera-
tion supplies the sole instance in which not merely
any Achaian chieftain, but any Achaian whatever is
found in the Poems to execute a work of art. That
it is such is undeniable, for he applies to it the very
term daidalldn, from Daidalos, wdiose name may be
said to give the summit level of art for those days.
Even the bed-covering expresses the same idea of
foreign art, for it is dye<l with purple (phoiniki) which
carries the IMio'iiiciaii name.* Alone among the
1 0<1. viii. 100, 214. 2 od. xviii. 3G5-75.
'-' 01. xxiii. 192. ■• 0(1. xxiii. 188-201.
1!)
Acliaian Greeks, he elevates his manual hil)()ur into
the reuioii of genuine art ; as he was also alone
among them in presenting to us the character of a
daring navigator prepared to face distant voyages
with the extremes of climate and adventure.
I have endeavoured elsewhere to show how
Ithaca, as well as its head, abounds in the signs
of Phoenician association/ Here I will only observe
that if the character of Odysseus has been based by
Homer upon Pho^^nician elements, trained by Hellenic
contact and experience into a superior development,
and set out in the Poems by the side of the purely
Hellenic Achilles, there cannot l)e a more decisive ex-
hibition of a belief in the mind of Homer that the
institutions and arts of life viewed as an aggregate
were imported from the East.
But, over and above this universality of Odysseus
in the arts of life, he bears the Phoenician stamp in
what may be termed his craft. In the Thirteenth
Odyssey, Athene signifies to him pretty plainly ^ that
there can be no use in their endeavouring to impose^
upon one another, as he is first of all mortals in
counsel and in figments, while she has a corresponding
precedence among the Immortals. In general, a high
prudence is the characteristic of each, sometimes
degenerating into cunning. This combination of
prudence with cunning is everywhere in the Poems a
^ See PLoenician Affinities of Ithaca, Nineteenth Century, Aug.,
1889. * Od. xiii. 20G-9.
c 2
20
leading Plioenician characteristic, and it supplies a
fresh note of affinity between the Phoenician idea
at large and the wonderful and consummate character
of Odysseus.
Let me now endeavour to show in some important
details how this general idea receives its verification
from the Poems. I have spoken of government.
In the great chapter of religion the case is different.
There is but little in Homer to associate the loftier
elements of the Olympian religion with Egypt or
Assyria or the race of Phoenician navigators ; and the
same may be said as to the Nature ^vorship which
was probably the previous religion of the mass of pre-
Ilellenic inhabitants. The principal contribution from
Phoenician sources to the mixed scheme of this Achaian
thearchy was the great god Poseidon. But of all the
chief deities of the system, Poseidon • is the lowest in
type. Powerful as an exhibition of force, he is nowhere
in touch with such ethical elements as subsist in the
Olympian religion, or with its least materialistic
elements. But when we turn from the religion to the
ethnography of the poems, the god Poseidon becomes
to us a great fountain head of instruction. First we
identify him as at every point associated with the
Plifjcnician name and character. Of the Phaiakes,
who are so deeply coloured with their attributes,
lie is the supreme local deity, and they are
indeed his kin. In tlic conventional triad of Homer
he rules the sea, of wlii^-li f]]ey are the earthly
21
masters. Nestor is, next to Odysseus, the cliicftuin,
who exhibits the Phoenician quality of prudence
bordering upon craft ; but Nestor is his descendant,
and there were others of his lineaii;e in the Western
Peleponnesos, where we find the Anax andrOn in the
person of Augeias, who may have been of the same
race. Next we note conclusive evidence that Poseidon
is a southern deity. His descendants, the race of
Kuklopes, have been sliown^ to be on the Libyan coast.
He frequents the Aithiopes of the south to enjoy their
sacrifices, even at a time when the Olympian gods are
holding a solemn assembly ; and he seems to be
specially associated with the Solyman mountains.
He also carries the sure note of dark colour, and has
the word Kvavo^diTy^s not only for an epithet, but for
a title.
Such being his ethnical and such his local asso-
ciations, let us next inquire what are the special attri-
butions of this Deity, and we shall find that they at
once supply us with three of the most essential con-
stitutive elements of social existence — the instrument
of sea passage, the instrument of laud passage, and
the means of solid and permanent habitation. In
relation to ships, it was his to grant tlie good voyage
or to refuse it. Achilles had no special connexion
with Poseidon, but when, in the Ninth Iliad, he
threatens to sail home, he says it will be accomplished
if Poseidon^ favours him. And so conversely the
' Sec Mr. R. Brown's roseidoii. - 11. ix. 3(32.
voyage of Odysseus from Ogugie, though favoured
l)y the gods at large, is doomed to fail because
Poseidon has determined that he shall be wrecked.
