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NEW CHAPTERS IN GREEK HISTORY. 
 
NEW CHAPTERS 
 
 IN 
 
 GREEK HISTORY. 
 
 HISTORICAL RESULTS OF RECENT EXCAVATIONS 
 IN GREECE AND ASIA MINOR. 
 
 BY 
 
 PERCY GARDNER, M.A., Litt.D., 
 
 LINCOLN AND MERTON rROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY AND ART, OXFORD ; 
 LATE DISNEY PROFESSOR OF ARCHAEOLOGY, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 UIIVBESIT7 
 
 toros^ 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 
 1892. 
 

 ^n 
 
 i o 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CKOSS. 
 
^0 
 
 SIR CHARLES THOMAS NEWTON, K.C.B., 
 
 PROFESSOR REGINALD STUART POOLE, 
 
 DR. BARCLAY VINCENT HEAD, 
 
 AND 
 
 MY OTHER COLLEAGUES AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM, 
 
 1871-1887, 
 
 £ gratefully gcbicate these Jiapxr0, 
 
 IN GREAT PART WRITTEN WHILE I ENJOVED THE INESTIMABLE 
 ADVANTAGE OF THEIR SOCIETY AND DAILY COUNSEL. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 £> 
 
 The object of the present work is to try to call more 
 eeneral attention to the results of recent excavation in 
 Greek lands. This object I have tried to express in the 
 title chosen : it will of course be understood that the 
 New CJiapters are not the chapters of this book, but 
 the chapters which have been opened to us at Mycenae, 
 at Olympia, and in the other scenes of recent researches. 
 The interest of these researches is many-sided : some 
 people will be attracted by their mythologic, some by 
 their artistic results, some by their bearing on ancient 
 life and manners, and so forth. On their artistic aspects 
 I have scarcely touched, this book being not primarily 
 concerned with art. My endeavour has been to set forth 
 briefly, and, if possible, in a way tending to interest all 
 Fhil-hellenes, the gains which the excavations of the 
 last twenty years have brought us in regard to our 
 knowledge of Greek history, using the word history in 
 the widest sense, as covering not only political events, 
 but all sides of the activity of a nation. 
 
 About half of the matter in this work has been printed 
 before. The greater part of Chapters IV., VI., VII., 
 VIII., IX., XV. has appeared in the Quarterly Reviezv, 
 
viii Preface. 
 
 most of Chapter X. in the Contemporary Review, most of 
 Chapter XI. in the Fortnightly Review, and parts of 
 Chapters I., V. in Macmillaris Magazine. Chapters I., II., 
 III., XII., XIII., XIV. are mainly or entirely unpublished, 
 and V. and VI. are in great part new. I have to thank 
 the proprietors of the Contemporary and Fortnightly 
 Revieivs and of Macmillari s Magazine for permission 
 freely to use this old material. I have carefully revised 
 it, in some cases almost re-writing, and in all cases 
 endeavouring to bring my work up to the level of recent 
 knowledge. One chapter only, that on the Successors of 
 Alexander, I have not attempted to revise. It is evident 
 that so slight a sketch of so vast a subject could not be 
 seriously corrected. The claim of this paper to appear in 
 the present book rests on the fact that it embodies the 
 results of considerable numismatic research. 
 
 As a rule the inscriptions found at the sites dealt with 
 in these chapters have not been discussed, as such dis- 
 cussion would have been too technical, and dealt only 
 with detached points. Besides, to deal only with the 
 subject-matter of the inscriptions discovered on the one 
 site of Olympia would take a volume. Inscriptions do, 
 however, furnish the main theme of two Chapters, XII. 
 and XIV. 
 
 The Chapters are quite independent, excepting II. to 
 V., in which is attempted the very difficult task of giving 
 a slight account of the recent discoveries of the remains 
 of pre-historic Greece. In a subject so rapidly moving 
 and so full of false lights, it is dangerous to commit 
 oneself to any views ; and it is almost certain that future 
 discovery will modify any views set forth under the 
 
Preface. ix 
 
 existing circumstances. But I felt it incumbent on me 
 not to avoid the responsibility of publishing such opinions 
 as many years' study of the subject have suggested to me. 
 
 The few illustrations used are all taken from authori- 
 tative works, and intended only to make the text more 
 intelligible. I have to express my indebtedness to the 
 authors and proprietors of them. 
 
 These Chapters were usually written as a relief in the 
 intervals of lecturing, cataloguing and other more absorb- 
 ing employments. They are not, I need scarcely say, in- 
 tended to be exhaustive. Within limits so narrow nothing 
 more could be attempted than to give a rough outline. 
 I have written not for archaeologists, but for the ordinary 
 educated reader, for those who are acquainted with the 
 literature or the history or the art of Greece, and who 
 wish to fill up lacunae, or to learn in what directions the 
 spade is increasing our acquaintance with ancient Hellas. 
 Certain inconsistencies, as the use sometimes of I and 
 sometimes of the more formal we, or differences in style 
 and scale, result from the variety of the occasions on which 
 various parts of the work were written. Also in some of 
 the papers earliest written, especially Chapter X., are 
 passages which I should not now write : but these, unless 
 actually incorrect, I have not usually altered. 
 
 Of the sites not here treated of, some are dealt with 
 in more or less detail in recent papers by other writers. 
 As to Delos the reader is referred to Professor Jebb's 
 paper in the first volume of the Journal of Hellenic 
 Studies; Ephesus and the Cimmerian Bosphorus are 
 spoken of in Sir Charles Newton's Essays ; Icaria and 
 Paphos in Mr. Louis Dyer's Gods in Greece. But the 
 
x Preface. 
 
 English literature on this subject is anything but 
 extensive. 
 
 My principal obligations are expressed in the dedica- 
 tion. In addition, I am indebted to several friends, in 
 Oxford and elsewhere, for reading the proofs of various 
 chapters and helping me with suggestions and corrections, 
 in particular to Mr. W. W. Fowler, Mr. D. G. Hogarth, 
 and Miss Alice Gardner. 
 
 PERCY GARDNER. 
 Oxford, \st March, 1892. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE VERIFICATION OF ANCIENT HISTORY. 
 
 Scarceness and unsatisfactory character of ancient authorities, I. 
 Desirability of verification, 3. Actual and ideal history, 5. 
 Possible tests of historical fact, geographic, 8 : inscriptions, 1 1 : 
 works of art, 14: coins, 15. Instance, Mycenaean history, 17. 
 Great extent of materials for verification of history, 20. The 
 verification of history by the imagination, 22. Principal means, 
 travel and archaeology, 24. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 PHRYGIA AND TROAS. 
 
 The exploration of Asia Minor, 28. Inconsistent accounts of the 
 Phrygians in ancient writers, 30. The Phrygians properly a 
 wanior clan who ruled a Canaanite population, 31. The region 
 about Mount Sipylus, 34. The Greater Phrygia on the San- 
 garius, 35. Reliefs of this district, 37. Great Phrygian tombs, 
 40. The Troad : excavations at Hissarlik, 44. Correspondences 
 and discrepancies with the Iliad, 46. Exceptional finds of the 
 Mycenaean class, 51. The Palace, 53. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MYCENAE AND THE ISLANDS. 
 
 Geography of Argolis, 56. Legends of Mycenae, 58. Pausanias at 
 Mycenae, 59. Subterranean treasuries, 61. Schliemann's dis- 
 covery of rock-tombs, 63. Subsequent excavations, 67. Orcho- 
 menus, 69. Bapheion, 70. Close relations of art to Egypt, 72. 
 Mr. Petrie's date, 74. Burials at Mycenae probably re-inter- 
 ments, 76. The circle of stones later, 79. Indications of con- 
 nection with Phrygia, 81. Comparison with legends accepted 
 by Thucydides, 83. Date of Achaean civilization, 84. The 
 Carian theory, 86. Mycenaean and earlier remains in the 
 Islands, 87. 
 
xii Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE PALACE AT TIRYNS. 
 
 Position of Tiryns, 91. Its history, 93. The Palace, 96. Propy- 
 laea, 100. Forecourt, 101. Great hall, 102. Bath-room, 106. 
 Quarters of women, 107. Alabaster frieze, no. Wall-paintings, 
 in. Chambers in walls, 112. Question of nationality, 114. 
 Splendour of heroic age, 116. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 RECENT DISCOVERIES AND THE HOMERIC POEMS. 
 
 Date of Homeric poems, 118. Native and imported works of art at 
 Mycenae, 120. Break in art after the Dorian invasion, 123. The 
 geometric style, 125. Revival of art under eastern influences, 126. 
 The shield of Achilles, 130. Other works described in the Iliad, 
 139. The Cup of Nestor, 141. Homeric armour, 143. The 
 Palace of Odysseus, 145. The golden age at Mycenae, 151. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ANCIENT CYPRUS. 
 
 thoenicians and early inhabitants, 153. Cult of Aphrodite, 155. 
 Adonis, 157. Greek settlements, 159. The Cypria, 160. Persian 
 Conquests, 162. Evagoras, 164. The Ptolemies, 165. Effemi- 
 nacy of people, 167. Mediaeval Cyprus, 168. Present inhabitants, 
 171. Beginning of excavations, 173. The discovery of the 
 language, 173. Cesnola's excavations, 175. Cyprus Exploration 
 Fund, 177. Classes of tombs, 178. Excavation at Paphos, 1S0. 
 Excavation at Salamis, 181. The problem of Cypriote art, 183. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 NAUCRATIS AND THE GREEKS IN EGYPT. 
 
 Earliest contact of Greeks and Egyptians, 188. Psammitichus, 1*9. 
 Egypt opened to the Greeks, 191. Discoveries at Daphnae, 194. 
 Inscriptions at Abu Simbel, 198. Aprics, 198. Amasis, 200. 
 Site of Naucratis, 202. Early history of the colony, 204. Pottery 
 of Naucratis, 206. Building of the Hellenion, 208. Scarabs and 
 pottery, 214. The Persian conquest of Egypt, 215. Egyptian 
 revolts, 218. Alexander the Great in Egypt, 223. The Ptolemaic 
 regime, 225. 
 
Contents. xiii 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE EXCAVATION OF THE ATHENIAN ACROPOLIS. 
 
 Recent excavations on the Acropolis, 231. Visit of Pausanias, 235. 
 The Acropolis in pre-historic times, 236. The kings, 238. De- 
 struction by the Persians, 239. Reconstruction after B.C. 479, 
 241. Levelling of surface, 242. Burial of broken statues, 243. 
 Old temple of Athena, 244. Pediment of temple of Athena, 245. 
 Other early pediments, 246. Female figures, 247. Early Athenian 
 vases, 251. Works of Cimon, 254. Was the old temple of 
 Athena rebuilt? 255. Splendid works of Pericles, 256. The 
 Propylaea, 258. Cults of the Acropolis, 259. Later history of 
 the Acropolis, 262. Lord Elgin, 263. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OLYMPIA AND THE FESTIVAL. 
 
 The German excavation, 266. Physical training in Greece, 267. 
 Nudity and oil, 269. Ancient and modern feats, 271. Institution 
 of the Olympic festival, 273. The throng in the Altis, 274. The 
 temple of Zeus, 277. The Heraeum, 283. Other buildings in the 
 Altis, 285. Palaestrae outside the Altis, 289. Order of the 
 contests, 293. Rewards of the victors, 297. Downfall of Greek 
 athletic sports, 300. Their place taken by military exercises, 303. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE RELIEFS AND INSCRIPTIONS OF ATHENIAN TOMBS. 
 
 The cemetery by the Dipylon, 305. Reliefs representing daily life, 
 307. Reliefs having reference to death, 311. Symbolical figures, 
 314. Conventional character of monuments, 316. Backward 
 reference of reliefs, 320. Inscriptions on public tombs, 321. 
 Simplicity of private inscriptions, 323. Metrical epitaphs, 325. 
 Paucity of references to future life, 330. Christian epitaphs, 331. 
 Minatory inscriptions, 334. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 SPARTAN TOMBS AND THE CULTUS OF THE DEAD. 
 
 Discovery of archaic reliefs at Sparta, 338. Representations of heroes 
 on them, 340. Ancient beliefs as to the future life, 341. Persis- 
 tence of burial customs, 343. Details of the Spartan reliefs, 344. 
 Lycian tombs and reliefs, 346. Representations of banquets, 347. 
 The hero as rider, 351. Female figures in heroic reliefs, 353. 
 Connection with Attic sepulchral reliefs, 353. Terra- cotta 
 statuettes in graves, 354. 
 
xiv Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 EPIDAURUS AND ANCIENT MEDICINE. 
 
 Plato's opinion of medicine, 357. Rise of the cult of Asclepius, 35S. 
 Democedes, 359. Other public physicians. 360. Physicians' 
 oath, 361. Precinct of Asclepius at Athens, 363. The Plains of 
 Aristophanes, 365. Excavations at Epidaurus, 368. Records of 
 cures by Asclepius, 370 : their date, 376. Later Asclepian in- 
 scriptions at Epidaurus and Rome, 378. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ELEUSIS AND THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 Sources of our knowledge, 381. Various local mysteries, 383. Origin 
 of those at Eleusis, 384. Four acts of the mysteries, 386. Pro- 
 cession to Eleusis, 38S. The Hall of the Mystae, 389. Proceed- 
 ings at Eleusis, 392. The sacred dramas, 395. Vase-paintings. 
 399. Effects of the celebrations, 401. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 DODONA AND THE ORACLES. 
 
 Early cults at Dodona, 403. Apolline oracles, 405. Methods of 
 giving responses, 407. Dodonaean responses in ancient writers. 
 408. Leaden tablets with questions discovered by Carapanos, 400. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER AND CREEK CIVILIZATION 
 
 IN THE EAST. 
 
 History of Hellas and Hellenism, 413. Essentially Greek character 
 of Alexander's conquests, 414. Paucity of authorities for later 
 Greek history, 417. Condition of Macedon after Alexander, 419. 
 Gaulish invasion, 420. Reconstitution of the kinerdom. &.11 
 Greece : the Achaean League, 423. The reformed Sparta, 425. 
 The Aetolians, 426. Egypt, 427. Syria, 430. Greek hold on 
 Asia, 431. The far East, 433. Cities of Syria and Asia Minor, 
 435. Expansion of commerce, 436. Rhodes, 438. Changes in 
 religion, 440. Sarapis, 442. Cybele and Mithras, 443. The 
 Games, 445. Erani and thiasi in Greece, 446. Philosophy, 447. 
 Material progress and science, 449. Wealth and luxury, 451. 
 Profligacy, 452. Domestic life; position of women, 454. Senti- 
 ment for nature, 456. Realism in art, 457. 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 51. Jewelry from Hissarlik 
 
 53. Ground-plan of Palace, Hissarlik 
 
 62. The Acropolis of Mycenae 
 
 64. Royal tombs, Mycenae 
 
 65. Mycenae swords .... 
 
 66. Siege of city, Mycenae 
 69. Ceiling at Orchomenus 
 71. Gold cups from Bapheion. 
 
 99. Plan of Upper Citadel, Tiryns 
 113. Walls at Carthage and Tiryns 
 
 138. Phoenician Cup, Cyprus . 
 
 139. Gold plate, Mycenae . 
 
 141. Cup, Mycenae 
 
 144. Gold seal, Mycenae 
 
 234. The Acropolis of Athens . 
 
 278. Olympia 
 390. Eleusis 
 
 SOURCE. 
 
 Schliemann's Ilios, p. 488. 
 Schliemann's Tiryns, p. 225. 
 Schuchhardt, Schliemanrts 
 Ausgrabungen, trans., p. 298. 
 Schliemann's Mycenae,-^. 124. 
 Bulletin de Corr. Hell., vol. x. 
 Epheincris Arch. 1891, pi. 2. 
 Schliemann's Tiryns, p. 299." 
 Arc/idol. Anseiger, 1S90, p. 
 
 104. 
 Schliemann's Tiryns, pi. ii. 
 
 P- 3-4- 
 Cesnola's Cyprus, pi. xix. 
 
 Schliemann's Mycenae, p. 309. 
 
 P- 237. 
 
 „ „ P- 174- 
 
 Journ. Hell. Studies, 1S80, 
 
 pi. viii. 
 Funde von Olympia, pi. i. 
 Praktika, 1887, pi. i. 
 
NEW CHAPTERS IN GREEK HISTORY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE VERIFICATION OF ANCIENT HISTORY. 
 
 There is a notable distinction between the records of 
 ancient and the records of modern history. All that 
 we possess of records of ancient history, that is, of the 
 ages before the great barbarian invasions, reaches us as 
 wreckage, as a small remnant which has survived the 
 flood of ages of ignorance and has floated down to us. 
 The records of modern history, on the other hand, are 
 mostly on our side of the flood. From this one fact 
 arise great differences in method between the investiga- 
 tion of the history of Egypt or Assyria, Greece or Rome, 
 and the investigation of modern history, some of which 
 will be mentioned below. But the most important differ- 
 ence lies in the far greater necessity for verification in the 
 case of ancient history, wherever verification is possible. 
 
 The great difficulty of writers on modern history is in 
 co-ordinating the vast masses of material before them, 
 comparing statement with statement and writer with 
 writer, and deciding which version of a story has the 
 better authority. Writing and printing have for several 
 centuries past been so usual that almost everything im- 
 portant which has happened has been somewhere or other 
 recorded. It is the quantity rather than the scarcity of 
 information which makes our great difficulty in dealing 
 with modern, and particularly with very modern times. 
 
 The opposite holds of ancient history. There the great 
 
 13 
 
7. New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. I. 
 
 trouble is not only the conflict of authorities, but even 
 more their paucity. If anyone wanders away from the 
 main stream of ancient history he will be astonished to 
 find how little is recorded. We scarcely know the out- 
 lines of the history of the Phoenicians, the Etruscans, or 
 even the Parthians. We learn little about the cities 
 founded by the Greeks in South Italy, and of their sudden 
 and wonderful bloom ; and even if we follow the main 
 stream of history we continually find that we have but a 
 single narrative of an event, and that single narrative on 
 the face of it very improbable if not impossible, or 
 obviously prejudiced, or inconsistent with itself. 
 
 Nor have we only the paucity of ancient authorities to 
 complain of, but also their unsatisfactory character. A 
 considerable part of our account of ancient history rests 
 on the word of such writers as Diodorus and Justin, who 
 follow authorities no longer extant, and whose judgment 
 is worth next to nothing. When Diodorus contradicts 
 Thucydides we lightly set him aside, but when he contra- 
 dicts no one, because no one else mentions the particular 
 event of which he is speaking, then, in the absence of any 
 direct counter-evidence, we are disposed to accept his 
 statements. Perhaps we cannot help doing so ; but if the 
 woof of ancient history contains such patchings how can 
 it hold together ? Even to the best and most trustworthy 
 of ancient writers, with one or two possible exceptions, 
 feelings such as are now usual as to the sacredness of fact 
 were absolutely foreign : there is a scientific realism about 
 the modern mind which is a recent growth, and of which 
 the ancients generally had no more notion than they had 
 of gunpowder or of printing. And at all events from the 
 time of Thucydides onwards, we must make allowance in 
 all ancient histories for the strong influence of rhetorical 
 and sophistic tendencies, which grew stronger and 
 stronger. 
 
Chap. I.] The Verification of A ncient History. 3 
 
 Hence to many students the pursuit of ancient history 
 is a gradual education in scepticism. They begin by 
 despising Diodorus, and go on to doubting Herodotus, 
 until they proceed to have very grave doubts about many 
 things in Thucydides. And if there comes a reaction, it 
 is only the reaction which is the natural fruit of that 
 extreme scepticism which is always conservative. Men do 
 not learn to believe in the ancient writers more, but they 
 begin more and more to doubt whether certainty is 
 attainable in ancient history at all. Abandoning all hope 
 of reaching actual fact, they become content to learn what 
 was believed by this or that party, this or that historian. 
 They take the statements of ancient writers with a grain 
 of salt ; but they do not attempt a really searching 
 criticism of those statements, because they regard such 
 criticism as an attempt to measure distances with an 
 elastic thread or to rule lines with a rod of pith. 
 
 The spirit of criticism and the spirit of scepticism are 1/ 
 the same. And as we cannot in these days cease to be 
 critical, it is likely that we shall tend more and more to 
 scepticism as regards ancient history. But the best, per- 
 haps the only, remedy for scepticism lies in the possibility 
 of to some extent verifying ancient history. This verifica- 
 tion consists, in history as in physical science, in bringing 
 views before they are finally accepted to the test of 
 actually-existing fact There are of course limits to the 
 availability of such facts in the case of ancient history, yet 
 the test can sometimes be applied, more often than most 
 students of ancient history are disposed to believe. 
 
 I do not propose now to discuss all the tests which may 
 be brought to bear upon the statements of the ancient 
 historians. For example, the languages of the ancient 
 world, though sometimes dead, are at least very well- 
 preserved corpses, and their dissection is a scientific 
 process whence may accrue much gain to history. No 
 
 B 2 
 
4 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. I. 
 
 doubt comparative philology furnishes us in many cases 
 with a test whereby we may directly learn the truth in 
 such matters as the geographical distribution of races, 
 their relations one to the other, and their economic and 
 social conditions at various periods of history. But com- 
 parative philology is so far outside the circle of my know- 
 ledge that I cannot venture to speak further of it. 
 
 Perhaps more important from the historical point of 
 view is the very modern science of ethnography, which 
 deals with the beginnings of civilisation, traces to a 
 common origin customs prevailing in various lands, and 
 shows how in many countries the same primary forces of 
 human desire and intelligence produced results of a parallel 
 character. Comparative mythology and folklore come 
 under this head. Of course this test is of little value 
 when we come to speak of civilised societies. But in 
 regard to the earliest history of Egyptians, Greeks and 
 Romans, the religious customs and social habits of those 
 nations, the ethnographic test may be applied with 
 advantage. 
 
 I propose, however, to confine myself to the mention of 
 four classes of facts with which our narratives of ancient 
 history may be brought into contact: — (i) geographic 
 fact, (2) inscriptions, (3) works of art, and (4) coins. 
 
 These classes of facts we must briefly consider in turn. 
 But first I wish to insist on a distinction of some import- 
 ance to the enquiry before us. 
 
 We must distinguish between objective history and sub- 
 jective history, between what has really taken place in the 
 world, and what is supposed to have taken place. Ob- 
 jective history is the succession of events as they would 
 appear if investigated on the spot by a committee of men 
 of thorough scientific training and free from preposses- 
 sions. 
 
 We know how the phonograph repeats as often as is 
 
Chap. I.] The Verification of A ncient History. 
 
 desired words spoken into it, in the very tones in which 
 they were spoken. If all the past history of the world 
 were registered in a sort of infinite phonograph, and a com- 
 mittee of savants had the power of rehearsing again and 
 again any event of the past which interested them, with 
 all the accompanying sights and sounds, then in time we 
 might form an actual or objective history of the world, not 
 indeed absolutely free from subjective colouring, since our 
 savants would be after all but men, yet with very little 
 colouring beyond such as belongs to man generically. 
 
 Beside the stream of actual history of the past runs 
 another stream of ideal history, the course not of that 
 which has really taken place, but of that which is supposed 
 to have taken place. Of course, speaking strictly, this is 
 not one stream but many, for at every period there must 
 have been the widest differences of opinion between men 
 and men as to events which they witnessed, or of which 
 they heard. But with every day the variety of these 
 opinions would diminish, until after a while, one or two or 
 three versions of each event would gain ascendancy and be 
 perpetuated in books of history. Each nation or city or 
 group of men would come to some rough agreement as 
 to what they believed to have happened, and this belief 
 would then take its place in what I have called ideal 
 history. Of course nothing like all the versions of various 
 events actually current have come down to us ; sometimes 
 we have but one version, sometimes two, sometimes a 
 dozen: while objective history is a single line, subjective 
 history resembles a skein sometimes of one thread, some- , 
 times of two, sometimes of many. 
 
 However, infinite complexity arises from the fact that 
 actual and subjective history are ever acting and reacting 
 one on another. It is of course the object of every his- 
 torian to recover so far as is possible, the actual objective 
 course of events. But the historian's duty is not limited 
 
6 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. I. 
 
 to that. It does not in the least follow that if we can 
 really settle the objective history of some event, we can 
 afford to neglect the versions of it current at the time or 
 subsequently. For it may often turn out that beliefs as to 
 
 - what took place, though not corresponding to the facts, 
 yet exercised a greater political and social influence than 
 the facts themselves. 
 
 This will be clearer if we take an instance from Greek 
 history. We do not know whether the Greek tradition of 
 a war waged by the Greeks in common against Troy was 
 based upon fact or not. To prove either that it had a real 
 foundation or that it had no real foundation would be a 
 great triumph for a scientific historian. But at the same 
 time the decision of this point would not be of great im- 
 portance in relation to subsequent Greek history. The 
 contemporaries of Miltiades and of Alexander believed 
 
 • that the Trojan war was historical fact, and that belief of 
 theirs exercised an enormous effect on their political and 
 military actions. So, if not itself a fact, the Trojan war 
 became the cause of innumerable facts. Even if it never 
 took place it was far more powerful among the realities of 
 the world than if it had taken place and been forgotten for 
 want of a sacer vates. In fact, anyone would easily see 
 what a blunderer the historian would be who made a 
 demonstration of the non-reality of the Trojan war a 
 ground for asserting that it had nothing to do with Greek 
 history. 
 
 It seemed the more necessary thus to insist on the value 
 of ideal history in order to guard against the notion that 
 the present book is in any way directed against the 
 literary study of the ancient historians. It is true that it 
 advocates as strongly as possible the most exact and 
 painstaking attempt to discover the actual objective facts 
 of past history. And it is true that its tendency is directed 
 against the notion that objective history can be recovered 
 
Chap. I.] The Verification of Ancient History. J 
 
 from the ancient texts alone, without the discipline of 
 existing facts. But even if we knew with absolute cer- 
 tainty the entire objective course of ancient history, the 
 texts of the great ancient historians would scarcely lose 
 anything either in interest or importance. It is their 
 modern commentators who would suffer, and not they. 
 In some respects they would even gain, as their works 
 would acquire a fresh psychologic interest, and shew us 
 more clearly than before through what kinds of spectacles 
 ancient historians looked at the events passing on around 
 them, and on what principles they constructed their 
 narratives. 
 
 It is, however, almost entirely with objective history that 
 we have at present to deal. The existing facts of the 
 world take us beyond the mere subjective statements of 
 historians, and enable us to investigate in a certain number 
 of cases the actual realities of past history. 
 
 And we are able to do this in two directions, first in 
 regard to actual fact of 'past history, civil and military 
 affairs, the dates of migrations and wars, of the founding 
 of cities and their destruction, the very bone and frame- 
 work of the past ; and, secondly, in regard to the back- 
 ground of history, the state of manners and of arts, the 
 customs of daily life and the cultus of the gods, the nature 
 of houses, of arms, and clothing and the like. 
 
 To take a single monument of the past for illustration. 
 Everyone who has seen representations of that marvellous 
 tapestry at Bayeux, on which is portrayed, by contem- 
 porary hands, the Norman Conquest of England, will 
 understand that it is naturally appealed to, alike when 
 there is a question as to some of the actual facts of the ad- 
 ventures of Harold and the Battle of Hastings, and when 
 we wish more fully to realise the outward life of the times, 
 the forms of towers and churches, of ships and camps, or 
 the arms and equipment of Norman and of Saxon. 
 
8 Neiu Chapters in Greek History, [Chap. I. 
 
 We must briefly indicate the nature of the services 
 rendered to ancient history in both these directions by 
 existing fact of four classes : geographic, epigraphic, 
 artistic, and numismatic. 
 
 I. 
 
 The geographical test is of all the easiest to apply to 
 historical narrative, and that which requires the least 
 special preparation. It may even, in these days of good 
 maps, be applied in many cases without the necessity of 
 foreign travel. But, of course, travel is a necessity for 
 those who wish to make much use of it. 
 
 Of all tests which can be applied to the woof of history, 
 the geographical is the most objective. The facts on 
 which it is based depend not at all on man and his fancies, 
 but on the laws of physics and chemistry. Thus primarily 
 they can be applied only to the recovery of objective 
 history, and not immediately to ideal history. It may, in 
 some cases, turn out that geographical fact is totally at 
 variance with all the accounts of an event which have been 
 handed down to us : in such a case we are almost helpless. 
 But far more often the facts of geography will establish 
 one and discredit the other of two contending views of an 
 event. 
 
 Let us take an instance or two. In the first volume of 
 the Transactions of the American School at Athens, 
 Professor Goodwin has published a masterly criticism of 
 that account of the battle of Salamis which has generally 
 passed current, and is adopted by Grote, Busolt, and other 
 authorities. This account, based professedly upon the text 
 of Herodotus, supposes that on the night before the battle 
 the Persian fleet which had been stationed in the neighbour- 
 hood of Athens, moved right along the shore of Attica to 
 Eleusis, so as to block the Greek fleet into the opposite 
 
Chap. I.] The Verification of Ancient History. 9 
 
 harbour of Salamis ; and that with morning it advanced in 
 long line from the shore of Attica against the Greek fleet 
 to destroy it ; but was beaten in a battle in the straits. 
 Professor Goodwin's first object is to prove that this 
 account cannot be reconciled with the geographical facts 
 of the straits. The map in Grote's history, where it looks 
 not impossible, is incorrectly drawn, and on so small a 
 scale as to be merely misleading. The writer then goes 
 on to consider the only alternative view which the con- 
 figuration of the district permits ; namely, that the 
 Persians did not blockade the Greeks by sailing through 
 the straits between Attica and Salamis, but only blockaded 
 the other end of the straits towards the Megarid by send- 
 ing a squadron round the south coast of the island of 
 Salamis. That this is what really took place he produces 
 strong arguments to prove, for which I can only refer to 
 the paper itself. And Professor Goodwin might have said, 
 in the manner of many a hasty writer before and since, 
 that if Herodotus gives a different account Herodotus 
 must be wrong. But Mr. Goodwin is not content with so 
 summary a dismissal of testimony ; so, after making out 
 the course, which, according to his observation of geo- 
 graphical facts, the battle must have taken, he turns again 
 to our ancient authorities, Aeschylus, Herodotus and 
 Ephorus, as followed by Diodorus, to see if the ideal 
 account accepted by them was really in contradiction with 
 fact. He tries to shew that the language of Diodorus 
 (Ephorus) and of Aeschylus, who was probably an eye- 
 witness of the battle, suits the version of the strategy 
 which he proposes, better than the received version. 
 And, finally he maintains that even the language of 
 Herodotus is very easily to be reconciled with his own 
 view. 
 
 Of course it is only on the spot that one could finally 
 test the arguments of Mr. Goodwin : and his views do not 
 
io New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. I. 
 
 seem to be accepted by some of those who have since 
 written on the subject. But whether he be right or wrong, 
 in any case his method is admirable. His facts are worth 
 thousands of pages of learned comments on ancient texts,, 
 if made without regard to things, and merely based on 
 the interpretation of words. 
 
 A second instance is furnished by the very careful in- 
 vestigations of Gen. Cunningham as to the place and 
 details of the battle between Alexander and Porus, pub- 
 lished in the first volume of his Ancient Geography of 
 India. It is true that Gen. Cunningham's discussion is 
 marred by a want of critical power, for he does not make 
 sufficient distinction between the trustworthy narrative of 
 Arrian, based on the testimony of contemporaries, and the 
 comparatively valueless statements of Curtius. But he 
 redeems this fault by the care and thoroughness of his 
 topographical studies, and the determination with which 
 he himself marched on the roads which Alexander's army 
 would take to reach the Indus, thus testing their practic- 
 ability. His views appear to be in harmony with Arrian's 
 narrative, though of course unless one has been on the spot 
 one cannot fully judge of them. It is geographic survey 
 and experiment only which can, in a case like this, 
 establish a solid causeway across the marsh of uncertainty, 
 rendering easier the labours of every scholar who shall in 
 future concern himself with this passage of history. 
 
 I should not omit to mention in this connexion the 
 vigorous and repeated efforts of Prof. Ramsay, Mr. Hogarth 
 and others, to throw light on the confused geography of 
 Asia Minor, and on the course taken by the roads in pre- 
 historic, in Persian, and in Roman times. The expeditions 
 of Xerxes, of the younger Cyrus, of Alexander, of Trajan, 
 must all be wrapped in some degree of uncertainty as 
 regards detail, until we more fully know the geography of 
 Western Asia. 
 
Chap. I.] The Verification of Ancient History. n 
 
 II. 
 
 The second test is furnished by inscriptions. It is how- 
 ever at once evident that ancient inscriptions can never 
 furnish us with so objective a test for history as geo- 
 graphical facts. There has perhaps been some misunder- 
 standing on this point, and too pronounced a tendency in 
 certain quarters to regard inscriptions as infallible, which 
 they clearly are not. All that we can prove from the 
 recovery of an inscription is, firstly, that a certain version 
 of fact was current in a particular time and place, and 
 secondly that this version was proclaimed by the public 
 setting up of a document recording it. The value of the 
 testimony of inscriptions must be judged by the same 
 canons as that of any other testimony, and it can in some 
 cases only help us to recover ideal, not objective history. 
 But for instance, if the inscription contains a lav/ or decree 
 of any kind, it is an objective fact that the law or decree 
 was passed and recorded by authority. 
 
 As regards the earlier part of ancient history, the annals 
 of the Egyptians and Assyrians, it is well known that in 
 our days inscriptions are the main source of knowledge, 
 and the writings of authors like Berosus, Diodorus, and 
 even Herodotus are only used, with the greatest caution, 
 to fill gaps, or to compare with the contemporary docu- 
 ments, the mass of which is yearly growing upon us. As 
 an instance of the abundance of this ancient material, there 
 are in the British Museum thousands of un-read cuneiform 
 tablets, so many in fact that it has been stated that they 
 cannot t*e read and arranged in less than a century from 
 now ; yet every year increases the stock. 
 
 The importance of the cuneiform documents has come 
 home to classical scholars in connection with the question 
 of the credibility of Herodotus. Not many years ago 
 
12 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. I. 
 
 critics were divided on the question whether the testimony 
 of Herodotus or that of Ctesias was preferable in regard 
 to the ancient history of the East, and the controversy 
 would doubtless have been periodically revived, the " last 
 new view " being on one side or the other alternately, but 
 for the possibilities of verification now offered by cunei- 
 form tablets, which have decided for all time that Ctesias 
 was the impostor and Herodotus the true man. 
 
 But with regard to the value of Greek inscriptions, the 
 opinion of the learned is not so unanimous ; and it has 
 sometimes been proclaimed with authority that Greek in- 
 scriptions are of little value for Greek history. It is easy 
 enough to understand how such an opinion could arise in 
 the mind of a scholar who should approach Greek history 
 only from the literary side. And it has thus much of truth 
 in it, that it is but seldom that we can quote a statement 
 of Herodotus or Thucydides, and then print on the oppo- 
 site page the text of a Greek inscription which disproves 
 that statement. Such instances can be found. For 
 example, Grote rejected on the ground of the silence of 
 Thucydides, the assertion of some ancient authorities that 
 the tribute which the Athenians exacted from their allies 
 was doubled towards the end of the Peloponnesian war. 
 Nor could the question between Thucydides and the other 
 writers have ever been settled but for the testimony of one 
 of the inscriptions published by Kohler in his Urkunden 
 zur Geschichte des Delisch-Attischen Bundcs, which proves 
 beyond question that such a raising of the tribute did 
 occur. And the new fact tells against Grote's view of the 
 character of the Athenian government. 
 
 In regard to the services of inscriptions to the bone and 
 framework of Greek history it is sufficient to refer to these 
 tribute-inscriptions or to the Parian Chronicle now pre- 
 served at Oxford. Yet it is generally allowed that the 
 corrections in historical fact due to inscriptions arc really 
 
Chap. I.] The Verification of Ancient History. 13 
 
 but a small part of their use and importance to us. They 
 are continually leading us into fields where the ancient 
 historians are silent. They show us what the relations 
 were between city and city, what laws were passed to 
 govern the conduct of the citizens, what decrees in honour 
 of benefactors. They reveal to us a hundred traits of 
 manners and feeling, a hundred customs of religious cultus 
 or of daily life. The ancient historians give us full de- 
 scriptions of the manners and customs of the barbarous 
 nations outside Greece, but naturally they assume a know- 
 ledge of Greek manners in their readers, a knowledge 
 necessarily existing at the time, but now barely to be 
 gained by the most laborious application to literature, to 
 art, and to inscriptions. And the facts thus acquired and 
 held in the mind are as important for verifying ancient 
 history as are the facts of Greek geography. They as it 
 were throw a strong light on to the background of history, 
 whereby we may see with far greater accuracy the progress 
 of events which passes in the foreground. 
 
 With inscriptions we should class, seeing that they are 
 practically a kind of picture-writing or sculptured record, 
 those historical reliefs which give us a professed represen- 
 tation of events in ancient history. As the well-known 
 historian of the Norman Conquest tests the literary 
 accounts of the Battle of Hastings by comparing them 
 with the Bayeux Tapestry ; so must those who would 
 follow the history of the conquest of Dacia by Trajan 
 compare the accounts of the Roman historians with the 
 relief of the wonderful column which was set up to com- 
 memorate that conquest while it was still fresh, and which 
 still remains in modern Rome as a legacy of the ancient 
 renown of the Roman arms. 
 
14 • New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. I. 
 
 III. 
 
 The third test which can be brought to bear on history, 
 that of works of art and style, is of all tests the hardest to 
 apply. It can only be applied by specialists, and even by 
 them with great caution. But special study is gradually 
 teaching us more and more how much men may be known 
 by their works. The bone of a fossil animal is not more 
 expressive to the palaeontologist than is a piece of pottery 
 or a weapon to the student of mankind. And if the facts 
 which we thus learn about man are vague and general, and 
 do not extend to political detail, they are nevertheless very 
 important in their way. For an instance of the application 
 to history of this test of works we may go back almost to 
 the origin of history itself, to an interesting statement of 
 Thucydides in the eighth chapter of his first book. He 
 says that when in his own time the Athenians at Delos 
 proceeded to purify the island by removing the dead 
 buried there, the majority of these corpses appeared 
 to be of Carian nationality, to judge from the character 
 of the arms buried with them, and the fashion of their 
 interment. This statement of Thucydides is in itself 
 thoroughly scientific. He speaks in just the same way as 
 an archaeologist of the most modern stamp. It is true 
 that if Thucydides had described, in but a dozen words> 
 the fashion of arms and the manner of interment to which 
 he refers, he would have laid us under still deeper obliga- 
 tion. He was writing, as was very natural, rather for his 
 contemporaries than for the barbarians of future ages. 
 But even writing as he does, he gives us a clue : and 
 more than one series of excavations in the last few years 
 has been undertaken in order to ascertain more exactly 
 Thucydides' meaning in this passage, and to discover what 
 value is to be attached to his observation. 
 
Chap. I.] The Verification of A ncient History. 1 5 
 
 In fact, not only this passage but the whole of the 
 extremely valuable first fifteen chapters of Thucydldes' 
 first book cross and recross the path of classical archae- 
 ology a score of times. Sometimes archaeological research 
 conveys to us for the first time the full meaning of his 
 words, sometimes it clearly shows him to have been im- 
 perfectly informed upon certain points. Into all this I 
 cannot here enter more fully. But there are few passages 
 in any ancient author which gain more by the comparison 
 with the testimony of the existing remains of ancient art 
 and handicraft. In the following pages we shall have 
 repeatedly to recur to Thucydidean statements as to early 
 Greece ; therefore we need not at present dwell on them 
 at greater length. 
 
 The excavations on the Athenian Acropolis, of which 
 below we give a brief account, serve greatly to clear and 
 enrich our notions of the character of the rule of Peisi- 
 stratus and of the doings of the Athenians just after the 
 battle of Plataea. If other Greek sites were excavated in 
 a manner as complete and methodical as Athens and 
 Olympia, the additions to our knowledge of Greek history, 
 both framework and background, would be incalculable. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The fourth test is that of coins. Coins are at once works 
 of art and inscriptions, and the certainty of their date 
 commonly makes them especially useful to the historian. 
 When we have series of coins most of which bear dates — 
 like those of the Seleucidae of Syria, the kings of Parthia 
 and the Roman emperors — it is obvious how valuable a 
 means they afford for determining the chronology of the 
 reigns of the kings and rulers who issued them. For 
 instance the dates of the reigns of the Parthian kings 
 Phraataces, Orodes II., and Vonones are fixed, on numis- 
 
 / 
 
1 6 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. i. 
 
 matic testimony only, to the years B.C. 2 to A.D. 1 1 ; and 
 these reigns date some important events of Roman 
 history, and help us to determine the policy of Augustus 
 on various occasions. As a rule the autonomous coins of 
 Greece bear no dates, and their period can only be fixed 
 by arguments of style and epigraphy. But the mints of 
 Greece were so active that we are able in the case of 
 hundreds of Greek cities to place beside their history, as 
 recorded by ancient writers, a tolerably continuous numis- 
 matic record with which it may be compared, and whereby 
 it may be occasionally corrected, more often supplemented 
 and expanded. To give detailed instances would involve 
 too long a disquisition ; but a few cases of the correction 
 or expansion of history by numismatic evidence may be 
 summarily mentioned. We have, I believe, no record of a 
 union of the people of the cities of Arcadia before the 
 time when the Arcadian League was established by Epami- 
 nondas. Yet if there had been no tradition of a political 
 union it is improbable that the idea of founding one would 
 have occurred to that great statesman. On turning to 
 coins, we find, issuing probably from the mint of Heraea, 
 a very extensive series belonging to the sixth and fifth 
 centuries, the inscription of which, 'Ap/caSt/cov, is sufficient 
 to prove that some kind of federal union, involving at least 
 the use of a common coinage, must have existed in 
 Arcadia as early as the time of the Persian wars. As 
 another instance we may take the city of Patrae in Achaia. 
 The language of Polybius and Pausanias seems to imply 
 that the city, after suffering severely at the time of the 
 Gaulish invasion of Greece, was entirely destroyed at the 
 time of the sack of Corinth in B.C. 146. Yet Ave learn 
 that Mark Antony, when he sailed against Augustus, 
 made Patrae his head-quarters. This apparent inconsis- 
 tency is made less hopeless when we find from the 
 evidence of the silver coins of Patrae that the city must 
 
Chap. I.] The Verification of Ancient History. IJ 
 
 have been commercially important and flourishing in the 
 first century before the Christian era, doubtless in virtue 
 of its position, which made it a convenient landing place 
 of Roman officers coming to Greece. But by far the most 
 remarkable addition made by numismatic evidence to 
 ancient history is in the case of the Greek kingdoms in 
 India in the second and first centuries before our era. 
 Hellenic civilisation in India, cut off by the wedge of 
 Parthian conquest from Syria and Egypt, ran its own 
 course, and was little known of in the West. It has hardly 
 any share in that history which consists of what is believed 
 to have happened. The very idea of a Greek kingdom 
 in India, though familiar to the archaeologist, is quite 
 strange to most students of ancient history. Yet it was 
 both powerful and extensive, and its results wide and far- 
 reaching. It is probable that even Chinese and Japanese 
 art owe a great part of their peculiar quality to Hellenic 
 influence. And almost all that we know, or can ever 
 know, about the Greek conquests in India, is derived from 
 the testimony of coins and of rock-sculptures. 
 
 V. 
 
 Perhaps as good an instance as could be found of the 
 manner in which excavation may sometimes correct and 
 expand our notions of ancient history will be found in 
 Mycenae. If we look at the index of Grote's History we 
 shall find only one reference to a place in the text where 
 Mycenae is mentioned. Turning to the passage we find 
 that Mycenae is spoken of as the seat of a mythical race 
 of kings. Apparently Grote did not know that the walls 
 of Mycenae are still extant, nor did it occur to him that 
 there are existing facts bearing the impress of the history 
 of Mycenae ; we might fancy that Mycenae admitted of 
 investigation no more than Atlantis or Sodom. Yet much 
 
 C 
 
x 8 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. I. 
 
 of the ancient history of Mycenae has been recovered in 
 the course of its modern history. First Schliemann dis- 
 covered the graves of its heroes, rich beyond imagination 
 in works of early art ; and since then the Archaeological 
 Society of Athens has brought to light on the Acropolis 
 of the city the palace of its mighty rulers of prehistoric 
 days, telling us much of their splendour and their customs. 
 The fruits of the excavations tell also of the destruction of 
 the city by the Argives, and of the colony which they sent 
 to dwell within the mighty walls. They shew that that 
 colony was established in the third century B.C., and 
 remained for some centuries ; and some inscriptions 
 recently unearthed tell of a transplanting of the inhabitants 
 by Nabis, the tyrant of Sparta, to Lacedaemon, and of 
 their subsequent return to their own city ; and inform us 
 of their government and tribal divisions. " These inscrip- 
 tions," writes their editor, " prove the inaccuracy of three 
 ancient writers Strabo, Diodorus and Pausanias, who all 
 assert that Mycenae was destroyed by the Argives after 
 the Persian wars, and remained thenceforward an un- 
 inhabited ruin." 
 
 It is not unlikely that there may seem in our instances 
 
 something pedantic and overstrained. Our interest in 
 
 ancient history, it may be said, lies not in details but in 
 
 large masses. It matters little how early the Arcadians 
 
 acquired a political unity or what Nabis did to Mycenae ; 
 
 that which interests us is the constitution of Athens, the 
 
 repulse of Persia, the brief bloom of Thebes. Life is not 
 
 so long that we can spend our days over the unimportant 
 
 fates of uninteresting tribes and towns. And I am quite 
 
 ready to confess that there is some force in this objection, 
 
 especially when urged by those who do not intend to 
 
 give special attention to ancient history. But to a certain 
 
 degree the objection may be met. 
 
 In the first place, it is no less true as regards history 
 
Chap. I.] The Verification of Ancient History. 19 
 
 than as regards physical science, that fact is fact, and as 
 such sacred. And it is never possible to tell what facts 
 may have a wide bearing. It continually happens — it has 
 often happened within my experience — that archaeological 
 facts to which their discoverers attached very small im- 
 portance have been at once seized on by historians, by the 
 men of general views, as of the highest value ; abundant 
 instances may be found in Busolt's new history of Greece. 
 Every fact is a thing of infinite possibilities ; it may lie / 
 unused for years or generations, until some new fact 
 suddenly appears to make it fruitful. None of us can tell/ 
 what is a negligible quantity in history ; and sometimes 
 the smallest-looking rock of reality will upset a whole 
 
 cargo of received views and send them to limbo for ever 
 
 .. 
 
 l & 
 
 And in the second place, no one who was practically 
 acquainted with the process of verifying history would ever 
 say that his knowledge had not materially grown in the 
 process. There are effects on knowledge, and there are 
 effects on imagination which go far beyond the mere attain- 
 ment of accuracy in detail. By this process the mind 
 gains a grasp alike of the flesh and of the skeleton or 
 bonework of history. Our bones are covered with flesh 
 and skin ; but without the bones flesh and skin would 
 lose their form and coherence ; and in the same way all 
 that is morally instructive and intellectually stimulating in 
 history rests on the arrangement of facts. A criterion the 
 historian must have to decide is what is possible and what 
 impossible ; and to the formation of that criterion the 
 study of fact, epigraphic, geographic, and numismatic, tends 
 very greatly. Such study, too, prunes away the excess of 
 scepticism, and remedies a certain misology, a certain 
 feeling that any one theory is about as defensible as any 
 other, which is sometimes the result of too great an in- 
 dulgence in general views. It is easy to start a new view 
 in history, and the starting of a new view confers such 
 
 C 2 
 
20 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. I. 
 
 ready distinction, that apart from an occasional appeal to 
 fact, it is hard to see how controversy would ever come to 
 a pause. 
 
 There is another point which must be mentioned when 
 we compare the testimony of monuments with that of 
 ancient historians. We are not likely to recover the works 
 of Ephorus or Trogus Pompeius, or even the lost decades 
 of Livy. Practically our stock of ancient historians is 
 complete,* and has been complete for centuries. We can 
 remelt by improved processes the slag left in previous 
 treatments of the ore furnished by their writings, and so 
 recover a little metal ; but fresh ore is not likely to reach 
 us from that quarter ; whereas the number of ancient 
 historical monuments accessible to us is increasing con- 
 tinually and rapidly, increasing at such a pace that the 
 greatest of German scholars find the utmost difficulty in 
 saving themselves from being overwhelmed by its mass. 
 Boeckh's Corpus of Greek Inscriptions is but a few decades 
 old ; it contains about 10,000 inscriptiohs. In 1876 Mr. 
 Newton estimated the number of extant inscriptions at 
 20,000 to 30,000. In the last ten years tens of thousands 
 have been added to the number, some of them of the 
 greatest value, and of enormous length. In the case of 
 other systematic collections of archaeological facts, edition 
 succeeds edition continually and each contains so much 
 new matter that its predecessors are virtually useless. 
 Thus the proportion between data derived from existing 
 fact and data derived from the ancient historians is con- 
 tinually shifting, and always shifting in one direction. 
 
 * I have left this passage as it was written before the appearance 
 of the Athenian Constitution, although that discovery has to some 
 extent contradicted it. We are scarcely likely to be so fortunate 
 again ; and, in tact, the stir and freshness produced in Greek history 
 by the new discovery is an apt illustration of the value of fresh matter 
 in old-world studies. 
 
Chap. I.] The Verification of Ancient History. 21 
 
 That archaeology can ever take the same place in regard 
 to Greek history which it has taken in regard to the his- 
 tory of Egypt and Assyria is of course quite out of the 
 question ; and yet it is difficult to set a limit to its con- 
 tinually increasing services, more especially to the history 
 of the times before the Persian wars. We must also con- 
 sider that existing facts bear testimony directly to the 
 realities of objective history, which cannot be the case 
 with historical writings. Ifwewereto recover the text of 
 Ephorus, of course its value would be unlimited ; and yet 
 in all probability it would increase rather than diminish 
 our uncertainties as to the actual facts of Greek history, 
 by giving us a new version which we should often find 
 hard to reconcile with that which we at present accept. 
 This has in fact been the result of the very important 
 discovery of the Aristotelian Constitution of Athens. But 
 every new archaeological fact which is discovered tends 
 not to the raising, but to the end of controversy. To 
 take one instance. Every attempt at a history of Parthia 
 hitherto written has necessarily begun with a discussion of 
 the date of the Parthian revolt against the Seleucidae, 
 which various writers have placed in various years. If we 
 recovered the history of Trogus Pompeius, his date would 
 give but a new impetus to the discussion. But among the 
 thousands of documents discovered in Babylonia by 
 George Smith, one came to light which bore a double date, 
 a date according both to the Seleucid era, and to the era 
 of Parthian independence. In a moment the Gordian knot 
 was cut ; and now we know that the date of Parthian in- 
 dependence was B.C. 249-8. Against the testimony of this 
 little clay tablet, no statement of an ancient historian 
 could stand for an hour. 
 
 Finally there is an influence on imagination exercised 
 by the dealing with actual fact, which must not be lost 
 sight of. History is verified by the intellect, but it is 
 
22 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. I. 
 
 vivified by the imagination. The sight of a battle exercises 
 a very different power on feeling and fancy, from the mere 
 reading about one in a newspaper ; and if the newspaper 
 account be read on the battle-field itself, the imagination 
 will be greatly stimulated. Still greater will be the 
 stimulus if dismounted cannon, scattered arms, and a 
 ground ploughed by cannon balls add reality to the scene. 
 In the same way Hiero of Syracuse becomes a far more 
 real person to us as we look at the helmet which he dedi- 
 cated at Olympia after his victory over the Etruscans at 
 Cumae. And the historical reality of the victory of 
 Plataea impresses itself more fully on us as we read on the 
 bronze serpent of Constantinople the names of the Greek 
 states which had a part in it. If the eye can see and the 
 hand touch the results of the deeds of the ancients, we 
 shall believe in them as we should never believe in them 
 from merely reading our Herodotus and Thucydides. 
 They come out of cloudland and become dwellers on our 
 earth, men of like passions with ourselves, with human 
 feelings and desires. 
 
 The verification of history, of which I have hitherto 
 spoken, must be the work of scholars and specialists. But 
 the vivification of ancient history, of which I am now 
 speaking, belongs as much or more to the ordinary student. 
 We must now briefly consider history not as a great 
 branch of knowledge, but as a means of education. 
 
 The aspects in which history may be regarded are as 
 many as the tendencies and prepossessions in the mind of 
 man. One historian cares only to trace in the past the 
 workings of political tendencies and forces ; another is 
 absorbed in following the succession of phases and modes 
 of civilisation ; another regards historical records as the 
 chronicles of the struggles of races and national tempera- 
 ments ; another sees in the annals of nations nothing but a 
 series of biographies of great men. Yet perchance all 
 
Chap. I.] The Verification of Ancient History. 23 
 
 would alike concede that one of the greatest benefits 
 bestowed by the muse of history on her votaries is that 
 she lifts them out of the ordinary dull routine of a mono- 
 tonous life, and conveys them through bygone scenes and 
 to distant countries ; that she enlarges their ideas through 
 the contemplation of states of civilisation different from 
 the present ; that she widens their charity by laying out 
 before them a vast panorama of forgotten beliefs and 
 endeavours ; that she softens their hearts with emotions of 
 pity and admiration for persons who have lived and died ; 
 that she helps them to the goal of right action by mapping 
 out the course whereby others have attained that goal. 
 
 But the history which should enlighten the intellect and 
 furnish wings to the imagination is not to be lightly ap- 
 proached. Only by long and patient discipline alike of 
 mind and fancy can the genius of history be mastered and 
 compelled to do our bidding. To read the pages of his- 
 torians, to remember the sequence of events and their 
 dates ; this is something indeed, but it is only the first 
 step in the study of history. The second step is to go 
 back to original documents, to read the statements of 
 writers who were contemporary with the events they 
 record ; to pore over inscriptions, treaties, letters, charters ; 
 to place side by side the statements of authorities who 
 have accepted divergent stories as to certain occurrences, 
 and from the comparison to attempt to elicit truth. The 
 third step is to fuse the collected material in the fire of 
 imagination, and to remould it into a new whole. 
 
 Long and laborious is the historical training of the 
 imagination. It demands the concentration of all the 
 faculties, the absence of mean cares and uncongenial pur- 
 suits. There are two methods whereby it may be accom- 
 plished, two methods whereof either separately may partly 
 avail, but only when the two are combined can rich and 
 full and satisfactory results be attained. 
 
24 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. i. 
 
 The first method or way is the perusal of the literature 
 of the country whose history is the subject of our study. 
 In the literature of each age the spirit of that age finds its 
 freest and most splendid development. When we read the 
 Odes of a Pindar, the Idylls of a Theocritus, we seem to 
 hold a close communion with their minds, minds with 
 which all the spirits of their contemporaries were in close 
 concert. The poet is the mirror wherein the spirit of his 
 time is reflected, and if we gaze on the mirror long enough 
 and steadily enough the forms reflected in it become real, 
 and we seem to dwell among them, to see with their eyes 
 and feel with their hearts. But this is not only the happy 
 privilege of poets. The condition of scientific thought in 
 the best ages of Greece is as accurately reflected in the 
 pages of Plato and Aristotle as are Greek emotions in the 
 songs of the lyrical poets. In the works of the dramatists 
 we see clearly the condition of an important branch of 
 Greek art ; we learn what thoughts passed across the 
 minds of the audience which sat all day long in the 
 theatre of Dionysus at Athens on the great festivals. The 
 orations of Demosthenes and Lysias show us to what 
 passions the fiery orators of Athens could make a sure 
 appeal, and on what prejudices they could safely play in 
 order to arouse sympathy and win a cause. Thucydides 
 brings before us in the liveliest form the working of the 
 minds of Greek politicians, the objects of their statesmen, 
 their views of political forces ; while on the other hand the 
 older and nobler narrative of Herodotus exhibits the 
 simple piety and open love of knowledge which dis- 
 tinguished the Greeks of the generation which witnessed 
 the repulse of the armies of Persia. 
 
 The imagination may be roused by the poetry of the 
 ancients and interested by their histories, but it can never 
 be fairly seized and held captive amid the scenes of 
 ancient life and history unless it be also approached 
 
Chap, l.] The Verification of Ancient History. 25 
 
 through the senses. Not only must we sympathise with 
 the emotions of the Greeks and Romans and share their 
 aspirations, but we must also see with their eyes and feel 
 with their hands, stand where they stood, and sail where 
 they sailed. It would be most satisfactory if every 
 student of classical literature could climb the Acrocorinthus 
 and look across the narrow sea at the gleaming temples of 
 Athens ; or could gaze from the Acropolis of Athens to 
 where the highway of the vEgean is blocked by ^Egina, the 
 eye-sore of the Piraeus ; or could sail the beautiful JEgean 
 amid the clustering islands which seem to draw on the 
 mariner from one to another until he reaches new lands 
 and a fresh climate ; or could wander on the Palatine at 
 Rome and trace the walls of early Rome, and observe the 
 sites of the first temples of the Republic, and look away 
 thence to the hills where stood in early times the little 
 citadels which, sheltered the enemies of the babyhood of 
 Rome. All this I say is most desirable ; indeed I incline 
 to think that no one who has not stood in Pompeii can 
 imagine the vast gulf which separates ancient from modern 
 manners, or understand how far less complex was that 
 civilisation than ours. 
 
 But all cannot travel, and even those who do travel need 
 a special preparation to enable them to gain all that may 
 be gained from a stay in lands of classical antiquity. The 
 great substitute or complement for foreign travel is the 
 study of archaeology, which, no less than travel, acts 
 directly on sense and imagination, and gives to our con- 
 ceptions of ancient history and manners a vivid reality 
 which they would otherwise never attain. When we care- 
 fully restore on architectural principles the Olympieium or 
 the Erechtheium, when we follow the rise, development, 
 and fall of Greek sculpture, when we examine and com- 
 pare the innumerable vase-pictures which the piety of the 
 ancients towards their dead has preserved to us, when we 
 
26 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. I 
 
 hold in our hands the gems wherewith heads of houses 
 sealed their deeds and their cupboards, and the coins 
 which they carried to the fish-market, we acquire through 
 sense a connection with the ancients which is instinctive 
 in character, and of a wondrous force. From feeling with 
 them in small things we learn to appreciate them in 
 greater, until their literature and history alike seem to rise 
 from the grave of centuries and become once more alive. 
 
 Surely there never lived a people on the life of which 
 external surroundings worked with deeper effect than on 
 the Greeks. Certainly no people was ever so surrounded 
 on all sides by the works of its own hands, works which 
 acted at every moment on the mind both consciously and 
 unconsciously. In the Greece of history every city was 
 full of temples and porticoes, and every portico, every 
 agora, and every temple, was one vast storehouse full of 
 works of great painters and sculptors. Nor were these 
 intended merely to please the eye and intoxicate the 
 senses. There was not a statue and not a relief which did 
 not speak to all beholders of some incident of mythology, 
 or some notable deed of history. Mythology and history 
 alike stood there in concrete form in all the streets and 
 public buildings of the country. The Greeks did not hear 
 or read of the gods and the deeds of their own ancestors ; 
 they saw them every day wherever they went. Love of 
 their native city was not with them a sentiment, but a 
 passion for this temple, that painting, that stoa. And 
 when they went into their houses the same scenes which 
 they had witnessed without, met them again within. The 
 walls of their rooms, and the pottery of common use, were 
 all painted with exploits of gods and men. Their very 
 mirrors and pins were adorned with human figures, not 
 one of which wanted its meaning. Thus to the Greeks the 
 works of their artists were not merely things to admire, 
 and symbols of worship, they were geography, history, 
 
Chap. I.] The Verification of Ancient History. 27 
 
 religious teaching, and literature. For the common people 
 the rare scrolls of parchment and papyrus which held the 
 writings of authors were far out of reach ; it was less 
 through the ear than through the eye that they received 
 the education which raised them out of the narrow limits 
 of the present. How then can any one aspire to under- 
 stand Greek manners, Greek civilisation, Greek history, if 
 he is ignorant of the chief source of Greek education, and 
 knows nothing of what occupied constantly the largest 
 part in the minds of the people ? 
 
 "Large and health-giving" is the phrase applied by a 
 French statesman, who also stands in the first rank as 
 an archaeologist, to the science of archaeology, and large 
 and health-giving it is. Large because it treats of the 
 outer or external side of all the works of man since he 
 came into being, health-giving because it adds a venerable 
 character to all the products of the energy of our fathers 
 and ancestors natural and spiritual, impressing on us the 
 continuity of life, and imparting a strongly developed 
 sense of a common humanity. And most health-giving is 
 it because it deals entirely with facts, not with words, 
 with actual objects, and not with mere notions. To the 
 archaeologist every fragment of wood, of stone, or of metal, 
 on which a human hand has worked, is an embodiment of 
 a thought, an illustration of a phase of civilisation. Every- 
 thing has a meaning and a history, and tells of human 
 effort, human progress, human culture. 
 
28 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chai>. II. 
 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 PHRYGIA AND TROAS. 
 
 It is probable that no region in the world holds such 
 treasures for archaeology as does Asia Minor. In respect 
 alike to abundance of art remains and gain in historic 
 knowledge we may expect in future to reap a harvest of 
 unimagined richness in that most interesting country. 
 There lie buried the remains of a score of civilisations 
 which flourished successively or contemporaneously in the 
 dawn of consecutive history, and furnish a ladder of tran- 
 sition between the old-world empires on the banks of the 
 Tigris and the Nile, and the new civilisation which takes 
 its rise in Greece. And Asia Minor is in most parts still 
 virgin soil to the excavator. Italy and South Russia are 
 in great part worked out. Greece proper has of late years 
 been so eagerly searched that her marvellous archaeological 
 treasures are rapidly becoming known to us. But Asia 
 Minor is to the historian what Africa is to the geographer, 
 a vast new region of unknown possibilities, a continent the 
 exhaustion of which lies beyond the limits of our foresight. 
 During the last decade most of the nations of Europe 
 have at least gleaned in this rich field. The Germans have 
 carried to Berlin the spoils of Pergamum, works of an art 
 somewhat florid and sentimental but of marvellous power 
 and variety. The Austrians have despatched a well- 
 appointed mission to Lycia, and brought back the inter- 
 esting sculptures of Gyol Bashi, which decorated a great 
 
Chai\ ii.] Phrygia and Troas. 29 
 
 tomb near Myra. The French have excavated at Myrina ; 
 the Americans at Assos. Schliemann has revealed city 
 beneath city on the site of Hissarlik in the Troad. Even 
 the Turks have been roused to emulation, and have deter- 
 mined to secure a share in the discoveries. And besides 
 excavations we have had energetic and learned travellers, 
 penetrating the country in every direction : Humann and 
 Hirschfeld, Benndorf and Puchstein, Paris and Sterrett, 
 Ramsay and Hogarth have all added greatly to our know- 
 ledge of the inner lands of Asia Minor and of the monu- 
 ments which still remain above the surface of the soil. 
 
 To England there has fallen but a moderate share in 
 these achievements. If we had shewn more energy or 
 been ready to spend money, our share in the rich spoil of 
 the buried Hellenic cities might have been great ; but 
 since Wood's excavations at Ephesus came to an end for 
 want of funds, no excavations of any great extent have 
 been carried on by Englishmen among the cities of the 
 coast. On the other hand in the exploration of the 
 interior they have taken a prominent part. In spite of 
 fever and robbers, of general indifference and narrow 
 financial resources, Professor Ramsay has plunged year 
 by year into the heart of the country, accompanied by 
 Mr. Hogarth and various younger companions, and has 
 succeeded in greatly increasing our knowledge of the 
 early inhabitants of the great central table-land from 
 the earliest times to those of the Turks. His papers 
 scattered through the pages of a multitude of learned 
 Journals, are the best foundation for a study of a race 
 whose history and whose relations to the Greeks have 
 hitherto been made little of, the ancient inhabitants of 
 Phrygia. 
 
 In the works of the great Greek writers which have 
 come down to us, notably, in the histories of Herodotus 
 and Thucydides, the Phrygians figure but little. To the 
 
>o New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. II. 
 
 Greeks generally they were known but as the race whence 
 most of their slaves were drawn, as a people branded with 
 the qualities of slaves, idleness, cowardice, effeminacy. 
 The few fables in regard to Phrygian antiquity which were 
 current in Hellas were mainly concerned with Midas who 
 turned all that he touched into gold, and Marsyas who 
 rashly provoked Apollo to a musical contest, and paid for 
 his temerity with his skin. From the Phrygians came 
 those orgiastic forms of religious cult which were con- 
 nected with the worship of Dionysus and of the Mother 
 of the Gods, orgies which led alike to sensual excess and 
 to hideous self-mutilations, to semi-religious frenzy and 
 bestial immoralities, against which the strong good-sense 
 of the better Greeks set itself at all periods, though it 
 could not deprive them of their attractions for the lowest 
 of the people. And yet it was to this race sunk in cor- 
 ruption, except when roused by frenzy, that the warlike 
 Trojan stock belonged. Hector and Aeneas were Phry- 
 gians ; and the most manly race of the ancient world, the 
 Romans, were proud of their supposed descent from 
 shepherds of Phrygia. 
 
 This remarkable inconsistency may be solved if we 
 adopt Mr. Ramsay's views.* He thinks that in the second 
 millennium before the Christian era there was spread over 
 Asia Minor, perhaps over most of Greece and Italy also, 
 a congeries of races, probably of a Semitic or Canaanite 
 cast, races of no vigorous character and no advanced 
 civilisation. We can still observe traces of the section of 
 this group of races which dwelt in Asia Minor in laneuao-e 
 and in custom. The place-names ending in -nda and -sa, 
 so common in many parts of Asia Minor, give us a hint 
 as regards their language. They traced descent, as do all 
 peoples at a certain stage of their progress, through the 
 
 * Journal of Hellenic Studies, ix. 351. 
 
Chap. II.] Phrygia and Troas. 3 1 
 
 mother and not through the father. As with nations in 
 the stage of Mutterrecht their chief deity was female, the 
 deity afterwards called by the Greeks Cybele, who was 
 in their cult connected with the effeminate Attis. They 
 were a people of shepherds and ploughmen, little skilled in 
 the art of war, and using only inferior weapons. Many of 
 them were grouped as temple-slaves about the shrines of 
 the great female deities. 
 
 In this age, according to Mr. Ramsay, the main seat of 
 political power was the City of Pteria in Cappadocia, a '• 
 city the extensive ruins of which at Boghaz Keui still 
 attest its former power. The people of Pteria frequently 
 engraved on the rocks the figures of their deities, ac- 
 companying those figures by hieroglyphic signs of a 
 peculiar kind. Similar reliefs and similar hieroglyphic 
 inscriptions across Asia Minor and even on the West 
 Coast, such for example as the figure of a warrior in the 
 Kara Bel near Smyrna, seem to show that the civilisation 
 and probably the dominion of Pteria was widely extended. 
 Mr. Ramsay finds the best proof of the power of Pteria in 
 the course of what was the main road of Northern Asia 
 Minor, which seems to find its main reason in Pteria, and 
 which passed the river Halys by a bridge, the mere 
 erection of which at so early a period seems to Mr. 
 Ramsay a proof of no small skill in engineering. This 
 view, it must be confessed, receives small support from 
 ancient writers, of whom only Herodotus even mentions 
 Pteria ; it is based upon geographical arguments and on 
 existing facts. 
 
 Into Asia Minor thus peopled there broke at some un- 
 certain, but very early period, conquering warrior tribes • 
 kindred to the Greeks, who came across the Hellespont 
 from Thrace. These tribes were known by various names, 
 Lycians, Lydians, Phrygians, Carians, and the like ; but 
 they probably differed but little one from the other in race 
 
i 
 
 32 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. II. 
 
 and language. In place of the Mutterrecht they introduced 
 descent through the father, an important step in early 
 progress. Their chief deity was male, a thundering god 
 like the Greek Zeus, known in Asia Minor as Papas 
 (Father), or Bronton (Thunderer), or Osogo. They made 
 their way chiefly by the superiority of their armour. 
 Herodotus tells us that round shields and crested helmets 
 were inventions of the Carians ; and no doubt the kindred 
 tribes shared in these useful discoveries. Of the battles 
 which they waged against the Semitic inhabitants we have 
 a reflex in the curious story told in the Iliad * how Priam 
 of Troy fought on the side of the Phrygians in a battle on 
 the river Sangarius against the hosts of the Amazons ; 
 since the Amazons would naturally represent to the imagi- 
 nation of the invaders the Asiatic hosts which worshipped 
 a goddess, and traced their descent through the mother. 
 These warrior-tribes were for a time dominant, but were 
 by degrees, as is always the case, absorbed into the body 
 of the people among whom they dwelt. To their number 
 would belong the valiant soldiers of Priam, the Carian 
 auxiliaries of the Egyptians, the horsemen who made the 
 strength of the army of Croesus, but though they had 
 hegemony in Asia Minor, and planted there many cults 
 and many customs, they never made the mass of the 
 population. They were an aristocracy like the Spartans 
 in Laconia and the Thessali in the plain of Thessaly. 
 
 Such in outline is the view to which Mr. Ramsay has 
 been led, partly by the researches of his predecessors, and 
 partly by his own. It is by no means established truth, 
 as he readily allows. There is a doubt whether we should 
 attribute the hieroglyphics of Asia Minor to the influence 
 of the Cappadocians of Pteria, or of the Hittites of 
 Carchemish. Nevertheless the view that the semi-Greek 
 
 * III. 184. 
 
Chai\ ii.] Phrygia and Troas. 33 
 
 races of Asia Minor were an invading and conquering 
 aristocracy, a view in which Mr. Ramsay by no means 
 stands alone, seems best to suit the facts of the case. To 
 them belong the royal tombs of Asia Minor, notably of 
 Lycia and Phrygia, with their inscriptions written in 
 languages certainly of an Aryan character, and to them 
 refer the warlike traditions which were handed down to 
 the Greeks. But that the mass of the people of inner 
 Asia Minor were connected rather with the Canaanites of 
 the south than with the Thracians of the north seems 
 clear. The Phrygian Cybele and Attis, the Trojan 
 Aphrodite and Paris, are so nearly paralleled by the 
 Astarte and Adonis of Syria as to indicate an identity 
 of origin ; whereas the thundering god reminds us at once 
 of the Zeus of Dodona who dwelt amid storms, and the 
 Mountain-Zeus of Arcadia. The sacred cities of Asia 
 Minor, Sardes and Comana and Pessinus and the rest, with 
 their communities of temple-slaves dedicated to the service 
 of a great nature-goddess, remind us of nothing Hellenic 
 or European, but find a complete parallel in Syria. 
 
 Yet we must allow that this view is by no means free 
 from difficulties. Neither Greeks nor Romans distin- 
 guished between the invaders and the primitive inhabi- 
 tants. They give us no hint that the worship of Cybele 
 belonged to a different race from that which produced the 
 Phrygian kings, but on the contrary connect goddess and 
 kings in legend. So it seems at any rate certain that in 
 historical times there was a fusion of earlier and later 
 inhabitants. The invaders must have adopted from the 
 natives the worship of Cybele and imparted in return that 
 of Bronton. And, as is usually the case, the older race as 
 time went on asserted more strongly its preponderance. 
 
 Let us however pass from these somewhat vague specu- 
 lations, and consider more in detail what is actually known 
 in regard to the Phrygians, and in this narrower search we 
 
 D 
 
34 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. II. 
 
 shall find the travels and researches of recent years of no 
 small value. 
 
 There are three districts in Asia Minor which are 
 specially connected with the history of Phrygia. 
 
 JFirst there is the region dominated by the majestic and 
 romantic Mount Sipylus, in the neighbourhood of Smyrna. 
 This region was in Greek myth closely connected with the 
 names of Tantalus and Pelops, those early Phrygian heroes 
 who so largely enter into Greek myth. Everyone knows 
 the story how Tantalus, richest and most luxurious of the 
 kings of Asia, and so favoured by heaven as to become the 
 p-uest-friend of the immortal gods, dared once in his im- 
 piety to set before them human flesh at a banquet, the 
 flesh of his own son Pelops. Everyone knows how he was 
 punished for this impiety in the lower world, and how the 
 son Pelops, restored to life, sought his fortune in the land 
 of Greece, and found it at Olympia, where he won the 
 hand of Hippodameia, and a kingdom destined to extend 
 over all the region named after him the Peloponnese. 
 Thucydides says that it was the power of Phrygian gold 
 which extended the dominion of Pelops, and to this state- 
 ment we shall have hereafter to return. With the migra- 
 tion of Pelops the legendary history of that district ceases. 
 The city of Tantalus was destroyed by an earthquake and 
 hidden under the waters of Lake Saloe, and when we 
 again hear of the region about Smyrna, it is as the centre 
 of the dominions of the wealthy and powerful kings of 
 
 Lydia : though it is of course very probable that there was 
 scarcely any distinction between the races of the Phrygians 
 
 and the Lydians. Lydian kings may quite well have 
 
 carried on the sceptre of Tantalus. 
 
 Pausanias, a native of Magnesia, a Greek city which lay 
 
 at the foot of Sipylus, says * that in his time there existed 
 
 * V. 13. 
 
Chap. II.] PJirygia and Troas. 35 
 
 in his own country monuments of the kingdom of Tantalus 
 and Pelops, " the lake of Tantalus which was named after 
 him and his conspicuous tomb, and the Throne of Pelops 
 which stands on Sipylus on the crest of the mountain 
 above the temple of Mater Placiana." The identification 
 of these localities has been the object of many excursions 
 from Smyrna undertaken by Weber, Humann and Ram- 
 say. A careful survey of the mountain and patient ex- 
 cavation of all interesting spots would bring great gain to 
 history, and probably settle finally the question of the 
 historic value of the Tantalid legends. But the mountain 
 is precipitous and a favourite haunt of brigands, and 
 hitherto little has been placed on a basis of certainty. 
 It is clear that the whole district is full of the traces of 
 early occupation by men who built fortresses on the rocks, 
 cut steps, and formed cisterns and caverns ; but in the 
 absence of systematic excavation there is insufficient 
 evidence who or what these men were. Two figures cut 
 in the rock have attained a wide notoriety, the great statue 
 of the Mother of the Gods * which is supposed to be men- 
 tioned in the Iliad, though in a late passage, and the relief 
 in the Kara Bel which represents a warrior accompanied 
 by a cartouche containing hieroglyphics. But both these 
 works are not of the true Phrygian class but belong to the 
 earlier populations. 
 
 The second historic district, that which lies on the head- 
 waters of the Maeander and the Sangarius, is the Greater 
 Phrygia of history. In this region lay the most notable 
 scenes of Phrygian history and legend ; the lake where 
 
 * Of this the best representations are those published by Weber 
 in Lc Sipylus, and by Humann in the Athen. Mittheilungen, 1888. 
 pi. I. Both Humann and Ramsay are disposed to think that the 
 Niobe of the Iliad (xxiv. 614) is not this figure, but merely some 
 group of rocks which bore a fancied resemblance to a human figure. 
 Mr. Humann publishes {Ibid. p. 22) a kind of seat hewn out on the 
 top of a lofty rock, which may well be the legendary throne of Pelops. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 New Chapters Z7i Greek History. [Chap. II. 
 
 Marsyas cut the reeds for his flutes ; the spring where 
 Silenus used to drink, and where he was captured ; the 
 city Gordium, where was preserved the wagon which had 
 belonged to Gordias the legendary founder of the Phrygian 
 monarchy ; the scene of the early battles with the Ama- 
 zons ; the plains which were made rich by Phrygian 
 ploughs, and which held the great cities the fame of which 
 was known to the author of the Iliad* 
 
 It would seem that this region was ruled in the eighth 
 century before our aera by a dynasty of wealthy kings who 
 bore in turn the name of Gordias and of Midas. Hero- 
 dotus speaks of a rich throne sent by one of these Midas 
 kings to Delphi as the earliest gift received at that sacred 
 place from any barbarian ruler. Of the reigns of these 
 monarchs we have no annals. As they are not mentioned 
 in the Iliad, where the Phrygian leaders are Otreus and 
 Mygdon,f it is inferred that their rule did not begin before 
 the ninth century. When the Cimmerians swept across 
 Asia about B.C. 670, the Phrygians suffered terribly, and 
 one of their kings committed suicide ; but the dynasty 
 seems to have survived until the time of Croesus, % who 
 became master of the country. To Cyrus the Phrygians 
 seem to have submitted peaceably ; it would almost seem 
 that the well-armed warrior clan had by this time died out, 
 for while the Lydians in the army of Xerxes are said to 
 have been armed like the Greeks, the Phrygians are stated 
 to have borne only plaited leather helmets, with small 
 shields, javelins and swords. In the same way the 
 Thracians, whence these well-armed warrior tribes are 
 
 * //. iii. 400. 
 
 t It is, however, not impossible that Mygdon may be a variant 
 form of Midas. 
 
 % See Herodotus, i. 35, for the charming story of the Phrygian 
 Adrastus, son of Gordias, and grandson of Midas, who slew acci- 
 dentally Atys, son of Croesus. Croesus addresses him as a scion of 
 a reigning house. 
 
Chai\ ii.] PJirygia and Troas. 37 
 
 supposed to have sprung, are described by Herodotus, and 
 in fact are represented on Greek vases, as equipped in 
 mere barbaric fashion. 
 
 One of the reliefs discovered by Mr. Ramsay in the 
 heart of Phrygia represents armed warriors with helmet 
 and breastplate, in equipment almost undistinguishable 
 from Greek hoplites ; and this relief must have been cut 
 long before the time of Herodotus. Thus the theory of a 
 conquering race of well-armed invaders is not without 
 definite archaeological support. Such are our difficulties 
 in these racial questions, which sometimes make the 
 investigator feel as if he were climbing a hill of sand or 
 wading through a deep morass. But perhaps in some 
 cases our difficulties spring, as they may in this, from the 
 modern intellectual prejudice which insists in looking for 
 continuous progress in all forms of civilisation, and which 
 is very loth to believe that the great discoveries which 
 tend to the raising and preservation of nations can die out. 
 This prejudice has to survive many shocks in dealing with 
 ancient history ; since in many countries and for many 
 ages the course of history runs steadily in a downward 
 direction. As to Thrace in particular, classical Greek 
 writers were aware that the country had greatly declined 
 in their days in the direction of barbarism, that the country 
 of Orpheus had ceased to be a place of poets, and the 
 orderly army of Rhesus had given place to hordes of 
 disorderly cavalry. 
 
 Thus in historic times the warlike and manly character 
 of the Phrygian race was passed away ; to the Greeks they 
 were henceforth known as the most submissive of slaves, 
 and very useful in agriculture. Their devotion to the 
 plough may be traced in almost the only fragment of their 
 legislation which survives, the law which punished with 
 death the crimes of slaying a ploughing ox or stealing a 
 plough. Like modern peasants of Asia, they were ready 
 
38 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. II. 
 
 to accept any ruler who left them the bare means of living ; 
 and so when early in the third century B.C. the Gauls made 
 a settlement in Asia Minor, they seized a great part of 
 Phrygia, which hereafter bore their name as Galatia. 
 
 We learn that one Midas took as his queen Demodica, 
 daughter of Agamemnon of Cyme ; and this makes it 
 probable that through Cyme the Phrygians would receive 
 letters and something of Greek culture, a probability which 
 has been confirmed in Mr. Ramsay's opinion by the dis- 
 coveries of Phrygian inscriptions. 
 
 The legends which the Greeks received from Phrygia 
 belong to this inland region, and they bear a uniform 
 character of melancholy. Passing the well known stories 
 of Marsyas and of Midas, we have the repulsive legend of 
 the effeminate Attis, by whose example the priests of the 
 Mother-Goddess justified their self-mutilation, and who 
 was made into a pine tree. Then there is the curious 
 agricultural myth of Lityerses, a son of Midas, a reaper 
 who challenged all passing strangers to a contest in 
 reaping, and when they failed slew them and dismembered 
 their bodies, in which fashion he was himself treated by 
 Herakles. The great antiquity of the country was proved 
 by legends of the deluge which was said to have happened 
 on the death of a king Nannacus. The Phrygians even 
 had a legend of the ark which rested near Celaenae, and 
 coins of Apamea struck in the reign of the Emperor 
 Philip show that they regarded their traditions as identical 
 with the Jewish legend which centres in Noah. It is more 
 than likely that most or all of these stories belong to 
 the early, probably Semitic, population of Phrygia; in 
 antiquity there was nothing which conquerors so readily 
 accepted from the conquered as religious cults and heroic 
 myths. There is no tale of victorious kings or of foreign 
 invasion, all the legends have reference to agriculture, 
 music, and religion. 
 
Chap. II.] Phrygia and Troas. 39 
 
 It is remarkable that features of the Phrygian character 
 persist even to our days. Mr. Ramsay has remarked how 
 the mixture of ascetic hardness and unbridled ecstasy 
 which marked the Montanists among early Christian sects 
 may be derived from their Phrygian origin ; and under 
 Mohammedan rule the whirling and howling dervishes 
 keep up the tradition, and prove that deeply-seated 
 national characteristics survive through all changes of 
 religion. It is by no means unlikely that much of the 
 blood of the early inhabitants may still run in the veins 
 of the modern dwellers in Asia Minor. 
 
 To Colonel Leake belongs the credit of the first great ^y 
 discovery of Phrygian monuments in the valley of the 
 Sangarius. Near Nacoleia he lighted on a rock the whole 
 front of which had been scarped in the form of a temple- 
 front, and carved with regular geometrical patterns with 
 an imitative door in the midst. Around ran an inscription 
 in letters closely resembling the Greek, recording the exe- 
 cution of the work by one Attes in honour or in memory 
 of Midas. It was the first clear revelation of the Phrygian 
 language, and it seemed evidently the tomb of one of the 
 royal line of the country. It is true that some recent 
 writers, including M. Perrot,* are disposed to see in the 
 monument rather the shrine of a deity than the tomb of a 
 monarch. Their main ground is that no actual sepulchral 
 chamber is visible. But it may well be concealed : and the 
 genius of the Phrygian race, which turned naturally in the 
 direction of the commemoration of ancestors, together with 
 the number of monuments in the neighbourhood which are 
 certainly tombs, prevent us from following these writers. 
 We hold it to be certainly a royal sepulchre. And this 
 tomb appears to have been close to a city which may be 
 
 * Histoire de VArt dans VAntiquiti, vol. v. ; Perse, Phrygie, &c, 
 pp. 89, 101, 181. M. Perrot gives the best general account which is ^ 
 accessible of Phrygia and its monuments. 
 
 
40 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chai\ II. 
 
 judged from the extent of its remains to have been the 
 capital of the Sangarian Phrygia. This city stands on a 
 rocky plateau of which the general level is some 200 feet 
 above that of the plain below.* "The rock is a rather 
 soft and friable volcanic stone which splits easily in 
 vertical surfaces ; and either on this account or through 
 scarping, or probably through both causes combined, the 
 plateau is almost entirely surrounded by vertical faces of 
 rock, absolutely inaccessible, except where a break occurs. 
 Some of these breaks are wholly or in part modern, but 
 many of them are ancient, and one can trace distinctly on 
 each side of these old gaps the lines where the wall that 
 filled up the gap fitted into the rock. Besides this there 
 was a parapet built along the edge of the plateau." It is a 
 thousand pities that we have yet to wait to an unknown 
 future for the results which a careful excavation of this 
 capital of an old-world dynasty could not fail to furnish. 
 
 The various expeditions of Stewart, Texier, Perrot and 
 Ramsay have gradually revealed an extraordinary abund- 
 ance of rock-cut tombs throughout the region ranging in 
 date over the whole, or nearly the whole, of the twelve 
 hundred years of the Phrygian, Persian, Greek and Roman 
 rule. We may briefly indicate the classes into which these 
 tombs fall, if we arrange them by the style and decoration 
 of their fagades. According to Perrot the oldest class is 
 / represented by a facade at Delikli-tash,f which is not 
 unlike that of an early Greek temple without the pediment. 
 It may perhaps at first be surprising to find a front of 
 this form given to about the eighth century. But in favour 
 of M. Perrot's view may be cited an interesting piece of 
 evidence, which has hitherto been insufficiently considered. 
 In a relief at Khorsabad, which represents the taking by 
 King Sargon of theTcfty' of Monsasir in Armenia, we have 
 
 * Ramsay in Journ. Hell. Stud., vol. ix. p. 376. 
 t Perrot, vol. v., p. 90. 
 
Chap. II.] Phrygia and Troas. 41 
 
 a representation of the temple of the god Haldia,* and it is 
 not a little surprising to find that it stood in almost exactly 
 the form of a Greek hexastyle temple, with pediment. 
 This remarkable building, quite unique among the reliefs 
 of Assyria, seems to prove that the form of the Greek 
 temple, like many other things, came to the Greeks through 
 Asia Minor ; and the fagades of Phrygian tombs are like 
 footsteps which the idea has left in its passage across the 
 country from east to west. 
 
 The next group consists of the tombs which resemble 
 that of Midas, and bear on their fronts a variety of geo- 
 metrical patterns, lozenges, crosses and maeanders. Many 
 such tombs have been found in the neighbourhood of the 
 Midas city, and the inscriptions which they bear shew in 
 whose honour or memory they were erected. It has been 
 suggested that the custom of covering the fagade of a 
 tomb with patterns of this kind must arise from the inten- 
 tion of reproducing on a front of stone the patterns of the 
 carpets which might well be hung over the doorway of a 
 dwelling. Mr. Ramsay, however, thinks that the pattern 
 bears a closer resemblance to tile-work ; and it may 
 perhaps be suggested that it bears a closer likeness still to 
 the patterns natural to matting, as we may see them any 
 day by looking under our feet, and that matting would 
 form a very natural screen to an open door. 
 
 The third class of tombs is best represented by those 
 remarkable rock-sepulchres guarded by gigantic carved 
 lions which Mr. Ramsay found at Ayazinn, and which he 
 justly considers of the highest interest. The most interest- 
 ing of these, called by Mr. Ramsay the broken lion-tomb,f 
 is a large chapel carved out of the solid rock. It is 
 adorned on two of its outer faces with reliefs representing 
 rampant lions on a colossal scale, and in a vigorous style 
 
 * Botta, Monuments de Ninive, ii. pi. 141 ; Perrot, vol. ii., p. 410. 
 t See the Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. ix. 
 
\ 
 
 \ 
 
 42 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. n. 
 
 
 of archaic art, and with a still more interesting group 
 representing warriors armed with a panoply like that of 
 the Greeks. Within are curious pillars with shell-like 
 capital. Near this tomb stands another over which are 
 sculptured two enormous lions face to face, almost in the 
 attitude of those over the lion-gate of Mycenae, but with 
 cubs at their feet. In the hills and plains around are 
 strewn a variety of tombs, mostly of later date, indeed, 
 in some cases clearly belonging to the Hellenistic or 
 even the Roman age ; the whole forming a vast series 
 reaching from the rise of the Phrygian power in Asia to 
 Christian times. And among the Phrygian tombs we find 
 here and there rock-reliefs and hieroglyphics such as are 
 associated with the civilisation of Pteria, and which are 
 probably of an earlier date than anything Phrygian. 
 
 It is clearly impossible here to discuss in any detail 
 these important archaeological data. Mr. Ramsay and 
 M. Perrot are agreed that Phrygian art takes its rise from 
 that of Cappadocia, usually called Hittite. But they differ 
 considerably in their assignment of the period of that art. 
 Mr. Ramsay thinks that the lion-tombs are the earliest, 
 dating from the first days of the dynasty of Gordias and 
 Midas ; and that later the Phrygians developed the geo- 
 metrical style of decoration, such as that used on the 
 Midas-tomb, which must be given to the time just before 
 the Cimmerian invasion of about 675. M. Perrot, on the 
 contrary, considers that the tombs of geometrical pattern 
 are earlier, dating perhaps from the eighth century ; 
 whereas the tombs at Ayazinn, with their reliefs of lions 
 and of warriors shew the influence of Greek art, and can 
 scarcely be placed earlier than the sixth century.* We 
 
 * The lions M. Perrot considers as copies derived through Car- 
 chemish of the lions of Assyria. Assyrian art, he observes, is the only 
 one wherein lions are represented with energy and fidelity to nature. 
 It is quite true that the lions of Assyria are far superior to those of 
 
Chap. II.] Phrygia and Troas. 43 
 
 cannot venture to express an opinion as to the relative 
 value of these views. In fact it must be allowed that most 
 of the representations hitherto published of the Phrygian 
 monuments, except in the few cases where they are based 
 upon photographs, are so unsatisfactory and wanting in 
 style that they do not render any final opinion possible. 
 
 Inscriptions of the Roman age, which abound in Phrygia, 
 also furnish us with a mine, as yet but little worked, of 
 information as to the language and customs of the people. 
 Very important in particular are the epitaphs which appear 
 on the late tombs of this people, some of them containing 
 imprecatory formulae in an unknown tongue which cast a 
 backward light on the graves of earlier times. They are 
 a curious mixture of records of the dead and dedications 
 to the gods. After recording the names of the dead and 
 of the erector of the tomb, they often conclude with some 
 such phrase as " dedicated to Zeus Bronton," or " payment 
 of a vow to Papas," or " to the Mother of the Gods on 
 behalf of so and so." It seems that in Phrygian belief 
 those who died became in some sense identified with the 
 national divinities, losing their lives to become absorbed 
 in one higher and more general. This is quite typical of 
 what we know of the Phrygians, a race soft and cowardly, 
 easily reduced in this life by stronger peoples to penury 
 and wretchedness, and consoling themselves by the ecstatic 
 joys of their corybantic religion, and by the hope of 
 escaping through the gate of death into another and a 
 wider sphere. In a nation like this we must naturally 
 suppose that the blood of a race kindred to the Greeks 
 was almost lost amid that of the communities of temple- 
 slaves of pre- Aryan race, of which we find so many traces 
 throughout Asia Minor. 
 
 The main interest which attaches to Phrygia, after all, 
 
 Greece, or, indeed, to any which appear in art until the present 
 century. 
 
44 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. II. 
 
 rests on the legends which connect it in early days with 
 Greece, and notably with Argolis. But any consideration 
 of this matter may best be postponed until we have dealt 
 with the wonderful discoveries of recent years at Tiryns 
 and at Mycenae. Meantime some account must be given 
 of Hissarlik and the great questions connected with that 
 interesting site. 
 
 The third district connected with Phrygian history is the 
 Troad. It is sufficiently clear, even from the Homeric 
 poems, that there was no racial difference between Trojan 
 and Phrygian. Hecuba was a Phrygian princess, and 
 Aphrodite, when she appears to Anchises in the Homeric 
 Hymn in mortal guise, calls herself a daughter of a 
 Phrygian king. Priam in his youth had fought among the 
 Phrygians on the Sangarius ; and Hesychius tells us that 
 the name Hector was Phrygian. The Romans notoriously 
 did not distinguish between Trojan and Phrygian ; and 
 if the languages of the kindred tribes varied, it varied prob- 
 ably only as in days before the invention of writing the 
 tongues of parallel tribes of the same race always vary. 
 And in later historic times we find the district of Troas 
 called Lesser Phrygia : Xenophon tells us that in the time 
 of Cyrus it was under the rule of an independent king. 
 With regard to the Troad we have precisely that archaeo- 
 logical evidence which is wanting in case of Sipylus. Dr. 
 Schliemann's excavations at Hissarlik have given us a 
 mass of historical data as to the succession of inhabitants 
 in this region. 
 
 It is unnecessary that I should here repeat the thrice- 
 told story of the fates of Troy. Everyone knows how 
 Dardanus, the son of Zeus, founded his city on the spurs 
 of Mount Ida. His son Ilus founded " in the plain," as 
 we are told, the city of Ilium ; and Ilus' son Laomcdon 
 had the good fortune to receive the assistance of the 
 immortal gods in building the walls of the city, which 
 
Chap. II.] Phrygia and Troas. 45 
 
 " like a mist rose into towers." Like Tantalus, he abused 
 the friendship of Heaven ; and later when Herakles had 
 slain for him the sea monster sent by Poseidon, he de- 
 frauded the hero of his rightful reward. Herakles, with 
 his friend Telamon, sacked Troy, and placed on the throne 
 Priam, the only son of Laomedon who respected righteous 
 dealing. But Priam's son, Paris or Alexander, again fell 
 into crime, carrying off from Greece the beauteous Helen, 
 and bringing on the great Trojan war, which has been for 
 all time the heroic model of military exploit. The only 
 facts of the legendary history which it is necessary to 
 bring into the field of possible history, and to compare 
 with the results of excavation, are the twice repeated 
 destruction of the city by Hellenic foes, and the circum- 
 stance that it was situated in the plain. 
 
 The excavations, which are still proceeding in spite of 
 Dr. Schliemann's lamented death, must be mentioned, but 
 must be mentioned with caution. In the first place, they 
 are not complete ; in the second place, in the course of 
 them Dr. Schliemann executed more than once a com- 
 plete change of front in his views ; in the third place, the 
 walls of recovered Troy, if so they must be called, have 
 once more been besieged by a host of Hellenes, and in the 
 din of controversy historic science does not always flourish. 
 No one can deny that the recent excavations have fur- 
 nished to anthropology and to history most valuable in- 
 formation. They have shewn how the little hill of 
 Hissarlik was occupied during successive ages, reaching 
 back far into the second millennium B.C., by successive 
 strata of inhabitants. For a time the grade of civilisation 
 which the superimposed layers of remains shew to have 
 been reached by the builders of fortress after fortress rises. 
 In the case of the second * city from the bottom, we can 
 
 * So called in Troja and in Dr. Schuchhardt's recent work on 
 Schliemann's discoveries. In Ilios it was called the third city. J 
 
46 New Giapters in Greek History. [Chap. II. 
 
 trace massive walls and gates, we can identify the 
 foundations of a palace ; and in the numerous works of 
 the crafts of potter and smith which have been recovered 
 we can discern proof of considerable proficiency in the arts 
 of life. We can recover a mirror of a state of society in 
 which indeed letters, coins, iron, all the great inventions of 
 rising civilisation, were unknown, yet which could scarcely 
 be called void of all civilisation or wanting in vigorous 
 promise. 
 
 This city had more than one distinct period of existence, 
 and perished, perhaps more than once, in violent conflagra- 
 tion ; and on the site we can trace for ages afterwards the 
 abode of communities far inferior in wealth, in power, and 
 in arts, to that which had been destroyed, weak and un- 
 settled tribes of no magnitude or cohesion, until at last we 
 reach the beginning of the historic age, and once more 
 strike into the stream of progress, a stream destined in 
 this case to flow steadily onwards, since Greece has now 
 lifted the human race for all time to a new level. Then we 
 come into clear daylight. We know that we are survey- 
 ing the remains of the city which Alexander the Great 
 planned, and which his general, Lysimachus, erected ; the 
 new Ilium, which was in the intention of its founders to 
 have been a worthy successor to the Ilium of old, and to 
 have made amends to Athena for the loss of the temple 
 where the Trojan women placed their offerings. A few 
 more careful excavations of this kind would put us in our 
 knowledge of human stratification in Asia Minor almost 
 in the position which geologists hold in regard to the 
 strata of the earth. They would place the science of pre- 
 historic archaeology on a new level. But that which 
 concerns us at the moment, the relation of the remains 
 at Hissarlik to the story of Troy is even now more obscure 
 than one could have hoped. 
 
 If the legend of the Trojan War was based, as it almost 
 
Chap. II.] Phrygia and Troas. 47 
 
 certainly was based, on some events which actually 
 happened, then there can be little doubt that the Troy 
 which was besieged was the second or burnt city, which 
 was built on the hill of Hissarlik^ and the massive walls 
 and gates of which still exist in stately array. Dr. Schlie- 
 mann claims to have proved, by a series of excavations 
 and surveys, that on no other site in the whole district 
 there stood important fortifications in the prehistoric age ; 
 and, further, that of the successive cities which occupied the 
 plateau of Hissarlik, the second city alone, which perished 
 in a violent conflagration, was of sufficient importance to 
 dominate the district round, and to shelter a warlike and 
 powerful royal house. On the same site stood the later 
 Ilium of the Greeks ; thither went up Xerxes and Alexander 
 the Great to sacrifice to the Ilian Athena ; and in fact until 
 the age of Alexandrian learning, the general voice of 
 antiquity pointed out the hill of Hissarlik as the site of the 
 city which so long defied the host of Agamemnon. 
 
 Further, as Schuchhardt ably argues, the Homeric de- 
 scriptions of battles before the city gates, suit in the main 
 the site of Hissarlik. A plain of three miles in width 
 separates the city from the shore, and this plain is bisected 
 by the ancient bed of the Scamander, which is joined to 
 the north of the city by a stream which may be the 
 Homeric Simois. It is true that Demetrius of Scepsis 
 and some modern writers have maintained this whole 
 plain to be a recent alluvial deposit ; but against this con- 
 tention we must set the verdict of Dr. Virchow, that it is 
 by no means recent land : and we know as a fact that it 
 has been as it now is for 2000 years. Towards this plain 
 open the principal gates of the citadel. The Hellespont, 
 on which lay, according to tradition, the Greek tents, is 
 a little further from the hill, and reached by following the 
 natural line of road, the course of the Scamander. "Bonpav- 
 
 bashi, which has been put forward as a rival claimant to 
 
48 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. II. 
 
 occupying the site of Ilium, cannot be said to stand, as 
 did Ilium, " in the plain." 
 
 Turning to the question how far the Iliad corresponds 
 in detail with existing fact, we reach many difficulties. 
 It seems to every visitor that the little citadel on Hissarlik, 
 which was but some 330 feet in diameter, cannot have 
 enclosed the noble palace of Priam, or have sheltered the 
 ranks of his tributaries. The little plain towards the sea 
 seems too narrow to have contained the exploits of 
 Achilles, and the long array of the Achaean host. And 
 carping critics go further, and point out many small dis- 
 crepancies. There is no place near the gate where rise, 
 as in the Homeric descriptions, two fountains of water, 
 one cold and one warm. There is no rising ground in the 
 plain like the Qpwa^ ireBioio on which Hector encamped 
 at night, when he intended in the morning to drive the 
 Greeks into the sea. Achilles could not have pursued 
 Hector thrice round the citadel on Hissarlik without cross- 
 ing the ridge which connects it with the hill behind. Such 
 and many other difficulties have been raised by critics, 
 from Demetrius of Scepsis onwards, who wished to prove 
 that Troy must have had another site. 
 
 From the point which we have in these days reached 
 in Homeric criticism, it should be easy to set aside 
 trifling objections of this kind. It should be enough to 
 say that it is ridiculous to treat the Iliad as if it were an 
 accurate record. The race of Achilles round the walls is 
 like the deeds of Diomedes when he overthrows Ares and 
 wounds Aphrodite in the hand. The poet of the Iliad 
 probably was not perfectly informed as to the geography 
 of the Trojan plain ; and could not limit the flight of 
 Pegasus by the bounds of knowledge. When Victor Hugo 
 describes the Battle of Waterloo, he makes the whole event 
 turn on the interposition of a ditch, which, as I under- 
 stand, other people cannot find : but that is no sound 
 
Chap. II.] Phrygia and Troas. 49 
 
 proof that the battle was really fought somewhere else. 
 And it is distinctly the character of Homeric poetry to 
 magnify and exalt everything it touches. It turns farm- 
 houses into palaces, bronze into gold, men into godlike 
 heroes. Why should it not turn 10,000 men into 100,000, 
 or a citadel into a broad-streeted city ? In the same way, 
 when the Iliad speaks of the windy heights of Troy, and 
 even of the beetling crags on which the city stood, these 
 phrases are by no means inconsistent with the facts of 
 Hissarlik, or outside the range of Homeric exaggeration. 
 It is partly a natural tendency of the imagination of the 
 Homeric age, and partly a mere trick of language which 
 makes the poet project everything on a multiplied scale. 
 Our old English ballads have much the same tendency. 
 And what is the Homeric exaggeration compared to that 
 of Virgil or of Milton ? 
 
 Unfortunately Dr. Schliemann and his assistants, instead 
 of taking this sound and rational line of argument, have 
 been led into an endeavour to fight their adversaries with 
 their own weapons. If the citadel on Hissarlik was not 
 large enough for Troy, there must have been a lower city 
 of larger size lying at the foot of the hill. Of this lower 
 city there is no trace, except one doubtful piece of wall, 
 but this again can without difficulty be accounted for. If 
 there are no warm springs near the city gate, there is at 
 all events one at the source of Scamander in the hills 
 above. Even Achilles must have his feat made possible 
 by proving that the ridge he had to cross in his course 
 round the city was in ancient times forty feet lower than 
 it is now. As if such a hero as Achilles would care for 
 forty feet more or less ! 
 
 There is no real historic difficulty in the supposition 
 that, in Greek prehistoric days, Hellenic chiefs led an 
 army to the Trojan plain, encamped on the Hellespont, 
 laid siege to the city on the Hill of Hissarlik, daily fought 
 
 E 
 
50 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. II. 
 
 in the plain with the defenders, and at last took their 
 citadel and burnt it. We know from the testimony of the 
 reliefs at Medinet Abu in Egypt,, that in the thirteenth and 
 twelfth centuries B.C. the land of the Nile was invaded 
 repeatedly by swarms of warriors who came in ships 
 from the islands and the coasts of the Aegean Sea ; and 
 in the lists of tribal names of these barbarians some 
 Egyptologists recognize the name of the Achaeans. The 
 period would seem to have been a swarming-time of the 
 Hellenic and kindred races, and they may well then have 
 made an expedition of which in later days they would not 
 have been capable. But of course it does not follow, 
 because such an expedition was possible, that it was 
 actual. We can suppose the story of the Iliad to be so 
 complete a transformation of some forgotten facts as to 
 have no historic character ; but in my opinion this view is 
 improbable. 
 
 After considering internal evidence and historical prob- 
 abilities, let us next turn to the archaeological evidence. 
 There are great difficulties in supposing that the second 
 or burnt city on the site of Hissarlik was destroyed at 
 about the traditional date of the Trojan war by Achaean 
 Greeks. In the first place, the date of the remains of that 
 city, though it cannot be with certainty fixed, must be 
 placed too early. The fourteenth century B.C. is I believe 
 the most modern date which has been suggested ; most 
 archaeologists would go back further still. And among 
 these remains there is nothing which bears kinship to any 
 of the monuments of Phrygia which have come down to 
 us, or which we could fairly assign to a people such as the 
 Homeric Trojans. And the difficulties thicken when we 
 compare with the relics at Hissarlik those of Mycenae and 
 Tiryns, which we have reason, as will be shewn later, to 
 regard as typical of the civilisation of the Achaeans. 
 
 In this matter at present the evidence seems self-contra- 
 
Chap. II.] 
 
 PJirygia mid Troas. 
 
 51 
 
 dictory. The general remains of the burnt city, such as 
 the vases which are moulded in the form of a human face, 
 the terra-cotta disks with their curious devices, even the 
 large treasure of gold and silver objects found by the 
 walls, and commonly called the Treasure of Priam, all 
 appear to belong not merely to a different civilisation to 
 that of Mycenae and Tiryns, but also to a far earlier and 
 ruder age. Most archaeologists do not hesitate to say that 
 the burnt city of Ilium must have perished long before the 
 palace of Tiryns was built, or the graves at Mycenae dug. 
 I have myself more than once expressed this view in 
 printed papers : and on the whole it is supported by the 
 mass of our evidence. Helbig remarks * that the scanty 
 
 JEWELRY FROM HISSARLIK. 
 
 use of the potter's wheel, and the primitive forms of the 
 pottery show the backward character of the Ilian civilisa- 
 tion : this pottery contrasts markedly with the far more 
 
 Homerische Epos, 2nd ed., p. 47. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. n. 
 
 highly finished ware of the Argolis. The influence of 
 Egypt or of Phoenicia, so clearly marked at Mycenae, 
 fails altogether at Hissarlik. The inhabitants used no 
 swords like those of Mycenae, but only short daggers, and 
 a number of their utensils, axes, hammers, knives, and saws, 
 were of stone ; while at Mycenae stone is in most cases, 
 save for the points of arrows, superseded. 
 
 But at the same time there are a few pieces of evidence 
 which seem to connect Ilium with the cities of Argolis as 
 regards date, as well as regards customs. In various spots, 
 which are supposed to mark them as belonging to the civi- 
 lisation of the burnt city, were found a few of those 
 circular gold-leaves with impressed patterns of which so 
 many were found at Mycenae, as well as bracelets, hair- 
 pins and other jewels (p. 51), which were decorated with 
 patterns of Mycenaean character. Since, however, in 
 archaeology it is always unsafe to draw conclusions from a 
 few specimens, this piece of evidence cannot claim great 
 weight. It is as regards importance quite outweighed by 
 another. On the summit of the hill at Hissarlik, and 
 in a line with the principal gate, were found the founda- 
 tions of a palace closely resembling those of Tiryns and 
 Mycenae. It was divided into two parts, for men and 
 women ; it was approached through propylaea, and in 
 the main hall stood a hearth just where it stands at 
 Tiryns. Of course we cannot tell how long this kind 
 of palace may have remained the usual abode of a king 
 in the cities bordering the Aegean ; such an arrangement 
 may be in some cities older by ages than in others. Yet 
 the fact we have mentioned is remarkable ; and it may be 
 doubted whether considerable value ought not to be 
 attached to it. 
 
 If we sum up and weigh the evidence of various kinds as 
 regards the historic character of the Trojan war, we must 
 confess that at present it does not compel us to any posi- 
 
Chap. II.] 
 
 Phrygia and Troas. 
 
 53 
 
 tive conclusion. It is probable that the author of the Iliad 
 had some historic siege before his mind, and that the place 
 besieged stood upon the Hill of Hissarlik. Yet the only 
 important fortress which occupied that spot in prehistoric 
 times perished in a conflagration long before the assumed 
 
 HPO03£PON 
 
 GROUND PLAN OF PALACE. 
 
 date of the Trojan war, and before the rise of the wealthy 
 Greek kings of Mycenae ; nor do its inhabitants seem to 
 have been of Trojan stock, or of a race kindred to the 
 Greeks. If we could suppose that the author of the Iliad 
 converted traditions of a siege and capture by the in- 
 vading Trojans, of Ilium when it was still in the hands of 
 a Syro-Cappadocian population, into his own story of a 
 
54 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. II. 
 
 siege and capture of the Trojan Ilium by the Greeks, a 
 solution would be reached very satisfactory to archae- 
 ologists. The remains of the burnt city would well suit 
 the Semitic peoples whom the Phrygians found in posses- 
 sion of Asia Minor when they came in. But such a view 
 has in it too much of paradox, and involves too many his- 
 torical improbabilities to be acceptable. It is very likely 
 that, if we wait, fresh archaeological evidence will throw 
 light on a matter at present so obscure, and make into a 
 whole the scattered facts which at present do not appear 
 to fit into one another. 
 
 
( 55 ) 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MYCENAE AND THE ISLANDS. 
 
 When in the winter of 1876 the brilliant discoveries of 
 Dr. Schliemann at Mycenae, and the richness of the 
 treasure in gold, silver and bronze which he brought to 
 light, drew the attention of all Europe, every archaeologist 
 felt that a new chapter in the record of prehistoric Greece 
 was being unrolled, and a new light being thrown on an 
 age which had been hitherto known to us only from the 
 mythical legends of Greek historians, and from the 
 immortal Homeric poems. The discoveries of Dr. Schlie- 
 mann came to us as a first glimpse into an unknown world, 
 but new glimpses into that world have been since afforded 
 us by a score of interesting excavations and discoveries 
 in Greece and the Islands. And it seems that the time 
 has almost arrived when we can review and marshal the 
 accumulated evidence. That we are yet prepared to indi- 
 cate with clearness the general results to which it leads, 
 and to compare in a satisfactory way the evidence of the 
 spade with the evidence of legend and of poem, I do not 
 say. But we can at least lay down a few lines which 
 seem to be established by research and comparison, and 
 measure out more exactly the amount of uncertainty 
 which yet remains. 
 
 In days when the timid sailor dared not venture out of sight 
 of land or out of reach of a port, the Argolid possessed re- 
 markable facilities for commerce. The Levantine sailor, at 
 
56 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. III. 
 
 least until the sixth century B.C., loved above all to pass 
 close under the lee of islands, or between islands and the 
 coast, and dreaded the free motion and fierce gales of an open 
 sea. To this day, when a sudden storm rises in the Aegean, 
 the steamboats run for the shelter of the nearest island, and 
 placing it between them and the wind, ride at anchor and 
 wait. And those islands are perfect breakwaters. The 
 change which comes over the sea when, during a high 
 wind, one passes behind one of them, is marvellous. Now 
 a vessel starting from Argolis could sail northwards behind 
 a perfect screen of islands and without once striking into 
 open sea, past Aegina, Ceos, and Euboea, as far as Pherae 
 in Thessaly. Or it could voyage eastwards between two 
 rows of islands as far as Cnidus or Miletus, or southwards 
 to Crete. Or it could pass the isthmus at Corinth, and 
 go westward through the sheltered Corinthian gulf to 
 Leucas and Epirus. Being so favourably situate, it was 
 impossible that the Argolid should have failed to carry on 
 large commerce from times of the remotest antiquity. In 
 the very beginning of his work, Herodotus states that the 
 Phoenicians had no sooner settled on the shores of the 
 Mediterranean, than they found their way to Argos, bear- 
 ing Egyptian and Assyrian wares. These they would 
 spread out on the beach, and hold a five or six days' fair, 
 and they thought themselves fortunate if after disposing of 
 their goods they could attract aboard their ships the fair 
 daughters of the land, when they would at once set sail, 
 bearing their precious prizes to the harems of the East. In 
 the legend which states that Danaiis, who drove out the 
 Pelasgic king Gelanor, was the son of Belus and brother 
 of Aegyptus, we find a clear assertion in mythic form that 
 the seeds of the higher culture which turned Pelasgians 
 into Danai came from abroad, and were brought from 
 the seats of the ancient monarchies of Mesopotamia and 
 of Egypt. 
 
Chap. Ill] Mycenae and the Islands. 57 
 
 In the heroic age of Greece, Argolis contained three 
 cities, all famous, though they clearly cannot all three 
 have flourished together. The natural centre of the plain, 
 the place which, apart from accidental reasons, must 
 always have been the spot on which an invader would 
 seize or in which a ruler would settle, was Argos with its 
 lofty citadel. And the traditions of Argos mount up until 
 they are lost in the mist of ages : Argos, like Ephesus or 
 like London, had always been a city since cities were built 
 in Greece. But to the other two cities of the plain are 
 assigned definite founders. First Proetus, in the third 
 generation from Danaiis, built Tiryns near the sea in the 
 ways of commercial intercourse. And next Perseus, two 
 generations later, built Mycenae on the spur of a hill that 
 stands at the head of the valley. In the construe^ 
 tion of both these cities the later Greeks saw the hand of 
 the Cyclopes of Lycia. And it is not a little interesting to 
 observe that there is certainly a similarity of style between 
 the architecture of the lion-gate at Mycenae and that of 
 early Lycian tombs, in both cases wooden beams being 
 closely imitated in another material, stone. It is also the 
 opinion of the best authorities that the existing walls at 
 Mycenae are of a less early date than those at Tiryns. 
 
 The walls and gates which now remain at Mycenae 
 enclose only the Acropolis or citadel of the early city. 
 The slopes below were occupied by a considerable town. 
 That the poet of the Iliad knew of Mycenae as a populous 
 city is implied by the epithet broad-streeted, evpvdyvia, 
 which he applies to the place : certainly no broad streets 
 can have existed in the narrow and steep spaces of the 
 Acropolis. Some traces of houses belonging to this lower 
 town are supposed still to exist ; a road among them can 
 still be traced, and there are remains of bridges which 
 spanned the mountain-streams. But these traces are slight 
 and obscure, and must have been obscure during the Greek 
 
5 8 New CJiapters in Greek History. LChap. III. 
 
 historic age, for the Greek historians and poets all suppose 
 that the Mycenae of Atreus and Agamemnon lay within 
 the citadel walls. 
 
 We are told that sons of Perseus ruled both at Tiryns 
 and at Mycenae. In the tale that Herakles, who was a 
 Perseid prince of Tiryns, was obliged to serve Eurystheus, 
 the hereditary ruler of Mycenae, we seem to find an indi- 
 cation that of the two cities Mycenae was the more im- 
 portant ; and that it was larger is abundantly clear from 
 the testimony of excavation. 
 
 According to the legends, only two generations inter- 
 vened between Perseus and the accession at Mycenae of 
 the Phrygian stranger Pelops, who established there a new 
 dynasty. It is not necessary that I should here repeat the 
 story of Pelops, one of the most brilliant and celebrated 
 figures in early Greek mythology.* Everyone knows how 
 he came from the district near Smyrna and Mount Sipylus, 
 with his followers and his treasures of gold, how he won 
 his bride Hippodameia in a chariot-race at Olympia, and 
 how he gradually succeeded, according to Thucydides, by 
 means of his great wealth, in acquiring dominion in the 
 southern peninsula of Greece, thenceforward known by his 
 name as Peloponnesus. Before the time of Pelops the 
 legends of Argolis are vague and confused, but henceforth 
 they become more consistent, and bear at least the out- 
 ward appearance of history. Atreus was the son of Pelops 
 by his Greek bride, and his son Agamemnon, king of 
 Mycenae, is the hero who shines out so nobly in the Iliad, 
 and who on his return from Troy fell a victim to the 
 intrigues of his wife Clytemnestra and her paramour, his 
 cousin Aegisthus. According to the story, Aegisthus held 
 the throne for seven years, but in the eighth he was put to 
 death by Orestes, who succeeded not only to the kingdom 
 
 * It is given in the seventh chapter of Grote's History of Greece, 
 and in all the Dictionaries. 
 
Chap, in.] Mycenae and the Islands. 59 
 
 of Mycenae, but also to that of his uncle Menelaus in 
 Sparta. Then came the Dorian invasion, which transferred 
 Peloponnese from Achaean to Dorian hands. And thence- 
 forth Mycenae which had for a time taken precedence even 
 of Argos loses that proud position. In the division of 
 lands, Temenus the chief of the Herakleidae set up his 
 throne in Argos ; and Mycenae must have been if not 
 ruined, at least greatly reduced. In the time of the 
 Persian invasion, it could furnish but eighty men to the 
 army of Leonidas, and but 200 to that which fought and 
 won at Plataea. Shortly afterwards, as we learn, the 
 Argives expelled the inhabitants who remained ; and the 
 period of its independence came to an end. 
 
 But the whole period of Mycenaean history which is 
 important in connexion with recent excavation is the five 
 or six generations from the time of Perseus to that of 
 Orestes. During that time, which may be reckoned as 
 between one and two centuries, Mycenae plays a part in 
 history which is unique. It is not merely the head of 
 Argolis, but it is the first city of Peloponnese, and bears 
 rule, as is said of Agamemnon in the Iliad, over the island 
 world which is the bridge between Asia and Europe. 
 Thucydides was astonished at the legendary fame of 
 Mycenae as compared with the smallness of its site ; he 
 did not know, as we do, that all that remained of Mycenae 
 in the historic age was the walls not of the city but of the 
 Acropolis. But we must postpone for the moment a full 
 discussion of his remarks. 
 
 The second period of Mycenaean history which is im- 
 portant to the present purpose consists of the few hours 
 during which the traveller Pausanias was wandering amid 
 its remains, which in his time cannot have been in a very 
 different condition to that in which they stood before the 
 recent excavations. It is necessary to cite his words,* as 
 
 * ii. 16, 4. 
 
60 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. ill. 
 
 they are important. " There remains of the city," he says, 
 " part of the circuit walls besides the gate on which stand 
 lions, the work, they say, of the Cyclopes, who built for 
 Proetus the wall at Tiryns ; and amid the ruins is the 
 spring called after Perseus, also the underground buildings 
 of Atreus and his sons where they kept their treasures. 
 There is also the grave of Atreus, and of those whom 
 Aegisthus slew while feasting them on their return with 
 Agamemnon from Troy. As to the tomb of Cassandra, 
 that is also claimed by the Lacedaemonians of Amyclae. 
 There is a separate tomb of Agamemnon, also of his 
 charioteer Eurymedon, and a common grave of Teleda- 
 mus and Pelops, who were, they say, twin boys whom 
 Cassandra bore, and whom Aegisthus slew while infants 
 along with their parents .... (gap) .... (Electra) who was 
 given in marriage by Orestes to Pylades. Hellanicus says 
 that Medon and Strophius were sons born to Pylades by 
 Electra. But Clytemnestra and Aegisthus were buried a 
 little way without the walls, being considered unworthy of 
 a place within, where lay Agamemnon himself, and those 
 who fell with him." 
 
 It is impossible to extract from this passage, which con- 
 tains several ambiguities, any quite certain result. But 
 without entering into any long discussion, we may regard 
 it as making certain points clear. We may take it that 
 Pausanias mistakes the citadel at Mycenae to which the 
 Lion-gate gives access for the city which lay around it in 
 ruins. The fountain of Perseus has not been identified, 
 though there are said to be water tanks in the citadel. 
 The tombs of Agamemnon and his companions, and of 
 Atreus and probably of Electra, were pointed out within 
 the walls of the citadel, while the tomb of Aegisthus and 
 Clytemnestra lay without those walls. To this testimony 
 of Pausanias and to the question of its value we shall have 
 to recur. Meantime we cannot but be sure as to what 
 
Chap, in.] Mycenae and the Islands. 61 
 
 Pausanias means when he speaks of the subterranean 
 treasuries of Atreus and his sons. 
 
 The subterranean treasure-houses, of which six at least 
 are now known to exist in the lower city of Mycenae, are 
 so well known from the numerous accounts of travellers 
 that they need not be described at length. They consist 
 of a circular chamber in the shape of a bee-hive, formed of 
 massive stones laid in circles one over another, the circles 
 becoming smaller and smaller in diameter towards the top 
 until the whole is covered in by a single massive stone. 
 This circular chamber is approached by a sunken way, and 
 out of one side of it opens a small rectangular apartment, 
 and the whole is so covered in with earth as to resemble 
 in appearance a large mole-hill. It has been disputed 
 whether these constructions were intended for tombs or for 
 treasuries, but by far the most probable opinion is that 
 they were both. In the rectangular chamber, which opens 
 out of the larger one, were placed, in all likelihood, the 
 remains of a hero or a monarch. In the circular outer 
 chamber were stored all the articles of pomp and luxury 
 which had surrounded him in life, and which were destined 
 for his use and enjoyment in the shadowy future world, 
 which was considered as a somewhat slight and joyless 
 continuation of the present. Here were his cups of gold 
 and silver, his tripods of bronze, his warlike weapons ; and, 
 by a strange piece of realism, even whetstones wherewith 
 to keep these weapons keen ; his sceptre, and all his wealth 
 wherein he delighted. His body was covered with plates 
 of gold, and perhaps wives or favourite slaves were laid 
 beside him to be his companions in the future world. 
 
 Everything leads us to believe that these treasuries and 
 the walls of the citadel are about synchronous. Both are 
 alike built of tier upon tier of huge squared blocks of tufa. 
 The principle of the entrance-gate is the same in both. 
 Upon two uprights is placed transversely a block of 
 
62 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. III. 
 
 enormous size, above which is a triangular slab, perhaps 
 carved in both cases with lions in relief, although the reliefs 
 of the treasuries have disappeared. In the still extant 
 gate of the citadel, the stones on either side of this trian- 
 gular slab are arranged, just as they are in the treasuries, 
 each tier somewhat overlapping the tier below, and the 
 ends cut obliquely so as to fit on to the triangular slab — 
 the very principle on which the whole of the treasuries are 
 constructed. The doorway of the best-preserved of the 
 treasuries has lost its decoration ; but in the earth close by 
 were found fragments of pillars of a similar character to 
 the pillar between the lions on the citadel gate, and in 
 addition specimens of that kind of ornament — consisting in 
 rows of raised disks or bosses — which appears on the top 
 of the above-mentioned pillar. 
 
 The third important period of Mycenaean history com- 
 prises the re-discovery of the buried treasures of the city 
 in the present century. In the year 1808 or 18 10, Veli 
 Pasha, who was then Governor of Peloponnesus, heard the 
 report that wealth was hidden in the building called the 
 Treasury of Atreus. He dug down to the entrance, and 
 his workmen searched inside. What they found is now 
 disputed, and will probably never be known. On the one 
 side it is said that not only were large masses of gold and 
 silver ornaments discovered, but also twenty-five colossal 
 statues. This story goes a long way towards refuting 
 itself; for colossal statues do not easily disappear, and 
 these having been, according to tradition, sold to travellers 
 at Tripolitza, should be still remaining in that town or else 
 discoverable in some of our great museums. The part of 
 the story which concerns the statues being thus found 
 wanting, we are inclined to reject the whole of it and to 
 prefer the rival story, supported, according to Dr. Schlie- 
 mann, by the memory of the oldest inhabitants, that Veli 
 Pasha found next to nothing for his pains. 
 
Gate of the Lions. 
 
 Towers. 
 Side gate. 
 
 Circular precinct of 
 the graves. 
 
 Placeof agold find. 
 Dwelling-house. 
 
 HIK Ascent to the palace. 
 L Court of the palace. 
 MNO Principal apartments 
 
 of the palace. 
 PQRS Smaller apartments 
 
 and corridors. 
 T Doric temple. 
 
 A Gate of the Lions. M 
 ,q Fountain of Perseia. 
 
 Ctl /ml Makry Lithari (Gate- 
 way uf the Lower City). 
 K The Kokoretza stream, 
 c The Chavos stream. 
 
 /ch. \» 
 
 E Peak of the Hagios Elias. s 
 
 Peak of the Szara. w Well. 
 Ch Village of Charvati. 
 1 "Treasury of Atreus." 2 Bee 
 
 hivetomb, excavated by Mr-*. 
 
 Scblieraann. S 4 5 other 
 
 bee-hive tombs. 
 
 To face page 62. 
 
Chap. III.] Mycenae and the Islands. 63 
 
 After a brief excavation at Tiryns, where little of value 
 was discovered, Dr. and Mrs. Schliemann settled at 
 Mycenae on the 7th of August, 1876, and set sixty-three 
 workmen to dig in the trenches. These men were divided 
 into three parties, of which one was set to dig down to the 
 entrance of a small subterranean treasury in the immediate 
 neighbourhood of the Gate of the Lions ; a second was to 
 excavate through the gate a passage into the Acropolis ; 
 and the third party was ordered to make a huge trench 
 just within the gate. 
 
 The first result of these diggings was the discovery 
 that Mycenae, after its destruction by the Argives about 
 B.C. 470, was again inhabited by a colony which owned the 
 supremacy of Argos, and which must have remained for 
 some time on the spot, as it has left a layer of debris some 
 feet in depth. This colony probably belonged to the 
 Hellenistic age. The trench cut inside the Gate of the 
 Lions soon led to remarkable discoveries. It was found 
 that the whole space there was occupied by a circle of 
 stones, an enclosure made of two concentric circles of 
 upright stones, the space between which was roofed by thin 
 stone slabs. At first it was supposed that this circle was 
 intended to form a continuous bench enclosing - an agora 
 for meetings and councils. That view, however, is now 
 untenable. The barrier was too lofty to sit on, and it is 
 most unlikely that any agora existed in the Acropolis ; an 
 agora would be found, if at all, in the lower city where the 
 people dwelt. It soon appeared that the circle was formed 
 for a definite purpose, to enclose a set of tombs of a very 
 remarkable kind. The locality of these tombs was first 
 suggested by the discovery at a depth of several yards 
 below the surface of the ground within the circle, of some 
 most curious tombstones, some plain, some carved with 
 rude representations of warriors in chariots, attacking the 
 foe or setting out for war, of lions pursuing their prey, or 
 
64 Nczv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. TTI. 
 
 of strange involved patterns, evidently not suitable to 
 stone, but adopted from some other material. Beneath 
 each of these stones lay a tomb cut deep into the rock 
 below. Dr. Schliemann supposed that these graves, after 
 receiving their contents, were filled up with earth, but Dr. 
 Dorpfeld has since made it probable that each had a roof 
 made of slabs of stone supported by beams of wood shod 
 with bronze, which only fell in after many years. 
 
 In these rock-cut tombs lay the bodies of the prehistoric 
 rulers of Mycenae. In two of them lay three women, 
 their heads adorned with lofty gold diadems, their bodies 
 covered with plates of gold which had been sewn on their 
 dresses. In four graves lay the bodies of men, varying 
 in number from one to five, some wearing golden masks or 
 breastplates, all adorned with gold, not less profusely than 
 the women, and buried with arms and utensils, with vessels 
 of gold and silver, with a wealth of objects of use and of 
 luxury sufficient to stock a rich museum of Athens, and 
 fairly to astonish those who see it for the first time. 
 
 Of these riches it is impossible without illustrations to 
 convey any impression. The reader must turn to the 
 pages of Schliemann's Mycenae, or those of Schuchhardt's 
 recent work on Schliemann 's Excavations, if he would form 
 a notion of them. All that we can here attempt is to give 
 representations and brief discussions of the few objects 
 which give us most historical information, and which are 
 bases of our argument. Curiously enough, the most 
 important of Mycenaean works of art required re-dis- 
 covery after their discovery. The swords which lay in the 
 graves were supposed by Dr. Schliemann to be of merely 
 rusted bronze, but since then Mr. Kumanudes has carefully 
 cleaned them and revealed devices inlaid on the bronze in 
 gold and silver.* On one sword we see a series of gallop- 
 
 * Best published, in the true colours, in the Bulletin dc Corre- 
 spondance helldniquc, vol. x. 
 

To face page 64. 
 
Chap. III.] 
 
 Mycenae and the Islands. 
 
 65 
 
 MYCENAE SWORDS. 
 
66 
 
 Neiv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. III. 
 
 On two others we find a scene of hunting. 
 
 A 
 
 ing lions. 
 
 river full of fish runs down the blade. Lotuses grow in 
 it, and wild ducks are feeding among them. Two cats, 
 probably tame, and trained for the purpose, leap among 
 the ducks and seize them with mouth and paw. This is a 
 subject which is found in wall paintings of the eighteenth 
 dynasty in the British Museum * from Thebes in Egypt : 
 the river, the fish, the lotus, the cat, the ducks all recur. 
 On another sword we have a very vigorous representation 
 of a lion hunt. There are three lions, all in varying 
 attitudes ; one flies, another also runs, but looks back ; the 
 third turns on the pursuers, and drags down one of them : 
 the others in various attitudes, armed with the spear and 
 
 SIEGE OF CITY. 
 
 the bow, and sheltered behind huge shields, hasten to 
 the rescue of their fallen comrade (p. 65). 
 
 A still more recent and perhaps not less interesting 
 
 * Page 54, No. 70, General Guide 
 
Chap. III.] Mycenae and the Islands. 67 
 
 discovery is announced in the Ephemeris* for 1891. 
 Among the fragments of silver vessels found by Schlie- 
 mann in tomb No. 4 on the Acropolis was one at the time 
 thrown aside as uninteresting. But recently, on removing 
 the oxide with which it was encrusted, Mr. Kumanudes 
 has revealed a scene of no small interest engraved on it, 
 and here repeated. A city with lofty walls is being 
 attacked by some enemy, who unfortunately does not 
 appear in the limits of the fragment. We see the women 
 on the housetops stretching out their arms in encourage- 
 ment to friend or supplication to foe : they seem to be clad 
 in garments with sleeves. Before the walls is a hill 
 planted with olives, and there the defenders of the city 
 who have issued forth from the gates take their stand. 
 Most of them are naked, armed with bow or with sling, 
 but two bear large shields and spears, and in the fore- 
 ground is a warrior who wears a conical helmet with tuft 
 at top, and a jerkin covering his body and his upper arms 
 and legs. Also some unarmed figures are kneeling, per- 
 haps the elders of the city. 
 
 In the Hesiodic Shield of Herakles is a passage which 
 might almost pass for a description of this remarkable 
 fragment.f Mention is there made of the contending hosts 
 of defenders and attackers, " and the women on the well- 
 built towers were crying with shrill voice and tearing their 
 cheeks, life-like, made by the hands of glorious Hephaes- 
 tus. And the men who were elders and stricken in years 
 were without the gate assembled, holding up their hands 
 to the blessed gods, in fear for their children who were in 
 the combat." 
 
 After Dr. Schliemann's excavations at Mycenae had 
 come to an end, the place proved to be no exhausted 
 mine. Further investigations carried on since 1887 on the 
 
 * Ephemeris Archaiologike, 1891, pi. 2, 2. 
 
 f Line 237, &c. Quoted by Mr. Tsountas in the Ephemeris, 1. c. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. III. 
 
 spot by Mr. Tsountas on behalf of the Greek Archaeo- 
 logical Society, have led to interesting results. On the 
 very summit of the Acropolis rock were found the remains 
 of a temple, and beneath that the foundations of an early 
 palace. Of this palace we shall have further to speak in 
 connection with the much better preserved palace of 
 Tiryns. And in the lower city there came to light a large 
 number of graves of the common people, also of the pre- 
 historic age. It may seem strange that any people should 
 place the tombs of the dead amid the dwellings of the 
 living ; but we know on good authority that such was in 
 some places the early Greek custom. Plutarch mentions 
 it among the institutions of Lycurgus that the dead should 
 be buried in the city and near the temples ; and this, like 
 most of the Spartan customs, was probably very ancient. 
 The contents of these graves are in some cases later in 
 character than those of the royal tombs, forming a transi- 
 tion to what we know as the art of historic Greece. But 
 on the whole the accordance in technique and style with 
 the remains found by Schliemann is close, and furnishes 
 abundant proofs, if such were needed, that these works of 
 art are not in the main imported from abroad, but manu- 
 factured on the spot by a local school of workmen, and 
 represent if not an indigenous at least a local art. 
 
 Great discoveries like those at Mycenae almost always 
 prove like the letting out of water, and receive from all 
 sides supplements and corollaries. So we need not be 
 surprised that within the last fifteen years it has been 
 made clear that the Mycenaean treasures are no isolated 
 phenomena, but belong to a class of remains widely spread 
 through northern and southern Greece, through Crete and 
 the Islands. Naturally, attention was called to all the 
 beehive tombs which existed in various districts, and in 
 them and in other early sepulchres was found quite a 
 wealth of the remains of heroic Greece. 
 
Chap. III.] 
 
 Mycenae and the Islands. 
 
 69 
 
 In the very year of the discovery at Mycenae a grave 
 was excavated at Spata in Attica, the contents of which 
 bore so striking a resemblance to the antiquities of 
 Mycenae that it was even shewn that objects precisely 
 like some of the ornaments at Spata could be made from 
 moulds of stone found at Mycenae. And yet a difference 
 of period was observable. For at Spata there were a few 
 objects, notably a head in ivory and ivory sphinxes, which 
 we could clearly see to belong almost to the period of the 
 beginning of Greek sculpture, properly so called. 
 
 With the contents of the tomb at Spata may be com- 
 pared those of various tombs of beehive form excavated 
 in recent years, at Menidi, at Orchomenus, at Volo, and in 
 
 iHf iSi^Hg ^=^H : ' ^ I e &' ! & f ' 
 
 npTJQ DGjaDGnnaaDDQDDDDDuDoaQno^apOQnaociOQgQaonaoaQPQa, 
 
 ww- 
 
 v 
 
 CEILING OF ORCHOMENUS. 
 
 JjOM. 
 
 other places. As a rule these tombs have been so com- 
 pletely spoiled in antiquity by robbers, that nothing re- 
 mains but small fragments of bronze or of glass. But 
 these serve to give us an idea of style. And we find 
 that the style of these fragmentary remains is the same 
 as the style of the objects from Spata, and the same as 
 
 J 
 
jo New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. Ill 
 
 the style of the earliest bronzes found on the site of 
 Olympia, which on that site precede works of which the 
 style is distinctly Greek ; these latter can be dated to the 
 seventh century or thereabouts. The carved ceiling of 
 the inner chamber of the tomb at Orchomenus is adorned 
 with a beautiful pattern which closely resembles Egyptian 
 designs, and seems to indicate communications in pre- 
 historic days between Egypt and Greece. 
 
 Quite recently a fortunate Greek savant has discovered 
 in the beehive tomb at Bapheion, near Spata, interest- 
 ing relics of the same age, including two gold cups which 
 are perhaps the most interesting remains of prehistoric 
 Greece, and which are represented on page Jl. We see 
 on them woods consisting in the upper scene of palm-trees, 
 and in the lower of trees which belong to a temperate 
 climate. Amid these are depicted scenes from the cap- 
 ture of wild or half-wild bulls by hunters. These latter 
 are lightly clad ; they wear only waistband and boots ; 
 their long hair streams down their backs. In the upper 
 scene two of them are overthrown by the charge of an 
 infuriated animal ; in the lower scene one has succeeded in 
 fastening a rope to the hind leg of a bull whose anger and 
 alarm are clearly indicated. The contrasted attitudes of 
 the bulls, in the upper scene certainly wild, in the lower 
 perhaps tamed to the service of man, are rendered with 
 remarkable vigour and skill. Together with the siege of 
 the city on the silver vessel and the lion-hunt depicted on 
 the sword from Mycenae, these cups give us the most vivid 
 representation which we possess of the pursuits of the 
 prehistoric Greeks, and their cousins on the other side of 
 the Aegean Sea. 
 
 For light on the origin and the date of the works of art 
 of the Mycenaean class, we must undoubtedly turn to 
 Egypt : and it is surprising how clear light we obtain 
 thence. 
 
Chap. III.] 
 
 Mycenae and the Islands. 
 
 71 
 
 GOLD CUPS FROM BAPHEION. 
 
72 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. Ill 
 
 Firstly, in the Mycenaean tombs and among the remains 
 of the city have been found some articles which must have 
 come from Egypt, such as an engraved ostrich-egg, and a 
 tassel of Egyptian porcelain.* These were found by Schlie- 
 mann. Since his excavations has been found a scarab 
 bearing the name of the Egyptian Queen Ti. f This lady 
 has been reasonably, though not certainly, identified as the 
 Queen of Amenophis III. of Egypt of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury ; and in very recent excavations some pottery has 
 been found % which bears the name of Amenophis himself. 
 It is true that these names do not give us a precise date ; 
 since it was a custom, as we learn, to copy the cartouches 
 of celebrated kings and queens on works of a later date. 
 But at all events we may consider it proved that the re- 
 mains of Mycenae are not earlier than the fourteenth or 
 fifteenth century. 
 
 And a clear proof of abundant intercourse between 
 Egypt and Greece in the Mycenaean age is furnished by 
 the obvious resemblance between works of Mycenaean art 
 and those of Egypt. The sculptured pattern of the sepul- 
 chral chamber at Orchomenus is almost identical with 
 patterns painted in Egyptian tombs. The swords repre- 
 senting a duck hunt § give us a scene of a very peculiar 
 character, which could only originate in Egypt : there were 
 no cats in Greece, and the custom of training cats to catch 
 birds seems to be peculiar to Egypt. The lion-hunt and 
 the siege of the city from the Mycenaean tombs will also 
 readily carry back the eye to Egyptian prototypes. || 
 
 Yet notwithstanding this close relation to Egyptian art, 
 the masterpieces of Mycenae have much in them which is 
 non-Egyptian, and which seems to mark a native style of 
 art. There is a freedom from convention and a vigour 
 
 * Mycenae, p. 241. \ Ephem. Archaiol. 1887, p. 169. 
 
 % Ephem. Archaiol. 1891, pi. 3. § Above, p. 65. 
 
 |J e.g. Perrot, Egyp/e, trans. I. 47. 
 
Chap. III.] Mycenae and the Islands. \% 
 
 about them which is unmistakeable. Some recent writer 
 have been disposed to call them importations from Phoe- 
 nicia. They cite the appearance of the palm-tree, the 
 half-clad appearance of the men, the presence of the lion 
 as indications pointing to Syria rather than to Greece. 
 This view is, however, unsatisfactory. So far as we know, 
 Phoenician art, from first to last, was singularly wanting 
 in any sort of originality : it only combined given forms. 
 And again, it is impossible to draw a line as regards style 
 between works in gold and silver, which might possibly 
 have been imported from Phoenicia, and heavy objects 
 such as tombstones which could not be imported. It 
 seems far more probable that in this problem we have 
 almost to eliminate the Phoenicians, and to find only a 
 native Greek art working largely in obedience to Egyptian 
 teaching. If the dates which presently I hope to make 
 probable are accepted, the culmination of the Mycenaean 
 age would correspond with the time when the cities o 
 Phoenicia had been plundered or destroyed by the people 
 of the north in their march on Egypt, and when Phoeni- 
 cian influence was at a low ebb. Accordingly, among the 
 Mycenaean treasures are scarcely any which can be with 
 confidence declared to be Phoenician. The objects which 
 have the best claim to that attribution are the gold plates 
 which represent a naked goddess surrounded by doves* 
 and a temple with doves perching on it ; but even these 
 may as well betray a Cyprian or a Canaanite as a 
 Phoenician origin. The Goddess of Love and her doves 
 were by no means peculiar to the people of Sidon and 
 Ascalon. 
 
 On another side Mr. Petrie has pointed out * that pottery 
 of the Mycenaean class was imported into Egypt under 
 the eighteenth and subsequent dynasties ; and the pre- 
 sence of it in conjunction with Egyptian antiquities which 
 * Jour n. Hell. Stud. 1890, p. 271 ; 1891, p. 201. 
 
74 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. III. 
 
 can be dated, gives us a clue for the determination of the 
 date of the Mycenaean civilisation. Quite recently, he has 
 endeavoured to affix closer dates to the tombs of the 
 Mycenaean Acropolis. He considers that their contents 
 can be assigned almost with certainty to the period 1200- 
 1100 B.C. But the twelfth century was, if any trust at all 
 is to be placed in Greek tradition, the age of the culmina- 
 tion of the Achaean power, shortly before the irruption of 
 the poor and comparatively barbarous Dorians from the 
 north shattered the fabric of princely luxury, and paved 
 the way for the rise of the city commonwealths of the 
 historic age. It is scarcely possible to over-estimate the 
 value of this date, if it may be relied on. And it certainly 
 accords with most indications. 
 
 We can scarcely pass in silence the important evidence 
 as to the peoples of the Levant in prehistoric days which 
 is furnished by the wall-paintings at Medinet Abu in 
 Egypt.* We have there in contemporary records the 
 account of more than one battle waged by the Egyptians 
 in B.C. 1 300-1200 against the peoples of Asia Minor and 
 the Islands, who are represented in the wall paintings as 
 attacking the country both by sea and land.f The names 
 given to these peoples by Egyptologists are so various, and 
 the identifications with particular races are so uncertain 
 that I am unwilling to repeat them. One can only 
 venture to speak of the wall-painting of the sea-fight at 
 Pelusium, in which the fleet of the invaders was destroyed 
 by Rameses III., because, however the Egyptian hierogly- 
 phics may be read, the paintings of Egyptian artists are 
 clear and trustworthy. 
 
 In this cartoon, the northern peoples who attack Egypt 
 are represented as sailing in ships rising at both ends with 
 
 * Rosellini, Monumenti Storichi, pi. 125 and foil, 
 t In an Appendix to Ilios (p. 745) Dr. Brugsch 'gives a detailed 
 account of these wars. 
 
Chap. Hi.] Mycenae and the Islands. 75 
 
 lofty curves, whereas the ships of the Egyptians are curved 
 only at one end, and adorned at the other with a lion's 
 head. They are unbearded men, clad in jerkins reaching 
 to the knee and girt in at the waist, armed with spears, 
 short swords and round shields. One tribe of them have 
 on their heads a lofty cap apparently made of feathers, 
 the other tribe wear a round helmet surmounted by a 
 crescent and ball. On other paintings of the same age 
 both tribes appear as auxiliaries or mercenaries of the 
 Egyptians in their wars. 
 
 It has been well remarked that the ships of these 
 invaders recall by their form the Homeric epithets afi<f)ie- 
 Xiaaa and Kopcovk. But the equipment and armour of 
 the men in no wise corresponds to that given in the 
 Homeric poems to Greeks, Trojans and Lycians ; the 
 crested helmet, the breastplate, the greaves are alike 
 wanting. Nor do we find here the crested helmets of 
 the Carians. Less unlike is the arming of the warriors 
 represented on the gems and the signets of Mycenae. If 
 we compare the Mycenaean hero of the signet figured on 
 p. 144 we shall see that he perhaps wears a spiked helmet 
 and jerkin. The warrior at the bottom of the siege- 
 scene (above, p. 66) is clad in a jerkin covering his body 
 and legs to the thigh, and wears a conical helmet. 
 But it must be confessed that though the equipment of 
 the warriors of Mycenae and of those who appear at 
 Medinet Abu is similar, it is not identical. The round 
 shield in particular appears at Medinet Abu, and not at 
 Mycenae. 
 
 That the Greeks in the prehistoric age entered on con- 
 siderable expeditions by land and sea is shewn by the 
 stories of Ilium and Thebes, of the Argonauts, and of 
 Odysseus' feigned expedition from Crete to Egypt. And 
 in fact they must have thrown out considerable colonies 
 about B.C. 1000. It would have been very natural to 
 
J 6 Neiv CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. III. 
 
 identify them among the invaders or the mercenaries of 
 Egypt. But we can scarcely venture to do so with con- 
 fidence until either Egyptologists are agreed on the 
 subject, or until fresh monuments are discovered in the 
 marvellous valley of the Nile, to decide our doubts. 
 But we do not need this further evidence to enable us 
 to trace a close connection between the Greeks of the 
 Mycenaean age and the Egyptians. 
 
 Beside the influence of the art of Egypt on that of 
 Mycenae we may also trace the working on it of Baby- 
 lonian prototypes. Babylonian cylinders have been found 
 in the early graves in Cyprus ; and we know that in early 
 pre-historic times the cuneiform system of writing, the 
 worship of the Babylonic goddess Mylitta, and the forms 
 of Babylonic sculpture slowly made their way across Asia 
 to the coast of Asia Minor and beyond it. Egyptian 
 influence had to pass the sea in order to reach Greece, but 
 Babylonic influence passed from city to city and from 
 nation to nation by the land route, and permeated western 
 Asia in a remarkable degree. It cannot therefore surprise 
 us to trace Babylonic influence in various remains of 
 Mycenaean art. And we find it especially in the signets, 
 such as that in which a lady seated under a tree receives 
 homage from worshippers, and generally in the treat- 
 ment of the male and female form. According to the 
 legend, Belus, as well as Aegyptus, had descendants in 
 the Argolid ; and this tradition is probably based on 
 fact. 
 
 Having thus briefly considered the problem of the 
 Mycenaean age in Greece, let us turn to the special and 
 less vague problems offered us by the facts of Mycenae in 
 particular. 
 
 Certain circumstances of the burials at Mycenae seem 
 remarkable and full of meaning. Firstly, the bodies of 
 the dead had been buried in haste and some confusion, 
 
Chap, in.] Mycenae and the Islands. 77 
 
 in graves too small * and unduly crowded with treasures. 
 And they had been, although preserved by some simple 
 process of embalming, yet as we are told, partially burned. 
 These facts indicate an entombment in haste : it is not 
 thus that any early people would dispose of their heroic 
 dead, especially while endowing them with so much 
 treasure. This makes it very probable that we have to 
 do, not with a first interment but with a re-interment ; and 
 this probability is especially strengthened by the burning 
 added to the embalming. Then again the number of the 
 graves was six, and it can scarcely be a mere coincidence 
 that the beehive tombs outside the citadel were also six in 
 number. And again, it is maintained by Dr. Schuchhardt 
 and other writers, and in fact generally allowed, that the 
 contents of the various tombs point not quite to the same 
 period for their origin. The contents of the tombs num- 
 bered by Schliemann 3, 4, and 5, seem to be decidedly, if 
 not by any long period, older than those of tombs I, 2, 
 and 6. And yet it is hard to suppose that the whole 
 contents of the circle of stones were not placed where they 
 were found on one definite occasion. Considerations such 
 as these led me some time ago to a view which I have 
 already suggested in the Quarterly Reviezu for 1877, but 
 which, I am bound to say, has not yet been generally 
 accepted by savants. I conceive that on some occasion 
 when the city of Mycenae was in danger from some 
 invading foe, the people of the city began to fear lest the 
 bodies and treasures of their early kings, buried in the six 
 beehive-shaped tombs outside the walls of the citadel, 
 should fall into hostile hands. So they may have removed 
 
 * Mycenae, p. 295 : " The three bodies' of this tomb lay with their 
 heads to the east and their feet to the west ; all three were of large 
 proportions, and appeared to have been forcibly squeezed into the 
 small space of only 5 ft. 6 in. which was left for them between the inner 
 walls." 
 
78 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. ill. 
 
 bodies and treasures alike to a spot within the walls of the 
 Acropolis, thinking that at least within those mighty walls 
 safety would be found. They may have dug deep into the 
 rock, and at the bottom of the tombs have hastily erected 
 rude pyres whereon to burn the bodies of their heroes. 
 This burning may have been dictated by the altered 
 custom which then prevailed as to the rites of burial. Or 
 perhaps it may have been intended to remove the corpses 
 yet more securely out of the reach of enemies. After the 
 funereal fire, they may have heaped in the graves all the 
 treasures which had before surrounded their dead. In 
 after days they may have made an altar and erected tomb- 
 stones over the various graves. This hypothesis would 
 account for many circumstances. It would explain the 
 dismantled and empty condition of the underground trea- 
 suries. That these have not been entered and pillaged 
 within historical times is certain, for Dr. Schliemann found 
 the dromos or entrance to the one which he searched full of 
 archaic pottery, and the earth there quite undisturbed. 
 Yet the treasury itself was empty. It would account for 
 the number of the bodies buried at one time and the mass 
 of wealth which lay about them. It is indeed open to one 
 objection, that the bodies of the kings would, unless em- 
 balmed, have passed in the course of a century or two into 
 such a condition as would prevent their being removed 
 to a new tomb. We would, however, suggest that some 
 circumstances seem to point to a certain decay in the 
 bodies before they were buried in the agora. This is 
 suggested by their cramped position, and the fact carefully 
 noted by Dr. Schliemann, that in the case of a male body 
 the golden shoulder-belt " was not in its place, for it now 
 lay across the loins of the body, and extended in a straight 
 line far to the right of it." It is further exceedingly likely 
 that the early Mycenaeans partly embalmed the bodies of 
 their dead princes. The gold masks on their faces remind 
 
Chai\ III.] Mycenae and the Islands. 79 
 
 us in a striking manner of the gilded faces of the Egyptian 
 mummies, and suggest that among other Egyptian cus- 
 toms, which penetrated into Greece at an early epoch, the 
 dressing of the dead with spices may have held a place. 
 
 As to the circle of stones which surrounded the spot, that 
 is at a higher level, and in Dr. Dorpfeld's opinion of a later 
 date than the graves. It is patent to everyone who looks 
 at the plan of Mycenae that this circle cannot have been 
 made while the Acropolis was in use as a dwelling-place. 
 It entirely blocks the way to the great Lion-gate which was 
 the principal entrance to the citadel ; and its only opening 
 lies towards that gate. It seems then perfectly clear that 
 it must be the work not of the early people of Mycenae, 
 but of their conquerors, probably of the Dorian invaders, .y 
 Wishing to abolish Mycenae as a fortified place, but at the 
 same time to avoid offence to the godlike heroes who had 
 made the place celebrated, the new comers must have 
 formed a sacred circle just within the gate, and accessible 
 only through it, and ordained that the rest of the site 
 should lie waste in honour of the indwelling heroes. And 
 waste it seems to have lain for a long time, until the 
 erection on the summit of a Doric temple, of which, as we 
 have seen, traces have been found. In the time of the 
 Persian wars it seems to have recovered a few inhabitants. 
 
 This view we hold to be the most probable ; but we 
 cannot maintain that it meets all the difficulties of the case. 
 For example, what can Pausanias have seen, when the 
 tombs of the companions of Agamemnon were shewn him ? 
 He cannot have seen the tombstones known to us, since 
 they were buried under some twenty feet of soil. And of 
 any chapels or memorials on the surface there is no trace. 
 Some will be prepared with the ready solution that Pau- 
 sanias was never at Mycenae at all, but merely copied from 
 old guide-books. This solution, however, does not help 
 us at all, since the authority copied by Pausanias can no 
 
8o New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. III. 
 
 more have seen the buried tombstones than can he himself. 
 And besides, no part of Pausanias' work bears more satis- 
 factory evidence of autopsy than does the book which treats 
 of Mycenae. Dr. Schuchhardt thinks that some later 
 graves may have been pointed out to Pausanias as those of 
 the Homeric heroes ; and of course this is possible. Never- 
 theless it seems more reasonable, in view of the results of 
 excavation, to think that tradition handed down even to 
 the Antonine age knowledge of the spot where lay the 
 bodies of the heroic monarchs of Mycenae, however such 
 spot may have been at the time marked out. 
 
 The theory above advanced is also untenable if the view, 
 which must be called the generally received one, of the 
 later date of the beehive tombs than of the deep graves 
 be accepted. This view, however, can scarcely claim to be 
 established. It is no doubt true that some objects found 
 in some of the beehive tombs, such as those at Nauplia 
 and Menidi, appear to belong to the latest period of the 
 Mycenaean culture ; while the deep graves represent a 
 somewhat earlier stage. But we do not know that all 
 these beehive tombs were of the same age. Those of 
 Orchomenus and Bapheion seem to belong to an earlier 
 date than some of the others : Mr. Petrie argues that the 
 objects from Bapheion are earlier in character than the 
 Mycenaean finds. And there appears to be no reason 
 why the beehive tombs of Mycenae should belong to a 
 later age than those of Orchomenus and Bapheion. We 
 have moreover argued above that the beehive tombs of 
 Mycenae are of the same age as the city walls ; and these 
 walls can scarcely be of later construction than the graves 
 dug within them. 
 
 In approaching the question as to the historical place of 
 the kings in the Mycenaean graves, we undoubtedly reach 
 the most difficult part of our subject. 
 
 Let us first consider the indications, neither few nor 
 
Chap. III.] Mycenae and the Islands. 8 1 
 
 slight, of a connection between the Mycenaean remains and 
 the Phrygians of the coast of Asia Minor. First we come 
 to the Lion-gate. Already in 1842 Ainsworth observed 
 the close likeness between these rampant lions facing one 
 another on each side of a pillar and the relief groups of 
 Phrygian tombs. Since the discovery of the great lions 
 at Ayazinn* this analogy has become still more striking, 
 although a difference in style is evident. The curious 
 heraldic scheme of the group is of course no Phrygian 
 invention, but may be traced back to the art of Cappadocia 
 and of Babylon ; yet we may fairly say that at present the 
 nearest analogy to the lions of Mycenae is to be found in 
 those of Phrygia. It has further been observed that the 
 capital of the pillar which divides the lions is clearly a copy 
 in stone of the ends of round beams, and this translation 
 into stone of wooden architectural features is precisely one 
 of the most clearly marked characteristics of the art of. 
 Phrygia no less than of that of Lycia. 
 
 The beehive tombs found at Mycenae and elsewhere in 
 Greece were certainly in ancient times regarded as of 
 Phrygian origin. Athenaeus records the tradition that 
 they were the graves of the followers of Pelops. And 
 Vitruvius states that the Phrygians in Asia were compelled 
 by want of wood for huts to dig into natural mounds, and so 
 hollow out for themselves a dwelling-place. Of course the 
 form of the tomb would among them, as among all peoples, 
 follow that of the dwelling. And although we now know 
 that the tombs in inland Phrygia were merely hollowed 
 out of the rock, we yet find nearer the coast tumuli with 
 inner chambers which may well have been prototypes of 
 the Greek " treasuries." There is the great mound which 
 is connected with the name of Tantalus near Smyrna, 
 and that connected with Alyattes in Lydia. And further 
 south, in Caria, Mr. Patonf has excavated some remarkable 
 
 * Jour?i. Hell. Stud. pi. 17, 18, &c. f lb. vol. viii. pp. 67, 80. 
 
 G 
 
82 Neiv Cliapters in Greek History. [Chap. III. 
 
 tombs built of stone under an artificial mound which are in 
 construction very similar to the " treasury of Atreus." It 
 is true that this method of burying the dead was not 
 confined to Phrygia, nor even to Asia Minor, but it seems 
 to be in Greece of foreign origin. 
 
 The quantity of the gold in the graves at Mycenae and 
 the patterns with which it is adorned alike seem naturally 
 to lead us to the district at the foot of Sipylus. The Pac- 
 tolus and other rivers near it were full of gold dust, and 
 generation after generation those who possessed that corner 
 of Asia possessed gold without limit down to the time of 
 Croesus. Greece proper, on the other hand, produced in 
 historic times little or no gold. It may be said that in all 
 countries there is surface-gold, which the first strong race 
 of inhabitants exhausts once for all : and this is true ; yet 
 it seems scarcely likely that there would be surface-gold in 
 Greece as late as the twelfth century. So the probability 
 of a Phrygian origin of the gold found at Mycenae must 
 stand for something, though it is not a certainty. The 
 likeness too of the patterns at Mycenae to those on the 
 tombs of the kings of Phrygia is striking : it was observed 
 by Leake, that the pattern on the Midas tomb was like 
 those on the entrance to the treasury of Atreus, and the 
 same likeness certainly holds in regard to the gold orna- 
 ments of the Mycenaean tombs. 
 
 To these archaeological indications we might add others 
 drawn from other sources. For instance, the ancients 
 regarded the dance cordax as imported into Greece from 
 Phrygia by Pelops. And there is a striking likeness 
 between the name of Atreus and that of Otreus the 
 Phrygian king mentioned in the Iliad, as well as of the 
 city of Otrus. But we must not insist on points like these, 
 or run the risk of adding fanciful arguments to those of 
 undoubted value. 
 
 Let us compare these results, the evidence of which is 
 
Chap. III.] Mycenae and the Islands. 83 
 
 derived from observation and excavation, with the legends 
 accepted by Thucydides. Thucydides says that before the 
 Dorian conquest, the date of which is traditionally fixed 
 at B.C. 1 104, Mycenae was the city whence ruled a wealthy 
 race of kings. Archaeology produces the bodies of kings 
 ruling at Mycenae about the twelfth century and spreads 
 their wealth under our eyes. Thucydides says that this 
 wealth was brought in the form of gold from Phrygia by 
 the founder of the line, Pelops. Archaeology tells us that 
 the gold found at Mycenae may very probably have come 
 from the opposite coast of Asia Minor which abounded in 
 gold ; and further" that the patterns impressed on the gold 
 work at Mycenae bear a very marked resemblance to the 
 decorative patterns found on graves in Phrygia. Thucy- 
 dides tells us that though Mycenae was small, yet its 
 rulers had the hegemony over a great part of Greece. 
 Archaeology shews us that the kings of Mycenae were 
 wealthy and important quite out of proportion to the small 
 city which they ruled, and that the civilisation which 
 centred at Mycenae spread over south Greece and the \ 
 Aegean, and lasted for some centuries at least. 
 
 It seems to me that the simplest way of meeting the 
 facts of the case is to suppose that we have recovered at 
 Mycenae the graves of the Pelopid race of monarchs. It 
 will not of course do to go too far. The number and sex 
 of the corpses found in the tombs cannot be made to 
 correspond with the enumeration of Pausanias, and this 
 is sufficient to warn us not to regard the local legend 
 which he reports as embodying actual sober fact. It 
 would be too much to suppose that we have recovered the 
 bodies of the Agamemnon who seems in the Iliad to be 
 as familiar to us as Caesar or Alexander, or of his father 
 Atreus, or of his charioteer and the rest. We cannot of 
 course prove the Iliad to be history ; and if we could, the 
 world would be poorer than before. But we can insist 
 
 G 2 
 
 
84 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. III. 
 
 upon it that the legends of heroic Greece have more of 
 the historic element in them than anyone supposed a few 
 years ago. And as science is always progressive we may 
 hope by degrees to distil more and more history from 
 these legends. At present, in speaking of the Pelopid 
 kings, we use an ethnologic and geographic, rather than 
 a historic, phrase ; we merely indicate a race probably 
 derived from Asia Minor, or at all events thence deriving 
 its civilisation. We do not mean to guarantee names or 
 details of history. 
 
 I have dwelt, perhaps, quite enough on the Phrygian 
 element in the civilisation of Mycenae, since after all any 
 influence exercised by Phrygia on Hellas at this time 
 would be artistic rather than national. The true Phrygians 
 were, as has been above maintained, closely akin to the 
 Greeks, quite as closely akin as the Macedonians of a later 
 time. And if the kings of Mycenae, with their immediate 
 followers, were of Phrygian extraction, that fact would 
 by no means put them outside the line of Hellenic 
 development. Agamemnon would be as truly Greek as 
 George III. was English. With Homer the Pelopid kings 
 have nothing at all foreign about them, so that Grote has 
 maintained that the Lydian origin of Pelops was a post- 
 Homeric invention. But there is in the Iliad nothing 
 more remarkable than its omissions ; and it is never safe 
 to insist upon them as evidence. All that it seems fair 
 to say is that had the Greeks of Homer's time thought of 
 the Pelopidae as an utterly foreign dynasty we should 
 have found some trace of this feeling in the Iliad. 
 
 Assuming then that we may fairly class the Pelopidae 
 as Achaean, and may regard the remains at Mycenae as 
 characteristic of the Achaean civilisation of Greece, is it 
 possible to trace with bolder hand the history of Achaean 
 Greece ? Certainly we gain assistance in our endeavour 
 to realize what the pre-Dorian state of Peloponnesus was 
 
Chap. III.] Mycenae and the Islands. 85 
 
 like. We secure a hold upon history which is thoroughly- 
 objective, while all the history which before existed was 
 so vague and imaginative that the clear mind of Grote 
 refused to rely upon it at all. But precise dates are more 
 than we can venture to lay down, in the present condition 
 of our knowledge. 
 
 The Achaean civilisation was contemporary with the 
 eighteenth Egyptian dynasty* (B.C. 1700-1400).! It'/ 
 lasted during the invasions of Egypt from the north 
 (1 300-1 100). When it ceased we cannot say with cer- 
 tainty. There is every historical probability that it was 
 brought to a violent end in the Dorian invasion. The 
 traditional date of that invasion is B.C. 11 04. But it is 
 obvious that this date cannot be relied upon. And it 
 is probable, almost to certainty, that the Dorian invasion 
 would be, like the Saxon conquest of England, a slow 
 and gradual process. We cannot tell how long it lasted, 
 the dynastic lists of the kings of this age having small 
 authority. We must suppose that district after district 
 succumbed to the invaders. When Argolis, the centre 
 of Greek civilization at the time, fell into their hands 
 must remain doubtful. At any rate, great changes must 
 have taken place, and a considerable space of time must 
 have elapsed, before the beginnings of historic Greece. 
 The doings of kings and peoples during these centuries 
 have perished. The phases of art only are known to us. 
 Of these phases I shall speak in more detail in a future 
 chapter.^ The Mycenaean art seems to have decayed, 
 in some districts faster than in others, and to have given 
 
 * Besides the proofs of this already mentioned (p. 72) it should be 
 stated that an inlaid bronze dagger and other articles resembling 
 those found at Mycenae have made their appearance in the tomb of 
 a queen of the eighteenth dynasty in Egypt. 
 
 t I take these dates from the British Museum Guide (1890), p. 40 
 and foil. 
 
 % See below, pp. 123-129. 
 
86 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chak III. 
 
 way by degrees to an art which is essentially geometrical, 
 like the art of Hallstadt and of Scandinavia. But we 
 are not of course in a position to say that wherever we 
 find the art of Mycenae we must suppose an Achaean 
 population, since the invading Dorians may easily have 
 copied the works of art of those they conquered, just as 
 the Saxons in Britain copied works of Celtic art. Only, 
 speaking roughly, it is fair to say that the Mycenaean art 
 is of Achaean, and the succeeding geometric art of Dorian 
 origin. Olympia, which only rose into importance under 
 the Dorians, shows in its lowest and earliest levels the 
 art which succeeded the Mycenaean. 
 
 We must, however before proceeding, consider a rival 
 view, which has been put forward on good authority as 
 an alternative to that which asserts the Achaean origin 
 of the Mycenaean remains, the view advocated by Kohler, 
 Dummler and Studniczka, that they are Carian. This view 
 was suggested by the statement of Thucydides,* that the 
 Carians had extensive possessions in the Greek islands in 
 days before the Trojan war ; and that when the Island of 
 Delos was purified by the Athenians during the Pelopon- 
 nesian War, and the bodies which had been buried there 
 removed, most of them were found to be Carian, being 
 identified by the fashion of their weapons and of their 
 burial. This very passage of Thucydides, however, 
 seems to offer the strongest proof that the interments at 
 Mycenae were not Carian, if we compare it with one 
 of Herodotus.f Herodotus says that the Carians were a 
 warlike race, and noted as the authors of three inven- 
 tions, which the Greeks borrowed from them, the crests 
 of helmets, the devices and handles of shields. But the 
 heroes of Mycenae were quite clearly not warlike. In 
 their tombs were found no helmets ; and if there were 
 traces of any shields, which is doubtful, these were made, 
 * I. 8. f I. 171. 
 
Chap. III.] Mycenae and the Islands. 87 
 
 not of metal but of wood or leather, without handles. 
 The mention of handles implies the use by the Carians 
 of small round metal shields : at Mycenae only the large 
 scutum suspended by a strap from the neck was in use. 
 We may thus safely say that, little as we know about the 
 Carians, we do know that their interments could not be 
 like those at Mycenae. 
 
 And the arguments which Dr. Dummler brings for- 
 ward * as fatal to the Achaean theory are really of small 
 weight, compared to those which accumulated on the other 
 side. The Carian theory is almost as untenable from the 
 historical point of view as are the Gallic and the Gothic 
 theories from the archaeological point of view.f For we 
 have no reason at all to assume lasting and wide-spread 
 settlements of Carians in Greece Proper. 
 
 At any rate, it seems impossible to bring down either 
 the treasures or the fortifications of Mycenae to a later 
 age than the year B.C. 1000, say to the date of the Dorian 
 kings of Argos and the threshold of Greek history. It 
 is not reasonable to suppose that Dorian kings of Argos 
 would have fortified the rival Mycenae. If we regard the 
 
 * Athen. Mittheil. xii. He argues (1) that the tombs must date 
 from the 15th century, which is too early for a flourishing Achaean 
 kingdom. But the true date, as we have seen above, is the 
 1 2th century not the 1 5th. (2) That we have small trace of Mycenaean 
 civilisation in Asia Minor among the Achaean colonists. But this 
 negative argument is valueless until more serious excavations are 
 carried on in Asia Minor. (3) That Homer speaks of burning the 
 dead, while at Mycenae they were buried. There are perhaps traces 
 of burning at Mycenae, but if not, we know that at various periods of 
 Greek history the two ways of disposing of the dead existed side by 
 side ; and so probably they did in the Homeric age. (4) That no 
 fibulae were found at Mycenae, which implies Asiatic dress rather 
 than that implied in the Homeric poems. But more recent excava- 
 tions at Mycenae, and particularly in graves of the Mycenaean age in 
 Cyprus, have brought fibulae to light. 
 
 \ How untenable these last views are, I have tried to show in a 
 paper in the first volume of the Journal of Hellenic Studies. 
 
88 Nezv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. III. 
 
 contents of the tombs, it seems quite out of the question 
 to attribute the wealth and luxury which they display 
 to the poor and hardy Dorians : and there is no evidence 
 that tombs and walls belong to different ages : the 
 circumstances of the case render this most unlikely. At 
 present therefore the Achaean theory decidedly holds the 
 field. 
 
 The painted pottery found in and around the tombs at 
 Mycenae has been the subject of careful investigation by 
 Messrs. Furtwangler and Loschcke, and has led those 
 savants to interesting results. For it appears that vases 
 of the same class, now known to archaeologists as Myce- 
 naean, are found in Boeotia, Attica, Peloponnesus, Rhodes, 
 Crete, Cyprus, Carpathos, and elsewhere. Certain classes 
 of them are supposed to have been made in Argolis only ; 
 other classes in many parts of the Aegean. They seem to 
 be the outward and visible sign of a civilisation, of which 
 the roots lay in Argolis, but the branches spread over the 
 south of Greece and across the islands of the Asiatic 
 coast. Vases of the same kind have been found in 
 Egypt,* no doubt having been carried thither as mer- 
 chandise, or as tribute from the Greek islands. And in 
 graves which contain this pottery we find also bronze work 
 adorned with the Mycenaean patterns, and poor jewelry, 
 including occasionally fibulae for fastening the dress. 
 
 And this " Mycenaean " civilisation in the islands and in 
 Cyprus seems to succeed to a lower stage of culture which 
 also we can trace in the grave-yards.f At this earlier 
 stage, the people of the islands seem to have used as 
 weapons bronze spears and daggers, but the long swords 
 which are so characteristic a feature of the Mycenaean 
 remains are entirely wanting. Their pottery, in opposition 
 to the more beautiful Mycenaean ware, with its elegant 
 
 * Cf. Petrie in Journal of Hellenic Studies, vols. x. xi. 
 f Diimmler in A then. Mit/heilungen, 1886, p. 15. 
 
Chap. III.] Mycenae and the Islands. 89 
 
 forms, and its decoration of skilfully adapted natural 
 forms, is rude, often not even made on the potter's wheel, 
 adorned with moulded patterns or with the roughest 
 painted devices. Idols also occur ; rude imitations in ala- 
 baster of the naked human form, so primitive as scarcely to 
 have style, and to leave us uncertain whether they are meant 
 to portray gods or men. Some of the objects mixed 
 with these primitive wares seem however to indicate com- 
 merce ; ivory for example must have come originally 
 from Africa, and a few Babylonian cylinders seem to prove 
 that even the distant Empire of Babylon threw out rays, 
 of civilisation beyond the confines of Asia. 
 
 It is impossible here to describe in detail these antiqui- 
 ties, so as to make them intelligible. It is certain that 
 they open to us interesting historical vistas ; and we may 
 hope some day to speak of the fruit which they bring to the 
 prehistoric record of Greece with confidence. But there is 
 a great impediment in the way, which has as yet con- 
 tinually turned historians and archaeologists into paths 
 which are unsafe. This is the fact that it is always 
 unsafe to argue from a likeness or difference in art-work 
 to identity or difference of race. Even on language it is 
 very unsafe to base ethnological arguments : still more 
 unsafe is it to base ethnological arguments on custom. 
 For example, one might suppose that among primitive 
 races style of dress was a fair index of race ; yet Herodotus 
 says — and the monuments prove him to be right — that 
 the Athenians in the course of two or three centuries 
 changed their women's dress from the Doric to the Ionic, 
 and back again. The custom of treating the dead, whether 
 burning or burying, might also seem a safe racial character- 
 istic. But we know that both customs prevailed together 
 at many periods of history, the rich being usually burned 
 and the poor buried. Still more uncertain are indications 
 drawn from style in metal-work or pottery, for in such 
 
90 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. III. 
 
 matters the less civilised race is almost sure to copy the 
 more civilised. Thus the spread of a kind of remains 
 found in tombs may not imply a change of race, nor a 
 conquest by a more civilised over a less civilised com- 
 munity, but may result merely from a change in the 
 direction of commerce, or in the taste of a people. 
 
 Dr. Diimmler is disposed to see in the earlier Island- 
 civilisation that of the Leleges, and in the later (Mycenaean) 
 that of the Carians, who probably conquered and made 
 them tributary. But since, as we have shewn, there is no 
 reason for connecting the civilisation of Mycenae with the 
 Carians, we are naturally tempted to draw from the facts 
 quite a different inference, and to discern in the spread of 
 Mycenaean style in art the growing political power of the 
 Achaean kings of Mycenae. We know that according to 
 tradition Agamemnon ruled the isles as well as Argos, and 
 Thucydides' theory that the King of Mycenae was the 
 head of a considerable naval force is very plausible indeed. 
 But though we can thus reach probabilities we cannot 
 reach certainties, and it is better not to treat as established 
 views which may hereafter be shewn to be unsound. 
 What archaeology makes clear is that Argolis was in the 
 twelfth century ruled by a wealthy and powerful native 
 race, closely connected with Asia Minor, and much in- 
 fluenced by the art of Egypt. 
 

 ( 9i ) 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE PALACE AT TIRYNS. 
 
 The excavations carried on by Schliemann, with the 
 help of Dr. Dorpfeld, at Tiryns during the years 1884-5, 
 have an interest which is mainly architectural. The 
 pottery, terra-cottas and implements found in the ancient 
 Acropolis are in the lower and earlier strata like those of 
 Hissarlik, while at the upper strata they closely resemble 
 the objects found in Mycenae, objects which have 
 been already discussed in these pages. We propose, 
 therefore, to devote most of the present chapter to an 
 attempt to explain what additions to our knowledge of 
 the city-walls, the palaces, and the graves of primitive 
 Greece have resulted from the excavations at Tiryns. 
 
 Travellers who have been in Greece, and such are now 
 no longer rare, must be forgetful indeed if they fail to 
 remember the aspect of the lovely plain of Argolis, as one 
 approaches it from the sea, a triangle, whereof lofty 
 mountains shut in two sides, while the third is bounded by 
 the blue, still, transparent waters of the Aegean. It is hard 
 to say whether the scene is more beautiful when the rising 
 sun throws the hard shadow of mountain on mountain, or 
 when the peaks towards evening change colour almost as 
 rapidly as do the clouds of a northern sky. Dr. Schliemann 
 writes of it : "I mentally recall the ascending peaks of the 
 Himalayas, the luxuriance of the tropical world on the 
 islands of Sunda and the Antilles ; or, again, I turn to the 
 view from the great Chinese wall, to the glorious valleys of 
 
92 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. rv. 
 
 Japan, to the far-famed Yo-Semite Valley in California, 
 or the high peaks of the great Cordilleras, and I confess 
 that the prospect from the citadel of Tiryns far exceeds 
 all of natural beauty which I have elsewhere seen." This 
 beautiful plain contains the sites of three famous cities. 
 They cannot all have flourished together, and we know 
 that the supremacy belonged to various of them at different 
 times. Mycenae, placed at the head of the plain, is a great 
 mountain fastness, fit for a stronghold in unquiet days, 
 when the seas were full of pirates, and a city nearer to the 
 sea ran a risk of sudden sack by them. In more quiet 
 times Argos, which naturally dominates the centre of the 
 plain, would secure the primacy in virtue of its more con- 
 venient site and richer territory, and would, as in fact it 
 did, establish a port on the sea, whence it could com- 
 municate with the outer world, Nauplia, the natural gate 
 of the valley, but never its ruler. The stronghold of 
 Tiryns is about three miles from the sea. The site was 
 fitted for the seat of a powerful family, who wished 
 to preserve communication with both sea and land, 
 but it was not adapted for a large population. It was not 
 large in area, to begin with, and possessed neither the 
 grasp of the land obtained by Argos, nor the hold on 
 the sea which made the fortune of Nauplia. Hence it was 
 destined to fade away with the growth of great cities, 
 population, and trade, which began in so marked a manner 
 in the ninth and eighth centuries in Greece ; and its bloom 
 was past when Sparta had scarcely eclipsed its neighbour 
 Amyclae, and Athens was disputing with Megara the 
 possession of Salamis. 
 
 The huge walls of Tiryns are pointed out to every 
 traveller. Their massiveness of construction surprises the 
 visitor, as it surprised Pausanias in the time of Hadrian, and 
 drew from him the somewhat exaggerated statement, that 
 the stones of which they are built are so huge that the 
 
Chap. IV.] The Palace at Tiryns. 93 
 
 smallest of them could not be moved by a yoke of mules. 
 And from the visit of Pausanias onwards travellers have 
 been content to gaze on the huge ramparts as a nine-days' 
 wonder, and to pass on. The spade of Dr. Schliemann has 
 chansred all this. The walls are to the mere traveller as 
 stupendous as ever, but to the archaeologist they have 
 become eloquent. Their plan and details are laid bare, 
 and they tell us many a fact as to the architecture and the 
 manners of a race who lived in Greece in godlike splendour 
 in the luxurious Achaean days, before the Dorian invasion 
 burst on Peloponnesus. They justify us in believing that, 
 noble as are the Homeric poems, they are the echo of a 
 state of society worthy to give them birth ; and they 
 help to explain to us why the Greeks of historical times 
 regarded their ancestors as a race of heroes and demigods. 
 
 The massive walls of Tiryns enclose the ridge of a long 
 and narrow hill, higher at one end than the other. The 
 city was thus a lengthy oblong, and it may be divided 
 by trisecting its length into three parts, parts which may 
 be called the Upper, Middle, and Lower Fortress. It is the 
 highest part of the hill only, the site of the Upper Fortress, 
 which has as yet been fully excavated. Much yet remains 
 to be ascertained ; for there is no doubt that the remains 
 of buildings will be found also on the lower parts of the 
 ridge. Yet the excavations have already brought to light 
 facts so important that it is not necessary to wait for the 
 account of the whole site before commenting on the data 
 already before us. It seems almost certain that future 
 excavations, though they may add to our knowledge of 
 the history of Tiryns, will not in any way invalidate 
 the conclusions drawn from the excavations with great 
 skill by the architects whom Dr. Schliemann had the 
 o-ood fortune to associate with himself in the work of 
 discovery on the site. 
 
 As to the history of Tiryns, only two or three statements 
 
94 Neiv CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. IV. 
 
 have come down to us from antiquity, and it is a curious 
 
 fact that most of these are called in question by Dr. 
 
 Schliemann, whom we should have supposed to be the last 
 
 man likely to fall a victim to too great historical scepticism. 
 
 In some cases he has, in our opinion, needlessly attacked 
 
 tradition. The first statement is that the walls of the city 
 
 were built for King Proetus by Cyclopean builders, who 
 
 were natives of Lycia. This is a matter which we shall be 
 
 compelled hereafter more fully to discuss. The second 
 
 statement is the assertion of Diodorus and Pausanias, that 
 
 the destruction of Tiryns was brought about by the Argives 
 
 after the Persian wars, and was partly caused by the 
 
 jealousy of the Argives because Mycenae and Tiryns had 
 
 furnished men to the Greek armies at Thermopylae and 
 
 Plataea, whereas they themselves had not. Professor 
 
 Mahaffy has thrown doubt on this assertion, maintaining 
 
 on the other hand that the ruin of Mycenae and Tiryns 
 
 took place much earlier, and Schliemann declares that his 
 
 theory is borne out by the evidence of the excavations. 
 
 Of course if it could be proved from archaeological 
 evidence that Mycenae and Tiryns were entirely ruined 
 long before the Persian, wars, we should then be com- 
 pelled to correct Pausanias ; but this is not the case. 
 Even if no remains belonging to the seventh and sixth 
 centuries had come to light in the upper part of the citadel, 
 they might still remain underground in the lower part of the 
 citadel which has not yet been explored. But as a matter 
 of fact, a Doric capital has been already found at Tiryns, 
 I which is given by Mr. Fergusson to about B.C. 600. 
 This capital is in itself an indication that Tiryns, though 
 like Mycenae greatly reduced in the Dorian invasion, still 
 survived in the sixth century ; and so strongly confirms 
 the testimony of Pausanias. 
 
 Having thus cleared the ground, we shall venture with 
 bolder hand to sketch out the great periods of Tirynthian 
 
CnAP. IV.] The Palace at 7 Ivy 'us. 95 
 
 history as revealed to us in the remains which have come 
 to light. 
 
 Schliemann and Dorpfeld are agreed that the great 
 walls of Tiryns do not belong to the earliest settlement 
 which we can discover. In certain parts of the Acropolis 
 quantities of pottery were found which resembled that very 
 early kind of ware which was discovered in the primitive 
 strata at Hissarlik, and which is familar to many people in 
 London in consequence of the exhibition of much of it 
 some years ago in the South Kensington Museum. This 
 must be assigned to a very remote antiquity indeed, to ' 
 days when the Acropolis of Tiryns was a mere place of 
 security for a few fishermen who dwelt in rocky caves at 
 the spot where Nauplia now stands ; to days before the 
 Phoenicians had established their commerce among the 
 islands and coasts of Greece, and before Greece had 
 developed any of those activities which form the starting- 
 point for European history. A few traces of floors and 
 foundations belonging to this pre-historic, and in fact 
 pre-traditional city, have been found ; but they are of 
 small importance. It is with the building of the massive 
 walls and with the planning of the noble palaces of 
 Tiryns, with that foundation which Greek tradition has 
 connected with the name of the mythical King Proetus, 
 that the interest of Tirynthian history begins. 
 
 "Of Tirynthian history " we say, but the very phrase 
 warns us that we must guard against misunderstanding. 
 For the history of Tiryns, all the history we shall ever 
 know, is archaeological. In old days history was regarded 
 as the chronicle of the doings of a few great men, their 
 successions, their enterprises, their victories and failures. 
 Historians found little worth recording but the spread of 
 empires, the results of battles, the founding of states. But 
 archaeology does not take the same view of history as did 
 the historians. Far from recording only wars, she has by 
 
g6 Neiv CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. IV. 
 
 far the most to say about peace and the manners and 
 customs of times of quiet. Far from telling us of govern- 
 ment and the deeds of heroes, she tells us rather facts 
 about the external life of men, of the houses in which 
 they lived, the weapons they used, what deities they 
 adored, and in what light they regarded the life beyond 
 the grave. From the outward facts revealed by spade 
 and pick we are enabled to judge of the degree of 
 civilisation attained by a nation, of its commerce and its 
 art, perhaps of its ethnical affinities, but only rarely of its 
 laws or government, or of its moral and intellectual 
 condition. 
 
 Yet the chapter with which the archaeological history 
 of Tiryns begins is startling enough. We find that at 
 a period which we are enabled by an accumulation of 
 evidence to fix to the twelfth or the eleventh century 
 before our era, the whole of the upper citadel of Tiryns 
 was occupied by the splendid palace of a wealthy line of 
 kings, who seem to show in the details of their luxurious 
 abode, and in the massiveness of the great walls with 
 which they surrounded it, the possession of wealth and 
 splendour far beyond those belonging to any Greeks of 
 earlier historical times. The colossal size of the stones 
 they used in building, which actually in one case at least 
 reach a weight of twenty tons, combined with the fact 
 that the mechanical appliances of those remote days were 
 extremely simple, proves that they must have disposed in 
 the most absolute fashion of the labour of countless depen- 
 dants. The number of the rooms in the palace, with the 
 splendid porticoes and courts by which it was approached, 
 testifies to the stateliness of their public life. The bath- 
 room, carefully adapted for the purposes of washing, and 
 the drains made to carry away superfluous water, show the 
 luxuriousness of their personal habits. And the way in 
 which the rooms of men and of women are set apart affords 
 
 ) 
 
Chap. IV.] The Palace at Tiryns. 97 
 
 us a curious problem as to the position of the husband in > 
 regard to the wife. 
 
 A moment's reflection will show us that the thing which 
 is really by far the most surprising in all this is the fact 
 that the site is in Greece proper. If in the lands of 
 Phrygia or Lycia, or among the hills of Etruria, we had 
 found the same proofs of the ancient existence of wealthy 
 and powerful and civilised nobles, we should have been far 
 less surprised. We should expect the Mermnadae of 
 Lydia, or the Phrygian princes of the line of Midas, to live 
 in this royal fashion. But we are accustomed to think of 
 Greece as a land of political communities, of little self- 
 governing states with agora, and harbour, and senate- 
 house, and with an acropolis covered not with a palace, 
 but with the temples of the gods. Such is the Greece of 
 history. But utterly different was pre-historic Greece. 
 There is a broad line dividing mythical from political 
 Hellas, a line which seems to coincide with the great break 
 made in the continuity of Hellas by the Dorian invasion. 
 On the older side of that line we see the castles of magm"- 
 ficent princes standing amid the huts of their dependants, 
 but no trade, no high art, curiously enough, no temples of 
 the gods, though rude images of them. On the more 
 recent side of the line we see vigorous communities, 
 choosing their own governments, carrying on trade with all 
 parts of the Mediterranean and Euxine, and planting 
 colonies on all shores, full of the highest artistic feelings, 
 and building on the heights where the royal castles had 
 stood those magnificent temples to Apollo and Athene, 
 Zeus and Poseidon, which were the centres of all the 
 higher life of Hellas, so long as Hellas lived. But the 
 tendency to revert to an original type is as strong in 
 nations as in breeds of animals. So in Greek history we 
 find constant instances of reversion towards the early 
 organisation in the rise of those tyrannies which were a 
 
 H 
 
gS New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. IV. 
 
 poor and feeble imitation of the splendour of monarch}*. 
 The Greece which we know and love, the Greece of art 
 and song, of religion and philosophy, of conquest and 
 trade, came to birth at the Dorian invasion, and is, in 
 great part at least, the child of the Dorian genius and 
 loftiness of character. 
 