On the other liand the Phaiakes, who are special
worshippers of Poseidon, excel all men in navigation
as rowers, with a speed equalling that of the hawk
in the air, or of the four-horse chariot on the plain. ^
The main instrument of agriculture was the ox, but
the main instrument of locomotion, and the grand
auxiliary in war, was the horse. The connexion
of Poseidon with the liorse is even more intimate
than with the ship. He unyokes and puts up the
horses of Zeus on their arriving in Olympos,^ which
cannot be a simple note of inferiority, since Hore
performed the same office for Athene. The signi-
fication here of the horse attribute is made all
the more pointed, because this is the only act
performed ])y Poseidon in Olympos. Peleus was
of the lineage of Zeus ; yet the deathless horses of
Achilles w^ere presented to his father not by Zeus
but by Poseidon. Neleus had the distinction of
a four-horse team ; l)ut Neleus was the child of
Poseidon. "When Antilochos was to be instructed
in horse-craft, Poseidon united with Zeus in im-
parting it. When ]\Icnelaos challenges Antilochos
to ]mv<^(\ liirnself in. the horse-race, of a suspected
liuud, li(-' rc'ijuires him to lay his hand upon the
horses and to swear ])y Poseidon that he is inno-
1 0.1. xiii. 8I-G. 2 jl. viii. 440.
23
cent of tliis incident. 1 know l)ut one provable
construction.^ It is that Poseidon was the god of
the particular region, Africa, without doubt, which
principally supplied the Achaian Peninsula with its
horses. There are still very curious traces of the
ancient importation of horses from Africa on the
tract of Mediterranean Coast lying between Frejus
and Hyeres, and bearing the designation of Pays
des maures.
Not less remarkable is the relation between
Poseidon, with the Phoenicians, and the construction
of houses with hewn or wrought stone. We trace
this connexion in the legend of the perjury of
Laomedon, whcj is said to have withheld the pay
stipulated to be paid to that divinity for having con-
structed the walls of Troy. This legend probably
had its basis in some transaction with the Phoinikes,
his worshippers. For it may be laid down as a
general rule that, wherever throughout the Poems
we meet a mention of skilled building or ornamenta-
tion, or of the use of hewn stone, it is among men
who stand in association with the Phoenicians.
Thus we have an imposing description of the palace
of Alhinoos, and of the buildings of his city ; Ijut
through Phaiakes, Homer signified Phoinikes.^ We
have a case of inferior but similar magnificence in
the palace of Menelaos ; but then Menelaos had
spent eight years in Eastern travel, and had ac-
1 II. xxiii. 5.t2-j. - Od. vii. 44-6, F 1 Sai
24
quired much substance in the course of it, wliich
■would naturally imply knowledge of its arts/ Even
Polupliemos, brutal as he was, had the courtyard for
his sheep and goats built of quarried stone ; but
Poluphemos was the son of Poseidon, and thus allied
Avith the irreat buildino- race. I have assumed all
alouir that the inhabitants of the Peninsula were
acquainted with agriculture before the advent of the
Phoenicians, or of those whose nationality was covered
by their name. This, I think, is sufficiently shown
by the etymology of a portion of the names given
to Achaian soldiery, which is indicative of pursuit,
and is markedly different from those of the chiefs.
I know but one place in Homer which associates
the East specially with the art of tillage. It is
where the cultivation of the Egyptian fields is
specially commended. But, speaking generally, it
is for advances beyond this stage of civil progress
that we have to look to the Phoenician vehicle. And
I think that already the debt of the Achaian Penin-
sula to the East has been shown to be considerable.
Let us carry the process somewhat further. In truth
the difficulty would be to point to any of the arts of
life, as exhibited in the Poems, which was not derived,
at least in germ, from Eastern and South-Eastern
sources. Nothing has been said of hunting. It may
probably have been known in some shape as a de-
fensive incident of rural pursuits before it had grown
into a recognised princely pursuit.
1 Oa, iv. 82-90.
25
I come next to art. And here it has to be observed
that, although the use of the potter's wheel is known
in Homer, yet there is nowhere an association of this art
with the effort to produce beauty ; nowhere, therefore,
an indication of the fine arts, except in connexion
either with metals or with embroidery. To begin
with embroidery, which is the smaller of the two
subjects. When, in the Sixth Iliad, Hecuba has to
select the most precious robe she possesses for a pro-
pitiatory offering to Athene, she chooses the largest
and the best adorned with patterns, which glittered,
too, like a star.^ Now it is probable that Troy may
have been more advanced in art than Greece, for it
was an older settled country, if we judge by the
number of generations allowed by Homer from the
first ancestors. But this choice robe and the collection
from which it was taken were not the work of Trojan
women. They were wrought by the damsels whom
Paris brought with him over sea from Sidon. In this
case the word poikihnata, which describes the patterns,
does not seem to include representations of the human
form, which Homer, with his intense sense of form,
would hardly have allowed to pass as mere decoration.