 Just such a contrast as exists between prehistoric and 
 historic Hellas, exists also in Greek literature between 
 Homer and the later poets. The Homeric poetry may 
 have been reduced to form after the splendour of the 
 Ionian and Achaean chiefs had passed away ; but it breathes 
 all the spirit of their sway. With Homer, too, the chief is 
 the only man worthy of a thought, the common herd are 
 fit only to be slain by him in the field of battle, or dragged 
 by him into slavery. To Homer also cunning works of 
 art show the influence of Cyprus, Phoenicia, and the East. 
 Homer knows comparatively little of temples of the gods. 
 The courts and the camps described in the Iliad and 
 Odyssey are rather akin to those of Lydians or Etruscans 
 than of historic Greeks. We must, however, guard our- 
 selves from misunderstanding. In using the name of 
 Homer, we do not of course assert that the Homeric 
 poems had a single author. But we do assert the anti- 
 quity of those poems. Homer reflects the pre-historic age 
 of Greece as truly as does Herodotus the Greece of the 
 Persian wars, or Pausanias the Greece of the age of the 
 Antonines. We shall therefore make no excuse for usine 
 the Homeric text when we find in it anything which seems 
 to throw light on the antiquities discovered on early Greek 
 sites, and more particularly on the site of Tiryns. Espe- 
 cially is it desirable to set side by side Homer's descrip- 
 tions of palaces like those of Alcinous and Odysseus, and 
 the palace of which the remains still exist at Tiryns. 
 
 The plan which accompanies this paper, a reduction of 
 that at p. 309 of Schliemann's Tiryns, will enable readers 
 
Chap. IV.] 
 
 The Palace at Tiryns. 
 
 99 
 
 easily to understand the plan and arrangements of the 
 palace of which the foundations have been unearthed at 
 Tiryns, and of its surroundings. To the upper citadel, 
 
 ?f|geg|^^ 
 
 ^t?^5 
 
 a&) 
 
 (On** 
 
 mSSk 
 
 mm 
 
 Villi 11 ' 
 
 PLAN OF THE UPPER CITADEL OF TIRYNS. 
 
 almost the whole space of which it occupies, access could 
 be had by two means only. The main entrance through 
 the outer wall was at the north-east corner, to which a 
 gradual ascent from the lower ground led up. Entering 
 
 H 2 
 
ioo Neiv CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. IV. 
 
 by this way and turning sharply to the left, the visitor 
 would pass along a narrow passage between the outer wall 
 of the palace and the wall of the citadel, and through a 
 mighty gate, of which the socket is in its place to this day. 
 We mark on our plan, by a dotted line, the route by which 
 we intend to lead our readers. Passing through the gate, 
 which probably in plan and construction resembled the 
 well-known Lion-gate of Mycenae, our traveller would 
 continue his way between the mighty walls, liable if he 
 came with hostile intent to be slain by many weapons, even 
 after thus obtaining an entrance, by the guard stationed on 
 the citadel wall or the roof of the palace. At length he 
 would reach the main entry. Students of Greek archi- 
 tecture have long been familiar with the fact that the entry 
 to Greek sacred areas, such as the Acropolis of Athens 
 and the domain of Demeter at Eleusis, were entered 
 through a noble propylaeum, of which the form is constant 
 and fixed. The Greek propylaeum consists of two porches 
 set back to back, whereof one looks outward towards the 
 outer world, the other inward towards the enclosure. At 
 the common back of the two porches runs a solid wall 
 with great gates. The construction combines, as do most 
 Greek contrivances, great beauty with great convenience, 
 since the two porches offered a pleasing shelter to those 
 waiting for the doors to open, whether they wished to go 
 out or in. Such is the fixed Greek custom, but it is not a 
 little surprising to find a propylaeum of precisely this kind 
 guarding the entry to the upper Acropolis of Tiryns. This 
 fact by itself seems to carry back the history of Greek 
 architecture some centuries. Of course, though the essen- 
 tial idea is the same in the pre-historic as in the historic 
 Greek doorway, the details differ. We should be dis- 
 appointed if we sought at Tiryns the marble pillars, the 
 sculptured friezes, the stone roofs which were features of 
 such propylaca as those of Pericles. At Tiryns there were 
 
Chap. IV.] The Palace at Tiryns. 101 
 
 pillars indeed, but they were of wood, let into lime- 
 stone bases : and the roof instead of being of slabs of stone 
 or tiles, was almost certainly made of rushes covered with 
 clay, after the fashion still usual in the East ; but while 
 materials change, form persists, the idea takes a new ex- 
 pression, but does not itself change. 
 
 Through the propylaeum we pass into a large court or 
 open space, round the sides of which are buildings used 
 no doubt as barracks for the guards, and store-houses for 
 provisions. But we shall direct our steps still westwards 
 and pass through another propylaeum of smaller size but 
 similar construction, which leads direct into the forecourt 
 of the men's apartments which corresponds to the av\r) of 
 Homer. Afterwards we shall return to the outer propy- 
 laeum and make our way to the women's apartments, 
 which are at Tiryns kept studiously apart from those of 
 the men. 
 
 The men's forecourt is a space of some sixty-eight by 
 fifty-two feet. It is carefully paved with a concrete of lime 
 and pebbles, and full provision is made for its drainage by 
 the slope of the paving to a sink at one corner. It is on 
 all four sides surrounded by porticoes, affording cool and 
 pleasant retreats from the power of the sun. At one side 
 of the court is a square construction of peculiar interest, an 
 altar with a hollow pit in the midst of it for the reception 
 of the blood of victim's. 
 
 Those familiar with the Homeric poems will scarcely 
 read these few dry lines of description without recalling 
 to mind many a passage in the Iliad and Odyssey, which 
 the new discovery sets in fresh light, or which clothes with 
 life and reality the skeleton of the new discovery. We 
 remember many facts about the av\i] of the palace of 
 Odysseus ; but they at once show us a difference between 
 his abode and that of the rulers of Tiryns : the Ithacan 
 palace was rude and rustic, and a far less splendid abode 
 
102 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. IV. 
 
 than that of which we can now trace the plan. When 
 Eumaeus brings his pigs for the feasting of the suitors he 
 lets them feed in the forecourt ; and cattle are tethered 
 under the porticoes, while slave-women do their grinding 
 of meal in the sheds round. Odysseus' house is, in fact, 
 the abode of a gentleman-farmer ; the palace of Tiryns is 
 more like the glorious abode of Alcinous in Phaeacian fairy- 
 land, or the splendid house of Menelaus, which glittered 
 like the sun and moon as one drew near to it. Yet the 
 difference in this matter is one of scale and of splendour, 
 rather than of plan. Telemachus, we learn, had a bed- 
 chamber in the forecourt, so had Phoenix : such rooms 
 we see at once were in the porticoes which enclosed it. 
 The forecourt of Odysseus contained a great altar of Zeus 
 Herceius, " whereon Laertes and Odysseus had burned 
 many thighs of oxen." So, too, the aged Peleus burned in 
 his forecourt the thighs of an ox in honour of thunder- 
 loving Zeus. This seems to justify us in identifying the 
 altar at Tiryns as that of Zeus. Only one puzzle which 
 has long baffled the Homeric commentators remains a 
 puzzle. In the forecourt at Ithaca was a OoXos, a circular 
 building of uncertain use ; and as there is no trace of any 
 such building in the court at Tiryns, its purpose must 
 remain a mystery for the present. 
 
 Homer's heroes when they go to a house always cross 
 the court and enter into the fAeyapov, or great hall of the 
 men, through a portico, the echoing aWovaa of which the 
 poet often speaks. We must do exactly the same at 
 Tiryns, as the plan will show at a glance. The portico 
 which we now approach is the frontage of the most 
 important part of the whole palace, shown to be so to an 
 architect by its occupying the very highest part of the 
 citadel, and by its governing the orientation of all the 
 parts about it. Though only the foundations of the wall 
 remain, to the height of a yard from the ground, yet the 
 
Chap. IV.] The Palace at Tiryns. 103 
 
 patient induction of Dr. Dorpfeld has enabled him to 
 recover many of the details of its construction. Its 
 elevation is that called in the case of temples in antis ; 
 that is, it has a wall on three sides, while on the fourth 
 side, that which faces the court, the place of a wall is taken 
 by a couple of columns which supports an architrave and a 
 roof. The antae, or foremost parts of the side-walls, 
 exhibit sufficient remains in dowel-holes and the like to 
 assure us that the walls of the portico were covered by a 
 thick panelling of wood, a panelling probably covered in 
 turn, if we may trust the analogy of some of the buildings 
 at Mycenae and the Homeric testimony, with plates of 
 bronze, which may well indeed have glittered like the sun 
 and like the moon. 
 
 In the. back wall of this portico were three doors, each 
 provided with a stone sill (every one will remember 
 Homer's \aivos ol»S6<?), leading into a sort of vestibule, from 
 which a door again led into the main hall or megaron. 
 It would seem that this vestibule was a feature only of 
 very spacious or splendid houses : and we have reasons for 
 thinking that usually the portico opened immediately into 
 the main hall. Into this latter, therefore, we will proceed. 
 It is a room of fine proportions, some forty feet by thirty- 
 two in size, and we can still trace the foundations of the 
 two rows of columns by which it was divided into three 
 oblong sections. In the midst of the room is a round 
 foundation, which indicates, almost beyond doubt, the 
 place where was situate that hearth which was the centre 
 alike of the Greek house and of the Greek religion, at least 
 in early and patriarchal days. The floor was paved with 
 good concrete in which a simple pattern of crossing lines 
 was introduced for variety. For the four pillars which 
 stand round the hearth we can cite a Homeric analogy. 
 When Nausicaa in the sixth book of the Odyssey is 
 directing Odysseus to her father's hall, she says "When 
 
104 New Cliapters in Greek History. [Chap. IV. 
 
 thou art within the shadow of the house and the forecourt, 
 pass quickly through the hall, till thou reachest my 
 mother, who sits by the hearth in the firelight weaving a 
 purple web, a wonder to see. She rests against a pillar, 
 and behind her sit her maids." The hint afforded by the 
 Tirynthian palace makes it clear to us where would be - 
 the seat of Arete. 
 
 Such are the bare facts observable on the floor of the 
 hall, but an architect like Dr. Dorpfeld is entitled to draw 
 a few cautious inferences. Some of the safest of these 
 regard the method of lighting and warming the hall. It is 
 quite certain that as the hall has but a single door into the 
 vestibule, itself not very light, light cannot have entered 
 nor the smoke of the fire escaped by means of the door 
 only. The hall of Odysseus is indeed spoken of in the 
 Odyssey as dark, and the armour hanging in it is said to 
 have been blackened by smoke ; but the room must have 
 nevertheless been habitable. At Tiryns the arrangement 
 of the pillars in itself suggests what plan of lighting was 
 adopted. Dorpfeld ingeniously argues that the four pillars 
 mark the four corners of a part of the roof which was 
 different from the rest ; for he observes that had the pillars 
 merely borne beams running the length of the hall from 
 end to end, then the space between pillar and pillar, and 
 between pillar and bounding wall, would have been equal, 
 which is not the case, for the places of the pillars by no 
 means divide the length of the hall into three equal parts. 
 But the question may still be raised whether the space 
 of roof which lies between the four pillars was left open, so 
 as to form a hypaethral aperture, or whether the roof at 
 that part was merely carried to a higher level, and open- 
 ings for windows left at the side. Dorpfeld remarks : — 
 
 " It might be assumed that the whole square between 
 the pillars was open ; but so large an aperture, even in the 
 southern climate of Tiryns, would have made the hall 
 
Chap. IV.] The Palace at Tiryns. 105 
 
 temporarily uninhabitable in winter. It would answer 
 much better to cover the square included by the pillars, 
 after the manner of a basilica, with a higher roof ; in the 
 vertical walls of the upper-structure (clere-story) smaller or 
 larger apertures could be introduced, through which not 
 •only light would enter into the megaron, but also the 
 smoke from the hearth would find an easy escape. - " 
 
 The late Mr. James Fergusson also discussed, in a 
 work apparently known to Dr. Dorpfeld only by hearsay, 
 precisely the same question in regard to the lighting of 
 the Parthenon at Athens, and arrived at a similar con- 
 clusion ; he even constructed a model of the Parthenon 
 on the principle of basilican lighting, of which the effect 
 is most pleasing. The concurrence of two such able 
 authorities should be sufficient for mere laymen, especially 
 when we consider that this method of lighting was certainly 
 in use in Egypt at quite an early period, and that its 
 existence in primitive Greece would account, better than 
 anything else, for the arrangement of triglyph and metope 
 as it existed in Doric temples of historical times. Only 
 we must observe that in his statement that a room with 
 hypaethral opening would be uninhabitable Dorpfeld goes 
 too far, and appears entirely to overlook the well-known 
 fact that hypaethral courts were quite usual in Greek 
 houses of historical times. It seems that moderns are far 
 more tender to the weather than were the Greeks of 
 Homeric or historic days. 
 
 Truly delightful is it with these new facts, so securely 
 based, in our minds to turn once more to the doings 
 of Odysseus and Telemachus in the Odyssey, which no 
 longer seem to have taken place in some dim palace of 
 romance, but in a hall of which the arrangements and 
 details are familiar to us. Through the whole Homeric 
 tale a light spreads like that which the presence of 
 Athene spreads in the hall at Ithaca. "A wondrous sight, 
 
106 New Cliapters in Greek History. [Chap. IV. 
 
 my father, meets my eyes. Meseems that the walls of the 
 hall, and the fair main-beams, and the cross-beams of pine 
 and the pillars that sustain them, are bright to my eyes 
 as if with flaming fire." Here is a stone threshold like 
 that across which Telemachus stepped, as he placed his 
 spear in the spear-stand at the door and went in. Here 
 is a hall where many a noisy crew of Achaean chiefs may 
 have feasted and drunk and quarrelled. Here is a hearth 
 on which they roasted great joints of oxen and swine, 
 and sent down portions to strangers, seated like Odysseus 
 on the threshold. Around hung the shields blackening 
 in the curling smoke, or shining with fire when at night 
 the braziers were kindled, and jest and song went on far 
 into the night, till the feasters went out to cool their 
 heated heads by sleeping in the airy porticoes of the court. 
 Perhaps this floor, like that of Odysseus, once ran with 
 blood during foreign invasion or faction fight, before the 
 fire came which consumed all the woodwork of the palace, 
 and left everywhere those charred remains which mark 
 the end of the gay old Achaean life of Tiryns and the 
 beginning of Argive ascendency. 
 
 Among the rooms which cluster about the megaron at 
 Tiryns is one of quite unique interest. This is a small 
 chamber, in size some ten feet by twelve, whereof the floor 
 is formed of a single gigantic slab of stone, weighing about 
 twenty tons, and the walls were wainscoted with solid and 
 close-fitting planks. A gully at the corner, evidently 
 made for the exit of water, at once suggested that this 
 was a bath-room, and no other theory seems tenable. 
 That Homer's heroes, like Greeks of later times, betook 
 themselves to the baths before they went to dine in the 
 hall, is well known to all scholars ; and here again excava- 
 tion gives illustration to the poet's words. Homer speaks 
 of the chiefs as repairing to the ev^earai aad/jLtvOot, and the 
 commentators have variously interpreted the phrase in the 
 

 Chap. IV.] The Palace at Tiryns. 107 
 
 light rather of their own ingenuity than of comparative 
 archaeology. But a fragment of a large terra-cotta vessel 
 evidently used in bathing has come to light at Tiryns, 
 proving beyond reasonable doubt that the bathing customs 
 of the Homeric Greeks differed but little from those which 
 the representations on vases show to have prevailed in 
 historical times. In the midst of the floor of the bath- 
 room was placed a large vessel full of warm water. In 
 this, after laying aside his clothes, the bather sat, or over 
 it he cowered, while a bathing man ladled over him the 
 water which, falling on the floor, ran away by the sink in 
 a corner of the room. After the washing came rubbing 
 and oiling. It is however to be observed that the place 
 of the bathing-man is in the Homeric descriptions supplied 
 by a woman, sometimes even a high-born lady. At Pylos, 
 Polycasta, youngest daughter of Nestor, bathes and dresses 
 young Telmachus. Helen bathes Odysseus when he comes 
 to Troy as a spy, and recognises him in the bath by 
 personal marks, as does old nurse Euryclea at a later 
 period. It seems to be a mark of the extreme modesty 
 of the same hero that he declines to be bathed by the 
 maidens of Nausicaa. Thus always when we compare 
 Homeric and later Hellenic customs, we find strong like- 
 ness and sharp contrast, presenting to the historian and 
 anthropologist one of the most fascinating of fields for 
 study, a field which they cannot as yet be said to have 
 fully occupied. 
 
 Thus far the discoveries of which we have spoken have 
 in the main confirmed the commentators on Homeric 
 antiquities ; but we now arrive at a fact which is totally 
 unexpected. At Tiryns we find a second set of buildings 
 by the side of those which we have described, smaller in 
 scale, but very similar in design. Dorpfeld regards it as 
 certain that this set of apartments belonged to the women, 
 as the first set to the men. From the outer propylaeum 
 

 io8 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chai>. IV. 
 
 a narrow way led between walls to a forecourt, like that 
 of the men but smaller (see plan) ; and facing this court 
 stands a hall with its vestibule, and in the midst of the hall 
 a hearth. Between this women's hall and the outer wall of 
 the palace cluster a number of rooms of various sizes, and 
 there is reason to believe that it is possible to indicate the 
 place where there was a staircase, leading to an upper 
 story, of which of course no trace now remains. Among 
 these rooms Dorpfeld would look for the bed-chamber 
 of the mistress of the palace, for the treasury where the 
 valuables were kept, and other rooms necessary to a 
 princely establishment. 
 
 That this scheme of arrangement was by no means 
 peculiar to Tiryns appears certain when we re-examine 
 the ruins of that city on the hill of Hissarlik, which 
 Dr. Schliemann, not without some reason, regards as the 
 historical prototype of the Homeric Troy. There we find 
 as central mass of the remains * two oblong blocks of 
 buildings side by side, a lesser and a larger, which at first 
 Schliemann, misled by Hellenic analogy, supposed to be 
 temples. There can now be little doubt that they are not 
 temples at all. Temples occupied the acropolis hills of 
 sites in Greece and Asia Minor in historical times, but not 
 in these pre-historic days which are so fast becoming 
 clearer to us. Then the most important places were 
 occupied by those earthly gods or god -like heroes, the 
 wealthy and splendid race of Zeus-descended kings. At 
 Hissarlik too then we must take the ruins to be those of 
 the men's and women's apartments respectively ; and in 
 fact looking on their ground-plan in the new light, we at 
 once see the remains of the family hearth. 
 
 Also the recent excavations of the Greek Archaeological 
 Society at Mycenae have resulted, as we have already 
 mentioned, in the discovery there of the foundations of a 
 
 * See cut, p. 53. 
 
Chap. IV.] The Palace at Tiryns. 109 
 
 palace nearly resembling in ground-plan that of Tiryns. 
 These foundations, ill-preserved as they are, afford us 
 valuable indications of date. Above them and covering 
 them were the foundations of a Greek temple of the Doric 
 order, a fact which proves beyond all dispute their pre- V 
 historic character. About the palace were found fragments 
 of pottery of the Mycenaean class, and fragmentary fresco 
 paintings which seem once to have decorated the walls. 
 We learn that at Cnossus also have been found in con- 
 junction one with the other, a palace of the Tirynthian 
 class and Mycenaean pottery. We have thus to do, not 
 with an isolated phenomenon, but with one of a class. 
 We must suppose that if trial were made on the acropolis 
 hills of Greece we should, in the pre-historic strata, find 
 parallels to what has been found at Tiryns. We must 
 therefore regard it as proved that in the pre-historic Greek 
 palace, the men's apartments and the women's stood apart, 
 though side by side, each with its own fore-court, vesti- 
 bule and hall. The obvious means of communication at 
 Tiryns is by making a long circuit, which takes us almost 
 to the gate of the citadel. It also appears that it is 
 possible to find a way from the bath-room to the women's 
 court. It is, however, evidently absurd to suppose that 
 the chief, when he wished to visit the apartments of his 
 wife, would make a long excursion through the town, 
 and not likely that the usual route would be by the 
 bath-room. There must have been some closer means 
 of communication, and since we possess knowledge as 
 to the foundations only, it is reasonable to suppose 
 that there was a communicating doorway above the 
 foundations, an dpaodvpr] such as that mentioned in the 
 Odyssey, as leading out of the men's hall towards the 
 women's apartments. This separation of men and women 
 at Tiryns and Mycenae has been the ground of much 
 controversy, because it appears to be inconsistent with the 
 

 1 10 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. IV. 
 
 customs of the Achaean heroes as described by Homer. 
 We shall return to the subject in the chapter which deals 
 specially with the Homeric questions raised by recent 
 excavation. 
 
 We must, however, pass on from the ground-plan of the 
 palace at Tiryns to one or two important discoveries of 
 detail. The 6piy/cos Kvdvoio, the cyanus frieze, which the 
 excavations brought to light in the vestibule of the men's 
 hall, probably adorned that chamber, at some height above 
 the ground. This beautiful frieze is made of alabaster, 
 carved in patterns of Egyptian character, with pieces of 
 blue glass inserted at intervals, to give it colour and 
 variety. In this case, too, recent archaeology had proved 
 the soundness of its methods, by giving an explanation very 
 near to the truth. Dr. Helbig had argued that the frieze 
 of cyanus could not be of steel, or any of the other metals 
 which have been suggested, but must have consisted of 
 small plates of blue enamel, inserted into some underlying 
 substance, and worked into the pattern of a frieze. This 
 is remarkably near the truth, and fresh proof that archae- 
 ology, having arrived at a capacity for divining what is not 
 yet discovered, has the right to be considered a fully 
 established science. 
 
 Scarcely inferior to the alabaster frieze in interest, and 
 very similar to it in design, are the mural paintings of 
 which fragments were found in many parts of the palace. 
 It is useless to attempt to describe their designs, for they 
 can only be studied or understood by turning to the plates 
 of Schliemann's Tiryns. Their style is perfectly unmis- 
 takable : every one who has turned over Rosellini's or 
 Lepsius' plates of Egyptian architectural designs will see 
 that their true parentage is Egyptian. No one who has 
 learned the lesson of Mycenae, or has seen a drawing of 
 the marvellous stone ceiling of purely Egyptian pattern 
 which was found by Schlicmann in the conical tomb at 
 
Chap. IV.] The Palace at Tiryns. 1 1 1 
 
 Orchomenus, would be surprised to find in the wall-decora- 
 tions at Tiryns designs of Egyptian origin. But when we 
 use the phrase " of Egyptian origin," we must do so with 
 circumspection. The native art of Egypt is now known tof 
 be, not less than Greek art, a thing of gradual evolution 
 along definite lines. In this fixed and ordered series the 
 patterns at Tiryns have no place. They are eclectic and 
 eccentric ; in fact, they are what archaeologists term bar- 
 barous imitations. The idea of them comes from Egypt, 
 but in the realization we see the genius of another race. 
 And there is a curious peculiarity about the transcription. 
 When Gauls and Britons copy the coins of Massilia, or of 
 Philip of Macedon, they have an inveterate tendency to 
 pervert lines and patterns into animal and vegetable forms : 
 on the Gaulish coins, in particular, we find quite a be- 
 wildering variety of winged monsters, boars, dragons, and 
 birds, all developed out of the simple head of Apollo and 
 the chariot of Philip's gold pieces. At Tiryns we discover 
 precisely the same tendency. The Egyptian patterns grow \J 
 into the form of birds or winged monsters, some of which 
 have so much of pattern and so little of animal about them, 
 that it takes a close study to discover the radical perversion 
 which has taken place, a perversion exactly the opposite to 
 that to which we are accustomed in modern art, where 
 animals and plants become conventional and sink into 
 patterns. The delight in animal form was very strong in 
 Phoenician and early Greek art, and dominated it more 
 and more as time went on. In one specimen of Tirynthian 
 wall-decoration we have a direct and curiously vigorous 
 representation of animal form, in that very remarkable bull, 
 bearing a human figure on its back, which is one of the 
 most startling results of Dr. Schliemann's excavations, and 
 which furnishes a new illustration of the law, that in all art 
 of all nations there are spasmodic outbreaks of naturalism, 
 sudden touches of that nature which makes the whole 
 
1 1 2 Neiv CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. IV. 
 
 world kin. We may compare the bulls of the Bapheion 
 vases figured at p. 71. 
 
 The massive Cyclopean walls which surround the citadel 
 of Tiryns, and which formed an outer line of defence to 
 the royal palace, are familiar to travellers. But things 
 familiar to us often hide from us their secrets. So it is 
 here. The industry and ingenuity of Dorpfeld have re- 
 vealed to us many unsuspected facts in regard to these 
 walls. Firstly, it is now proved that the universal belief 
 that they were constructed without mortar is erroneous. 
 A strong cement of lime held together the huge polygonal 
 masses of stone : this has now disappeared from the face 
 of the wall, having been washed out by the rain, but still 
 remains in the interior of the structure. Secondly, the 
 nature and uses of the galleries which have long been 
 known to exist in the thickness of the walls have been 
 fully explored. It is now shown that in two cases at least 
 these galleries led to a number of vaulted chambers, built 
 in the wall, and probably used for the storage of provisions 
 and water and warlike material. Some of these chambers 
 appear at the top of our plan. Thirdly, it seems to be 
 quite established that there existed on the top of the wall 
 a covered way, a gallery or portico, admirably adapted for 
 the shelter of the garrison of the castle, and for the dis- 
 comfiture of assailants. If all cities of pre-historic Greece 
 were thus fortified and provided, it is no wonder that 
 Thebes repulsed Tydeus and his comrades, and that the 
 siege of Troy lasted ten years. A further very interesting 
 discovery is that the citadel-wall is pierced on the west 
 side by a postern gate, from which a long and winding 
 stone staircase leads (see plan, p. 99) up into the back 
 of the palace. 
 
 Dr. Dorpfeld lays great stress on the fact that recent 
 excavations have revealed in the massive walls which sur- 
 round Byrsa, the citadel of ancient Carthage, galleries and 
 
Chap. IV.] 
 
 The Palace at Tiryns. 
 
 113 
 
 chambers for storage, which in plan and construction differ 
 but slightly from those at Tiryns. He even goes so far as 
 to say,* " So long as a similar casemate-like construction 
 has not been found in Lycia, or in any other district of 
 Asia Minor which had not been visited by the Phoenicians, 
 the conformity between the structures of Tiryns and Byrsa 
 must be looked upon as a proof that both were erected by 
 
 < -to To 
 
 WALL AT CARTHAGE. 
 
 WALL AT TIRYNS. 
 
 Phoenician builders." These words were written before the 
 palaces at Mycenae and elsewhere were found, and it is not 
 likely that Dr. Dorpfeld still holds the opinion expressed 
 in them. But the question raised in them is one which it 
 is necessary to discuss. In doing this, however, I will 
 postpone further enquiry how far the palace at Tiryns 
 corresponds to the data of the Odyssey, to the chapter 
 which deals with Homeric Archaeology. 
 
 Primitive legend, if that be worth anything, is most 
 explicit as to the connections of the early kings, if not 
 the early inhabitants of Tiryns. The city was built, we are 
 
 * Tiryns, p. 325. 
 
^ 
 
 114 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. IV. 
 
 told, by Cyclopes, whom the Argive Proetus brought with 
 him from Lycia. This is but one of several tales which 
 indicate close connection in pre-historic times between 
 Argolis and Lycia, and these tales form together a group 
 among several groups of legends which go to prove that 
 the princely houses of Greece had frequent intercourse 
 with the princely houses of the Asiatic coast, of Troas and 
 Phrygia and Lycia and Cyprus. We hear continually of 
 migrations of the heads of clans from Asia to Europe, or 
 from Europe to Asia ; and everything indicates that they 
 were of kindred races, living the same kind of life and 
 strongly united together by aristocratic class feelings. 
 Whether, therefore, the race which ruled in Tiryns were 
 Achaean, or Lycian, or Phrygian, or even of Phoenician 
 extraction, does not greatly matter. They were the sort 
 of kings of whom tradition speaks, and through such in 
 their day passed the line of succession of Hellenic ideas 
 and nascent European civilisation. It is clear, then, that 
 the ruling race of Tiryns may fairly be considered as 
 Greek, for all practical purposes. And the people whom 
 they ruled were almost certainly of Hellenic stock. Works 
 of such magnitude as these colossal walls are not raised 
 by a handful of resident aliens ; they are the result of the 
 slow and patient labour of the people of the country 
 where they exist. 
 
 But the main question is, after all, not as to the nationality 
 of either king or people, but of the architects who directed 
 and controlled the works. Shall we declare them to have 
 been Phoenician ? This is a more hopeful question, for 
 the existing remains give us much material for an answer. 
 For our part, we do not think that the evidence, as a whole, 
 indicates Phoenician architects. Years ago we were all 
 strongly inclined to the belief that the Phoenicians were 
 the main channel through which civilisation flowed into 
 Greece. But of late years evidence to the contrary has 
 
Chap. IV.] The Palace at Tiryns. 1 1 5 
 
 increased. Mr. Ramsay has found in Phrygia great lions 
 carved on the rocks, which seem clearly to be in the direct 
 line of descent of Greek decorative sculpture. And still 
 more recently the excavations at Naucratis have proved 
 that the Greeks borrowed largely from the Egyptians 
 direct, and not through the mediation of the Phoenicians. 
 We cannot therefore allow that the existence at Tiryns of 
 a particular mode of erecting storehouses in the walls, 
 which is found also on Phoenician sites, proves necessarily 
 the presence there of Phoenician architects. Phoenicians 
 and Greeks, and the natives of Asia Minor, may very 
 probably all have acquired the method of construction 
 from some common and older source. 
 
 The fact rather is, as indeed Dr. Adler points out in his 
 Preface to Tiryns, that the architecture and art of Tiryns, 
 and of the closely similar city of Mycenae, present analogies 
 to the remains of several ancient peoples. The general 
 form of the conical tombs, like the so-called Treasury of 
 Atreus, with its underground dromos or approach, seems to 
 derive from Phrygia, where dwellings of this form, and 
 similarly covered by a mound of earth, existed in the time 
 of Xenophon, and exist even to this day. To Phrygia, 
 too, we may trace back the style of the sculptured lions 
 over the gate of Mycenae. The wooden pillars, and the 
 roofs formed of trees laid side by side, of which we find 
 imitations in the stone construction at Tiryns and 
 Mycenae, remind us of the tomb-architecture of Lycia and 
 of Phrygia, the style of which is based on the use of wood. 
 The beautiful carved ceiling of Orchomenus, and the painted 
 wall-patterns of Tiryns, distinctly derive from Egypt, 
 whether directly or through the mediation of the Phoeni- 
 cians. And besides all this, there is both at Tiryns and 
 Mycenae a great deal of decoration and drawing, which 
 seems autochthonous. The Mycenaean warriors, the bulls 
 of Tiryns and Bapheion, a thoroughly Hellenic torch-holder 
 
 I 2 
 

 n6 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. IV. 
 
 from Tiryns, all betray native Greek ideas and art. In 
 this connexion we must mention also the pipes used in the 
 drainage of the Tirynthian palace, which closely resemble 
 those used in the aqueduct constructed at Samos by 
 Eupalinus. It seems therefore most probable, judging' 
 /from the evidence at present available, that the walls and 
 palaces of the Argolid were not merely raised by Greek 
 hands, but also designed by a Greek brain, though we may 
 trace in them the influence of several of the peoples which 
 surrounded the Greeks, and which were probably at the 
 time more advanced than they in material civilisation. 
 
 The palace walls of Tiryns and of Mycenae, combined 
 with the rich treasures of the Mycenaean tombs, serve well 
 to make our notion of the life of the heroes of Greek 
 legend more complete and more vivid. 
 
 These discoveries prove that the summits of the hills 
 of Greece, which in the historic age were covered with the 
 temples of the gods, and with works of art dedicated to 
 them, were at an earlier period dedicated not to gods but 
 to men. There rose the noble palaces of the ancient kings 
 of the cities of Greece, god-descended monarchs on whose 
 luxury and prowess, on whose immoderate pride and 
 ruinous crimes the legends told in later Greece loved to 
 dwell, and whose memories furnished subjects to Sophocles 
 and Euripides, as well as to the earlier epic poets. On 
 high they dwelt, fenced in by strong walls, like our own 
 barons of the Middle Ages ; while around the foot of their 
 Acropolis-rocks clustered the dwellings of the common 
 people whom they ruled with a rod of iron. Sidonian 
 merchants brought them slaves, or the rich products of 
 Egypt and Cyprus ; while they lived, thousands of obedient 
 serfs toiled on their lands or reared their fortress-walls ; 
 and when they died they were buried in chambers lined 
 with plates of bronze, and filled with the richest offerings 
 that could be found in Greece, or brought from lands of 
 
Chap. IV.] The Palace at Tiryns. 1 1 7 
 
 older civilisation. Their easy lives passed amid a pomp 
 which we should associate rather with the courts of Sardes 
 or Cyprus than with the cities of Greece. This was the 
 golden age of which Hesiod writes, when the heavens were 
 nearer and the gods were more familiar ; when deities 
 looked with favour on daughters of men, and there were 
 born giants and warriors of superhuman prowess and 
 undying fame. As their palaces shone through the land 
 with a light like the light of sun and moon, so do they 
 shine through the mists of history radiant and splendid. 
 
1 1 8 Nezu Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. v. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 RECENT DISCOVERIES AND THE HOMERIC POEMS. 
 
 I HAVE above dwelt strongly on the outer or historical 
 side of the discoveries at Mycenae, because, if they are to 
 be used at all in illustration of the art of the Homeric 
 poems, it is of the utmost importance to know exactly 
 what is their date and origin. It is one thing vaguely to 
 compare the art products of Mycenae with those spoken 
 of in Homer, with a view to finding analogies, and quite 
 another thing to proceed after identifying the art familiar 
 to the heroes of whom Homer sings, to try to measure by 
 means of art the space between them and the Iliad. It is 
 this latter task that I would venture in a very slight and 
 tentative way to attempt. Of course this is only one line 
 of argument, and if its results do not agree with those 
 reached on other lines, we must be ready to reconsider 
 the matter. 
 
 My view, which it may be well to set forth in few words 
 at once, is this : that the art familiar to the authors of the 
 Iliad and Odyssey is in many respects like the art revealed 
 at Mycenae, but distinctly later, and shewing clear evidence 
 of comparative poverty and degradation. 
 
 As to the date and method of composition of the Ho- 
 meric poems, I cannot speak either in detail or with 
 authority. But I am quite ready to accept the usually 
 received view that they grew up during a considerable 
 space of time, and contain earlier and later elements. 
 
Chap, v.] Recent Discoveries and the Homeric Poems. 1 19 
 
 Wilamowitz's view, which Helbig, after a careful survey of 
 the archaeological side of the Homeric question * is quite 
 ready to accept, gives the latest parts of the Iliad to the 
 eighth century ; the Odyssey to the eighth and seventh 
 centuries. But both poems no doubt incorporate legends 
 and even ballads of a much earlier period, and it is in the 
 earlier parts especially that the Aeolic dialect prevails. 
 In the main the Epos belongs to the Aeolian and Ionian 
 colonists of Asia Minor ; but they brought much of their 
 materials from Greece ; and parts of the Iliad and Odyssey 
 as they stand were composed, in Wilamowitz's opinion, 
 in that country. Mr. Monro f and Mr. Leaf| are both 
 disposed to think that most of the Homeric poems were 
 composed by Achaeans before the Dorian conquest, and 
 taken to Asia by the colonists. This I cannot concede ; 
 for it seems to me certain that the poets who wrote thern 
 were speaking of a past which lay some distance behind 
 them. 
 
 And as the Homeric poems are composite in origin and 
 conventional in language, so the civilisation which they 
 portray is by no means primitive, but in its way complex 
 and artificial. We are constantly tempted to suppose, 
 because the Iliad is our earliest specimen of Greek litera- 
 ture, that therefore it represents the beginnings of the 
 Greek race in all respects. But this is far from being 
 the case. The mythology of Homer is incomparably 
 more advanced, refined, and artificial, than that which 
 meets us in the pages of Pausanias or of Apollodorus. 
 The life of the wealthy Achaean kings at home, not 
 of course on the battle field, is depicted as more luxu- 
 rious than that of any historic Greeks down to the 
 
 i 
 
 * Das Homerische Epos aus den Denkmalern erlantert. 2nd edit. 
 1887, p. 1. 
 t English Historical Review, 1886. 
 X Introduction to Schuchhardt's recent work. 
 
120 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chai\ y. 
 
 Hellenistic age. This heaven-descended aristocracy had 
 acquired, as dominant aristocracies do acquire, great 
 elegance and refinement of life, and an elaborate code of 
 manners. In western Greece, Ithaca for instance, life was 
 ruder and simpler ; but from what the Homeric poems tell 
 us of the courts of eastern Greece, we can judge that they 
 represented not the beginnings of culture, but the bloom 
 of a culture which had gradually arisen, and which, though 
 not advanced, was in its way finished and complete. 
 
 Before we proceed to compare the works of plastic and 
 toreutic art mentioned in Homer with those found recently 
 in Greece, it will be necessary to give some sketch, how- 
 ever slight and imperfect, of the history of art in Greece 
 between the age of Mycenae and historical times. 
 
 It would be very interesting if we could pick out amid 
 the Mycenaean spoils those which may be claimed as 
 Greek in design, and not imported from abroad. This, 
 however, we cannot do with complete certainty. The 
 pottery is no doubt of local manufacture, but though it 
 makes us acquainted with Greek decorative forms, the 
 subjects depicted are so simple as not to help us to judge 
 of the state of art in depicting scenes from life. On these 
 vases the human form very seldom * occurs. The tomb- 
 stones of Mycenae must almost certainly have been made 
 on the spot : but it is generally allowed that the designs 
 on them are mere copies from work in metal, probably 
 on a much smaller scale, and executed by artists unused 
 to working in stone. The fragmentary wall-paintings at 
 Mycenae and Tiryns were certainly home-made, and were 
 they more complete they would afford us the best test 
 we have for the establishment of the style in which the 
 Achaeans worked. The only complete group in them is 
 
 * There is a remarkable exception in the procession of warriors on 
 a vase {Mycenae, p. 133). But this is of doubtful date and unusual 
 style ;' it may even be an importation from Cyprus. 
 
Chap, v.] Recent Discoveries and the Homeric Poems. 1 2 1 
 
 that of the bull galloping with a man kneeling on his back. 
 Some human figures with asses' heads, at Mycenae, are 
 also fairly well preserved. 
 
 Putting together what we can learn from these indica- 
 tions, we seem to be justified in assuming that the art 
 visible in the smaller remains at Mycenae, the engraved 
 stones, the gold seals, the thin plates of gold, and the rest, 
 represent native rather than foreign art. More elaborate, 
 and at a higher level of art, though similar in style, are the 
 wonderful sword-blades adorned with scenes inlaid in them, 
 scenes which were concealed by rust and oxide from 
 discovery by Dr. Schliemann, but afterwards brought to 
 light by the patience and ingenuity of Kumanudes. The 
 style of the most remarkable, a hunt of three lions by a 
 body of warriors armed with shield and spear, is very dis- 
 tinctive. The proportions of the figures and their general 
 plan are Egyptian. But the whole scene has a life and 
 hardy naturalism which belong to Greece : the figures are 
 lithe and in motion, not fixed and mechanical. And the 
 central touch of the picture, a man lying stretched under J . 
 the fierce attack of a lion who turns on his pursuers, is a 
 motive for which one might in vain seek a close prototype 
 amid all the sculptures of Egypt and Assyria. In Egyp- 
 tian battle-scenes not one of the Egyptian soldiers is 
 represented as falling ; but the Greeks saw that the fall of 
 a few men while their comrades were victorious is a touch 
 which adds pathos and human interest to a battle. And 
 it was in virtue of keen and true perceptions like this that v 
 Greek art at a later time rose to so high a level. The cups 
 of Bapheion, too, of which mention has already been 
 made, and which are figured on p. 71, appear in spite 
 of the introduction of the Syrian palm-tree to be in all 
 probability the productions of Greek artistic talent. The 
 likeness they bear to the celebrated mural painting of the 
 bull at Tiryns indicates this. 
 
122 Nezv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. V. 
 
 Several of the gold signets found in the tombs at 
 Mycenae show us a style identical with that of the swords ; 
 the men on them are armed in the same way, and carry 
 the same sorts of shields. And these signets again lead 
 us to the intaglios of early date which are found in Crete 
 and Rhodes and other Greek islands, the peculiar style of 
 which has offered a basis to the very remarkable theories 
 recently put forth by Milchhoefer * as to the existence of a 
 native and local style of art in Greece at least as early as 
 the twelfth century before the Christian era. 
 
 These intaglios are cut upon small stones of lentoid 
 shape, which are pierced with a hole for suspension, and 
 probably served the owners as seals or amulets. They are 
 not found in Asia, but frequently in the Greek islands, 
 Crete, Rhodes, Melos, and Cyprus, and sometimes on the 
 mainland of Hellas. Their subjects are distinctive, and it 
 is remarkable that they display but little Oriental influence. 
 Oriental creatures, the lion, the griffin, and the sphinx, 
 appear on them, according to Milchhoefer, but rarely. 
 Nearly always they present to us either animals of Euro- 
 pean character, bulls, goats, stags, dogs, and the like, or 
 subjects derived from Indo-European mythology. Among 
 the latter, beings with the head of a horse are conspicuous, 
 and Milchhoefer tries with all the resources of learning to 
 show that horse-headed monsters belong to the mythology 
 of Greece rather than of any other country, and to connect 
 them with the tales of the Harpies, of the Gorgon who 
 gives birth to the winged horse Pegasus, and the horse- 
 headed Demeter worshipped at Phigalia and Thelpusa. 
 These gems the writer considers to be the work of the 
 Pelasgic race in the islands of the Aegean. He goes too 
 far in his theories, no doubt, but his views are very sug- 
 gestive, and undoubtedly contain a kernel of truth. 
 
 Thus we are able to identify among objects found at 
 * Die Anfange dcr Kunst in GriechcnlancL Leipzig, 1SS3. 
 
Chap, v.] Recent Discoveries and the Homeric Poems. 123 
 
 Mycenae many specimens of native Greek art, as well as v 
 much work which seems to reveal a Phrygian origin. A 
 third element at Mycenae, the Semitic or Phoenician, is far ( 
 less plentifully present. Here and there in the woodcuts 
 which illustrate Mycenae we find objects which seem to 
 have been imported from Phoenicia. Such is the figure of 
 Aphrodite with a dove resting on her head,* and the gold 
 plate which bears a representation of a temple of the same 
 goddess with doves seated on it. Through the Phoenicians, 
 too, perhaps came the tassel made of Egyptian porcelain, 
 which was found in one tomb, and especially an ostrich 
 egg, which can only have been of African origin. These 
 objects prove that Phoenician trade existed at the time of 
 the Pelopid kings, but their rarity proves that Phoenician 
 commerce had not yet reached the fulness of development 
 which belonged to it at a later time. In the Mycenaean 
 age the Greeks could hold their own against any people, 
 except perhaps the Egyptians, in the richness and beauty 
 of their handiwork. Nor do the few Phoenician produc- 
 tions from Mycenae show any of that elaboration of design 
 and complication of scene which belongs to the Phoenician 
 art of the eighth and succeeding centuries. 
 
 Dr. Helbig, who regards the Mycenaean swords and 
 seals as works of Phoenician art, does not sufficiently 
 consider the difficulty of separating them from works of 
 home manufacture ; nor does he allow for the fact of a 
 direct Egyptian influence on Greece, which is proved to 
 demonstration by the ceiling at Orchomenus. 
 
 Let us follow the archaeological record of Greece down 
 to a later time. 
 
 Those who have studied the early history of Greece are 
 aware that it offers an extraordinary lacuna between the 
 supposed time of the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus and 
 the first Olympiad. The date of the Dorian invasion 
 
 * Mycenae, p. 180. 
 
I2 4 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. V. 
 
 according to the received reckoning is 1104 B -C ; the 
 Olympiads begin in 776 B.C. We have thus a period of 
 three centuries and a quarter which is almost a blank as 
 regards events of which we have any knowledge. Yet the 
 state of Greece as represented in the mythic legends so 
 entirely differs from the state of Greece as it appears in 
 the dawning of history, that we are compelled to believe 
 that there is a gap of time between. This gap is supposed 
 to be filled with obscure events and inglorious names. It 
 is supposed that exhausted Greece was in those centuries 
 recovering from the benumbing effects of the Dorian con- 
 quest, and rising by slow degrees to the height of civilisa- 
 tion from which she had fallen during the wandering of 
 the tribes. But it would appear that this blank space of 
 time held the seeds of the rapid development of aftertimes. 
 It was then that wealthy and prosperous Greek colonies 
 grew up along the whole Asiatic coast, and Cumae arose 
 as the first outpost of Hellas towards the west. Into this 
 period falls the Lycurgean legislation, which laid the 
 foundation of the greatness of Sparta, and the rise of the 
 Homeric and Hesiodic schools of poetry, which fixed for 
 all time the main outlines of Greek mythology and the 
 Greek language. 
 
 It is not a little remarkable that in the archaeological 
 record of Greece there is a gap which closely corresponds 
 to the gap in Greek history. The objects found at 
 Mycenae, and the kindred objects found in the excavations 
 at Bapheion and Menidi, belong to the time before the 
 Dorian invasion. The art remains of the next age are 
 comparatively very poor, alike as regards style and ma- 
 terial. But they exist in the lowest strata of the remains 
 at Olympia, in the continued series of the island-eems in 
 Melos and Thera, and elsewhere. The most interesting 
 remains of the post-Dorian age exist where the Dorians 
 did not penetrate, in Attica. In the very early cemetery 
 
Chap. V.] Recent Discoveries and the Homeric Poems. 125 
 
 of the Dipylon at Athens have been discovered works in 
 bronze and other materials which must be given to this 
 period, which exhibit in their decoration that geometrical 
 style of art which seems to belong to most races at a 
 certain low stage of their civilisation. The Dipylon pottery 
 also,* although contemptible from the point of view of art, 
 is interesting from the subjects portrayed on it, chariot- 
 races, the laying out of corpses, sacred dances and pro- 
 cessions. It is as clearly historic in age, in spite of its 
 rudeness, as Mycenaean art is pre-historic, and some of the 
 later specimens even bear inscriptions in Greek letters. 
 
 The Dipylon pottery is about the highest representative 
 of art after the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus. It is 
 probable enough that the Dorians were slow in acquiring 
 the use of the arts, not being naturally aesthetic. And it 
 may be that the conquered Ionians and Achaeans had 
 small chance, amid their struggles for bare existence, to 
 continue or develop their artistic activity. So while it is 
 possible that carefully conducted excavations amid the 
 ruins of the cities of Aeolis and Ionia might bring to light 
 the traces of an art linked on one side to the art of 
 Mycenae, and on the other side to the art of historical 
 Greece, yet it will scarcely be wonderful if that art, if 
 discovered, will disappoint us by its meagreness and want 
 of energy. But of course this is a question to which the 
 final answer can only come from the spade. 
 
 It is in the eighth or seventh century before the Christian, 
 era that Greek history, and indeed the history of Europe, 
 may be said to begin. This period witnessed the colonising 
 of Sicily and lower Italy by Greeks, and the rapid spread 
 of Milesian trading stations in the Euxine, the conquest of 
 the Messenians by Sparta, the rise of lyric poetry, and 
 the establishment of the Olympic festival, to be for a 
 
 * The most convenient account of early Greek pottery will be found / 
 in Rayet and Collignon's Histoire de la Ceramiqne Grecque. V 
 
126 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. v. 
 
 thousand years a tie to bind Hellas together. And it 
 saw a revival of art, which had its origin in the East 
 and thence spread over the islands of Greece into the 
 mainland. The spread of the use of writing, and the 
 gradual introduction of coins, accompany henceforth the 
 slow development of sculpture out of mere decoration ; so 
 that at any later time we have means for assigning a date 
 within fairly narrow limits to any objects of Greek art 
 which we may find. 
 
 We must very briefly follow this new wave of art, which 
 passed westward from Phoenicia along the shores of the 
 Mediterranean. Especially in the case of two materials, 
 metal and pottery, we can trace stage by stage the spread- 
 ing influence. Let us begin with metal-work. In one of 
 the palaces of Nimroud excavated by Sir H. Layard there 
 were found a number of bowls of bronze, with designs of 
 repousse work, which now form a chief ornament of the 
 Assyrian galleries of the British Museum. The palace in 
 which they lay was not built by King Sargon, but he is 
 believed to have used it. And as the bowls in question do 
 not exhibit the style which we recognise as Assyrian, but 
 are, on the contrary, of distinctly Egyptian type, it seems 
 clear that they were importations from abroad. It is 
 regarded by archaeologists as almost certain that they 
 were some of the spoils brought home by Sargon in the 
 course of his conquest of Phoenicia about B.C. 720. These 
 vases then give us a view of the art of Phoenicia at that 
 time. We cannot here give any detailed description of 
 them ; * it must suffice to say that they show throughout 
 an intelligent appreciation of the ideas and customs of 
 Egyptian art, but in imitating that art they adapt ; they 
 add as well as lose in copying. But they introduce few- 
 forms and few ideas foreign to the art of Egypt. Baby- 
 
 * Layard, Nineveh, 2nd series. Perrot et Chipiez, Hist, de FArt, 
 vol. ii. 
 
Chap, v.] Recent Discoveries and the Homeric Poems. 127 
 
 Ionia and Assyria contribute comparatively little to 
 them. 
 
 Other metal bowls of silver and bronze, which are also 
 ascribed to Phoenician workshops, have been found in / 
 various countries of the Mediterranean, more particularly 
 in Etruria and Cyprus. These bowls have been repeatedly 
 published * and discussed. Their most remarkable charac- 
 teristic lies in the way in which they combine the represen- 
 tations of Egyptian and Assyrian art. In alternate bands, 
 sometimes in alternate groups of the same band, we may 
 discern, mingled together, Egyptian kings slaying their 
 foes, Assyrian monarchs hunting lions, the scarabaeus of 
 Egypt, the sacred tree of Assyria, scenes of ritual such as 
 figure on the walls of Egyptian tombs, and incidents of 
 court life such as we see depicted on the walls of the 
 palaces of Nimroud. These vessels of thoroughly eclectic 
 or mixed art belong to a later period than the vases of 
 Nimroud, which show mainly Egyptian influence. They 
 must belong to the seventh and the sixth centuries before 
 the Christian era ; and this date will well suit the objects 
 found with them in Cyprus and in Etruria. 
 
 There can be no doubt that works in metal so finished 
 and effective as these engraved Phoenician bowls must 
 have had great influence in Greece and Italy, more espe- 
 cially because they came at a time when the old art of 
 Greece was nearly extinct, and no new art had yet arisen 
 to take its place. In Etruria we find careful and well- 
 executed copies of some of the more usual and mechanical 
 designs on these bowls. We might have imagined that 
 the importation of works so complete into Greece would 
 have produced in that land also mere imitations more or 
 less perfect. But careful copying did not suit the Greek 
 nature. Hellenic artists were at all periods original and 
 
 * L. P. di Cesnola, Cyprus, pi. xix. Perrot et Chipiez, Hist, de 
 PArt, vol. iii. pp. 759, 769, 779> &c -, 
 

 128 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. v. 
 
 productive. So though Phoenician metal-work stimulated 
 them into activity, the line taken by that activity was 
 original and national. What it was will more clearly 
 appear if we consider the history of the decoration of vases 
 at the same period. 
 
 The spreading Oriental influence of which we have 
 spoken may be traced less clearly in those vases of Cyprus 
 which were probably executed by Phoenician hands, than 
 in the pottery discovered at Camirus, in Rhodes, in such 
 quantities by Salzmann and Biliotti.* The designs of 
 these remarkable vessels show us in many points influences 
 which must be Oriental. The rows of animals which 
 surround the vases in bands, each animal in exactly the 
 same attitude as the other, show close analogy to the 
 Phoenician bowls of Nimroud. Among these animals 
 those predominate of which the eastern origin is clear, 
 the lion, the sphinx, the griffin, and many other winged 
 monsters such as the Asiatic brain alone originates. The 
 field of the vases is filled with floral ornaments and 
 rosettes, which is a mark of Assyrian influence. And in 
 the decoration of the vases two forms predominate, the 
 lotus, alternately flower and bud, which belongs to Egypt, 
 and the sacred tree which is a distinguishing feature of 
 Assyrian decoration. On the Dipylon vases, on the other 
 hand, such Oriental designs are notably absent, and the 
 scenes bear far more the character of home-invention. 
 
 The colouring of these vases is rich, and they are 
 beautiful with a certain mechanical completeness. In their 
 way they are specimens of very successful decoration, and 
 we cannot wonder that they fascinated the Greeks of the 
 seventh century. That the Greeks fully adopted this kind 
 of vase-painting, whencesoever it came to them originally, 
 has been of late abundantly proved by the discoveries at 
 Naucratis in Egypt, where an enormous quantity of pottery 
 
 * Nccropole dc Camirc. 
 
Chap. V.] Recent Discoveries and the Homeric Poems. 1 29 
 
 of the class has been discovered, dating doubtless from 
 near the time of the foundation of Naucratis in the seventh 
 century B.C. But Greek art soon became a thing too much 
 alive to be confined in the limits of any decoration, how- 
 ever admirable. A demand arose for something contain- 
 ing more of human interest. And the Greek potters met 
 the demand, not by copying on their vases some of the 
 more elaborate scenes of cult or of court life, such as they 
 must have seen on the eclectic metal vessels of Phoenicia, 
 but by introducing something of their own, some scene out 
 of Greek legend or mythology. Thus we see illustrations 
 of Greek myths gradually make their way on the decorative 
 Oriental pottery, and by degrees claim the first place, 
 driving into a corner the foreign elements, until the friezes 
 of animals which used to cover the whole surface of the 
 vases remain only in a narrow band above and below the 
 mythological scene, which has now occupied the post of 
 honour which it is never again to lose until Greek art is 
 in its dotage. A good illustration alike of the Oriental 
 setting of early Greek art and its aggressive attempt at 
 originality will be found in that remarkable archaic bronze 
 plate found at Olympia, where a combat between Herakles 
 and a Centaur appears as a proof of Hellenic workmanship 
 among animals and monsters of purely Asiatic character. 
 
 Having thus brought down the archaeological record of 
 Greece to the seventh century, after which time we emerge 
 into the full light of history, let us retrace our steps. Let 
 us take up the problem at the other end ; and briefly 
 consider what account is given in the Homeric poems 
 themselves of the state of contemporary art ; and of those 
 details of vessels, armour, and the like, of which we find in 
 works of art a full and satisfactory representation. Such a 
 discussion will, we believe, firmly establish the conclusion 
 that the Homeric poems were written at a time of 
 decadence of art, when the light which shines so clearly 
 
 K 
 
 '\ 
 
130 New Chapters in Creek History. [Chap. v. 
 ___^_ 
 
 at Mycenae had faded away, but yet the new revival had 
 not made its start from the East, or at most had but 
 recently started on its career of conquest. 
 
 When the art of the Homeric age is spoken of, one's 
 mind naturally turns to the description of the shield of 
 Achilles in the eighteenth book of the Iliad. And as this 
 is the only careful description of a work of art in the 
 Homeric poems, it is the touchstone by which will be 
 tried all theories which attempt to determine the condition 
 of the modelling arts in the Homeric age. Assuredly 
 we have no intention of writing an account of all the 
 views which have been set forth by Alexandrian and by 
 modern writers on this fruitful subject, which has ranged 
 the greatest names in opposite camps. Nor would the 
 present writer venture to attack a subject already handled 
 by Welcker, Brunn, and a host of able writers, but for the 
 fact that the last few years have greatly increased the 
 possibilities of forming a sound judgment. 
 
 Two questions require consideration — (1) How far is the 
 Homeric description suggested by, or how far does it 
 correspond with, works of art familiar to the poet? (2) 
 Supposing such correspondences to exist, to what class of 
 works of art do they point as contemporary with the 
 Homeric poems ? We have placed these questions in their 
 logical order ; but this we shall have to reverse in any 
 practical discussion of the matter, because until we have 
 determined the kind of art with which Homer was familiar 
 we cannot in fairness attempt to decide how far he was 
 influenced by it. 
 
 There are three theories which may be held, and have 
 been held, as to the art contemporary with the Homeric 
 poems. The first, and perhaps the most natural, is that it 
 was the archaic Greek art which is represented to us by 
 Pausanias' description of the chest of Cypselus, as well as 
 by a multitude of early painted vases which have come 
 
Chap, v.] Recent Discoveries and the Homeric Poems. 131 
 
 down to us, among which the so-called Francois vase* is 
 conspicuous for its early age and its great variety of sub- 
 jects. This, we say, is the most natural view, but a little 
 consideration will show us that it is untenable. It is, in 
 fact, now generally abandoned ; and with reason. In the 
 first place, none of our vases of the so-called Corinthian, 
 Rhodian, or Cyrenaean classes can be carried back to the 
 age of Homer. And the chest of Cypselus, which closely 
 resembles them in subjects and style, probably belongs to 
 the seventh century. Secondly, if we compare the scenes 
 of the Homeric shield with the scenes of the vases and the 
 Cypseline chest, we shall find a strongly-marked contrast. 
 All the Homeric scenes are general or ethical ; they repre- 
 sent phases of life and action, a city at war, ploughing, a 
 lawsuit, and the like ; while all the scenes on the vases and 
 the chest are mythological, represent the doings of Perseus 
 or Herakles, or other heroes, or the interferences of the 
 gods in the life of the world. We have here a distinction 
 clear, deep-seated, and unmistakable ; which proves, if 
 anything can be proved in archaeology, that the two phases 
 of art are divided by a considerable period of time, and 
 belong to distinct civilisations. In the Hesiodic account of 
 the shield of Herakles, or at least the part of that account 
 which is not a mere copy of epic models, we do find scenes 
 which correspond very nearly with those existing on early 
 vases. But it is certain that the Hesiodic description is 
 later by many years than the Homeric. 
 
 Let us then dismiss this first theory and turn to the 
 second, which requires more respectful consideration, as it r 
 has been set forth by very high authorities, Brunn for 
 instance, and is still upheld by Dr. Helbig and Mr. A. S. 
 Murray. This theory brings into connection the Homeric 
 shield and those Phoenician bowls of silver and of bronze 
 of which we have above spoken, and considers that Homer 
 * Monumenti deW Institute, iv. pis. 54-58. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. v. 
 
 borrowed his scenes from them, and through them from 
 the Avail-paintings and reliefs of Egypt and Assyria. Mr. 
 Murray, in his History of Greek Sculpture, has gone so far 
 as to print a design of the shield of Achilles of which 
 nearly all the scenes are taken from these sources. He 
 also points out, what is much to the purpose, that recently 
 in Crete there have been discovered shields, the designs 
 of which may be placed in line with those of the bowls, and 
 which may have been imported from Phoenicia or Cyprus.* 
 They are however very fragmentary. Undoubtedly there 
 would be much to be said for this view if it could be 
 shown, or even rendered probable, that Phoenician wares of 
 the more developed and syncretic designs were exported 
 to the shores of the Mediterranean as early as the ninth 
 century B.C. But this is not merely unlikely but almost 
 impossible. We have already shown that the Phoenician 
 bowls of even the eighth century exhibit a style almost 
 purely Egyptian ; and that the Assyrian designs, which 
 have more of the Homeric character than the Egyptian, do 
 not appear until a later age. In fact, the bowls which by 
 variety and richness of design most tempt a comparison 
 with the Homeric description are comparatively late,f and 
 in all probability not so early as many extant works of 
 archaic Greek art. It seems therefore an anachronism to 
 suppose that Homer can have seen such. Other considera- 
 tions confirm the argument from date. One of the most 
 striking and remarkable things about the Homeric de- 
 scription is the way in which the inlaying of various metals 
 on the shield is described ; we have a field of gold, vines 
 with silver props, a fence of tin, oxen of gold and tin, and 
 
 * Mtiseo Italiano, vol. ii. 
 
 f That found in the Regulini-Galassi tomb was in company with an 
 
 / Etruscan inscription, and the Etruscan alphabet was of late intro- 
 
 / duction. That found at Palestrinawas among objects not earlier than 
 
 those in the Regulini-Galassi tomb. Dr. Helbig himself declares that 
 
 I the Regulini-Galassi tomb belongs to the sixth century B.C. 
 
Chap. V.] Recent Discoveries and the Homeric Poems. 133 
 
 the like. If there be one point on which Homer is de- 
 scribing art which he has seen, it is this. But the silver-gilt 
 and the bronze bowls of Phoenicia are chased and repousse, 
 but not inlaid with various metals. Moreover, the chief > 
 theme of Egyptian art as rendered on the bowls is the 
 worship of the gods, the chief themes of Assyrian art as 
 rendered on the bowls are the exploits of kings and the 
 destruction of evil spirits in the form of monsters. But in 
 the Homeric description the cultus of the gods is notably 
 absent ; and great as was the pre-eminence of the kings in 
 Homer's days, it is not their deeds which appear on the 
 shield but the ordinary life of mankind, subject-matter, one 
 might have thought, rather adapted for a Hesiodic than a 
 Homeric description. 
 
 The t hird_ theory as to Homeric art, and on the whole 
 the most reasonable, is the view which sees the nearest 6 
 analogy to the Homeric description in some of the works 
 of art discovered at Mycenae, such as the sword-blades 
 already mentioned. The subjects on these blades possess in 
 a remarkable degree the most distinct features of the scenes 
 of the shield. They are ethical or general, represent scenes, 
 and not the exploits of personages. Nor is this all. The 
 lion-hunt of the most remarkable blade (p. 65) is not merely * 
 a Homeric subject, but it is treated in a really epic way. 
 One lion flies headlong, one flies but turns to look on his 
 pursuers, a third turns fiercely to meet them ; of the attack- 
 ing party one has fallen ; the others are varied in arms and 
 attitude. In spite of the rough style of this work of art, 
 there is more of vigour and freshness, more of pathos, more 
 in fact of the Homeric spirit in it than in the productions 
 of Egyptian and Assyrian artists. They are but chronicles : 
 it is a poem. The fragment also on which the siege is 
 represented (p. 66) has something of epic variety and 
 force, though the naked slingers and archers are not much 
 like the warriors of Agamemnon. If from treatment ^ 
 
134 Netv CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. V. 
 
 \ we turn to technique, the correspondence is perhaps even 
 more striking. Some of the more beautiful of the sword- 
 blades, including that which bears the lion-hunt, are thus 
 decorated :* — the blade itself consists of bronze, but on 
 each side a second plate of bronze is fastened, overlaid 
 with a metallic enamel of dark hue, which served for the 
 insertion of figures cut in thin gold leaf. These latter 
 depend for their effect partly on the graving-tool, but 
 especially on the varied hues of gold, which varies in colour 
 from the dark red of pure gold to the shimmer of silver. 
 " It seems beyond doubt," writes Koehler, " that the varied 
 toning of the gold was produced by methods of art." On 
 these blades we find fishes of dark gold swimming in a 
 stream of pale gold, drops of blood are represented by 
 inserted spots of red gold ; in some cases silver is used. 
 What could be nearer to Homer's golden vines with silver 
 props, or his oxen of gold and tin ? 
 
 It has also been well pointed out by Hirschfeld and 
 Helbigj that coincidences in subject though not in execu- 
 tion may be observed between Homeric works of art and 
 those Dipylon vases which were probably contemporary 
 with the Homeric poems, though representing a different 
 wave of art from that of the old Achaean monarchies. On 
 these vases, " in accordance with Homeric custom, men in 
 ordinary life wear the sword ; their equipment comprises 
 those greaves which gave to the Achaeans the epithet 
 ivKvyj/MSes." As was the case with Patroclus' corpse, here 
 also a corpse laid out is covered from head to foot with 
 a cloth. On the Dipylon vases we find chariot-races in 
 honour of the dead, like those of the Iliad, and tripods set 
 forth as the prizes. A dance of youths and maidens recalls 
 a scene of the shield of Achilles. These resemblances, 
 though not very striking, are worthy of notice. But it is 
 
 * U. Koehler in Athen. Mittheilimgcn, vii. z\\. 
 f Das Homerische Epos, p. 76. 
 
Chap, v.] Recent Discoveries and the Homeric Poems. 135 
 
 also to be observed that the ships depicted on the Dipylon 
 vases have beaks or rams in front of them, of which no 
 trace is to be found in the Homeric poems ; and in this 
 respect at least they represent a somewhat later age. 
 
 Thus it seems that the authors of the Iliad and Odyssey 
 gained their notion of works of art less from foreign than 
 from Hellenic productions. The art of the great Achaean 
 age they probably knew by tradition and by survival ; 
 while perhaps the art of their contemporaries was rather 
 like that of the Dipylon vases ; or at all events a degraded 
 descendant of the Achaean. 
 
 We proceed to attack our second question — How far is 
 Homer in his description of the shield thinking of works 
 of art, and how far is he giving loose rein to his poetic 
 imagination ? The problem has become far simpler if we 
 are satisfied that Homer was not thinking of Phoenician 
 bowls with their elaborate scenes, nor of Cyprian shields, 
 but of arms with inlaid patterns, of shields which he had 
 seen. The general plan of Homer's shield is clear ; as to 
 that, all scholars are agreed. On the boss in the midst 
 were represented earth, sea, and sky, sun, moon, and the 
 constellations of heaven, while round the edge ran ocean, 
 inclosing the whole design. Between the two extremes, 
 arranged in concentric bands, were representations of the 
 principal phases of human life : a city at peace and a city 
 at war, tilling and vintage, a lion-hunt and a peaceful 
 pasture, a dance of youths and maidens. The general 
 arrangement is like that which we find on early Greek and 
 Etruscan shields, which are also thus planned in concentric 
 rings. The group of sun, moon, and sky in abbreviated 
 form appears at the top of one of the very remarkable gold 
 signets found at Mycenae,* and we may easily suppose a 
 wave pattern which might well represent the ocean, to run 
 round the edge of any circular object of metal. But when 
 * Schliemann, Mycenae, p. 254, No. 530. 
 
 y 
 
136 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. V. 
 
 we come to the numerous and complicated scenes which fill 
 the surface of the imaginary shield, it must at once be 
 admitted that their order and their details are developed 
 \ without the least regard to any existing or possible work of 
 art, from the poetical rather than the plastic point of view. 
 It is true that there runs through the whole description a 
 law of measure and balance, scene being matched with 
 scene, and circumstance contrasted with circumstance. 
 But this is the result, not of any dependence on a work of 
 art actual or imagined, but of the love of balance and 
 architectonic form which belongs to all the works of the 
 Hellenic race, to poetry no less than to sculpture, which 
 marks the plays of a Sophocles as strongly as the pedi- 
 ments of a Pheidias. It is, moreover, quite remarkable 
 [ how simple are the designs of all the early Greek shields 
 which are depicted on vases, or have come down to us in 
 the pages of Pausanias. Usually they are decorated with 
 one, or at most with two, figures. The most complicated 
 shield known, that of Athena Parthenos at Athens, was 
 adorned but with a single group of combatants. Etruscan 
 shields, made under Phoenician influence, are of more 
 complex design, but their pattern at most comprises a few 
 monotonous rows of animals. 
 
 Indeed no one could read with critical mind the 
 Homeric description without observing that of the scenes 
 described none is stationary ; all are full of successive 
 events. The disputants turn first to the people and 
 then to the elders ; the ploughmen turn up one furrow 
 and down another ; the city at war passes through the 
 successive events of half a day. All this is quite 
 natural to a poet describing the phases of human life, 
 but not natural to a poet who is trying to embody 
 to < his imagination a real work of art. Homer has 
 beyond almost all poets the power of making the 
 things he speaks of real and concrete ; if he had been 
 
Chap, v.] Recent Discoveries and tJie Homeric Poems. 137 
 
 intending to describe a real shield, he would have brought 
 it before our minds as he brings before our minds the 
 quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, or the warriors 
 whom Helen describes from the towers of Ilium. 
 
 It may be well, however, to speak more in detail of one 
 particular passage, that which describes the siege of the 
 city, since as to this a particular theory has been set forth. 
 It will be in the memory of most of our readers that Homer 
 speaks of a series of events as happening. He describes a 
 city girt by two armies which are at issue between them- 
 selves, one army wishing to destroy the place wholly, the 
 other to accept a ransom for it. While they deliberate the 
 citizens issue forth, led by Ares and Pallas Athene, and 
 form an ambush, by means of which they succeed in 
 capturing the cattle of the enemy and slaying their herds- 
 men. The council of the enemy breaks up, they hasten to 
 the rescue of their herds, and a fierce battle is joined on 
 the banks of a river. It has been maintained* that this 
 description is prompted by a reminiscence of an artistic 
 representation of a town with the enemy on both sides of it 
 as he appears on a Phoenician cupf (p. 138) ; that Homer 
 took the idea of two armies from the two attacking corps. 
 This, however, seems to be fanciful. In the Homeric 
 description the point is far less that the attacking armies 
 are two than that they are together assembled in council ; 
 and it is hard to see how an artist of the Homeric age 
 could represent what Homer describes in less than three 
 
 * Murray, Greek Sculpture, i. p. 49 ; Helbig, Homerische Epos, 
 
 P. 305- 
 
 f Cesnola, Cyprus, pi. xix. In the outer scene we have, in the 
 midst, a city which is attacked by scaling parties from both sides, 
 one party lightly armed, the other armed in Carian or Greek fashion ; 
 cavalry and archers advance as supports, and labourers cut down 
 trees. In the middle band we see two Assyrian figures flanking the 
 sacred tree, and various Egyptian deities, I sis, Harpocrates, the frog- 
 god and the scarab. Within is a line of sphinxes. 
 
138 
 
 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. V. 
 
 PHOENICIAN CUP, CYPRUS. 
 
 
Chap, v.] Recent Discoveries and the Homeric Poems. 139 
 
 scenes, of which the first would represent the deliberation, 
 the second the ambush, and the third the battle, and each 
 of these scenes would probably be too complicated for such 
 an artist to manage intelligibly. And the argument de- 
 rived from this vase loses much of its force now that / 
 we possess on the Mycenaean silver vessel a scene of 
 siege of unquestionable pre-historic date, but in design 
 very straightforward (p. 66). 
 
 Thus it seems clear that all that Homer took , 
 from existing art in his description was the general 
 principle of producing effects by means of inlaying of 
 metal of various colours, and the custom of arranging 
 the designs of shields in concentric bands ; beyond that 
 
 GOLD PLATE, MYCENAE. 
 
 he is free. And it is just thus that scholars are agreed to 
 interpret other Homeric descriptions. The poet speaks of 
 golden maids formed by Hephaestus, who had power of 
 motion and speech and more than mortal wisdom ; but 
 no one supposes that there were in those days statues of 
 gold ; these beings are mere fantastic imaginations of the 
 poet. In some other cases a real work of art may be the 
 basis of the description, as in that remarkable description 
 of the group on the brooch of Odysseus.* " On the face 
 
 * Od. xix. 228. 
 
140 Nezv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. V. 
 
 of it was a curious device, a hound in his forepaws held 
 a dappled fawn and gazed on it as it writhed. And all 
 men marvelled at the workmanship, how, wrought as 
 they were in gold, the hound was gazing on the fawn and 
 strangling it, and the fawn was writhing with his feet and 
 striving to flee." Certainly in this passage the poet shows 
 a marvellous power of putting life into a simple design, 
 such as he may well have seen ; such for example as the 
 Mycenaean gold plate* (p. 139) which represents a lion 
 leaping on a stag. But here there is no narrative ; he 
 . does not say that the fawn was feeding, and the dog 
 sprang upon it and tore it, but describes a single moment. 
 In two lines of Homer only do we find a description of 
 a work of art which seems to have been made on the 
 lines of Phoenician art or the Greek art which rose out 
 of it. He says of the sword-belt of Herakles,f that on 
 it were wrought bears and boars and lions and battles 
 and slaughter : a passage which certainly does suggest a 
 composition of a fighting scene between rows of stylised 
 animals such as we see on Rhodian vases. But this 
 passage occurs in the Odyssey, not the Iliad, and it stands 
 by itself, so we need not press its evidence. 
 
 In some cases the resemblances between Mycenaean 
 antiquities and works of art mentioned in the Homeric 
 poems are closer and more detailed. An instance will be 
 found in the case of the cup described in the Iliad as 
 belonging to Nestor,} "a right goodly cup, that the old 
 man brought from home, embossed with studs of gold, 
 and four handles there were to it, and round each, two 
 golden doves were feeding, and to the cup were two feet 
 -. below." I cite Mr. Lang's translation, but the precise 
 meaning of the original has been much disputed, and we 
 know that in antiquity at least one treatise was devoted 
 by a learned Alexandrian to the elucidation of this cup. 
 * Mycenae, p. 309. f Od. xi. 610. % II. xi. 630. 
 
Chap, v.] Recent Discoveries and the Homeric Poems. 141 
 
 But the comparison of a gold vessel found at Mycenae 
 has made the nature of Nestor's treasure quite clear to 
 us. This vessel,* which like Nestor's was fastened together 
 with golden nails, has two handles, and on each handle a 
 bird sitting, while two curious supports run up from the 
 base to the rim. We at once conjecture that in Nestor's 
 
 CUP OF MYCENAE. 
 
 cup the doves were not feeding round the handles, but 
 standing one on each side of each handle ; and that the 
 7rv0fMeve<; of Homer were not feet, but supports joining the 
 rim to the foot. 
 
 In spite however of the general likeness between the 
 art of Mycenae and that of the Iliad, the latter seems / 
 in a more exhausted and depressed condition. One can 
 scarcely call the shield of Achilles a work of decaying 
 art : but of course that is a poet's work of art, the like of 
 which never really existed. Besides the shield, works of 
 art are rarely described, and when they are it is with an 
 
 * Mycenae, p. 237. 
 
142 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. v. 
 
 exaggerated astonishment, which shews such things not 
 to be common in Homeric days. Anything artistically 
 good is either imported from Sidon, or else made by 
 Hephaestus : that such things could be made by ordinary 
 workmen seems scarcely to have entered into the Homeric 
 mind. Would anyone who was accustomed to see 
 brooches well engraved write in regard to the device of a 
 brooch, " And all men marvelled at the workmanship, how, 
 wrought as they were in gold, the hound was gazing on 
 the fawn and strangling it, and the fawn was writhing with 
 his feet and striving to flee." Such a description even 
 applied to a painting by Landseer would sound hyperbolic. 
 Such passages seem clearly to shew that in Homeric times 
 works of art were rare, and in most cases either imported 
 from abroad or else handed down as heirlooms from past 
 generations. But at Mycenae we have to do with an art, 
 not indeed highly advanced, but in the full swing of life 
 and motion, and quite as likely to send out its products to 
 foreign shores as to feel the need of bringing in from 
 elsewhere cunningly wrought works of art. 
 
 Analogy does certainly render it probable that the 
 author of the Iliad does in art, as in other respects, work 
 rather in the light of the past than in that of the present. 
 It has been well pointed out that we find in the Iliad no 
 trace of many customs which must almost certainly have 
 existed among the author's Greek contemporaries. The 
 Homeric Achaeans are unacquainted with writing, they 
 do not use the horse for riding on, they do not eat boiled 
 meat* It is unlikely that any of these customs were 
 foreign to the Greeks of the ninth and eighth centuries ; 
 but they were kept out of their epic poems on the same 
 principle on which a writer of pastoral idylls in our day 
 would avoid the mention of the telegraph or telephone. 
 
 * Ephemeris Arch. 1891, p. 40 : Wilamowitz, Homcrische Unter- 
 suchungen, p. 292. 
 
Chap, v.] Recent Discoveries and the Homeric Poems. 143 
 
 Perhaps the clearest evidence of changing custom which 
 is furnished by the Homeric poems is to be found in the 
 descriptions of arms and armour, on which Mr. Leaf has 
 written an excellent paper.* He shews that the Homeric 
 passages which speak of the shields of Achaean and 
 Trojan warriors exhibit marked inconsistency. The poet 
 evidently thinks of shields as round, and often speaks of 
 them as round ; but in other places he clearly implies 
 that they were of that oblong scutum-like form which is 
 often depicted in the island gems and the monuments of 
 Mycenae. Thus the shield of Ajax is compared to a 
 tower, which comparison would be pointless unless it were 
 of oblong form. Hector's shield as he walks touches at 
 once neck and ankle ; this would be possible if the 
 shield were oblong, but practically impossible if it were 
 round, a round shield five feet in diameter being a mon- 
 strosity. So, too, Homer constantly speaks of the re\a/jbcov 
 or strap by which the shield was suspended from the neck 
 of his heroes. On Egyptian monuments and those of 
 Mycenae we frequently see the oblong scutum thus sus- 
 pended, but the round shield is alike on Egyptian and 
 Greek monuments managed by means of two handles, 
 and requires no shoulder-belt. We are almost certainly 
 justified in supposing that when the Iliad was written 
 the oblong shield had but recently given way in use to V 
 that of circular form, whence some confusion arose, and 
 traditional phrases properly applicable only to oblong 
 shields were applied to round bucklers. 
 
 The body- armour of the Homeric heroes consisted, as 
 Mr. Leaf and Dr. Helbig have well shewn, of breastplate 
 and backplate, united to form a cuirass, girt round the 
 body by a fyocrrrjp or belt, below the bottom of which the 
 body was protected by a metal girdle called a filrpTj. This 
 is an arrangement which does not occur in the representa- 
 * Journal of Hellenic Studies, iv. p. 283. 
 
^ 
 
 144 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. V. 
 
 tions on swords and signets at Mycenae. There the 
 warriors, who do not usually even wear helmets, do not 
 appear to be clad in body-armour at all. It is also an 
 arrangement unknown to Greek art after the sixth century. 
 Hellenic warriors, from the stele of Aristion onwards, are 
 represented indeed as wearing a cuirass, but the lower 
 part of their bodies is not protected by a iiirprj, but by a 
 sort of leathern apron attached to the lower end of the 
 cuirass. But on very early Greek vases, such as those 
 from Melos,* and even on black-figured vases, we find an 
 arrangement of armour which seems to correspond to the 
 Homeric description. The cuirass is represented as ending 
 below not in an apron, but in a sharp ridge, while below it 
 the hips are girded with a close-fitting girdle which may 
 well be intended to represent the fiirpij. In this case 
 also we see a marked progress between the period repre- 
 sented by the Mycenaean remains and the Homeric age. 
 That this progress should have taken place notably in 
 warlike panoply is natural enough. The defeats which 
 they had suffered from the Dorians must have taught the 
 Achaeans by sad experience the insufficiency of their 
 defensive armour, and made them consider seriously how 
 a remedy could be found. 
 
 One curious Mycenaean intaglio in gold f seems to 
 
 represent a lightly equipped Achaean 
 
 of the early period armed only with 
 
 a sword, slaying a warrior wearing a 
 
 helmet with conspicuous crest, who 
 
 gold ornament, tries to shelter himself behind an oval 
 
 shield. Is this latter a Dorian, or possibly a Carian 
 
 soldier ? 
 
 In speaking of shields, we clearly see how the Homeric 
 poet mixes the customs of his own age with what is handed 
 down by tradition as to the equipment of earlier and 
 * Come, Melische Thongefasse. \ Mycenae, p. 174. 
 
Chap. V.] Recent Discoveries and the Homeric Poems. 145 
 
 more splendid times, sometimes mingling the inconsis- 
 tent elements. And this analogy will greatly help us in 
 approaching the mo st difficult question presented to us by 
 the recent excavations in the Argolid, the relations of the 
 Achaean palace to that of the Homeric poems, we should 
 rather say to that of the Odyssey, since in the Iliad we 
 have no description of a palace sufficiently detailed and 
 exact to help us. 
 
 On the one hand we have the plans of the great houses 
 at Tiryns and Mycenae, of which I have already spoken, 
 with their courts and their halls, and with the apartments 
 of men and women separate, though placed side by side. 
 And facts seem clearly to prove that these houses were 
 the residences of Achaean chiefs in the 12th and nth 
 centuries before our aera. On the other hand in the 
 Odyssey it is clearly implied, as almost all commentators 
 are agreed, that men's and women's chambers were not 
 thus separated, but were adjacent, with doors between, so 
 that intercourse was easy and continual. Professor Jebb 
 in a very clear and able paper * maintains that in the 
 palace of Odysseus: (1) The women's part of the house 
 was immediately behind the men's hall, directly com- 
 municating with it by a door. (2) There was a second 
 way of going from the men's hall to the back part of the 
 house, by a passage outside of the hall. And this is in 
 fact the ordinary view which had been previously accepted 
 by the orthodox Homeric commentators : f Mr. Hayman 
 and Mr. Lang however are disposed to regard the women's 
 quarters as not even separate ; and there are some passages 
 in the Odyssey which seem to support this view. But in 
 any case it is necessary to allow Prof. Jebb's contention 
 
 * Journal of Hellenic Studies, \\\. 185. 
 
 f Winckler, Wohnhduser dcr Hellenen, Protodikos, De aedilnis 
 Homericis, &c. This view I have also maintained in the Journal 
 of H. S., iii. 264. 
 
 L 
 
146 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. V. 
 
 that the Odyssey becomes unintelligible if we suppose 
 the scene of the slaying of the suitors to have taken 
 place in a palace like that of Tiryns, with men's and 
 women's apartments separated by a space one from the 
 other. 
 
 But firstly, it appears that in the Achaean age there 
 was a considerable difference in degree of civilisation 
 between eastern and western Greece. The rulers of the 
 poor and hardy races of Epirus, Acarnania and the Western 
 Isles would scarcely be likely to reach such a degree of 
 civilisation as the wealthy rulers of the Argolid. Besides, 
 if we must suppose, as is indeed certain, that the Odyssey 
 was put together, whether in Europe or in Asia, at a period 
 subsequent to the Dorian invasion, how unlikely it is that 
 we should find in it any exact remembrance of the pre- 
 Dorian palace. A race which degenerated in art, changed 
 the character of its armour, and passed from riches to 
 poverty, would not be likely to preserve the custom of 
 building such palaces as the Achaean kings possessed in 
 Greece. The palace of Alcinous was perhaps a remini- 
 scence, coloured by fancy and time, of the great houses of 
 early Greece ; but the palace of Odysseus is but a farm- 
 house, where swine wallow in the court and the maids are 
 busy with their mills. We can scarcely be surprised that 
 the poet of the Odyssey, needing a clear and actual scene 
 for the slaying of the suitors, went rather by houses which 
 he saw around him than by those of which tradition told. 
 
 Unfortunately our information as to the disposition of 
 parts in the Greek house at various periods is very frag- 
 mentary. We can only discern that it varied greatly, and 
 depended largely upon degrees of wealth and luxury. In 
 the farm-houses of early type described by Galen, the wife 
 sits by the hearth in the main apartment. In the Athenian 
 house described by Lysias in his speech de caede Erastos- 
 t/ienis, husband and wife occupy two chambers, one over 
 
Chap, v.] Recent Discoveries and the Homeric Poems. 147 
 
 the other, the upper being approached by a ladder. But 
 the ordinary custom in wealthy houses of the later age 
 was to assign to the men and the women of a family 
 separate courts with a passage between, around which 
 courts were grouped the living-rooms and the bed-rooms 
 of the family. 
 
 The house of Odysseus does not coincide entirely with 
 any of these arrangements. Its general plan agrees nearly 
 with that of the wealthy historic house. Yet there are a 
 number of details in which the agreement with the Tiryn- 
 thian palace is singularly close : some of these agreements 
 we will briefly indicate. 
 
 (1.) At Tiryns, before the door of the main hall, lies a 
 court surrounded by arcades and fenced with walls, the 
 entrance being through the folding doors of a propylaeum. 
 With this we may compare Od. 17, 264. "Eumaeus, 
 verily this is the fair house of Odysseus, and right easily 
 might it be known even if seen among many : there is 
 building upon building ; and the court of the house is 
 cunningly wrought with wall and frieze, and well fenced 
 are the folding doors ; a man could not easily storm it." 
 Again in Od. 16, 343, " The wooers came forth from the 
 hall, past the great wall of the court, and there before the 
 gates they sat them down." 
 
 (2.) At Tiryns there is a porch in front of the hall, which 
 well corresponds to the echoing porch of the Odyssey. 
 
 (3.) In the court at Tiryns was an altar with a trench 
 evidently intended for sacrifices : in the house of Odysseus 
 the altar of Zeus Herceius is situate in the court before 
 the hall. 
 
 (4.) At Tiryns the hearth stands in the middle of the 
 hall, the smoke rising through a hole in the roof: in the 
 Odyssey the fire in the hall is frequently mentioned, it stood 
 in the midst, and was used for cooking food. 
 
 (5.) At Tiryns a passage led from the hall to a bath-room 
 
 L 2 
 
148 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. V 
 
 carefully arranged: in the Odyssey (17, 85) the suitors, 
 *' when they came to the fair-lying palace, laid aside their 
 cloaks on the couches and chairs, and went to the well- 
 polished baths and bathed them." 
 
 (6.) At Tiryns the door-sills were in some cases made of 
 stone, in other cases of wood : this is altogether in harmony 
 with the Homeric custom. 
 
 (7.) The glass and alabaster frieze found at Tiryns is 
 not only in accordance with Homeric custom, but it 
 explains as has above been pointed out, the Homeric 
 phrase dpvyicb<i kvclvolo, which had before been imperfectly 
 understood. 
 
 (8.) In the men's hall at Tiryns the hearth stands in 
 the midst of four pillars which supported, as is supposed, 
 a raised square of roof above. In the Odyssey, when 
 Nausicaa is directing Odysseus to the palace of her father 
 (vi. 304), she bids him quickly to pass through the hall 
 to where her mother "sits by the hearth in the light of 
 the fire " busy with the loom, and " resting against a 
 pillar." The coincidence here is very remarkable : in the 
 conjectural restorations of the Homeric palace the hearth 
 had been placed at a considerable distance from the 
 
 pillars. 
 
 These coincidences, besides others of a more doubtful 
 character, or requiring a long discussion to prove, are 
 sufficient to show that the poet of the Odyssey knew from 
 tradition, if not from personal observation, many of the 
 features of the Greek prehistoric house, such as those of 
 Tiryns and Mycenae. But he does not seem to be 
 sufficiently familiar with such houses to escape confusion 
 in some parts of his narrative. In the stirring episode of 
 the slaying of the suitors especially he sometimes nods : 
 we find it hard, or even impossible, to determine at which 
 end of the hall Odysseus stood when he shot them down, 
 or how Melanthius contrived to fetch the arms. No one 
 
Chap, v.] Recent Discoveries and the Homeric Poems. 149 
 
 can make a vivid and consistent picture of an event of 
 which the scene is not really familiar to him ; least of all 
 a poet like the author of the Odyssey who has to work up 
 given material into a new whole. 
 
 Some writers have been led by the marked separation of 
 men's and women's apartments at Tiryns to the view that 
 the palace there must have been built for an Oriental 
 rather than a Greek ruler. But there is here some con- 
 fusion of thought. No Oriental king arranges his harem, 
 so that he has to leave his palace and wander a long 
 distance in order to reach it. It stands to reason that 
 there must have been some means of communication 
 between men's and women's rooms, and it is most reason- 
 able to suppose that this would have had the form of a 
 side door, the Homeric dpaodvprj. Mr. Middleton in his 
 conjectural restoration * inserts such a door of communi- 
 cation : and it is curious that at the corresponding spot in 
 the supposed men's hall at Hissarlik f the foundation is 
 broadened for some uncertain purpose. If however there 
 were such a door, the means of communication between 
 men and women would be not unlike those supposed by 
 most commentators on the Odyssey. The only difference 
 will be that at Tiryns the communication takes place 
 by a side-door, and in the Odyssey by a back-door. This 
 difference is important as regards architectural plan and 
 construction, but it does not imply much difference of 
 civilisation or of race. 
 
 There can be little doubt that the wandering and 
 troubled life of the Achaeans after the Dorian invasion 
 would tend to diminish the seclusion of women, with the 
 other stately customs of the ancient princely houses. It 
 
 * Journ. Hell. Stud. viii. 164. 
 
 t See above, p. 53. In Dr. Dorpfeld's plan in Troja this broaden- 
 ing is marked as belonging to the work of the second period of the 
 burnt city ; but in the most recent plan it is marked as belonging to the 
 first period of the city. 
 
150 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. v. 
 
 would be more usual in Homeric than in Tirynthian days 
 to see the lady of the house standing among men in the 
 hall, or seated by the hearth. Of such gradual change of 
 manners we do see traces in the Odyssey, but we see nothing 
 to prove that the palaces of Tiryns and Mycenae lie out- 
 side the lines of Hellenic history. Even if, as is probable 
 enough, they were originally built for princes of foreign 
 extraction, of Lycian or Phrygian blood, these would not 
 be very different from native Greeks, so far as we can 
 judge, either in language or customs. For of whatever 
 race the mass of the people in Asia Minor may have been, 
 it is more than probable that the upper class was a tribe of 
 pure Aryan blood, and closely akin to the Greeks in arts 
 and religion, in arms and customs.* 
 
 We thus reach in conclusion the point whence we 
 made our start. After spending time over prehistoric Greek 
 archaeology and the Homeric data, it always seems to 
 me clear that the Iliad and Odyssey belong essentially to a 
 time when the wealthy and powerful Achaean kingdoms of 
 Greece had passed away, and that the civilisation which 
 colours those poems belonged to the past, a past fresh in 
 tradition and looked back to as a period of prosperity and 
 happiness. Certainly archaeology shows that there was 
 such a time, quite apart from the testimony of history. 
 To the rich treasures of Mycenae and Spata and Bapheion 
 there succeeds an age in which the tombs of Greece 
 contain but poor and scanty spoil, spoil which seems to 
 speak alike of poverty and of artistic decline. That, so 
 far as I can judge, should be the age when the Iliad 
 received its present character. 
 
 * In this connection it is worthy of notice that Mr. Ramsay thinks 
 he can trace, in the ground plan of an early house which he has dis- 
 covered in Phrygia, traces of separate living apartments devoted to 
 women. See Jonrn. Hell. Stud. x. 176. This evidence, however, must 
 scarcely be relied on, as the date of the dwelling is very doubtful, and 
 it appears to have been lived in by Turks. 
 
Chap, v.] Recent Discoveries arid the Homeric Poems. 1 5 1 
 
 The Mycenaean age was in a literal sense the age of 
 gold. Gold was used for cups and for seals, for masks for 
 the dead and breastplates ; and the very garments in 
 which the dead were swathed were covered with plates of 
 gold. Iron was all but unknown, and was probably 
 regarded as more valuable than gold itself. Homer also is 
 fond of speaking of gold, but he does not talk of garments 
 of gold, save in the case of the gods, and in his time the 
 iron age had in the literal sense begun ; iron was used for 
 swords,* axes and ploughshares. The iron Dorians had 
 got the better of the golden Achaeans, and Greece had 
 passed out of the period of royalty and legend into the 
 period of chieftaincy and actuality. Greek nationality had 
 begun to be formed, and the seeds of the future greatness 
 of the race were being sown in poverty and warfare. 
 Somewhat later, in the middle of the sixth century, the 
 iron men of Sparta, wishing for gold to plate the face of a 
 statue of Apollo, knew not where to seek it, save at the 
 hands of Croesus in that very region whence Pelops is 
 said to have come. 
 
 To Dr. Schliemann beyond all others we owe it that 
 we have succeeded in passing the abyss which the Greeks 
 themselves did not succeed in passing, the gap which 
 divides the Hellas of history from heroic Greece. We 
 have discovered an archaeological record of the rise of the 
 Hellenic nation, a record which will probably become every 
 year more full and more trustworthy. We may hope, at 
 least in part, to abandon the purely sceptical tone in which 
 Grote speaks of the ages which preceded the first 
 Olympiad, and by degrees to trace the outlines of the 
 material condition, the manners and the ethnic connections 
 of the peoples of prehistoric Hellas. The dream that 
 Homer narrates actual events may never be realized, and 
 
 * It has, however, been doubted whether the passages which speak 
 of iron swords are not interpolations. 
 
152 
 
 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. V. 
 
 we may never be able to test the value of the genealogical 
 lists which are almost all that Greek historians and inscrip- 
 tions preserve to us in the way of record of their own 
 heroic days. But, nevertheless, we shall find that those 
 days are not buried in hopeless oblivion, and that there is 
 truth of a certain kind in Schliemann's childish belief that 
 the walls of Ilium have not passed into nothingness. 
 
( 153 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ANCIENT CYPRUS. 
 
 The traveller who approaches Cyprus from the south-east, 
 and nears the port of Larnaca, can scarcely fail to be un- 
 favourably impressed by the bare and forlorn appearance 
 of a country almost entirely denuded of trees and brush- 
 wood, and in the summer months without vegetation. 
 Very different was probably the aspect which even this 
 least fertile side of the island presented three thousand 
 years ago to the Phoenician mariner starting on his 
 westward explorations. In those days vast forests and 
 thick underwood stretched down from the mountains to 
 the shore, offering the visitor the prospect of an inex- 
 haustible supply of the materials for ship building. 
 Very probably the need for wood and tar first attracted 
 the Sidonian sailors to the shores of Cyprus. If so, a 
 stronger attraction soon induced them to remain. In the 
 mountains of the island they found an endless supply of 
 that copper which, until the difficulties attending the 
 working of iron were overcome, was the chief of all the 
 means by which man established his dominion over the 
 earth, the beasts of the world, and his fellow-man. When, 
 further, we consider the position of Cyprus, lying right 
 over against the Syrian coast, we cannot doubt the truth of 
 the tradition that some of the earliest Phoenician colonies 
 were established in the island. Timidly, as their custom 
 was, the new-comers took their post beneath the long 
 
154 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. VI. 
 
 range of mountains which cuts off the southern coast from 
 the broad plain which forms the middle portion of the 
 land, and built their citadels on little hills, easy to be 
 fortified, overhanging sheltered roadsteads, and beaches 
 where their galleys could He safely. So arose Amathus, 
 Paphos, and the mightier Citium, which became the 
 Phoenician capital, and even gave its name to the whole 
 island. 
 
 At this time no doubt the island was already peopled by 
 a race of Anatolian stock. The religious practices of the 
 Cyprian people, and, as we now know, both the style of 
 their art and the alphabet they employed, point to a close 
 connection between them and the primitive races of Asia 
 Minor. But these races were as yet in a state of bar- 
 barism, and had little culture of their own to oppose to 
 that brought by the Phoenicians from the valleys of the 
 Nile and the Euphrates. They were never so quick-witted 
 as the Ionians, and the latter applied to them in scorn the 
 epithet " Cyprian oxen." Modern travellers speak still of 
 the dulness and stolidity of the peasants who dwell in the 
 mountainous and unfrequented parts of the island, and 
 whose ancestors probably lived there three thousand years 
 ago ; though Ross, on the other hand, maintains that the 
 Greek peasants who dwell in secluded valleys in Rhodes 
 are equally stolid, and ascribes their dulness rather to the 
 uneventful and monotonous character of their lives, than to 
 an inherent tendency. 
 
 To the primitive Cyprians the Phoenicians brought not 
 only the rudiments of art, trade, and civilisation, but also 
 a religion. It is quite likely that they found already 
 established at Paphos the cultus of a great nature goddess. 
 In that case they overlaid that cultus with their own 
 worship of the moon-goddess, the queen of heaven, 
 Ashtoreth or Astarte, the national deity of Ascalon and 
 Sidon. That a people of navigators, in the infancy of 
 
Chap. VI.] Ancient Cyprus. 1 5 5 
 
 navigation, should worship the moon and the stars is so 
 natural as to require no explanation. Astarte guided the 
 Sidonians on all their maritime expeditions, saved them 
 from shipwreck in many a storm, and measured the time of 
 their return ; and their gratitude made her supreme in all 
 matters of navigation and commerce, their directress in 
 war, and the wealthy recipient of a large share of the rich 
 spoils which they reaped by force or by commerce in the 
 far west. But the cultus of Astarte soon changed its form 
 in Cyprus when it came into contact with native customs 
 and beliefs. 
 
 Of the cultus of the goddess called by the Greeks 
 Aphrodite at Paphos we know a little from later accounts, 
 but only a little. No subject could possibly be more 
 obscure than the origin of the elements of that worship. 
 We may be sure that it was at least partly Phoenician, but 
 of Phoenician belief we know next to nothing. Movers 
 asserts that the worship of the Sidonian goddess was 
 pure from lascivious rites. If so the grosser elements in 
 the later worship of Aphrodite must have been derived 
 either from a Syrian or a Phrygian source. The Syrians 
 as well as the people of Asia Minor worshipped with 
 orgiastic rites a deity of the feminine gender, who re- 
 presented at once the moon and that warm moisture of 
 which the moon was the symbol, and which is the great 
 fosterer of life and growth in the world. With this female 
 deity was associated an effeminate male divinity, who 
 doubtless stood for the sun. On all the eastern coasts 
 of the Mediterranean we find among the various peoples 
 pairs of deities of this character under the most varied 
 names and with great variety of legend. In Babylon they 
 were called Sandan and Mylitta ; in Phrygia, Attis and 
 Cybele. In Lydia the pair were Graecised into Herakles 
 and Omphale, in the Troad into Anchises and Aphrodite. 
 In Cyprus they sometimes went by the names of Adonis 
 
156 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VI. 
 
 and Aphrodite. The name of Adonis is probably Semitic, 
 but as worshipped in Cyprus he was certainly a deity of 
 the same class as Attis and Anchises. 
 
 We find a further likeness to the religions of Asia Minor 
 and Syria in the strongly organised college of priests, who 
 were attached to the service of the deity of Paphos. 
 Tradition asserted that these priests were all descended 
 from Cinyras. Certainly they were a very wealthy and 
 powerful corporation, with branches in all parts of the 
 island wherever there was a temple of Aphrodite, and great 
 wealth and political power. They ruled at old Paphos 
 almost as kings. Similar to the guild of the Cinyradae 
 were the colleges of priests of Cybele, and the religious 
 corporations of cities which, like Ephesus, took the tone 
 of their worship from Asia Minor. It is also worthy of 
 observation that in the Paphian temple the goddess was 
 represented by no image, but by a conical stone, just as 
 the Syrian goddess was represented at Hierapolis, Cybele 
 at Pessinus, and the Asiatic Artemis at Perga. 
 
 Herodotus tells us of the abominations practised in the 
 temple of Mylitta at Eabylon, in words which might tempt 
 the reader to suppose that he is exaggerating, or at least 
 that the abominable sensual excesses of which he speaks 
 could have no connection with any form of religion. Un- 
 fortunately religious excitement, when perverted, is but too 
 apt to lead to sensuality, as is proved by the history of 
 the early Christian sects, and too surely even in our own 
 day by the rise of strange communistic societies on a pro- 
 fessedly religious basis in America and Russia. In Asia 
 Minor the worship of deities of the Mylitta class was 
 accompanied by sensual indulgence and degrading self- 
 mutilations, a canker which spread at a later time deep 
 into the decaying frame of the Roman Empire. At 
 Cyprus the nature of the climate, which has enervated 
 successively Greek colonists, Frankish knights, Venetian 
 
Chap. VI.] Ancient Cyprus. i$7 
 
 nobles, and Turkish settlers, and the fatal facility of living, 
 both combined with the vague mystical traditions of the 
 Cyprian race to turn the worship of Aphrodite into a vast 
 orgy, and to make the very name of Cyprus stand 
 through the civilised world for a synonym of luxury and 
 sensuality. 
 
 In the earliest form known to us of the primitive Greek 
 religion, that kept up by tradition at Dodona, there is 
 already an Aphrodite, who is the child of Zeus and Dione, 
 and is associated with the dove, the great emblem in all 
 times of Aphrodite-worship. An Aphrodite under other 
 names is also found in the Pelasgic cultus, which rendered 
 Lemnos and Imbros celebrated. But after the Paphian 
 goddess had been identified thoroughly with the Greek 
 Aphrodite, and was seldom spoken of by any other name, 
 her worship still retained its repulsive character. Xeno- 
 phon, however, in the Symposium, carefully distinguishes 
 two forms of Aphrodite. Of these the first is Urania, 
 whose symbol was the planet Venus, who was regarded as 
 a virgin, and whose rites were free from impurity. Of her 
 Pheidias made a statue which stood upon a tortoise, and 
 the animal sacred to her was the gentle and loving dove. 
 The other form was Aphrodite Pandemos, fitly symbolised 
 by a goat or a pig, the patroness of harlots and the 
 encourager of all kinds of sexual immorality. It was 
 rather in the latter light that the deity was regarded in 
 Cyprus. The Aphrodisia, which fell at the beginning of 
 April, were stained with the wildest excesses, the two 
 sexes vying one with the other in the bestial rivalry. 
 
 Of a scarcely less obscene, though of a more interesting 
 character, was the annual feast of Adonis. In this the 
 love of the goddess for her hero, his death, her passionate 
 lament, and his resurrection from the dead, were repre- 
 sented to the eyes of worshippers by means of images, 
 in a sort of Pagan miracle-play. For one day the crowds 
 
158 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VI. 
 
 of women stood loudly lamenting and beating their 
 breasts, or sat with tearful eyes raised to heaven ; some- 
 times they even shaved their heads in token of mourning. 
 On the next day, with joyful voices, they announced that 
 Hades had been unable to hold back the young, the 
 blooming Adonis, and Zeus had restored him to life and 
 love. For eight months of the year he was to dwell with 
 his loving Aphrodite ; only for four he was to remain 
 with Persephone beneath the earth. The worshippers 
 planted quickly growing herbs in carefully-prepared hot- 
 beds : in a few days the tender stalks appeared, when they 
 were thrown into the sea or into wells, to typify the sudden 
 end of springing life on the earth. In all this we cannot 
 fail to see allusion to the annual winter death and vernal 
 resurrection of the sun ; a death and resurrection which 
 by the Pagans of that time were not thought of as 
 figurative, but as actual hard fact. In the same way 
 Osiris died and rose again in Egypt, Attis in Phrygia, 
 and Dionysus in Greece. 
 
 Until about the ninth or eighth century before our aera, 
 the Phoenicians worked their will and made their fortunes 
 on all the coasts of the Mediterranean. Then the crenius 
 of the Greek race began to awake. The Iliad may not be 
 history, but it certainly represents a time when the Greeks 
 began to colonise and to conquer towards the East, and 
 to spread themselves over the coast of Asia Minor. The 
 tradition tells how Cinyras, the cunning King of Amathus, 
 in Cyprus, promised Agamemnon fifty ships for the siege 
 of Troy, and how in performance of his promise he sent 
 one galley, in which were stowed forty-nine little vessels 
 of terra-cotta, such, no doubt, as are still often found in 
 Egyptian tombs. This Cinyras is clearly meant for the 
 embodiment of the Phoenician race, and the tradition 
 is a touching reminiscence of the remote time when the 
 Greek was not yet a match in the arts of over-reachin<r 
 
Chap. VL] Ancient Cyprus. 159 
 
 for his Semitic neighbour. But if Cinyras did not send 
 ships to Agamemnon, he sent him a suit of armour, of 
 which Homer gives a very glowing description, and which 
 was a masterpiece of Sidonian skill. Agamemnon, if the 
 tradition be trustworthy, did not regard the lesser service 
 as a sufficient compensation for the loss of the greater, 
 and at a later period made war on Cinyras and took his 
 city. At that time many a Phoenician city was falling 
 into Greek hands. History tells us little of the method 
 followed by the supplanters, but no doubt the story of 
 Agamemnon and Cinyras had a hundred parallels in real 
 life at the time. 
 
 Nevertheless, the settlers who came to Cyprus from 
 Hellas in the Homeric age, did not primarily attack 
 the Phoenician cities. Cyprus, as everyone who has 
 looked at a map of the island knows, consists of a 
 southern mountain-range, a northern mountain-range, and 
 a broad and fertile plain between them, running across 
 the country from east to west. The Phoenicians had 
 already occupied the strip of shore to the south of the 
 southern mountain range. The Greeks began by occupy- 
 ing the strip of shore on the opposite side of the island, 
 to the north of the northern mountain range. These were 
 Peloponnesian settlers. But there came a bolder race of 
 colonists from Attica and Salamis, led, according to 
 tradition, by that Teucer to whom Horace ascribes the 
 motto nil desperandum. They established a new Salamis 
 boldly at the eastern end of the great plain, and after a 
 time their compatriots founded Soli, to command the other 
 or western end of the plain. So the Ionians held the 
 central plain, the Peloponnesians the northern mountains, 
 and the Phoenicians the southern mountains. This plain 
 was compared in all antiquity with the valley of the Nile, 
 being yearly flooded by the waters of the Pediaeus, which 
 left a rich deposit of mud and unexampled fertility behind. 
 
160 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VI. 
 
 At present it is almost a desert, but it may become once 
 more what it has been. The mountains seem to belong: 
 to another continent. Herr von Loher * compares them to 
 those of the Tyrol ; but the lovely glens breaking down to 
 the sea can be like nothing so much as Greece. In situa- 
 tion, in productions, in climate, Cyprus belongs in part to 
 Europe, in part to Asia, in part to Africa, and it has con- 
 stantly shared in the political vicissitudes and calamities 
 of all three continents. 
 
 The early dwelling of the newly arrived Greeks in 
 Cyprus was not unmarked by the splendid bloom so usual 
 in early Greek colonies. The want of fine harbours pre- 
 vented Salamis and Soli from attaining a wide commerce 
 and becoming the centres of a great colonial empire like 
 Miletus. Nor did they suddenly spring into wealth and 
 lapse into luxury like Sybaris and Tarentum. But they 
 probably participated, for a time, in the spiritual and 
 intellectual life of Hellas. The Cypria was considered 
 one of the grandest epics of antiquity, scarcely inferior 
 to the Iliad and the Odyssey. The epic was ascribed by 
 some of the ancients to Euclus, a poet older than Homer, 
 while others asserted that it was the work of Homer 
 himself. They narrated that Homer sojourned in the 
 island with a daughter named Arsiphone, and giving her 
 in marriage to a man named Stasinus, he gave as a dowry 
 the Cypria. Hence, others again maintained that Stasinus 
 was the true author of the epic, and the name Stasinus 
 has quite a Cyprian sound. 
 
 The Iliad seems to fall from the clouds ; none can 
 clearly see why it begins where it does, and why it ends 
 where it does. The Cypria seems to have formed a sort 
 of proem or introduction to it, which begins with the 
 complaint of Earth that she is oppressed with the number 
 of her inhabitants, and her prayer that the crowd may be 
 
 * Cypcm, 1872. 
 
Chap. VI.] Ancient Cyprus. 161 
 
 thinned, and ends at the exact point where the Iliad takes 
 up the tale. It would appear that the 'poem of Stasinus 
 was more popular, had greater influence over the poets and 
 painters of Greece, than the poems of Homer. At least, 
 in the poems and plays which have come down to us the 
 subject is oftener taken from the Cypria than the Iliad. 
 In the case of Greek painted vases, whereas representa- 
 tions taken from the Iliad are rare, we find very frequent 
 paintings of the incidents of the Cypria, such as the 
 Judgment of Paris, the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, or 
 the surprise of Troilus and Polyxena by Achilles at the 
 well. And in Greek legend few names are better known 
 than those of Iphigeneia, Telephus, Palamedes, and Pro- 
 tesilaiis, the deeds of all of whom are narrated in the 
 Cypria. Indeed, the quantity of local myths the poem 
 embodies is immense, thus showing the close connection 
 which at the period must have existed between the Greek 
 colonies in Cyprus and the mainland of Hellas. 
 
 We can scarcely be wrong in tracing, if not a Cyprian 
 origin, at least Cyprian influence in the Homeric hymns 
 to Aphrodite, as well as in that passage of Hesiod's Theo- 
 gony which records the birth of the goddess from the 
 foam of the sea. This story, like so many of the Greek 
 mythological legends, may have a physical basis. Tra- 
 vellers tell that to this day the sea shore at Paphos is 
 covered at certain seasons of the year, and when the wind 
 is in a certain quarter, with thick masses of foam, which 
 sometimes drift inland before the breeze almost on to the 
 spot where stood in old days the temple of the deity. A 
 German man of science, Dr. Unger, has examined that foam 
 under the microscope, and found it to consist chiefly of 
 the spawn of certain marine Crustacea. In this difference 
 between ancient and modern ways of regarding a natural 
 phenomenon there is much that is suggestive. 
 
 The date of the Greek settlements in Cyprus cannot be 
 
 M 
 
1 62 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VI. 
 
 fixed with accuracy. It was earlier, however, than the 
 date of the foundation of the Italian and Sicilian colonies, 
 that is, than the eighth century before our aera. It 
 probably preceded the time when Assyrian influence was 
 strongest on the coasts of Syria and in Asia Minor. 
 Josephus states, that Shalmaneser, about the year 730, 
 made war upon Phoenicia and penetrated to the shores 
 of the Mediterranean. The straits endured by the metro- 
 polis, Tyre, naturally brought greater liberty to the colony, 
 Citium, which from this period began like Carthage to 
 have a trade and a far-reaching policy of its own. At the 
 end of the eighth century Sargon was supreme master of 
 the island, and on a pillar preserved at Berlin we find the 
 names of the kings and kingdoms which paid him tribute, 
 Salamis being at this time the Greek, and Citium the 
 Phoenician metropolis of the island. The tribute was 
 continued to his grandson, Esarhaddon. 
 
 As to the antiquity of the connection between Cyprus 
 and Egypt there has been some controversy, some Egypt- 
 ologists being disposed to regard it as very ancient. But 
 Herodotus states in positive terms, that Amasis, a king 
 of the new semi-Greek Egyptian kingdom of the sixth 
 century B.C., was the first Egyptian king to conquer the 
 island. The determination of the controversy is the less 
 important, because wherever the Phoenicians had sway 
 they introduced a copy of Egyptian manners in Egyp- 
 tian art ; and at this distance of time it is sometimes 
 difficult to distinguish true Egyptian from pseudo-Egyp- 
 tian influence in art-remains. 
 
 After the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses, the supre- 
 macy of Cyprus naturally fell into the hands of the 
 Persians ; and hereupon the opposition between the Greek 
 and the Phoenician settlers became at once intensified. 
 Like the Phoenicians of the mainland, those of Cyprus 
 seem to have found their wisdom in a general support of 
 
Chap. VI.] Ancient Cyprus. 163 
 
 Persian policy and the Persian arms, in which all the 
 Greeks saw the most dreaded foes of their nascent civilisa- 
 tion and their ancient liberties. When the Milesians and 
 their allies raised the standard of revolt against Darius, 
 Onesilus, brother of Gorgus, king of Salamis, finding his 
 brother inclined to temporise, had himself proclaimed king 
 in his place. He became master of all Cyprus, except the 
 old Phoenician stronghold of Amathus, and, receiving a 
 contingent of Ionic ships, hoped to hold his own against 
 all Asia. But his success soon came to an end. A Per- 
 sian army came from the coast of Cilicia ; and when the 
 two hosts were drawn up for battle, there was, of course, 
 a traitor in the Greek camp. Stasanor, king of the Greek 
 colony of Curium, went over to the enemy, the brave 
 Onesilus lost his life, his army was dispersed, and Cyprus 
 had again to submit to the Persian yoke ; even to furnish 
 contingents to the fleet which blockaded Miletus, and 
 to that which was afterwards gloriously destroyed by 
 Themistocles in the battle on the coast of Salamis. 
 
 After the invasion of Xerxes had been rolled back, the 
 gallant Cimon with his Athenians sailed to the coasts of 
 Asia Minor, restoring liberty to the Greek cities. As the 
 great cities of Cyprus, Salamis and Soli, were connected 
 with Athens by ties of blood, he would naturally seek 
 their enfranchisement. And as a matter of fact he did 
 so, and even won a splendid victory on the east coast of 
 Cyprus, but was not finally successful. And now we 
 reach the period most splendid in the ancient history of 
 our island, when the arrival of a great man for a few years, 
 if we may trust the rhetoric of Isocrates, makes Cyprus 
 great. It was the period of the peace of Antalcidas, 
 when Persia won back by gold and art much of the 
 territory and supremacy which she had lost to the 
 conquerors of Marathon and Plataea. About the year 
 B.C. 410, the throne of Salamis was occupied by a Phoe- 
 
 M 2 
 
164 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VI. 
 
 nician usurper, named Abdemon. Of immemorial right 
 that throne belonged to the family of Teucer, who had 
 founded the city and named it after the island whence he 
 sailed for Troy. Suddenly a member of that ancient 
 family, by name Evagoras, appeared in Salamis with fifty 
 followers, who ' reverenced him as a god,' and followed 
 him implicitly in an enterprise to which a prosperous 
 termination seemed impossible. But the extraordinary 
 personal ascendency of the leader and the faith of the 
 followers accomplished the seeming impossibility. The 
 palace was stormed, the foreign guards slain, and the 
 citizens, who, as Isocrates, who tells the story, says, stood 
 trembling and undecided by, were informed that their 
 ancient line of kings and their legitimate supremacy in the 
 island were restored. Evagoras, prudent as he was valiant, 
 Ions" souerht to avoid the inevitable breach with Abdemon's 
 master, the great King of Persia, and even for a time 
 succeeded in maintaining an alliance with him and the 
 Athenian Conon against the Lacedaemonians, whom Conon 
 defeated in a great battle at Cnidus. But the object of 
 Evagoras' life, the complete Hellenisation of Cyprus, was 
 an end the attainment of which Artaxerxes of Persia could 
 not allow so long as he had a soldier or a ship left. On 
 the representation of the Phoenician cities of Amathus and 
 Citium, supported, more Graeco, by the Hellenic rival of 
 Salamis, Soli, Artaxerxes sent an army to put him down. 
 Evagoras had long foreseen what turn events must take, 
 and had strengthened his position by making great 
 military preparations and by securing the alliance of the 
 Athenians, and Acoris, the native aspirant to the throne 
 of E°ypt. Now he drew the sword and flung away the 
 sheath. Aided by the Athenians under Chabrias, he made 
 himself master, in a rapid campaign, of nearly all Cyprus, 
 sailed across to Phoenicia, took by storm the mighty city 
 of Tyre, which so long defied Alexander the Great seventy 
 
Chap. VI.] Ancient Cyprus. 165 
 
 years later, and stirred up a revolt against the Persians in 
 Syria and Cilicia. But Artaxerxes was now thoroughly 
 aroused, and, straining every resource, landed upon Cyprus 
 a force amounting, according to Diodorus, to 300,000 men, 
 at a cost, says Isocrates, of 50,000 talents, and supported 
 by a fleet of three hundred sail. Even against these forces, 
 for a time, Evagoras held his own. He defeated Persian 
 troops in several small engagements. Then he seems to 
 have formed the plan of suddenly attacking and destroying 
 the hostile fleet, hoping that without its aid the army must 
 starve. Falling upon a portion of that fleet, he crushed 
 it at the first onset ; but the reserves came up. The Persian 
 admiral Gaos fought with desperation, and at last Evagoras 
 was overpowered by superior numbers. After this mis- 
 adventure Salamis was blockaded by sea and land ; but 
 even after suffering the hardships of a long siege, Evagoras 
 would not consent to accept a peace offered him on con- 
 dition that " he would submit himself to the will and the 
 command of the Persian king, as a servant to his lord ; " 
 and, finally, the Persian pride was compelled to accept the 
 terms he offered, and to allow him to retain Salamis on 
 paying an annual tribute and submitting himself "as a 
 king to a king." But, notwithstanding, Evagoras' high 
 hopes were shattered, and Cyprus lost for sixteen hundred 
 years the chance of playing a part in history. 
 
 Cyprus fell easily into the hands of Alexander the 
 Great, and after his death belonged to the Ptolemies of 
 Egypt. The number of Ptolemaic inscriptions discovered 
 in the island, shows how closely at this time it was con- 
 nected with Egypt. It is probable that during the Ptole- 
 maic dominion and that of the Romans, who succeeded, 
 the island maintained a great pitch of wealth and material 
 prosperity. The enormous quantities of silver coin issued 
 by the Egyptian kings at Cyprian mints show that they 
 knew well how to develop the material resources of the 
 
1 66 Nexv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VI. 
 
 land. In the reign of Trajan the Jews of Cyprus revolted 
 and slew, it is said, a quarter of a million of the inhabitants 
 — a fact which testifies at once to the populousness of the 
 island and to its wealth, for where Jews were in such 
 numbers money must have been to be made. 
 
 No doubt, during the period at the history of which we 
 have thus slightly glanced, vast changes had taken place 
 in the appearance of the island. Throughout antiquity 
 copper was obtained there in extraordinary abundance. 
 Nor was the quantity alone remarkable, but the quality 
 also. It was noted for its ductility and malleability, and 
 almost rivalled gold in brightness. The Roman monetarii 
 cast their asses out of it ; artificers in all lands preferred it 
 for objects of use and ornament ; while on the spot were 
 formed from it sory, misy, chalkitis, and other mysterious 
 compounds. No one who is acquainted with Cyprian 
 remains can doubt that gold and silver were found in the 
 island; indeed, we know from the writers that gold was 
 dug there by the Venetians, and Cyprian emeralds were 
 prized above all others. In ancient, as in modern times, 
 the great salt-lakes at Citium and Amathus dried up 
 annually and left a thick layer of excellent salt, a mar- 
 vellous and unfailing source of wealth : indeed in old 
 times people used to say that Citium produced salt 
 enough for the whole world. 
 
 The very name of Cyprus tells how cypress (henna) 
 flourished of old in the island. The fig-trees attracted 
 swarms of fig-peckers (beccafkos), a bird still common, 
 and considered one of the greatest delicacies of the 
 Levant ; and wherever the Greek went he took with him 
 his beloved olive-tree. Palms grew, but were less common 
 than since the Turkish occupation, nor did the fruit ripen. 
 The mountains still retained their primeval clothing of 
 pine-forests, furnishing an inexhaustible supply of navy- 
 timber, and bringing to the land refreshing showers and 
 
Chap. VI.] Ancient Cyprus. 1 67 
 
 cool airs. But during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods 
 corn and wine were the chief produce of the island. The 
 great central plain was covered with waving fields of 
 barley ; the valley of the Pediaeus contributed almost as 
 richly as the valley of the Nile and the plains of Sicily 
 towards the great distributions of bread among the lower 
 classes of Rome, which made that city, under the Empire, 
 the lazy and hungry stomach of the civilised world. The 
 wine of Cyprus was proverbial. Possibly it would have 
 seemed somewhat rough to a modern taste ; but for gene- 
 rosity and richness it had few equals. 
 
 We hear very little, after the Greek colonists of Cyprus 
 had become in a few generations acclimatised, of any of 
 them having become distinguished in literature and art. 
 While Rhodes, a day's sail to the west, enjoyed a lofty 
 political career, exhibited the best phases of Greek culture, 
 and was filled with splendid statuary produced by local 
 artists, Cyprus was remarkable only for the luxury, the 
 prodigality, and the dissoluteness of its inhabitants. When 
 Greek fabulists and philosophers wished to bring forward 
 an example of effeminate self-indulgence they quoted or 
 invented a king of Cyprus. The wealth which generous 
 nature heaped upon the inhabitants they spent in elaborate 
 self-indulgence ; the faculties with which the Greek race 
 was so abundantly endowed they exercised only in the 
 invention of new and abominable forms of sensuality. The 
 moral is no new one. There are spoilt children of nature 
 as well as of society ; and just as the child whom his 
 parents have indulged begins by slighting them and de- 
 spising their wishes, so the race spoilt by nature begins by 
 violating the ordinances of nature. And yet Cyprus gave 
 birth to the Stoic Philosophy. Zeno of Citium owed his 
 education to Athens, but he must have owed the nature 
 which moulded that education to his native place. In him 
 the Cyprian spirit, after sounding every deep of profligacy. 
 
1 68 Nezv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VI. 
 
 sick of the vanity of enjoyment, went into the cloister to 
 seek peace in self-control and the limitation of desire. 
 
 Everyone knows how, after a thousand years of Roman 
 government and Byzantine bureaucracy, the glory of a 
 second youth burst upon Cyprus. Under the Lusignan 
 family the island became the bulwark of Palestine and the 
 chosen home of the flower of Frankish chivalry. If the 
 life which the medieval writers of romances describe ever 
 became actual fact, it was there. Of the law adminis- 
 tered between knight and knight we have evidence in 
 the Assises de Jerusalem, a monument of lofty feelings 
 and gallant aspirations. Then tourneys and combats, 
 conducted according to the most approved methods 
 of fantastic chivalry, took place daily in the plain of 
 the Pediaeus. Then rose Nicosia and Famagosta, cities 
 splendid even at this day in their utter decay, filled with 
 churches, some of them built in a style peculiar to Cyprus, 
 a refinement of Norman art. Then the castle of Buffa- 
 vento was erected on the perpendicular rocks of the 
 northern coast, and rich abbeys like that of Bellapai's 
 became the abode of a host of ecclesiastics and the 
 centres of rich cultivation. The materials for the his- 
 tory of this period have been collected with zeal by de 
 Mas Latrie, and the subject is well worthy of an English 
 pen. But we have not here space to recount it even in 
 outline, and we have chosen for our subject rather the 
 ancient than the medieval glories of Cyprus. We will but 
 quote the testimony of Ludolf of Sudheim, an ecclesiastic 
 of Paderborn, who visited Cyprus in the middle of the 
 fourteenth century : — 
 
 " Cyprus is the noblest, most fertile, and most illustri- 
 ous of islands, and the richest too : none in all seas comes 
 near to it, and in all goods it is richer than the rest. . . . By 
 all sea-ports, Egyptian, Syrian, Armenian, Turkish, and 
 Greek, it is surrounded as with a girdle. To them all one 
 
Chap. VI.] Ancient Cyprus. 169 
 
 can sail in at most one day .... Nicosia is the capital ; 
 it lies in the midst of Cyprus, under the mountains, at the 
 most level spot, and under the best and healthiest climate. 
 In this town, because of the mildness and healthiness ot 
 its air, lives the king of Cyprus and all bishops and other 
 prelates of the kingdom ; and all other princes, counts, 
 nobles, barons and knights for the most part, daily indulg- 
 ing in tourneys, feats of arms, and especially in hunting. . . . 
 Also in Cyprus are princes, nobles, barons, knights, and 
 citizens richer than in all the world. He who should 
 possess a revenue of 3000 florins * would stand lower 
 than he who in Germany should have three merks. They 
 squander all on hunting. I knew a count of Jaffa who kept 
 more than 500 hounds, and every couple of hounds, as 
 the custom is, has an attendant to itself, to cleanse, bathe 
 and salve them, as is very necessary there for hounds. So 
 a noble has at least ten or eleven falconers. . . . From early 
 morning to evening one hears rumours and news, and all 
 speeches of the world are understood, spoken, and taught 
 in special schools. ... In Famagosta live a host of wealthy 
 courtesans, some of whom possess more than 100,000 
 florins ; but of their riches I venture to say no more." 
 
 It is probable that the good curate, accustomed to rude- 
 ness and poverty at his Westphalian home, where merks 
 were not very plentiful, exaggerated a wealth which daz- 
 zled him. Indeed, we are in a position to test his state- 
 ments and detect his exaggerations ; for we possess an 
 official list of the revenues of the landed proprietors of the 
 
 * The gold florin was equal in value to the sequin or ducat of 
 Venice. Both contained about fifty-four grains Troy of pure gold, and 
 so were worth intrinsically somewhat less than half-a-sovereign. Of 
 course money was in that time more valuable, but to determine the 
 true modern value of a florin of the fourteenth century is an insoluble 
 problem. At this period the entire revenue of England did not very 
 much exceed 150,000/. The merk was worth 13^. <\d. of the time, and 
 equal intrinsically to about two of our sovereigns. 
 
170 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VI. 
 
 island, drawn up at the end of the fifteenth century for the 
 use of the Venetian senate. From this list it appears that 
 the wealthiest lord of Cyprus, George Cornaro, brother of 
 the Queen, had a rent-roll of 7000 ducats ; no other pro- 
 prietor had an income of more than 3000 ducats. The 
 average annual revenue of 120 of the richest persons in the 
 island was about 480 ducats, a handsome income, no 
 doubt, for the time, and probably greater than that of 
 many an English nobleman, but still not so enormous as it 
 seemed to the German church-mouse. 
 
 When the Frankish knights and the Venetian rulers 
 passed away, they did not leave behind them those im- 
 perishable remains of roads, ports and aqueducts, which 
 make the inhabitants of all countries which the Romans 
 ever occupied bless the utilitarian character of their genius. 
 Yet they left the island richer far than they found it. By 
 the sixteenth century many products unknown at the 
 Roman period increased the riches of Cyprus. Already 
 in the reign of Justinian, the eggs of silk-worms were 
 brought by monks from India, and Cyprus soon had a 
 flourishing silk-manufacture. The European knights intro- 
 duced into the island the fruit-trees of France and Italy ; 
 the sugar-cane was imported in crusading times from 
 Arabia. The Knights of St. John found the wine of 
 Cyprus capable of higher cultivation, and the improved 
 kind of it is to this day called Commandaria, after 
 them. The cotton-plant, which was raised from Persian 
 seed, was first cultivated in Cyprus during the same period. 
 There is in the island a tradition that the Venetians paid 
 a sequin for every olive-tree planted. If, in addition to 
 these improvements, we reckon the vast mass of splendid 
 buildings left by the Lusignan princes, and requiring only 
 to be kept in repair, we can scarcely doubt that her 
 Frankish and Venetian masters deserved, on the whole, 
 well of the island. 
 
 
Chap. VI.] Ancient Cyprus. 17 l 
 
 In the plains and the cities the present people of 
 Cyprus are a race so mixed of Italian, Tatar, Syrian, and 
 even Negro elements, as to have become a caput niortiiitm, 
 whence no facts of ethnological value can be extracted. 
 Among the mountains purer blood is said to prevail. In 
 the Carpasian promontory of the north-east dwells a race 
 fairer and stronger than the mass of the Cyprians, a race 
 possibly of Teutonic blood.* But in the Olympus range 
 of the south, in a valley near the site of the ancient Soli, 
 Herr von Loher thinks that he has found true Greeks 
 of tall and slight frame and statelier manners, and 
 Mr. Hogarth is disposed to agree with him. No doubt 
 in Cyprus the Greek element is largely present, as is 
 proved by the persistence of Greek language, Greek 
 customs, and, above all, of that charming closeness and 
 affection of family life, which has preserved the Greek 
 race, as it has preserved the Jewish, through centuries of 
 tyranny and oppression. For ourselves, we are disinclined 
 to think that the people who dwell in the mountains are 
 necessarily of pure blood. They are freer, statelier, more 
 manly, than the dwellers in plains ; but that is the constant 
 effect of mountain-life. Amid the mountains of the Morea 
 we have ourselves lighted on colonies of stately, noble folk, 
 whom the traveller could scarcely hesitate to take for 
 remnants of the ancient Dorians, did not history positively 
 assert that they are of Sclavonian stock. The Greek of 
 the coast and the plain is not so fine a fellow as the moun- 
 taineer, but he is probably quite as much of a Greek. 
 
 Many traces of the ancient religion still linger or lately 
 lingered in Cyprus. Aphroditissa was commonly regarded 
 as a mere alias of the Virgin Mary, and this not by the 
 ignorant only, but, as Ross assures us, sometimes by the 
 priests themselves. Probably when the worship of the 
 Virgin Mother was introduced into Cyprus, a tradition 
 * Compare Hogarth, Dcvia Cyprfa, p. 54. 
 
172 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. VI. 
 
 still lingered of the virgo coelestis of the Sidonians, and 
 facilitated the identification. A religious origin was 
 until lately attributed to various conical stones erect in 
 the ground with great holes through them, into which 
 holes the young women of the island were said to break 
 their glass jewellery on their marriage, or on being be- 
 trayed by their lovers ; while old women repaired to the 
 spot and burnt tapers in the hope of getting rid of their 
 bodily ailments. Mr. Hogarth has, however, in his Devia 
 Cypria (p. 48) supported the view that these stones are 
 only the remains of old oil-presses. It is probable that 
 the Primate of the island, who rejoices in the title of 
 fjbaKapL(oraro<i and has the right of signing his name in 
 red ink, inherits influence and more solid privileges owing 
 to the fact that his spiritual ancestor was the high- 
 priest of Aphrodite, representative of Cinyras, and chief 
 of the politically-powerful guild of the priests of Paphos. 
 
 However, our present concern is rather with the more 
 substantial remains of ancient times in Cyprus : temples, 
 statues, and jewelry. In all the Levant there are ex- 
 aggerated notions abroad among the people as to the 
 richness of buried treasures on the sites of ancient cities 
 and temples. Nowhere are these notions deeper seated 
 than in Cyprus. The traveller cannot explore any ruins, 
 whether ancient or medieval, without being followed by 
 half-a-dozen gaping natives, who watch every turn and 
 every look in the hope of sharing the treasures which they 
 make no doubt to be buried there, and which the stranger, 
 by the help of his books, can surely find. For the belief 
 there are good grounds. It is certain that in all times no 
 field of archaeological research has yielded more precious 
 results, if the preciousness is to be measured by money 
 value, than Cyprus. But until lately the statues recovered 
 were broken to pieces by the fanatical fury of iconoclastic 
 Turks ; while the objects in gold and silver, which were 
 
 
Chap. VI.] Ancient Cyprus. 173 
 
 probably plentiful, found their way at once to the melting- 
 pot. Not until the year 1867 were systematic explorations 
 attempted in the island. 
 
 In 1868 Mr. Lang, the English Consul in Cyprus, made 
 extensive excavations at Dali, the ancient Idalium, a place 
 situated in the hills a few hours north of Larnaca. He 
 was rewarded by the discovery of a temple, in which stood 
 in rows, each upon its proper pedestal, a vast quantity of 
 votive statues in stone, of all sizes, and representing many 
 different styles of art and ages of manufacture. In that 
 part of the temple which Mr. Lang judged to be the oldest, 
 these statues had sometimes an Egyptian, sometimes an 
 Assyrian aspect. In the more recent parts a style appeared 
 somewhat different from any to which we were accustomed, 
 a style which was probably native, and peculiar to Cyprus. 
 In addition, mingled with these, were what seemed to be 
 copies of the early Assyrian and Egyptian statues, together 
 with a few figures which bore unmistakable signs of manu- 
 facture in Macedonian and Roman times. Mr. Lang also 
 found beneath the floor of the temple two treasures of 
 coins, issued by the various Phoenician and Greek dynasts 
 of Cyprus in the fifth century before our aera. 
 
 But by far the most valuable part of his spoil was a 
 bilingual tablet containing Cyprian and Phoenician legends, 
 which has proved the Rosetta Stone of the Cyprian 
 language. It had long been known that the native legends 
 in Cyprus were commonly written in a peculiar character, 
 not so nearly resembling the Phoenician as the cuneiform 
 of Assyria. This character had always defied interpreta- 
 tion ; but it could no longer defy interpretation after the 
 discovery of a bilingual tablet. A group of English scholars 
 — Mr. Lang himself, Dr. Birch, and Mr. George Smith — 
 may claim the credit of finding the clue to the mystery. 
 The learned world was electrified by the discovery that 
 beneath so barbarous and Oriental a character lay hid a 
 
174 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. VI. 
 
 mere variety of Greek, expressed, not alphabetically, but 
 syllabically. And the particular dialect of Greek which 
 lies hid under these unfamiliar characters is declared by 
 philologists to have closer relations with the Arcadian than 
 with any other variety of Greek. Few facts more interest- 
 ing than these, or fuller of historical suggestion, have come 
 to light of late. In historic times the Arcadians were a 
 secluded and unprogressive race, dwelling amid their 
 mountains as herdsmen and ploughmen, and cut off from 
 the sea on all sides, by a ring of flourishing Dorian and 
 Achaean cities. The migration of Arcadians to Cyprus 
 must have taken place while they still had access to the 
 sea and were still in the ways of commerce and migration. 
 According to a Latin tradition it was Arcadians who under 
 Evander settled at the foot of the Palatine Hill, and 
 brought something of Greek culture into nascent Rome : 
 and it is evident that this tradition receives fresh force from 
 the Cyprian parallel. Dr. Dummler* remarks that we must 
 suppose the Cyprian migration to have taken place long 
 before the Dorian invasion of Peloponnesus ; perhaps when 
 the Achaeans first came into that district. It does not, 
 however, appear that such a view is justified. Tradition 
 places the colonies of Italy and of Cyprus alike in the time 
 of the Trojan war ; and it is far more likely that they were 
 part of the general unsettling which resulted from the 
 Dorian irruption. In any case it is quite clear that the 
 Greek colonists who went to Cyprus took with them no 
 Phoenician alphabet ; and that when the example of neigh- 
 bouring nations opened their eyes to the advantages of a 
 written language, it was not to the mainland of Greece that 
 they turned for letters, nor even to their powerful neighbours 
 of Phoenicia ; but rather to their kinsfolk of Asia Minor. 
 We learn from slight but important remains that in southern 
 Asia Minor there was a large group of languages which 
 * Athen. Mittheilutigen, 18S6, p. 256. 
 
Chap. VL] Ancient Cyprus. 1^5 
 
 were more or less cousins of Greek, Phrygian, Lycian, 
 Pamphylian, Cilician, which used alphabets of their own, in 
 some cases not based on the Phoenician, but having closer 
 relation to the Assyrian, or perhaps the Hittite characters. 
 We may best regard the Cyprian alphabet as one of this 
 little known class. 
 
 It is much to be regretted that the period of excavation 
 which opened so auspiciously with the discovery of the 
 Cyprian language has not been so successful as regards 
 the language of Cyprian art. In this matter misfortune has 
 succeeded misfortune. The value of Cyprian antiquities 
 has caused the country to be ruthlessly exploited, and some 
 of the excavators seem to have had neither the wish to 
 benefit historical science, nor the necessary knowledge. 
 
 The diggings of General Louis Palma di Cesnola began 
 in 1 866, and were pursued for many years, with the result 
 of amassing the treasures which adorn the Metropolitan 
 Museum of New York. He claims to have opened fifteen 
 thousand tombs, and to have lighted on the treasure-house 
 of a temple. His account of his work* is elaborate and 
 well-illustrated, and should be a mine of information as to 
 the art and archaeology of Cyprus. Perrot, in his valuable 
 Histoire de Part dans lantiquite has trusted to it. But it 
 has been fully established, by the careful investigations of 
 a number of subsequent explorers, that Cesnola's methods 
 of excavation were so unscientific, his records of them so 
 incorrect, his statements so fanciful and untrustworthy, 
 that the whole book must be set aside as misleading and 
 worthless. A great opportunity has been missed, and 
 harm of a quite irreparable character done to the cause of 
 history. Louis di Cesnola's depredations were followed by 
 those of his brother Alexander di Cesnola ; and then 
 succeeded a time in which licence to dig for ancient remains 
 was granted by the English Government to the private 
 * Cyprus j its cities, tombs, and temples, 1877. 
 
176 New Cliapters in Greek History. [Chap. VI. 
 
 persons who applied for it. The result was an unfortunate 
 scramble. Such sites as seemed to possess antiquities of 
 monetary value were dug into, without much method and 
 without record. The spoils were kept in private museums, 
 or sold to the great national collections. And meantime 
 little light was being brought to bear on such questions as 
 the dates of various classes of remains ; the topography of 
 ancient cities, the plans of ancient temples. The materials 
 of knowledge were being shipped out of the island in 
 abundance, but knowledge was not distilled from them ; 
 and it seemed as if ignorance were likely to retain for ever 
 the field of Cyprian antiquity. At the same time we must 
 give credit to the few who did what they could for science. 
 Mr. T. B. Sandwith wrote a useful paper on Cyprian pottery 
 for the Society of Antiquaries in 1878; in 1886 Dr. Diimm- 
 ler published some useful but rather speculative papers on 
 Cyprian tombs in the Athenian Mittheilungen, and Mr. 
 Ohnefalsch Richter has from time to time published in 
 various periodicals fragmentary accounts of the excavations 
 which he has conducted, mainly in the interest of private 
 persons. Mr. Paul Hermann's work also, Das Graberfeld 
 von Marion, is in many ways valuable, though the propor- 
 tion of theory in it to fact is excessive, and the writer does 
 not speak from personal experience of the excavation. 
 
 We are bound to stop a moment to make the reflection, 
 however distasteful it maybe, that perhaps the only civilised 
 government which would have tolerated such proceedings 
 is the English. All the other states of Europe are alive to 
 the fact that the remains of antiquity are a valuable source 
 of knowledge and culture, and require to be protected from 
 cupidity. France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Greece, pay 
 annually large sums to promote systematic excavation, and 
 to secure a worthy record of them. Italy, Greece, and now 
 even Turkey, assert the right of the state to appropriate 
 and preserve not merely ancient buildings, but all ancient 
 
Chap. VI.] Ancient Cyprus. 177 
 
 works of art and records of history. England alone in her 
 care for government and commerce takes insufficient care 
 of historic remains ; only the English proconsul cares for 
 none of these things. Even from the political point of 
 view it is a mistake. Those who know the Levant tell us 
 that we thus lose in general estimation. France has made 
 of her long-established interest in the antiquities of Egypt, 
 a political weapon of no little strength. Germany owes no 
 small part of German prestige at Athens to the state 
 endowment and the vigour of the German Archaeological 
 School in that city. But it seems that nothing can alter 
 the fixed opinion of successive English Governments that 
 learning and historical science can quite well take care of 
 themselves, and that a government's great concerns are 
 material order and material wealth : or if education, only 
 education of the lowest grade. Thus while established 
 institutions like the British and South Kensington Mu- 
 seums are fairly well supported, any suggestion to give a 
 grant to a new institution such as the British School of 
 Athens, or a new cause such as that of excavation at home 
 or abroad, is referred to the generosity of a public, out of 
 which it seems impossible to extract money for archaeo- 
 logical purposes, except on the smallest scale. 
 
 It is to be hoped that better days are arrived, since 
 three years ago the High Commissioner of Cyprus, Sir H. 
 Bulwer, put a stop to private digging : and the Cyprus 
 Exploration Fund was formed in London in order to con- 
 duct excavations in methodical order. For the last three 
 winters young archaeologists from Oxford and Cambridge 
 have been at work on the sites of Paphos, of Arsinoe and 
 of Salamis, and have published their results in systematic 
 form in the Journal of Hellenic Studies. Their main 
 hindrance has been smallness of funds. While German 
 excavators at Olympia and French excavators at Delphi 
 have only to consider how best to make their work thorough 
 
 N 
 
178 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VI. 
 
 and scientific, our countrymen, members of the richest 
 country in the world, are stopped at every turn by material 
 considerations. Here their work is limited by a piece of 
 land which they cannot afford to buy ; there the trenches 
 have to be stopped because they do not promise results 
 tangible enough to gratify the subscribers. The aid of 
 experts in architecture or engineering has to be dispensed 
 with because it cannot be paid for ; and so forth. It is no 
 wonder that English exploration cannot compare with that 
 of other countries in all respects in which money is the 
 reigning factor. 
 
 Although the very outlines of Cyprian archaeology are 
 as yet not finally settled, still it may be possible to sketch 
 the problems which it presents. Hitherto nearly all 
 excavation has been directed to the graveyards ; and 
 almost all that we know in regard to the early inhabitants 
 of Cyprus we learn from their tombs. These tombs fall 
 naturally into three classes : (1) primitive, (2) Phoenician, 
 (3) Graeco-Roman. Of each class we will briefly treat. 
 
 The graves called primitive are found mostly on sites 
 in the interior of Cyprus, at Chytri, Alambra, Dali, and 
 other places. They are too small to have held a human 
 body unless in sitting posture ; and the probability is that 
 bodies before being placed in them were burned. With 
 the body lie weapons, the spear and the dagger, but not 
 the sword, and pottery of a rude kind with geometrical 
 devices roughly scratched or painted on them. Among this 
 rougher pottery sometimes lie relics which give us more 
 information, in a few cases Babylonian cylinders, sometimes 
 vessels of the Mycenaean class, which, as we have already 
 seen, the researches of Mr. Petrie enable us to date to the 
 twelfth or eleventh century B.C. These graves may easily 
 be distinguished from those of later times : but the 
 ethnological enquiries which they suggest do not admit of 
 any ready answer. Dr. Dummlcr's view is that the forms 
 
Chap. VI.] Ancient Cyprus. 179 
 
 of vessels which occur in them indicate a relation to 
 Hissarlik so close as to prove not merely connection, but 
 identity of race. He conceives that one race was spread 
 over Cyprus before the Phoenician invasion, and the coast 
 of Asia Minor ; and building on the appearance of statuettes 
 in these tombs of the naked goddess who is supposed to 
 be of Syrian origin, he claims this widely spread race as of 
 Canaanite origin. And he supposes that it was subjugated 
 or even destroyed in the island by the Phoenicians when 
 at some period about the tenth century they came into it. 
 This view harmonizes with that above accepted in regard 
 to Phrygia. It is however not easy to distinguish from the 
 graves of the primitive inhabitants, those of the earlier 
 Greek settlers who built the cities of the coast. It is likely 
 that in Cyprus true Greek style was of late introduction, 
 and until it made its appearance the art and manufactures 
 of the local Hellenes may not have greatly differed from 
 those of the natives. Only in the later of these graves 
 we find pottery of the Mycenaean class. 
 
 Coming down to a later period, when we gain the help 
 of coins and of inscriptions, our facts become clearer. It 
 appears, as history would lead us to expect, that Citium 
 was the centre of Phoenician influence in the island. We 
 possess a series of coins belonging to the fifth and fourth 
 centuries before our aera issued by Phoenician kings of 
 Citium ; and in the graves of Citium down even to the 
 Roman age Phoenician remains are prominent. On the 
 other hand the graves of Salamis, as well as the coins of 
 its rulers, show a strong Hellenic tendency, perhaps we 
 can scarcely venture to say a marked Hellenic character. 
 Idalium, which we should have supposed to belong to the 
 Phoenician group of cities, seems on the contrary to have 
 been predominantly Hellenic : this is shown especially 
 by the testimony of coins and of the celebrated tablet 
 of Idalium which records the honours bestowed on a 
 
 N 2 
 
1 80 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VI. 
 
 physician named Onesilus, which is written in Greek and 
 which mentions as king of ldalium Stasicyprus and as 
 magistrate Philocyprus. The names of the Priests of 
 Paphos also during Persian dominion seem to be Greek. 
 But both Phoenician and Greek remains are strongly 
 overlaid with another element which seems to be native to 
 Cyprus ; so that it would appear that the island must 
 occupy a separate place in archaeology. 
 
 It is however obvious that we cannot here speak in 
 detail of the archaeological data furnished us by all the 
 cities of Cyprus : we must content ourselves with a brief 
 notice of recent excavations on the two sites of Paphos 
 and Salamis. 
 
 The first excavation carried out by the Cyprus Ex- 
 ploration Committee was on the site of Paphos. Few 
 temples were more noted in antiquity than that of the 
 Cyprian Aphrodite or Vanassa ; if Salamis was the 
 political centre of the island, Paphos was its religious 
 centre ; and there was concentrated all that Cyprus had 
 to impart to the world of hope and belief; no high lesson 
 at best, it is to be feared. In the spring of 1888 Mr. 
 Ernest Gardner, Mr. Hogarth, and other archaeologists 
 set to work to lay bare the plan of this temple, the 
 arrangements of which are now known to us. The evi- 
 dence of excavation, so far as it has yet been carried on the 
 site, seems to confirm our previous conjectures. Aphrodite 
 at Paphos seems not to have dwelt like Zeus at Olympia 
 and Athena at Athens, in one of those stately Hellenic 
 temples, adorned without with the compositions of great 
 sculptors, and within with innumerable dedicated works of 
 art, which were built like caskets to hold the great statues 
 which embodied all that was loftiest and most charming in 
 Greek religion. The representation of the Paphian god- 
 dess was no masterpiece of Pheidias or Praxiteles, but a 
 cone without human form, a sure indication of the antiquity 
 
Chap. VI.] Ancient Cyprus. 181 
 
 of her worship on the spot. The abode of the goddess 
 also was comparatively mean, and its composition shows 
 that it perpetuated to Greek and Roman times arrange- 
 ments due to less civilised races. The plan* of it pub- 
 lished by the excavators shows a somewhat bewildering 
 medley of chambers, some earlier and some later ; 
 and they leave it uncertain whether the sacred cone 
 stood in one of these chambers or in the open court. It 
 seems very probable that the abode of the goddess 
 commonly represented on Cyprian coinsf is not the 
 temple itself, but rather a smaller shrine built round the 
 the cone. It bears a singularly close resemblance to a 
 shrine in gold leaf found by Schliemann in one of the 
 graves at Mycenae,! which must be at least 1200 years 
 older than the coins. So unchanged through centuries 
 and millennia do the forms consecrated by Oriental 
 religion persist ! 
 
 The excavations carried on last winter on the site of 
 Salamis by Messrs. Munro and Tubbs have scarcely 
 availed to give us any satisfactory notion of the arrange- 
 ment and plan of the city ; but they have at least revealed 
 to us some sites in it, and shown how much of that city 
 still exists under a layer of sand. It is clear that a 
 systematic course of excavation would bring to light very 
 extensive and important remains of the Greek metropolis 
 of Cyprus, would indeed probably show us more of a 
 Greek city than has ever yet been discovered. Mr. Tubbs 
 speaks of Salamis as almost offering a parallel to Hercu- 
 laneum and Pompeii. If Cyprus were in the hands of any 
 other European power it is likely that government excava- 
 tions would soon add largely to our historic knowledge of 
 
 * This plan was made on the' spot by Mr. R. Elsey Smith, and is 
 published in the Journal of Hellenic Studies for 1888, p. 193. 
 f 1. c. pp. 210, 212 ; Head, Historia Numorum, p. 628. 
 % Mycenae, p. 267. 
 
1 82 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VI. 
 
 Cyprus and of the Levant generally. But such excava- 
 tions would require large sums of money, and it is found 
 impossible in our country to procure such sums. If 
 hereafter Cyprus falls into the hands of the Greeks, they 
 will probably soon show how far more active and 
 efficacious is their love of archaeological knowledge than 
 is that of England. 
 
 It is clear that although the civilisation of Salamis was 
 in essence Hellenic, yet it had a strongly marked cha- 
 racter of its own. Coins, which so often give an accurate 
 picture of the growth and decay of the Greek common- 
 wealths, reflect well the phases of the story of Salamis. 
 Previous to the reign of the great Evagoras they bear as 
 type a ram, and inscriptions in Cypriote Greek. For the 
 mere heraldic device of a ram Evagoras substitutes 
 beautiful representations of the Greek Herakles, and 
 amid the Cyprian inscriptions we find in some cases 
 ordinary Greek letters. Under the successors of Evagoras 
 Greek mythological types, Zeus, Pallas, and Aphrodite, 
 become usual, and by the end of the fourth century 
 the Greek alphabet has supplanted the Cyprian in in- 
 scriptions. 
 
 The new discoveries take us further back, to a time 
 when Salamis was still under eastern rather than western 
 influence. Especially important are a series of terra-cotta 
 figures now added to the riches of the British Museum, 
 which merit a careful comparison with the sculptured 
 remains of Assyria and Persia ; bearded men adorned with 
 abundant jewelry and clad in flowing Oriental garments, 
 the rich patterns of which, in arrangement like the painted 
 devices of early Greek vases, give them a singularly vivid 
 look. It is evident that before the days of Marathon and 
 Plataea the flowing wave of Asiatic influence had fairly 
 engulfed the Greeks of Cyprus, whose soft and pleasure- 
 loving disposition rendered them little fit to resist conquest 
 
Chap. VI.] Ancient Cyprus. 183 
 
 whether by arms or arts. Then by degrees the tide was 
 thrust back ; and Greek influence in politics and commerce, 
 in art and manufacture, slowly made way in the island 
 until under the Ptolemies it became an integral part of the 
 Hellenistic world. 
 
 The most interesting problem offered by Cyprian ex- 
 cavation to the student of art is that presented by the 
 statues made in local limestone, and found in great 
 abundance in many parts of the island. Images in terra- 
 cotta may have been, at least in many cases, imported ; 
 but these stone figures were certainly shaped in the island 
 itself. They form a group apart amid all the remains of 
 antiquity, and they reflect alike the character of the 
 Cyprian race and the nature of their surroundings. The 
 fatal facility of the material combined with the indolence 
 of the worker to produce a superficial result. Neither 
 from within nor from without came the striving to labour 
 out results. As M. Perrot has well pointed out, in none 
 of these figures do we find any serious study of nature, in 
 none do we find the attempt to represent either movement 
 or emotion. There is not even any attempt at the por- 
 traiture of individuals. The rich robes and the abundant 
 jewelry of the natives are represented rather than them- 
 selves. It is not strange that an art so languid imitated 
 the style of any one of the more living arts of the nations 
 round. 
 
 When we consider the contents of a temple such as that 
 found at Dali by Mr. Lang, or the Cyprian statues of the 
 British Museum, the Louvre, or the Museum of New York, 
 a question naturally rises : — 
 
 Are these remains in the temples of Cyprus really a 
 store gradually accumulated in the course of long ages ; 
 the objects of Assyrian design dating from the times of 
 Assyrian supremacy, the articles of Egyptian design 
 actually made in the age when Egypt was mistress of 
 
184 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. Yl. 
 
 Cyprus — and so on with the rest ? Or were the treasures 
 accumulated in a comparatively short period, and made 
 by artists who had the custom to copy styles used in 
 various countries ? In studying the course of Cyprian art- 
 manufacture, are we to interpret it on the analogy of a 
 stream which flows straight down past point after point, or 
 are we to interpret it on the analogy of an eddy which 
 turns again and again, and runs in all directions within the 
 space of a few feet ? 
 
 This question would be much simplified if we could tell, 
 to begin with, whether in attempting it we are to use 
 the Hellenic or the Phoenician analogy. The history of 
 Greek art we know ; we can trace it from stage to stage, 
 through archaism, the transition, the period of full 
 development, and the period of decline. The properly- 
 trained student of Greek art will seldom hesitate to 
 what century to give a statue or a gem ; while the date 
 of objects of very marked style can be fixed with still 
 greater precision to a particular province, almost a par- 
 ticular decade. But in regard to the art of Oriental 
 countries, the same precision cannot by any means 
 be attained. And with regard to Phoenician art in 
 particular, we find ourselves in quite a different order of 
 things. Of course it is quite possible that future .dis- 
 coveries and investigations may afford us far more light 
 than we possess as yet on the subject of Phoenician art. 
 But as far as we can judge at present, it would appear that 
 the Phoenicians had no style of art peculiar to themselves. 
 In all the works which can be with the greatest probability 
 assigned to them, we find nothing but copies, of varicus 
 degrees of goodness or badness, of Assyrian and Egyptian 
 and Greek originals. Assyrian reliefs they copy, but 
 confuse the elements ; Egyptian hieroglyphics they imi- 
 tate, but evidently without understanding them. There 
 may have been a time when they were swayed by Egyp- 
 
Chap. VI.] AiicieJit Cyprus. 185 
 
 tian influence alone, before the Assyrians reached the 
 shores of the Mediterranean ; but it is certain that after 
 that time on many of their works of art we find Egyptian 
 and Assyrian representations and emblems mingled in the 
 most intricate and the most confusing way. Phoenician 
 artists seem to have copied at random all reliefs and 
 figures which they anywhere saw, certainly not without 
 considerable taste in grouping and great ability in execu- 
 tion, but quite dropping all definite meaning. It is quite 
 clear, then, that their habits make a classification of their 
 works by date quite impossible, at least in the present 
 state of our knowledge : for a Phoenician artist might 
 introduce on the same patera or vase copies of Egyptian 
 and Assyrian reliefs differing in date one from the other 
 by a thousand years. Thus it would seem that the course 
 of Greek art was like a stream ; that of Phoenician art 
 like an eddy. Are we to class Cyprian art with the Greek 
 or with the Phoenician ? 
 
 We cannot doubt that Phoenician influence was earlier 
 than Greek in Cyprus, and for ages stronger. The history 
 of its gradual retrocession into the second place is obscure, 
 and can be only very partially recovered. We know from 
 the writers, and the unimpeachable evidence of coins, that 
 in the fifth century B.C. there was a strong Phoenician 
 dynasty ruling at Citium ; and we are told that Evagoras 
 had to wrest the sceptre of Salamis from Phoenician grasp. 
 Amathus remained, as its tombs testify, Semitic ; but with 
 the foundation of the Greek city of New Paphos, Phoeni- 
 cian influence must have begun to wane at Old Paphos. 
 The Phoenicians probably strongly held the south coast 
 about their two great cities until the time of Alexander 
 the Great, but had by that time lost influence over the 
 remainder of the island. 
 
 In spite of the occasional landing of Athenian forces in 
 Cyprus, the Greeks of the island were not strongly under 
 
1 86 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. VI. 
 
 the influence of their brethren in Hellas, and developed to 
 a great extent on a course of their own. They were far 
 more influenced than their compatriots by Phrygian tradi- 
 tions and religion, which must have had a strong hold on 
 the island before the foundation of Salamis and Soli, and 
 by the semi-Assyrian civilisation which had spread over- 
 land to the coast and to Asia Minor. The native Cyprian 
 alphabet furnishes distinct and incontrovertible proof by 
 its very existence how far Cyprus lay from the stream of 
 Greek progress, and by the forms of its letters indicates a 
 connection with Lycians, Pamphylians, and other semi- 
 Greek peoples of Southern Asia Minor. In the style of 
 his sarcophagi General Louis di Cesnola sees rightly a 
 somewhat close likeness to the style of Lycian reliefs. 
 Under these circumstances, we should be prepared to find 
 in use among the non-Phoenician people of Cyprus a 
 native style for statues and ornament, a style partly Greek, 
 partly Asiatic, partly peculiar. And we should expect 
 this style, while on the whole moving forward, to have 
 relapses and episodes, and not to show consistent or 
 vigorous development. Such expectations are on the 
 whole fulfilled. It would be of little use to discuss 
 Cyprian art in more detail in the absence of engravings to 
 make our remarks clear. We must quit our subject with 
 the hope that when history weighs the character of British 
 rule in Cyprus it will appear that we have done our duty 
 to the people of the island better than we have done our 
 duty to the existing remains of its ancient inhabitants. 
 
( i87 ) 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 NAUCRATIS, AND THE GREEKS IN EGYPT. 
 
 Since the bombardment of Alexandria by the English 
 fleet, learned excavators, equipped by the Egypt Ex- 
 ploration Fund, have been at work in the Delta ; and 
 from their labours important discoveries have resulted in 
 both Biblical and Classical geography. M. Naville has 
 determined the position of Pithom-Succoth, the first 
 station of the Jewish exodus, as well as of the capital 
 of the Land of Goshen. Mr. Petrie has identified the 
 palace of Pharaoh at Tahpanhes, a spot very notable in 
 the story of the later Jewish Captivity ; and has further 
 discovered and excavated, with the help of Mr. Ernest 
 Gardner, the site of Naucratis,* the meeting-point in the 
 seventh century B.C., of Egyptian and Greek, and the 
 fulcrum by which the enterprising Hellenic race brought 
 the power of their arms and of their wits to bear on the 
 most ancient and venerable empire in the world. We 
 must leave it to others to speak of the gains thus result- 
 ing to Biblical archaeology ; our intention is to sketch in 
 the light of the newly-discovered facts the relations be- 
 tween the ancient Greeks and Egyptians down to the 
 final establishment of a Greek dynasty in Egypt. 
 
 Whether -the first contact between Egyptian and Greek 
 
 * Naukratis, Part I. By W. M. Flinders Petrie, 1886. Part II. 
 By Ernest A. Gardner, 1888. 
 
1 88 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VII. 
 
 J can be traced so far back as the thirteenth century before 
 I the Christian era is the subject of a notable controversy. 
 On the walls of the temple at Medinet Abu is painted a 
 wonderful record of invasions of Egypt by great allied 
 armies coming from the north, a record which, for com- 
 pleteness and vigour, is surpassed only by the memorable 
 tapestry of Bayeux, which records the Norman invasion 
 of England. But the fate of Egypt's invaders was not 
 that of the Normans ; they are said to have been defeated 
 successively by the warlike Pharaohs Menephthah II. and 
 Rameses III., and either slain or reduced to slavery. Of 
 their ships, their arms, and their ethnological character 
 the wall-paintings give us a vivid representation, and their 
 nationalities are reported in the hieroglyphic text which 
 runs with the scenes of conflict and triumph. Neverthe- 
 less the best authorities are not agreed as to who the 
 invading armies were and whence they came. There is 
 no doubt that their main force consisted of Libyans, but 
 with the Libyans came as allies other races, Pulosata, 
 Tekkari, Danaii, Shardana, Leku, Turisha, and Akaiu- 
 asha. Wiedemann considers that all these races dwelt 
 near the frontiers of Egypt ; Brugsch identifies them 
 with the peoples of Asia Minor, the Teucri, Lycians, 
 Sardians, and the like ; while Chabas and Lenormant 
 incline to spread them over a still wider area, and regard 
 the invading army as a great confederacy drawn from the 
 northern and eastern shores of the Aegean Sea by the 
 hope of conquest and plunder. Certainly the theory that 
 the contingents called those of the Danaii and Akaiuasha 
 consisted of Danaans and Achaeans, and so of men of 
 Hellenic race is very tempting, and is as yet by no means 
 disproved. 
 
 But in any case, military or piratical expeditions would 
 not bring the Greeks into permanent contact with the art, 
 the civilisation, and the politics of the Egyptians : to be 
 
Chap. VII.] Naucratis, and the Greeks in Egypt. 1 89 
 
 really formative, intercourse between nations must be 
 peaceful and leisurely. 
 
 Most of us are familiar with the delightful tale of 
 Herodotus, which narrates how Psammitichus, one of the 
 chiefs among whom Egypt was divided in the middle of 
 the seventh century B.C., became an object of suspicion to 
 his neighbours, and how they drove him out as an exile 
 into the Delta ; how an oracle informed him that he 
 should be set on the throne of Egypt by bronze men 
 from the sea, and how these bronze auxiliaries appeared 
 in the persons of Ionian and Carian sea-farers clad in 
 armour, who did really win for the exile a way to the 
 throne of the Pharaohs. And however much the critical 
 writers of the new school, such as Wiedemann, and Sayce, ( 
 and Busolt, may warn us against the moralising ten- 
 dencies and imperfect information of Herodotus, men 
 will always find a difficulty in doubting the truth of his 
 stories. For ourselves, we are often disposed to take the 
 part of Herodotus against modern criticism, which is apt 
 to err through supposing that people in ancient days 
 always acted reasonably, and valued motives according to 
 the scale of Bentham. Even Wiedemann, though pos- 
 sessed of admirable judgment, is inclined to reject those 
 stones of Herodotus in which oracular responses play a 
 leading part, and we cannot think that he is justified in 
 so doing ; with moderns, reasons of state would outweigh 
 the worth of an oracular response ; but we know for 
 certain that among the less advanced of the Greeks, such 
 as Lacedaemonians and Megarians, oracular advice would 
 outweigh any reasons of expediency, and there seems 
 every reason to suppose that the same frame of mind 
 would prevail in the barbarian kings, who at the dawning 
 of Greek history had learned to value the advice of 
 the Hellenic Zeus and Apollo as delivered at their 
 oracles. 
 
19° New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VII. 
 
 We know, indeed, from monumental evidence* that 
 Psammitichus reigned as colleague of the last Ethiopian 
 king of Egypt, Nut-Amen, and presumably succeeded 
 him, but it can scarcely be doubted that he had great 
 difficulty in making his nominal supremacy real. Whether 
 he was led by an oracle, or by any other inducement, to 
 seek the friendship of the Greeks and Carians, we are 
 justified by a passage in Strabo in supposing that the 
 Milesians were among his most important allies. Strabo 
 says that in the time of Psammitichus, whom he rightly 
 states to have been contemporary with Cyaxares the 
 Mede, the Milesians sailed with thirty ships into the 
 Bolbitine mouth of the Nile, and erected a small fortress ; 
 and that afterwards they sailed up to the Saitic nome, 
 and vanquished in a sea-fight one Inaros , after which they 
 founded Naucratis. Now the only Inaros mentioned in 
 history is the Libyan king, who about B.C. 460 tried to 
 wrest Egypt from the Persians. But he was an ally, not 
 an enemy of the Greeks, and in his days Miletus existed 
 only in ruins ; it is therefore certain that the Inaros whom 
 the Milesians vanquished must have been a different ruler. 
 As he does not appear in the Egyptian dynastic lists, we 
 may be almost sure that he was a chief at the time of 
 disintegration which preceded the final establishment of 
 Psammitichus, when a multitude of petty potentates 
 divided among them the land of the Pharaohs. Doubt- 
 less he was one of the rivals whom the Greek and Carian 
 allies of Psammitichus put down for him. Far from 
 thinking, with Mr. Petrie, that this passage of Strabo is 
 to be set aside as useless, we regard it as the simplest and 
 strongest testimony as to the date of the earliest Greek- 
 settlement in Egypt. If with Wiedemann we fix the 
 
 * Wiedemann, Aegyptische Geschichte (1884) p. 597. A stone 
 at Boulak bears side by side the cartouches of Nut-Amen and of 
 Psammitichus I. 
 
Chap. VII.] Naucratis, and the Greeks in Egypt. 191 
 
 accession of Psammitichus at B.C. 664, we shall regard the 
 building of the Milesian fortress as having taken place / 
 before B.C. 670, and the first settlement of Naucratis as 
 dating from about B.C. 660^— 
 
 This is the time assigned by Herodotus and Strabo for 
 the earliest intercourse between Egypt and Hellas. And 
 that this was the beginning of Greek knowledge of the 
 Nile country, is fully confirmed by all the archaeological 
 evidence which bears upon the matter, both the negative 
 evidence and the positive. 
 
 When Egypt became accessible to Greek travellers, 
 they crowded to behold its wonders, and we can easily 
 understand how the vast size and venerable antiquity of 
 the buildings of the Pharaohs would overpower the lively 
 imaginations of the visitors, and how the fixity and order 
 of Egyptian society would impress them. We moderns 
 can see that a Greek in Memphis or Thebes as much 
 represented a higher race and a nobler order of ideas, as 
 a Spaniard in Mexico, or an Englishman in Canton. 
 With him lay the future, with the Egyptians only the 
 past ; while they were sinking into decay, he was just 
 starting on his great career as master for all time in 
 science and art. But in the seventh century before our 
 era this was not so clear as it is now. The Greeks called 
 the Egyptians barbarians, but that term had not yet 
 acquired the haughty meaning which filled it at a later 
 date. So when the Egyptian priests dwelt on the an- 
 tiquity of their civilisation, and told the Greek travellers 
 that in its presence they were like children before a 
 venerable master, we cannot wonder that the strangers 
 felt abashed. When Hecataeus of Miletus was rash 
 enough to boast in the temple at Egyptian Thebes that 
 his sixteenth ancestor was a god, the priests led him into v 
 an inner sanctuary, and showed him three hundred and 
 forty-one statues of high-priests who had borne sway for 
 
192 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VII. 
 
 life in successive generations, and told him that since 
 that series began the gods had not walked the earth or 
 begotten mortal men. Solon, wisest of the Greeks, is 
 represented in the Timaeus of Plato as having been 
 gently set down by an aged Egyptian priest : " You 
 Greeks, Solon, are ever .boys, and there is no old man 
 among you ; you are young in mind, for you have no 
 ancient belief handed down by long tradition, and no 
 doctrine hoary with age." 
 
 It is natural then that with minds thus cowed and over- 
 shadowed by the vast age of all they found in Egypt, the 
 Greeks should have been ready to believe all that was 
 told them by the priests as to the derivation of the Greek 
 gods and Greek rites and customs from the land of the 
 Pharaohs. Herodotus is entirely vanquished. " The 
 names of the gods came to Greece from Egypt." " The 
 Egyptians were earliest among men in introducing re- 
 ligious assemblies and processions and set prayers, and 
 the Greeks learned of them." "The customs I have 
 mentioned, and others which I shall mention hereafter, the 
 Greeks took from the Egyptians." And later writers, 
 such as Diodorus and Plutarch, speak in the same strain. 
 They pass at once from a conviction of the greater an- 
 tiquity of Egyptian civilisation to a belief that the Greeks 
 must have borrowed from the people of Egypt those 
 cults and those customs which were alike in the two 
 peoples. 
 
 So long as the Egyptian language was unknown and 
 the early history of the country lay in darkness, modern 
 writers not unnaturally adopted this view ; and the 
 French savants who accompanied to Egypt the army of 
 Bonaparte went with an eager expectation that they 
 would find in the land of the pyramids the source alike 
 of the religions and of the civilisation of antiquity. They 
 hoped to find the origin not only of the laws of Solon, 
 
Chap. VII.] Naucratis, and the Greeks in Egypt. 193 
 
 but also of those of Moses, and to prove that the earliest 
 civilisation in the world was also one of the wisest and 
 most fruitful. It is hardly necessary to say that the 
 reading of the hieroglyphic texts, combined with the 
 progress of the historical sciences, has put an end to all 
 such sanguine anticipations. We now know that, high as 
 was the development of Egyptian civilisation in certain 
 directions, it was by no means the fertile mother of other 
 civilisations ; rather, like that of China, a complete and 
 fully developed growth, but not in the main line of human 
 progress. All mo dern writers are agreed that religious 
 cult s and national customs are exactly what the Greeks 
 did not borrow from Egypt, any more than the Hebrews 
 borrowed thence their religion, or the Phoenicians their 
 commerce. All are agreed that before the reign of Psam- 
 mitichus and the founding of Naucratis, Egypt was a 
 sealed book to the Greeks. It is likely that the Phoe- , 
 nicians, who were from time to time the subjects of the 
 Pharaohs, were admitted, where aliens like the Greeks 
 were excluded. We have indeed positive evidence that 
 the Egyptians did not wish strange countries to learn 
 their art, for in a treaty between them and the Hittites it 
 is stipulated that neither country shall harbour fugitive 
 artists from the other. But however the fact may be 
 accounted for, it is an undoubted fact that long before 
 Psammitichus threw Egypt open to the foreigner, the 
 Phoenicians had studied in the school of Egyptian art, 
 and learned to copy all sorts of handiwork procured from 
 the valley of the Nile. This is proved not only by the 
 excavations in Greece, but by the results of Sir Henry 
 Layard's investigations at Nimrud, where many Phoe- 
 nician bowls of Egyptising style were found in the north- 
 west palace, as well as by the results of M. Renan's 
 mission to Phoenicia. 
 
 What kind of influence it was which, after the build- 
 
 o 
 
194 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VII. 
 
 ing of Naucratis, Egyptian civilisation exercised upon 
 Greek beliefs and laws and arts, we shall presently con- 
 sider ; for the present we will resume the thread of Egyp- 
 tian history, which exhibits the other phase of the con- 
 nection, the influence of Greek character and valour on 
 the political fortunes of the valley of the Nile. 
 
 Psammitichus made his birthplace, Sals, the capital of 
 Egypt. All the country had greatly suffered in the wars 
 with the fierce and brutal Assyrians, and the ancient 
 capitals Memphis and Thebes were greatly reduced ; but 
 this was not the only reason for passing them by in 
 favour of a site in the Delta. The fatal step of calling in 
 armed strangers compelled Psammitichus, after becoming 
 king, still to lean on their support. He attracted to 
 Egypt large bodies of Carian and Ionian mercenaries, 
 and settled them at Daphnae, on the Pelusian branch of 
 the Nile, a spot well chosen as an outpost against possible 
 invasion from Asia. Here the new-comers occupied 
 fortified camps on both sides of the river. Herodotus 
 says that the King entrusted to them certain Egyptian 
 children to bring up, and that these became the parents 
 of the entire caste of interpreters, who in the next age 
 became the intermediaries between Greek and Egyptian. 
 If the mercenaries came, as was probable, without wife or 
 child, it is likely that Egyptian women were assigned to 
 them, and that a large number of half-breeds arose, of 
 whom a separate caste would naturally be formed by 
 the exclusive and stranger-hating dwellers by the Nile : 
 indeed we are inclined to interpret in this way the state- 
 ment of Herodotus. 
 
 Mr. Petrie has made on the site of Daphnae* some ex- 
 cavations which have led to interesting results from many 
 points of view. He found the site of the camps, and in 
 the soil of them weapons and horse-gear. He also found 
 
 * Tanis, Nebesheh and Dejenneh. By W. M. Flinders Petrie, iSSS. 
 
Chap. VII.] Naucratis, and the Greeks in Egypt. 195 
 
 the foundations of a fort, beneath the corners of which 
 were placed, according to the Egyptian custom, founda- 
 tion deposits recording the name of the builder of it, 
 The name is in this case Psammitichus ; a fact entirely 
 confirming Mr. Petrie's views. But the place was not 
 only a military outpost, it also became a Greek settle- 
 ment ; this is proved alike by the quantity of early 
 Hellenic pottery found on the site, and by the statement 
 of Herodotus that in his time the docks used by the 
 inhabitants still existed in ruins, for docks imply trade. 
 Amasis, as we shall presently see, removed the Greeks 
 from Daphnae and put an Egyptian garrison in their 
 place, which again had given way in Herodotus' time to a 
 Persian garrison ; the rulers of Egypt, whoever they were, 
 had to maintain here an outpost against the fierce Be- 
 dawin tribes of Syria. We can thus date the Greek 
 colony at Daphnae as having lasted from about B.C. 664 
 to about 570 ; and it is a great gain to be able to assign 
 with confidence all the objects found at Daphnae to this 
 one century. 
 
 Egypt seems at once to have recovered some prosperity 
 under the new ruler with his new allies. Temples of the 
 gods arose, or were restored, on all sides, as we learn 
 from many a dedicatory inscription still preserved. And 
 it is interesting to find in the art of the Sal'te kings a 
 marked new impulse. At this period, writes Wiedemann, 
 in sculptured figures "the proportions of the body grow 
 slimmer and more shapely, the muscles are worked out 
 with greater naturalism. The features of the face, even 
 the hair, shows a treatment careful in the smallest detail, 
 and in the modelling of the ear and nose especially we 
 may discern the industry and talent of the artists. 1 ' And 
 the new impulse was not less visible in arms than in art. 
 After securing Egypt from invasion, by fixing strong 
 garrisons on its eastern, western, and southern borders, 
 
 O 2 
 
196 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. VII. 
 
 Psammitichus marched with his native army and his 
 Greek allies into Syria. Ashdod was taken after a long 
 siege, and inscriptions found at Aradus and Tyre prove 
 that all Palestine fell at this time into the hands of the 
 Pharaohs. But a still more powerful invader came from 
 the north ; the dreaded and destructive host of the 
 Cimmerians poured down into Syria, burning and slaying 
 like the Mongol hordes of later times. Psammitichus 
 was fain to retire ; he is said to have bought his safety 
 with money, and perhaps, but for his castle of Daphnae, 
 the plague of human locusts might have followed him to 
 the banks of the Nile. 
 
 According to Herodotus and Diodorus, the favour 
 shown to the Greeks by the King was the cause of a 
 great revolt of the native Egyptian troops, who left the 
 frontier-fortresses, and marched south beyond Elephan- 
 tine, where they settled, resisting all the entreaties of 
 Psammitichus, who naturally deplored the loss of the 
 mainstay of his dominions, and developed into the race 
 of the Sebridae. Wiedemann, however, rejects the whole 
 story as unhistorical, and certainly, if we closely con- 
 sider it, it contains great inherent improbabilities. Even 
 among a people naturally so unwarlike as the Egyptians, 
 a great revolt of troops, and the march of an armed force 
 from end to end of Egypt, could scarcely take place 
 without some fighting. 
 
 Psammitichus died in B.C. 610, and was succeeded by 
 his son Necho, who was his equal in enterprise and 
 vigour. This King paid great attention to the fleet of 
 Egypt, and Greek shipwrights were set to work on both 
 the Mediterranean and Red Seas to build triremes for 
 the State navy. A fleet of his ships, we are told, suc- 
 ceeded in sailing round Africa, a very great feat for the 
 age. The King even attempted the task, of which the 
 completion was reserved for the Persian Darius, the 
 
Chap. VII.] Naucratis, mid the Greeks in Egypt. 197 
 
 Ptolemies, and Trajan, of making a canal from the Medi- 
 terranean to the Red Sea. Herodotus says that, after 
 sacrificing the lives of 120,000 men to the labour and 
 heat of the task, he gave it up, in consequence of the 
 warning of an oracle that he was toiling only for the 
 barbarians. It is an easy task with Wiedemann to sug- 
 gest reasons for its abandonment of a more political and 
 statesmanlike character, such as a wish to stop the waste 
 of human life, or a fear which in such cases has at all 
 periods of history terrified engineers, that the levels of 
 the two seas might prove quite different, and that the 
 waters might make a breach over the land. But, after all, 
 we have no reason for assuming that a Pharaoh would 
 always act from motives which we would approve, and the 
 simplest plan is to take the story as it stands, perhaps 
 with a grain of salt. 
 
 Necho, like his father, must needs try the edge of his 
 new weapon, the Ionian mercenaries, on Asia. At first 
 he was successful. Josiah, King of Judah, came out 
 against him, but was slain, and his army dispersed. 
 Greek valour carried Necho as far as the Euphrates, and 
 in gratitude the King dedicated to Apollo in the temple 
 of the Branchidae at Miletus the linen cuirass which he 
 wore. But Nebuchadnezzar, son of the King of Babylon, 
 marched against the invaders, and defeated them in a 
 great battle near Carchemish. His father's death recalled 
 him to Babylon, and Egypt was for the moment saved 
 from counter-invasion by the stubborn resistance offered 
 to the Babylonian arms by Jehoiakim, King of Judah, 
 a resistance fatal to the Jewish race ; for Jerusalem was 
 captured after a long siege, and most of the inhabitants 
 carried into captivity. 
 
 Of Psammitichus II., who succeeded Necho, we should 
 know but little were it not for the archaeological record. 
 Herodotus only says that he attacked Ethiopia, and died 
 
198 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. YII. 
 
 after a reign of six years. But of the expedition thus 
 summarily recorded we have a lasting and memorable 
 result in the well-known inscriptions written by Rhodians 
 and other Greek mercenaries on the legs of the colossi 
 at Abu Simbel in Nubia, which record how certain of 
 them came thither in the reign of Psammitichus, pushing 
 up the river in boats as far as it was navigable, that is, 
 perhaps, up to the second cataract. The importance of 
 these inscriptions to the history of Greek epigraphy is 
 well known ; but their testimony had hitherto lost much 
 of its force, because it could not be finally determined 
 whether they belonged to the reign of the first or second 
 Psammitichus. Of late most scholars have agreed with 
 Wiedemann in assigning them to the later monarch ; and 
 the excavations at Naucratis seem to prove definitely that 
 this view is right. Mr. Ernest Gardner, who publishes 
 with accuracy the numerous Greek inscriptions which were 
 found at Naucratis, proves that many of them are of 
 considerably earlier date than the inscriptions of Abu 
 Simbel. As the earliest Naucratic inscriptions, however, 
 cannot date from an earlier time than the reign of the 
 first Psammitichus, when Naucratis was founded, it is 
 certain that the Abu Simbel inscriptions must belong to 
 the reign of the second king of that name. 
 
 Apries, the Hophra of the Bible, was the next king. 
 The early part of his reign was marked by successful 
 warfare against the Phoenicians and the peoples of Syria; 
 but, like his predecessor, he was unable to maintain a 
 footing in Asia in the face of the powerful and warlike 
 Nebuchadnezzar. The hostility which prevailed between 
 Egypt and Babylon at this time, caused King Apries to 
 open a refuge for those Jews who fled from the persecu- 
 tion of Nebuchadnezzar. He assigned to their leaders, 
 among whom were the daughters of the King of Judah, 
 a palace of his own at Daphnae, " Pharaoh's house at 
 
Chap. VII.] Nancratis, and the Greeks in Egypt. 199 
 
 Tahpanhes," as it is called by Jeremiah. That prophet 
 was among the fugitives, and uttered in the palace a 
 notable prophecy (xliii. 9) that King Nebuchadnezzar 
 should come and spread his conquering tent over the 
 pavement before it. Formerly it was supposed that this 
 prophecy remained unfulfilled, but this opinion has to 
 be abandoned. Recently-discovered Egyptian and Baby- 
 lonian inscriptions prove that Nebuchadnezzar conquered 
 Egypt as far as Syene, at which point a certain general 
 named Hor claims to have stopped his advance. Mr. 
 Petrie, while investigating the site of Daphnae, has found 
 fresh evidence to the same effect. He has discovered the 
 ruins of a royal palace built by Psammitichus I., which 
 to this day, most curiously, bears the title of "the house 
 of the Jew's daughter ; " ruins which by their condition 
 prove that the palace was destroyed by a hostile invader, 
 in all likelihood by the Babylonian monarch. He has 
 even found the square pavement on which, according to 
 the Prophet, Nebuchadnezzar should set up his tent. 
 There are few people who do not feel in the presence of 
 facts like these that our grasp of many scenes of ancient 
 history is becoming stronger, and our outlook clearer. 
 
 The fall of Apries was brought about by his ingratitude 
 to the Greeks, and his contempt for the lives of his own 
 subjects. He had formed the project of bringing under 
 his sway the Greek cities of the Cyrenaica, at that time 
 in a most wealthy and flourishing condition, prospering 
 under the rule of the Battiad princes, and drawing within 
 the circle of Hellenic commerce all the nomadic nations 
 of Northern Africa. Apries despatched against Cyrene 
 a large force ; but the Cyreneans bravely defended them- 
 selves, and as the Egyptians on this occasion marched 
 without their Greek allies, they were entirely defeated, 
 and most of them perished by the sword, or in the deserts 
 which separate Cyrene from Egypt. The defeated troops, 
 
\ 
 
 200 New Chapters m Greek History. [Chap. VII. 
 
 and their countrymen who remained behind in garrison 
 in Egypt, imputed the disaster to treachery on the part 
 of Apries, believing that he would willingly reduce the 
 number of his Egyptian warriors in his partiality for 
 their Greek allies. They revolted, and chose as their 
 leader Amasis, a man of experience and daring. But 
 Apries, though deserted by his subjects, hoped still to 
 maintain his throne by Greek aid. At the head of thirty 
 thousand Ionians and Carians he marched against Amasis. 
 At Momemphis a battle took place between the rival 
 kings and between the rival nations ; but the numbers 
 of the Egyptians prevailed over the arms and discipline 
 of the mercenaries, and Apries was defeated and captured 
 by his rival, who, however, allowed him for some years to 
 retain the name of joint-king. 
 
 It is the best possible proof of the solidity of Greek 
 influence in Egypt at this time that Amasis, though set 
 on the throne by the native army after a victory over the 
 Greek mercenaries, yet did not expel these latter from 
 Egypt, but, on the contrary, raised them to higher favour 
 than before. The troops which had been settled at 
 Daphnae in the *' Camps," he brought to Memphis to be 
 his body-guard. Herodotus says that it was Amasis who 
 gave Naucratis to the Greeks to settle in ; this is in- 
 correct, since the inscriptions found at Naucratis prove 
 beyond a doubt that the city was in the possession of 
 Greeks before the time of Psammitichus II. ; but it may 
 well be that Amasis accorded to the city special privi- 
 leges, and laid the foundation of its great prosperity. 
 Mr. Petrie's careful investigations enable us to conjecture 
 what it was that Naucratis owed to the favour of Amasis, 
 — the building of the Hellenion, of which we shall 
 presently have to speak. 
 