When Penelope resorts to her famous device in the
Odyssey,^ we are told only of its size and fineness.
It was meant professedly for a shroud to enwrap the
body of Laertes ; and the mere incident that it was
unwoven at nijxht shows that it was not a work of
art. The apparatus employed l)y Helen in the Fourth
1 II. vi. 289, scq. ' Od. iii. 104, se^- 95.
2C)
0(lys^?cy wus one for spinning only ; and even this
was a o-ift made to her in Egypt. ^ In the Third
Iliad, however, we find her employed in her chamber
upon a wel) upon which she embroidered {enepassen
is the word, used upon this occasion only) many
combats of the Trojan and Achaian warriors.^ Here,
and here only in Homer (as we must except works
wholly ideal), we have that higher form of art
which consists in the representation of the human
form. But the foreign derivation is here obvious,
for we must suppose Helen to have learned the
art either at Sidon, which ^ he had visited in her
company, or from the Sidonian attendants of whom
mention has been made.
Metallic art holds a more important place in the
poems than embroidery, and it assumes more forms
than one. Most commonly it is exhibited in portable
articles of war or other use ; but it is also an
auxiliary of architecture, which nowhere, except in
connexion with metallic workmanship, approaches to
an ornamental character. This art is so entirely
Eastern in its associations, that the possession of it
by Odysseus supplies one of the substantive pre-
sumptions that lie was modelled upon lines originally
Pha'iiician. TIephaistos and Athene* are the two
standing instructors in arts, she for women in textile
work, and he for metals. His name appears to fall
1 0(1. iv. 120-3.''.. •■; II. iii. 125. 3 ji vi. 292.
* 0(1. vi. 2;;:{: xxiii. 160.
27
witliiu the stiitcment of Ilerixlotus as to gods whose
designations were derived from Egypt. His divinity
was probably established on the coasts of the ^gean
as that of a nature power, for the name is more than
once used as synonymous with the element of fire.^
But this character is in him wholly subordinate to
that of the worker in art, and he fights against Troy,
which is befriended by the nature powers. His true
character is that of the art-worker. He builds the
Olympian palaces. He fashions the shield of Achilles.
He made the most precious of all the valuables in the
palace of Menelaos, a silver bowl, with edges of gold,
and this bowl was presented to the Achaian Prince
by Phaidimos, the King of Sidon.' Tlie silver bowl
given by Achilles as a prize in the foot race was of
Sidonian manufacture, and was brought to Greece by
Phoenician traffickers. The signs of his handiwork
abound in the palace of Alkinoos, where he made
the golden and the silver dogs.^ Throughout the
poems nothing can be clearer than the association
of metallic art with the Phoenician coast. Even a
superficial view of the Homeric text cannot fail to
recognise in this particular respect the debt of the
Greek Peninsula to the East.
But, as it was the general rule of the Greek race to
improve upon the benefactions they thus acquired, we
have a very signal example of such improvement in
1 II. ii. 226; Od. xxiv. 71. - Od. iv. Gi7 ; xv. 117.
^ Od. vii. 02.
28 •
the case of works in metallic art. With an extra-
ordinary daring, the Achaian poet endows these
works with automatic motion, and even with the
gift of understanding. The lame Ilephaistos, as he
proceeded to his anvil and his forge, w\as propped
by female figures in gold, which he had wrought,
and which were educated in accomplishments by the
Immortals.^ So likewise in the palace of Alkinoos,
besides the golden youths w4io hold torches to light
the banquet, and who are named without any other
express specification, the golden and silver watch
dogs, which have already been named, are endowed
with the life w^hich was needful for the performance
of their office, and are exempt both from death and
from old aixe.^ In the marvellous details of the
Shield, the poet seems always to be imparting life
to the metallic product. Thus wonderfully was he
made at once the recorder of what the East had
invented, and the prophet by anticipation of those
more splendid triumphs which in the aftertime his
countrymen were to achieve.
I might show if time permitted the connexion
between the Phoenician idea and the establishment
of the Games, the knowledge of drugs, the use of
pork as an article of food, and the supply of slaves
to the Achaian region.
But it is time to say a few words on the case
of Assyria, to whicli thus far I have made little
1 II. xviii. 37G, 417-20. - Od. vii. 91-4, 100-2.
29
or no specific reference. The Assyrians were too
distant to be even within the range of the poet's
knowledge, as exhibited in his sketch^ of the travels
of Menelaus in the south-east. We are therefore
led to the supposition that what the Achaians
had obtained from Assyria they had obtained with-
out definite acquaintance with the source whence it
came, knd that the name and marine of the Phoenicians
stood as an opaque curtain between them and the
great south-eastern empire. Much, nevertheless, may
have come, especially if in a fragmentary form. I
have elsewhere^ made a collection of particulars from
the Homeric text which appear to betray an Assyrian
origin. I say advisedly to betray, for we are wholly
without direct information, and have only internal
evidences to guide us. A portion of these I will
briefly set forth : — •
1. Homer gives us the great encircling river
Okeanos as the origin not only of rivers and fountains,
but of gods and men. Compare a citation made
by Dr. Driver from the tablets concerning Heaven
and earth : —
" The august ocean was their generator,
The singing deep was she that bare them all."