 Amasis entered more fully than his predecessors into 
 the stream of the history of the Levant. He conquered 
 
Chap. VII.] Naucratis, and the Greeks in Egypt. 201 
 
 Cyprus and the cities of Phoenicia, and he won victories 
 over the Arabs. He won by wisdom what Apries had 
 vainly sought by arms, a predominant influence in Cy- 
 rene ; and a fair daughter of that city became his queen. 
 He gave fresh impulse to the cutting of canals and the 
 extension of agriculture, and we are told that in his day 
 there were in Egypt twenty thousand flourishing cities, 
 a statement which seems to be an exaggeration. To 
 him was ascribed the promulgation of the law, that every 
 year each dweller in Egypt should report to the ruler of 
 the district where he lived by what means he made a / 
 living, those who could make no satisfactory statement 
 being condemned to death. This is among the earliest 
 of recorded poor-laws, and it is certainly one of the most 
 drastic ; whether there was any relation between it and 
 the flourishing condition of the country we cannot venture 
 to say. 
 
 In the delightful dawn of connected European history 
 we see Amasis as a wise and wealthy prince, ruling in 
 Egypt at the time when Polycrates was tyrant of Samos ; 
 and when Croesus of Lydia, the richest king of his time, 
 was beginning to be alarmed by the rapid expansion of 
 the Persian power under Cyrus. We hear of Pythagoras 
 visiting him and obtaining letters from him to the priests 
 of Egypt, which induced them to communicate to that 
 earliest of mystics some of their choicest secrets. Thales 
 was also a welcome guest at the court of Amasis. We 
 need not repeat the story, familiar in these days to 
 children, of the friendship between Amasis and Poly- 
 crates, and how Amasis broke off that friendship because 
 he was convinced that some calamity impended over 
 Polycrates. Wiedemann's version is that Amasis was 
 afraid that he might be landed in difficulties, supposing 
 that Polycrates should quarrel with his subjects ; but 
 we must confess that the German professor's explanation" 
 
202 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VII. 
 
 seems to us uncomfortably modern, while the story of 
 the ring of Polycrates suits admirably the whole mental 
 and religious atmosphere of Greek antiquity. Critical 
 historians are bound to make new theories in such a case ; 
 but the tale of Herodotus will outlive them all, and afford 
 a starting-point for fresh theories a thousand years hence. 
 The alliance of Amasis and Croesus must in any case be 
 taken as a historical fact, for there were Egyptian troops, 
 perhaps we should rather say a body of Egypto-Greek 
 mercenaries, in the Lydian army when Cyrus defeated 
 it ; the Persian king especially noticed their valour, and 
 gave them lands for settlement in Asia Minor, where 
 their descendants dwelt in later times. 
 
 In the days of Psammitichus III., the son of Amasis, 
 the storm which had overshadowed Asia broke upon 
 Egypt. One of the leaders of the Greek mercenaries 
 in Egypt named Phanes, a native of Halicarnassus, made 
 his way to the Persian Court, and persuaded Cambyses, 
 who, according to the story, had received from Amasis 
 one of those affronts which have so often produced wars 
 between despots, to invade Egypt in full force. In a 
 battle fought at Pelusium about B.C. 525, the Egyptians 
 and their Greek allies were utterly defeated by the 
 Persian king, and this one victory laid Egypt at his feet. 
 As the Persian conquest is the beginning of quite a new 
 era in Egyptian history, and as it closes the time of the 
 greatest prosperity of Naucratis, we will at this point 
 interrupt our sketch of Egyptian history, in order to trace 
 the fortunes of that city during the reigns of the Phil- 
 hellenic monarchs of the Sai'te line. 
 
 On the subject of the position of Naucratis there is 
 distinct and irreconcilable contradiction between Ptolemy 
 and the map of Peutinger on one side and Strabo on the 
 other. The two former authorities place the city to the 
 left (looking down the stream) of the Canobic branch of 
 
Chap. VII.] Naucratis, and the Greeks in Egypt. 203 
 
 the Nile, that is to say, outside the Delta enclosed by 
 the Canobic and Pelusiac branches ; while Strabo as 
 clearly places the city within the Delta and on the right 
 of the Canobic branch. Most modern writers had fol- 
 lowed Strabo ; but certainty would never have been 
 attained, but for the spade. That useful instrument has 
 settled the controversy : — 
 
 " It was by the merest accident," writes Mr. Petrie,* 
 " that I got the clue to the site of Naucratis. An Arab 
 at the Pyramids sold me an archaic Greek statuette, 
 and, cross-questioning him, I heard of the place from 
 which he had brought it. I visited the site as soon as I 
 could, and found that the ground which the Arabs had 
 cleared was strewn with pieces of early Greek pottery. 
 When I went there to begin work this past season " 
 (1884-5), "I saw a t the very house where I obtained 
 quarters a decree of the city of Naucratis which had 
 been found in the ruins ; and it only needed the results 
 of our excavations to turn a hopeful probability into a 
 certainty." 
 
 The site thus identified is at present on a canal to 
 the west of the westernmost branch of the Nile ; thus 
 by the logic of facts Ptolemy is proved to be right and 
 Strabo wrong. 
 
 On another point the correction of classical authorities 
 is rather less conclusive. At present the site of Naucratis 
 is on a canal which joins the Nile some miles off, while 
 in many statements of ancient writers it seems to be 
 implied that the city stood on the river itself. Mr. Petrie 
 is at no loss for reasons why a canal would be a more 
 satisfactory channel of communication with the outer 
 world than a river. 
 
 " If Naucratis f had been on an open branch of the 
 
 * Report of the Egypt Exploration Fiend, 1S85, p. 15. 
 t Ibid. 
 
204 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap, yil 
 
 river, it would have been almost unapproachable during 
 the three months of the inundation. And then these 
 three months were the most valuable of all for trade ; 
 since then the natives had nothing to do, the whole land 
 being under water, and at the same time they had all 
 the proceeds of the harvest lying by in hand. This was 
 then the great time for the Greek traders ; and when 
 the villages stood out of the water like the islands of 
 the Aegean, as Herodotus describes them, the Greek 
 pedlars were doubtless pushing their fortunes actively 
 in shallow boats, sailing from village to village." 
 
 Perhaps this argument, that a city on the Nile itself 
 could not be approached during the inundation, must 
 not be too much relied on, since almost all the cities 
 of Egypt did stand on the Nile. And when Mr. Petrie 
 goes on to cite Herodotus as a witness in favour of the 
 position of Naucratis on a canal, he seems to us to 
 misquote Herodotus. He writes, " Herodotus expressly 
 says that, when the Nile was in flood, they sailed up 
 from Naucratis to Memphis by the canal which flowed 
 past the Pyramids, owing to the stream of the river 
 being too strong against them." But what Herodotus 
 really says (ii. 97) is quite different. "At this season 
 (of inundation) boats no longer keep the course of the 
 river but sail right across the plain. On the voyage 
 from Naucratis to Memphis at this season, you pass 
 close to the Pyramids, whereas the usual course is by 
 the apex of the Delta." But though we cannot agree 
 with Mr. Petrie's reasoning, he has his fact. The site 
 of Naucratis is now on a canal, and must have been 
 so originally, unless the course of the Nile has changed, 
 which is scarcely unlikely. 
 
 By a close attention to the stratification of the remains 
 of Naucratis, Mr. Petrie has recovered for us the outlines 
 of the history of the city. The lowest stratum of all 
 
Chap. VII. ] Naucratis, and the Greeks in Egypt. 205 
 
 is a bed of charcoal and ashes, which seems to be the 
 result of a conflagration of a cluster of poor houses 
 built in large part of wood. This village may have been 
 the earliest settlement of the Greeks ; but it seems to 
 us equally probable that it may have been a native 
 Egyptian village, or perhaps a settlement of Phoenicians, 
 conquered and destroyed by the Milesians when they 
 came to make a settlement in the land. The next stage 
 of the history of Naucratis, corresponding almost to 
 a certainty with the reign of Psammitichus I., has left 
 us more distinct and solid memorials. Among these 
 memorials must first be mentioned a large quantity of 
 scarabs and moulds for scarabs, evidently the stock in 
 trade of a maker of seals and amulets. Of these many 
 bear the name of Psammitichus I., some those of Psam- 
 mitichus II., and apparently of Apries. Here the series 
 comes to an abrupt conclusion, and it would seem from 
 the extent of the stock suddenly thrown away or buried, 
 that the cessation of the factory must have been caused 
 by some event which greatly disturbed the trade of 
 Naucratis, perhaps, as Mr. Petrie suggests, the defeat of 
 Apries' Greek mercenaries. We may observe in passing, 
 that scarabs imitated from those of Egypt, and like 
 those produced in the factory just mentioned, have been 
 found in Rhodes, and on other Greek sites. They have 
 always hitherto been supposed to be of Phoenician work, 
 but in future archaeologists will be more inclined to 
 regard them as imported from Naucratis. 
 
 To the same period as the factory of scarabs belongs 
 the foundation of the earliest Greek temples of Nau- 
 cratis. Of these several are mentioned in a well-known 
 passage of Herodotus (ii. 178), who says that, beside 
 the Hellenion, which belonged to the Greeks in common, 
 the Aeginetans founded a temple of Zeus, the Samians 
 one of Hera, and the Milesians one of Apollo. An 
 
206 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VII. 
 
 early temple of Aphrodite is also spoken of by Athe- 
 naeus (xv. 18). Of these temples the Hellenion and 
 the temple of Apollo were found by Mr. Petrie in 1885 ; 
 the temples of Hera and Aphrodite were discovered in 
 1886, when the excavations were continued by Mr. 
 Ernest Gardner. A temple dedicated to the Dioscuri 
 has also been discovered. Of the Hellenion we shall 
 presently have to speak. The other temples mostly 
 show proofs of early foundation and subsequent re- 
 foundation ; of the successive temples of Apollo, a few 
 fragments, interesting in point of architectural detail, 
 have been preserved. All the temples, however, are very 
 small ; if we compare them with contemporary temples 
 of the West or of Asia Minor, with the magnificent 
 structures of Paestum, of Agrigentum, or of Ephesus, 
 they will indeed seem mean. Their scale proves beyond 
 question that we must not think of Naucratis, even when 
 at the height of its fortunes, as of a great or wealthy 
 city, but rather as of an emporium or trading-station, 
 chiefly important as being the point at which the Greek 
 and Egyptian civilisations met. 
 
 But time, which has destroyed all that was splendid 
 in the temples of Naucratis, the marble pillars, the 
 cultus-statues, the dedicated vessels of gold and silver, 
 has made some amends by preserving to us their rubbish- 
 heaps. It was the custom of the city that Greeks who 
 entered Egypt by that way should dedicate to the 
 patron deity under whose protection they voyaged a 
 statuette or vessel of pottery in memory of a safe 
 journey. On the object so dedicated they would in- 
 scribe the name of the donor. And as from time to 
 time the temples became too full of these pious offer- 
 ings, the temple officers would dig a trench and bury 
 all that they judged to be superfluous, breaking them up 
 for economy of space. Out of such trenches Mr. Petrie 
 
Chai\ VII.] Naucratis, and the Greeks in Egypt. 207 
 
 and Mr. Gardner have extracted thousands of fragments 
 of pottery, painted with figures, or inscribed with dedi- 
 catory formulae, besides many statuettes, mostly frag- 
 mentary also. To build up these fragments into vases, 
 nearly or partly complete, has been a laborious task, of 
 which the results can scarcely fail to be valuable. We 
 have acquired a long series of inscriptions for the epi- 
 graphist ; and for the archaeologist a quantity of vases, 
 which can be dated by means of the inscriptions which 
 they bear. And we have acquired a sort of visitor's 
 album, a record of the Greeks who went to Egypt, 
 from the foundation of the city under Psammitichus, 
 down to the Persian conquest, when these dedicatory 
 customs seem to have been discontinued. Among these 
 is one name of no ordinary interest, that of Rhoecus, 
 probably the same sculptor Rhoecus who was in an- 
 tiquity spoken of as having worked in the Egyptian 
 style, and who was at the same time, with his son 
 Theodorus, one of the originators of the production in 
 Greece of statues of divinities. In another case we have 
 a possible autograph of Sappho,* whose brother, if not 
 herself, is known to have journeyed to Naucratis. On 
 one large vessel we read the name of Phanes, the son 
 of Glaucus, whom we can scarcely be wrong in identi- 
 fying with the Greek captain of mercenaries, who led 
 Cambyses into Egypt. 
 
 It is a point which never can be finally settled, how 
 much Amasis did for the Greeks of Naucratis, and in 
 what light he really regarded them. The two statements 
 of Herodotus — first, that he won his throne through 
 Egyptian support and a victory over the Greeks ; and 
 secondly, that he was a great friend and patron of the 
 Greeks, — seem at first sight to be discordant. Mr. Petrie 
 endeavours with considerable ingenuity to reconcile them. 
 * Kaukratis, Part I. p. 62, No. 532. 
 
2o8 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. YH. 
 
 He maintains that the abolition of other Greek settle- 
 ments in Egypt, and the concession of a monopoly of 
 Greek trade to Naucratis, was really an act quite as agree- 
 able to the conservative inhabitants of Egypt as to the 
 people of Naucratis themselves. It confined the Greek 
 traders within definite limits, and prevented them from 
 forming settlements in the great Egyptian cities, where 
 their business activity, their love of innovation, their 
 curiosity and talkativeness, would render them very 
 unpleasant. We may be quite sure, however, that unless 
 the Greeks had in some way had the best of the 
 bargain, they would not have formed of Amasis the 
 very favourable opinion which Herodotus repeats. The 
 likelihood is, that the King, being a wise and liberal- 
 minded man, saw that the goodwill of the foreigners 
 was necessary to him, and behaved towards them in a 
 generous spirit, at the same time conceding something 
 to the exclusiveness of his native subjects. 
 
 With the reign of Amasis, Naucratis reached its highest 
 point of commerce and renown. Herodotus says that 
 he allowed the Greeks of Naucratis to dedicate precincts 
 to various deities. It is a curious confirmation of this 
 statement that, according to Mr. Petrie, while the founda- 
 tions of the temple of Apollo date from somewhat after 
 the middle of the seventh century, the outer wall of his 
 precinct appears to have been built a century later. We 
 also venture to think it probable that the building of the 
 Hellenion belongs to the reign of Amasis. This is not 
 indeed stated by any ancient writer, nor can we prove 
 it from the results of excavation ; but it seems to be 
 implied in what Herodotus says, and is in no way in- 
 consistent with the testimony of the spade. 
 
 After enumerating the Greek cities which had a 
 share in the foundation of the Hellenion, Herodotus 
 adds : " These are the states to which the enclosure 
 
Chap. VII.] Naucratis, and the Greeks in Egypt. 209 
 
 belongs ; and it is these states which appoint overseers 
 of the market ; other states which claim a share in it, 
 claim that to which they have no right. Besides, the 
 Aeginetans by themselves founded an enclosure of Zeus, 
 the Samians of Hera, and the Milesians of Apollo." It 
 is thus evident that the Hellenion not only contained 
 a temple or temples dedicated to the gods of Greece, 
 but also an important market. This Hellenion Mr. Petrie 
 has, almost beyond a doubt, discovered, and it fully 
 bears out the description of Herodotus. 
 
 The enclosure consisted of a vast rectangle, some 
 250 yards square, bounded by a wall about 50 feet in 
 thickness and in height, made of native brick. It 
 contained two great buildings. Of these, one has en- 
 tirely disappeared : the natives, who have in quite recent 
 times destroyed it for the sake of its materials, state 
 that it contained passages and rooms, with an entrance 
 on the ground-floor, " like a house in Cairo." More 
 than this we can never know about it ; but we may 
 conjecture that it served rather for a dwelling-place 
 than for temples of the gods. Of the other building 
 there are abundant remains, and a most singular struc- 
 ture it must have been, but admirably adapted, like 
 everything Greek, to the end which those who planned 
 it had in view. It was in form a square, 60 yards 
 each way, framed by walls 16 feet thick and about 
 60 feet hie;h. The entrance was at 18 feet above the 
 ground, evidently approached by a wooden scaffolding, 
 which could be on occasion removed, and led into a 
 passage, from which branched off to right and left 
 twenty-six chambers. Under each of these chambers 
 was a cellar, but the cellars did not communicate one 
 with the other. There were also upper floors divided 
 into chambers in similar fashion. 
 
 It is at once evident that we have in this building 
 
210 . New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. Yll. 
 
 a great market and store-house. The deep cellars, 
 each only accessible from the chamber above it, would 
 furnish ample and secure space for storage ; the rooms 
 above would serve as show-rooms and offices, as well as 
 work-rooms. The whole would form a hive of industry 
 much like a modern factory, full of looms and wheels, 
 and the sound of iron and brass. Than the agora in 
 ordinary Greek cities, nothing could be more open and 
 simple. Outdoor life, with crowding and talking and 
 sight-seeing, suited the restless and enquiring Greek. 
 Yet here we see him living in a vast pile of building. 
 And the reason is clear. In Hellas he felt himself to be 
 surrounded by friends and fellow-citizens. But in Egypt 
 he felt that he was surrounded by an alien race and 
 a rival civilisation ; by a people who frankly despised 
 instead of admiring him, and would be delighted at 
 any opportunity to drive him into the sea. So he took 
 precautions. 
 
 Close consideration of the factory shows it to have 
 been admirably fitted for defence, whether against a 
 crowd or an army. There was no entrance save at 
 1 8 feet from the ground, the approach to which could 
 easily be removed. 
 
 " If an enemy began to mine the wall, which was 
 1 6 feet thick, he would at last, on getting through it, 
 find himself in the bottom of a well " (that is in one of 
 the cellars), " from which the besieged would have had 
 ample time and notice to remove all means of com- 
 munication. To mount a wall 18 feet high to a doorway, 
 in the face of opponents above, would be impossible ; 
 or even the floors might be taken out and the doors 
 fastened, so that the defenders could hurl down stones 
 from a height of 50 feet or more on the enemy. The 
 building was simply impregnable to direct attack, and 
 has never been breached in this way." 
 
Chap. VII.] Naucratis, and the Greeks in Egypt. 2 1 1 
 
 Nor would it be a hopeful task to try to reduce by 
 famine a place so abounding in storage-room for food 
 and wine. And even before attempting either assault 
 or blockade, the enemy would have to storm the outer 
 wall of the great enclosure, 50 feet thick. 
 
 As we are now busy with the Hellenion, it may be 
 well to sketch its history from the foundation onwards. 
 It appears that at some time during the Persian rule 
 part of the outer wall of the enclosure was broken down, 
 when and how we know not. Ptolemy Philadelphus 
 determined on its restoration. In the breach he set a 
 large building, faced with limestone, no doubt for offices 
 and for commerce. In connection with this building 
 occurred some of the most interesting discoveries of the 
 year. Mr. Petrie found that exactly under each corner 
 of it had been buried a set of foundation deposits, which 
 clearly marked the date and character of the structure. 
 In each deposit were models of the tools used for the 
 building, and specimens of the materials employed in its 
 construction ; a model brick, a plaque of turquoise, jasper, 
 agate and obsidian ; an ingot of gold, of silver, lead, 
 copper and iron ; also models of ceremonial implements, 
 libation vases, corn rubbers, a knife and an axe, to- 
 gether with cartouches of Ptolemy himself. This dis- 
 covery is not only charming in itself, but of great 
 promise for the future, because it affords us hope of 
 being able hereafter often to determine the date and 
 character of Egyptian buildings, even when they have 
 perished to the ground, since Ptolemy followed an 
 old custom of the country in burying such record of 
 his works. 
 
 In the Roman age the building of Ptolemy was pulled 
 down, and its materials used for the erection of the 
 houses and offices of Roman officials dwelling in the 
 enclosure. But by that time Naucratis had gone far 
 
 P 2 
 

 212 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VII. 
 
 on the downward road leading from greatness to 
 decay. 
 
 In all Greek cities, as i* well known, there were two 
 main parts, the acropolis and the lower city. At Nau- 
 cratis there was no hill whereon to build an acropolis ; 
 the Hellenion, with its mighty walls, took the place of 
 a citadel and refuge in case of danger. At its gates 
 lay the dwelling-houses of the city, its streets and 
 docks. Of these houses and streets the plan has, to 
 some extent, been discovered by Mr. Petrie. Though 
 the site has been ruined and the whole ground carried 
 away by the Arab diggers of sebach, yet by pains and 
 study the lines of street can be followed, and the walls 
 of the houses distinguished from the mud in which they 
 are embedded. And these investigations prove that 
 the city at its best was small and poor. The contrast 
 between the chief Greek settlement in Egypt and the 
 contemporary Greek settlements in Italy and Sicily, on 
 the Aegean and the Euxine, is indeed marked, and calls 
 for explanation. 
 
 Nor is the explanation far to seek. When the swarms 
 thrown off by the parent cities of Greece landed in a 
 country inhabited by Thracians or Phrygians, by wander- 
 ing Libyan tribes or the rude but hardy races of South 
 Italy, they came as a superior race, bringing with them 
 at least the rudiments of arts and letters, as well as 
 social order and habits of self-government. Those 
 among whom they settled at once felt their superi- 
 ority ; and they had a proud consciousness of it them- 
 selves. They did not hesitate, even if they were few 
 in number, to trace a great circuit for walls, and to 
 set aside extensive precincts for their native deities. 
 They knew that expanding Greece was behind them, 
 and that their compatriots would flock after them 
 across the sea. The peoples among whom they settled 
 
Chap. VII.] Naucratis y and the Greeks in Egypt. 213 
 
 might sometimes harass them by force of arms, but 
 had no arts, no civilization, no ideas which could be 
 set up against theirs. They were the force of light 
 invading the kingdom of darkness, and the darkness fell 
 away before them. 
 
 But in Egypt the Greeks before the rise of the Persian 
 Empire met with a civilization which could dispute with 
 them on equal terms. The Hellenic nationality being 
 in its infancy was awed by the venerable institutions 
 and beliefs of the land of the Nile. Instead of im- 
 parting to barbarians the rudiments of civil organization, 
 the Greeks of Naucratis stood amazed in the presence 
 of a society organized in the most inflexible way. In- 
 stead of teaching strangers the use of letters, they 
 found themselves wondering at scribes who had two or 
 three quite different ways of writing, according to the 
 occasion and the subject. Instead of being able to 
 tempt the cupidity of the natives by a display of works 
 of archaic Greek art, they had to admire vessels and 
 textile fabrics, images and ornaments, designed with a 
 skill which far surpassed their own, and showing a 
 delicacy and pureness of style which roused their envy. 
 Only in arms, elsewhere that in which they least ex- 
 celled their barbarian neighbours, did the Greeks in 
 Egypt surpass the natives of the country. Thus Nau- 
 cratis might be compared to a tender plant growing in 
 an uncongenial soil, and surrounded on all sides by 
 hardier shrubs ever ready to encroach upon its narrow 
 domain. When the fostering care of kings like Psammi- 
 tichus and Amasis was no longer exercised, the decay 
 of the city set in slowly but surely. 
 
 Meantime, while Naucratis flourished, it was as much 
 an outlet for Egyptian as an inlet for Hellenic influ- 
 ences. Many of the wisest men of Greece in the seventh 
 and sixth centuries, if we may believe the traditions 
 
214 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. Yll. 
 
 accepted by their countrymen, passed through the city 
 into Egypt, and brought away treasures of knowledge. 
 According to Diodorus, Solon borrowed several laws 
 from Egypt, among others the law that every citizen 
 should once a year set forth before magistrates the 
 sources of his livelihood. Pythagoras travelled with 
 letters of introduction from Amasis himself, and was 
 supposed to have learned in Egypt not only the language 
 of the country, a thing in those days reckoned as won- 
 derful, but also the principles of his mystic philosophy. 
 Thales of Miletus is said by Diogenes Laertius to have 
 learned mathematics and astronomy in Egypt, and to 
 have taught his countrymen what he had thus learned 
 himself. Hecataeus of Miletus, who perhaps deserves as 
 much as Herodotus the title of " father of history," jour- 
 neyed into Egypt, and told many tales of the country 
 which remained among the common-places of Greek his- 
 torical knowledge ever afterwards. No doubt when phi- 
 losophy and science had grown in Greece to their full 
 stature, they did not retain many marks of the swad- 
 dling-bands of Egypt ; yet they may, as the ancients 
 believed, have been very usefully aided in their infancy 
 by those swaddling-bands. 
 
 There is, however, another field— the field of art and 
 manufacture — in which the recent excavations should 
 enable us to judge with some accuracy of the extent of 
 the debt of Hellas to Egypt. The products of Greek 
 art from Naucratis consist chiefly of three classes of 
 objects, scarabs, pottery, and statuettes. The scarabs 
 come from the factory of which we have already spoken. 
 Had they been found scattered over the Greek islands, 
 or in Cyprus, they would have been at once taken for 
 works of Phoenician craftsmen. For we do not usually 
 think of the Greeks as making copies, barbarous copies, 
 as archaeologists term them, of the products of other 
 
Chap, vii.] Naucratis, and the Greeks in Egypt. 2 1 5 
 
 peoples. But in that very early period the proud artistic 
 consciousness of the Greeks had not developed, and they 
 were not yet ashamed of making commodities which were 
 in demand, even though the work of fashioning them 
 was ignominious. And even in the common-place pro- 
 ducts of this factory we find now and then a trace of 
 Greek originality and skill in design. The pottery from 
 the site belongs nearly all to the seventh and sixth cen- 
 turies. The bulk of it belongs to the class so abundantly 
 found in the tombs of Cameirus in Rhodes, on which are 
 painted friezes and heraldic groups of animals or winged 
 monsters, lions, sphinxes, and boars, water-birds, and 
 domestic fowls. Here, again, we have much that is 
 Oriental, little that is Greek, and the pottery of Cameirus 
 was formerly supposed to be of Phoenician origin. In 
 certain other vases, however, which resemble the class 
 which has hitherto been attributed to Cyrene, we find 
 human figures, and more of human interest. But the 
 conspectus of the early pottery, which can be dated, it 
 must be remembered, by the dedicatory inscriptions 
 which it bears, proves that even late in the sixth 
 century the pottery of the Greeks had not emerged 
 from that merely decorative stage in which much regard 
 was paid to colour and the harmonious filling of space, 
 and but little to form and subject. The statuettes 
 of Naucratis are seldom or never of purely Egyptian 
 type ; rather they are of the mixed character which we 
 observe in statues and statuettes from the island of 
 Cyprus. They too are not beautiful, and show little 
 of the great wave of artistic inventiveness which was at 
 the time passing over Greece. 
 
 When the military power of Persia became dominant 
 in Egypt, the function of the Greek mercenaries was for 
 a time gone, and their influence diminished. And it was 
 by no means unlikely that Egypt, which had long 
 
2i6 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. yii. 
 
 been suffering from gradual exhaustion of the warrior 
 caste, and long been used to respect foreign arms as 
 irresistible, might have been content to accept Persian 
 sway and pay tribute without a murmur, had the 
 Persians been wise enough to spare the feelings and 
 respect the institutions of the people. But this they did 
 not do. They were usually very tolerant of the religions 
 of those they conquered. Babylon and Asia Minor had 
 little ground for accusing them of the fervid iconoclasm 
 which some writers have supposed to be part of their 
 policy. And in Egypt, at the first conquest of the 
 country, they seem to have spared the political and re- 
 ligious sensibilities of the people. We possess a record 
 drawn up by an Egyptian, who narrated how he initi- 
 ated Cambyses in the mysteries of Neith, and ob- 
 tained of the king for the goddess special favours, and 
 for himself the post of Court-physician. But afterwards, 
 a sort of frenzy seems to have fallen on Cambyses. He 
 is said not only to have dug up and ill-used the corpse 
 of Amasis, who died during the Persian invasion, but to 
 have treated his family with insult and cruelty. From 
 persecution of the kings of Egypt he passed to persecu- 
 tion of the gods of the country. Every one knows the 
 story told by Herodotus, how, when full of irritation 
 at the news of the destruction of the troops he had sent 
 against the Libyan Oasis, Cambyses was driven to mad- 
 ness by the sound of joy and revelry in the streets of 
 Memphis ; and how, learning that the cause of the 
 rejoicing was the instalment of a new Apis-bull, he sent 
 for the newly made deity and plunged a knife into its 
 side, so that it languished and died. It is notable that 
 Wiedemann, who usually rejects stories of this kind, is 
 willing to accept this tale, because he believes that he 
 can identify among the tablets set up in honour of 
 successive Apis-bulls in the Serapeum at Memphis, the 
 
Chap. VII.] Naucratis, and the Greeks in Egypt. 217 
 
 record of the animal slain by Cambyses, a record graven 
 in haste and wanting in the usual formalities. We also 
 learn that Cambyses wasted with fire and sword many 
 of the temples of Egypt and carried off their treasures 
 to Persia. 
 
 In such deeds of impiety the Egyptian priests natu- 
 rally found the cause of the madness which possessed 
 Cambyses in his later years, and made him a terror to 
 all about him. Herodotus is quite ready to accept the 
 explanation. The conduct of Darius Hystaspis was very 
 different from that of Cambyses ; he buried with great 
 pomp an Apis-bull which died during his reign, and 
 took great pains to find hini a successor ; he built and 
 restored many temples, endowed colleges of scribes which 
 were impoverished, and is represented to us in tradition 
 as maintaining an easy and friendly intercourse with the 
 Egyptian priests. But there were few Persian rulers 
 like Darius ; the Persian yoke was on the whole ex- 
 tremely uncongenial to the dwellers by the Nile, and 
 wounded all their most settled sentiments. It was not 
 long before discontent broke into open revolt ; and 
 during part of the fifth and most of the fourth cen- 
 tury there were in Egypt native kings who enjoyed 
 a degree of independence, were indeed often quite inde- 
 pendent. Egypt was not really reduced to a Persian 
 province until B.C. 350, a few years before the conquest 
 of the country by Alexander the Great. • 
 
 We do not propose to trace the obscure outlines of 
 the history of Egypt during this period of revolt and 
 struggle. But it is part of our task to sketch the 
 course taken by events when the Greeks organized, as 
 they did more than once, expeditions to aid the native 
 Egyptian rulers in their efforts to be independent. Be- 
 tween the invasion of Greece by Xerxes and the invasion 
 of Persia by Alexander, there was a perpetual enmity, 
 
2 1 8 Neiv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. YII. 
 
 whether flaming or smouldering, between the Hellenic 
 race and the over-lords of Asia ; and the ruling States 
 in Greece were constantly on the alert to strike at any 
 part of the Persian dominions which might seem open 
 to attack. 
 
 Soon after the accession of Artaxerxes to the Persian 
 throne in B.C. 464, a revolt broke out in Egypt. The 
 leader was not a native Egyptian but a Libyan, Inaros 
 by name. Our surprise at this circumstance diminishes 
 if we consider that for ages, from the fifteenth century 
 onwards, Libyan or Mediterranean mercenaries had been 
 a chief element in the armies of Egypt ; it was there- 
 fore natural that the Egyptians in any attempt to ex- 
 pel the Persians should call on their allies for help. 
 They called also on the people of Athens, with whom 
 the destruction of their city by Xerxes was a fresh 
 memory, and they did not appeal in vain. There were 
 two hundred Athenian triremes stationed at Cyprus 
 ready for any service against Persia ; these were at once 
 ordered to the Nile. They conquered the Delta and 
 two thirds of Memphis, hemming the Persian troops 
 into the citadel called the White Fortress. Achaemenes, 
 the Persian satrap, came with an army and fleet to the 
 relief of his men ; but his army was defeated with 
 great slaughter by Inaros, and his fleet by the Athenian 
 triremes ; he himself was among the slain. But a new 
 and enormous armament was dispatched from Persia 
 under the command of Megabyzus, comprising, we are 
 told, at least half a million of men. The Libyans and 
 Athenians had to retire from Memphis, and took refuge 
 in the island Prosopitis. For a year and a half their 
 naval superiority enabled them to maintain themselves 
 there ; then the Persians succeeded in turning aside the 
 water from the branch of the Nile which enclosed the 
 island. Inaros was captured and cruelly executed ; the 
 
Chap. VII.] Naucratis, and the Greeks in Egypt. 219 
 
 Athenians capitulated, but were allowed to depart, and 
 marched through Libya to Cyrene, leaving the ships to 
 their conqueror. A reinforcement of fifty Athenian tri- 
 remes, ascending the Mendesian arm of the Nile in 
 ignorance of what had happened, was entrapped by the 
 Persians and destroyed. 
 
 The death of Inaros and the defeat of the Greeks did 
 not at once bring the revolt to an end. Amyrtaeus, a 
 native Egyptian, found means to carry on the struggle 
 for some time longer. Cimon, then in command of the 
 Athenian fleet near Cyprus, sent him sixty ships as an 
 aid. But they accomplished nothing, and soon retired. 
 That Amyrtaeus was able to make favourable terms for 
 himself with the Persian king, appears from the state- 
 ment of Herodotus, that the Persians allowed Pausiris 
 son of Amyrtaeus to retain his father's dominion, though 
 he probably retained it not as an independent sovereign, 
 but as a vassal of Persia. 
 
 A later revolt of Egypt about B.C. 415 was more 
 successful ; and for sixty-four years that country main- 
 tained a precarious independence under the 28th, 29th, 
 and 30th dynasties. This was accomplished only by the 
 aid of Greek mercenaries, who henceforward play the 
 leading part in all wars on the shores of the Aegean. 
 But to give a connected narrative of their doings in 
 Egypt is very difficult, if not impossible. We lose the 
 guidance of Thucydides, and have to choose between 
 the discrepant accounts of writers like Diodorus, Plu- 
 tarch, and Cornelius Nepos. The most abundant in- 
 formation comes from the slovenly pen of Diodorus. 
 Of late certain Egyptologists, more particularly Wiede- 
 mann and Revillout, have tried to restore the reputation 
 of this writer. They have succeeded in showing that 
 his account of Egyptian law is based on good and 
 native authorities ; but even Wiedemann does not pretend 
 
22 o New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. Yll. 
 
 that his narratives of events are to be trusted. He con- 
 fuses names and dates with the most exasperating care- 
 lessness, and in repeating his account of civil and 
 military events we cannot escape from the feeling that it 
 is likely that what he is narrating never really happened. 
 Unfortunately also at this period native records are 
 scarce and meagre. The materials of history, therefore, 
 scarcely exist. 
 
 The native ruler who shook off the Persian yoke was 
 Amyrtaeus, perhaps a grandson of the Amyrtaeus al- 
 ready spoken of. He gained possession alike of Upper 
 and Lower Egypt, and it seems from a casual reference 
 in Thucydides (viii. 35), that he was a friend of the 
 Athenians. That he won his throne through Greek 
 mercenaries is more than probable, and when a papyrus 
 informs us in regard to his successors that they owed 
 their elevation to the soldiers, we may be almost sure 
 that the nucleus of these soldiers was Greek. Of 
 Achoris, who ruled at the beginning of the fourth 
 century, we learn that he sent building-timber and corn 
 to the Spartans for their wars, and that he concluded 
 with the active and powerful Evagoras, king of Cyprus, 
 a treaty against Persia, and sent fifty vessels to his aid 
 in that final battle against the Great King, which put 
 an end for ever to the chance of Cyprus' gaining a pro- 
 minent place in the world's history. 
 
 As to the wars and policy of the next King, Necta- 
 nebus I., who came to the throne, according to Wiede- 
 mann, in B.C. 387, we have ampler information. Evagoras 
 having been put down, the Persians made great prepara- 
 tions for the reduction of Egypt. Pharnabazus marched 
 into the country with an army of 200,000 men, but even 
 with forces so overwhelming he was disquieted by hear- 
 ing that the Athenian Chabrias was in the Egyptian 
 service. Sending to Athens, he procured the recall of 
 
Chap. VII.] Nctucratis, and the Greeks in Egypt. 221 
 
 that officer, and even persuaded the Athenians to let 
 him have the services of Iphicrates, who joined him with 
 20,000 Greek mercenaries. Failing in an attempt on the 
 Pelusian arm of the Nile, Pharnabazus and Iphicrates 
 made good an entry into Egypt by the Mendesian arm. 
 The land lay open to them, and Iphicrates counselled 
 (we repeat the account of Diodorus) a prompt attack 
 upon Memphis, which was not in a state of defence. 
 But whether through jealousy or indecision, or through 
 waiting for orders from the Persian court, Pharnabazus 
 delayed to move until Nectanebus had had time to 
 cover Memphis with his army, and the rising of the Nile 
 so hampered the movements of the Persians that they 
 were obliged to retire, and the invasion came to nothing. 
 The reign of Nectanebus was dignified by visits paid 
 to Egypt by noteworthy Greek savants ; Eudoxus, the 
 astronomer, Chrysippus, the physician, and Plato, the 
 philosopher. Letters of introduction from Agesilaus 
 secured Eudoxus respectful attention at the Egyptian 
 court. As regards one of the three, Plato, we may be 
 sure- that his imagination was not unmoved by the 
 wonders of the land, and that there are passages in his 
 writings which but for this visit would not have been 
 written. 
 
 The successor of Nectanebus, Tachos, being again 
 threatened from Persia, applied for aid to the Spartans, and 
 procured for himself, it is said through heavy bribes, the 
 aid of the aged Agesilaus and a body of Lacedaemonian 
 troops. Being thus fortunate, and having further secured 
 the Athenian Chabrias as leader of his fleet, he felt em- 
 boldened to undertake an offensive campaign. He rapidly 
 made a conquest of Phoenicia ; but during his absence 
 a relation, Nectanebus II., revolted against him. The 
 people of Egypt seem at once to have accepted the 
 new pretender, but the question was what line would be 
 

 2 ~i~> 
 
 New Chapters in Greek Histoiy. [Chap. Til. 
 
 taken by Agesilaus and Chabrias. Agesilaus had already 
 been deeply wounded in his Spartan pride by Tachos, who 
 had failed to understand that the coarse clothes and rude 
 manners of the Spartan king were a sign not of humility, 
 but of infinite pretension, and had ventured to slight 
 him. He is said to have referred to Sparta the question 
 which side he should take, and to have received in reply 
 the answer that he should do whatever was for the 
 advantage of Sparta. He left the party of Tachos and 
 adopted that of Nectanebus ; Chabrias followed his ex- 
 ample ; and Tachos' Egyptian troops not venturing to 
 retain their loyalty, he fled to the Persian court, where 
 he was received as a useful ally. 
 
 We hear next of a fresh Persian invasion of Egypt, 
 which was repulsed by two Greek leaders of mercenaries, 
 Diophantes of Athens and Lamius of Sparta. But a 
 subsequent expedition, which took place in the reign of 
 Artaxerxes Ochus about B.C. 350, was more successful. 
 The manner of its success is very characteristic of the 
 times. The Persian army of invasion was accompanied 
 by a large body of Greek troops under Nicostratus and 
 Mentor of Rhodes. Nectanebus marched against it, ac- 
 companied by 20,000 Greek troops under Cleinias of Cos. 
 On the frontier the two bodies of mercenary troops came 
 into collison, and Cleinias was defeated. The disaster 
 was irreparable ; Nectanebus fled to the south, and the 
 cities of Egypt surrendered without further struggle. 
 The Persian King Ochus visited Egypt, and is said to 
 have repeated all the cruelties and enormities of Cam- 
 byses, down to the slaying of the Apis-bull ; though it 
 may perhaps be doubted whether the fact is that Ochus 
 copied Cambyses, or merely that Plutarch and other late 
 writers who record these deeds copy Herodotus. In any 
 case this was the end of Egyptian independence, and the 
 historian must allow that the end was due. A nation 
 
Chap. VII.] Naucratis, and the Greeks in Egypt. 223 
 
 that could allow its national existence to depend on the 
 victory or defeat of one body of foreign mercenaries by 
 another, can scarcely claim our pity when it fell. Egypt 
 had still a history before it ; but it was a history not 
 concerned with conquest or war, but with science and 
 poetry, religion and philosophy. But before the first 
 page of that later history could be opened, it was neces- 
 sary that Greek influence should affect far more deeply 
 the national life. Hitherto Greeks had been only the 
 defenders and mercenaries of Egypt ; it was necessary 
 that they should become her masters ; and not masters 
 only of her political organization, but also of her learning, 
 her science, her religion, and her art. 
 
 Persian authority had scarcely been re-established in 
 Egypt when Persia in turn succumbed to a new and 
 mighty foe. Alexander the Great having welded into 
 one force the wisdom of Greece and the hardy strength 
 of Macedonia, brought that force to bear with irresistible 
 energy on the languid and overgrown empire of Asia, and 
 it crumbled at once to pieces. In no country was the 
 victory of Alexander more rapid or more easy than in 
 Egypt. City after city opened its gates on his approach ; 
 and the throne of the Pharaohs cost him scarcely the life 
 of a spearman. Of course to forces and talents such as 
 those of which Alexander disposed, Egypt could under 
 any circumstances have made but a weak resistance. But 
 there is reason to believe that she did not care to resist. 
 Sabaces, the Persian satrap of the country, had fallen at 
 Issus, and the Persian garrison was withdrawn to meet 
 the nearer needs of the Empire. The Egyptians had no 
 motive for resisting Alexander on behalf of their foreign 
 masters, and they were too weak and dispirited to oppose 
 him in the interests of their independence. Rather they 
 were inclined to welcome him as a liberator, as a hero 
 belonging to another and more tolerant race than the 
 
224 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chai\ Til. 
 
 lords whom they were used to obey. Alexander offered 
 sacrifices to the national deities, and amused the people 
 with warlike pomp and agonistic festivals. The Egyp- 
 tian priests were ready with a fiction to make submission 
 in some sense a duty. Nectanebus II. had disappeared 
 at the time of the Persian reconquest ; the priests gave 
 out that he had made his way to Macedon, and there, 
 through the use of magic arts, become the father of 
 Alexander. The story was an invention, as obviously 
 false as the earlier fable which had made Cambyses 
 son of an Egyptian princess ; in both cases the motive 
 was the same, and in both cases the story fulfilled its 
 object. 
 
 Escorted by his troops, Alexander sailed from Memphis 
 by the Canobic branch of the Nile ; he landed at Racotis. 
 Here was the place where Homer represents the imaginary 
 raid of Odysseus into Egypt as having taken place, in a 
 poem which Alexander knew by heart. He at once made 
 up his mind to build there a great city to bear his name, 
 and to be a memorial of him for ever ; and thus the 
 greatest of all the Alexandrias came into being. Hence 
 he visited the oasis of Ammon, led to the spot, when 
 the way was lost in the sand, by two serpents ; and found 
 in that deity a third claimant to the honour of having 
 begotten him. 
 
 As Alexandria grew, Naucratis declined. In the 
 troubled times of Nectanebus, the city had rather 
 shrunk than increased, and had suffered from some 
 hostile violence, of which traces still remain. Despite 
 the efforts of Ptolemy Philadelphus to restore the place, 
 it never again flourished. A fragmentary papyrus proves 
 that it retained under the Greek kings its municipal 
 organization, under magistrates called rifiov^oi, remain- 
 ing a free Greek community. About the third century 
 of our era, after giving a home to some notable men of 
 
Chap. YIL] Naucratis, and the Greeks in Egypt. 225 
 
 letters, — Philistus, Proclus, Athenacus and Julius Pollux 
 — Naucratis ceased to exist. Since then the site, one of 
 the coolest, healthiest, and pleasantest in Egypt, has been 
 tenanted by none but scattered Copts and companies of 
 agricultural Arabs. 
 
 Egypt was indeed fortunate in being assigned, when 
 Alexander's flimsy empire fell to pieces, to Ptolemy, son 
 of Lagus, the gentlest and wisest of the Macedonian 
 generals, a man who understood, while bringing fresh 
 life into the administration, the religion, and the social 
 condition of Egypt, how to avoid shocking the sensibilities 
 of the conservative people of the land. 
 
 In religion, we find under the? Ptolemaic kings a process 
 of syncretism. The resemblance, which had not escaped 
 Herodotus, of the worship of Isis to that of the Greek 
 Demeter, made it easy that she should retain her place 
 at the head of the pantheon of Egypt. But her consort 
 Osiris gradually recedes into the background before a 
 new deity, Sarapis, whose worship was introduced into 
 the country by Ptolemy in consequence of a dream. 
 Sarapis took his place beside Isis, and the other Egyptian 
 gods, Anubis, Harpocrates and the like, sank into mere 
 satellites of the supreme pair, into whose worship more 
 and more of symbolism and of mysticism entered, until 
 the Egyptian religion seemed to the pagans of the third 
 century of our era no unworthy rival of Christianity. But 
 the state religion of Egypt in Hellenistic times was less 
 the cult of Isis and Sarapis than that of the kingly race. 
 According to the tales of the priests, all the gods of 
 Egypt, from Osiris downwards, had been originally suc- 
 cessive kings of the country ; it was therefore not difficult, 
 especially since the Libyan Amnion guaranteed Alex- 
 ander's divine parentage, to raise him also from the rank 
 of king to that of god. The worship of the Macedonian 
 hero and his Greek successors became the central worship 
 
 Q 
 
226 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. Yll. 
 
 of Egypt, and not only united Macedonian, Greek, and 
 Egyptian in a common litany, but served to give religious 
 sanction to the power of the reigning dynasty. 
 
 As kings, the Ptolemies stepped into the customs and 
 the honours of the Pharaohs. This was natural, since 
 among the Greeks there was no precedent for such relations 
 as existed in the East between sovereigns and subjects. 
 Alexander did indeed for a short time assume the posi- 
 tion of a Persian king of kings, and in some part of the 
 station which he thus claimed most of his successors tried 
 to imitate him. But probably the precedents of the 
 Persian court had less effect in Egypt than in Syria or 
 even Macedon. Of course the relation of the king to 
 his Greek subjects and to his Egyptian subjects would 
 not be the same. To the former he would be a country- 
 man in high station ; to the latter an earthly god. From 
 the facts of archaeology we may illustrate this distinc- 
 tion. When on the walls of an Egyptian temple one of 
 the Ptolemaic dynasty is depicted as engaged in reli- 
 gious or political observance, he is represented, as were 
 the older monarchs of the land, in Egyptian dress, in 
 conventional attitude, with the inexpressive features of an 
 abstraction, not of a person. When on their silver coins, 
 struck for the use of Greek commerce, the portraits of 
 the Ptolemies appear, they appear as men, idealized 
 indeed to some degree, but still as men, liable to the 
 accidents and diseases of humanity. On the bronze coins 
 struck under Ptolemaic rule, mostly for the use of the 
 Egyptians themselves, we have usually no portrait at 
 all, but the effigy of a deity. 
 
 Something, however, was changed even in the govern- 
 ment of the native Egyptian population. Writers on 
 the Ptolemaic constitution of Egypt attach great im- 
 portance to the establishment of Boards of Judges who 
 moved in circuit into the different districts of Egypt. 
 
Chap. VII.] Naucratis, and the Greeks in Egypt. 227 
 
 Hitherto the Courts of Justice had had their fixed seats 
 in the great cities ; and the peasantry being, like all 
 peasant cultivators, very litigious, had flocked into the 
 towns with their causes, and waited for long periods 
 until they could be attended to. We are told that the 
 result was that much of the fertile land of Egypt 
 remained for considerable periods untilled. Instead of 
 abolishing the local courts, the Ptolemaic kings strove 
 in some degree to supersede them by providing Boards 
 of Chrematistae, who moved among the people, invested 
 directly by the King with a portion of his authority, and 
 responsible to him alone. Thus cheaper and speedier 
 justice was made accessible to the peasantry. But in 
 Ptolemaic as in Pharaonic Egypt, the King was prac- 
 tically an autocrat, whose rescripts were law, and whose 
 officers held power not a moment longer than they 
 retained his favour. In Ptolemaic as in Pharaonic Egypt, 
 the nome or district was the unit of government ; pro- 
 bably the hierarchy of officials in the nome was not 
 much altered. 
 
 But although the political constitution of Egypt was 
 not greatly altered when the land fell into Greek hands, 
 yet in other respects great changes took place. The 
 mere fact that Egypt took its place among a family 
 of Hellenistic nations, instead of claiming as of old a 
 proud isolation, must have had a great effect on the 
 trade, the manufactures, and the customs of the country. 
 To begin with trade. Under the native kings Egypt had 
 scarcely any external trade, and trade could scarcely 
 spring up during the wars with Persia. But under the 
 Ptolemies, intercourse between Egypt and Sicily, Syria or 
 Greece, would naturally and necessarily advance rapidly. 
 Egypt produced manufactured goods which were every- 
 where in demand ; fine linen, ivory, porcelain, notably 
 that papyrus which Egypt alone produced, and which 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VII. 
 
 was necessary to the growing trade in manuscripts. 
 Artificial barriers being once removed, enterprising traders 
 of Corinth and Tarentum, Ephesus and Rhodes, would 
 naturally seek these goods in Egypt, bringing in return 
 whatever of most attractive their own countries had to 
 offer. It seems probable that the subjects of the Ptole- 
 mies seldom or never had the courage to sail direct down 
 the Red Sea to India. In Roman times this voyage 
 became not unusual, but at an earlier time the Indian 
 trade was principally in the hands of the Arabs of 
 Yemen and of the Persian Gulf. Nevertheless the com- 
 merce of Egypt under the Ptolemies spread eastwards 
 as well as westwards. The important towns of Arsinoe 
 and Berenice arose on the Red Sea as emporia of the 
 Arabian trade. And as always happens when Egypt 
 is in vigorous hands, the limits of Egyptian rule and 
 commerce were pushed further and further up the Nile. 
 The influx into Alexandria and Memphis of a crowd 
 of Greek architects, artists, and artizans, could not fail to 
 produce movement in that stream of art which had in 
 Egypt long remained all but stagnant. A wealthy Greek 
 court and self-indulgent Greek satraps had to be supplied 
 with articles of luxury which would not offend them by 
 hieratic stiffness or bear the impress of a religion which 
 they half despised. That the Egyptians responded to 
 the demand we know ; the best proof is to be found in 
 reading the extraordinary account in Athenaeus of the 
 pomp of Ptolemy Philadelphus. We there not merely 
 read of a display of wealth such as was perhaps never 
 rivalled, of mountains of gold and silver, but also find 
 precious indications of a new departure in Greek art, 
 which seems on that occasion to have borrowed some- 
 thing from the abstract tendencies of Egyptian thought. 
 There were statues not merely of gods and kings, but of a 
 multitude of cities, and even personifications of qualities 
 
Chap. VII.] Na7icratis, and the Greeks in Egypt. 229 
 
 such as Arete, Valour, and of spaces of time such as the 
 Year and Penteteris. Such abstractions are not to be 
 found in Greek art in its best period, nor are they in the 
 spirit of Greek art at all ; but they mark the new age and 
 the progressive amalgamation of Greek and Egyptian 
 nationalities and ideas under the just and benign rule of 
 the earlier Ptolemies. 
 
 If we may trust the somewhat over-coloured and flighty 
 panegyrics which have come down to us, the material 
 progress of Egypt under Ptolemy Philadelphus was most 
 wonderful. We read, though we cannot for a moment 
 trust the figures of Appian, that in his reign Egypt 
 possessed an army of 200,000 foot soldiers and 40,000 
 horsemen, 300 elephants and 2000 chariots of war. The 
 fleet at the same period is said to have included 1500 
 large vessels, some of them with twenty or thirty banks 
 of oars. Allowing for exaggeration, we must suppose 
 that Egypt was then more powerful than it had been 
 since the days of Rameses. The enormous wealth of 
 Philadelphus would enable him to secure the services of 
 a large number of those wandering mercenaries, troops 
 from Crete and Thessaly, Peloponnesus and Caria, Libya 
 and Galatia, who mainly made up the armies of the 
 Hellenistic kings ; and who, if they were well paid, seem 
 to have been fairly faithful. The number of towns in 
 Egypt under the early Ptolemies is given by some 
 writers as over 30,000. 
 
 But far more noble, and far more durable in its effects 
 than any mere material expansion, was the rise at Alexan- 
 dria of a great literary and scientific school. Among 
 the scholiasts on the great poets and prose-writers 
 of Greece there was no doubt much pedantry, but a lite- 
 rature which was adorned by the writings of Theo- 
 critus, and Bion, and Callimachus, cannot be despised. 
 And to our day most children are trained to mental 
 
230 Nezv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. Yll. 
 
 accuracy by the writings of an Alexandrian professor of 
 mathematics, Euclid. A large part of the thoughts which 
 dominate the world's views in philosophy, religion, and 
 science, saw the light first in Alexandria. But if it were 
 our intention to do justice to the glories of that illustrious 
 city, it would claim not the last page of a chapter but a 
 volume. 
 
 We have introduced the Greeks as they made their 
 first appearance in Egypt as mail-clad warriors from over 
 the sea, and we have followed their career until from 
 being the hired protectors of the Egyptians, they became 
 their masters. The later relations between Egypt on the 
 one side, and Syria, Athens, and Rome on the other, 
 would form a subject not less interesting, but beyond our 
 compass. Egypt, with Alexandria as its capital, plays 
 a great part in the drama of history ; Egypt, with 
 Naucratis as its link with the outer world, was compara- 
 tively recluse. It is therefore the more welcome when 
 excavation helps us to clear away some of the mist 
 which envelopes the earliest of the Greek settlements 
 in Egypt, and enables us more clearly to understand 
 under what conditions it existed and what were its 
 relations to Greece and to Egypt. 
 
231 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE EXCAVATION OF THE ATHENIAN ACROPOLIS. 
 
 It is only by slow degrees that the modern world has 
 learned how much is left of ancient Athens. To the 
 great scholars of the Renaissance, Athens was a name in 
 history but not in geography, a vanished city like Baby- 
 lon and Jerusalem. From the days when Ciriaco of 
 Ancona, in 1447, first brought it to the knowledge of the 
 learned world that though the jewels were gone, valuable 
 fragments of the casket still remained, down to the 
 present year, archaeological research has pressed closer 
 and closer at Athens on the heels of the ravages of time 
 and barbarism, until it may fairly be said that as Athens 
 is almost the most interesting of ancient cities, so the 
 remains which it has left us are more extensive and 
 suggestive than those of any other place, with the possible 
 exception of Rome. And this is only natural. Jerusalem 
 has left an invisible record in the spiritual life of man- 
 kind ; but the genius of the Athenians was pre-eminently 
 plastic. What they thought and felt they worked out 
 in their exquisite native marble, and the rocky soil and 
 dry air of Attica have preserved at least some remains 
 of their admirable creations through the political vicissi- 
 tudes of twenty-five centuries. 
 
 The modern Athenians are possessed by a curious 
 passion, intelligible but quite unhistorical. They are de- 
 termined to obliterate so far as they can the whole tract 
 
232 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. YIII. 
 
 of history which lies between the Roman Conquest and 
 King George. Every year brings the spoken language of 
 educated circles in Athens nearer to the language of 
 Demosthenes. The children receive high-sounding names 
 like Miltiades and Sophocles, and read in the elementary 
 schools the great masterpieces of Hellenic literature. 
 Cities and districts lose their mediaeval and go back to 
 their classical names. The Panathenaic festival has been 
 brought to life, and Christian churches are demolished in 
 order that the remains of pagan temples may be disin- 
 terred from their walls and foundations. Whether the 
 modern Hellenes are quite wise in taking up a past to 
 the burden of which they are scarcely equal, and forgetting 
 a more recent past with its many useful lessons, may be 
 doubted. In any case, it is in this spirit that they have 
 dealt with the Athenian Acropolis. That they should 
 clear away the mosque which occupied the interior of 
 the Parthenon when it fell into their hands after Nava- 
 rino, as well as the Turkish battery, and later the ugly 
 tower which commanded the entrance to the Acropolis, is 
 not matter for wonder. It was a less happy impulse 
 which made them destroy the bastion erected by their 
 own Captain Odysseus in the War of Independence, and 
 which led them in 1834 to set up in their places some 
 of the columns of the Parthenon which had fallen, and 
 quite recently to range the drums of fallen columns in 
 formal order at the sides of the building. But since we 
 are now promised that the Christian frescoes on the walls 
 of the Parthenon shall be spared, and since the founda- 
 tions of even Roman buildings are respected, we must 
 not unduly complain, especially seeing that nothing but 
 praise can be awarded to the zeal and method with which 
 the extensive excavations of the last five years have been 
 conducted. 
 
 It is chiefly with the results of these recent excavations, 
 
Chap, viii.] The Excavation of the Athenian Acropolis. 233 
 
 conducted by the Greek Archaeological Society, that we 
 propose to deal in the present chapter. They are of 
 extraordinary richness and interest ; and although reports 
 of them have appeared from time to time in the columns 
 of the Athenaeum, and in the pages of the Journal of 
 Hellenic Studies, they have not been fairly brought 
 before the notice of those, in England so numerous a 
 class, whose interest in Greece and Greek art is general 
 rather than special. To help our readers we copy, in 
 the annexed woodcut, a plan of the Acropolis due to 
 Messrs. Penrose and Schultz, and published in the 
 Journal of Hellenic Studies for 1 889. For permission to 
 use it our thanks are due to the Council of the Hellenic 
 Society. 
 
 If this plan be compared with that published in 
 1885 in Baumeister's Denkmaeler or that in Baedeker's 
 Greece, it will be seen how much progress has lately 
 been made in the topography of the site. But the pro- 
 gress is not due only to the excavations ; in great part 
 it is the work of Dr. Doerpfeld, Head of the German 
 School of Athens, a man whose patience, science, and 
 enthusiasm are all alike remarkable ; a man who has 
 shed upon all the sites where he has worked a flood of 
 new light, and who possesses in a rare degree the power of 
 interesting and convincing others. 
 
 There are two recent works on the Athenian Acropolis. 
 Dr. Boetticher's* is a readable and useful resume of the 
 views generally accepted at the time of his writing, 
 illustrated by abundant engravings. Unfortunately it 
 was written a little too soon ; and the writer is more 
 at home in dealing with the problems of architecture 
 than with those of sculpture, epigraphy, or topography. 
 The book of Miss Harrison and Mrs. Verrall,f two dis- 
 
 * Die Akropolis von A then. 
 
 \ Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens. 
 
234 
 
 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VIII. 
 
 
Chap. VIII.] The Excavation of the Athenian Acropolis. 235 
 
 tinguished quasi-graduates of Newnham College, is of a 
 far more important and thorough-going character ; we 
 should rather say Miss Harrison's book, for Mrs. Verrall 
 has contributed only a good translation of some chapters 
 of Pausanias, and the work bears throughout the stamp 
 of a strong individuality. It is probably the best 
 Guide to the Acropolis, and ancient Athens generally, 
 which has yet appeared. Miss Harrison is a devoted 
 adherent of Dr. Doerpfeld, who has allowed her, with the 
 generosity common among the best sort of savants, to 
 anticipate many of his unpublished views. His enthusi- 
 asm is contagious ; and readers will be surprised to find 
 that it is possible to extract from discussions on topo- 
 graphy and Attic myths much that is interesting and 
 almost overflowing with actuality. The book leads us 
 from point to point in the midst of the temples, the 
 dedications, the mythology, the cultus of the ancient 
 Athenians, until they become astonishingly familiar to us. 
 We learn all about the plans of Mnesicles when he began 
 the Propylaea, and why those plans were not carried out ; 
 we trace the steps by which the stage of the Dionysiac 
 Theatre gradually encroached on the orchestra, following 
 the altering character of dramatic representations ; we 
 visit the grotto of Pan, and sympathize with the herds- 
 man-god, who finds himself sadly out of place among 
 the cultivated and metaphysical Athenians ; we trace 
 from point to point the wanderings of the traveller 
 Pausanias, and often get the true clue to his puzzling 
 utterances and his more puzzling silences. 
 
 In regard to Pausanias, we are glad to see that Miss 
 Harrison does not endorse the theories of some rather 
 too advanced scholars in Germany, who maintain that 
 Pausanias was no traveller at all, but a redactor of old 
 guide-books and collector of queer stories. She writes : — 
 
 "I feel bound to record my own conviction that the 
 
236 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VIII. 
 
 narrative of Pausanias is no instance of ' Reise Ro- 
 mantik,' but the careful, conscientious, and in some parts 
 amusing and quite original narrative of a bond fide 
 traveller. If Pausanias did read his Polemon before he 
 started, and when he got back to his study in Asia 
 Minor posted up his notes by the help of the last 
 mythological handbook, what educated man would do 
 less ? ... In the face of recent excavations, which every- 
 where, save in the most trivial details, confirm the nar- 
 rative of Pausanias, such criticism proves nothing but that 
 there is a vast amount of energy and learned ingenuity 
 out of work." 
 
 No test could be more severe than that to which Miss 
 Harrison submits the narrative of Pausanias ; if it en- 
 dures that test, we may fairly be content to trust it when 
 there is no special reason for mistrust. 
 
 To these special works we have to add the less de- 
 tailed, but not less interesting StadtgescJiichte von A then 
 by the Nestor of Greek archaeology, Professor Ernst 
 Curtius, who writes of Athens at once with the ardour of 
 a lover, the science of a historian, and the imagination 
 of a poet. His book treats of the whole ancient history 
 of Athens, and his longer experience and wider knowledge 
 serve in some cases to correct the revolutionary views of 
 Dr. Doerpfeld. 
 
 The Acropolis, with its levelled top surrounded by 
 lofty walls, approached through magnificent Propylaea, 
 and loaded with ancient temples and monuments, evi- 
 dently owes at least as much to art as to nature. It 
 has long been known that its present form and aspect 
 dates from the age of Cimon and of Pericles. The 
 recent excavations have thrown light on all ages of 
 Athenian history, but they are specially notable for 
 having opened up to us the stages through which the 
 whole Acropolis passed before it reached what may be 
 
Chap. VIII.] The Excavation of the Athenian Acropolis. 237 
 
 called its classical form. Hitherto it has risen as abruptly 
 from the background of history as from the level soil of 
 the Attic plain. But now we can trace step by step its 
 formation out of an irregular rocky mass, sloping on at 
 least two sides gradually to the ground below, and sur- 
 mounted only by the poor huts of a prehistoric race, whom 
 the later Greeks called by the vague name of Pelasgi. 
 
 The nucleus of almost all the celebrated centres of 
 civic life in Greece was a rocky eminence rising out of 
 a river-valley. Such a rock was a natural fortress, and 
 afforded shelter to a sparse population of shepherds 
 and fishermen in the early times of Greece, when, as 
 Herodotus and Thucydides tell us, every man's life was 
 in his hands, and no coast free from the constant in- 
 cursions of pirates. Under such outward pressure the 
 village life of primitive barbarians began to crystallize 
 into civic order. On some parts of the Acropolis-rock 
 one may still trace, though not so clearly as on the 
 neighbouring Areiopagus, the foundations of the huts or 
 cells of the early inhabitants. Recently a few graves 
 dating from the same age have been discovered. They 
 contain, besides human bones, only a few rude terra- 
 cotta figures, and fragments of the primitive pottery 
 known to archaeologists as Mycenaean, because it is found 
 in greatest abundance on the site of Mycenae. 
 
 It is evident that in very early times efforts were made 
 to strengthen the Acropolis with walls, especially on the 
 western side where it is most easily accessible. Of such 
 early walls there are considerable remains close to the 
 Propylaea of Pericles. Some archaeologists have tried to 
 trace the lines of a far more complete system of forti- 
 fication, running round the foot of the Acropolis and 
 enclosing a small part of the surrounding plain. This 
 view, which is however based on no great amount of 
 existing remains, would help to account for the fact that 
 
238 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VIII. 
 
 a strip of land at the foot of the rock was in Greek 
 historical times known as the Pelasgicum and kept, for 
 traditional religious reasons, free of buildings. In the 
 recent excavations, there have been found near the later 
 Erechtheum traces of the foundations of a prehistoric 
 palace, which Dr. Doerpfeld supposes to have been the 
 abode of the kings who traced their lineage to Erechtheus, 
 as well as of a rocky staircase leading thence to the lower 
 ground, just as does the staircase at Tiryns, which de- 
 scends to the plain from the palace of the rulers of that 
 early city. 
 
 That the kings of Athens in the heroic age had their 
 palace on the Acropolis may be regarded as certain, 
 though it is possible that its site is covered by the 
 Parthenon. What that palace would be like we may 
 judge from the remarkable discovery at Tiryns of re- 
 mains of the palace of the Greek heroic age, of which 
 we have already spoken. They record a civilization 
 luxurious if not lofty, and an age when wealthy and 
 noble families dispersed over Greece disposed of the 
 resources of the country, and ruled over masses of sub- 
 ject vassals, whose huts clustered about their lofty abodes. 
 When, early in the sixth century, Peisistratus seized on 
 the Government of Athens, he, like the early kings, took 
 up his abode on the Acropolis. But by this time the 
 change had begun which at Athens, as in most Greek 
 cities, transformed the Acropolis from an abode of men 
 into a dwelling-place of the gods. There already existed 
 a large temple of Athena in the very midst of the Acro- 
 polis, of which the foundations have in the last few years 
 been traced by Dr. Doerpfeld. Mr. Penrose maintains, 
 in a paper recently read before the Hellenic Society, 
 that Peisistratus also erected an older Parthenon, on the 
 site on which the present Parthenon stands, and that 
 various still remaining achitectural fragments which Dr. 
 
Chap. VIII.] The Excavation of the Athenian Acropolis. 239 
 
 Doerpfeld had given to the temple of his own discovery 
 really belonged to this building. It is at all events 
 proved by inscriptions published by Dr. Lolling* that 
 a temple called the Hecatompedon existed at Athens 
 before the Persian conquest, and it seems more natural 
 to apply this term to an earlier Parthenon than with 
 Doerpfeld and Curtius to the midmost temple of Athena. 
 Peisistratus was content to share the plateau with the 
 eoddess to whom he owed his elevation and success. 
 
 Considerable remains of the Acropolis and its monu- 
 ments as they existed in the time of the Peisistratidae 
 have been preserved to us as a consequence of the havoc 
 wrought by the Persians when they were in possession 
 of Athens in B.C. 480 and 479. As, however, this state- 
 ment has the air of a paradox, we must try to prove 
 that it is true. 
 
 Herodotus tells us (VIII. 51), how in B.C. 480 the 
 numberless host of Xerxes came down upon Athens, 
 and how the Athenian people fled upon their ships to 
 the opposite island of Salamis, except a few who, reading 
 literally the oracle which bade the Athenians trust to 
 their wooden walls, barricaded the approaches to the 
 Acropolis with beams and planks, and so awaited the 
 foe. To the Persians when they arrived they offered a 
 desperate resistance, but some of the mountaineers in the 
 invading army climbed up the steep rock to the sanc- 
 tuary of Aglauros on the north of the Acropolis, and 
 thence mounted the narrow staircase which led thither 
 from the summit (see plan). The defenders were put 
 to the sword, or flung themselves in despair down the 
 precipices, and the Persian soldiery completed their work 
 by breaking down and destroying the monuments on the 
 sacred site, and burning the buildings. The destruction 
 was a deed of warlike fury, not of religious iconoclasm. 
 
 * Athena for 1890. 
 
240 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. yiii. 
 
 It was formerly supposed that the Persians, and especially 
 their kings, were actuated by a hatred of idolatry, and a 
 zeal for more spiritual religion in their dealings with con- 
 quered nations. But the records of Egypt show us that 
 in that country the Persian invaders displayed an easy 
 tolerance towards Egyptian cultus. So it was at Athens. 
 On the day after the temples had been burned Xerxes 
 ordered the Athenian exiles who were in his camp to go 
 up to the Acropolis and sacrifice to Athena after their 
 own fashion. It is said that they found a portent, 
 which showed that the humiliation of Athens would not 
 be lasting. The sacred olive-tree of Athena, instead of 
 withering from the flames, had in one night sent out a 
 fresh shoot a cubit in length. 
 
 After the glorious victory of the Greeks at Salamis, 
 the Persian troops retired for the winter into Boeotia, 
 and the Athenians could for a few months revisit their 
 home. But in the spring of 479, Mardonius once more 
 occupied the ruined city, and Herodotus says that when 
 he left it to meet the Spartans at Plataea, he once more 
 burned all that could be burned, and levelled with the 
 ground whatever still remained standing, walls, houses, 
 temples and statues. The destruction was as complete 
 as barbarous fury could make it. When the people of 
 Athens came back to their city, they found only an un- 
 distinguishable heap of ruins, blackened with fire and 
 shattered by hammers. 
 
 But the days which followed the repulse of the Persians 
 were in all Greece days of vigour and progress, of 
 youthful hopes and unbounded aspirations. It was not 
 likely that the Athenians, who had hurled back the 
 whole strength of Asia, would sit long idle in the midst 
 of ruins. And it was not likely, at a time when art 
 was growing and expanding every day, that they would 
 be content to restore the buildings and monuments of 
 
Chap, vill.] The Excavation of the Athenian Acropolis. 241 
 
 the Acropolis to the state in which they had been before 
 the coming of Xerxes. When art is stagnant or dead, 
 nations care greatly to preserve the monuments handed 
 down to them by previous generations. When art is 
 alive and growing, destruction is sometimes almost wel- 
 comed as an opportunity for progress, and the feeling of 
 Homer's Diomedes, "We are far better than our fathers," 
 governs the energies of architect, sculptor, and painter. 
 So the Athenians proceeded to make new temples larger 
 than the old, to set up more beautiful statues, to establish 
 more splendid cults. The marble fragments with which 
 the surface of the Acropolis was covered, they used only 
 as materials for walls or foundations for buildings. They 
 were straightway buried out of sight ; and buried they 
 remained until the excavations of the last three years. 
 Yet the Athenians seem to have made some distinctions. 
 Pausanias speaks in one place of ancient images of 
 Athena blackened by Persian smoke, but still holding 
 their places of honour. Thus it would seem that some 
 of the images of the gods, sacred from long association, 
 were repaired and set up again. But almost all that 
 had not so strong religious sanction was condemned. 
 Votive portraits of men and women, dedications bearing 
 the names of wealthy citizens, even the sculptural 
 decorations of temples, were thrown aside as no longer 
 worthy of a place in the Athens which was to be. 
 
 The story of the building of the walls of the lower 
 city by Themistocles is well known. In constant fear 
 of Spartan interruption, men, women, and children toiled 
 incessantly at the work, and for material not only the 
 walls of private houses were demolished, but also in- 
 scribed stones and sepulchral monuments were broken 
 up and used ; in fact, from the wall of Themistocles we 
 have in recent years recovered inscriptions and frag- 
 ments of tombs of an early period ; the slab, for 
 
 R 
 
242 Neiv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VIII. 
 
 instance, on which is sculptured the head of a youth 
 holding a discus. But it would be a mistake to suppose 
 that the walls of the upper city or Acropolis were thus 
 hastily piled together. They show, on the other hand, 
 every mark of care, and are admirably constructed. In 
 places, it is true, we find, instead of squared stones from 
 the quarry, the remains of pillar and cornice taken from 
 the ruined temples lying near ; but it is likely that this 
 break in the order of the walls was the result not of 
 haste or parsimony, but of deliberate intention. Pausanias 
 tells us that some of the Greeks were anxious to leave 
 all the ruins on the Acropolis lying as they stood for 
 an eternal memorial of the hate due to the Persians. 
 This could not be done ; but it was found possible to 
 retain and to embody in the walls of the citadel a me- 
 morial of the ruin wrought by the barbarians sufficient 
 to act as a perpetual reminder. 
 
 According to Dr. Doerpfeld it is to Cimon that we 
 must ascribe the reduction of the Acropolis to its present 
 form. The wall on the north has been ascribed by the 
 excellent authority of Leake to Themistocles ; but Pau- 
 sanias says expressly that all the walls of the Acropolis 
 which did not date from the Pelasgic age were erected 
 by Cimon. Of the method of formation of the surface 
 of the Acropolis after the Persian invasion, we must 
 endeavour to give some account. 
 
 The natural rock which is its foundation is not flat 
 above, but rises in the midst somewhat like a gable 
 roof. Let us pursue this analogy a little further. Let 
 us suppose a house with gable roof, of which the ridge 
 runs parallel to the front and back walls of the house. 
 Then it is evident that if the two walls of the house are 
 carried up to the level of the ridge, and the two tri- 
 angular spaces between ridge and walls filled up, a flat 
 roof will be the result. This was the plan followed by 
 
Chap. VIII.] The Excavation of the Athenian Acropolis. 243 
 
 the Athenian architects. They built their solid walls on 
 the line where the abrupt rise of the rock ceased, and as 
 the walls rose they filled the space between them and 
 the highest ridge with layer above layer of earth and 
 stones until they produced a surface, not indeed mathe- 
 matically level, but level enough to serve as a foundation 
 for the noble temples and beautiful monuments with 
 which the piety of the Athenians designed to reward 
 the gods who had rolled back the tide of Persian in- 
 vasion, and made Athens free and glorious. 
 
 It is these spaces behind the walls which have been 
 thoroughly searched in the last five years. And as they 
 were filled to a great degree with the ruined walls and 
 inscriptions and statues left scattered on the site when 
 the Persians departed, it may easily be understood that 
 a rich harvest has been reaped of works of historical and 
 artistic interest belonging to the age of Peisistratus 
 and the time which followed down to B.C. 480. In the 
 neighbourhood of the Erechtheum ancient sculptures 
 lay crowded together ; at one spot fourteen statues were 
 found, representing in various styles of art a goddess or 
 her votaries. 
 
 Seldom has a more admirable opportunity been offered 
 to archaeologists than this. An endless series of statues, 
 of fragments of pediments, of bases, of inscriptions, of 
 shards of vases, is laid before them, and they may be 
 quite sure that all belong to a period of which the limit 
 in time is sharply defined. A hundred questions as to 
 the meaning, the school, the historical bearing of each 
 monument are suggested, and beyond these questions 
 lies the grand problem of recovering the whole artistic 
 and mythologic surroundings of the sixth century at 
 Athens. And the very men most fitted to use the 
 opportunity are on the spot. Besides the members of 
 the Greek Archaeological Society there are now con- 
 
 R 2 
 
244 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VIII. 
 
 centrated in Athens, in the German, French, English, 
 and American Schools, the most promising young 
 archaeologists of many countries. It cannot be denied 
 that the lead in all archaeological matters belongs to 
 the Germans. But we must remember that the British 
 School at Athens has been but quite recently estab- 
 lished, and suffers from poverty unknown to the other 
 Schools, which can rely on Government support. 
 
 We now know with certainty that in the Peisistratid 
 age a temple of Athena stood between the sites of the 
 later Parthenon and the later Erechtheum. In size it 
 does not approach the Parthenon, from which temple it 
 also differs in ground-plan (see p. 234), inasmuch as 
 behind the cella of the goddess we find traces of two 
 rooms, which would seem to have been used as treasure- 
 chambers. Perhaps they may have contained respec- 
 tively the treasures of Athena and those of the other 
 gods, which are in the later inscriptions kept apart, and 
 which were guarded by different Boards of Treasurers. 
 Dr. Doerpfeld has attempted the reconstruction of this 
 temple from data still existing. Nothing but the bare 
 foundations remain on the spot ; but in virtue of a series 
 of elaborate measurements he claims some fragments 
 built into the neighbouring Acropolis walls as belonging 
 to the building, and not only tells us the number of 
 pillars, their size and character, but even ventures to 
 assure us that whereas the body of the temple is of 
 very early date, the stylobate was added in the time 
 of Peisistratus. Mr. Penrose, however, claims these same 
 remains for the earlier Parthenon, and has many reasons in 
 favour of his view. The talent and patience of a younger 
 archaeologist, Dr. Studniczka, has recovered from the 
 masses of remains some fragments of a group which 
 may have adorned the pediment of one or other of 
 these temples. This discovery offers so good an in- 
 
Chap, vill.] The Excavation of the Athenian Acropolis. 245 
 
 stance of the application of archaeological method that 
 we must give a more detailed account of it. 
 
 An archaic helmeted head of Athena of sixth-century 
 work was found many years ago on the Acropolis, and 
 is well-known from casts (at South Kensington, Oxford, 
 and Cambridge) and from engravings in the histories of 
 sculpture. To this head Studniczka joined an almost 
 shapeless fragment of more recent discovery, which turns 
 out to be the shoulder of the goddess covered with the 
 aegis, on the edges of which were ranged snakes, painted, 
 according to the crude fashion of colouring then in use 
 for marble, with red and green paint. Head and shoulder 
 being thus placed together, it becomes evident that we 
 have before us no detached figure, but part of a group, 
 for Athena looks downward, and her arm is outstretched 
 as if in conflict. And if in conflict, she could not but 
 be represented as victorious, looking down on an over- 
 thrown enemy. To find this enemy, it was necessary to 
 examine the numerous fragments of human figures stored 
 in the Acropolis Museum. The lower part of a male 
 figure was discovered which in scale and in species of 
 marble corresponded to the Athena. The position of his 
 legs showed that he was lying on his back. And on 
 the upper surface of one leg were at regular intervals 
 spots which seemed on careful examination to arise from 
 the dripping of water mixed with red and green colour. 
 Now the intervals between these spots corresponded so 
 nearly to the spaces between the different snakes on 
 the aegis of Athena, which were painted in these very 
 colours, as to leave small doubt that it was from these 
 very snakes that the rain-water fell in drops upon the leg 
 of the prostrate man ; so he must have lain directly 
 under the aegis. Here then, was the opponent of 
 Athena, a prostrate foe, no doubt one of the earth- 
 born Giants, whom in so many sculptures, and on so 
 
246 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VIII. 
 
 many vases, Athena is represented as overthrowing and 
 slaying. 
 
 So far, however, we have only proved a group, not a 
 pediment. But fragments of corresponding Giants, in the 
 store-rooms of the Museum, soon showed that the com- 
 position was extensive ; and the fact that one side of 
 them was fully worked showed that they stood against 
 some background as in a pediment, and did not make 
 up a free-standing group. Lastly, the lines of breakage 
 of the figures, and the wide dispersion of the fragments, 
 proved that they had fallen from a height. They could 
 thus only belong to a pediment ; and the dimensions 
 of a pediment to which they must have belonged 
 being carefully calculated from the height of the central 
 figures, it is asserted that a pediment of exactly that 
 size would suit the temple of Athena. Thus, by an 
 admirable chain of reasoning, Dr. Studniczka has en- 
 abled us to restore to the pediment of Peisistratus' 
 temple a representation of a battle of Gods and Giants 
 in which Athena occupied the central position. And 
 we can further tell exactly what was the condition of 
 sculpture, and what the principles of pedimental com- 
 position at the time. 
 
 The temple of Athena, though the most important of 
 the shrines of the Acropolis in the sixth century, cer- 
 tainly did not stand alone. For we have recovered the 
 whole or part of five or six other pediments of small 
 size, and executed in rough local stone. These com- 
 positions now form one of the most conspicuous features 
 of the Acropolis Museum, and arouse the wonder, far 
 more than the admiration, of visitors. To those who are 
 accustomed to consider Greek Art as a thing dropped 
 from the skies, calm, colourless and faultless, they must 
 come with a shock. For both in form and in colour 
 these interesting memorials of the early art of Greece 
 
Chap. VIII.] The Excavation of the A thenian A cropolis. 247 
 
 are bold, awkward, and wanting in all refinement. Per- 
 haps the most curious of them is the pediment put 
 together by the skill of Dr. Brueckner, in which Zeus and 
 Herakles in the midst are fighting back to back against 
 two monsters advancing against them from the corners ; 
 on one side the giant snake Echidna, on the other 
 Typhon, a winged figure with three human bodies and 
 interwoven snakes for feet, a monster coloured throughout 
 with brightest red and blue and green, which might seem 
 better suited for the adornment of a Mexican than of a 
 Greek temple to those who have not realised that Greek 
 art, like every other art, was of gradual growth, and 
 started from barbarous beginnings. Interesting as these 
 pediments are historically, one cannot wonder that the 
 contemporaries of Themistocles were very ready to thrust 
 them out of sight. But these sculptures are of older date 
 than that of Peisistratus. 
 
 It must not be supposed that the Peisistratid age was 
 one of barbarous art ; on the contrary, it is revealed in 
 these excavations as an age of extraordinary progress, 
 and various culture. It is stated that Peisistratus 
 collected and edited the Homeric poems. He also 
 attracted to his brilliant and luxurious court the most 
 celebrated of the artists of all Greece, who set up their 
 productions side by side on the Acropolis, and so laid 
 the foundations of that Attic style in sculpture which by 
 the end of the sixth century was fully formed, and be- 
 coming conscious of its high destiny. We have recovered 
 the bases which supported statues by Aristion of Paros, 
 and Aristocles of Crete, by Archermus of Chios, by 
 Endoeus of Ionia, by Callon of Aegina, and others ; in 
 a few cases it has been possible to restore to the bases the 
 statues which belonged to them, 
 
 No group of statues belonging to this early age has 
 attracted more attention than the very remarkable series 
 
248 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VIII. 
 
 of archaic female figures, clad in the flowing Ionian dress, 
 of which an almost endless series is now set up in the 
 Acropolis Museum, and which must when the Persians 
 broke in have formed quite a crowd of stately statues 
 standing in rows on their dedicative bases somewhere in 
 the neighbourhood of the temple of Athena. In style 
 they vary greatly ; and it is a fascinating task to trace 
 from one to another the gradual dawn upon the artistic 
 sense of Greece of greater skill in the rendering of difficult 
 detail, of keener love for nature, of clearer feeling for 
 style. Yet all, even the rudest, have something of that 
 inexplicable charm which belongs to archaic Greek Art, 
 and which takes a stronger and stronger hold of students 
 of archaeology. This charm was felt in antiquity by 
 Pausanias, who found something divine in the primitive 
 sculptures of the school of Daedalus, and by Lucian, who 
 praises the sweet and subtle smile of the Sosandra of 
 Calamis. Among ourselves, one may venture to say, it is 
 only archaic art which can arouse a real enthusiasm. It 
 is not Reubens nor even Michael Angelo, who really 
 takes hold of our younger lovers of painting, but Giotto 
 and Fra Angelico. For one young archaeologist who 
 really cares for the Laocoon, or even the Hermes of 
 Praxiteles, three will be found who are strongly affected 
 by the Hestia Giustiniani or the Harpy Tomb. It is a 
 tendency not unnatural in an age when taste is directed 
 rather by the understanding than the senses, and when 
 the tendency to asceticism is so marked among more 
 sensitive natures. 
 
 Unfortunately it is found impossible to take casts of 
 these statues, for fear of destroying the delicate remains 
 of colour which yet linger on hair and eyes and dress. 
 So it is not easy without visiting Athens to appreciate 
 them. A useful series of photographs, however, is ap- 
 pearing in Kavvadias' new work, Les J\I usees d'At/ie/ies. 
 

 Chap, vill.] The Excavation of the Athenian Acropolis. 249 
 
 We shall make no attempt at descriptions, which in such 
 cases are useless. But we may say a few words on the 
 interesting question, what was the object of those who 
 set up these statues, and whom of gods or of mortals do 
 they represent ? 
 
 If we question the statues themselves, and the bases 
 on which they stood, we shall find little material towards 
 a solution. These figures standing stiffly side by side, 
 supporting with one hand their dress and in the other 
 perhaps a flower, looking before them with rigid smile 
 and vacant eyes, seem to embody rather the idea of 
 woman than any set of living ladies. The inscriptions 
 of the bases sometimes tell us that they were dedicated 
 to Athena, or give us the dedicator's or the artist's 
 name, but contain no further information. But it is at 
 once evident that three alternatives lie before us. They 
 might represent the Goddess herself, since according to 
 Greek notions no present could be more acceptable to one 
 of the gods than a well-wrought image of himself. How 
 charming is the dedication written in archaic characters 
 on the base from Melos, probably intended for a statue 
 of Apollo, " Son of Zeus, accept from Ecphantus this 
 blameless statue, for with prayer to thee he finished the 
 graving of it." A temple of ancient Greece is seldom 
 excavated without discovery of statues or statuettes of 
 the deity to whom it was dedicated, placed in it by the 
 grateful hands of those who had found favour in his eyes. 
 Or, secondly, they might represent not the Goddess but 
 her earthly embodiment the priestess. We read that in 
 the vestibule of the great temple of Hera, near Argos, 
 there stood portrait-statues of all her priestesses, including 
 even the careless Chrysis, who had fallen asleep during 
 her ministry, while the sacred lamp set fire to some of 
 the offerings, and the whole temple was burned. Or, 
 thirdly, they might portray votaries of various sorts. The 
 
250 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VIII. 
 
 less educated Greeks were really idolaters ; that is to 
 say, they constantly made confusion between a person 
 and an image representing that person, like the witches 
 of a later age ; so it was natural enough that they should 
 wish ever to stand if not in person, at least by the 
 proxy of a portrait, in the neighbourhood of a deity in 
 whose power to help they fully believed, and who was 
 present in his temple-image as he was present nowhere 
 else. 
 
 These are the three possibilities. But the second may 
 be promptly rejected. The only priestesses of Athena on 
 the Acropolis were the regular priestess of Athena Polias, 
 an aged woman who held office for life, and the Arre- 
 phoric maidens, some twelve years of age. The statues 
 in question certainly do not represent children, and they 
 are too numerous to be portraits of the successive 
 priestesses of Athena Polias, each of whom would hold 
 office for many years. So they cannot represent priest- 
 esses. But between the other alternatives it is hard to 
 choose. If they represent Athena, it is Athena deprived 
 of her usual attributes, her warlike equipment of hel- 
 met and aegis and spear ; though we know that at 
 this very time the goddess was usually represented as 
 clad in full armour. And if they represent votaries, 
 these votaries are generalized, and have nothing of indi- 
 vidual character in them. Either the deity has given up 
 her divinity for womanhood, or the women have merged 
 their womanhood in something which approaches the 
 divine. Between these alternatives it would not be easy 
 to decide, but for the statement of Pausanias already 
 adduced, that there stood in his time on the Acro- 
 polis figures of Athena blackened by the smoke of 
 Persian fires, which seems to suggest that statues not 
 preserved but buried would be not of the Goddess but 
 of her votaries. This argument perhaps must not be 
 
Chap. VIII.] The Excavation of the Athenian Acropolis. 251 
 
 pressed too far ; but it does seem to make the scales dip 
 in favour of the human alternative. 
 
 Beside these female figures, we have extensive remains 
 of the works of art and of piety which adorned the 
 Acropolis at the opening of the fifth century. There 
 are fragments of horsemen, set up in memory of victories 
 in the games or of deliverance in war, or perhaps of 
 admission into the class of knights ; there are reliefs 
 of delicious archaic art representing the Gods or their 
 dealings with men. There is one fragment on which is 
 sculptured a youth driving his chariot, which may 
 possibly be part of the frieze of the Peisistratid temple 
 of Athena. There are several portrait-heads, or heads 
 intended for portraits, but telling us more of the school 
 of the artist than of the physiognomy of the subject. 
 There are scribes seated at work, who strongly remind 
 us of the figures of similar functionaries from Egypt. 
 And the bases which supported these dedicated statues, 
 and others which have disappeared, bear the names, one 
 might almost say the autographs, of many prominent 
 Athenian citizens, and of the artists whom they em- 
 ployed in the service of the Gods of Athens. 
 
 It is interesting to find among the dedications several 
 by the great Athenian potters of the end of the sixth 
 century, Andocides, Euphronius and others. It is a fresh 
 proof of the wealth of these potters and the consideration 
 which they enjoyed. Many beautiful fragments of vases 
 bearing the names of Euphronius, Hiero, Scythes, and 
 other vase-painters have also been recovered ; and these, 
 though in themselves of no very great importance, have 
 given us evidence long looked for, as to the date and 
 the source of the beautiful black-figured and early red- 
 figured vases which now form so prominent a part of 
 the treasures of the great museums of Europe. 
 
 It was in the last century that excavations in the 
 
252 New Chapters in Greek History. [Cjiap. VIII. 
 
 cemeteries of Etruria brought first to light large numbers 
 of ancient vases painted with scenes from the mythology 
 and the daily life of Greece. At first they were called 
 Etruscan vases, in spite of the fact that not only their 
 art and their subject but also their inscriptions were 
 purely Greek. It is only in late years that the fact has 
 been discovered that they were importations from Greek 
 factories, coming in the earlier period from Corinth or 
 Chalcis, and after a time principally from Athens. We 
 may congratulate ourselves on the fortunate circumstance 
 that the wealthy Lucumos of Etruria thought it in good 
 taste to adorn their houses and to fill their graves with 
 these delightful vessels. Our gain is inestimable. It is 
 true that Greek vases have a language of their own ; and 
 probably even well-informed and artistic visitors pass 
 through the vase-rooms of our museums without feeling 
 much interest in their contents. But the lang-uaee is 
 well worth learning. There is no class of ancient monu- 
 ments which has risen so rapidly of late years in the 
 estimation of archaeologists. The students who take the 
 pains to understand Greek vases soon discover not only 
 that their art is, within the limits which it studiously 
 observes, most admirable, but also that they carry with 
 them more of the flavour of ancient life than even 
 sculpture or coins. They not only give us abundant 
 information as to the beliefs, the cults and the customs 
 of Greece, but they put us at once, if only they have 
 escaped restoration in modern Italian workshops, on 
 terms of friendship with the potter who moulded and 
 the painter who decorated them. Clay with its mar- 
 vellous durability preserves for us not only the ultimate 
 design of the worker, but his first sketch, his second 
 thoughts, his mistakes and carelessness, his happy inspi- 
 rations, and the obstacles which interfered with their 
 realization. A vase bears the same relation to a sculp- 
 
Chap. VIII.] The Excavation of the Athenian Acropolis. 253 
 
 tured relief which a diary bears to a formal histori- 
 cal treatise. It is more local, temporary, and personal. 
 And at the same time vases are among our most serious 
 documents in matters of mythology and mythography. 
 Every year they are used more and more for comparison 
 with the plots of the tragedies of Aeschylus and Euri- 
 pides, and the lyric tales of Pindar. Writers now 
 apply the test of vases, as they are perfectly justified in 
 doing, in order to determine the comparative antiquity 
 of various versions of Attic myths, and their popularity 
 among the people. How far brighter and fresher is this 
 source of knowledge than the musty, pedantic pages of 
 an Apollodorus or a Hyginus ! In contact with the 
 actual works of the Attic potters the conventional com- 
 positions of the Alexandrian mythologists fall to pieces, 
 and we have, in the place of complicated structures of 
 mythological gingerbread, myths living and growing, 
 crossing and recrossing, springing 'from the heart of the 
 people and finding expression in their customs. It is 
 then no small advantage that we derive from the exca- 
 vations at the Acropolis, that they really lay a solid 
 foundation for the construction of a history of ancient 
 vase-painting. 
 
 To the stirring times which followed the Persian wars 
 belong some of the well-known features of the Acropolis. 
 Cimon and his contemporaries not only made of the 
 surface of the Acropolis a table-land fit for the erection 
 of great buildings, but they began some important 
 monuments and planned more. One magnificent trophy 
 erected out of the Persian spoils remained always a 
 feature of the citadel. This was the great bronze figure 
 of Athena called in later times Promachos, the work of 
 Pheidias, whose glittering spear and helmet were visible 
 out to sea, not indeed from Sunium, as Pausanias seems 
 to imply, since Hymettus intervenes, but at a great 
 
254 New Cliaptcrs in Greek History. [Chap. Yin. 
 
 distance. At the same period were set up other dedica- 
 tions full of the rapidly unfolding promise of Attic art. 
 There were paintings by Polygnotus, the Raffaele of 
 antiquity, whom Cimon had brought from Thasos, and 
 who became a citizen of Athens and the originator of 
 that ethical style, pure and self-contained, of which the 
 Parthenon frieze became the fullest embodiment. There 
 were statues by Calamis, whose works, now lost to us, 
 are perhaps among all Greek sculptures those which we 
 should most care to recover ; we can form but a very 
 very slight notion of them from the archaizing reliefs 
 of the Neo-Attic school. We have recovered* a basis 
 inscribed with a dedicatory inscription by Callias who 
 fought at Marathon ; and it is possible that on it may 
 have stood the celebrated Aphrodite of Calamis ; but 
 this is a poor consolation. There were also works by 
 Myron of Discobolus fame, notably his cow, about which 
 the poetasters of antiquity wrote thousands of epigrams, 
 none of which, if we may judge of them by those extant, 
 told anything about the work of art, but only informed 
 men as to the ingenuity of the epigrammatist. 
 
 The other works planned at this time were not final. 
 Propylaea were planned to form an entrance on the west, 
 but they had soon to make way for the far more 
 magnificent Propylaea of Pericles. A Parthenon is sup- 
 posed to have been planned, but it seems not to have 
 risen above the foundations. We cannot be sure why 
 the next generation chose to begin these tasks afresh, 
 instead of working on the projected lines. But it seems 
 likely that the rapid rise of Athenian power and prosperity 
 enlarged the ambition of the architects and artists, and 
 the Delian fund provided them with so large a treasure 
 that they were able to carry out designs of greater 
 magnificence than were a few years before even con- 
 * Harrison and Verrall, p. 387. 
 
Chap. VIII.] The Excavation of the Athenian Acropolis. 255 
 
 templated. Professor Curtius, in an interesting passage 
 of the work already mentioned* tries to find traces of 
 opposition on the part of the friends of Cimon to the new 
 impulse to deck the city like a courtesan with gold and 
 precious stones. 
 
 A question warmly debated in the archaeological camp 
 of late is whether the Peisistratid temple of Athena was 
 rebuilt after the Persian wars or not. Doerpfeld maintains 
 that it was rebuilt without the surrounding stylobate. 
 He pertinently asks where the treasures of the Delian 
 confederacy could have been stored, before Parthenon 
 and Erechtheum were built, save in this old temple. 
 Probably if Doerpfeld had contented himself with the 
 view that the cella was rebuilt for a temporary purpose, 
 and then pulled down on the erection of the Parthenon 
 and Erechtheum, archaeologists would have been indis- 
 posed to quarrel with him. But he by no means stops 
 at that point. He tries to show that it still remained 
 standing during all the period of Greek history, and 
 was visited by Pausanias in the Antonine age. Thus 
 extended, the view does incur grave difficulties. We 
 are asked to believe that the beautiful porch of the 
 Erechtheum, with its row of maidens standing to support 
 the roof, was built within two yards of the blank wall 
 of. this earlier building (see p. 234); and that at a time 
 when Pericles was adorning the Acropolis with every 
 embellishment which art could devise or money procure, 
 he allowed the very centre of the hill to be occupied 
 by. a structure destitute of architectural and sculptural 
 ornament, and only set up in haste for practical 
 purposes. 
 
 It is of course impossible here to give even a short 
 account of a controversy which involves the citation of 
 ancient writers and of inscriptions, as well as the weigh- 
 
 * p. 140. 
 
2 ^ 6 iVWf Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VIII. 
 
 ing of architectural evidence. Doerpfeld's arguments 
 have been met point by point by Petersen, the late 
 Head of the German School, and the question is still 
 far from being settled. Miss Harrison is as usual 
 entirely on the side of Dr. Doerpfeld, whose arguments 
 she sums up*. She even goes further, and supposes 
 that when Pausanias speaks of the temple of Athena 
 Polias and the treasures it contained, he intends not, as 
 all writers have hitherto supposed, a part of the complex 
 building called the Erechtheum, but this most ancient 
 temple of Athena. At the same time she is obliged to 
 allow that the very archaic wooden figure of Athena 
 which the people of Athens guarded as their most 
 important and venerable treasure, was preserved under 
 the roof of the Erechtheum, thus acknowledging in her 
 theory a weakness which if not fatal is at least serious. 
 It is an interesting as well as a pretty quarrel ; but we 
 must leave it to be dealt with by others. 
 
 We now reach the great age of Athens, the age of the 
 Olympian Pericles, when every year brought fresh fame 
 and power to Athens abroad, and rendered the city more 
 beautiful within. Never again could come such a con- 
 junction of circumstances. In the midst of a people of 
 highly organized sensibility and keen love of the beau- 
 tiful, a school of architects and sculptors unrivalled alike 
 in loftiness and delicacy was called upon to adorn a 
 site of incomparable natural beauty, which had been 
 swept clear for them by the Persians and made ready 
 by Cimon. And for resources they were able to draw 
 upon the almost boundless wealth accumulated from the 
 tribute, while close to them lay the mountain Pentelicus 
 composed of the most beautiful marble which the world 
 can show. However splendid their success, it could 
 scarcely reach the level of their opportunity. 
 
 * p. 504- 
 
Chap. VIII.] The Excavation of the Athenian Acropolis. 257 
 
 It was at this time that the surface of the Acropolis 
 received the stamp which it wore until the downfall of 
 Paganism. It may be well therefore to recount the 
 principal features of the site ; and we would beg the 
 reader to follow us on the plan. 
 
 It was of great importance to provide the plateau on 
 the west side with an approach worthy of Athens. The 
 Propylaea of Cimon were set aside as unsatisfactory, and 
 the architect Mnesicles was entrusted with the task of 
 planning new gates ; not such gates as might keep out 
 an enemy ; for that the Athenians trusted to their ships 
 and the city-wall ; but such gates as might properly 
 impress citizen and visitor as they entered. Not only 
 did the Propylaea of Mnesicles form a standing boast to 
 the Athenians, but they still form, as every visitor to 
 Athens knows, a most beautiful and imposing whole. 
 Dr. Doerpfeld has made an interesting discovery, to 
 which he has been led, not by the unearthing of new 
 facts, but by a more careful weighing of those already 
 known. The ground-plan of the building as it stands 
 is evidently irregular, and not in accordance with the 
 principles of Greek architecture. The reason of this is, 
 according to Doerpfeld, that the original plan was not 
 fully carried out. The hall which stands on the right 
 side as one approaches the entrance should have been 
 as large as the hall on the left side, and behind each 
 there was to have, been a still more extensive gallery, in- 
 tended no doubt for the reception of the great works in 
 painting and sculpture, which then every year was pro- 
 ducing at Athens. Why the plan was not carried out 
 we cannot be sure, but it is very likely that one reason 
 may have been an objection on the part of the votaries 
 of Artemis Brauronia, on whose precinct the too auda- 
 cious Mnesicles would fain have trespassed. There is 
 a clear summary of Doerpfeld's reasonings in Miss Har- 
 
 S 
 
258 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. Till. 
 
 rison's book ; * it will be to many architects a pleasure 
 to follow them. 
 
 Within the enclosure the most prominent monuments 
 were of course those devoted to the worship of Athena. 
 As one passed the Propylaea, her great bronze statue by 
 Pheidias towered over one's head, and behind it was 
 visible the smoke curling up from her great altar, which 
 stood in the open air. On the right hand stood the 
 Parthenon in its unrivalled majesty, and on the left the 
 smaller Erechtheum, with its row of marble maidens sus- 
 taining the roof of the southern porch. In regard to 
 these two temples recent excavation has added com- 
 paratively little to our knowledge ; an exquisite head 
 of the goddess Iris, from the Parthenon frieze, is the 
 chief new addition. The ground beneath their founda- 
 tions is the only part of the surface of the Acropolis 
 which has escaped a thorough investigation ; and it is 
 greatly to be hoped that the zeal for knowledge of the 
 modern Athenians will never lead them to venture on 
 underpinning the two temples in order to search beneath 
 them. 
 
 While the Propylaea were being built, one of the 
 skilled masons fell from a height. His life was des- 
 paired of ; but Athena appeared in a dream to Pericles, 
 and prescribed a remedy, from the use of which the 
 mason recovered. In return Pericles set up a statue 
 of Athena Hygieia, the patroness of medicine, near her 
 altar on the Acropolis. It gives actuality to this pleas- 
 ing story when we discover close to the Propylaea, 
 possibly on the spot where the mason fell, a basis of a 
 statue bearing an inscription in letters of the time of 
 Pericles, which reads : " The Athenians to Athena Hy- 
 gieia : Pyrrhus, the Athenian, was the sculptor." 
 
 Besides being Virgin, Protector, and Healer, Athena 
 
 * P- 355- 
 
Chap. VIII.] The Excavation of the Athenian Acropolis. 259 
 
 was worshipped on the Citadel by other titles. She was 
 also Giver of Victory ; and the exquisite little temple 
 of Nike Apteros, which stands just outside the Pro- 
 pylaea, was really dedicated to her, the " Unwinged Vic- 
 tory," in contrast to the ordinary winged victory, who 
 was but her servant and messenger. It used to be 
 supposed that as Ergane, the patroness of work, Athena 
 had a separate sanctuary on the Acropolis. This is now, 
 however denied. It is true that an inscription recording 
 a dedication to Athena Ergane was found in the space 
 between the shrine of Artemis Brauronia and the Par- 
 thenon, and in consequence it was supposed that the 
 Deity had there a sacred precinct ; but the result of 
 recent excavation is to show that here there stood no 
 shrine, but a stoa, which may have been the Chalcotheca 
 of which Pausanius speaks, and which has been assigned 
 to various spots in the enclosure. Athena Ergane must 
 have had an altar and a cult, but that she had a temple 
 is very doubtful. There was, finally, a statue of Athena 
 Lemnia made by Pheidias, which Lucian, perhaps the 
 best critic of antiquity, declares to have surpassed in 
 grace and beauty all other works of the master. 
 
 Next in importance to the cult of Athena was that 
 of the Brauronian Artemis, who possessed a territory be- 
 hind a wing of the Propylaea, and whose worship bore 
 many marks of great antiquity. There stood in her 
 temple, as we gather from an inscription in the British 
 Museum, two statues, a more ancient seated one, and a 
 later one by Praxiteles. The votaries of Artemis were 
 called bears, and in early times girls clad in bearskins 
 danced in her honour. A little stone bear found on the 
 Acropolis illustrates the custom, which few moderns will 
 hesitate to regard as a remnant of totem-worship. Ar- 
 temis was everywhere the goddess of child-birth ; so we 
 are not surprised to learn from inscriptions that her 
 
 S 2 
 
260 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VHL 
 
 temple became a regular wardrobe, where garments of 
 all kinds, dedicated to the formidable deity, with mirrors 
 and many other feminine trifles, were heaped up in 
 profusion. 
 
 Other cults had a place, though a less prominent one, 
 on the Acropolis ; and of nearly all of them we have 
 some remains in the form of inscriptions found on the 
 spot. There was Aphrodite Pandemos, whose statue, 
 the work of Scopas, was seated on a galloping goat. 
 There were Ge Kourotrophos and Demeter Chloe, who 
 had a little shrine by the Propylaea, and Pan, who had 
 a cave on the side of the rock. It is, however, surpris- 
 ing how small a share in the sacred site fell to the 
 higher and more dignified gods, Zeus and Apollo, Hera 
 and Hermes. The men of Athens were content that 
 the great centre of their worship should be their ances- 
 tral Athena, the armed Virgin, mistress alike in war 
 and the arts of peace. The fact is remarkable. In 
 Athens women led a secluded life, and were during all 
 the flourishing age of the city of little account, though 
 their influence grew with the decline. Nor was virginity 
 after early youth regarded as either natural or pleasing 
 to the gods. An armed woman could scarcely be more 
 out of place anywhere than at Athens. The old saying 
 that men make the gods in their own likeness fails 
 singularly in this instance. The explanation is probably 
 to be found in the identification of the Deity with her 
 city. It was no worship of Humanity which held the 
 Athenians, but a worship of the beautiful and glorious 
 city of the violet crown, a veneration for their illustrious 
 ancestors, and a conviction that alike in arts and arms 
 they held the lead of the whole world. The object of 
 their cultus was an idealized and glorified embodiment 
 of their civic life. 
 
 If, with Pausanias, we could have spent a day amid 
 
Chap. VIII.] The Excavation of the Athenian Acropolis. 261 
 
 the splendid dedications and crowded statues of the 
 Acropolis, we should have found many things to astonish 
 us, and to widen our notions of classical art, which are 
 far too narrow and conventional, too much shaped by 
 the Roman copyist and the Italian restorer, by the 
 outworn views of Winckelmann and Lessing, and the 
 conventional proprieties of the Vatican and the Capitol. 
 The ancient Athenians were not classical in the narrow 
 sense in which the age of the Antonines, or the age of 
 Louis XIV., was classical. They followed impulse freely ; 
 but the impulse in turn was kept in check by a clear 
 perception of the conditions under which works of art 
 of various sorts must be executed, and a frank accept- 
 ance of traditional types, as well as the sense of what 
 was beautiful, and the love of what was natural. One 
 cannot but wish that some copy or record remained to 
 us of the statue of Diitrephes, pierced by arrows, ap- 
 parently an anticipation of the S. Sebastian of Christian 
 painters, or of the bronze figure of the Trojan horse 
 by Strongylion, with Menestheus and Teucer, Demophon 
 and Acamas, looking out from his side, two works of 
 which we have the bases only. One cannot but wish 
 that we could restore the group which represented 
 Athena leaping full-armed from the head of Zeus, or 
 the bronze Theseus lifting the natural rock to recover 
 his father's sandals. One cannot but long for an hour 
 in the Pinacotheca, amid the paintings of Polygnotus 
 and Aglaophon, so infinitely removed from the super- 
 ficialities and vulgarities of Pompeii. These things are 
 gone for ever, and it is perhaps a poor consolation to 
 know that we have of late become better able to appre- 
 ciate their loss. 
 
 We must not, however, imitate the modern Athenians 
 by ignoring the Athens of the times which succeeded 
 Pericles, but must recount, however briefly, the existing 
 
262 New Cliapters in Greek History. [Chap. viii. 
 
 monuments of the Acropolis dating from later and less 
 splendid ages. 
 
 Of the brief revival of Athenian power in the fourth 
 century there are extant traces in the bases which once 
 supported the statues of Conon and Timotheus men- 
 tioned by Pausanias, and in a number of interesting 
 tablets which record the alliances and the decrees of 
 the restored Athenian empire. Of the Alexandrine age 
 are the choragic monuments of Nicias and of Thrasyllus, 
 the latter of which was still surmounted in the time of 
 the traveller Stuart by the seated statue of Dionysus, 
 since removed to the British Museum. The kings of 
 Pergamon have bequeathed to us enduring memorials of 
 their love for Athens in the great stoa, of which remains 
 still exist in the rear of the stage-buildings of the theatre, 
 and in the figures of overthrown Giants and Amazons 
 and Persians, executed in the Pergamene style, now 
 preserved in several of the museums of Europe. The 
 basis of the statue erected to Agrippa in the earliest 
 days of the Roman Empire may still be seen outside 
 the Propylaea, and recent researches have revealed the 
 foundations of the temple of Rome and Caesar, the 
 emblem of the incorporation of the city of Athena in the 
 world-wide dominion of the Romans. Several existing 
 buildings at Athens date also from the time of Hadrian, 
 and bear testimony to the philhellenic propensities of an 
 emperor who sought to restore animation to the Greek 
 nation, and only succeeded in galvanizing the corpse of 
 the race. 
 
 Thereafter every century took something from the glory 
 of Athens, and added nothing to it. The main blame for 
 the wanton destruction of the memorials of their own 
 greatness rests on the Greeks, though doubtless Turks 
 and Venetians have done their part in the work of ruin. 
 The share of England deserves rather praise than blame 
 
Chap. VIII.] The Excavation of the Athenian Acropolis. 263 
 
 There is still in some quarters a mistaken notion, fostered 
 by the poems of Byron, and encouraged by Greek Chau- 
 vinists, that one of the worst spoilers of later ages was 
 Lord Elgin. But the facts of history not only justify 
 the action of Elgin, but prove that he must be classed 
 among public benefactors. He knew that in all pro- 
 bability if the sculptures of the Parthenon were left 
 where they were, they would shortly perish. And in 
 fact had they been left they would have suffered severely 
 in the troubled days of the Greek revolt. The west end 
 of the Parthenon which he had stripped of its sculptures 
 was exposed for a year in 1826 to the repeated blows 
 of Turkish cannon-balls. The so-called Caryatid of the 
 Erechtheum which Elgin carried off has been preserved 
 intact, the five which he left in situ suffered severely in 
 the revolutionary war. The reliefs of the Choragic 
 Monument of Lysicrates which he spared have since 
 been so much defaced, that the cast taken in Elgin's 
 time preserves many details which they have lost. And 
 in addition the art of Europe received the impulse im- 
 parted by the exquisite Pheidian sculptures many years 
 earlier than would have been the case had they remained 
 at Athens. The visitor at Athens cannot help a moment's 
 regret when he looks at the blank spaces in the pedi- 
 ments and on the cella walls of the Parthenon, and in 
 imagination fills them with the sculptures which repre- 
 sent the birth of Athena and the Panathenaic Procession. 
 But a little reflection shows him that it was a wise 
 prudence which removed the jewels from a casket ex- 
 posed to a hundred risks, and not then guarded by any 
 strong national feeling. Beyond doubt had Elgin left the 
 sculptures on the temple, the Greeks themselves would 
 before now, in justifiable zeal for their better preserva- 
 tion, have transferred them to the galleries of their new 
 and spacious museums. Moreover, Michaelis and Boet- 
 
264 New CJiapters in Greek History. ["Chap. yiii. 
 
 ticher, although as Germans free from national bias in 
 the matter, fully allow that in possessing herself of the 
 Parthenon sculptures, England conferred a benefit on the 
 world. 
 
 Had the artistic treasures brought to the west from 
 the Athenian Acropolis, from Aegina, from Bassae re- 
 mained in Greece, Athens would have been too rich and 
 the rest of the world too poor in what is after all the 
 common possession of civilized man. But the Greeks 
 have the future in their own hands. And we must ex- 
 pect that year by year the harvest of sculpture in the 
 Athenian and provincial museums will grow richer and 
 richer, until the country recovers something of the posi- 
 tion which it held in the days of Pausanias as the most 
 glorious storehouse in the world of the sculpture of the 
 only nation which ever really understood sculpture. The 
 voyage to Athens, already exercising every year a 
 stronger attraction on the cultivated classes, will become 
 more and more an essential part of education. And 
 those who still believe that classical training is the best 
 means of developing the humane side of men will be 
 unwise if they fail to appreciate this growing advantage 
 which has fallen in their way, or to use it as a means 
 of giving actuality to Greek literature and history, and 
 enthusiasm to those occupied with them. 
 
( 265 ) 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OLYMPIA AND THE FESTIVAL 
 
 In order that the study of history may duly fulfil its 
 mission in enlarging the ideas and widening the charity 
 of mankind, it is essential that both the writers and the 
 readers of historical works should use the imagination 
 not less than the intellect and the memory. It is not 
 enough to study the chronicles of past days ; what we 
 want is to re-live the life of past days ; to sympathize 
 with the hopes and fears, to share the beliefs and the 
 sentiments, of the age and the country which we make 
 our study ; to image to ourselves its daily life ; to fall 
 into its ways of thinking. 
 
 The historical training of the imagination is a long 
 and laborious task. Nor can it ever be completed by 
 the study of documents and of literature ; though these, 
 of course, have their place in the curriculum. But it is 
 also necessary that the imagination should be approached 
 through the senses. We must not only read, but feel 
 and see. Thus, there are only two methods by which 
 it is possible adequately to carry the imagination through 
 past episodes of history. One is to study in museums 
 the material relics— the corpses, so to speak — left by 
 those episodes ; the other is to visit their graves — the 
 scenes where those episodes took place — and there follow 
 with patience and reverence their details. 
 
266 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. IX. 
 
 It is most fortunate when these methods can be com- 
 bined ; when in visiting the scene of great events we see 
 also on all sides traces of their course and results of 
 their energy. This is now the case at Olympia. The 
 result of the excavations carried on there at great cost 
 and with supreme disinterestedness by the German people 
 has been to enable the traveller at Olympia not only to 
 study the scene of the greatest of Greek athletic fes- 
 tivals, but to trace the celebration from hour to hour 
 and from point to point. He not only sees the hill of 
 Cronion, where the spectators crowded, wades through 
 Olympic dust, and feels the sun of Olympia beat on his 
 head ; but he can wander on the threshold of the Temple 
 of Zeus, pass from building to building in the sacred 
 enclosure of the Altis, and stand at the starting-point 
 of the runners in the Stadium. Taking the guide-book 
 of the old Greek traveller Pausanias in our hand, we can 
 follow in his steps ; and out of broken pillars, truncated 
 pedestals, and the foundations of demolished buildings, 
 we can conjure forth the beautiful Olympia of old, with 
 its glorious temples, its rows of altars, its statues of gods 
 and godlike men who conquered in the games, its trea- 
 suries full of the noblest works of art and the richest 
 spoils of war. And we can people the solitude with 
 the combatants and with the spectators, a crowd filled 
 with the enthusiasm of the place and with delight in 
 manly contests ; a crowd over whom emotions swept as 
 rapidly as the chariots through the hippodrome, and who 
 were ever breaking out into wild cries of delight or loud 
 shouts of scorn and derision. We can see the bestowal 
 of the crowns of wild olive, and can hear the heralds 
 recite the names of those who have been victorious. 
 
 Scarcely any chapter of Greek history is of more 
 interest, or contains more instruction for modern readers, 
 than that which records the rise and the fall of Greek 
 
Chap. IX.] Olympia and the Festival. 267 
 
 athletic sports. The chapter is a short one. The bloom 
 of all the promising institutions of Greece was short. 
 Abuse soon succeeded use ; excess supervened on mode- 
 ration ; and the same causes which had made the great- 
 ness of the people, in matters athletic as in other matters, 
 also caused its decline and eclipse. 
 
 So long as Greece lived at all, and education in any- 
 way embodied national ideas, the physical training of the 
 body was much regarded. An harmonious development 
 of body and mind was sought in all systems of train- 
 ing ; and an erect carriage, well-turned limbs, and activity 
 of movement, were considered as necessary to the gentle- 
 man as modesty and good sense. From their earliest 
 years the boys frequented not only the house of the 
 teacher who instructed in reading and writing, but also 
 the palaestra of the athlete who carefully trained their 
 bodies with various exercises. The greatest of Greek 
 philosophers, when they discussed ideal possibilities in 
 education, never dreamed of neglecting its more corporeal 
 side. Aristotle maintained that gymnastic training ought 
 to begin earlier than that of the mind ; and Plato, in 
 the Laws, advocated the system of restricting boys to 
 the exercises of the gymnasium until their tenth year, 
 -and only allowing them to take up letters when their 
 physical frame was already formed. As the boys grew 
 older, they frequented new places of training, and learned 
 new exercises. The ball and the hoop gave way to the 
 discus and wrestling ; but no Greek youth at any stage 
 of his life would pass a day without devoting some 
 hours at least to systematic development of his body. 
 On the banks of some pleasant stream, and beneath the 
 shade of groves of platanus, were the early palaestras of 
 the Greeks. Here in the open air and during the heat 
 of the day the men and the lads contended one with 
 the other in mimic contest, or sedulously set themselves 
 
2 68 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. IX. 
 
 to overcome any physical defect or awkwardness of 
 person. Here all, except the classes who were bound 
 by sordid necessity to the market or the workshop, met 
 in the afternoon to gain an appetite for dinner, and to 
 mix with the circle of their friends in talking, in running, 
 in leaping", or in enjoying the most beautiful of all sights, 
 that of the healthy human body in vigorous action. 
 Grave and elderly men, generals, priests, and magistrates, 
 were not too stiff or too dignified to lay aside their 
 clothes and enter the stadium or the wrestlingr-ring-. 
 And in this pure democracy of the palaestra he was 
 king who was in person most beautiful and fittest for 
 the various contests ; he alone was despised who was 
 mean in body or wanting in energy for the conflict. 
 
 To the life of the palaestra a new meaning and aim 
 was given by the establishment of the great athletic 
 festivals of Greece. Even in heroic times there had been, 
 on the death of a chief, funereal sports wherein his com- 
 panions in arms displayed their strength and activity. 
 Homer's heroes compete in running, wrestling, and the 
 driving of chariots. Peleus vanquished his contem- 
 poraries in wrestling and the pentathlum, and Milanion 
 won Atalanta by his swiftness of foot. But the intro- 
 duction of the great festivals at stated times brought 
 system into athletic contests. Now athletes from the 
 farthest ends of the Hellenic world could be sure of 
 meeting formidable competitors, and had a chance of 
 trying for the championship of Hellas. At first men 
 contended at Olympia in running only, a fact which 
 makes it seem likely that the sports of the heroic age 
 were somewhat out of use ; but before long, wrestling, 
 the pentathlum, and other contests were added. 
 
 The ideas of the different races and cities of Greece 
 of course varied as to the nature of physical perfection 
 and the objects of gymnastic training. With the Spar- 
 
Chap, ix.] Olympia and the Festival. 269 
 
 tans endurance and hardness were most thought of; 
 among the Ionians grace and symmetry were wor- 
 shipped. The Boeotians cultivated wrestling in a marked 
 manner. Croton was noted for the great stature and 
 force of her athletes ; Aegina sent forth men highly 
 skilled in pugilism. But, setting aside ( these minor dif- 
 ferences, we may find some distinctive features which 
 specially marked the athletics of the Greeks in general. 
 The most striking of these, and indeed the key to 
 them all, was the custom of complete nudity during 
 exercise. Runners, wrestlers, leapers and boxers, whether 
 practising among themselves or performing at the games 
 beneath the eyes of assembled multitudes, divested them- 
 selves of every shred of clothing. Over and over again 
 we find it mentioned by the writers as one of the marks 
 of distinction between Greeks and barbarians that, while 
 the latter were ashamed to show themselves naked, a 
 true Hellene thought no shame in doing so. This was 
 a result brought about by gymnastic training. But 
 when it was established it seemed, to every true Greek, 
 part of the order of nature. The Lydians, Herodotus 
 naively remarks, are ashamed to be seen naked, even 
 the men of them. Not long ago, says Plato, the Greeks 
 thought, just like the barbarians, that it was a shame 
 and an absurdity for a man to appear naked. The 
 very first thing, says Solon in a dialogue of Lucian, 
 which an athlete has to learn, is to expose his unpro- 
 tected body to all kinds of weather. Such exposure 
 was made more possible by a free use of oil, which 
 the Greek daily rubbed into every part of his body, 
 and which probably had the effect not only of protecting 
 its surface against sun and wind, but of diminishing the 
 flow of perspiration and of rendering the joints supple 
 and elastic. Over the oil was sprinkled fine sand, which 
 had a detergent effect. Baths too were greatly used in 
 
 ) 
 
270 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. IX. 
 
 the Greek gymnasia, not warm baths so much until 
 late times, but frequent cold plunges in the river and 
 douches beneath a fountain. 
 
 Such training must have had a wondrous effect in 
 rendering the body hard and healthy, and the skin soft 
 and supple. This question, however, we leave to phy- 
 sicians, and speak only of the outward physical and 
 moral effects of the life. The first result would be 
 ruddiness of body. When Agesilaus stripped his Persian 
 prisoners, their white bodies caused the utmost ridicule 
 among the bronzed Greek soldiers, who looked on them 
 as on women brought up delicately in houses. In 
 Greek paintings the bodies of women are rendered by 
 white colour, but those of men are red, and this no 
 doubt only reproduces the facts of daily life. And with 
 ruddiness there was joined the utmost symmetry. Grace 
 and rhythm of movement and form aroused enthusiastic 
 admiration wherever Greek men practised together. 
 This, all strove to imitate, all looked for in friend and 
 connection, all desired to perpetuate. Statues of the 
 most beautiful and vigorous men, of victorious athletes 
 in particular, were erected by the hundred and thousand, 
 not at Olympia only, but in every city of Greece. Of 
 these a small remnant remains to testify to us of Greek 
 physical perfection. Modern sculptors sigh in k vain for 
 models which can compare with them ; in the gymnastic 
 rooms at our Universities we see no forms so powerful, 
 yet so well-balanced and light. Yet Galen states that 
 in his day many of the young men were not inferior in 
 physique to the statues of great sculptors. 
 
 It is this habit of constantly watching the beautiful 
 and powerful bodies of athletes in every attitude and in 
 every kind of exercise, which accounts for many of the 
 peculiarities of the Greek nature. It accounts for the 
 unrivalled excellence of their sculpture ; they had not 
 
Chap. IX.] Olympia and the Festival. 271 
 
 to copy in a studio the limbs of a single unsatisfactory- 
 model, but were able by comparison of form with form 
 daily to grow in knowledge of every part of the human 
 frame, and daily to raise their standard as to the possi- 
 bilities of human perfection. The shapes of men became 
 as familiar to sculptor and painter as those of the sheep 
 to a shepherd or those of horses to a groom. These 
 artists became intoxicated with the beauty of men, until 
 every force of nature presented itself to them under a 
 human aspect ; until all their decoration consisted in the 
 introduction of human forms ; nay, even abstract qualities, 
 events, and places, seemed to clothe themselves with 
 flesh and blood. 
 
 There is another aspect in which we may regard 
 Greek athletic sports, that is as a training for war. 
 Some of the contests were of a distinctly warlike 
 character, such as running a race with a shield on one's 
 arm, and such as hurling the spear. And in days when 
 man clashed against man and a duel often ended in a 
 personal grapple, it was no mean advantage to be a 
 good wrestler. Plutarch attributes the victory of the 
 Thebans at Leuctra to their superiority in wrestling to 
 the Lacedaemonians, wrestling being a special art of 
 the Boeotians. Indeed, if we examine any one of the 
 numerous friezes from Greek temples which represent 
 groups of fighters, we may see at once how much the 
 victory depended on personal force and agility. 
 
 The most learned and laborious of the German writers 
 on the Greek games, Dr. Krause, concludes his work* 
 with a comparison between ancient and modern athletic 
 sports, resulting in the claim of immense superiority in 
 the Greeks over any moderns. But Dr. Krause's stan- 
 dard of modern proficiency was that of the German 
 Turnvereins of forty years ago. It is since that time that 
 * Die Gymnastik titid Agonistik der Hellenen. 
 
272 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. IX. 
 
 athletic contests very closely resembling those of the 
 Greeks have been introduced in our English cities, and 
 especially have taken deep root at our Universities. 
 Mr. Mahaffy* has more recently compared our English 
 athletics with those of Olympia and the Isthmus, and 
 decided far more favourably for the moderns. The pro- 
 ficiency of modern athletes may be tested by any one 
 who will pass a day in witnessing their competitions. 
 But it is not an easy task to estimate properly the skill 
 of the Greeks in this manner, and in our opinion 
 Mr. Mahaffy takes by far too mean a view of it. In 
 some matters he is distinctly unjust. Thus, he tries to 
 show that Greek pugilists did not hit straight from the 
 shoulder, and quotes a passage of Virgil in support of 
 this view ; adducing also the supposed fact that it was 
 the ears of Greek boxers, and not their noses and 
 cheeks, which suffered in their encounters. But Virgil 
 knew very little about Greek athletics ; and it would be 
 easy to adduce several passages from ancient writers 
 which show that Greek boxers attacked nose and mouth 
 not less than other parts of the face. The battered ears 
 belonged to pancratiasts rather than boxers. On vases 
 we see representations of boxers standing one against 
 another in well-balanced attitudes, their heads thrown 
 back and their arms well advanced ; and unless the 
 physique of the combatants is very falsely depicted, 
 their blows must have been delivered with immense 
 force. Mr. Mahaffy ridicules the tales of Greek prowess 
 in leaping, and certainly we are driven into scepticism 
 when we hear of Phayllus clearing fifty feet at a bound, 
 but it is extremely probable that the ancients had 
 studied the theory of leaping more than we, and were 
 able by means of the weights which they held in their 
 hands to propel their bodies for considerable distances. 
 * In MacviillaiCs Magazine, vol. xxxvi. p. 61. 
 
Chap. IX.] Olympia and the Festival. 273 
 
 During the recent excavations one curious memorial of 
 Greek prowess has come to light at Olympia — an oval 
 mass of rock two feet in length and one in depth, 
 which bears an inscription testifying that one Bybon 
 raised it with one hand above his head and hurled it — 
 whither we cannot clearly make out. 
 
 In fact, in the matter of athletic sports our more com- 
 plicated civilisation gives us no advantage. Red Indians 
 run as fast as English professionals, and some of the 
 most distinguished pugilists have been negroes. In these 
 matters four things alone give success — strength, address, 
 science, and practice. All four of these the Greeks 
 united in the highest degree. Bodily forms such as 
 theirs must have been admirably adapted for every ex- 
 ploit, whether of force, activity, or endurance. They lived 
 in the open air, had no sedentary employment, did not 
 trouble themselves about reading of any kind, or that 
 study which is destruction to an athlete, practised for 
 hours every day, and had the utmost inducement to 
 attain the highest possible perfection. So the mass of 
 their young men reached, during the best age of Greek 
 history, a stage of physical prowess and perfection which 
 has probably never been attained in any other age or 
 country. And the custom of doing all exercises to the 
 sound of the flute would tend to produce measure and 
 a studied grace of movement conspicuously absent in 
 some of the most celebrated of modern athletes. 
 
 Once in every four years the heralds from Elis pro- 
 claimed through all the cities of Greece a sacred truce 
 which was to last for a month. In the midst of that 
 month, from the eleventh to the sixteenth day, was the 
 great athletic festival of Zeus at Olympia. The earlier 
 and the later days of the month were occupied with the 
 journey to the spot and the return homeward. War, 
 business, and pleasure, were alike stayed ; and the roads 
 
 T 
 
274 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. IX. 
 
 leading to Olympia were daily more and more thronged 
 with a mingled crowd. Woe to the man who molests 
 one of the pilgrims of the Deity on his sacred journey ! 
 Zeus, the protector of strangers, will guard his votaries, 
 and severe judgments from Heaven will dog the steps 
 of the sacrilegious offender during life or drag him to 
 an early grave. 
 
 We are accustomed to think of the Greeks as all alike ; 
 yet it is certain that the spectators who watched the 
 crowds pouring towards Olympia along the road which 
 passed up the Alpheus into Arcadia, or that which led 
 to the sacred port of Pheia, witnessed wide differences 
 of type and of dress. From all the shores of the Medi- 
 terranean and the Euxine Seas the Greek colonies sent 
 deputations to represent them at the games, to bear 
 offerings to the temple, and to perform sacrifices on their 
 behalf. And the Greeks readily took a tinge from the 
 land wherein they dwelt. There were dwellers on the 
 northern shore of the Black Sea, to whom constant inter- 
 course and frequent intermarriage with their Scythian 
 neighbours gave almost the aspect of nomads ; and 
 colonists from Massilia, who in dress and blood were 
 half Gauls. There were people of Cyrene, with the hot 
 blood and dark complexion of Africa, and oriental 
 Ionians with trailing robes and effeminate airs. There 
 were rude pirates from Acarnania, and delicate sensual- 
 ists from Cyprus. And not only were various climates 
 and different stages of civilisation represented, but all 
 social classes and all occupations. The rich rode on 
 horseback, with a train of slaves following, or were 
 gently transported in a litter on the shoulders of stal- 
 wart bearers ; the poor marched in troops, carrying their 
 frugal provisions with them. Here might be seen a 
 merchant with a large stock of oriental draperies, or of 
 works of art adapted for votive purposes, of which he 
 
Chap. IX.] Olympia and the Festival. 275 
 
 hoped to dispose during the festival ; there, a poet eager 
 to recite his verses amid the throng, or a musician 
 carrying his precious lyre with him. Here was a statu- 
 ary, with his coppersmiths, hoping to secure orders for 
 statues of victors ; there a gymnastic trainer, eager to 
 learn the latest fashion in wrestling, or to watch the 
 prowess of a former pupil. Many would come to fulfil 
 a vow undertaken at some time of sorrow or sickness, 
 many to consult the various oracles at Olympia as to 
 future conduct or past events, to seek the aid of some 
 deity in marrying a daughter, or detecting a thief. 
 Many would come to display their wealth before the 
 eyes of Greece, many to hear news from all parts of the 
 world, or to ask after seafaring relations, or friends who 
 had long been absent and unheard-of. In one point the 
 throng was very noteworthy — it contained no women. 
 The long journey, the fatigue of witnessing the contest, 
 the character of the competitions, were all quite unfit for 
 the carefully-nurtured and secluded women of the Ionian 
 and Achaean races ; even the Dorian women, who dwelt 
 at less distance, and were not unused to mingle with 
 men, were mostly or even entirely excluded. Pausanias 
 indeed says that although married women were not ad- 
 mitted, virgins might be spectators of the festival ; but 
 it is much doubted whether this statement is not based 
 on some misunderstanding. 
 
 Arriving at Olympia the visitors had to provide them- 
 selves with quarters. There was probably no city on the 
 spot, certainly none at all capable of containing the arriv- 
 ing multitudes ; few buildings besides the religious edi- 
 fices and those used by judges, trainers, and athletes. 
 The strangers had to pitch themselves tents in the field 
 surrounding the Altis, or sleep in the stone porticoes. A 
 vast camp arose, and in the days preceding the festival 
 the camp became a fair. Merchants set up their booths, 
 
 T 2 
 
276 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. IX. 
 
 and money-changers their tables, all the classes of artists 
 tried to collect audiences and admirers, crowds attended 
 the exercises of the athletes who were in training, or 
 admired the practice of the horses and chariots which 
 were entered for races. Heralds recited treaties, military 
 or commercial, recently formed between Greek cities, in 
 order that they might be the more widely known. The 
 representatives of the various cities passed from altar to 
 altar, sacrificing to the deities whose favour they most 
 coveted ; and the dignitaries of Elis offered a series of 
 public sacrifices in a regular order mentioned by Pau- 
 sanias, the earliest honours being awarded to Hestia and 
 the Olympian Zeus. 
 
 The judges appointed by the people of Elis to conduct 
 the festival were called Hellanodicae. Their number 
 varied between eight and twelve. Their first business 
 was to conduct an examination of the candidates who 
 wished to enter for the various contests. Duty to Zeus 
 himself required that no person who was not of Greek 
 blood, that no one who had been convicted of crime, or 
 guilty of impiety, that no member of a city which had 
 incurred the divine wrath, should be admitted. Candi- 
 dates had also to prove that for ten months they had 
 been undergoing a regular course of training in a gym- 
 nasium, and to practise for the thirty days preceding the 
 festival at the great gymnasium of Elis, under the eyes of 
 the Hellanodicae themselves. After undergoing these 
 tests their names were placed on a white board, and 
 suspended at Olympia. After this there was no drawing 
 back. He who, when the time came, shrank from the 
 contest, was adjudged a coward, and fined with a fine 
 as heavy as that inflicted on men guilty of bribery, or 
 of taking an unfair advantage of an opponent. The 
 greatest of Greek athletes, Thcagenes, entered at Olympia 
 for the contests of boxing and the pancratium. In the 
 
Chap. IX.] Olympia and the Festival. 277 
 
 former he was victorious, but suffered so severely that 
 he was unfit for the terrible test of the pancratium, and 
 even he was remorselessly fined, as failing to appear 
 through cowardice. 
 
 When the candidates enrolled themselves they offered 
 a boar in sacrifice, at the altar of Zeus Horcius, the 
 hearer of oaths, which stood in the Senate-House, and 
 swore solemnly to observe the laws of the contest. After 
 they were entered, they and their friends alike besieged 
 the altars of those deities who specially interested them- 
 selves in the games, and more particularly of the heroes 
 who had in mythical ages distinguished themselves in 
 the various sports. Charioteers sought the Heroum of 
 Pelops ; pancratiasts specially invoked the aid of Her- 
 cules, pentathli implored the assistance of Peleus, and 
 boxers appealed to the protection of Euthymus, a boxer 
 of historical times, but of world-wide fame. 
 
 The leisure days before the festival would, by most of 
 the visitors, be spent in great part amid the temples and 
 statues of the Altis. And we are now, in consequence of 
 the results of the German excavations, enabled to form 
 a clear and satisfactory idea as to what they would have 
 found there to awaken their emotions of admiration and 
 piety. The central point of it, alike in a material and 
 a religious sense, was the great Temple of Zeus. To- 
 wards this, every visitor would at once make his way, 
 entering at the southern gate of the Altis, and passing 
 along the sacred road, trodden by frequent processions 
 between monuments erected in memory of Olympian 
 victors and illustrious men — monuments whereof the 
 bases still exist, with inscriptions reading like epitaphs 
 to tell us how much of beauty and of excellence we have 
 lost for ever. Towering above the crowd of distinguished 
 men, a little to the right of the road, was the wonderful 
 Victory of Paeonius on her tall triangular base. The 
 
278 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. IX. 
 
 discovery of this figure, a cast of which is now set up 
 in the British Museum, was the first important result 
 reached by the German explorers, and the first inscrip- 
 tion which they copied was the memorable lines, en- 
 graved below it, recording the victory of the Messenians 
 and Naupactians over their " enemies." We gather from 
 Pausanias that these enemies were the Lacedaemonians, 
 and that the event really commemorated was the calamity 
 of Sphacteria, but that those who erected the trophy 
 dared not be more explicit. A little further on stood 
 the bronze bull dedicated by the Eretrians, of which an 
 ear has been recovered. 
 
 All these monuments the visitor might pass without 
 notice in his eagerness to behold the great temple. 
 There is now scarcely any temple in Greece of which 
 we can form a juster idea than of this. The foundations 
 are complete, even the pavement remains in parts, and 
 the columns lie side by side close to the temple, just 
 as they fell in the earthquake which shattered the fabric. 
 To a large extent the structure might be built again 
 from the old materials, which lie on the site in a 
 disorder beneath which a real order may be sometimes 
 discerned. And it is not only the shell of the edifice 
 which remains ; the metopes which adorned its ends, 
 and the compositions which filled its two pediments, 
 have been slowly recovered, piece by piece, from the 
 ground, until we can form a very distinct notion of the 
 sculpture of the temple ; only that the great chrys- 
 elephantine statue of Pheidias, the chief glory of Olym- 
 pia, and the embodiment of the highest Greek notion 
 of divinity, has perished completely. It is supposed 
 that the only direct copy of it which has come down 
 to us from antiquity is to be found on bronze coins of 
 Elis, of the age of Hadrian. 
 
 The student who would study the Olympian temple 
 
To face page 278. 
 
Chap. IX.] Olympia and tlie Festival. 279 
 
 may supplement a visit to the new museum at Olympia 
 itself by one to the museums of Berlin or Dresden, 
 where casts of the marbles found at Olympia have 
 been arranged by scientific hands into groups such as 
 they may originally have formed.* Here the student 
 will find the pedimcntal groups recomposed, as far as 
 is at present possible, and can judge of the appearance 
 they must have presented to the ancient visitor at 
 Olympia. 
 
 According to Pausanias, in the eastern pediment 
 Paeonius represented the chariot-race between Oenomaus 
 and Pelops ; in the western pediment Alcamenes por- 
 trayed the battle of the Centaurs and the Lapithae at 
 the marriage of Pirithous. Both of these groups are 
 full, to the archaeologist, of instruction, and to the artist, 
 it must be confessed, of disappointment. It might have 
 been expected that the great sculptors who worked at 
 Olympia, the elder contemporaries of Pheidias, would 
 have left us something which might in its way rival 
 the marvellous grace and charm which belong to the 
 pedimental groups of the Parthenon. All critics are 
 agreed that this expectation has not been realised, and 
 the art-loving part of the public seems to have made 
 up its mind that the Olympian pediments may be 
 neglected or despised. It is true that some of the groups 
 which represent Centaurs struggling with their prey are 
 of great force of design, and that some of the standing 
 and reclining figures are by no means devoid of a 
 certain largeness and nobility of treatment. But it is 
 agreed that the whole effect, more especially of the 
 
 * The literature on the subject of the arrangement of these 
 pediments is very extensive ; most of it is in the pages of the German 
 Archaeological Jahrbuch of the last few years. The little models of 
 Gruettner to be found in all museums of casts afford a useful but 
 somewhat misleading means for comparing the various views. 
 
280 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. IX. 
 
 Oenomaus group, is poor ; that the drapery of the 
 figures is rendered in a shallow and feeble manner ; 
 that the faults of execution are numberless. Indeed, 
 an ordinary student of art will find, in an hour's study 
 of these figures, faults which in our day an inferior 
 sculptor would not commit. And, what it still worse 
 to a modern eye, the figures are not only faulty, but 
 often displeasing, and the heads have a heaviness which 
 sometimes seems to amount to brutality, and are re- 
 pellent, if not absolutely repulsive. 
 
 That which repels the artist, attracts the archaeologist, 
 who is bound to explain how this character can attach 
 to sculptures from the most celebrated temple in Greece. 
 In seeking an explanation we have lighted on many 
 new truths. It has been suggested by Professor Brunn, 
 that the peculiarities of Olympian sculpture arise from 
 the circumstance that both Paeonius and Alcamenes 
 were trained in the peculiar schools of Northern Greece. 
 Others have fancied that these two artists only furnished 
 the designs for the pedimental groups, and that these 
 designs were very much marred in the execution by the 
 clumsiness of the Peloponnesians who were employed 
 as craftsmen. It can scarcely be doubted that there 
 is much truth in this latter part of the theory, and we 
 may safely lay to the credit of unskilled stone-masons 
 the smaller defects of the pedimental sculptures. But, 
 even then, the artist who designed the Chariot-contest 
 can scarcely be acquitted of jejuneness and poverty, 
 and he who designed the Combat of Centaurs sins quite 
 as deeply in the direction of excess of strain and de- 
 ficiency in sobriety. In fact, the composition as well as 
 the execution is of provincial character, and the safest 
 plan is absolutely to reject Pausanias' assignment of the 
 pediments to Alcamenes and Paeonius, and to suppose 
 that they are entirely due to a local school of sculpture. 
 
Chap. IX.] Olympia and the Festival. 28 1 
 
 The clearest result of the whole controversy is the per- 
 ception how far Pheidias was in advance of his pre- 
 decessors in the construction of groups and in all 
 qualities of design, and how superior were the Athenian 
 stone-cutters in knowledge of their craft to those of 
 other parts of Greece. This is a lesson which we might 
 have learned already from a study of the frieze of the 
 temple at Bassae ; but now we are not likely ever to 
 forget it. 
 
 The metopes from the Temple of Zeus, representing 
 the various Labours of Heracles by an unknown artist, 
 though showing the same qualities of art, are certainly 
 more pleasing than the pedimental groups. They are 
 not, indeed, without rudeness and stiffness, but in their 
 backward style there is the charm which so usually 
 marks the works of early Greek art, but which the 
 pediments have lost, without getting knowledge and 
 mastery in exchange. One of the most marked charac- 
 teristics of the metopes is the want of elaboration in 
 detail. The hair and beards of the figures are merely 
 blocked out; the parts of the garments are -not clearly 
 distinguished from one another. Critics have long seen - 
 that evidently the artist who made these groups trusted 
 chiefly to the use of colour for the effect of his com- 
 positions. And actual discovery has entirely verified 
 this conjecture. Among the discoveries is a head of 
 Heracles, from that metope wherein he is strangling 
 the lion. Of this head the hair and eyes still bear 
 distinct traces of colour. In the group of Heracles and 
 the bull, the background was blue, and the body of the 
 bull brown. Another metope had a red background. It 
 is thus quite certain that the sculpture of the metopes 
 of the temple was painted throughout. And, indeed, 
 the pedimental groups were also painted, for a part of 
 the chlamys worn by the middle figure of the western 
 
282 New Chapters in Greek PI i story. [Chap. IX. 
 
 pediment has been found still stained with a deep red 
 colour. And colour was not confined to the sculpture, 
 but extended also to the architectural decoration. All 
 the buildings of Doric order at Olympia are largely 
 coloured in blue and red. The pillars are not coloured, 
 but the triglyphs are of an intense blue, the abacus 
 beneath them red. Of the cornices the cymatia have 
 blue and red leaves alternately, and the viae are blue 
 and red. It is clear from these very exact indications, 
 that we shall always greatly misjudge Greek architecture 
 and sculpture if we think of them as cold and colour- 
 less. And although the colours of the ancients may 
 seem crude, and their juxtaposition harsh, yet it is 
 certain that the climate of Greece requires that the 
 brilliancy of marble should be moderated by colour of 
 a strong degree. The Athens of our day, because the 
 mansions in it arc built of pure white marble, is most 
 dazzling to the eyes, and all beauty of form in the 
 buildings is lost amid the glare of the cloudless Athe- 
 nian sky. 
 
 A little to the north of the great Temple of Zeus 
 was the Pelopium. The space between, as Pausanias 
 says, as well as the precinct of the Pelopium itself, 
 was a grove of trees and full of statues. The chapel 
 of the chief hero of Olympia nestled close to the temple 
 of the chief deity of Olympia, and there was the closest 
 connexion between the honours rendered to Pelops and 
 the worship offered to Zeus. But Pelops would seem 
 to be the older dweller in the Altis. 
 
 Close by, again, was the huge elliptical altar of Zeus, 
 of which the base was of stone, but the whole of the 
 upper part consisted of the ashes of victims moistened 
 with the sacred water of the Alphcius. In the solid 
 mass of ashes steps were cut, whereby men could mount 
 to the summit of the altar ; but women, even at those 
 
Chap. IX.] Olympia and the Festival. 283 
 
 seasons when they might come within the Altis, were 
 not allowed to walk on the ashes. 
 
 A little farther still to the north was the Temple of 
 Hera. The worship of Hera was quite as ancient at 
 Olympia as that of Zeus, and belonged in a special 
 degree to the people of Elis. The temple of the goddess 
 was built in nearly the same form as that of the god ; 
 but it was smaller and decidedly more ancient. Some 
 parts of it were to the last made of the primitive wood, 
 though in most parts the wood had decayed and been 
 replaced with stone. In every respect Hera stood to 
 the women of Elis in the same relation in which her 
 lord stood to the men of Elis. The men had an 
 athletic contest in honour of Zeus ; and the virgins of 
 Elis ran races in honour of Hera. The Hellanodicae 
 were picked from the tribes of the country, to conduct 
 the festival of Zeus ; and women were chosen from 
 the same tribes to preside at the festival of Hera, 
 and, in addition, to weave every year a robe for the 
 goddess. 
 
 Of the Heraeum no sculptured remains exist, like 
 those which bring before our eyes the glories of the 
 Temple of Zeus. The marvellous riches which Pausanias 
 beheld stored up within the temple, among which was 
 the wondrous coffer of Cypselus, and the disk of Iphitus, 
 on which was inscribed the proclamation of the Olympic 
 truce, have disappeared. Only two important pieces of 
 sculpture remain. Of these the first is the head of a 
 large and very early statue of Hera herself. It may 
 indeed belong to the primitive seated statue of Hera 
 which Pausanias mentions, and which was set up as her 
 representative in the temple as soon as ever the Greeks 
 began to venture on anything more ambitious than the 
 primitive pillars and xoana. The huge fiat face and 
 rude features remind us of the earliest sculptures from 
 
284 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. IX. 
 
 Selinus, and make even the archaic Hera of the Ludo- 
 visi gallery seem modern. The other piece of sculpture 
 has already gained world-wide fame, and casts of it are 
 everywhere. It is the statue by Praxiteles of Hermes 
 carrying the child Dionysus, which Pausanias mentions 
 as having been dedicated in the Temple of Hera, and 
 which was found there by the German explorers lying 
 on its face within the cella, broken indeed, yet with 
 its surface almost uninjured, a wondrous contribution to 
 our knowledge of art, and an addition to our pleasures 
 for all time. 
 
 The statues of the Parthenon belong to the school of 
 Pheidias, and those of the temple at Tegea to the school of 
 Scopas ; but we cannot lay our hand on any one of the 
 figures and say, This is the veritable work of the great 
 master. Of the works of Myron, Polycleitus, Praxiteles, 
 we have many copies, some earlier and some later, some 
 better and some worse. But we had nothing of which 
 we were sure that it contained no misunderstandings 
 and no embellishments of a later hand. Now for the 
 first time we possess a work which may with reasonable 
 certainty be attributed to one of the very greatest 
 sculptors of antiquity, and for every line and touch of 
 which we can hold him responsible. 
 
 That this figure of Hermes is of surpassing beauty 
 is acknowledged by all. Though it is wanting in the 
 lofty idealism of Pheidias, and the boldness of dcsism 
 and anatomical detail of the later Greek schools, yet it 
 has charms of its own which strike every observer. 
 Power and grace are mingled in charming proportions 
 in the figure of the deity, and in his face is a sweetness 
 of expression which is most attractive. The surface is 
 admirably finished, and we find everywhere the origi- 
 nality and absence of convention which ordinarily mark 
 the work of a master-hand. We arc perhaps somewhat 
 
Chap. IX.] Olympia and the Festival. 285 
 
 surprised to find, that at a period in Greek art so com- 
 paratively early as that of Praxiteles, every trace of 
 archaic stiffness had disappeared ; that the god, indeed, 
 may almost be said to lounge. And though there is 
 no effeminacy in the form, we may find its softness and 
 roundness of outline to exceed our expectations. But 
 in that case, all we have to do is slightly to correct 
 our notions of the art of Praxiteles. He seems to have 
 entirely accomplished his mission of calling the gods 
 down to earth, and thoroughly clothing them in the 
 flesh of beautiful humanity. His style suited the Greek 
 taste better than the loftier manner of Pheidias, and the 
 effect it had on the whole Greek world was immediate 
 and prodigious. The influence of Pheidias, as is the 
 way when artists strike too high a note, spread but 
 slowly in Greece ; but that of Praxiteles and Scopas 
 may be traced at once in all parts of the Greek world, 
 from Syracuse in the West to Lycia in the East. It 
 is worthy of notice that on this statue also were found 
 traces of colour. Lips and hair still retained a tinge 
 of red, and on the foot there were remains of colour 
 and of gilding ; indeed, a sandal of gilt bronze had 
 been attached to it. 
 
 Close to the Heraeum was the Prytaneum, the official 
 house of the magistrates who had charge of the entire 
 Altis. In it was an altar whereon the flame never died 
 out, night or day. The burnt-out ashes were periodically 
 removed and heaped on the great altar of Zeus which we 
 have already mentioned. In the Prytaneum continual 
 libations were made to a great variety of deities, and 
 mystic songs were sung, of which Pausanias does not 
 venture to give us the words. It was a sort of meeting- 
 ground of all the deities who were held in honour by 
 the people of Elis. In the Prytaneum also took place the 
 feast given at the end of every festival to the various 
 
286 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. IX. 
 
 victors by the people of Elis, a feast the materials of 
 which were probably supplied from the flesh of the 
 hecatomb of oxen which were slaughtered in sacrifice 
 to Zeus. Thus the successful athletes became in a 
 special degree the guests of the great deity of Olympia, 
 and received honour from him in return for their labours 
 in his service. 
 
 The Heraeum was in the north-west corner of the Altis. 
 As the stranger passed thence eastward along the northern 
 border of the sacred enclosure, he would light on the only 
 remaining temple which had a place in it, the Metroum, 
 or shrine of the Mother of the Gods. The reason which 
 induced the people of Elis to erect this temple in the 
 very precincts of Zeus must remain unknown. The 
 German explorations have ascertained the fact that it 
 was not erected at an early period, indeed not before 
 the time of Alexander, when many Eastern cults first 
 found a home on Greek soil. But on whatever occasion 
 the worship of Cybele was introduced at Olympia, it did 
 not long continue, for in the time of Pausanias the 
 building was without any statue of her, but full of those 
 of Roman emperors. Beyond the Metroum was a long 
 line of statues of Zeus, the pedestals of which still exist. 
 These were erected out of the fines incurred by those 
 competitors in the Olympic games who had acted un- 
 fairly or violated the solemn regulations of the contest. 
 Pausanias gives a list of the fines inflicted. We are 
 astonished alike at the smallness of their number and 
 the greatness of their amount, two circumstances which 
 alike testify to the honour in which the games were held 
 and the sportsmanlike spirit of the Greeks. 
 
 Opposite to the Zanes, as the statues of Zeus were called, 
 and the Metroum, were the treasuries of various States, 
 wherein were stored the offerings which they or their 
 citizens bestowed from time to time upon the god of 
 
Chap. IX.] Olympia and the Festival. 287 
 
 Olympia. The contents of these treasuries are of course 
 gone, but the line of foundations remains. They were ' 
 built in the form of small Greek temples in antis with 
 pronaos and cella, and in some instances adorned with 
 sculpture. Thus Pausanias tells us that the pediment of 
 the treasury of the Megarians, which stood at the eastern 
 end of the Street of Treasuries, was adorned with a re- 
 presentation of the Battle of the Gods and Giants. And 
 in fact, in taking down a rude wall erected in the Altis 
 in Byzantine times for purposes of defence against the 
 barbarians, several blocks of poros stone were discovered 
 which are proved by many indications to belong to the 
 treasury of the Megarians, and which certainly do offer 
 us figures from such a contest. We may distinguish 
 Zeus and Athena, Poseidon and Ares, with some of their 
 opponents, and a monster of the sea who comes to the 
 aid of Poseidon. Another treasury of peculiar interest, 
 which has been protected from complete destruction by 
 a fortunate landslip, is that erected by Gelo and his 
 Syracusans in memory of the ever-memorable defeat 
 which they inflicted on the Carthaginians' 1 on the very 
 day, as is said, on which the battle of Salamis was fought 
 in Greece. 
 
 Three temples, a Prytaneum, and the Treasuries : such, 
 together with numberless figures of deities and altars for 
 sacrifice, and statues of victors and warlike trophies, were 
 the contents of the sacred Altis in the period of Greek 
 independence. Before passing outside the four walls 
 which on all sides secured and shut it in from the outer 
 world, we may for a moment glance at the changes which 
 came over it at a later period. Indeed, in after time 
 the fortunes and the calamities of Greece alike left their 
 marks in the sacred enclosure. After the melancholy 
 battle of Chaeroneia, Philip of Macedon erected in it a 
 round temple, of which the foundations still remain. In 
 
288 New Cliapters in Greek History. [Chap. IX. 
 
 this temple were statues in gold and ivory, materials 
 usually reserved for the gods, of Philip and his son 
 Alexander, as well as of Amyntas, father of Philip, and 
 of Olympias and Eurydice. Philip was very powerful at 
 Elis, and in his day kings and generals were fast taking 
 the place of the Greek deities, and appropriating the 
 honours due to them. So of Demetrius and of Pyrrhus 
 and of Ptolemy, the inheritors of the empire of Alex- 
 ander, there were conspicuous statues near the Temple 
 of Zeus. 
 
 The sack of Corinth by Mummius, which concludes the 
 chapter in Greek history opened at Chaeroneia, also left its 
 traces at Olympia. It would seem that Mummius was not 
 quite satisfied at heart with his work ; at any rate his 
 offerings at Olympia were on a most profuse scale. The 
 Temple of Zeus was hung by him with twenty-one gilded 
 shields, and two large statues of Zeus in bronze were set 
 up by him — being the first offerings, as Pausanias says, 
 ever dedicated by a Roman. And when in the time of 
 Hadrian and the Antonines material prosperity returned 
 to Greece, a notable sign of it was erected in the Altis 
 by Herodes Atticus, wealthiest and most beneficent of 
 the later Greeks. This was a great reservoir of pure 
 water, built in the Street of Treasuries, and flanked by 
 two small temples, containing statues respectively of 
 Marcus Aurelius and the younger Faustina. There had 
 always been a difficulty at Olympia in procuring pure 
 water, and that difficulty was finally overcome only when 
 Greece was in its dotage, and past real enjoyment from 
 any outward change. 
 
 Then came the ravages of the Christians, who used the 
 materials of the buildings of the Altis for their churches, 
 and to form walls of defence against roaming bands of 
 Goths and Slavs ; and then the havoc of the earthquakes 
 which levelled the proud temples with the ground : and 
 
Chap. IX.] Olympia and tlie Festival. 289 
 
 then a degraded race who built their wretched cells all 
 about the enclosure of any material that came to hand ; 
 and then Turkish times, when lime-kilns were established 
 on the sites of all the great Greek temples. When we 
 think of such a series of ages of misery and fighting and 
 ignorance, we are almost ready to be surprised, not that 
 so little of Olympia remains to us, but that so much has 
 escaped the grasp of successive swarms of plunderers and 
 successive generations of barbarians seeking by every 
 means to eke out a wretched existence. 
 
 Around the Altis as a centre were grouped the other 
 buildings used by the people of Elis and the Hellanodicae 
 for purposes connected with the festival. To the north- 
 west of it, between the Heraeum and the Cladeus, may 
 still be seen the remains of a great palaestra. This is 
 an elaborate edifice some 200 feet square, divided into a 
 number of rooms and corridors. Vitruvius has left us a 
 detailed description of the gymnasium of the Greeks, 
 showing how the various rooms were grouped about the 
 hall specially belonging to the Ephebi ; how one was 
 devoted to the games of ball, in another was the corycus, 
 a leathern sack hung up for pugilists to try their fists on ; 
 how one apartment was devoted to the oiling of the 
 athletes, another to the cold bath, and another to the hot 
 bath. In other parts of the gymnasium were galleries 
 with sanded floors for the wrestlers, and raised platforms 
 round their sides, where trainers and friends could stand 
 out of fear of the contact of the oily bodies of the 
 athletes ; and besides, shady walks for the studious, and 
 exedrae where the philosophers could hold forth among 
 their disciples. The plan of the Palaestra of Elis corre- 
 sponds to the words of Vitruvius. But Olympia was no 
 place for philosophers. It was in the various gymnasia 
 that the final preparations for the momentous struggles 
 of the festival took place, and the feverish air which hung 
 
 U 
 
2 go Nezv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. ix. 
 
 over the place, and infected alike competitors and spec- 
 tators, must have greatly indisposed them for unim- 
 passioned dialogue and ethical niceties. 
 
 Still on the ^ast of the Altis, but farther south than 
 the Palaestra, lie the remains of a most interesting 
 Byzantine church. The early date and excellent pre- 
 servation of this building make it of great value to the 
 enquirers who concern themselves with Christian anti- 
 quities. But it is no less interesting to classical archae- 
 ologists. The chapel is erected on the solid foundations 
 of an earlier building. This earlier building lay exactly 
 to the west of the Temple of Zeus ; its size and aspect 
 are almost precisely those of the cella of the temple, and 
 there was a very large door opening in the direction of 
 the Altis. It is conjectured by the German excavators 
 that this building was the celebrated workshop of Pheidias, 
 wherein the great chryselephantine statue of Zeus was 
 put together in a space and a light almost exactly 
 corresponding to those which awaited it in the cella of 
 the Olympieium. The piety of the people of Elis spared 
 this workshop, and it was still shown in the . days of 
 Pausanias as one of the most venerated buildings of the 
 district. 
 
 On the south of the Altis lay the Buleuterium, or 
 Senate-house of Olympia. This is in shape a very re- 
 markable building, and was erected piece by piece. From 
 the sixth century B.C. dates one long narrow hall with apse. 
 To this a second erection, of similar shape, was added 
 in a few years. Then a smaller square building was set 
 up between the two ; and finally, in Roman times, all 
 three buildings were united together by a porch with 
 colonnades. Greek architecture did not easily lend itself 
 to enlargements. When a building had become too small 
 for the purposes to which it was appropriated, it was 
 necessary either entirely to pull it down and rebuild, or 
 
Chap, ix.] Olympia and the Festival. 291 
 
 to add a new building without. The strict architectural 
 rules of the Greeks prevented them from altering the 
 proportions of temples and halls. In the Senate-house 
 sat the Olympian Senate, the body which was the final 
 court of appeal in all matters relating to the festival — 
 who inflicted fines on competitors, and to whom an 
 appeal lay from the Hellanodicae. Within this build- 
 ing, too, was the altar of Zeus, at which all competitors 
 took a solemn oath to abide by the conditions of the 
 contest, and to take no unfair advantage. After the oath 
 their names were placed on the list, and read out to 
 the assembled multitude. Here, too, was the treasury, 
 whence the expenses of the feast and the sacrifices were 
 defrayed. 
 
 Along the whole eastern side of the Altis ran long 
 pillared galleries, which furnished a retreat in inclement 
 weather to the Olympian throng, and possibly afforded 
 them shelter at night. At least we know that the 
 Leonidaeum, which was in a line with these halls, was 
 used as an inn by distinguished Roman visitors in the 
 time of Pausanias. At the north-eastern corner of the 
 Altis there was a covered way into the Stadium, which 
 ran eastward from that point. It had been expected 
 that the end or head of the Stadium would be placed in 
 a recess of the hill of Cronus, such being the usual 
 arrangement of the stadia of Greece. But such has not 
 turned out to be the case here. The Olympian Stadium 
 runs, not into the Cronion, but along at its base. And, 
 in fact, in this way the hill would offer a better vantage- 
 ground for spectators. It rises so steeply that the crowd 
 could stand, row above row, to the very top of the hill, 
 and obtain a clear view of the course from the starting- 
 point to the goal ; though, of course, a less near view 
 than could be had from the sides of the Stadium itself. 
 These sides are specially made sloping for the con- 
 
 U 2 
 
292 New Chapters in Greek History. ["Chap. IX 
 
 venience of spectators, so that as many as possible might 
 see well. As they uncovered the marble slabs which 
 marked the starting-place and the goal so eagerly 
 looked forward to by the runners, the explorers must 
 have felt such a pleasure as rarely falls to the lot of 
 archaeologists. 
 
 The last year of researches was as fruitful in results 
 as any. On the west side more especially, between 
 the Altis and the Cladeus, discoveries thickened. The 
 Palaestra, of which mention has already been made, 
 was cleared of earth, and the ground-plan laid bare, and 
 another and larger gymnasium found farther to the south ; 
 and, farther to the north, a whole series of buildings and 
 spaces appropriated to special sports, stadia for runners, 
 and spaces for the practice of spear-throwers, and for the 
 use of the discus. The Heroum of the Seer Iamus was 
 brought to light, and the altar used by his descendants 
 in their professional divination ; also the foundations of 
 numerous buildings used as residences by trainers and by 
 athletes. 
 
 When the celebrated eleventh day of the sacred month 
 arrived, nothing was thought of but the athletic contest. 
 Before the sun arose, every point of Cronion whence a 
 good view could be obtained, every part of the Stadium, 
 was thronged. Only the Hippodrome was deserted, for 
 the contests of horses did not take place on the first day 
 And the throng still stood in the deep dust, as the day 
 grew hotter and hotter ; no one dared to leave his place 
 for a moment, or it would be lost. Such light refresh- 
 ment of food and drink as would support an abstemious 
 Greek, each carried with him. No hats were allowed ; 
 every man must appear bareheaded in the presence of 
 Zeus. Only when the sun went down, and there was no 
 more light thereby to continue the contests, the people 
 trooped away to their tents, and to snatch a hurried 
 

 Chap. IX.] Olympia and the Festival. 293 
 
 sleep before they thought of securing places for the next 
 day. But neither heat nor dust, hunger nor thirst, could 
 quench the general enthusiasm. At every skilful blow 
 of a boxer, at every cunning throw of a wrestler, a 
 tempest of cheers rent the air. And woe to the wretch 
 who ventured on an unfair stroke, or who succumbed 
 without a gallant struggle. He had to endure infinite 
 cries of scorn until he escaped by flight from the hooting 
 crowd. Fathers and teachers were near to encourage by 
 their voices their sons and pupils who were engaged in 
 the contests. We hear of one case in which a mother 
 was present in male disguise to witness the victory of her 
 sons. She was detected ; but the Hellanodicae, recog- 
 nizing the irresistible force which urged a member of so 
 athletic a stock into the neighbourhood of contests which 
 touched her so nearly, left her unpunished. The water at 
 Olympia was scarce and bad ; the assembled people must 
 have suffered terribly from thirst ; but against another of 
 the plagues of Greece, flies, they were protected, it is said, 
 by a special interposition of Zeus, who, in reply to a prayer 
 of Hercules, drove the flies across the river. We cannot 
 wonder that, as the festival recurred, sacrifices were con- 
 tinually offered to Zeus, the Averter of flies. 
 
 In the times preceding the Persian wars, the whole of 
 the Olympic contest had been crowded into one day. 
 But at the seventy-seventh celebration, night fell before 
 the contests were completed, and it was resolved to 
 extend the time. After that, five days were occupied ; 
 already Pindar, in one of his later odes, speaks of a five 
 days' contest. Unfortunately, we cannot accurately trace 
 the order in which the various competitions succeeded 
 one another. The running probably came first, then the 
 pentathlum, the decision of which occupied a consider- 
 able time. Then followed the horse-races and chariot- 
 races, and the boxing and wrestling came last of all. 
 
294 Neiv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. IX. 
 
 Such, at least, seems to be the order indicated by 
 Xenophon, who says that when the confederated Ar- 
 cadians attacked Olympia in the midst of the 104th 
 celebration of the festival, they arrived after the horse- 
 races were over, and the running which formed part of 
 the pentathlum, but before the wrestling. Pausanias says 
 that in his time the running and the pentathlum pre- 
 ceded the contests in which horses took part. In our 
 brief description of the games we will follow this same 
 order ; we will begin with the running and the kindred 
 contests, then speak of the horse-races, and last of the 
 wrestling and boxing. 
 
 The foot-races all took place in the Stadium. They 
 were in number four. There was the single course, 
 wherein the competitors ran one length of the stadium 
 or about two hundred yards ; the double course, in which 
 they ran once up and once down the stadium ; the 
 long race ; and the armed race, in which each competitor 
 had to carry on his left arm a shield. In each of these 
 races, if the number of entries was considerable, there 
 were various heats, and the winners of the heats con- 
 tended again in the final and decisive race. We know 
 from vases the attitudes of the runners. Those who 
 were running a long distance clenched their fists and 
 held their arms close to their sides like our runners. 
 But those who were contending in the short and in the 
 armed race swung their arms with violence backwards 
 and forwards at each stride, or rather each spring, pro- 
 pelling themselves with their arms almost as much as 
 with their legs. How this can have answered we scarcely 
 know ; yet if the custom had not led to success it would 
 surely have been discontinued. 
 
 Next to the running came the pentathlum, which was, 
 of all the contests, the most complicated. It comprised 
 no less than five distinct competitions, and it would seem 
 
Chap. IX.] Olympia and the Festival. 295 
 
 that in order to secure victory, it was necessary to win 
 in three out of the five. First came leaping. The leaper 
 held weights like our dumb-bells, called halteres, in his 
 hands. He probably leaped standing. The leap was 
 measured in length, not height ; but as to the distance 
 which a Greek athlete could cover we are in perplexity, 
 being, as we said, unable to receive the statements of 
 certain writers that fifty feet was sometimes covered. 
 Next came the hurling of discus and spear. The discus, 
 if we may judge from a specimen at present in the British 
 Museum, weighed about twelve pounds. It was round and 
 fiat, and a skilful athlete, by putting all his weight into 
 the throw, would sometimes hurl it more than a hundred 
 feet. The spear was thrown either with the hand or by 
 means of a strap attached to it, as it still is in many 
 countries. These three competitions — leaping, throwing 
 the spear, and hurling the discus — were the chief and es- 
 sential parts of the pentathlic contest They did not recur 
 at any other stage of the festival, and it is probable that 
 any athlete who vanquished his competitors in all three 
 exercises was adjudged winner of the prize. But when, 
 as more usually happened, the first place in these three 
 exercises was secured by different men, then the final 
 award was determined by the result of a farther com- 
 petition in running and wrestling, although both running 
 and wrestling had separate crowns reserved for them at 
 other stages of the festival. Thus it was necessary that 
 the athlete who entered for the pentathlum should be 
 skilled in many forms of exercise ; and those who were 
 distinguished in it were the most beautiful and accom- 
 plished men of Greece. 
 
 The horse-races at Olympia were very numerous. 
 First in honour and importance was the race of four- 
 horse chariots, wherein the kings and despots and the 
 wealthiest of Greek nobles thought it an honour to be 
 
296 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. IX. 
 
 successful. Certain cities, such as Syracuse and Agri- 
 gentum, were so proud of the victories of their citizens 
 at Olympia that they adopted the victorious quadriga as 
 the normal type of their coins. The family which 
 secured a victory in the chariot-race at once acquired a 
 certain standing, and was looked up to even in the most 
 democratic cities. Yet this victory must have rested in 
 a great degree with fortune. For, as all the chariots had 
 to turn round a pillar at the end of the course, collisions 
 between them were excessively common. The best 
 chariots might easily thus be wrecked and the worst 
 survive. Thus, when Dionysius the Elder, Despot of 
 Syracuse, contended at Olympia in the chariot-race, all 
 the other competitors agreed to crush his quadriga, in 
 order that the prize might not fall to one who had 
 inflicted so much injury on Greeks, and ruined so many 
 cities. 
 
 Besides the race of four-horse chariots there was a race 
 of pair-horse chariots, of mule-chariots, of quadrigas of 
 colts, and other chariots. Horses were also run out of 
 harness. Philip of Macedon won in the single-horse race, 
 and was so elated that he placed on his coinage the vic- 
 torious horse, with a jockey on his back, and a wreath on 
 his neck. This was in the same year in which his son 
 Alexander was born and Potidaea fell into his hands, 
 and he classed all three events together as splendid gifts 
 of fortune. But of course at Olympia he won no stakes, 
 only an olive-wreath, and the name of having been vic- 
 torious in the sacred contest. 
 
 To the equestrian contests succeeded wrestling, boxing, 
 and the pancratium. The wrestling of the Greeks was as 
 full of tricks and feints as that of modern times. As the 
 Greeks wrestled quite naked, and rubbed themselves with 
 oil before entering the lists, it must have been no easy 
 matter to get a hold, and the ancients naturally thought a 
 
Chap. IX.] Olympia and tJie Festival. 297 
 
 good grasp the better part of the battle. We learn that 
 victory was bought with three throws ; but it remains 
 uncertain as to how throws were counted, and whether 
 when the combatants had fallen they continued the 
 struggle on the ground. The Greek boxers wound about 
 their hands a strip of raw ox-hide, which seems to have 
 been intended partly to protect the hand, and partly 
 to moderate the force of blows, like our boxing-gloves. 
 Certainly at its introduction it was not meant to inflict 
 a cruel wound ; the nail-studded cestus was unknown to 
 the Greeks in early times. Peculiar to the Greeks was 
 the pancratium, a mixture of boxing and wrestling — a 
 cruel combat, continued whether standing or on the 
 ground, until one of the contending athletes acknowledged 
 himself defeated. 
 
 In these three competitions the competitors had, of 
 course, to be drawn in pairs, and the Hellanodicae 
 managed this in a very business-like manner. They put 
 into an urn two tesserae marked A, two marked B, and 
 so forth, the number of tesserae corresponding to that of 
 the competitors. The athletes then drew each a tessera 
 at random, and the two who drew an A had to contend 
 together, likewise the two who drew a B, and so on. If 
 there was an uneven number of competitors one would 
 have a letter to himself, and so draw a bye. He was 
 called the Ephedras. Of course the victors in the first 
 round drew again for opponents in the second round, thus 
 proceeding until only two were left in. 
 
 When the toils and agonies of the Olympic contest 
 were over, there followed the rewards of the victors. From 
 the sacred olive-tree several branches, as many indeed as 
 there were contests, were cut with a golden knife by a boy 
 specially selected, both of whose parents must still be 
 alive. Of each of these branches a wreath was made, and 
 these wreaths were placed upon a brazen tripod in full 
 
 $^ 
 
29S New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. IX. 
 
 view of the people. On the fifth day of the contest, the 
 fifteenth of the sacred month, a solemn assembly was held, 
 and the victors came up in order to receive their prizes. 
 They wound woollen fillets round their heads, and over 
 the fillets one of the Hellanodicae placed the wreath, 
 while another probably handed a palm. At the same 
 moment a herald announced in loud tones the name and 
 city of the athlete who was being crowned, together with 
 the contest in which he had been victorious. On every 
 announcement followed a burst of acclamation, and not 
 the victor alone, but all his friends and relations felt a 
 thrill of pride and delight, which extended even to all 
 the spectators who could boast of being born in the same 
 city. 
 
 Then followed a round of feasting and sacrifices. All 
 the gods, whose protection the athletes had implored 
 before the contest, were rewarded with sacrifices by those 
 who attributed the victory to their favour and assistance. 
 Again the magistrates of Elis were lavish with offerings at 
 the altars of the Altis. To Zeus himself a whole hecatomb 
 of oxen was brought ; the victims were slaughtered, and 
 with their flesh a great feast was made, a feast to which 
 the people of Elis invited all the victorious athletes. 
 Meantime, if these were wealthy, they would be, like 
 Alcibiades, keeping open house for all their friends ; if 
 they were not, they had but to choose whom among their 
 friends and townsfolk they would honour by accepting in- 
 vitations to their tables. The poets were called in to write 
 odes in honour of the victors and of all their ancestors. 
 Sculptors were called in to execute portraits of them in 
 bronze and marble, to be placed in the Altis for the study 
 of all future generations. As they moved about, dis- 
 tinguished by the fillets they wore and their palms, they 
 were ever the centres of admiring crowds, and followed by 
 the eyes of all. 
 
Chap. IX.] Olympia a?id the Festival. 299 
 
 What became of the vanquished ? Of them we hear but 
 little. But it is to be feared that the Greeks did not treat 
 athletes who had manfully striven and failed of success 
 with that respect which they merited. We may fear that 
 they often incurred undeserved hissing and ridicule : cer- 
 tainly they retired from the scene of contest, or hid them- 
 selves in the throng, and tried to escape notice. Respect 
 for a vanquished competitor could never be counted among 
 Greek virtues. 
 
 Soon Olympia began to empty. In groups and parties 
 as they had come, the spectators dispersed. Only those 
 who knew any of the victors formed a throng about him, 
 in order to lead him home in solemn procession. Travel- 
 ling, they beguiled their way with song and merry-making. 
 And as they approached their native city they began to 
 prepare for a splendid reception. In the city the success 
 of the athlete had been already announced, and his ap- 
 proach was expected. It was a white day ; no work was 
 done, but all the population crowded out to welcome 
 him who had brought home such honour. According to 
 ancient usage, a part of the city-wall was thrown down in 
 order that the hero might pass by a way not made vulgar 
 by other footsteps. And so he entered to the notes of a 
 triumphal song, written by a Pindar or Simonides and 
 sung by the noblest-born of the city, passing over a path 
 strewn with flowers towards the house of his father. Nor 
 did the honours even then cease ; ever after the hero was 
 a man to be followed and respected. The proudest and 
 wealthiest houses sought an alliance with him in marriage, 
 his voice was listened to with respect in council, and in 
 war the place of greatest honour and danger was specially 
 reserved for him. 
 
 Such was the Olympian festival at its best, in the age 
 between the Persian invasion of Greece and the Greek 
 invasion of Persia. But it was not long before evil days 
 
300 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. IX. 
 
 came. The degradation of Greek athletic sports may be 
 traced to several causes. The less pleasing of them — 
 boxing and the pancratium — came more into favour and 
 use, and at the same time changed their character. Boxing 
 had, indeed, from early times been practised at Olympia, 
 but was not at first savage in character. The early 
 cestus was very unlike the cruel instrument made of iron 
 and leather which suited the brutal tastes of the Romans, 
 and which was even introduced in late times at Pytho 
 and Olympia. The pancratium, in which two athletes 
 were set together to fight with fists and feet and in 
 wrestling until one confessed himself vanquished, must 
 always have been a sport unfitted for gentlemen. At 
 Sparta it was proscribed, it being contrary to the genius 
 of the people that any one of them should allow that he 
 was vanquished, even in sport. Yet for a time the victors 
 in boxing and the pancratium are frequently men of the 
 noblest and wealthiest Greek families, such as the Dia- 
 goridae of Rhodes, and the wealthy Dorians of Aegina. 
 It was only by degrees that the professional element 
 among the competitors came in, and the gentlemanly 
 spirit went out. The first Alexander of Macedon was 
 proud to enter among the runners at Olympia ; the third 
 Alexander was indignant when such a course was sug- 
 gested to him. 
 
 We cannot trace the change in detail, but only discern a 
 landmark here and there. It was Dromeus of Stymphalus 
 who, in the fifth century, substituted a meat diet for the 
 previous regimen of cheese and figs, and ever after his 
 time athletes who intended to be successful had to devour 
 great quantities of flesh, a diet unnatural in the climate of 
 Greece, and apt to produce sleepiness and slowness of 
 wit. But it was Herodicus of Selymbria, a contemporary 
 of Socrates, who ruined athletics, by introducing elaborate 
 rules for eating and drinking and exercise. In fact, he 
 
Chap. IX.] Olympia and the Festival. 301 
 
 first made training into a system, and discovered the fatal 
 truth that, by scientific tending, the human body can be 
 made, not healthy and beautiful, but muscular, and 
 adapted to this or that special exercise. He, no doubt, 
 improved the speed of the races and the skill of the 
 wrestlings, but he spoiled athletics as a means of education 
 for life and happiness. After his time, victory at Olympia 
 became a thing which had to be worked for by special 
 methods, instead of being the crown of a career good in 
 itself. The competitors ceased to be drawn from the 
 better classes : probably many of them trained for the 
 games in order that they might make a living afterwards 
 as professional trainers, or in order that they might secure 
 the more substantial prizes allotted to victors in the 
 Hellenistic cities of Asia. Instead of being an element 
 in the life of all, athletic sports became the whole of the 
 life of a special class. 
 
 We know that this lamentable change did not take 
 place all at once. Sparta in particular, true to her high 
 traditions, opposed all speciality in the matter of athletics. 
 In that city new tricks in athletic contests, and new 
 methods of training, were not allowed ; we even hear 
 of youths who were chastised by the Ephori for attempt- 
 ing finesse in ball-play. But in all countries that which 
 secures success must succeed ; and there can be little 
 doubt that the Olympian victory went more and more 
 to the professional. At the same time a complete 
 change comes over the sentiments of poets, philosophers, 
 and the leaders of Greek thought in relation to the 
 games. 
 
 By an old custom of Athens an Olympian victor had a 
 right to live at the public expense in the Prytaneum ; by 
 an old Spartan law he had a right in battle to stand next 
 the king. In the time of Pindar a victorious athlete was 
 placed almost among the demi-gods, and Dionysius the 
 
302 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. IX. 
 
 Elder offered the athlete Antipater a large sum if he 
 would allow Syracuse to receive the credit of giving him 
 birth. But in the time of Plato, thinking men were 
 beginning to find the reverse of the medal. Xenophon 
 makes Socrates complain that excess in some one sport 
 spoils the symmetry of the body, runners acquiring thick 
 legs and feeble shoulders, and boxers large shoulders and 
 weak legs. Socrates' disciple, Euripides, makes one of 
 his characters declare athletes to be one of the greatest 
 pests of Greece, and ask what throwing the discus and 
 wrestling have to do with leading to wisdom and virtue. 
 Perhaps in the strictures of this poet we may see too 
 much of the sophist, who is inclined to value the intel- 
 lectual faculties of his countrymen only, and to despise 
 mere physical prowess. But some of the most distin- 
 guished warriors of later Greece echo his sentiments as 
 regards the value of athletes. Epaminondas declared that 
 fleshy boxers and pancratiasts were of no use as soldiers, 
 and dismissed them from his army. Alexander the Great 
 cared not for athletic sports. When Philopoemen was 
 urged to cultivate his natural gift of wrestling, he refused, 
 saying that if he studied to become a better wrestler, he 
 should become a worse soldier. Special diet and special 
 training made athletes into a special class, and late writers 
 do not tire of ridiculing them — their vast muscle and 
 small wit, their extreme appetite for food and sluggish- 
 ness in war, their sleepiness and stupidity. The great 
 physician Galen sets his face against athletic training, 
 though he of course thinks highly of bodily exercises. He 
 declares the state of health of professional athletes to be 
 most deceptive and precarious, and their strength to be of 
 no use for any sound and practical purpose. 
 
 We may, then, easily account for the contempt in 
 which the Romans held the Greek sports. They knew 
 them only after they had passed their best. They con- 
 
 
Chap. IX.] Olympia and the Festival. 303 
 
 sidered that athletic sports unfitted for war ; that they 
 made men lazy, always hanging about the gymnasia, and 
 quarrelling for want of something better to do. What 
 specially disgusted the Romans was the Greek custom 
 of entire nudity when at exercise. This custom suited 
 neither the better nor the worse side of the Roman 
 character. It offended the Roman sense of dignity and 
 respectability ; and at the same time it did not suit 
 the hard and brutal fibre of the nation. Certain ugly 
 vices attended_ the practice at gymnasia even in Greece. 
 Among the coarser Romans these same vices would, had 
 they adopted Greek manners, have been conspicuously 
 in the foreground, and that in their worst and most 
 vulgar form. The Greek who was luxurious was so at 
 least with something of refinement and grace ; but the 
 Roman who quitted his native hardness and sank into 
 luxury was a mere swine, a repulsive spectacle to all who 
 were not entirely corrupted. 
 
 From the time of Roman predominance to our own 
 military exercises have superseded those which have 
 reference merely to health and beauty. In most of the 
 countries of the Continent it is still from military drill 
 that the youth of the nation receives its physical train- 
 ing. Among ourselves there has been a great revival 
 in the practice of athletic sports, which now occupy in 
 our schools and Universities a place which is, in the 
 opinion of many teachers, too large and too honourable. 
 Whether they will retain that place or not will probably 
 depend on their capacity to acknowledge a limit. It was 
 excessive training and extreme specialization which 
 brought ruin on the athletic sports of Greece, which fell 
 into disrepute so soon as they ceased to be a means 
 and usurped the place of an end. As soon as it came 
 about that a boxer must devote his life to boxing, and 
 a wrestler to wrestling, and make himself fit for that at 
 
304 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. IX. 
 
 the expense of becoming unfit for everything else, then 
 all men of sense and dignity began to despise both 
 boxing and wrestling. We need not surely apply the 
 lesson to English sports, or point out to our own 
 youth the danger and discredit which threaten their 
 favourite pursuits, unless they take to heart the teach- 
 ing of history, and pursue the middle course in which 
 lies safety. 
 
( 305 ) 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE RELIEFS AND INSCRIPTIONS OF ATHENIAN TOMBS. 
 
 At Athens the grave-stones of the ancient inhabitants 
 are not only among the most interesting, but among the 
 most extensive remains. Near Piraeus, through ali the 
 Ceramicus, and in many other parts of the city, excava- 
 tions have constantly brought to light a vast quantity 
 of inscribed and sculptured slabs and columns, which 
 have mostly, unlike antiquities of many other classes, 
 remained at Athens, and now fill one wing of the new 
 museum and the whole space in front. But there is a 
 group of grave-stones of equal interest which are left 
 standing, just where they were disinterred, by the old 
 road which led through the gate Dipylon from Athens 
 to Eleusis, the road annually trodden by the procession 
 at the Eleusinia. These tombs, in size and beauty supe- 
 rior to the rest, are preserved for us, as is supposed, by 
 a fortunate chance.* Sulla, when he attacked Athens 
 and remorselessly massacred the miserable inhabitants, 
 made his approach close to the gate Dipylon. There 
 he erected the long aggeres by which his engines were 
 brought close to the wall, and there his soldiers threw 
 down several hundred yards of the city ramparts, which 
 were formed of sun-baked bricks. Hence a vast mass 
 of ruin which completely overwhelmed and buried the 
 lines of tombs immediately without the gate, and pre- 
 
 * See F. Lenormant's Vole Eleusinieime, vol. i. 
 
 X 
 
306 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. X. 
 
 served them almost uninjured until one day when they 
 were once more brought to the light by a French 
 archaeological expedition in the year 1863. The sudden- 
 ness with which these monuments were overwhelmed is 
 indicated by the fact that some of them were and 
 remain unfinished ; the completeness of their disappear- 
 ance is proved by the silence of Pausanias the traveller, 
 who, passing through all quarters of Athens in the time 
 of the Antonines, would appear to have seen no trace 
 of them. All of the monuments in this group are 
 of course indubitably Athenian, and furnish the best 
 materials for the present paper. Of the stones in the 
 museum it is sometimes impossible to trace the finding 
 spot ; some are Boeotian, some from Peloponnesus, some 
 from the Islands. But the great majority are of Athe- 
 nian origin. Of the longer inscriptions a large proportion 
 are from the tombs of foreign residents at Athens. 
 
 I propose to consider in the case of these grave-stones 
 two points, firstly, the reliefs which they bear ;* secondly, 
 the inscriptions engraven on them. 
 
 Amongst the earliest of Athenian sepulchral monu- 
 ments is the often-cited stele of Aristion. It represents 
 the deceased on a scale somewhat larger than life, as 
 standing clad in full armour, spear in hand. The ground 
 of the relief is red ; traces of colour may be seen, or 
 rather might at the time of discovery be seen, on many 
 parts of the body, and holes may be observed made by 
 the nails which fastened armour of bronze on to the 
 body. The design or idea of this slab differs not much 
 
 * On the subject of these reliefs there is no complete work, but 
 several monographs, the best of which are those of Friedlaender and 
 Pervanoglu, and a chapter by Furtwaengler in his Collection 
 Sabouroff. Recently has appeared the earlier part of the Corpus 
 of Attic Sepulchral Reliefs, edited for the German Institute by 
 Dr. Conze. 
 