2. Thalassa, the Greek name for the sea, is of
Chaldean origin.
3. Poseidon has a marked correspondence with
1 Od. iv. 83-5.
2 "Landmarks of nomeric Study," pp. 127, sqq., with tho
authorities are there cited.
30
tlie Ilea of the Assyrian Triad or Trinity, in certain
respects. Neither of them was an elemental god, but
each was ruler of the sea. Poseidon was dark in
line ; and Ilea was the creator of the hlack race.
4. Deification is found on the tablets in the case
of Izdubar. The only instance of absolute and pure
deification given by Homer is that of Leucothea, and
she belono's to the Phoenician or Eastern circle.
o
5. Babylonia records the gigantic size and strength
of primitive man, and so Poseidon has relations with
the giants in various forms.
6. The Ishtar of the tal)lets appears to correspond
with the Aphrodite of Homer, the passage of whose
worship into Greece we can trace by her associa-
tion chiefly with Paphos, and next with Cythera or
Cerigo.
7. Aidoneus, the Greek Pluto, has among his other
epithets in Homer that of pulartes, the gate-fastener.
The term receives little or no illustration from the
Homeric text. But the Assyrian Underworld has no
less than seven gates ; and its leading idea is not that
of receiving the dead, but of shutting in the dead.
8. The relation of sonship, and of a conformity of
will attending it, between tlie god Merodach and liis
father is represented in a peculiar and most striking
manner l)y the conformity of will between the Apolh^
of the Iliad and his father Zeus.
9. The Babylonian Triad of Anu, Bel, and Hea is
the possible oi- prnb.iblo source of tlic Hoiiicric Triad
of Zeiis. I*<)scid<»ii. and A'i'doiieus.
31
10. Wherever there is any purtieukir notice of stars
in Homer it is always in Phoenician association, as if
based upon accounts of the Chaldean astrology.
11. Heptaism, or the systematic and significant
use of the number seven, is peculiarly Chaldean.
The only marked use of this numl)er in Homer is for
the seven 2:ates of Thebes. Now Tliebes was the
only one of the Achaian cities distinctly traceable in
Homer to an Eastern origin.
12. CancHi Eawlinson gives reasons for supposing
the Assyrian gods to have been about 19 in number ;
and Homer seems to use 20 as an approximate
number for the Olympian gods.
13. The descent of Ishtar to Hades caused ofreat
disorders in the Upper Workl. We may, perhaps,
compare the threat of Helios to Zeus, that if his
demand was refused he would cease to travel the sky
and shine only in the Underworld.^
14. On the tal)let the Flood is the consequence
of sin, and the allusion to a flood in an Homeric
simile associates it with the sins of rulers.
15. In the Babylonian system the JMoongod is
the father of the Sungod. In Homer tlie moon is
nowhere personified, ])ut thrice we find the sun
invested with the patronymic Hyperion ; and in
each case the passage is one of strictly Oriental
association.
It will be observed that in this enumeration I have
not yet alluded lo tlie great gift of the alpliabet
' Od. xii. 374-83.
32
\vliicli lias been commonly recognised as a gift of the
Phoenicians to Greece/ To this gift and to its source
Homer bears witness in a single passage of the Sixth
Iliad. It records the legend of Bellerophon, who is
himself a descendant of Cloeus or Aiolas, and this
name when found in Homer is, I venture to assert,
a sure sign of Phoenician association. The other
chief actor, who transmits the written or symbolic
message, is Proitos, and Proitos is the king of Argolis,
an undoubted seat of immigration from the south-east.
Yet one other remark, whatever the East gave to
the West, it did not supply Europe with the basis of
its social morality in the great article of marriage.
Sexual license is, according to the Poems of Homer,
traceably wider in the East than in Western regions ;
and it is remarkable that at that early date we should
find the line between polygamy and monogamy
already drawn where it may be said generally to
have lain ever since, namely, at the Bosphorus ai- i
the Dardanelles.
I now, with renewed apologies, bring to a close
this very lium})le contribution to a great cause.
To have offered it will give me sincere pleasure,
if it prove to be in any degree a source of interest
or profit to any among the members of the Oriental
Congress of 1892.
W. E. GLADSTONE.
July-Awjust, 1892.
' Kawlinson's Herodotus, ii. 717, 9.
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