Chap. X.] Reliefs and Inscriptions of Athenian Tombs. 307 
 
 from that of a portrait statue. Clearly in early Greek 
 times, for this statue is given to the very beginning of 
 the fifth century. B.C., the survivors wished to see" in the 
 monument the dead, as it were, still living among them, 
 still to be seen in his daily dress, and about his daily 
 business. 
 
 But it is from the later fifth, and the fourth centuries 
 before the Christian era, that we inherit the great mass 
 of the sculptured tomb-stones which crowd the museums. 
 No one can spend a few hours among these without 
 perceiving that the representations fall naturally into four 
 or five classes. 
 
 The first and the most extensive class consists of 
 formal groups wanting in distinctive character, which 
 display the dead either alone or in company with others. 
 The companions, where there are such, are sometimes 
 other members of the family, sometimes slaves or at- 
 tendants, who, in accordance with the well-known canon 
 of Greek art, which gives larger stature to the person of 
 more importance, are always represented as of diminu- 
 tive size. Sometimes the companion is not a person at 
 all, but a favourite animal, a pet dog or bird. Such 
 subjects are common in Macedonian times. The group- 
 ing is usually simple and graceful, the attitudes natural 
 and unforced, the movements, if movement there be, 
 measured. But the execution is not of the best, save in 
 a few remarkable cases, and there is a want of invention, 
 nay, there is even vulgarity, in the designs. Pausanias 
 mentions sepulchral reliefs by the great artists, and 
 a few of those which have reached us are of very fine 
 execution : but this is quite the exception. Like our 
 modern photographers, the inferior Greek artists who 
 usually did this kind of work had a few cardinal 
 notions as to possibilities of arrangement, and could 
 not easily be induced to depart from them. I will give 
 
 x 2 
 
308 Nezv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. X. 
 
 the details of a few reliefs of this class, (i) A seated 
 lady, who with her left hand holds the end of the veil 
 which covers her face ; before her stands a man, facing 
 her. (2) A pair of sisters, Demetria and Pamphila. 
 Pamphila is seated, and turns her head towards the 
 spectator ; with her right hand she grasps the end of 
 her veil. Demetria stands over against her, her right 
 hand folded across her breast, and grasps her veil with 
 her left hand. (3) A man clad in long himation stands, 
 in his hand a scroll. In front of him stands a small 
 male figure, naked, holding a vessel, perhaps an oil-flask. 
 The scroll which the master holds and the flask of the 
 slave seem here to have as little meaning as the books 
 and the flower-baskets of photographic rooms. (4) A 
 mother clad in flowing Ionian drapery is seated to left. 
 Her left hand rests on the seat ; with her right she lifts 
 something from a little toilette-box which a servant 
 holds out. Round her knees clings a little girl. (5) A 
 lad stands clasping to his breast a bird which a snake at 
 his feet threatens and springs upward to reach. In other 
 reliefs we find a dog in the place of the snake ; some- 
 times a dog is standing elsewhere in the picture. Tame 
 birds would seem to have been the usual playmates of 
 Athenian children, and tame dogs the constant com- 
 panions of young men, while in many houses a favourite 
 which would be rarely appreciated in England, a snake, 
 was nurtured. 
 
 As this is the commonest class of reliefs, so it is the 
 least original. But it is by no means rare to find on 
 sepulchral slabs a more exact reference to the past life or 
 the habits of the dead. Sometimes we are told more than 
 the bare fact that the departed was father, mother, wife, 
 or sister — was young, old, or in the prime of life. I select 
 the following: — (1) A youth, naked, or wearing the light 
 chlamys only, stands holding in his hand the strigil and 
 
Chap. X.] Reliefs and Inscriptions of Athenian Tombs. 309 
 
 oil-flask, those invariable accompaniments of gymnastic 
 exercises among the Greeks. No doubt the survivors, 
 who chose the design, wished to indicate that their friend 
 was prominent in manly sports and labours. In this, the 
 field of his best energies, they wished him still to seem to 
 live. (2) A young man, clad in a chlamys, charges with 
 spear advanced a wild boar, which is coming out of its 
 lair; at his side is a dog, which leaps forward at the 
 quarry. Above, on a rock, stands a deer. We see at a 
 glance that this is the tomb of one who loved the chase. 
 (3) On a rock sits a man in an attitude of grief; beneath 
 is the sea, and on it a boat with or without sailors. It is 
 a generally received opinion that monuments of this 
 character were set up over those who had been wrecked 
 at sea. (4) A young rider, clad in the light chlamys of 
 the Athenian cavalry, charges, at once trampling beneath 
 his horse's hoofs and transfixing with his spear a fallen 
 foe, who tries in vain with his shield to ward off the at- 
 tack of his triumphant enemy. From the accompanying 
 inscription we know that this monument was erected in 
 honour of Dexilaus, one of the five horsemen at Corinth 
 — that is to say, as is supposed, one of the five horsemen 
 who did some notable deeds of valour in the battle under 
 the walls of Corinth, in which the Athenians were en- 
 gaged in the year B.C. 394. The relief thus dates almost 
 from the best time of Attic art, and it is worthy of its 
 [time. It does not, of course, represent the moment of 
 the death of the young warrior ; we see him strong and 
 I triumphant, such as his friends would fain have seen him 
 j always ; to show him fallen would have suited an enemy 
 rather than a friend. (5) Another relief, although set up 
 jin honour of a man of Ascalon, is clearly of Athenian 
 handiwork and design. A sleeping man rests on a 
 jcouch. Close to his head rises on its hind-paws a lion, 
 'who is clearly ready to slay or carry him off. On the 
 
310 Nezv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. X. 
 
 other side of the couch is a warrior who attacks and re- 
 pels the beast. In the background appears the prow of 
 a ship. From a Greek metrical inscription which ac- 
 companies this relief, it would appear that the Phoe- 
 nician stranger here buried had incurred great peril at 
 some previous period of his life from the attack of a lion, 
 who seems to have surprised him resting on the shore, 
 but who was driven off by the timely arrival of friends 
 just landed from their ship.* (6) A man and his wife, 
 both muffled in ample garments, advance towards the 
 spectator. Between them advances a priestess of Isis, 
 clad in the dress of her calling, holding in her right 
 hand the sistrum, in her left the vessel of sacred water. 
 It is possible, the inscriptions which accompany this re- 
 presentation being illegible, that the monument was 
 erected to a father and mother, and to their daughter 
 devoted to Isis. Or it is possible that we have here 
 expressed in a symbolical form the devotion of a man 
 and woman to that mysterious worship which spread in 
 Ptolemaic times from the bank of the Nile over all 
 lands, and their firm trust that in the next world Isis 
 would recognize and protect her worshippers. 
 
 Such are a few specimens of the reliefs which give us 
 more precise information with regard to the lives and 
 habits of the dead. In the same way, those who had 
 devoted themselves to a profession appear on their tombs 
 with the badges of that profession ; physicians, for 
 instance, with the cupping-glass and other instruments 
 of their daily use. And in this matter it is clear that 
 the Athenians merely followed one of the most natural 
 of all instincts leading to a custom common among all 
 nations. Thus in the Odyssey, the ghost of the drowned 
 oarsman, Elpenor, begs Ulysses, when he reaches the 
 
 * I should say that another explanation of this relief is given by 
 Dr. Wolters in the Athenien Mittheilungen for 1SS8, p. 310. 
 
Chap. X.] Reliej r s and Inscriptions of Athenian Tombs. 311 
 
 island of Aeaea, to raise a tomb to him, and to fix on it 
 the oar he was wont to wield. And thus, even in our 
 own day, what device is commoner on a soldier's grave 
 than sword and cannon, or on a painter's than palette 
 and brush ? 
 
 But although the sculptors of tombs usually designed 
 references to the past life of those they commemorated, 
 such was not always the case. After all, past was past, 
 and it were idle to deny that the moment of death 
 brought a vast change over everything. The next class 
 of reliefs have reference to the fact and the moment of 
 death. Among the Romans that fact was symbolized 
 in art frequently by sleep ; and among all Christian 
 nations it has become usual to speak of death in meta- 
 phorical language borrowed from the rest of night. But 
 it was not usually merely as a deeper sleep that death 
 presented itself to the imagination of Athenian sculptors. 
 They considered death rather as a departure, a going 
 far away from and losing sight of one's family and 
 friends. Scenes of leave-taking are among the most 
 frequent of all sepulchral reliefs. I am not, however, sure 
 that this leave-taking is quite consciously adopted as 
 the image of death. Indeed, all images of death were 
 somewhat distasteful to the joyous sensuousness of 
 Athenian taste. But when an artist had to represent 
 the dead and the surviving friends of the dead in a 
 group, this posture of farewell, which must have been 
 one of the most usual and natural to think of, seems to 
 have frequently suggested itself, and, in virtue of its 
 inherent appropriateness to the occasion, to have become 
 more and more common. This leave-taking presents 
 itself in the least intrusive and gentlest form in those 
 representations where a lady appears dressing herself 
 with the assistance of her maids for an out-door journey, 
 throwing over her head the ample veil, and perhaps hand- 
 
312 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. X. 
 
 ing to an attendant nurse the babe whom she cannot 
 take out into the open air with her. Sometimes the 
 preparations are more advanced ; the lady sits or stands 
 veiled and prepared for a journey, and gives her hand 
 to husband or father who stands opposite. Sometimes 
 two men grasp hands as if about to travel in different 
 directions. Occasionally a horse appears in the back- 
 ground which is destined to carry away the master of 
 the house. In this very introduction of the horse we 
 see how much the notion of travel preponderates in 
 those scenes over that of death. For the horse was not 
 directly connected by the Greeks with death. The rider 
 on the pale horse had yet to be introduced to the 
 popular imagination by the writer of the Apocalypse, 
 who must have borrowed from a non-Hellenic source. 
 Dwelling closely hemmed in by the sea, they never 
 thought of the dead as travelling to other worlds by 
 land, but usually as going over the waves mysterious 
 and vast to some distant island, or perhaps as penetrat- 
 ing into deep abysses of the land. But for journeys 
 from town to town in Hellas, the horse was the appropriate 
 conveyer. And the horse seems in many cases to signify 
 the knightly rank of the dead. 
 
 The old opinion of archaeologists with regard to 
 these scenes of farewell, an opinion grounded on in- 
 sufficient induction, was that in them the dead were 
 represented as seated, the survivors as standing and 
 taking leave of them. It is now acknowledged that this 
 is not the case. It is true that most commonly in the 
 groups one is seated, while of the standing figures one 
 grasps his or her hand. But a careful study of the 
 accompanying inscriptions proves that it is sometimes 
 the dead person who stands while the survivor sits ; and 
 again, in other cases both the dead and the living stand, 
 while sometimes, again, of the several dead persons com- 
 
Chap. X.] Reliefs and Inscriptions of Athenian Tombs. 313 
 
 memorated some stand and some are seated. The fact 
 is that any pedantic rule of uniformity is put out of the 
 question by the circumstances under which sepulchral 
 reliefs were designed and executed. It was essential to 
 the composition of a group, thought the artists, that 
 some of the figures should stand and others sit ; but 
 the question which should do which was settled, not by 
 a desire to convey a careful meaning to the eyes of 
 beholders, but by the study of a little graceful variety, 
 within somewhat narrow limits, and the influence of 
 every-day custom which made it far more natural and 
 usual that a woman should be seated when taking leave 
 of a man, than a man when taking leave of a woman. 
 Sometimes a little life breaks in on the formality of 
 the group. Children cling about their mother's knee, 
 or daughters stand by in an attitude betokening their 
 grief; but those circumstances which might move 
 emotion in the spectator are quite banished or kept 
 sedulously in the background. Here, as ever, the 
 Greek abode by that motto, " Nothing in extremes," 
 which expresses the ultimate law of all his art. 
 
 In the later periods these scenes are common at 
 Athens as in other parts of Greece. But the numerous 
 and well-known reliefs which represent a feast or ban- 
 quet certainly do not originate in Attica, nor do they 
 belong to the circle of Athenian ideas : their origin is 
 rather Peloponnesian, and we may best treat of them in 
 the next chapter, in connection with the grave-reliefs of 
 Sparta and Boeotia. 
 
 Into these representations of life a faint allusion to 
 death, a slight ^flavour of mortality is often introduced. 
 We sometimes see an urn set up in a corner, such an 
 urn as received the ashes of the dead ; or the tomb 
 which bears the relief was made in the form of a water- 
 pot, as was the case, as we are told by Demosthenes, 
 
314 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. X. 
 
 with those who died unmarried. Like the skeleton at 
 an Egyptian feast, this urn would seem meant to show- 
 that in the gayest ' moment of life death hovers near, 
 waiting to strike. If a babe in swaddling-clothes is 
 represented in the scene, the meaning is that the mother 
 died in giving birth to it. The same moral is conveyed in 
 other cases, by the appearance at the side or in the fore- 
 ground of a snake entwined round a tree ; the snake being 
 the companion of the dead, sometimes even the embodi- 
 ment of the dead man's spirit or ghost. And in scenes 
 where there is no allusion to death so concrete or con- 
 ventional as the above, there is over all an aspect of 
 grief and dissatisfaction. Children or slaves are weep- 
 ing without apparent cause, or women stand with an 
 arm folded across their breast, their head resting on a 
 hand, in an attitude consecrated by the Greeks to sor- 
 row, not as among us to mere reflection. There are a 
 few instances to be found, even among works of the fifth 
 century, in which the moment of dying is portrayed, with 
 the grief of those standing by ; but this is very excep- 
 tional, and even here considerable reserve is exercised. 
 
 All the scenes of which I have spoken have this in 
 common, that they represent to us the deceased, w r ith or 
 without the living. But sometimes, though rarely, the 
 Greeks substituted for these groups a merely symbolical 
 figure of an animal or some fabulous creature. On a 
 tomb at Athens, erected in memory of one Leon, stands 
 a marble lion, evidently in punning allusion to his name. 
 Over the tomb of the celebrated courtezan Lai's, in the 
 suburbs of Corinth, was a group representing a lioness 
 standing over a prostrate ram, a symbol the reference 
 of which to the extraordinary career and splendid 
 success of the woman is evidently appropriate. Stone 
 snakes often guarded a tomb, in imitation of the living 
 snakes sure soon to glide about it, on the same prin- 
 
Chap. X.] Relief s and Inscriptions of Athenian Tombs. 315 
 
 ciple on which, when the Athenians sought a floral 
 decoration for a stele, they sometimes chose the acanthus, 
 which is notable for freely growing among stones. But 
 it was especially the forms of female monsters, sirens, 
 sphinxes, and harpies, which were selected for the adorn- 
 ment of tombs. All these were spoken of in legend 
 as fatal evils, carrying off to death young men and 
 maidens. The sirens especially slew the young after 
 attracting them by the sweetness of their singing, and 
 so well became the graves of those who were lost in 
 the mid ardour of their pursuit of the delights of youth. 
 In modern Greek superstition their place is taken by 
 the Anerades or Nereids who carry away the young, as 
 of old they carried away young Hylas the friend of 
 Heracles, as he fetched water from a well. 
 
 Battles of heroes and Amazons, Dionysiac revels, and 
 mythological scenes, occurring on sarcophagi, belong to 
 Hellenistic and Roman times, and represent phases of 
 thought quite other than those suggested by the reliefs 
 inspired by early Greek feeling. It is extremely seldom 
 that any mythological subject is found on Greek tombs 
 at all. Charon, with his boat, sometimes appears in the 
 foreground. And in another very interesting represent- 
 ation, which however is not Athenian, Hermes appears 
 as the conductor of souls, leading gently by the hand a 
 young girl to the future world. So small is the part 
 played by the gods in sepulchral scenes. Not a trace 
 appears of scenes of future happiness or misery, no 
 allusion to that future judgment of souls which is so 
 prominently brought before us in Egyptian pictures. 
 Only, in times when the Egyptian worship of Sarapis 
 and Isis had penetrated to Athens, and served there to 
 impart purer and higher views as to future punishment 
 and reward, we do sometimes find the priestess of Isis 
 going before the departed with all pomp of worship to 
 
316 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. X. 
 
 guide them through the perils of the last journey, and 
 lead them to a safe resting-place. But these scenes only 
 illustrate the triumph of the religious notions of the 
 Egyptians over the susceptible Greeks, at a time when 
 their national city life was extinct, and they were driven 
 by the fewer attractions of the present life to think more 
 about the possibilities of the next. 
 
 It seems to be desirable, in view of the unfounded 
 assertions so frequently set forth on the subject of Greek 
 art, to gather what light we can on that most interesting 
 subject from the facts above summarized. In doing so, 
 however, it is above all things necessary to bear in 
 mind the conditions under which sepulchral monuments 
 were designed and executed. And first, it is quite clear 
 that where several persons who died at intervals are 
 buried in one tomb, they cannot all have been adequately 
 represented in the relief, which would naturally be the 
 production of a single time. A citizen dies, and a relief 
 is erected over his body, perhaps representing him as 
 taking a farewell of his wife, while his infant son stands 
 by. This same son, may be, dies in middle life and is 
 buried with his father, and an epitaph is inserted on the 
 monument stating the fact. It may thus happen that 
 a man of thirty or forty may appear in the sepulchral 
 relief as an infant. Such slight inconsistencies are 
 inseparable from the nature of these monuments. But 
 it must be confessed that sometimes between inscription 
 and sculpture there are contradictions which cannot be 
 thus easily explained, and which raise serious reflections. 
 The fact is that the conviction is forced upon us by the 
 comparison of a multitude of instances, that very often 
 the relief placed on a tomb did not possess much re- 
 ference to its contents. There can be no doubt that the 
 more ordinary sorts of representations were made in 
 numbers by the sculptors, and, as we should phrase it, 
 
Chap. X] Reliefs and Inscriptions of A tJienia?i Tombs. 317 
 
 kept in stock by them for customers to choose from. 
 And if the would-be buyer found a group of which the 
 general outline and arrangement suited him, he would 
 scarcely decline to purchase it because it was not entirely 
 appropriate, because it made his wife look twenty years 
 too young, or even turned the boys of his family into 
 girls. Those who are let into this secret will not be sur- 
 prised if they occasionally find a subject repeated exactly 
 on two tombs without variation, nor if a sculptured 
 group is little in harmony with the inscribed list of the 
 dead. 
 
 Even in those cases in which a relief was executed 
 by special order on the death of a person, a relief 
 adapted in plan and intended in details to represent 
 the deceased happy amid his family or pursuing his 
 favourite avocation, we must not expect too much. 
 Even here, the sculptor confines himself to a gene- 
 ralized or idealized representation. Probably he knew 
 nought of the dead, and certainly he took no pains 
 to exactly imitate the living. Hence the same con- 
 ventional types, the bearded man, the veiled woman, the 
 girl, the infant, repeat themselves almost without variety, 
 through all the Macedonian period of Athenian graves. 
 The men who appear on sepulchral reliefs of the same 
 period are as much like one to another as the horsemen 
 of the frieze of the Parthenon, or the fighting heroes of 
 the Aegina pediments. In Roman times this is far less 
 the case ; but among the Greeks of the fourth and third 
 centuries B.C., the artist was careful only of the type, 
 and careless of the individual peculiarities. 
 
 Nevertheless it is quite an error to suppose that the 
 Athenians were all cast in one mould. They differed one 
 from another almost as much as an equal number of 
 Englishmen taken at random. And of this proof is 
 extant in their surviving portraits. There still exists at 
 
318 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. X. 
 
 Athens a remarkable series of portraits of those citizens 
 who in succeeding years undertook the office of cosmetes. 
 This series stretches over a long period, and though it is 
 true that that period belongs to the decline, not the 
 flourishing greatness of the city, and Athenian blood 
 may then have been mixed with that of other races, 
 yet the type cannot have disappeared. Taking these 
 statues then as portraits of some of the most prominent 
 Athenian citizens, and probably some of the purest- 
 blooded, what do we find ? One head is almost African in 
 type, with thick lips and woolly hair ; one face might be 
 taken for that of an English judge ; one for that of an 
 Italian street-musician. We may safely affirm that an 
 Athenian crowd of the period must have contained as 
 many widely divergent types as an English or French 
 one. So of the Greek princes who reigned during 
 the third and second centuries before the Christian era 
 over the disjecta membra, the fragments of the Empire 
 of the Great Alexander, we possess quite a portrait 
 gallery in their numerous and excellent coins. Here, 
 too, we find the widest variety of type, many coins 
 presenting to us heads which no one whose knowledge 
 of Greek art was superficial would suppose to be Greek 
 at all. But although individual Greeks differed thus 
 widely one from another, and although, in the Alexan- 
 drine times of Greek art, artists quite understood the 
 art of taking portraits, yet throughout the forms and 
 features of those sculptured on tombs are quite conven- 
 tionally rendered. And in nothing does one see more 
 clearly than here the blending of Attic good taste with 
 Attic superficiality and dislike of too deep or too per- 
 sistent emotion. For a tombstone calling up in a general 
 way past life and past happiness would be a constant 
 source of emotion, gentle and melancholy, but not too 
 intense in degree ; while the sight of the very features 
 
Chap. X.] Relief s and Inscriptions of Athenian Tombs. 319 
 
 of dead father, mother, wife, or child would be too startling 
 and cause far more pain than pleasure. We moderns are 
 less afraid of pain, and, when we place on tombs any 
 representation of the dead at all, make it as exact a 
 likeness as we can. But most, even now, prefer a mere 
 slab in the graveyard and a portrait in the family-room 
 or the bedroom. 
 
 The sources of these generalized types of man, youth, 
 woman, and child are of course to be found in the 
 common feeling of the Hellenic nation working through 
 the brains and hands of the ablest statuaries. As in the 
 accepted type of Zeus, the Greek sculptures embodied all 
 that seemed to them most venerable, wise, and majestic ; 
 as in the accepted type of Apollo they combined youthful 
 beauty with supreme dignity ; so in the accepted type of 
 matron they strove to embody all the matronly virtues, 
 in the young girl all childish grace and promise, in the 
 bearded man the dignity and self-control of a worthy 
 citizen, such as Aristides or Epaminondas. The type 
 was fixed in the case of human beings, as in the case 
 of some of the Hellenic deities, by the sculptors of the 
 generation which succeeded those who had fought at 
 Marathon and Plataea, and altered but little after that 
 until the collapse of Hellenic independence and Hellenic 
 art. 
 
 Goethe has expressed, in a passage which cannot be 
 too often quoted, the ultimate truth about Greek sepul- 
 chral reliefs : — 
 
 " The wind which blows from the tombs of the ancients 
 comes with gentle breath as over a mound of roses. The 
 reliefs are touching and pathetic, and always represent 
 life. There stand father and mother, their son between 
 them, gazing at one another with unspeakable truth to 
 nature. Here a pair clasp hands. Here a father seems 
 to rest on his couch and wait to be entertained by his 
 
320 Neiv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. X. 
 
 family. To me the presence of these scenes was very 
 touching. Their art is of a late period, yet are they 
 simple, natural, and of universal interest. Here there is 
 no knight in harness on his knees awaiting a joyful 
 resurrection, The artist has with more or less skill pre- 
 sented to us only the persons themselves, and so made 
 their existence lasting and perpetual. They fold not 
 their hands, gaze not into heaven ; they are on earth, 
 what they were and what they are. They stand side 
 by side, take interest in one another, love one another ; 
 and that is what is in the stone, even though somewhat 
 unskilfully, yet most pleasingly depicted." * 
 
 It is a proof at once of the genius of Goethe and of 
 his keen sympathy with all that is truly Greek, that at 
 a time before Greek art was half understood, he was able 
 to judge from the few inferior specimens known to him 
 of the general character of these sepulchral reliefs. That 
 on which he lays his master-hand is certainly their most 
 essential character. Their whole aspect is turned, so to 
 speak, from the future to the past, and from heaven to 
 earth. We whose ancestors have been, for some twelve 
 hundred years, taught constantly that death is but the 
 entrance to wider life, that the world is a place of pro- 
 bation and preparation for eternity, can scarcely place 
 ourselves in thought in the position of men who seem 
 to have found the world charming and delightful, and to 
 have been well satisfied with it, preferring to let their 
 minds dwell on the enjoyments of the past rather than 
 on a future which at best was a cold and gloomy echo 
 of the present world. It is not that they disbelieved in 
 the unseen world, or thought that the soul died with the 
 body ; such scepticism was perhaps rarer in antiquity 
 than in modern times, and confined in antiquity as in 
 modern times to a few of the highly educated. But 
 * Italienische Reise, ii-propos of the museum at Verona. 
 
Chap. X.] Reliefs and Inscriptions of Athenian Tombs. 321 
 
 that inevitable future occupied comparatively very little 
 of their time and thought ; it was a cold shadow to be 
 kept out of sunny life as much as might be. And when 
 it was thought of, it was thought of without very much 
 either of hope or fear. Terrible punishments in it were 
 reserved for terrible criminals, supreme pleasures for the 
 supremely good, but for ordinary mortals an ordinary 
 fate was reserved, a sort of ghost or echo of their mortal 
 life, made up, like that, of pleasure and pain, but with 
 both pleasure and pain diluted and made ghostly. From 
 discontent with life and repining at the lot assigned by 
 fate, the Greeks would seem to have been singularly free, 
 and no nation ever thought life better worth living. I 
 shall have more to say on this subject further on. 
 
 It remains to speak of the inscriptions which accompany 
 or even take the place of the reliefs, and which have some- 
 times a considerable interest for us. It will be conve- 
 nient to quote these inscriptions in English ; those who 
 wish to compare the original Greek can easily do so in 
 the complete work of Kumanudes.* 
 
 If we turned to the Greek Anthology, we could no 
 doubt find epitaphs of a far more elegant and finished 
 character than those which appear on the graves them- 
 selves ; but the compositions of the Anthology are merely 
 epideictic, exercises of ingenuity without any such real 
 interest as belongs to epitaphs really used. 
 
 There are in the British Museum two sepulchral in- 
 scriptions on public tombs of considerable interest. Of 
 these one contains lists of all the citizens who fell in a 
 single year at the various places where Athens was carry- 
 ing on war. We learn from Thucydides and Pausanias 
 that it was the Athenian custom thus annually to honour 
 
 * 'Attiktjs 'E7riypu(£cu 'Ettitvu^ioi. Athens, 1871. See also the 
 Corpus Inscriptionum Atticarum ; and Kaibel, Epigrammata Graeca 
 ex lapidibus coulecta : 1878. 
 
 Y 
 
322 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. X 
 
 with a public monument all those who had in the pre- 
 vious year fallen in the battles of their country — a custom 
 which must have nerved for death many a soldier's 
 heart, as he reflected that he was sure, if he fell, of a 
 sort of immortality before the eyes and in the memory 
 of his countrymen. The other inscription,* which was 
 written under a relief representing three warriors, com- 
 memorates those Athenians who fell before Potidaea, in 
 the year B.C. 432. It runs thus : — 
 
 "Thus to the dead is deathless honour paid, 
 Who, fired with courage hot, in arms arrayed, 
 Felt each our fathers' valour in him glow, 
 And won long fame by victory o'er the foe. 
 
 " Heaven claimed their souls, in earth their limbs were 
 
 laid, 
 Yet past the gates their conquering charge they 
 
 made ; 
 Of those they routed some in earth abide, 
 Some in strong walls their lives for safety hide. 
 
 " Erechtheus' city mourns her children's fall, 
 Who fought and died by Potidaea's wall, 
 True sons of Athens, for a virtuous name 
 They gave their lives, and swelled their country's 
 fame." 
 
 The smallness of the number of public epitaphs at 
 Athens is well compensated by the abundance of private 
 ones, of which upwards of 4,000 have been already pub- 
 lished, while every year brings a multitude of fresh ones 
 to light. I will attempt to class these, as I did the 
 reliefs. The commonest inscriptions by far are those 
 which simply record, in the case of a man, his name, his 
 
 * Corpus of British Musaun Inscriptions^ i. p. 102. The reading 
 of the first few lines is very doubtful. I follow Mr. Hicks. 
 
Chap. X.] Relief ~s and Inscriptions of Athenian Tombs. 323 
 
 father's name, and his deme or township ; in the case of a 
 woman, her name, that of her father, husband, or husband 
 and father, with their respective demes. Of the numerous 
 epitaphs which remain, perhaps nine out of ten are of 
 this simple character. Sometimes they accompany reliefs 
 of an elaborate character, or are placed on tombs of great 
 size and pretensions. Than such an epitaph nothing could 
 possibly offend less against good taste, and it was pro- 
 bably thought somewhat sentimental and gtisliing at 
 Athens to indulge in a longer metrical sepulchral in- 
 scription. When longer inscriptions occur, they seldom 
 bear much sign either of taste or education. Their 
 grammar is often doubtful, and, when in metre, they 
 halt terribly. They clearly belong to the same class of 
 compositions as the lame verses which abound in English 
 graveyards. 
 
 In the case of very early reliefs we find usually not 
 only the name of the dead, but also of the artist who 
 did the work. In later times this custom dropped, and 
 we have scarcely in any case a clue to the name of 
 the sculptor. This fact is the more curious, inasmuch 
 as in other remains of antiquity, such as gems and coins, 
 to insert the artist's name becomes more usual as we 
 approach the best time of art. Not many epitaphs of 
 an earlier period than the year B.C. 400 are preserved, nor 
 are these, except in the case of public tombs, of special 
 importance. One is interesting to students of epigraphy 
 as it bears an exact date, the year B.C. 430, when the 
 plague, following in the wake of the Peloponnesian army, 
 invaded Attica : " I am the tomb of Myrina, who died 
 of the plague." Another, of an ordinary Attic type, has 
 a grace and charm which is seldom absent from the 
 earlier productions of Attica : — 
 
 " Let the reader pass on, be he citizen or stranger from 
 afar, having pitied for a moment a brave man who fell 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 Neiv CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. X. 
 
 in battle and lost his young prime. Having shed a tear 
 here, go by, and good go with you." 
 
 To the period between the falling of Athens into 
 Lysander's hands and the times of the Roman Anto- 
 nines belongs the vast body of the epitaphs. A more 
 exact chronological classification is neither easy, it being 
 especially hard to determine the period of those inscrip- 
 tions which are not accompanied by reliefs, nor necessary. 
 It is best to divide them into classes, not by a determina- 
 tion of date, but rather by a consideration of drift and 
 content, and to consider all as belonging to one long period, 
 a period when the Athenian Empire had indeed passed 
 away, and external conquests were not to be hoped for ; 
 but when Athens still ruled in the realm of mind and 
 attracted to herself the flower of the culture of Hellas 
 and the world. I have already said that the commonest 
 sort of inscriptions comprised only the name of the dead, 
 his father's name, and that of his deme. But not unfre- 
 quently a few words of comment were added. The 
 person who paid for the erection of the tomb liked to 
 see some record of his liberality. Thus a stone marks 
 the spot where " His sons buried Julius Zosimianus, the 
 head of the School of Zeno," that is, the head of the 
 Stoics of Athens. Another records that " Polystratus 
 set up this portrait in memory of his brother." We 
 frequently find the trade or calling of the deceased 
 mentioned in his epitaph. One Heracleides is stated 
 to have been the greatest master of the catapult, a war- 
 like machine which seems to have required some skill 
 in the handling. Many other trades are mentioned in 
 connection with the dead. One was a bathing-man, 
 another a mid-wife and physician, another a 'priestess 
 of the all-producing Mother, probably Cybelc, another 
 second in rank in joyous comedy, another a bull-fighter. 
 On one tomb the record ends quaintly, after mentioning 
 
Chap. X.] Reliefs and Inscriptions of Athenian Tombs. 325 
 
 that the grave contained one or two named persons, with 
 the phrase, " also the others who are represented in the 
 relief," where the stonemason or his instructor seems to 
 have grown tired of a bare list of names, and stopped 
 short in the midst. 
 
 The longer inscriptions which are found on Attic 
 gravestones, if we except only the class of minatory or 
 deprecatory epitaphs, which I reserve to the last, are in 
 metre. To this rule there are few, if any, exceptions, so 
 that the ancient epitaph-writer could at least, unlike the 
 modern, claim the saeva necessitas as a reason for at- 
 tempting a metrical composition. I shall, however, ren- 
 der into English prose rather than verse the specimens 
 of these selected for purposes of illustration, as it would 
 convey quite a false impression if I were to disguise 
 their oddities and crudities under the smooth mantle of 
 English heroic verse. 
 
 The metrical epitaphs are of four kinds. Those of the 
 first kind are in the form of a dialogue between the dead 
 and the surviving friend, or in some cases of a mere direct 
 address to the dead. The simplest form which such an 
 address can take is the ^prjare %atpe — " Farewell, lost 
 friend " — which is so usual on tombs of a certain period, 
 but which does not, apparently, appear on any which 
 belonged certainly to an Athenian. Of this simple and 
 touching phrase we find a number of metrical amplifica- 
 tions : — 
 
 " Farewell, tomb of Melite ; the best of women lies here, 
 who loved her loving husband, Onesimus ; thou wast most 
 excellent, wherefore he longs for thee after thy death, for 
 thou wast the best of wives. Farewell, thou too, dearest 
 husband, only love my children." 
 
 But an inscription of this kind is necessarily of a late 
 period, and but little in accord with the canon of fashion- 
 able taste. More usual and less emotional is the following, 
 
326 New Cliapters in Greek History. [Chap. X. 
 
 which details a conversation not with the dead, but with 
 his tomb : — " Whose tomb are we to call thee ? That of 
 famous Nepos. And who of the children of Cecrops 
 begat him ? say. He was not of the land of Cecrops, but 
 from Thrace." Another epitaph, after proceeding in 
 verse, suddenly breaks into prose : " And if you seek my 
 name, I am Theogeiton, son of Thymochus of Thebes." 
 Of course it is quite natural that the tombstone should 
 thus speak in the first person in the name and on behalf 
 of the deceased. In some of our commonest English 
 epitaphs such as " Affliction sore long time I bore," we 
 find the same peculiarity ; but that a grave-stone should 
 give information in reply to cross-questioning is less usual. 
 
 The second kind of metrical inscriptions, which is by 
 far the most numerous, speaks of the past life and his- 
 tory of the deceased. Thus over the grave of a soldier 
 we find : — 
 
 " Of thy valour stands many a trophy in . Greece and 
 in the souls of men ; such wast thou, Nicobulus, when 
 thou leftest the bright light of the sun and passedst, 
 beloved of thy friends, to the dwelling of Persephone." 
 
 Other triumphs besides warlike ones are elsewhere 
 recorded ; on the tomb of one Praxinus, the doer, we 
 read the punning epitaph : — 
 
 "My name and my father's this stone proclaims, and 
 my country ; but by my worthy deeds I attained such a 
 name as few may obtain." 
 
 We are not aware in this case to what special kind 
 of deeds the inscription refers ; often it is more explicit 
 as in the following, erected over a young statuary : — 
 
 " I began to flourish as a statuary not inferior to 
 Praxiteles, and came to twice eight years of age. My 
 name was Eutychides,* but that name fate mocked, 
 tearing me so early away to Hades." 
 
 * Child of good luck. 
 
Chap. X.] Reliefs and Inscriptions of Athenian Tombs. 327 
 
 On the tomb of one Plutarchus, who seems to have 
 been a merchant, we find a brief history of his life : — 
 
 " This is the tomb of the discreet Plutarchus, who, 
 desiring fame which comes of many toils, came to 
 Ausonia. There he endured toils on toils far from 
 his country, although an only child and dear to his 
 parents. Yet gained he not his desire, though long- 
 ing much, for first the fate of unlovely death reached 
 him." 
 
 Sometimes out of a whole life one event or circumstance 
 of peculiar interest was taken, and commemorated as well 
 by inscription as relief, as in the case of that Phoenician 
 stranger already mentioned who narrowly escaped the 
 jaws of a lion. The inscription on his tomb describes 
 that escape, and explains the meaning of the representa- 
 tion it accompanies. 
 
 The virtues of the dead must always in all countries 
 form the most frequent and suitable subject of sepulchral 
 inscriptions. Athens is no exception to the rule. We 
 find on the grave of a young man : — 
 
 " Here Euthycritus, having reached the goal of every 
 virtue, lies entombed in his native soil, dear to father and 
 mother, and loved by his sisters and all his companions, 
 in the prime of his life." 
 
 A copper-smelter from Crete has the simple and pleas- 
 ing epitaph : — 
 
 " This memorial to Sosinous, of his justice, his prudence, 
 and his virtue, his sons erected on his death." 
 
 The following is from the tomb of one Sotius : — 
 
 " Here in earth lies Sotius, superior to all in the art 
 he practised, virtuous of soul, and dear to his fellow- 
 citizens ; for ever he studied to please all, and his heart 
 was most just towards his friends." 
 
 Such are a few of the panegyrics bestowed on 
 men after their death ; those bestowed on women are 
 
328 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. X. 
 
 fewer in number, but not less interesting. A young 
 girl is commended for her serious and staid dis- 
 position : — 
 
 " She who lies here coveted not, while alive, garments 
 or gold, but desired discretion and virtue. But now, 
 Dionysia, in place of youth and bloom, the fates have 
 awarded thee this sepulchre." 
 
 More than once we find epitaphs which speak of the 
 virtue and kindness of nurses, evidently set up by young 
 men who had never ceased to care for and respect 
 them. The ancients evidently felt for the wet-nurse who 
 cherished their infancy, slave as she might be, something 
 of lasting and filial affection : — 
 
 " Here is laid in earth the best of nurses, whose foster- 
 child still misses her. I loved thee, nurse, when alive, 
 and still I honour thee though thou art laid in the ground, 
 and shall honour as long as I live." 
 
 More characteristic of the Greek disposition than mere 
 praise of the dead are those praises of the good fortune 
 of the departed, which sound almost mocking to modern 
 ears, and yet on a little reflection do not displease. Of 
 one Symmachus, of Chios, we read on his tomb that 
 through life his joys were many and his sorrows few, 
 that he reached the extreme limit of old age, and lies 
 in Athens, the city dear to gods and men. On the tombs 
 of women it is often stated that they were in comfortable 
 circumstances, and that they lived to see their children's 
 children. All the happiness of past life seemed to the 
 Greeks a gain, and even when it was over was to be re- 
 garded, not with bitter regret, but gentle sympathy. In 
 one inscription, though a late one, we find an elaborate 
 description of the beauty of the young wife buried below, 
 of her yellow hair, her bright eyes, her snow-white 
 forehead, the ruddy lips and ivory teeth of her lovely 
 mouth. These things were past, it is true, but even so 
 
Chap. X.] Reliefs and Inscriptions of Athenian Tombs. 329 
 
 they were something better to look back upon than 
 ugliness. 
 
 Sometimes, however, through the general level of cheeri- 
 ness a sadder note breaks : — 
 
 " My name is Athenais, and with grief I go to my 
 place among the dead, leaving my husband and my 
 darling children. A grudging web the Fates spun for 
 me. 
 
 When youthful promise is early cut off it is scarcely 
 possible that it should be spoken of without a sound of 
 sad regret. Even the statement of the fact produces this 
 impression : — 
 
 "If fortune had continued thy life, Macareus, and 
 brought thee to manhood, strong wast thou in the hope 
 that thou wouldst become the guiding spirit of tragic art 
 among the Hellenes. But thou diest not without fame 
 for discretion and virtue." 
 
 Even here consolation comes in to modify regret, so 
 true to the happy disposition of the Greeks is the 
 charming saying of Spenser, " A dram of sweete is worth 
 a pound of sowre ! " 
 
 As in sepulchral reliefs, so in epitaphs, the Greek 
 mourner usually turns his thought to the past, and 
 dwells on the life which is over rather than on any which 
 may be beginning. Nevertheless we do find, here and 
 there, some allusions to the state of the departed which 
 are of great interest, and which furnish us with evidence 
 on a subject still obscure and much discussed, the beliefs 
 of the ordinary minds among the Greeks as to the future 
 life, and as to reward and punishment in it. The small 
 space which these allusions occupy, compared with the 
 whole body of epitaphs, shows how small a corner of 
 Athenian thought was taken up with meditation on 
 matters outside the present life. This was, as we shall 
 see in the next chapter, less the case in Dorian and 
 
330 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. X. 
 
 North Greek cities. But the materialism of the Greeks 
 was rather natural and practical than speculative, and 
 we nowhere find any positive denial of future existence. 
 In one or two epitaphs there is an appearance of 
 such denial, but its meaning must not be pressed. 
 Thus, in one case, we find the phrase, " Rising out of 
 earth I am become earth again," and in another epitaph, 
 one Nicomedes, who calls himself the servant of the 
 Muses, says that he is "clad in wakeless sleep." Here 
 we probably only have popular phrases used in a vague 
 and indefinite sense, and without the least intention of 
 theorizing on the nature of the soul. Commoner still are 
 even more vague phrases as to the destination of the soul, 
 which is said to fly to heaven, to air, or to aether.* It 
 is aether which is said in the metrical inscription first 
 quoted to receive the souls of the slain Athenian warriors. 
 So in the following : — 
 
 " Here Dialogus, student of wisdom, his limbs purged 
 with pure fire, is gone to the immortals. Here lie naked 
 the bones of Dialogus the discreet, who practised virtue 
 and wisdom ; them a little dust hides sprinkled over 
 them ; but the spirit from his limbs the broad heaven 
 has received." 
 
 Dialogus was presumably a philosopher and had 
 learned the difference between soul and body. The 
 words, heaven and the immortals, have to him a some- 
 what vague meaning, representing rather something 
 hoped for than believed in and expected. There is a 
 stronger flavour of philosophic materialism in the follow- 
 ing : — " Damp aether holds the soul and mighty intel- 
 lect of Eurymachus, but his body is in this tomb." The 
 word aldrjp, aether, is certainly used by Homer to signify 
 the abode of the gods, and no doubt the poet of our 
 metrical inscription had Homer in his mind, but here 
 
 * ovpavoS) aWijf.). 
 
Chap. X.] Reliefs and Inscriptions of Athenian Tombs. 331 
 
 the word " damp " (1)7/00?) seems to point to some 
 materialist notion as to the nature of spirit and its 
 affinity to the upper air. A more popular interpretation 
 must be accepted in other cases, such as : " Earth sent 
 thee forth to light, Sibyrtius, and earth holds thy re- 
 mains, but aether, the source of thy soul, has received it 
 again." 
 
 But the vulgar notions with regard to the future state 
 were certainly borrowed from Homer, sucked in by the 
 many with their mothers' milk, or at latest imbibed at 
 school, where Homer occupied the place taken by the 
 Bible in our Church schools. The Greeks generally were 
 inclined to regard Homer as infallible, and so, when 
 they thought of the future state at all, pictured it ac- 
 cording to his teaching. Hence they made it a shadowy 
 realm under the government of Hades and Persephone, 
 a poor washed-out copy of the brilliant life on earth. 
 The dead go to the chamber of Persephone, or, as it is 
 sometimes phrased, the chamber of the blessed. " The 
 bones and the flesh of our sweet son lie in earth, but his 
 soul is gone to the chamber of the holy." It is clear, 
 from some other inscriptions, that in that chamber re- 
 wards were supposed to await the good, and punishments 
 the bad. Thus one man writes on the grave of his 
 nurse, "And I know that, if below the earth there be 
 rewards for the good, for thee, nurse, more than for any, 
 is honour waiting in the abode of Persephone and Pluto." 
 The suggestive if is again repeated elsewhere. "If there 
 is with Persephone any reward for piety, a share of that 
 was bestowed on thee in death by Fate." The expres- 
 sion in both instances seems to be rather of a wish or 
 longing than of a sure and certain hope. 
 
 Indeed, this wavering tone never becomes full and 
 confident until we come down to the times of Christian 
 inscriptions, when a sudden and marvellous change takes 
 
33 2 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. X. 
 
 place. To the Christian the place of interment is no 
 longer a tomb, but a sleeping-place. When he speaks 
 of aether and heaven as receiving the soul, the words 
 have quite another ring. Though Christian epitaphs at 
 Athens be somewhat beyond my province, I cannot 
 avoid introducing one or two, if merely for the sake of 
 contrast. The following charmingly combines the genial 
 backward glance of the Greek with the forward glance 
 of the Christian : — 
 
 " Look, friend, on the sacred beauty of Asclepiodota, 
 of her immortal soul and body, for to both nature gave 
 one undefined beauty, and if Fate seized her it van- 
 quished her not ; in her death she was not forsaken, nor 
 did she abandon her husband though she left him, but 
 now more than ever watches him out of heaven, and 
 rejoices in him and guards him." 
 
 Or take another : — 
 
 " His body is hidden here in earth, but his soul is 
 escaped to Heaven (aWrfp) and returned to its source, 
 for he has obtained the reward of the best of lives." 
 
 Sometimes one catches a note of a still higher strain : 
 " There, whence pain and moans are banished, take thy 
 rest." I think no one can deny that these epitaphs are 
 quite equal to the pagan ones in literary taste and feli- 
 city of language, while in sentiment they mark a striking 
 advance. 
 
 It would have been natural to expect that the religion 
 of Isis, which among all ancient faiths clung most closely 
 to the belief in a future life, and which owed to that 
 circumstance its great influence among the later Greeks, 
 would have left in the epitaphs some traces of a surer 
 hope and trust in what was beyond the grave. But such 
 is not the case ; and a still more remarkable omission is 
 to be noticed. The great Eleusinian mysteries were cele- 
 brated annually, within a few miles of Athens. The 
 
 
Chap. X.] Reliefs and Inscriptions of Athenian Tombs. 333 
 
 whole population must have known more or less of the 
 meaning of the ceremonies ; and there were probably few 
 adult Athenians who had not been initiated. But it has 
 always been supposed that the continuance of the dead 
 and the life to come were the chief matters on which 
 light was thrown during the celebration. It has been 
 thought that the analogy between the sowing of wheat 
 and the burying of the dead, that analogy which the 
 Apostle Paul works out in full detail, was then insisted 
 on. Cicero speaks of the mysteries of Eleusis as some 
 of the noblest productions of Attic soil, and declares 
 that they impart not only directions for leading a better 
 life, but also a better hope in death. Polygnotus painted 
 on the walls of the Lesche at Delphi the punishments 
 suffered in Hades by those who neglected to have them- 
 selves initiated in the mysteries. Yet in all the Attic 
 epitaphs which have come down to us, we discern not a 
 trace of any such doctrine as we should have been dis- 
 posed, from such indications, to attribute to the College 
 of Priests who conducted the mysteries. When the next 
 world is at all spoken of, it either appears as the 
 Homeric realm of Hades and his bride Persephone, or 
 else is mentioned in the vague language of the philoso- 
 phers as aether and heaven. The conclusion seems in- 
 evitable. We are strongly warned against attributing 
 too much influence over the ordinary mind, or any very 
 lofty and spiritual teaching, to the mysteries. The wise 
 men, like Cicero and Plutarch, may have found in them 
 deep meaning and profound consolation, reading into 
 them the results of their own philosophy and faith ; 
 just as some writers of recent times have read into them 
 most of the doctrines of Christianity. But to the 
 common people they were probably a string of outward 
 observances with little inner meaning. Like the sacra- 
 ments of Christianity, to which in many respects they 
 
334 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. X. 
 
 were parallel, they had a strong tendency to lose all life 
 and become mere form. That their secret was so well 
 preserved can be attributed to but one cause — that their 
 secret, such as it was, was not of a kind that could be 
 communicated. It is certain that throughout Greece, in 
 antiquity, the future life was by the common people 
 looked upon with distaste, if not with dread ; and that 
 they had no doctrine tending to soften its repulsion. 
 
 Moral reflections and words of advice form a not un- 
 frequent ending to Athenian epitaphs. Sometimes in 
 these nothing more is expressed than a kindly wish for 
 the reader. Thus one stranger after stating that he was 
 shipwrecked, adds in genial spirit, " May every sailor 
 safely reach his home ! " Another wishes for all way- 
 farers who read the stone a prosperous journey. Some- 
 times there is a general observation : " It is rare for a 
 woman to be at once noble and discreet ; " or a quota- 
 tion from a poet, as in the case of the well-known line, 
 " Those whom the gods love die early." Sometimes 
 the occasion is improved, as a Scotch minister would 
 say, and a little sermon read to the passer-by, who is 
 advised to live virtuously, " knowing that the abode of 
 Pluto beneath is full of wealth and has need of nothing," 
 — virtues, that is to say, and not riches, are the only 
 things which will avail after death. 
 
 So far with regard to metrical inscriptions. The long 
 inscriptions which are not metrical are nearly always of 
 the same kind as the well-known epitaph of Shake- 
 speare, — curses pronounced against those who shall in 
 future time attempt to move or destroy the grave, curses 
 of which the modern explorer makes very light, ap- 
 parently supposing that their virtue has in the course 
 of centuries departed. But in ancient time they might 
 be more effectual. They are always of a very late date ; 
 so long as the people of Athens had a common feeling 
 
Chap, x.] Relief r s and Inscriptions of Athenian Tombs. 335 
 
 and a common pride in their city there was small fear 
 of the violation of the grave of a citizen, but under the 
 Roman Emperors the Athenian citizenship and Greek 
 nationality fell to pieces, and no one felt sure of the 
 future. Herodes Atticus, the wealthiest citizen of Athens 
 in the reign of Hadrian, who built the Athenians a 
 splendid marble Odeum, set up a monument to his wife 
 Appia Annia Regilla, " the light of the house," which he 
 thought it necessary to fence by a very unpleasant string 
 of threats. 
 
 " By the gods and heroes I charge any who hold this 
 place not to move aught of this : and if any destroy or 
 alter these statues and honours (rt/xa?), for him may 
 earth refuse to bear fruit, and sea become unsailable, 
 and may he and his race perish miserably ! " 
 
 The inscription goes on to heap blessings on those who 
 keep the tomb in its place and pay it honour. A lady 
 who bears the Roman name of Antonia hands over, 
 in her epitaph, her tomb to keep to Pluto and Demeter 
 and Persephone and all the nether gods, calling down a 
 curse on all who violate it. In another epitaph we find 
 a formidable list of diseases which are likely to seize 
 the violator — palsy, fever, ague, elephantiasis, and the 
 rest. In another instance the dimensions of the curse 
 are curtailed, and it is put neatly into two hexameter 
 verses, " Move not the stone from the earth, villain, lest 
 after thy death, wretch, dogs mangle thy unburied body." 
 
 In the last-quoted epitaph it is evidently the writer's 
 intention to threaten a punishment according to the lex 
 talionis. To move a tombstone was an offence of the 
 same class, though in degree of course slighter, as to 
 leave the body of a dead man unburied. It is well- 
 known how keenly every Greek dreaded that his body 
 should after his death be deprived of burial-rites, and 
 how bitterly he condemned all who through fear or 
 
336 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. x. 
 
 carelessness abandoned dead friends to dogs and vul- 
 tures. No doubt this dread was connected with the 
 very ancient and widespread notion that those who re- 
 mained unburied could not rest in the grave, were re- 
 pelled from the gates of the world of spirits, and hovered 
 as unhappy ghosts in the vicinity of their corpses. As 
 the first step towards exposing a dead body was the 
 tearing down of the stone which covered it, and as the 
 stone was moreover closely associated with the dead, 
 some of the mysterious horror which guarded the corpse 
 was transferred to the gravestone above it. We may 
 consider ourselves happy that among us gravestones are 
 protected not by curses but by blessings, by cherished 
 memories and associations ; and so perhaps it was in the 
 better times at Athens ; only when the old civilisation was 
 falling into corruption, all gentler ties were loosed, and 
 every man fought for himself and his, with any weapons 
 which came nearest. 
 
 One closes the Corpus of SepulcJiral Inscriptions with a 
 feeling of surprise ; surprise that a people so gifted as 
 the Athenians should be so helpless and tongue-tied in 
 the presence of death. The reliefs do not disappoint a 
 reasonable expectation ; in taste at least they put our 
 modern cemeteries to shame, if the range of ideas ex- 
 pressed is somewhat narrow. But the inscriptions are at 
 a far greater depth below Greek poetry and oratory than 
 the reliefs are below the best Greek sculpture. The 
 reason may partly be that the reliefs are the work of 
 professionals, the inscriptions of amateurs. But there 
 are two other reasons of a more satisfactory character. 
 The first of these I have already mentioned, that except 
 in the case of soldiers and of public characters, such as 
 eminent poets, it was considered in bad taste at Athens 
 to have an epitaph at all ; those, therefore, which we find 
 are mostly written by persons of the less respectable 
 
Chap. X.] Reliefs and Inscriptions of AtJienian Tombs. 337 
 
 classes, and in the later and worse times of the city. 
 But the deepest reason, at least from the modern point 
 of view, is that the Greek mind found in death no in- 
 spiring force ; they might regard its inevitable power 
 with equanimity and even cheerfulness, but in any way 
 to rejoice in its presence, to look upon it with hope and 
 warmth of heart, did not consist with the point of view 
 of their religion. Such feelings at such a time are in- 
 spired only by one or two religions of the world, among 
 which there is no place for naturalism. 
 
 Z 
 
33% Neiv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. Xt. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 SPARTAN TOMBS AND THE CULTUS OF THE DEAD.* 
 
 In no class of ancient monuments have more extensive 
 or more important discoveries been made of late than in 
 the class of sepulchral monuments, so that we have now 
 to revise in fresh light our opinions of a few years ago. 
 In some respects we have altogether to remodel those 
 opinions. So rapid is in our days the growth of Greek 
 archaeological science, that every year consigns to limbo 
 some dictum of the older school of archaeologists, who 
 laid down rules as to Greek art with all the courage of 
 limited experience. 
 
 But the chief discoveries of sepulchral reliefs have been 
 made outside Attica. Nothing has appeared to throw 
 doubt on the thesis, set forth in the last chapter and 
 firmly established by the discovery of the great Athenian 
 cemetery by the gate Dipylon, that in sculpturing their 
 tombs the minds of the Athenians exhibited a strong 
 tendency to look backwards rather than forwards, to 
 dwell on the life which finds its termination in the grave, 
 rather than on that which there begins. But we now 
 know that the custom of referring only to the life of the 
 past was not by any means universally observed in the 
 subjects painted and sculptured on Greek tombs. It was 
 
 * The subject of this paper is treated more in detail, and with 
 citation of authorities, in an article entitled A Sepulchral Relief from 
 Tarentum, by the present writer, in the Jotimal of Hellenic Studies 
 for 1884. 
 
Chap. XL] Spartan Tombs and the Cultns of the Dead. 339 
 
 the line taken by the high art of Athens and other great 
 cities ; indeed, it best suited the instincts of all Greek 
 art, to which all that was vague and mystic was re- 
 pulsive and ugly. But it did not altogether satisfy the 
 emotions and beliefs of the common people, especially 
 in the more backward cities of Hellas, and among con- 
 servative races like the Dorians and Arcadians. They 
 did not believe that human life ended at the grave, and 
 they did not content themselves with representations 
 which seemed to imply that such was the case. They 
 loved to think of and represent their dead ancestors as 
 still living. 
 
 In the year 1877 Messrs. Dressel and Milchhoefer, then 
 members of the German school of Athens, wandering 
 through Peloponnese in the laudable fashion of German 
 students, and eagerly looking out for works of ancient 
 art, lighted at Sparta upon some very remarkable monu- 
 ments then recently exhumed. These were certain stelae 
 or slabs, bearing a relief which represented two persons, a 
 man and a woman, enthroned side by side, and depicted 
 in a very archaic style of art. The man usually holds a 
 wine-cup, and the woman grasps the end of her veil. A 
 snake appears close behind the pair, and sometimes there 
 are depicted as approaching them with offerings, votaries, 
 whom their diminutive size shows to be of far less dignity 
 than the principal figures. It was at once evident to the 
 discoverers of these slabs that the subject depicted on them 
 was the offering of sacrifices to a male and female deity. 
 But, as is so often the case with new and important 
 discoveries, the whole bearing of the reliefs was not at 
 first seen. Two theories were at once mooted in regard 
 to them. One set of archaeologists saw in the seated 
 male figure holding the wine-cup the god Dionysus, and 
 in his consort either Ariadne, or perhaps Persephone, 
 who was in some parts of Greece regarded as the wife 
 
 Z 2 
 
34° New Chapters in Greek History. [Chai\ XI. 
 
 of the Chthonic Dionysus. Other archaeologists preferred 
 to consider the pair as Hades and Persephone, the great 
 deities of the unseen world, and supposed that the in- 
 tention was to represent sacrifices brought to them by- 
 mortals as a propitiation, and in hopes to secure their 
 favour in the world of shades. Messrs. Dressel and 
 Milchhoefer accepted at first the view last mentioned, 
 and adduced several arguments in its favour. They 
 pointed out the prevalence of the worship of Hades 
 and the great goddesses of nature in several parts of 
 Peloponnesus, particularly at Andania in Messenia, and 
 in Arcadia, and tried to show that the character of the 
 offerings was well fitted to the cultus of these dread 
 powers of the future world. The wine-cup in the hand 
 of Hades they regarded as a substitute for the horn which 
 he more commonly carries. 
 
 This view, though incorrect, was at the time very 
 natural. But very shortly a number of monuments of a 
 similar kind were brought to light in other parts of the 
 Peloponnesus and of Northern Greece, which made it 
 impossible longer to doubt of the true meaning of the 
 Spartan stelae. 
 
 For instance, at Sparta two slabs were discovered which 
 had certainly served as tombstones, and bore the names 
 of Timocles and Aristocles respectively. On each of these 
 was represented a seated male figure, holding wine-cup 
 and pomegranate. Here the representation was evidently 
 of the man who was buried in the tomb. And in other 
 cases the person thus seated is female, in some cases 
 holding a pomegranate or feeding a serpent from a cup. 
 
 These fresh instances have suggested for the earlier- 
 found and better-known Spartan reliefs a new interpre- 
 tation which is, I believe, universally accepted. The pair 
 seated in state must be the deceased hero or ancestor 
 and his wife. They await the offerings of their descen- 
 
 
 I 
 
Chap. XL] Spartan Tombs and the Citltus of the Dead. 341 
 
 dants and votaries, who bring them such objects as were 
 in Greece commonly offered to the dead — fowls, and eggs, 
 and pomegranates. The snake who accompanies them 
 is the well-known companion and servant of the dead. 
 
 We find, then, in Peloponnesus and in other parts of 
 Greece, in quite early times, abundant monuments testi- 
 fying to the prevalence of a widely-spread cultus of the 
 dead. We have proof that not only did the gods, and 
 those heroes of old who had almost stepped into the 
 rank of the gods, receive worship and sacrifice in the 
 temples and houses of the Greeks, but also ordinary 
 human beings after their death. In text-books which 
 deal with Greek antiquities we had already read of these 
 customs, but they had hitherto been supposed to have 
 left little trace in literature and in art. Men well ac- 
 quainted with Greek history and customs had often 
 scarcely heard of them or given them a thought. But 
 now the evidences of the customs of ve/cvena in Greece 
 need no longer be sought in writers of Alexandrian 
 times and in inscriptions. They are thrust under the 
 eyes of all who gain but a superficial acquaintance with 
 Greek art. It is not too much to say that the new 
 discoveries are to archaeologists quite a revelation, and 
 of the greatest value to those who care to study the 
 origin and the history of religious belief. 
 
 We will briefly set forth the Greek beliefs on the sub- 
 ject of the life after death, and next, give a general view 
 of the Greek sepulchral monuments which illustrate those 
 beliefs. 
 
 An idea which commonly prevails among barbarous 
 peoples as to the life after death is, that it is in essentials 
 merely a continuation of the ordinary mundane existence. 
 When alive the warrior requires a house, when dead he 
 must be sheltered in a tomb ; and the form and arrange- 
 ments of early tombs often follow those of the house 
 
34 2 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XI. 
 
 When alive the warrior requires food ; when he is dead 
 food must still be brought to him in his new abode. He 
 must have drink also, and pleasant smells, lamps to light 
 his darkness, and abundant vesture and armour for him to 
 wear. As hunting was the principal pleasure in life, so in 
 the life after death the warrior must have all things neces- 
 sary for the chase. His horse and his dog must be slain 
 and buried with him, that they may continue their ser- 
 vices to their master. His wife must also attend his 
 steps to the new state of existence ; and enemies must 
 be slain at the spot where he is buried, in order that he 
 may have slaves to do his behests in the future as in the 
 past. 
 
 This general statement is fully borne out by the testi- 
 mony afforded by the graves of ancient peoples. The 
 walls of Egyptian tombs are painted with innumerable 
 scenes of public and religious and private life — scenes 
 like those amid which the dead man had passed his days. 
 To the real scenes the paintings bore a similar resem- 
 blance to that which the shadowy life of the tomb bore 
 to the real life of the flesh. The interior of Etruscan 
 tombs is adorned with scenes of revelry, of amusement, 
 and sport, to glad the eyes of the hero hovering within 
 and disperse his ennui ; and in these tombs are found 
 the bones of the warrior's horse and dog which were slain 
 to bear him company on the last journey. In early 
 Greek graves are found armour and vestments, cups and 
 vases, weapons and utensils. The writer will not easily 
 lose the sense that the Greeks at one time really be- 
 lieved in this life of the tomb which flashed upon him 
 when, in turning over the spoils found by Dr. Schliemann 
 in the tombs of Mycenae, he came upon a whetstone, 
 actually put among the swords that their edge might be 
 renewed when blunted with use. 
 
 In the later times of the Egyptians and the Greeks 
 
Chap. XL] Spartan Tombs and the Ciiltus of the Dead. 343 
 
 this nai've faith died away, and was replaced by beliefs 
 of a more worthy and spiritual kind. Men came to be- 
 lieve in a realm of souls far away beyond the desert or 
 hidden in the depths of the earth, and presided over by 
 mighty and just rulers. They began to feel that it was 
 the soul only that survived death, and that it did not 
 stay at the tomb, but went on a long journey, and abode 
 far from descendant and townsman. But we find always 
 in history that customs outlast the beliefs which gave 
 birth to them, and often survive into quite a different 
 state of opinion. So it was in this case. The burial 
 customs which arose when the grave was supposed to be 
 a real abode were kept up when the soul was believed 
 entirely to quit the body at death. It was still in the 
 tomb that provision for the future life was heaped up. 
 It was in the actual mouth of the corpse that the fee for 
 Charon, the ferryman, was placed. It was to the very 
 place of burial that offerings were brought on the all 
 souls' days of antiquity. The logical complement of the 
 later doctrine of Hades would have been to regard as 
 immaterial what happened to the body after death. But 
 this was a point never reached by ancient nations ; they 
 always regarded want of burial of the body as fatal to the 
 bliss of the soul in Hades. 
 
 Changes did, however, take place in burial customs in 
 consequence of the growing discordance between them 
 and popular belief. They were still maintained, but in 
 more and more perfunctory and unreal fashion. The 
 arms and ornaments buried with the dead became flimsier 
 and less fit for use. Every archaeologist knows that 
 sometimes the graves of Greece and Etruria contain the 
 mere pretence of offerings : gold ornaments as thin as 
 paper ; loaves and fruits of terra-cotta ; weapons unfit for 
 use, and vases of the most unserviceable kind. " In sacris 
 simulata pro veris accipi," wrote Servius ; and in no class 
 
344 A T ew Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XI. 
 
 of sacred rites does hollow pretence more commonly take 
 the place of reality than in those connected with funerals 
 and tombs. 
 
 Such, in merest outline, is the history of Greek beliefs 
 as to the life beyond the grave during the course of the 
 historical ages. And if we examine a few examples of 
 the various groups of sepulchral monuments to be found 
 in various parts of Hellas, we shall find ample illustration 
 of our sketch. 
 
 Among the earliest of Greek sculptured tombstones are 
 those Spartan reliefs of which mention has already been 
 made. In them we see the departed ancestor and ances- 
 tress seated like gods to receive the homage of survivors. 
 When the seated hero holds out a wine-cup, it seems 
 a broad hint to survivors to fill it. Accordingly, in 
 Boeotian and other reliefs, we actually see a female 
 figure approaching to fill from a pitcher the extended 
 vessel. And upon Greek graves there commonly lay, as 
 we learn from the testimony of excavations, an amphora 
 of coarse ware to receive the doles of wine brought to 
 the cemetery. The food brought by suppliants on the 
 Peloponnesian stelae consists of eggs and fowls, and more 
 especially the pomegranate. This last seems to have 
 been the recognised food of the shades. Hades gives it 
 to his stolen bride, Persephone ; and she, by eating it, 
 becomes incapable of quitting the place of the dead to 
 return to her bright existence in the upper air. And 
 to this day pomegranate seeds are one element in the 
 sweet cakes which are made to be distributed by those 
 who have lost a friend, at certain intervals after his death, 
 cakes evidently representing those bestowed in old times 
 on the lost friend himself. 
 
 This realism of offerings to the dead naturally suggests 
 to us that the idea of offerings of food and wine to the 
 deities themselves arose from the transfer to them of 
 
 
Chap. XL] Spartan Tombs and the Qtltus of the Dead. 345 
 
 ideas originally connected with dead mortals. In his- 
 torical times the Greeks made wide distinction between 
 the offerings to deities and those brought to heroes, both 
 as to time and mode and as to the objects sacrificed ; 
 but this distinction is not fundamental, and we cannot 
 help looking on the whole custom of sacrifice as one 
 imported into the cultus of deities from that of the dead. 
 It is not unusual to represent deities also in sculpture as 
 holding out a cup or vessel, and it seems clear that what- 
 ever meaning the Greeks attached to the action in later 
 times, it must in earlier have signified a readiness to 
 receive offerings. Great sculptors substituted for this 
 action, which to them seemed trivial or mean, some 
 higher motive, placing a Victory or a sceptre in the 
 hands of the greater divinities ; but in case of some of 
 the lesser, such as Tv^r), Fortune, the patera remained to 
 the end a not unusual attribute. 
 
 The snake which is erect behind the pair stands in a 
 very intimate relation to the dead. His habit of dwelling 
 in holes in those rocky spots which the Greeks chose for 
 their cemeteries, amid which he mysteriously appeared and 
 disappeared, originated the idea that he was either the 
 companion or even the impersonation of the dead (in- 
 certus geniumne loci famulumne parentis esse putet*) ; 
 and the idea was fostered by the manners of the reptile, 
 his shyness when approached, and the wisdom and sub- 
 tilty attributed to him by the ancients. It is curious to 
 find, in other reliefs, the horse and the dog in the place 
 of the snake. Their presence, indeed, is not in itself 
 surprising. They have their place beside their master in 
 the sculpture by the same right by which their bones 
 were laid beside his in the grave. As they died with 
 him and are his companions in the fields of Elysium, so 
 they swell his state when he sits to receive homage and 
 
 * Aeneid, v. 95. 
 
346 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XI. 
 
 offerings. Yet it is somewhat strange to find horse and 
 dog, which imply a free and open life of hunting and 
 amusement, alternately with the sad and cold serpent, 
 which belongs to no happy hunting-ground, but to the 
 rocky soil of the cemetery. 
 
 Such being the symbolism of Spartan tombs, we 
 naturally inquire with what purpose these designs were 
 sculptured. With us a gravestone is merely a reminder, 
 placed on the spot where some of our friends are laid, 
 and intended to awake in the survivors memories, sad, 
 indeed, yet touched with a certain melancholy pleasure, 
 since it can never be altogether sorrowful to think of 
 those we have loved, even after their departure. 
 
 But we are accustomed, it must be remembered, to 
 look upon images as mere works of art, and quite with- 
 out associations of worship. The Greeks, on the other 
 hand, being idolators— that is to say, accustomed to assist 
 their religious sentiments by images of the gods in 
 painting and in sculpture — were accustomed also to con- 
 sider the presence of the gods as especially belonging 
 to their images. And there can be no doubt that they 
 carried the same associations to the reliefs on the tombs 
 of their ancestors. They regarded those worthies as 
 distinct, of course, from the images of them on the tombs, 
 and yet they supposed that there was a bond of con- 
 nection between the two, and that the soul of the de- 
 ceased ancestor was present in the carving on his tomb 
 as he was not present elsewhere. These reliefs, then, 
 are in a sense the idols of the domestic worship of the 
 Greeks, or at least of the less civilised tribes among them, 
 and were never looked upon without a touch of religious 
 awe. 
 
 A series of monuments beginning at a scarcely later 
 date than the Spartan stelae is that of the Lycian rock-cut 
 tombs of the Xanthus valley. Some of these are elabo- 
 
Chap. XI.] Spartan Tombs and the Cultus of the Dead. 347 
 
 rate architectural monuments, adorned with a profusion 
 of sculpture, and of great importance for the history of 
 art. But all these monuments, including the Harpy tomb, 
 the Nereid monument, and the heroon recently discovered 
 at Gyol Bashi, served undoubtedly as memorials of chiefs 
 or kings buried beneath them. The sculptured friezes 
 which adorn them embody sometimes heroic or local 
 myths. Sometimes, as in the case of the Nereid monu- 
 ment, they seem to commemorate historical deeds and 
 expeditions. But certainly, in several instances, they 
 bear reliefs representing the buried ruler as enthroned 
 in state, waiting to receive the homage of survivors. As 
 an instance, we may cite the pediment-sculptures of the 
 well-known Nereid monument, now in the British Mu- 
 seum. Here the presence of votaries suggests, and even 
 proves, that the scene represented belongs to the life 
 beyond the tomb, and not to the mundane existence of 
 the buried king. 
 
 German savants have of late advocated the theory that 
 the mysterious seated figures, which adorn the beautiful 
 archaic Lycian monument in the British Museum which 
 is known as the Harpy tomb, are really deceased heroes 
 and heroines seated to receive offerings from votaries who 
 reverently approach them. Hitherto the sculptures of 
 this lovely monument have offered a wide field for con- 
 jectural explanations, some of a very fanciful character ; 
 
 I but without fully declaring in favour of the new inter- 
 pretation, we must confess that it is far better in accord 
 
 1 than are most others with the simplicity of early art, and 
 the primitive beliefs which we have reason to attribute to 
 
 I the Lycian race. 
 
 And in connection with these Peloponnesian and Lycian 
 
 j reliefs we must consider the large class of sepulchral 
 
 I reliefs which represent a feast, and which reach us from 
 all parts of Greece, especially from Athens, where they 
 
54-8 ■ New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XI. 
 
 form in the later period a group differing in character 
 from the ordinary Attic grave-reliefs. 
 
 We begin with a simple and ordinary class : Male 
 figure reclining on couch ; at his feet seated female 
 figure ; before the couch a tripod covered with eatables 
 and drinkables, with a slave to serve them ; while the 
 man is feasting, the woman commonly draws her veil 
 about her. Or the male figure reclines alone. It is 
 evident that here we have nothing to give a colour or a 
 flavour to the scene ; the feast is to all appearance an 
 every-day one. It is well known that the heroes of 
 Homer sit at table ; and the custom of reclining came 
 in at some time between the age of Homer and historical 
 times. The custom never spread to women, at least of 
 the modest class, nor to boys. We are told that in 
 Macedon boys were not allowed to recline at table until 
 they had slain a boar, which sometimes did not happen 
 until they were middle-aged ; Cassander for instance had 
 to sit like a boy until he reached his thirty-fifth year. 
 When men dined together in Greece modest women were 
 not present ; but when a man dined at home his wife 
 would naturally be present, not reclining with him, nor 
 probably eating with him, but sitting by to entertain him 
 with her talk while he dined. The group which I have 
 described is therefore an ordinary scene from the private 
 life of the Greeks. Sometimes the seated wife rests her 
 head on her hand in an attitude which to the Greeks 
 signified grief. This may seem a jarring note at a feast ; 
 but we know that it was customary in Athenian grave- 
 reliefs which represent scenes of daily life to introduce 
 some such touch as this, to show that the beautiful 
 picture has been spoiled by the hand of death, that it 
 was not destined to last, and that already the shadow of 
 coming change was thrown on to the happy scene. In 
 the same way we may interpret another adjunct some- 
 
Chap. XL] Spartan Tombs and the Cu/tns of the Dead. 349 
 
 times found in banqueting scenes which certainly come 
 from actual tomb-stones, a snake twined round a tree in 
 the background. 
 
 So far we find nothing to throw doubt on the theory 
 of some writers that the daily banquet was introduced 
 in sepulchral reliefs, from the same motives as other 
 scenes of domestic life which so commonly appear on 
 the tombs of Athens. What scene could be more 
 characteristic of domestic felicity, what memory more 
 pleasing to recall on a gravestone than these happy 
 moments, when physical satisfaction of bodily needs 
 went with pleasant talk and social enjoyment ? 
 
 We may even go further and say that to certain reliefs 
 of the class, this view alone seems appropriate. For ex- 
 ample, one of the earliest and most interesting among 
 them is on a tomb in the celebrated Athenian cemetery 
 on the Sacred Way.* It represents two men reclining 
 on a couch, with food as usual set before them, and their 
 two wives seated by ; in the foreground is a galley, in 
 which is Charon with his hand extended towards the 
 feasters. A comparison with other Athenian reliefs leads 
 us to think that this banquet, at all events, is one of 
 every-day life. The sudden appearance in the midst 
 of social enjoyment of one empowered to summon to the 
 next world is a striking fancy, rather in accordance, one 
 would think, with the taste of the Etruscans than that 
 of the Greeks, yet by no means unknown in Greek and 
 even Athenian sepulchral reliefs. We may instance the 
 well-known relief inscribed with the name ^lupplvr] where 
 Hermes appearsf leading by the hand the girl Myrrhina 
 from the midst of her family, to convey her to Hades. 
 
 Indeed this simple explanation of the group is in al- 
 most all cases tenable where the monument is of Athe- 
 
 * Salinas, Monumenti Scpokrali, PI. iv. 
 f Ravaisson, Lc monument dc Myrrhine. 
 
V 
 
 350 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. XI. 
 
 nian provenience, and the relief belongs to an early 
 period. But yet when we consider these banqueting 
 reliefs as a class, and observe the frequency with which 
 there occur on them some of those devices, the snake, 
 the horse, the dog, which appear with full meaning on 
 the early reliefs of Peloponnesus, we shall be disposed to 
 think that the origin of them is to be connected with the 
 memorials of Greek ancestor-worship, and that they em- 
 body Peloponnesian rather than Athenian views. They 
 seem to have reference to the customs already mentioned 
 of bringing at stated times food and wine to the grave 
 of the ancestor, a custom known to the Greeks under 
 the name of veKixrca and the origin of the modern custom 
 of laying flowers on the graves of friends. 
 
 And we thus see that the feelings which in pre-historic 
 ages gave birth to the worship of ancestors never died 
 out among the Hellenes. To the last days of their 
 pagan life no subject was more commonly depicted 
 on their tombs than the offerings to forefathers, and no 
 custom was more religiously kept up than those relating 
 to the periodical visitation of the dead. 
 
 Dr. Milchhoefer, in an able paper on these banqueting 
 reliefs,* has made an observation which is so good as to 
 deserve special notice. They are found, he observes, not 
 usually in cemeteries, but in temples, especially the temples 
 of Asclepius and other deities of healing. Thus they 
 indicate that the custom of dedicating spots in great 
 religious buildings to saints whose aid may be there 
 sought by descendant or votary is no invention of the 
 Christian church, but had a prototype in the customs of 
 heathen Greece. 
 
 In some minds the question may arise whether the 
 Greeks, when they sculptured the feasts of the dead, 
 supposed those feasts to take place in the tomb, at 
 * Jahrbiich dcs Arch. Inst., 1887, p. 23. 
 
Chap. XL] Spartan Tombs and the Cultus of the Dead. 351 
 
 which they commonly deposited their offerings, or in 
 Hades, the realm of the shades. This is a question 
 which it is easier to ask than to answer ; indeed, it can- 
 not be satisfactorily answered, for it is a matter in which 
 the Greeks had never fully made up their minds. The 
 gods dwelt in Olympus, yet they were also present on 
 their temples. In the same way the dead were imagined 
 to dwell in the world of shades, and yet they knew what 
 took place at their tombs, and could enjoy the offerings 
 there set out for them. The spot where a man's body 
 is laid can never be entirely divorced from his person- 
 ality. Do not we ourselves regard as sacred the spot 
 where the body of a friend sleeps in death, although 
 among us the idea of the distinctness of soul and body 
 is far more clear and general than among the Greeks ? 
 These are confusions of thought so deeply worked into 
 the web of human nature that it may be doubted if they 
 will ever be worked out of it. 
 
 We moderns could easily understand that deities 
 should be depicted as reclining on a couch to receive 
 the homage of mankind. And we could understand 
 that the banqueting-reliefs of tombs should be mere 
 transcripts from ordinary daily life. But we find it very 
 hard to understand how the Greeks, possessing the no- 
 tions of the future life with which we meet in Homer 
 and Pindar, and in the mockeries of Lucian, could erect 
 such frequent monuments at all periods as memorials of 
 the worship of the dead. We find it difficult simply be- 
 cause the frame of mind implied is one of which we 
 have no experience. But the view hardest to receive is 
 that which is true. 
 
 Let us next turn to another class of reliefs, those in 
 which the deceased is represented, not as seated in state, 
 but as riding on a horse, or leading one by the bridle. 
 These designs are not found at Sparta, though they have 
 
352 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XI. 
 
 been sometimes discovered at Argos and elsewhere in 
 Peloponnesus. But they belong more especially to 
 Northern Greece, particularly to Boeotia. I think that 
 the veneration for ancestors implied in them is less in- 
 tense than that implied in the Spartan reliefs, and for 
 several reasons. At Sparta the hero is seated on a 
 throne, in an attitude which belongs only or properly to 
 the greater deities, especially Zeus and Hades. In Boe- 
 otia he is no longer seated but riding. The Greeks did 
 not represent their greater deities, excepting Poseidon, as 
 riding on horseback, though they not unfrequently place 
 them in chariots. This would seem to them a position 
 of insufficient dignity. But there was a lower and less 
 exalted race of beings than the gods, whom the Greeks 
 did in a marked degree associate with horses. These 
 are the demi-gods or heroes, mostly the sons of the gods 
 by a mortal mother, like Heracles and Asclepius and 
 Castor and Pollux. There was a decided distinction in 
 Greece between the honours of these subordinate beings 
 and those paid to the gods. And it is notable that the 
 heroes were usually represented as riders. Everyone 
 knows that this was the case with the twins Castor and 
 Pollux, termed the Dioscuri, or the sons of Zeus par 
 excellence. And those acquainted with Greek vases and 
 other remains know that the same character belonged 
 more or less to all those unnumbered heroes who en- 
 joyed temples in later Greece as founders of cities, or 
 great warriors or inventors of useful arts, or as noted 
 benefactors of the human race. The inscription en- 
 graved on a notable relief of this class is this :* " Dedi- 
 
 o 
 
 cated to Aleximachus by Calliteles." And it is supposed 
 that Aleximachus is not the real name of the dead person 
 thus commemorated, but a sort of state name or heroic 
 name bestowed on him after death by those who wished 
 * In the Sabouroff Collection. 
 
 
Chap. XL] Spartan Tombs and the Cultus of the Dead. 353 
 
 to raise him to the rank of a local hero. Such heroising 
 of any man who was in his life at all distinguished was 
 usual in all parts of Greece, and at all periods of Greek 
 history. 
 
 A point which requires some notice in both the Spar- 
 tan and Boeotian reliefs is the very frequent presence on 
 them of a lady accompanying the divine or semi-divine 
 ancestor. Naturally we suppose her to be his wife. 
 And this interpretation very well suits the Spartan 
 tombs, where she sits by the hero's side in equal state. 
 At Sparta women were held in higher honour than in 
 the rest of Greece. Elsewhere they were looked on 
 often either as household drudges or as mere playthings, 
 but in Sparta they were regarded as real helpers to the 
 men, and capable of that patriotism which the Spartans 
 regarded as the highest virtue. And as a consequence 
 of this esteem we find women in more than one of the 
 crises of Spartan history, when the city was in danger 
 from invasion or sedition, come nobly to the front and 
 save the State which had treated them honourably. At 
 Sparta, then, there is no reason why they should not 
 occupy a divine place beside their husbands after death, 
 as they had occupied a place beside him when alive. 
 But in the rest of Greece such honour paid to a de- 
 ceased woman might well seem excessive. And in the 
 horseman-reliefs of Northern Greece she does not seem 
 to share the worship of the hero, but rather to be doing 
 honour to him, to meet him with an offering, and to 
 pour wine into the cup which he holds out to be filled. 
 
 It is even quite possible that, as a matter of artistic 
 tradition and development, the ordinary reliefs of Attic 
 tombs may originate in the same circle of ideas. Some 
 of the earliest of the Athenian reliefs seem to indicate 
 this. In the so-called Leucothea-relief, for instance, a 
 work of the time of the Persian Wars, which represents 
 
 2 A 
 
354 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XI. 
 
 a dead mother seated and embracing for the last time 
 her infant, while other children stand before her, we have 
 in the general composition, the seated lady and the small 
 figures standing before her, an echo of the Spartan reliefs 
 with seated hero and ancestress, and small votaries 
 approaching. The line is carried on by the reliefs of a 
 century later, in which seated ladies receive caskets from 
 their attendant maids ; in which case we may suppose 
 that the likeness to the scene common on vases, where 
 the dead person seated on the steps of the tomb receives 
 gifts from the living, is not fortuitous. It is however 
 usually a mistake to consider the productions of 
 developed sculpture too closely in the light of their 
 origin. And in this case the fact already pointed out, 
 that the dead person frequently is not seated but standing, 
 shows that the class of monuments treated in the last 
 chapter had broken away from the ideas of ancestor 
 worship, and gained a new centre in the scenes of 
 daily life. 
 
 There yet remain various funeral customs of the Greeks 
 which still await explanation, although we feel that the 
 explanation is brought nearer year by year by new dis- 
 coveries. For example, the beautiful figures of terra-cotta 
 which of late years have reached us in such quantities 
 from Asia and Greece, especially Tanagra, are connected 
 with Greek burials in a very remarkable way. They 
 are frequently found in connection with tombs. But they 
 are not placed in the graves in an orderly or regular 
 fashion. At Tanagra and Myrina and other sites they 
 are seldom found entire, but almost always broken in a 
 purposeful manner, the head usually torn off and lying 
 apart. And they are as often to be met with in the 
 earth over and beside a grave as in the grave itself. 
 Messrs. Pottier and Reinach * express their conviction, 
 * La Necropolc de Myrina : Bull. Corr. Hell. vol. vii. 
 
Chap. XL] Spartan Tombs and the Cultus of the Dead. 355 
 
 based upon a long induction, that the friends of the 
 deceased must have stood beside the grave as it was 
 being filled with earth with these pretty images in their 
 hands, and thrown them — first breaking them — into the 
 hole. How can so strange a custom be explained ? 
 M. Rayet has proposed a remarkable theory on the 
 subject. In early times, he remarks, men slew at the 
 graves of departed chiefs their female kin or captive 
 women to accompany them to the next world. It seems, 
 then, likely that these terra-cotta women of the graves 
 are the later representatives of these real women, just as 
 terra-cotta loaves of bread and fruits take the place of 
 real food ; and that they were thrown into the tomb to 
 people the solitude of the grave, and to furnish the dead 
 man with pleasing companionship in the world of shades. 
 This theory would account for two things ; first, for the 
 fact that there are scarcely any representations of bearded 
 men among terra-cotta images — they are nearly all of 
 women and of boys ; and secondly, for the custom of 
 breaking the images, the breaking taking the place of 
 the earlier slaying. 
 
 Interesting as the newly-discovered Peloponnesian 
 reliefs are to students of Greek art and ancient life, they 
 are at least equally important to anthropologists who 
 look beyond Greece to the very origin of civilisation. 
 For they can undoubtedly be used in favour of the view 
 of those who, like Mr. Herbert Spencer, suppose the 
 worship of the gods to have arisen later than that of 
 deceased human" beings, and to be an outgrowth from 
 it. If we find sculpture employed as early as the sixth 
 century B.C. in places so far apart as Lycia and Pelopon- 
 nesus in making figures of the dead for the worship of 
 the living, and if we find at a later time a regular cultus 
 of the dead prevailing and flourishing in all parts of 
 Greece, it would seem that the set of ideas embodied 
 
 2 A 2 
 
356 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XI. 
 
 in these manifestations must have struck deep roots in 
 the Greek mind. They seem to belong to a deeper and 
 more primitive stratum than does the worship of the 
 deities of Olympus. And this view is fully confirmed 
 by the fact that whereas with the different branches of 
 the Aryan race religious rites differ widely, and the names 
 of the deities are diverse, yet the cultus of ancestors is 
 common to several branches, and takes among them much 
 the same form. 
 
 The whole, or nearly the whole, of the new evidence 
 is the result of persevering researches of young members 
 of the German School of Archaeology at Athens. This 
 is one of the many investigations by which they and 
 their French colleagues have benefited the cause of know- 
 ledge. And not only has knowledge been benefited, but 
 not less the discoverers themselves. Such researches as 
 these, conducted in the seats of ancient life, are really 
 the only training by which archaeologists can be formed, 
 or archaeology placed in its rightful position in the very 
 front of historical studies. Museums of sculpture and of 
 casts may help us ; but it is to the British School at 
 Athens that we look to recover for England a position 
 like that which she once held, as the nation most deeply 
 interested in the study of classical lands and the beautiful 
 remains of classical architecture and art. 
 
( 357 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 EPIDAURUS AND ANCIENT MEDICINE. 
 
 The feeling of the noblest of the Greeks in regard to 
 medicine is well set forth in the third book of Plato's 
 Republic* " Do you not hold it disgraceful to require 
 medical aid, unless it be for a wound, or an attack of 
 illness incidental to the time of year, — to require it, I 
 mean, owing to our laziness, and the life we lead, and 
 to get ourselves so stuffed with humours and wind, like 
 quagmires, as to compel the clever sons of Asclepius 
 to call diseases by such names as flatulence and catarrh." 
 " Asclepius was aware that in all well-regulated com- 
 munities each man has a work assigned to him in the 
 State, which he must needs do, and that no one has 
 leisure to spend his life as an invalid in the doctor's 
 hands." Primitive doctrine truly ! and sounding strangely 
 out of date in an age when many of our great physicians 
 spend all their lives in patching up the constitutions of 
 those who are openly at war with the ordinances of 
 mother nature, or in protracting for a few years the 
 sufferings of those whom they cannot hope to cure. 
 
 Plato recognises as a true art the gymnastic, which 
 trains healthy bodies to be active and vigorous and 
 useful, and stigmatises as a false art the medicine which 
 would relieve and perpetuate a life radically unhealthy. 
 But even in Plato's time this must have been doctrine 
 
 * Pp. 405, 406. Translation of Davies and Vaughan. 
 
35§ New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XII. 
 
 much too lofty and too hard for the many. And as the 
 moral tension of the Greek race grew laxer, so that they 
 cared more and more for life and less and less for the 
 causes of living, it must have passed more and more out 
 of the reach of all but a very few. 
 
 One of the clearest indications of the change is to be 
 found in the growth of the cultus of Asclepius. In the 
 time of Homer, Asclepius is merely the blameless phy- 
 sician whose sons Podaleirius and Machaon led to Ilium 
 the men of Tricca. The healing art was used for the 
 treatment of outward wounds, not of inward infirmities ; 
 and in this restricted sense Paeeon is the physician of 
 Olympus. At a later time the functions of Paeeon as 
 god of health were absorbed by Apollo as deity of 
 harmony and of perfect physical development, and there- 
 fore able to produce that vigorous health to which 
 disease is as foreign as blight to a hardy and growing 
 plant. We do not hear Asclepius spoken of as one of 
 the greater of the gods until the time of Alexander the 
 Great. But in the unsettled times which came later, 
 when individualism triumphed and the State counted 
 for little, when society was corrupt and moribund, and 
 men's aim was to get out of life all the pleasure which 
 it was capable of affording, physical health became a 
 rarer blessing and its value grew greater and greater. 
 Then Asclepius took his place in many districts at the 
 very head of the Pantheon ; in inscriptions he was 
 termed ^eyas, crayri'jp, K^pto<i and even Zevs ; and his temples 
 were perpetually thronged by an endless train of votaries 
 begging the priceless boon of health for themselves or 
 those whom they loved. 
 
 Of late years extensive excavations have taken place 
 at three of the principal scats of Asclepian worship in 
 ancient Greece — Athens, Epidaurus and Pergamon. The 
 Pergamene excavations do not appear to have shed 
 
Chap. XII.] Epidanrns and Ancient Medicine. 359 
 
 much light on the cult ; but those "at Epidaurus, and 
 the investigation of the precinct of Asclepius on the 
 slope of the Acropolis of Athens, have produced an 
 abundance of materials whereby we may discern the 
 character of the worship of Asclepius, its relations to 
 ancient medicine, and its bearings upon Greek life in 
 general* 
 
 In early Greek days no doubt the clan of the Ascle- 
 piadae possessed something like a monopoly in the 
 treatment of disease ; such a monopoly as the Home- 
 ridae of Chios possessed in the recitation of some of 
 the epic poems, or the Iamidae in certain kinds of 
 divination. But that this monopoly was not inviolate 
 before the Persian Wars is proved by the history of 
 Democedes of Croton, one of the most renowned of the 
 public or State physicians of Greece, who was by birth 
 not an Asclepiad. Herodotus tells us his story : born 
 at Croton he fled from an ill-tempered father to Aegina, 
 and there in the first year of his stay, though lacking 
 materials and instruments, gained a greater reputation 
 than all the local physicians. In the second year the 
 Aeginetans retained him as public physician at the high 
 salary of a talent a year.f The Athenians however 
 tempted him away by an offer of higher pay, and Poly- 
 crates of Samos secured his services for two talents a 
 
 * As to the excavations at Athens, see U. Koehler's papers in the 
 Mittheilungen of the German School at Athens, and P. Girard's 
 summary VAsclcpieion dAthenes. The most important of the 
 Epidaurian inscriptions is published by Kavvadias in the 'Ecfrrjpepis 
 dp^aioXoyiKT] for 1 883. 
 
 t i.e. 6000 drachms. To most readers this statement will not 
 convey its full meaning. The Aeginetan drachm being of about the 
 weight of a shilling, the value in modern metal of a talent would be 
 some ^300 ; but considering the far greater value of money in 
 antiquity, it is perhaps nearer the mark to reckon the drachm as 
 ten shillings than as one. The Athenian dicasts received for a day's 
 pay from the sixth to the half of a drachm. 
 
360 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XII. 
 
 year. Captured by the Persians he was sent to Darius, 
 and at the Persian court continued his successes, curing 
 a tumour in the breast of Atossa, and setting right the 
 foot of Darius when sprained. Finally he became one of 
 the chief causes which induced Darius to plan the in- 
 vasion of Greece. We are told that his system was 
 one of healing and soothing processes. 
 
 This instance is sufficient to show that physicians had 
 a career before them in Greece as early as B.C. 500, and 
 that they were retained by tyrants and republics as 
 public doctors. No doubt they were bound in return 
 for their pay to put themselves at the service of all 
 citizens. There is extant an inscription from Carpathos,* 
 wherein a certain doctor named Menecrates is praised 
 for not deserting the city at a time of plague, but stay- 
 ing at his post, and even, though a poor man, expending 
 a talent of his own money in relief of the sick. In an 
 Athenian inscriptionf a Rhodian physician named Phei- 
 dias is awarded a wreath for volunteering his services 
 gratis as public doctor. At Athens in the later period 
 the public physicians united twice a year in solemn 
 sacrifices to Asclepius and Hygieia on behalf of them- 
 selves and their patients.! As to the skill and attain- 
 ments of these practitioners we have means of judging 
 in the writings of Hippocrates, Galen and Celsus, which 
 have come down to us. It is not a matter in which a 
 layman can form a confident opinion. After forming 
 at the time of the Renascence the staple of medical edu- 
 cation, these writings have in recent years fallen into 
 comparative neglect ; a neglect perhaps beyond their 
 
 * Revue Archeol., 1863, vol. viii. On Greek public doctors Dr. 
 Vercoutre has written a series of papers in the same review, vol. xxxix. 
 (1880). 
 
 f C. I. A. ii. 1, Addenda Nova, 256 b. 
 
 % Ibid., Add. Nova, 352 b. 
 
Chap. XII.] Epidaurus and Ancient Medicine. 361 
 
 deserts, for if we greatly surpass the Greeks in our ex- 
 perience of unhealthy conditions of life, their knowledge 
 of health was surely wide and sound. 
 
 Perhaps the relation of Democedes to the Asclepiadae 
 may have resembled that borne in our days by a suc- 
 cessful homoeopathic physician to regular practitioners. 
 At any rate it is certain that for long after his time 
 the Asclepiad clan kept medicine in a great degree in 
 their own hands, and admitted but rarely strangers to 
 share their privileges. It was from the branch of the 
 gens connected with the temple of Cos that Hippo- 
 crates sprang, who in the days of the Peloponnesian 
 War laid for all time the foundations of systematic 
 medicine. It is to Hippocrates that the ancients as- 
 cribed the formulation of the oath taken in some cities 
 by those who entered the profession of medicine, and 
 though this attribution cannot be upheld, yet the oath 
 is certainly early as well as interesting. I translate it 
 in full : " I swear by Apollo the physician, Asclepius, 
 Hygieia and Panaceia, and all gods and goddesses, 
 calling them all to witness, that I will fulfil according 
 to my power and judgment this oath and promise. I 
 will reverence my teacher in this art as my own parents, 
 give him of my living and fulfil his necessities : I will 
 regard his issue as my own brothers, and will teach 
 them this art, if they wish to learn it, without pay or 
 obligation : I will admit to teaching, to lecture and all 
 other instruction, my own sons and those of my teacher, 
 and pupils who are articled and have taken the oath 
 pertaining to physicians, and none beside. I will use a 
 regimen suited to the good of the sick according to my 
 power and judgment, and preserve them from harm and 
 injury : I will give no man poison at his request, nor 
 will give such advice : likewise will I administer no 
 harmful drug to women. I will preserve my life and 
 
362 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chat. XII. 
 
 practice pure and sound. I will not cut for stone, but 
 leave that to those who practise the matter. When I 
 enter a house I will go for the good of the sick, keeping 
 myself from all wilful harm and injury and all lust to- 
 wards man and woman, free and slave. All that I hear 
 and see in my practice or out of my practice in ordinary 
 life, if it should not be told outside, I will keep in silence, 
 regarding this experience as secret. If I keep this oath 
 sacred may I be successful in life and practice and in 
 repute with all men for all time : but if I violate it and 
 commit perjury may it be otherwise with me." 
 
 Meantime, beside the growing schools of scientific 
 medicine, there sprang up, or survived, other sorts of 
 treatment. Medicine as practised in the best schools of 
 Greece is not our subject at present. We have only to 
 speak of a kind of medicine which ancient as well as 
 modern physicians would commonly regard as a kind of 
 charlatanry. 
 
 In all ages there have been many natures which have 
 revolted against the hard materialism which is the domi- 
 nant creed in the high medical schools. In all ages 
 many have preferred to look for relief even from physical 
 ailments to some kind of miracle ; have looked with 
 more favour on faith than on mere prescriptions and 
 drugs. And indeed, if there be any value in human 
 testimony, faith has often been successful where drugs 
 have failed. Among the Greeks persons, whose temper 
 was such that they expected health from mere mental 
 and spiritual influences, would naturally apply to the 
 temples of Asclepius and enrol themselves among the 
 votaries of the healing god. In so doing, they certainly 
 fell in the way of a good deal of charlatanry, but they 
 may nevertheless in some cases have attained their object. 
 The effects of belief, even if that belief be based on 
 insecure grounds, may often be solid enough. 
 
Chap. XII.] Epidanms and Ancient Medicine. 363 
 
 The position of the temple of Asclepius at Athens was 
 in winter pleasant and salubrious. It was placed on the 
 southern side of the Acropolis rock, and by that rock 
 was sheltered from the cold winds of the north, while 
 exposed to the sun and to the breezes blowing fresh 
 from the Aegean. It was above the level of the city, 
 and looked over it to Aegina, "the eye-sore of the Pi; 
 raeus, " and Salamis and Acrocorinthus. The traces of 
 walls which still remain within the precinct of the deity 
 may be variously interpreted ; but it is clear from an 
 inscription * discovered in situ that there were two 
 temples of the god, an older and a newer ; and besides 
 we can trace the ground plan of ranges of buildings of 
 some extent, which must have served for the abode or 
 at least the temporary accommodation of the crowds of 
 votaries who came to the spot in search of health. In 
 one chamber is a well, used no doubt for the ablutions 
 which the god frequently prescribed, and which, together 
 with gentle walks in the airy and warm galleries, go far 
 to explain some of the cures which took place. 
 
 The temples were not more than small chapels, and 
 filled with inscriptions and with reliefs set up by those 
 who had been cured, and articles of value given by them 
 as a fee to the healing god. Some of the reliefs and 
 some of the inscriptions remain to our days. The reliefs 
 are mostly of one class: they represent Asclepius and 
 Hygieia, or sometimes Asclepius with other members of 
 his family, standing or seated in dignity, and approached 
 by a train of votaries, who bring with them sometimes 
 an animal for sacrifice. Some of these reliefs belong to 
 a good time of art, and are in composition and execution 
 
 * The inscription (C. I. A. ii. 1, Addenda 489 b; Girard, p, 6) 
 records how one Diocles repaired the propylaea of the precinct, and 
 restored the old temple, being allowed as a return to place on each an 
 inscription recording his liberality. 
 
364 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XII. 
 
 most pleasing. But though these larger anathemata 
 alone survive, the inscriptions tell us of many others 
 which have long since been stolen or destroyed. It was 
 a common custom to dedicate to Asclepius a model in 
 precious metal, in stone or in wax, of that part of the 
 body which had been healed by his intervention. Some 
 people have fancied that an accumulation of votive offer- 
 ings of this kind might in time constitute a sort of mu- 
 seum of pathology and be very instructive to students.* 
 But those who entertain such a fancy can understand 
 but little of the aesthetic and artistic side of the Greek 
 nature. Such models would not represent the diseased 
 member in its abnormal condition, but in that healthy 
 condition to which it was restored by the god. It was 
 health and beauty, not disease and deformity, which Greek 
 artists depicted. This is no mere theoretical assertion ; 
 we possess in our museums a large number of stone 
 models of eyes, breasts, arms and feet, and other parts of 
 the human body, dedicated in memory of cures in ancient 
 times. And many of these belong to a later time, when 
 the purity of Greek artistic taste was overlaid by the 
 barbarism of Asia and the realism of Rome. Yet they 
 represent health merely; or if there be an allusion 
 to disease it is no such brutal transcript as many a 
 modern artist would delight in producing, but a mere 
 hint. 
 
 We read also, in the inscriptions, of votive cocks made 
 in the cheapest of all materials, terra-cotta, and dedicated 
 either by those who were very poor, or by such mean 
 worshippers as the /M/cpofaXori/Aos of Theophrastus, who 
 dedicates in the temple of Asclepius a bronze ring, and 
 goes every day to clean it and rub it with oil. But 
 many of the thankofferings presented to the temple were 
 
 * A passage of Strabo (xiv., p. 657) has been regarded as supporting 
 this view ; but it should be otherwise interpreted. 
 

 Chap. XII.] Epidauriis and Ancient Medicine. 365 
 
 of quite another class, cups of silver and gold, jewels of 
 value, censers and tripods. 
 
 The inscriptions found at Athens enlighten us as to 
 the number and character of these dedications ; they go 
 into the utmost detail, and even describe the place where 
 each was deposited, by such phrases as " in the second 
 row," " behind the door," and the like. They also pre- 
 serve to us decrees passed by the people in regard to 
 the temple, and record the names of priests. But they 
 do not give us, what is of far more interest in the present 
 day, a record of the cures wrought in the temple. For 
 that we must turn to the inscriptions discovered in the 
 great Asclepian shrine at Epidaurus, the native city of 
 the god. But, before doing so, we must linger for a few 
 minutes over a delightful sketch of Aristophanes which 
 brings up vividly before us the scenes daily enacted in 
 the temple at Athens. The compilers of inscriptions 
 often give us by their very simplicity a clear and exact 
 view of circumstance, but they can scarcely transplant us, 
 as does the genius of Aristophanes, into the very midst 
 of ancient thought and feeling. Carion is relating to an 
 old woman how the blind god Plutus fared when he 
 went to the temple of Asclepius to seek a cure for his 
 blindness * : — 
 
 " Carion : Directly we reached the abode of the god, 
 taking with us this man (Plutus) — then in very evil case, 
 but now happy and blessed beyond all men — first of all 
 we led him to the sacred spring and washed him. 
 
 " Woman : Happy indeed he must have been — at his 
 age being washed in a cold spring. 
 
 " Carion : Then we proceeded to the precinct of the 
 god ; and after offering on the altar the first sacrifices 
 and pouring sweets on the flame of Hephaestus, we laid 
 
 * Plutus, 653, sqq. The following^ paraphrase gives only the 
 substance of the dialogue. 
 
366 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XII. 
 
 Plutus on a couch in the approved fashion ; then each of 
 us arranged for himself a shake-down of straw. 
 
 " Woman : Were others there seeking aid of the god ? 
 
 " Carion : Yes, one Neocleides, a blind man who at 
 stealing beats men who can see ; and many others suffer- 
 ing from every sort of disease. Then the servant of the 
 god put out the lamps and bade us sleep, forbidding us 
 if we heard a noise, to speak ; so we all lay quiet. But 
 I could not sleep, for my mind was disturbed by a pot 
 of porridge, lying just over the head of an old woman, 
 which I violently longed to creep up to. And, looking 
 up, I saw the priest carrying off the cakes and figs from 
 the sacred table ; after which he went round to all the 
 altars in turn to see if any cake were left, and conse- 
 crated them all, — into a bag. So I, concluding that this 
 proceeding was in accord with religion, arose to hunt 
 the porridge pot. 
 
 " Woman : Impudent man ; feared you not the god ? 
 
 " Carion : Aye, that indeed I did, lest he should get 
 to the porridge before me, he and his chaplets ; for it 
 was his priest that showed me the way. But the woman, 
 when she heard the noise I made, put out her hand, and 
 I with a hiss seized it in my mouth like a sacred serpent ; 
 she drew it back in haste and lay huddled up in her 
 clothes, smelling like a weasel in her fear. Then I gulped 
 down most of the porridge, and when I had had my fill 
 thought of sleep. 
 
 " Woman : Came not the god to you ? " 
 
 Carion then describes how the god made his appearance 
 followed by his daughters Iaso and Panaceia. 
 
 " I straightway covered myself up in terror, but he 
 proceeded all round inspecting all the diseases in a most 
 orderly fashion ; then a slave set down by him a stone 
 mortar and pestle and a medicine-chest. 
 
 " Woman : Of stone ? 
 
Chap, xii.] Epidaurus and Ancient Medicine. 367 
 
 " Carion : No, not the chest. 
 
 " Woman : How could you see, you scoundrel, if, as 
 you say, you were covered up ? 
 
 " Carion : Why, through my cloak, for its holes were 
 not a few, to be sure. First of all he set about grinding 
 an ointment for Neocleides ; he put in the mortar three 
 heads of Tenian garlic, then he crushed them, mixing in 
 fig-tree juice and squills, and moistening with Sphettian 
 vinegar, anointed the inside of his eyelids, turning them 
 back to increase the smart. Neocleides, shrieking and 
 crying, rose to rush off; but the god said, with a laugh, 
 ' Sit in plaster, so will I give you an excuse for not going 
 to the assembly.' 
 
 " Woman : How clever the god is, and how patriotic. 
 
 " Carion : After that he sat down by Plutus, and first 
 he handled his head, then with a clean towel wiped his 
 eyelids, and Panaceia wrapped all his head and face in a 
 purple cloth. Then the god whistled, and two snakes of 
 huge size issued from the temple. 
 
 " Woman : Good heavens ! 
 
 " Carion : Gently they entered under the cloth, and, as 
 I thought, began to lick his eyelids round, and before you 
 could drink ten ladles-full of wine, Plutus, madam, stood 
 up a seeing man ! I clapped my hands for delight, and 
 called my master ; and at once the god vanished, he and 
 his serpents, into the temple. And, as you may fancy, 
 they who lay near Plutus began to congratulate him, and 
 they lay awake all night till day appeared." 
 
 Few problems are harder to those who want to realise 
 Greek life than those offered by the plays of Aristo- 
 phanes. We find it almost impossible to understand how 
 the Athenians could one day delight in ridiculing the 
 gods and their worship, and the next approach them as 
 votaries. In the Plutus the passage describing the actual 
 cure of Plutus sounds like the pious recital of a grateful 
 
368 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XII. 
 
 votary who had experienced the help of the god ; but 
 the background of the passage is one of jesting and 
 indecency. It does not seem that Aristophanes intended 
 to throw any doubt on the reality of the cures in the 
 temple ; he probably accepted the cultus of Asclepius as 
 he did the other cults of Athens ; his wit has no icono- 
 clastic force, but only covers the images of the gods with 
 Dionysiac ivy, making them like that ancient statue of 
 Hermes described by Pausanias, which was invisible 
 because of the myrtle boughs heaped about it. 
 
 In turning from Athens to Epidaurus, one is some- 
 what overwhelmed by the number of interesting vistas 
 opened by that important site. It is a pity that no 
 complete or consecutive account of the excavations 
 carried on there by M. Kavvadias for the Greek Archaeo- 
 logical Society in the eighties has yet been published. 
 Their details have to be extracted from the Praktika 
 of the society, or from the pages of the Athenian 
 Ephemeris. There has been found something for all 
 Hellenic scholars. The theatre of Epidaurus is one of 
 the most complete remaining to us, affording abundant 
 material to the controversy now centering about the new 
 views of Dorpfeld as to the arrangements of the Attic 
 stage. To architects not only this theatre is interesting, 
 but also the curious round building called the Tholos of 
 Polycleitus. Of this the foundations, consisting of con- 
 centric circles of masonry, have come to light, besides 
 many architectural fragments : but the purpose of the 
 building still remains obscure ; M. Kavvadias thinks that 
 it was not a spring-house or reservoir. In the way of 
 sculpture the recovered fragments of the pediments and 
 acroteria of the temples of Asclepius and of Artemis 
 offer much of importance. These sculptures, like the 
 great statue of Asclepius in gold and ivory by Thrasy- 
 medes of Paros, which has of course disappeared, were 
 
Chap, xii.] Epidaurus and Ancient Medicine. 369 
 
 works of the early fourth century and show Athenian 
 influence. We learn from an inscription discovered on 
 the spot that models (rinrot) for the sculpture which 
 adorned the temple of Asclepius were furnished by 
 Timotheus, doubtless the same sculptor who worked 
 with Scopas on the Mausoleum, and that he was paid 
 900 drachmas for them. The interesting figures of 
 Amazons, Nereids, and other ideal beings made after 
 the models of Timotheus are now ranged in a room in 
 the central Museum at Athens ; but since no casts from 
 them have been taken they are not so widely known as 
 they should be. 
 
 But perhaps the most important spoil of all consists 
 in the inscriptions, which are early, numerous and of 
 great length. Here as in Delos and on other sites 
 we have recovered a considerable part of the archives of 
 the temple, among other things the details of the cost 
 of its construction, and several documents in regard to 
 the worship of the great deity of Epidaurus. The last 
 twenty years have brought us an astonishing amount of 
 this kind of document, showing us whence the revenues 
 of temples were derived, how they were administered, and 
 in what way they were expended, how the offerings 
 dedicated in them were placed, how repairs were from 
 time to time executed, and the like. There is material 
 of this kind to fill with the mere text several volumes, 
 and even German industry has as yet by no means 
 absorbed all the new data thus procured. As to us 
 English, we shall probably wait until the results of 
 discovery slowly filter down to us through new editions 
 of German text-books. 
 
 Among the most striking results of the excavations 
 has been the recovery of two inscriptions * of con- 
 siderable length, giving details of many of the cures 
 * Ephem. Arch. 1883, p. 197, and 1885, p. 1. 
 
 2 B 
 
370 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XII. 
 
 wrought in the temple. To a modern physician these 
 accounts would scarcely be of interest ; but to those 
 interested in Greek religion and antiquities this wreckage 
 from the life of ancient Hellas has an importance of 
 its own. 
 
 They are headed Cures by Apollo and Asclcpius. 
 Some of these cures we will detail, not quite in the order 
 in which they are entered on the stones. We will begin 
 with the least injured record. 
 
 Line 72. " Case of a man, who came to the god as a 
 patient ; he had but one eye ; of the other only the 
 empty eyelids remained. And some of these in the 
 precinct said it was sheer folly for him to suppose that 
 he could see, when he had no vestige of an eye, but only 
 an empty socket. While he slept he saw a vision ; it 
 seemed to him that the god mixed a salve, and opening 
 his eyelids poured it in. And when day broke he de- 
 parted seeing with both eyes." 
 
 Line 120. " Case of Alcetas of Halica. He was blind, 
 and saw a vision : he thought the god approached him, 
 and with his fingers opened his eyes, so that he could see 
 the trees in the precinct. And when day broke he de- 
 parted cured." 
 
 Line 125. "Case of Thy son of Hermione, a blind boy. 
 He being licked while awake by one of the temple-dogs 
 on the eyes departed cured." 
 
 These temple-dogs were no less an institution at 
 Epidaurus than the snakes of which Aristophanes speaks, 
 and their tongue had as great healing power as the drugs 
 of the god himself. We pass on from blindness to other 
 diseases : 
 
 Line 68. " Case of Euphanes, a boy of Epidaurus. He 
 went to sleep suffering from stone. And it seemed to 
 him that the god stood by him and asked, ' What will 
 you give me if I make you well ? ' And he answered 
 
Chap, xii.] Epidaurus and Ancient Medicine. 371 
 
 he would give ten knuckle-bones ; at which the god 
 laughed, and said he would ease him. And when day 
 broke he departed cured." 
 
 Line 41. " Case of a dumb boy. He came to the 
 precinct to ask a cure of his dumbness : when he had 
 made the preliminary sacrifice and performed the rites, 
 the slave of the god who carried the torch turning to the 
 father of the boy said, ' Do you promise that if within a 
 year he gains the end for which he came he will make 
 the sacrifice of thanksgiving?' And the boy suddenly 
 answered, ' I promise ' : the father in astonishment bade 
 him say it again ; and he said it again and thenceforward 
 was cured." 
 
 In this case and in the next the cure seems to have 
 been wrought without any special intervention of the 
 god, by a mere force of healing which pervaded the 
 whole place. 
 
 Line ill. " Case of Nicanor, a lame man. While he 
 was sitting awake a boy snatched away his crutch and 
 began to run off: he jumped up to pursue and was 
 thenceforth cured." 
 
 Line 95. " Case of Euippus. He carried a spear-head 
 six years in his jaw ; when he was laid to sleep, the god 
 extracted the spear-head and gave it into his hands. And 
 when day broke he came forth cured carrying the spear- 
 head in his hand." 
 
 Line 107. " Case of Hermodicus of Lamps acus. He was 
 paralysed : sleeping he was cured by the god who bade 
 him go out and bring into the precinct the biggest stone 
 he could carry ; so he brought in the stone which still 
 lies before the hall." 
 
 The stone which still lies there : this must have been an 
 answer quite irrefutable to the sceptics who doubted of 
 the story : proof positive was before their eyes. 
 
 Line 113. " Case of a man, whose toe was cured by a 
 
 2 B 2 
 

 37 2 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XII. 
 
 sacred snake. His toe was in pain from the bite of a wild 
 beast : he was carried outside by day by the temple 
 servants, and was sitting on a seat, when he fell asleep : 
 and while he was asleep, a snake issued from the hall* 
 and cured his toe with its tongue, after which it returned 
 to the hall. He awaking cured said he had seen in a 
 vision a beauteous youth pouring medicine on his toe." 
 
 But not all the cures wrought by the god were of 
 wounds and grievous sicknesses ; he condescended in 
 some cases to cure indispositions which we are accus- 
 tomed to bear with philosophy ; and others in which 
 imagination seems to have had no small share. 
 
 Line 122. " Case of Heraeeus of Mytilene. He had no 
 hair on his head, but a good crop on his chin : being 
 ashamed of being a laughing-stock to his companions he 
 came to sleep in the hall : and the god anointed his head 
 with salve, and made the hair come." 
 
 Line 98. " Case of the Toronaean who was cured of 
 leeches. He slept in the hall and saw a vision ; he 
 thought the god cut open his chest with a knife, and 
 taking out the leeches gave them into his hands, and 
 sewed up his chest again. When day broke he departed 
 carrying the creatures in his hands, and was cured. He 
 had swallowed them in consequence of a step-mother's 
 trick, who had put them into a potion which he 
 swallowed." 
 
 Line 3. " Case of C/eo, who went with child five years. 
 She in the fifth year of pregnancy came to seek the aid 
 of the god and went to sleep in the hall : and no sooner 
 did she come forth from it and pass outside the precinctf 
 than she gave birth to a son, who directly after birth 
 
 * uftarov, here rendered hall, was not the temple of the god, but the 
 chamber where suppliants slept : lepou is the sacred precinct, contain- 
 ing this hall, the temple, raw, and the dedicated tablets. 
 
 t Of course a delivery within the precinct would have polluted it. 
 
Chap. XII.] Epidaurus and Ancient Medicine. 373 
 
 washed himself at the spring, and began to walk about 
 with his mother. And after meeting these fortunes she 
 wrote up on a votive tablet, ' Not the size of the picture 
 but the miracle is the marvel, that Cleo bore the 
 burden in her womb for five years, till she slept here 
 and the god made her whole.'" 
 
 Certainly these cures were of a remarkable kind, and 
 the moral of them was, from the point of view of the 
 priesthood, quite unexceptionable. But the cures which 
 follow have a moral bearing which lies still more con- 
 spicuously on the face of them, showing the great danger 
 of doubting the power of the god, or of defrauding him 
 of his revenues. 
 
 Line 22. " Case of a man whose fingers were paralysed 
 all but one. He came to the god to seek aid ; but looking 
 round at the votive tablets of the precinct he was doubtful 
 about the cures and began to ridicule the inscriptions. 
 He slept in the hall and saw a vision ; he thought that 
 as he was playing with astragali close to the temple, and 
 was going to make a cast, the god appeared and seemed 
 to seize his hand and stretch out the fingers of it. And 
 when he went away, he thought he clenched his hand 
 and then extended the fingers one by one, and when he 
 had extended them all, the god asked him if he was still 
 sceptical as to the inscriptions on the votive-tablets in the 
 temple ; and he replied that he was not." 
 
 Line 33. " Case of Ambrosia from Athens who had but 
 one eye. She came to seek aid of the god ; and walking 
 round the precinct, began to ridicule some of the cures, 
 saying it was absurd and impossible that the lame and 
 the blind should become whole merely through seeing a 
 vision. And sleeping she saw a vision ; she thought the 
 god stood by her and said that he would make her whole, 
 but she must for payment dedicate in the precinct a pig 
 of silver, as a memorial of her folly. And with these 
 
374 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XII. 
 
 words the god cut open her diseased eye and poured 
 a drug in. And when day broke she went away 
 healed." 
 
 Line 48. " Case of Pandarus of Thessaly, who had 
 marks (stigmata) on his forehead. He slept and had a 
 vision ; he thought the god tied a bandage over his 
 stigmata, and bade him when he had passed out of the 
 hall to take off the bandage and dedicate it in the temple. 
 And when day broke he arose and took off the bandage, 
 and found his forehead healed of the stigmata, and dedi- 
 cated the bandage in the temple." 
 
 Line 54. " Case of EcJiedorus, who received on his fore- 
 head the stigmata of Pandarus, in addition to those he 
 had before. He had received of Pandarus money to 
 dedicate to the god at Epidaurus on behalf of Pandarus 
 himself. Sleeping, he saw a vision. He thought the god 
 stood by him and asked him whether he had any money 
 from Pandarus to dedicate as an offering in the precinct ; 
 he answered that he had not received anything of the 
 kind from Pandarus, but that if the god would make him 
 whole he would have a picture painted and dedicate it ; 
 and after that the god bound round the stigmata on his 
 head the bandage of Pandarus, and bade him when he 
 departed from the temple take off the bandage and wash 
 his face in the spring and look into the water. When 
 day broke he came out of the temple and removed the 
 bandage. It had no marks ; and when he looked into 
 the water he saw that his face, in addition to its previous 
 stigmata, had acquired those of Pandarus." 
 
 Truly an unimpeachable moral ! and scarcely less 
 sound is the moral of the following cures : — 
 
 Line 90. " Case of AescJiines. When the suppliants 
 were laid down to sleep, he mounted into a tree and 
 pried into the hall ; and he fell from the tree and struck 
 his eyes on some palings. Being in an evil case and 
 
Chap. XII.] Epi daunts and Ancient Medicine. 375 
 
 having become blind, he turned as a suppliant to the god ; 
 and he slept and became whole." 
 
 Line 79. " Case of the earthen vessel. A porter on the 
 way to the precinct, about ten furlongs off, fell down ; he 
 rose and opened his bag and examined the shattered 
 vessels. When he found that the cup out of which his 
 master was used to drink was broken, he was much 
 grieved, and sitting down tried to fit the pieces together. 
 Now a wayfarer saw him and said, ' Why, unfortunate, 
 do you try in vain to put the cup together ? not even 
 Asclepius who dwells at Epidaurus could make it whole.' 
 Hearing this the slave replaced the fragments in the bag, 
 and came to the precinct ; and when he arrived, he opened 
 the bag and took out the cup which had become whole. 
 Then he told his master all that had been done and said ; 
 and when he heard he dedicated the cup to the god." 
 
 And in the temple of the god no doubt it remained, 
 with the marks of its fracture upon it, to silence for all 
 time the sceptics and to prove that Asclepius could mend 
 not only the bodies of the sick, but broken earthenware 
 too. 
 
 We may add two cures from the worse preserved of 
 the two stones, because they preserve the peculiarity 
 that sometimes the actual presence of the votary was 
 dispensed with, and he was represented by a friend. 
 
 Line 19. "Case of Aristocritus of Halica* amid the 
 rocks. He dived and swam out to sea and came to a 
 dry piece of ground surrounded by rocks, out of which 
 he could find no way of escape. ■ Presently his father, 
 when he could not find him by searching everywhere, 
 
 * Ephem. Arch. 1885, p. 1. The reading and rendering of the first 
 few lines of the case of Aristocritus is doubtful. I omit the word 
 Sevbpvw, which has no intelligible meaning, in my rendering. I 
 suppose that Aristocritus swam out to sea, and returning exhausted 
 found himself on a strip of beach whence he could not climb the 
 cliff. 
 
376 New Cliaptcrs in Greek History. [Chap. XII. 
 
 came to Asclepius and slept in the hall on behalf of 
 his son. He saw a vision ; the god seemed to lead him 
 to a place, and showed him that his son was there. He 
 came out of the precinct, and cutting through the rock 
 found his son who had been there six davs." 
 
 Line I. " Case of Arata, a Spartan girl sick with dropsy. 
 Her mother slept on her account in the precinct, she 
 remaining at Lacedaemon. The mother saw a vision ; 
 she thought the god cut off her daughter's head and 
 hung up her body neck downwards, and when enough 
 water had run out, took down the body and restored the 
 head to the neck. After seeing this vision she returned 
 to Lacedaemon and found that her daughter had re- 
 covered after seeing the same vision." 
 
 The mixture in this and other cases of operation and 
 vision, fact and fancy, is very suggestive. In this case 
 the cutting off of the head is a dream, in other cases it 
 is spoken of as a fact. 
 
 Such are these extraordinary documents, which it will 
 be well to examine in various points of view, to ascertain 
 more exactly their character. As to the period at which 
 they were drawn up we can be in no uncertainty. The 
 character of the writing, clear and regular, points to 
 the fourth or the early part of the third century. Then 
 doubtless they were set up, and so remained for cen- 
 turies. Pausanias in the Antonine age thus writes* : 
 " There stand tablets in the sacred enclosure, of which six 
 remain in our time, but formerly there were more, on which 
 are recorded the names of men and women who were healed 
 by Asclepius, also the disease of each and the manner of 
 cure. They are in the Doric dialect." Of late years it has 
 become not unusual in Germany to speak with more than 
 distrust of the testimony of Pausanias, and even to suggest 
 that he made up his Pericgesis by the aid of old catalogues 
 
 * Paus. ii. 27, 3. 
 
Chap. XII.] Epidaurus and Ancient Medicine. $77 
 
 and guide-books. The phrase of Pausanias which I have 
 quoted bears an impress of trustworthiness. But there is 
 a further fact pointing in the same direction which carries 
 more conviction.* In another passagef the Traveller 
 mentions a small place in Argolis called Halica in 
 the following terms : " Halica is deserted in our days, 
 but it was formerly inhabited, and is mentioned in the 
 stelae at Epidaurus, in which are recorded the cures of 
 the temple of Asclepius : I know no other mention of 
 Halica or its inhabitants." As a matter of fact Halica 
 is mentioned thrice in the inscriptions before us. It is 
 hard to avoid the conclusion that Pausanias saw with his 
 own eyes the name of Halica on the tablets and made a 
 note of it on the spot, although it is of course within 
 the bounds of possibility that in this case too he is 
 merely quoting an old guide-book. 
 
 We are by no means justified in supposing that all or 
 most of the cures recorded in our tablets were of the same 
 period as the tablets themselves. We can in fact point out 
 on the second stele of Epidaurus a case in which a cure is 
 certainly written down from tradition. We read on it 
 the tale of a woman named Aristagora of Methana, who 
 was cured in somewhat blundering fashion of a taenia 
 or tape-worm of monstrous size. She went to the temple 
 of the god at Troezen ; and the god being away at Epi- 
 daurus his servants tried to cure the woman by taking 
 off her head and rummaging in her intestines for the 
 monster. It was captured, but the servants were unable 
 to put the head on again until the deity returned from 
 Epidaurus. Now we have an exactly similar story,! 
 evidently its prototype, in the fragments of Hippys, a 
 writer of the age of the Persian wars, that is, at a period 
 two centuries before the stele was engraved. It is evident 
 then that some of the stories of Epidaurus were mellow 
 * See Kavvadias, /. c. f Paus. ii. 36, i. % Girard, op. c, p. 29. 
 
378 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XII. 
 
 with age. And it seems that they improved with keeping. 
 In the tale as told by Hippys the scene is Epidaurus. 
 But the tale reflects small credit on a shrine from which 
 the deity was absent and in which the temple-servants 
 were blunderers. So in the Epidaurian record the scene 
 is shifted to the neighbouring and rival Troezen, and the 
 failure of the ministers is said to have been due to the 
 circumstance that the god was absent at Epidaurus. The 
 hand of the fraudulently pious redactor is in this case only 
 too evident. 
 
 In later times of Roman Dominion, though the fame 
 of the deity did not decline, yet the simplicity of the 
 faith of his votaries seems to have done so. We no 
 longer read of Asclepius curing with a touch or by the 
 tongue of a sacred dog or snake : he seems mainly to 
 confine himself to giving prescriptions either directly to 
 his votaries in dreams, or by the mouth of his priests. 
 " To one man," writes the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, 
 " Asclepius prescribes horse-exercise, to another cold 
 baths, to another bareness of feet." We have an extra- 
 ordinary variety of these divine prescriptions in the '\epwv 
 \6jol of the valetudinarian Aelius Aristides, who was 
 devoted to Asclepius, and whose pilgrimages to the 
 shrines of the god have helped considerably to extend 
 our knowledge of the geography of Asia Minor. In 
 this matter also we gain much information from inscrip- 
 tions. An inscription from Epidaurus of the Antonine 
 age* doubtless a votive tablet, records thus the visions 
 of a votary : " I, Marcus Julius Apellas of Mylasa was 
 sent for by the god, often falling sick and having chronic 
 dyspepsia ; on the voyage, in Aegina, he bade me ab- 
 stain from the passion of anger : and when I was in the 
 
 * Ephem. Arch., 1883, p. 230. The name of the eponymous priest 
 mentioned in the inscription, P. Aelius Antiochus, indicates its date 
 clearly. 
 
Chap. XII.] Epidaurris and Ancient Medicine. 379 
 
 temple he bade me cover my head for two days during 
 which there were showers, to take bread and cheese at 
 the beginning of a meal (or before bathing) and parsley 
 with lettuce, to bathe without attendance, to practise 
 running .... to take walks upstairs in the open air, to 
 go barefoot before entering the warm water in the bath- 
 room, to pour wine over myself, to bathe alone, and give an 
 Attic drachm to the bathing man, to drink honey with 
 milk. And one day when I was drinking milk alone, 
 he said to me ' put in honey : ' " and so on •} but we will J\ 
 no longer follow the maunderings of this tedious patient. 
 It seems, however, clear from this testimony and that 
 of Marcus Aurelius, that in Roman times the god of 
 Epidaurus went on the hardening system, and be- 
 lieved greatly in cold baths and naked feet and exercise. 
 The opposite system that the road to health lies through 
 tending and cosseting oneself, was not much in vogue ; 
 Asclepius fancied that exposure and hardness led to 
 vigour and longevity. 
 
 I will cite but one more inscription, which comes 
 from the shrine of Aesculapius in the Insula Tiberina 
 at Rome.* It is of very late times, and one seems in 
 reading it to be already approaching the middle-ages 
 with their external devotion and ready credulity for the 
 miraculous. " Gaius, a blind man, the god ordered to 
 come to the sacred Pr^ia and kneel ; then to go from 
 right to left, and place his five fingers on the bema ; 
 then to raise his hand and place it on his eyes ; and 
 at once he saw, a crowd standing by." " To Julian, who 
 spat blood and was given up, the god recommended 
 to take the seeds of pine cones from the altar and eat 
 them with honey for three days : and he was cured, 
 and came and gave the god thanks in the presence of 
 the people." "To Valerius Aper, blind, he prescribed 
 
 * C. I. 5980. 
 
380 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. XII. 
 
 that he should take the blood of a white cock with 
 honey for an eye-salve, and anoint his eyes with it 
 \ three days : he did so and recovered." 
 
 These cases are unlike those of Epidaurus either of 
 the earlier or later age, inasmuch as the element of 
 faith-healing is more conspicuous. The god does not 
 as in the earlier records effect the cure himself, nor 
 does he recommend any course of action in itself health- 
 ful, but he merely ordains some ceremonial observance, 
 on doing which recovery follows. Asclepius appears in 
 these cases like a thaumaturge such as Sabazius and 
 Mithras, those strange figures of late Greek superstition. 
 And in fact, as we know from many records, in late 
 times Asclepius did become, like those barbarous Oriental 
 figures, a sort of mystic saver and preserver. Then it 
 was not from disease only that he saved men, but from 
 battle and murder, from shipwreck and disaster. And 
 this character he seems to have retained until his place 
 was gradually taken by Christian saints and martyrs, 
 whose relics proved no less efficacious than dreams sent 
 by the physician-god or than the tongue of the sacred 
 snakes. 
 
( 33i ) 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ELEUSIS AND THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 As no branch of Greek religious usage is more 
 worthy of study than the Mysteries of Eleusis, so 
 scarcely any presents greater difficulties to the investi- 
 gator. The ancients, it is notorious, threatened with 
 heavy penalties those who should divulge any secret 
 connected with the Mysteries ; therefore the ancient 
 writers tell us but little of them, nor do inscriptions 
 and works of art do very much towards filling up the 
 blank. And the little information which reaches us by 
 means of stray hints of writers of classical times, or 
 the violent polemical treatises of early Christian fathers 
 and Pagan writers of the decline, has been greatly 
 distorted by modern authors who cannot in this 
 matter lay aside the odium theologicum. This theolo- 
 gical bias acts in entirely opposite directions according 
 to the character of the writer. Leaving aside the pre- 
 judice of those who like Warburton supposed the Greek 
 mystic rites to retain scraps of a primitive revelation 
 made to mankind in ancient days, a theory now en- 
 tirely out of date, we shall find other disturbing pre- 
 occupations. Some modern writers inclined to rational- 
 ism are much predisposed to imagine that something 
 far higher and nobler than ordinary Greek polytheism 
 was taught to those initiated at Eleusis and Samothrace, 
 that doctrines such as the unity of God and the high 
 
382 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XTTT. 
 
 destinies of the human soul were there made known to 
 the votaries ; while on the other hand strong partisans 
 of revealed as opposed to natural religion have declined 
 to credit the inner doctrines of Paganism with noble 
 thoughts or lofty aspirations, and have revolted, like 
 the Fathers of the Christian Church, against the crude 
 imagery and obscene-sounding myths connected with the 
 Eleusinian festival. 
 
 The learned and critical work of Lobeck, AglaopJiamus, 
 published some half century ago, finally disposed of the 
 views of those who would see in the Mysteries a great 
 repository of religious truth laid up there as in an ark of 
 safety ; but on the other hand this writer carries his nega- 
 tions too far and forgets that it is not fair to judge of 
 the inner value of religious ceremonies from their outward 
 show. We want to know not only what took place at 
 Eleusis but what the mystae thought and felt, and this is 
 lost beyond recovery. But we have more materials than 
 had Lobeck. His material was gathered almost entirely 
 from the statements of early Christian writers who at- 
 tacked, and their Pagan opponents who defended, the 
 Eleusinian rites. We now possess two or three impor- 
 tant inscriptions which relate to them.* The testimony 
 of vases has also some weight. And much truth has 
 been fairly sifted out by the careful labours of scholars 
 skilled in the critical methods of modern times ; in 
 particular by Preller and August Mommsen in Germany, 
 and Guigniaut and F. Lenormant in France, who have 
 succeeded in dispelling many illusions and representing 
 the subject, not indeed in detail, but in broad masses 
 of light and shade. The excavations at Eleusis, too, 
 begun by the English Society of Dilettanti, continued 
 by the French School of Athens, and recently com- 
 
 * Dittenberger's Sylloge, 384-387. See also the important inscrip- 
 tion from Andania, published by Sauppe. 
 
Chap, xiii.] Elcusis and the Mysteries. 383 
 
 pleted in a far more thorough way by the Archaeological 
 Society of Athens, have furnished many important facts, 
 and are likely to add greatly to our knowledge. 
 
 Finally there are three valuable papers on the Eleu- 
 sinian Mysteries contributed to the Contemporary Review 
 (1880) by Francois Lenormant, and not only written 
 with the accustomed brilliancy of that lamented writer, 
 but also marked by care and more than his usual ac- 
 curacy, though on the whole it must be allowed that 
 Lenormant, a devoted member of the Roman Catholic 
 Church, has allowed himself to take too low a view 
 of the teaching of Eleusis. But he writes on this 
 subject with much learning, and his account is in 
 part based on his own studies and excavations at 
 Eleusis. 
 
 If prayers and sacrifices were the ordinary ritual of 
 the Greeks, and purifications and the like their special 
 services, the Mysteries were their sacraments ; and in 
 fact, as we shall see, they bore in many respects a rather 
 close likeness to the most solemn rites of the Latin and 
 Greek Churches. 
 
 Although the mysteries at Eleusis outshone all those 
 of Greece in importance and splendour, yet we must 
 by no means suppose that they had no rivals. At 
 Pheneus in Arcadia, at Andania in Messenia, and in a 
 number of other places, there were mysteries of con- 
 siderable notoriety ; mysterious rites are constantly men- 
 tioned in the pages of Pausanias ; in fact it is probable 
 that few considerable Greek cities were altogether with- 
 out some such institution. And it should be observed 
 that these mysteries are connected in almost every case, 
 not only with Chthonic deities, but also with such cults 
 as properly belonged to the primitive inhabitants of 
 Greek lands, notably the Pelasgi. Demeter, to whom 
 in most cases they appertained, was the great earth- 
 
384 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. XIII. 
 
 goddess of the Pelasgic race. And this fact may at 
 once suggest to us an explanation of the origin 
 of secret rites, an explanation which is, I believe, 
 generally accepted as accounting for the existence of 
 various secret and mysterious rites among many semi- 
 barbarous races. When a conquering race sweeps over 
 a country, the conquered make a desperate effort to 
 retain their deities and religious observances. But they 
 dare not openly practice their accustomed rites ; the in- 
 tolerance of their masters might then put an end to 
 them ; or, what would still more terrify the barbarous 
 imagination, the conquering race might imitate the 
 religious practices, and so win over to themselves the 
 last and dearest possession of the vanquished, their 
 deities. Hence the necessity for secret observances 
 handed down privately from father to son. Some acci- 
 dent might easily cause peculiar fame and reputation 
 to attach to one of these secret cults, and in that case 
 its very secretness would tend greatly to add to its 
 renown, until strangers sought as a great favour that 
 they might be admitted to witness the traditional cele- 
 brations. Then the cultus from being famous might 
 gradually become worthy of fame ; and when race- 
 distinctions of conqueror and conquered were forgotten 
 at the place to which it belonged, it might become civic 
 or even national, and yet never lose the character of 
 secrecy by that time deeply impressed on its very nature. 
 The local tradition at Eleusis assigned the origin of 
 the mysteries there to Eumolpus, one of the traditional 
 Thracian seers and poets who were supposed to have so 
 largely influenced Greek religious thought. And this 
 may suggest the question whether they were not influenced 
 from Phrygia, where dwelt a people kindred to the 
 Thracian, and distinguished among the races of anti- 
 quity by their devotion to great Chthonic goddesses. 
 
Chap, xiii.] Eleusis and the Mysteries. 385 
 
 This view is advocated by Mr Ramsay in the Encyclo- 
 paedia Britannica (Mysteries). In that case they would 
 exhibit a fragment of the religion of Asia Minor adopted 
 and purified by the Athenians. The ancients, however, 
 are very explicit in their statements that there was at 
 Eleusis, from very early times, a secret cultus belonging 
 to Pelasgians. To trace fully the growth of this cultus 
 from stage to stage, until from an obscure local worship 
 it became one celebrated throughout the civilised world, 
 is not part of the plan of this chapter, nor would it be 
 possible in the absence of ancient testimony. The cause 
 of that growth was without doubt the close connection 
 of Eleusis with Athens, and the adoption by the latter 
 city of Eleusinian beliefs and legends. M. Lenormant 
 considers that we can trace three successive periods in 
 the history of the Eleusinian mysteries. The first is 
 represented by the Homeric hymn to Demeter, and 
 during its continuance the ceremonies were altogether of 
 a commemorative kind. The abduction of Cora, the 
 wanderings and grief of her mother, the interference of 
 the higher powers, and finally the partial restoration of 
 the lost child were all brought before the eyes of the 
 initiated ; and at the same time it is likely that these 
 scenes were explained as relating to the hiding of seed 
 in the earth and its rising in spring, phenomena the 
 explanation of which occupies much of the religious 
 thought of many primitive peoples. The name of 
 Iacchus does not occur in the hymn, and its omission 
 has been variously explained. But it is only in the 
 second period of Eleusinian history that Iacchus takes 
 an important place. This period begins early indeed, 
 but subsequently to the Homeric hymn. In it we trace 
 the gradual intrusion of orgiastic and Dionysiac rites, 
 Iacchus being identified with Bacchus, and that deity 
 taking his place at Eleusis as husband or as son of 
 
 2 c 
 
$86 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. XIII. 
 
 Persephone. The third period may begin about the 
 time of Alexander the Great, and is marked by the 
 adoption at Eleusis, under the influence of the school 
 of religion called by the name of Orpheus, of the strange 
 Cretan legend of Zagreus, and the Oriental rites which 
 belong to that deity, the Chthonic Dionysus. These 
 are the rites which caused so much scandal in Greece, 
 and which, when they spread into Campania, were put 
 down by the strong hand of the Roman Republic. Not 
 that the Eleusinian rites ever became really licentious or 
 indecent ; their close connection with all that was respect- 
 able at Athens saved them from that. But the cultus 
 of Zagreus found a home at Eleusis, and his legend was 
 closely connected with that of the great goddesses. 
 Only it was explained away in spiritual and non-natural 
 fashion, and was even made edifying by having put into 
 it the promise of future life beyond the grave. We might 
 perhaps distinguish a fourth period, when neo-Platonic 
 philosophers were hierophantae, and the doctrines of 
 Eleusis were developed by the Pagans as a parallel and 
 counterpoise to those of the Christian church. 
 
 In the mysteries of Eleusis four acts were distin- 
 guished — (i) Ka6apai<;, the preliminary purification, (2) 
 gvotclgls, the rites and sacrifices which preceded and 
 prepared the way for the actual celebration, (3) reXery'] or 
 /mvt]<tl<;, the initiation properly so called, and (4) eVoTrrei'a, 
 the last and highest grade of initiation, between which 
 and the /iu^o-i? an interval of a year was required in the 
 case of each mystes. The last two of these stages alone 
 were of private and mysterious nature ; at the first two 
 the whole populace assisted freely. The whole festival 
 was protected by a sacred truce,* proclaimed like that 
 
 * Dittenberger, Syll. No. 3S4. Br. Mas. laser., No. 1. The 
 duration of the truce was from the middle of Metageitnion, including 
 all Boedromion, and untd the 10th of Pyanepsion. 
 
Chap. XIII.J Eleusis and the Mysteries. 387 
 
 in connection with the Olympian festival by public 
 heralds. During the earlier part of the Peloponnesian 
 war the Spartans respected this truce ; but after the 
 renewal of hostilities and the occupation of Deceleia they 
 stopped for many years the procession of mystae to 
 Eleusis. 
 
 We learn from an inscription * of the age of Hadrian, 
 that every autumn on the 13th of Boedromion the 
 Ephebi of Athens were marshalled, and went in pro- 
 cession to Eleusis in order to escort thence on the 14th 
 in solemn procession certain sacred objects, ra lepd, 
 which were required for the procession from Athens to 
 Eleusis, which at that age took place on the 19th of 
 Boedromion. 
 
 The first day of the Eleusinia fell on the 15th of 
 Boedromion. It was called the assembling, ayvp/j.6<;, 
 because on it the mystae assembled in groups, each 
 under the direction and guidance of a mystagogus. At 
 the Stoa Poecile they received a sort of address from 
 the officials ; the King-archon first ordering those to 
 withdraw who were stained by crime or ignominy or 
 otherwise unworthy of admission, and the hierophant 
 next proclaiming the conditions required of those who 
 desired to be initiated, and enjoining purity both inward 
 and outward on all. And the sacred herald impressed 
 on the assembled votaries the duty of absolute secrecy 
 as to all that they might witness, and bade them be 
 silent throughout, and not even utter exclamations. 
 
 The second day of the mysteries, the 16th of Boe- 
 dromion, was that called akaSe fAvaTcu, " Mystae to the 
 sea," because on it the candidates for initiation purified 
 alike themselves and the young pig, which was the 
 regular victim of the goddesses, in the salt waters of 
 the sea, or perhaps, as M. Lenormant maintains, in the 
 * Dittenberger, Sylloge, No. 387. 
 
 2 C 2 
 
388 Nezv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XIII. 
 
 salt water of the two lakes called Rheiti on the Sacred 
 Way. 
 
 These days were not at Athens holidays except for 
 the mystae. But the 17th of Boedromion was kept as 
 a holiday generally. On it there were solemn state 
 sacrifices in the Eleusinium at Athens ; and each of the 
 mystae offered the sacred pig required from him. On 
 the 1 8th also there was a continuation of sacrifices and 
 offerings to the two goddesses. 
 
 The grand procession of the mystae from Athens to 
 Eleusis is spoken of by the writers* as happening on the 
 20th of the month. The inscription already cited as- 
 signs it to the 19th. Possibly by the time of Hadrian 
 the day had been changed, or it may be, as Dittenberger 
 suggests, that as the procession did not reach Eleusis 
 until after sunset on the 19th, it was reckoned as be- 
 longing to the 20th. It bore the name of Iacchus, be- 
 cause in it the statue of Iacchus was borne from Athens 
 to Eleusis, escorted by the Ephebi and followed by the 
 crowd of the mystae, each bearing a lighted torch. The 
 march was ordered by the Iacchagogus ; the statue was 
 attended by two priestesses, and followed by bearers, 
 who carried the cradle and the playthings of the infant 
 deity. The procession kept up a constant singing of 
 hymns, of which we may form some idea from the 
 imitations of them in the Frogs ; at each of the shrines 
 on the Sacred Way it stopped to make sacrifices and 
 libations, to sing hymns and perform sacred dances. 
 Naturally it moved but slowly, and, though starting at 
 daybreak, did not reach Eleusis till late at night. 
 Reaching the spot, the mystae found some shelter or 
 encampment to protect them from the weather during 
 their stay at Eleusis. 
 
 Existing materials enable us to discover what the 
 * Euripides, Ion, 1. 1076, &c. 
 
Chap, xiii.] Eleusis and the Mysteries. 389 
 
 temenos at Eleusis, which was the scene of the mysteries, 
 was like. Thrice have excavations taken place on the 
 spot. In 1806 the Society of Dilettanti made, some 
 small excavations ; * but the whole site being then oc- 
 cupied by a modern village, they were unable to bring 
 their attempt to any satisfactory issue ; and most of 
 their conclusions have been set aside by further evi- 
 dence. Next, in i860, M. Fr. Lenormant, then attached 
 to the French School of Athens, made some excavations 
 and laid bare the design of the Propylaea ; but the 
 talents of that brilliant but hasty generalizer were un- 
 suited to the slow labours of excavation, and not much 
 solid gain accrued. Since 1882 the Athenian Archaeo- 
 logical Society has set to work in a most methodical 
 way to lay bare the whole plan of the great 0-77/0)9, or 
 mystical assembly hall, after removing the whole of the 
 modern village which occupied the crt-q^od. The irpaKTuca 
 of that society for 1 882-1 885 contain plans and ^details 
 showing what progress has been rnade.t< -\ The platx which 
 accompanies this paper is taken from Dr. Doerpfeld's plan 
 in the official guide to Eleusis of 1 8^9 ^see next page)". 
 
 We cannot here attempt any complete exposition of 
 the site with its remains of early, later, jand* Roman, 
 buildings. Some of the most interesting places, such as 
 the "joyless rock" and the well Callichoron have not 
 yet been identified. But the main features of the site 
 are clear, and in particular the great hall of initiation 
 can be studied in detail, and it is to that in the main 
 that our attention must be directed. 
 
 The remains, as they stand, are mostly of the Roman 
 age. But nevertheless it is probably fair to regard them 
 as giving us the general plan of the great hall which 
 
 * A plan, representing the views of the Dilettanti, will be found in 
 Leake's Attica. 
 f See also Bull. Corr. Hell., 1884, p. 65. 
 
 f' 
 
Bsutullst 
 
 PLAN OF FXEUSIS. 
 
Chap. XIII.] Eleusis and the Mysteries. 391 
 
 was built in the times after the Persian wars to take the 
 place of the much smaller hall (see plan) which the 
 Persians had destroyed. One sees immediately how 
 wrong it would be to give the name "temple" to this 
 building, and how radically it differs from all Greek 
 temples in design. The Greek temple was a casket 
 made to contain the statue of a deity and the dedicated 
 gifts of his votaries ; but it was never meant to hold a 
 throng. All the great religious processions and cere- 
 monies went on, not in the temples, but in the open air 
 outside. Even sacrifices were offered not within the 
 sacred buildings but at the great altars of sacrifice which 
 stood in the open air, heaped high with the ashes of 
 victims. Anything like congregational worship was en- 
 tirely foreign to Greek ideas. But the hall at Eleusis 
 contained no statue, and no offerings of the faithful. It 
 was meant merely for use during the celebrations, to 
 hold and to shelter from rain and cold the multitude of 
 the mystae while they were witnessing the sacred celebra- 
 tions, of which presently we shall speak. It was about 
 170 feet in length and in breadth, and entered on each 
 of three sides by two doors, while all round the walls 
 ran stone seats eight tiers high, capable of holding, ac- 
 cording to Mr. Philios' estimate, nearly 3000 sitters. All 
 the arrangements, the numerous entrances, the great space 
 in the midst, the well-ordered seats, bespeak the practical 
 sense which is always so conspicuous in Greek buildings ; 
 but nothing savours of mystery, of concealment, or decep- 
 tion. A concert, a reception, an exhibition would seem 
 in such a hall most suitable ; but we cannot help a 
 shade of disillusion in reflecting that this was the scene 
 of what was most sacred and secret in Greek religion. 
 
 As to the proceedings of the mystae, when they had 
 reached Eleusis, we cannot be said to have much definite 
 knowledge. In the papers above cited, M. Lenormant 
 
392 New Oiapters in Greek History. [Chap. XIII. 
 
 works out for them a time-table almost as complete as 
 those set before the members of a modern scientific con- 
 gress. And he may not be far from the truth in many 
 of his conjectures. We however shall prefer to proceed 
 on safer lines and with more caution. In fact we can 
 better judge of what happened in the sacred precinct 
 than of the order in which it happened. 
 
 During the day-time the mystae fasted, breaking their 
 fast, as the Mohammedans do in our time, at sunset. 
 And as most of the sacred ceremonies went on at night, 
 we must suppose that the day was mostly spent in sleep, 
 or In prostration resulting from the excitements of the 
 night. Amid the nightly celebrations we can distinguish 
 certain interesting ceremonies. 
 
 First the initiated had to rouse in themselves a feeling 
 of sympathy with Demeter in her passion. They imi- 
 tated the sad wanderings of the goddess who roamed, 
 torch in hand, along the shore of Eleusis ; and we are 
 told that the lights which they bore looked from a dis- 
 tance like a swarm of fire-flies on the shore of the bay. 
 They sat like their sorrowing goddess on the "joyless 
 rock," and tried to imagine that from them also the sweet 
 Persephone had been snatched away. Amid so many 
 mystae some must have suffered the loss of their own 
 children, and at least to them the feeling that such loss 
 was not unknown even to the immortal gods, and perhaps 
 might be like the absence of Persephone only temporary, 
 must have sometimes come as a strong consolation. 
 
 Secondly, there was certainly a sacrament of eating 
 and drinking. After a nine days' fast Demeter had 
 been induced by the persuasive drolleries of Iambe or 
 Baubo to partake of food and drink, and to change the 
 harshness of despair for less passionate grief. The 
 votaries of Demeter also broke their fast by eating from 
 a sacred vessel and drinking a draught called the /cv/ceoov 
 
Chap. XIII.] Eleusis and the Mysteries. 393 
 
 made of meal and water. They also handled certain 
 sacred objects ; transferring them from basket to box, 
 or from box to basket, according to a fixed ritual. Of 
 course such ceremonies are no surprise to the anthropo- 
 logist, who knows that in all religions some of the most 
 solemn ceremonies are connected with eating and drink- 
 ing in common. 
 
 Thirdly, it may be regarded as certain that the crown- 
 ing and consummation of the whole celebration at Eleu- 
 sis consisted in certain representations of a dramatic 
 character, mysteries or miracle plays, which were acted 
 in the sacred meeting-hall, and which contained the 
 revelations to be made to the initiated. 
 
 But we must begin by dismissing as fanciful and un- 
 founded a great deal of modern conjecture on this subject. 
 Some modern writers have taxed their ingenuity to 
 imagine such noble revelations as should correspond to 
 what they think the Eleusinia ought to be. They have 
 pictured to themselves elaborate ceremonies, and care- 
 fully planned stage effects. And it must be confessed 
 that they are not without the support of some ancient 
 authorities, who however belong to the last periods of 
 Greek literature. For example, the orator Themistius, 
 who lived in the fourth century, writes of the mystae : 
 " They wander about at first ; they enter on wearisome 
 deviations ; they walk about full of suspicion and un- 
 certainty in the darkness ; and the nearer they approach 
 to the goal, the more terrible everything becomes ; there 
 is nothing but trembling, shuddering, sweating and 
 stupor. Then a marvellous light falls on them, and 
 they enter pure places and meadows, and hear voices, 
 and see dances, and witness majestic utterances and 
 sacred forms." It is perhaps not strange that some 
 writers should have supposed, on the strength of such 
 passages as this, that the mystae on their way to the hall 
 
394 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XIII. 
 
 of assembly passed through long underground passages, 
 and wandered far in the darkness. And the opinion has 
 been widely diffused, though based on slight authority, 
 that in these wanderings there were displayed before 
 them the terrors of Tartarus, dreadful sights and sounds, 
 in sharp contrast to the delights of Elysium supposed 
 to be revealed in the hall itself. This view must be 
 considered as finally disposed of by the evidence of 
 excavation, which has proved that the underground 
 passages which the Dilettanti supposed themselves to 
 have discovered never existed. The darkling walk 
 which was said to be so full of terrors and uncertainties 
 could only be the walk from the propylaea to the gates 
 of the hall. But we must remember that after their 
 daily fast the votaries would be worked up to a pitch of 
 excitement. Their expectation would be raised to the 
 highest point. And the nights were planned by the 
 Attic calendar so as to fall when there was no moon. 
 The mystae might therefore be very ready to imagine 
 more than they saw. 
 
 But what happened when at last the door of the 
 hall was opened, and the torch-bearer appeared with 
 his torch to lead the mystae into the sacred place ? 
 Then at all events, it may be thought, strange sights and 
 sounds would be met. The simple answer is that at 
 Eleusis there was no provision for the production of 
 strange stage-effects. Never at any time was there on 
 the shallow stage of a Greek theatre any room for those 
 elaborate effects in which modern stage-managers delight. 
 All was simplicity and convention. But at Eleusis there 
 was not even a stage. The people sat tier above tier 
 all round the building, and whatever went on had to go 
 on in their midst. If they were dazzled by strange sights, 
 these sights must have been very simply contrived. If 
 they saw gods descending from the sky or rising from the 
 
 
Chap. XIII.] Eleusis and the Mysteries. 395 
 
 ground, they must have been willing to spread round the 
 very primitive machinery by which sucfh ascents and descents 
 would be accomplished an imaginative halo of their own. 
 
 In the midst of the crowd the hierophant and his 
 colleagues displayed certain sights and uttered certain 
 sounds which the people received with trembling vene- 
 ration, and filled with a meaning perhaps out of pro- 
 portion to the actual phenomena. 
 
 It is the opinion of Lenormant that on successive 
 nights there were acted two separate miracle plays, in 
 which the parts were taken by the officers of the Eleusinia. 
 On the first night the whole story of Demeter and Cora, 
 as related in the Homeric hymn, was brought on' the 
 stage. " Eleusis," says Clement* of Alexandria, " illus- 
 trates, by the light of the torches of the SaSovxos, the 
 abduction of Cora, the wandering journeys and the 
 grief of Deo." The descent into Hades was part of the 
 play, and it is possible that advantage may have been 
 taken of this circumstance to give instructive pictures of 
 the future world, both of the bliss of the virtuous and 
 the punishments of the wicked. Other episodes of a 
 less instructive nature, such as that of Baubo, were also 
 introduced, and it is hard to see how they can have pre- 
 sented any but an indecent character. After the long 
 wanderings and griefs of the mother had been played 
 out, with the details of her sojourn at Eleusis, there 
 followed the return of Cora, possibly bringing with her, 
 as Stephani and Lenormant maintain,! the young 
 Iacchus as the fruit of her marriage and her sojourn 
 in the realm of shades. The testimony of a number of 
 vases and other monuments, in the representations on 
 which Triptolemus plays a conspicuous part in con- 
 
 * Cohort, ad Gaifcs, p. 12 (ed. Potter). 
 
 (" But the vases on which Stephani relied are now interpreted as 
 referring to other myths. See Robert, Archdologische Marchen, p. 179. 
 
396 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XIII. 
 
 nection with Demeter and her daughter, seems to indicate 
 that the first night's drama did not end there, but went 
 on to display the civilizing and beneficial mission of 
 Triptolemus, conveying to all lands the knowledge of 
 the sowing and reaping of corn. On the vases * we 
 commonly see Triptolemus setting out on his sacred 
 mission, while mother and daughter stand by to sanction 
 his enterprise ; and sometimes Eleusis in person assists 
 under the guise of a local nymph. 
 
 The sacred drama of Demeter and Cora constituted 
 the fMinio-is proper. But there was a further degree of 
 revelation called eiroirrela. Lenormant argues that this 
 was imparted in a second drama, exhibited on the re- 
 maining night of the ceremonies ; and further that the 
 subject of this second drama was the well-known Orphic 
 myth of the birth and death of Zagreus, the Chthonic 
 Dionysus. We need not here repeat the story, which 
 may be found in dictionaries and works on Greek 
 mythology, and which is of a peculiarly offensive kind, 
 unless interpreted, as the Orphists did interpret it, in an 
 altogether fanciful and symbolical manner. Zagreus, it 
 will be remembered, was the son of Persephone by Zeus, 
 who was slain by the Titans, and his body buried at 
 Delphi, all but the heart, which was carried to Olympus 
 by Pallas. If this view as to the formal incorporation 
 of Orphism in the Eleusinia be true, Zagreus must have 
 been accepted as identical with the local Iacchus. And 
 it must rank as an objection to it that the accepted 
 Eleusinian myth gives a different paternity and history 
 to Iacchus ; but we can scarcely be sure that an incon- 
 sistency of this kind would weigh greatly with the 
 members of a priestly house. And it is certain that 
 early Christian writers mix up in the same sentence the 
 
 * For Triptolemus in vases with Eleusinian subject, see pis. xv., xvi. 
 of the Atlas to Overbeck's magnificent Kunsttnythologie. 
 
Chap. XIII.] E leu sis and the Mysteries. 397 
 
 mysteries of Eleusis and those of Orpheus. Also it is 
 easy to see how the story of Zagreus could be used, as 
 was the closely parallel story of Osiris in Egypt, to illus- 
 trate and enforce that doctrine of the future existence 
 of the soul which seems certainly to have been inculcated 
 at Eleusis. We are therefore inclined rather to agree 
 with Lenormant than with LobeCk, who energetically 
 denies that the Orphic myth ever found a home at Eleusis. 
 
 The last formal act of the mysteries seems to us 
 simple enough, . though it was certainly regarded as 'no 
 unimportant part of the whole. The mystae filled with 
 water two vessels which bore the special name of 
 plemochoae, and emptied them in libation, turning to 
 east and west, and repeating the mystic words ve, /eve. 
 The first was directed to the sky and was a prayer for 
 rain, the second to the earth, as a prayer for fertility. 
 These simple words are probably part of the oldest Eleu- 
 sinian ritual, and show the original character of the whole 
 festival to have been a religious service of prayer that 
 the corn-sowing might lead to a fair harvest. 
 
 By the 24th of Boedromion the secret parts of the 
 mysteries were over; the festival again became of a 
 public nature, and all Athens again kept holiday. Then 
 they celebrated the games called Eleusinia, one of the 
 most important of Athenian agones, the prize wherein 
 consisted of a measure of barley, reaped probably in the 
 sacred Rharian plain. The games grew in duration as 
 time went on ; at first only occupying one day, they at 
 last absorbed quite four. An important part of them 
 was the representation of tragedies in the theatre of 
 Eleusis. We learn that at one time the plays of 
 Aeschylus were by preference selected on account of 
 their religious character; in the Macedonian age the 
 Dionysiac artists resorted to Eleusis, and for two or three 
 days furnished amusement to the mystae and their visitors. 
 
39S New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. xiii. 
 
 The return to Athens, like the setting out thence, took 
 place in solemn procession, the priests joining the 
 cortege. At one part at least of its progress the pomp 
 must have relapsed into disorder and clamour. For the 
 people of Athens went out with masks on their faces to 
 meet the returning mystae ; and received them at the 
 bridge over the Cephissus * with jests and banter. The 
 mystae replied, and a contest ensued of wit or of scurrility, 
 in which each tried to surpass the other. Such mixtures 
 of jest and religion do not shock the feelings of natives 
 of southern Europe. 
 
 There is no good ground for the supposition that the 
 Eleusinian priests communicated to the people some 
 theology above the common, some mystic doctrine pre- 
 served in the archives of Eleusis and handed down from 
 age to age. There were rites and representations of a 
 symbolic character, well adapted, no doubt, to act upon 
 the nerves and imaginations of those present. These 
 scenes brought men nearer to the gods, and caused a 
 thrill of sympathy with the feelings of the deities to pass 
 through human bosoms ; but they did not instruct the 
 intellect, still less impart any cosmologic or theogonic 
 system. Even the sentences which, as we learn, the 
 actors in the divine dramas threw out from time to time 
 were full of fancy and mysticism rather than of sober 
 meaning. " Aristotle," says Synesius,f " is of opinion that 
 the initiated learned nothing precisely, but that they 
 received impressions, that they were put into a certain 
 frame of mind ! " We can scarcely do better in such a 
 matter than adhere to the opinion of Aristotle. 
 
 * Our authorities do not make it clear whether this jesting at the 
 bridge belonged to the setting out or the return of the mystae. It 
 may well have been a feature of both. 
 
 f Aristot. Fragm. ed. Heitz, p. 40. This editor is however of 
 opinion that Aristotle is referring not to the mystae of Eleusis, but to 
 those who received his esoteric doctrine. 
 
Chap. XIII.] Eleiisis and the Mysteries. 399 
 
 Preller has summed up the performance as consist- 
 ing of the following elements : — hymns, sacred dances, 
 mimical scenes, and sudden apparitions, with solemn 
 utterances and precepts to accompany them. It is likely 
 that besides the human actors, there were puppets, some 
 perhaps of considerable size and fitted to impress the 
 awakened nerves of the auditors. Deities appeared 
 ascending from the earth or descending from heaven ; 
 and uttering words of a mysterious kind, to which the 
 mystae or their instructors might attach a deeper or 
 a simpler meaning according to their taste and fancy. 
 The dull would be impressed by the nobility of the 
 pageant ; the excitable might fancy that the deities 
 themselves were present in bodily form ; and the spiri- 
 tually inclined might have their sense of the supernatural 
 quickened, and read in sight and sound the promise 
 of a better world beyond the grave. For this sub- 
 jectivity and variety of impression certainly belonged in 
 a marked degree to the mysteries. Full and perfect 
 knowledge was said to belong to the hierophant alone ; 
 the priests understood much, but some things were 
 beyond their comprehension, while the multitude fol- 
 lowed the scenes with vague and uncertain surmises. 
 
 The testimony of vase-pictures in regard to the mys- 
 teries has often been cited. It must, however, be used 
 with extreme caution. The Greeks would never have 
 allowed vases to be painted with subjects taken from 
 the sacred dramas of Eleusis, even if it had been the 
 custom in Greece to transfer to painting scenes as they 
 were enacted on the stage. But, as we know, this was 
 not the custom ; painting and acting have very different 
 sets of laws ; the treatment of the same subject develops 
 in quite a different way in the drama from that in which 
 it develops in art ; and in particular the architectonic 
 laws governing vase-painting are so strict as to prevent 
 
400 Neiu Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XIII. 
 
 it from attempting to render exactly any group or scene 
 from actual life. We therefore have amply sufficient 
 reasons for rejecting the fancy of those writers who saw 
 in the subjects of a multitude of late Apulian and 
 Campanian vases allusions to the mysteries of Dionysus 
 and of Demeter. And even the vase paintings which 
 depict such subjects as the carrying off of Persephone, 
 the wanderings of Demeter, the sending forth of Tripto- 
 lemus seem to be in no way connected with the dramas 
 of the Eleusinian mysteries ; but follow their own laws 
 of development and grouping. Even when the nymph 
 Eleusis is present at these scenes, there is an allusion 
 to Eleusis as the locality where they originally took 
 place, rather than as the spot where they were periodically 
 re-enacted. 
 
 There are, however, a few vases extant, which do not 
 in any way betray the secret of the mysteries, nor show 
 us the details of the mystic dramas, yet which are useful 
 as informing us in some points of detail as to the dress 
 of the priests and so forth. Three of the most important 
 will be found depicted on the 1 8th plate of Overbeck's 
 great Atlas.* No. 18 on the plate represents the admis- 
 sion of Heracles to the mysteries at Agrae ; No. 19 
 represents the parallel admission of the Dioscuri. On 
 No. 20 is a most interesting group of deities and magis- 
 trates. The deities are those interested in the festival, 
 Demeter, Persephone, Pallas, Triptolemus, Aphrodite and 
 Artemis ; the magistrates seem to be the four persons 
 highest in authority at Eleusis, the Hierophant, who 
 stands by a tripod clad in flowing robes and holding a 
 thyrsus, the Epibomius, who carries a young pig and a 
 corn sheaf, the Daduchus, who grasps two long torches, 
 and the Hierokeryx, who also holds a torch. On all 
 three of these vases we see, lying on the ground or in 
 * Atlas zur Kunstmythologie. See also text, vol. ii., p. 669. 
 
Chap. XIII.] Eleusis ci7id the Mysteries. 401 
 
 the hands of votaries, what appear to be bundles of 
 twigs, which are supposed, on the authority of the 
 scholiast on a passage of Aristophanes,* to be those 
 borne by the mystae, and called by them after their 
 patron deity Bacchus. 
 
 It may seem not easy to reconcile the account which 
 is here given of the Eleusinia with the strong language 
 used in regard to them by many ancient writers. Every- 
 one knows that it was universally considered by the 
 ancients that the doctrine of the continued existence of 
 the soul after death was especially proclaimed at Eleusis. 
 Some writers even imply that none but the initiated 
 had a sure hope in death. Sophocles and Folygnotus 
 alike confine the bliss of a future life to those who 
 had received the promise of it at Eleusis. Plato speaks 
 in the Phaedrns in very high terms of the mysteries ; to 
 Plutarch we owe the fine saying that to die is to be 
 initiated into the greater mysteries. And that the 
 doctrine was supposed to bear also upon conduct in 
 this life we may judge from the speech of Andocides 
 to his judges, "You are initiated," said he, "that you 
 may punish those who commit impiety, and save those 
 who defend themselves from injustice." 
 
 But the testimony on which we have relied is on the 
 whole fairly trustworthy. The touching and tasting of 
 a few mystic substances, and the performance of miracle- 
 plays, were all that the disinterested spectator would 
 have seen. And of course these things would not have 
 in themselves any power to raise the character or reform 
 the life. We are told that robbers and murderers were 
 initiated, and remained evil still. But it does not follow 
 that the pious and the spiritual received no benefit from 
 the initiation. The mysteries did not necessarily elevate 
 
 * Knights, 1. 409. B(1k)(ov ixaXovv .... ko.1 tovs k\68ovs ovs ol 
 fivcrrai (pepovai. 
 
 2 D 
 

 402 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XIII. 
 
 men's hearts, but they gave those of lofty and spiritual 
 minds a chance of being elevated. This must necessarily 
 be the character of all ceremonies. If the sacrament of 
 the Christian church were in detail described to an in- 
 telligent Pagan, would he not also find the mere ceremony 
 a trivial thing, and be surprised to hear that many men 
 trusted to its recurrence for keeping alive religion in 
 their hearts? A ceremony affects people by its sym- 
 bolism, and each man interprets the symbolism accord- 
 ing to the state of his heart and his belief. To the 
 vulgar-minded they are vulgar and trivial, to critical and 
 uninterested spectators they are tedious and foolish ; but 
 to those to whom they have a meaning they are of real 
 value ; and the more vague the ceremony, the greater 
 is the variety of meaning which can be put into it. Of 
 dogmatic teaching, as we have already remarked, there 
 was none at Eleusis : only pleasing sights to remain in 
 the imagination, and short enigmatical sentences to be 
 stored in the memory, all likely to recur to the mind at 
 the critical moments of life, and whenever that state of 
 nervous exaltation recurred which had existed when they 
 were first received at Eleusis. 
 
( 403 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 D0D0NA AND THE ORACLES. 
 
 One of the most interesting spots in Greek legend and 
 tradition is Dodona, the religious centre of the rudest 
 and most primitive tribes of Greece ; perhaps at one 
 time the religious centre of the whole Greek race. The 
 site of the sacred place was discovered and excavated 
 by M. Carapanos ; and his interesting results are pub- 
 lished to the world in a monumental book * written in 
 French. 
 
 There are many indications in the customs and ritual 
 widely prevalent in Greece of the effects produced upon 
 the Hellenic race by the physical features of Southern 
 Epirus. Everywhere in Greece the river Achelous was 
 regarded as the parent and the type of rivers ; and the 
 Dodonaean oracle constantly bade all who made applica- 
 tion there to offer a sacrifice to Achelous. Near Dodona 
 were two other streams also, named Acheron and Cocytus, 
 which seem to be prototypes of the rivers which flowed, 
 according to the imagination of the epic poets, through 
 the fields of the world beyond the grave. 
 
 The divine cultus, which had its seat at Dodona, 
 belongs to the deepest and most fundamental strata of 
 Hellenic religion. The deities to whom it attached were 
 a triad, called by the names of Zeus, Dione and Aphro- 
 dite. Similar triads, though bearing other names, are to 
 be found in other places where that proto-Greek set of 
 
 * Do done et ses Ruines. 
 
 2 D 2 
 
404 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XIV. 
 
 influences, which later writers call Pelasgic, prevailed. In 
 Samothrace, for instance, we have a primitive pair of 
 deities called Axiokersus and Axiokersa, with their 
 child Axieros, constituting a very similar group. And 
 the primitive group of Hesiod, who represents Uranus 
 and Gaea as giving birth to Eros, offers a close parallel. 
 In all these cases we seem led back to a Greek pair, 
 the heaven and the earth, with Love which unites and 
 springs from the pair. The later religion of the Greeks 
 drifted away from the Dodonaean type. The Astarte of 
 Syria ousted the Aphrodite of the Pelasgians as an object 
 of worship, Dione fell altogether into the background, and 
 gave way to Hera and Demeter. But the Pelasgic Zeus 
 still held his place. Achilles in the Iliad* wishing to 
 make a solemn appeal, turns naturally to him as an 
 ancestral deity, " King Zeus of Dodona, the Pelasgian, 
 dwelling afar, the ruler of wintry Dodona :" and the Zeus 
 of Olympia was but a descendant of the Epirote god ; 
 in fact, a beautified and civilized descendant, developed 
 on the main lines of Hellenic progress. At Dodona 
 there was not, so far as we know, any worthy sculptural 
 embodiment of Zeus like the great Olympian statue of 
 Pheidias. And whereas Zeus at Olympia was the centre 
 of all the beauty, the wisdom and the fancy of Greece, 
 the Dodonaean god, amid his stormy mountains, remained 
 half a barbarian. His priests were the Selli, who slept 
 on the ground and washed not the feet, some college of 
 prophets of a kind usual rather in Asia than in Greece, 
 and his oracle never attained the clearness or the im- 
 portance of the voice at Delphi. 
 
 It is in their bearing upon this oracle that recent 
 discoveries are most interesting. It is much to have 
 revealed the actual scene of the earliest of Greek holy 
 places. The spoil in works of art which M. Carapanos 
 
 * xvi. 234. 
 
Chap. XIV.] Dodona and the Oracles. 405 
 
 has acquired is considerable, and especially interesting, 
 because many of the small bronze figures of deities and 
 of warriors belong to an early and important phase of 
 Greek art. These, however, can only be studied in 
 M. Carapanos' plates. The historical and chronological 
 data of some of the inscriptions are also valuable. But 
 these are detached points. The main value of the trea- 
 sures found at Dodona lies in this, that there are among 
 them tablets of lead, the inscriptions of which are con- 
 nected with the Dodonaean oracle, and which, on the 
 whole, afford us a clearer and more vivid notion than 
 we had hitherto possessed of the way in which the less 
 advanced of the Greeks regarded and used oracular shrines. 
 The more important oracles, which were usually con- 
 nected with some shrine of Apollo, were clear and articu- 
 late in question and in reply. To them kings and states 
 and persons of standing brought the problems which had 
 perplexed them to be solved by the higher wisdom of 
 the god. In carefully arranged order they were intro- 
 duced into the sacred shrine, and the priestess from the 
 tripod filled with an ecstacy of Apolline inspiration gave 
 them their answer, which was carefully taken down, and 
 which served often to guide colonies in the choice of a 
 place, or nations in the decision between peace and war. 
 It has often been remarked that the Greeks as a rule, 
 when compared with Oriental peoples, were decidedly 
 sceptical as to the value of the utterances of those in a 
 state of nervous exaltation. Plato is something of an 
 exception to the rule : in the Timaeus* he remarks that 
 foresight of the future does not belong to men sane and 
 sensible, but to those under the influence of sleep, disease 
 or inspiration. At the Apolline oracles this divine mad- 
 ness was systematically used as a means for learning the 
 will, and profiting by the wisdom, of the gods. 
 
 * p. 336. 
 
4o6 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XIV. 
 
 But there were other oracles in which the gods were 
 consulted not through the frenzy of the priestess, but 
 rather by a systematic taking of omens. Any sound or 
 sight might be regarded by the pious as a message from 
 the gods. And especially any sudden and unexplained 
 phenomenon, lightning, a sneeze, a sudden appearance of 
 birds, would be likely to have a deeper meaning than 
 appeared on the surface. And the reading of these 
 omens was an art or profession which required long 
 study, and carefully trained faculties. The Homeric 
 seer Chalcas was no prophet, inspired by heaven, but a 
 highly-trained professional man, a &7]/uoep>y6<;, who had 
 learned to spy out the true but occult meaning of all the 
 phenomena in which it was likely that the divine purposes 
 would reveal themselves, more especially in the flight of 
 birds, and in the convolutions of the internal organs of 
 animals offered in sacrifice. The taking of omens was 
 the work of hereditary clans of skilled observers. 
 
 The history of the oracle at Dodona seems to cover 
 all the distance between the mere taking of omens and 
 the developed Apolline oracles. That it was by omens, 
 some of them of a very primitive kind, that the will of 
 Zeus was made manifest seems clear. Yet in the later 
 age of Greece, at all events, the responses of Dodona 
 were as systematic and as clear as those of Delphi. It 
 will be necessary to set forth the evidence for both of 
 these statements. 
 
 Eustathius, in commenting on the already cited pas- 
 sage of the Iliad, which speaks of the Selli of Dodona 
 as washing not the feet and sleeping on the ground, 
 regards it as a proof that oracles were sometimes given 
 there by dream. Of course we cannot say that it was 
 not so : but the Homeric passage on the face of it 
 appears rather to refer to the rude and outdoor life of 
 the Selli than to any custom such as is inferred. That 
 
Chap. XIV.] Dodona and the Oracles. 407 
 
 the oak-tree at Dodona was an ordinary source of super- 
 natural wisdom is clear from several passages in the 
 Tragedians. Aeschylus* and Sophocles f both speak of 
 the vocal oaks as the source of oracles in the shrine of 
 Zeus, and in fact the picturesque expression of Sopho- 
 cles " many-tongued oak " seems clearly to point to the 
 murmuring of the oak leaves as an articulate language. 
 Again, Servius in commenting on a passage of the 
 AeneidX speaks of a stream which flowed at the foot 
 of this oak as a source of inspiration. The meaning of 
 the frequent mention of doves (TreXeidSe?) in connexion 
 with the Dodonaean oracle is more ambiguous ; for be- 
 sides the doves which seem to have been connected with 
 the temple, and which may in early times have given 
 auguries by their flying and their cooing, the name 
 of " doves " was later transferred to the priestesses, who 
 spoke with more articulate voice. There was another 
 curious mode of taking responses, which seems to imply 
 that all the place was sacred, and even the wind that blew 
 there was not devoid of purpose and meaning. The Cor- 
 cyreans dedicated near the shrine a bronze tripod, over 
 which stood a bronze man holding in his hand a whip, 
 to which astragali were attached. In the wind these 
 astragali struck the tripod, and from the noise which 
 resulted omens were sometimes taken. 
 
 We have, however, abundant proof that in the historical 
 ages of Greece the responses at Dodona were given by 
 priestesses, and Plato § in one place says that the Dodo- 
 naean priestess spoke like the Delphic under the dominion 
 of an ecstasy. Whether this implies that the oracle in 
 Epirus became altogether like those of Apollo we cannot 
 be sure : it may be that the utterances of the Peleiades 
 were still to some extent controlled by the omens given 
 
 * Prom. Vine, 851. f Trachiniae, 1148. X iii. 466. 
 
 § Phaedrus, p. 244 b. 
 

 4<d8 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XIV 
 
 by the rustling of the branches of the sacred tree, or the 
 moaning of doves in its branches. At all events the mere 
 inarticulate voice of tree and dove would need to be put 
 into words by intelligent agency. 
 
 We possess in the text of Greek writers several re- 
 sponses given on solemn occasions by the Dodonaean 
 oracle. On one occasion Herodotus says * the people of 
 Apollonia applied to Dodona because the sacred flocks 
 of Apollo were stricken with barrenness. The answer 
 came that " The woes were come on account of Euenius, 
 the guardian of the flocks, whom the people of Apollonia 
 had wrongfully deprived of sight [for letting wolves slay 
 some of the flock]. The gods had themselves sent the 
 wolves, nor would they ever cease to exact vengeance 
 for Euenius till the Apolloniates made him whatsoever 
 atonement he liked to ask." Truly Euenius seems to 
 have been a person fortunate in his friends. In Demos- 
 thenes' oration against Meidias,| there is cited a response 
 which seems to show that the Athenians of that age were 
 by no means too much given to divine service. " The 
 priest of Zeus signifies to the Demos of the Athenians ; 
 because ye let pass the due time of sacrifice and embassy, 
 therefore he bids you send quickly a chosen embassy, three 
 oxen to Zeus Naius, and with each ox two sheep, and to 
 Dione a cow and a lamb for sacrifice, besides a brazen 
 table as an addition to the trophy dedicated by the Athe- 
 nian Demos." One of the Dodonaean oracles to Athens 
 was, if we may believe Pausanias, of most fatal con- 
 sequence : it bade the Athenians XitceXiav oltdfav>t an d 
 was one of the causes which induced them to undertake 
 their fatal expedition to Sicily. Of course the god came 
 out of the business quite well ; he had meant that they 
 were to settle a small hill near Athens called Sikelia, and 
 not the Island of Sicily. 
 
 * ix. 93. t P- 53 1 - i Paus. viii. n, 12. 
 
Chap, xiv.] Dodona and the Oracles. 409 
 
 It would be easy to multiply these citations : the 
 known Dodonaean responses are collected by M. Cara- 
 panos,* and are both numerous and important. But it 
 is time to pass on to the discoveries of the excavator, 
 which throw especial light on the method in which en- 
 quiries were made, and on the kinds of questions put to 
 the god. Curiously, M. Carapanos did not find any com- 
 plete or certain instance of a response to questions : 
 probably these were taken away by the votaries ; but 
 of written questions he found abundance. 
 
 These questions were graven on leaden tablets ; most 
 of them are made by private persons, in most cases pro- 
 bably inhabitants of the more backward districts of 
 Greece, Epirotes and Aetolians and Acarnanians, and 
 in their naive directness and their defective grammar, 
 they seem to bring before us clear proof of the simple 
 faith, as well as of the primitive manners, of those who 
 consulted the god.f 
 
 We must first cite a few questions of political character, 
 put by Greek civic communities. The people of Tarentum 
 question the oracle of Zeus Naius and of Dione as to 
 means of prosperity (Trepl iravrv^ia<;). A more detailed 
 question is put by some (unascertained) neighbours of the 
 Molossians, who enquire as to a proposed alliance with 
 that people. And the Corcyreans put a question which 
 to those who know their history sounds somewhat like a 
 bitter jest : " to what god or hero they must offer 
 prayer or sacrifice, to secure the blessing of internal 
 harmony ? " 
 
 The enquiries of private persons are more numerous, 
 
 * p. 142, foil. 
 
 t These oracle inscriptions are treated in^some detail by Mr. E. S. 
 Roberts in the first volume of the Journal of Hellenic Studies, where 
 other discussions of them are also cited. I need scarcely apologize 
 for freely using Mr. Roberts' versions, and his results, j 
 
4-IO New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XIV. 
 
 and naturally of a more trivial character. Sometimes 
 they are quite general. One Eubander, or Evander, and 
 his wife would fain be informed to what god or what 
 hero they must sacrifice in order to attain to prosperity. 
 A native of Ambracia puts a similar request ; he enquires 
 in regard to health, fortune and prosperity, and would 
 fain learn to what god he must offer his prayers in order 
 to gain these ends. Such requests as these have a some- 
 what formal and conventional air, like the prayers of 
 regular attendants at worship. But others are more de- 
 tailed and of more interest. One Lysanias enquires 
 whether the child with which his wife or mistress Annyla 
 is pregnant is his own. One Agis, who has lost some 
 cushions and pillows, and who is uncertain whether the 
 theft is due to strangers or to some member of his own 
 household, tries to make Zeus decide the question for 
 him. Another votary seems to ask in an inscription, 
 which we possess only in fragmentary form, whether it 
 will be to his advantage to buy some town-house and 
 farm which are in his mind. A capitalist asks whether 
 if he takes to sheep-farming it will prove a good invest- 
 ment. One Heracleidas asks the god whether any other 
 child besides Aegle will be born to him. 
 
 Sometimes the questions are so worded that they will 
 be intelligible only to the god, perhaps a necessary pre- 
 caution, if the honesty of the Peleiades or the priests was 
 not above suspicion. Diognetus, son of Aristomedes, an 
 Athenian, "begs and entreats you, Lord and Master, 
 Zeus Nai'os, and Dione, and you Dodonaeans, to grant 
 (a certain favour) to himself and all his well-wishers and 
 his mother Clearete." As however this inscription is in- 
 complete, the nature of the favour asked may have been 
 stated in the part of it which has perished. The follow- 
 ing is clearer. A certain person enquires "whether he 
 shall be successful in trading in such a way as seems to 
 
Chap. XIV.] Dodona and the Oracles. 411 
 
 him expedient, carrying on at the same time his own 
 craft." This votary clearly preferred that the god only, 
 and not his ministers, should have a voice in his affairs. 
 In another case a group of persons who make a common 
 enquiry seem to prefer to limit the reply to certain lines. 
 They ask "whether they shall best prosper by going to 
 Elina (a place not mentioned elsewhere) or to Anacto- 
 rium, or by effecting a certain sale." Evidently they 
 had discussed the matter well among themselves, and 
 though they were willing to let the god decide among 
 their divergent views, did not care to run the risk 
 of his suggesting some course which would please 
 nobody. 
 
 Requests such as these roughly engraven on lead 
 tablets were laid before the god. But of the method in 
 which answers were given the excavations give us no clear 
 information. Nor is there among our tablets any certain 
 specimen of a written response, though there are a few 
 fragments which may be parts of such responses. These 
 questions, couched in rude and uncouth dialectic forms, 
 and full of bad grammar and false spelling, seem to bring 
 vividly before us the hopes and fears, the customs and 
 beliefs of a bygone age. The rude races who dwelt 
 around stormy Dodona, Epirotes and Acarnanians and 
 Locrians preserved their belief in the responses of the 
 gods, when more polished and sceptical races of Greece 
 had ceased to believe in any god except Fortune. The 
 questions which they brought to Dodona were not 
 merely such as modern people would naturally bring 
 to a priest, questions of cult and sacrifice, but also such 
 as we might put to a physician, a lawyer, or a stock- 
 broker. Our own ancestors of a few generations back 
 might have put such questions to the wise woman, or 
 have opened the Bible at random to try and light on a 
 solution for them in a Scripture-text, but they would not 
 
412 
 
 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XIV. 
 
 have carried them to the highest shrine of their religion. 
 Even the Roman and Greek churches, which in so many 
 ways carry on the customs of pagan religion, do not pro- 
 vide any fortune-telling apparatus. Prayer and purifica- 
 tion, sacrifice and mystery, all survive in Christendom, 
 but the oracles are dumb, and the needs which they 
 supplied have to find satisfaction elsewhere. 
 
 
( 413 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER AND GREEK 
 CIVILIZATION IN THE EAST. 
 
 The modern historians of Greece are much divided on 
 the question where a history of Hellas ought to end. 
 Curtius stops with the battle of Chaeroneia and the pros- 
 tration of Athens before the advancing power of Macedon. 
 Grote narrates the campaigns of Alexander, but stops 
 short at the conclusion of the Lamian War, when Greece 
 had in vain tried to shake off the supremacy of his 
 generals. Thirlwall brings his narrative down to the 
 time of Mummius, the melancholy sack of Corinth, and 
 the constitution of Achaia as a Roman province. Of 
 these divergent views we regard that of the German 
 historian as the most correct. 
 
 The plan of Bishop Thirlwall compels him to speak of 
 Hellas as the land of the Greeks for centuries after the 
 centre of gravity of the Hellenic world had been trans- 
 ferred to Syria and Egypt, to Antioch, Pergamus, and 
 Alexandria. It is as if a historian of the Dorians should 
 confine his attention to the strip of land called Doris ; or 
 a historian of the Arabs should omit to speak of the 
 Mohammedan conquests in the three continents. 
 
 The limits which Mr. Grote has imposed on himself are 
 equally unfortunate. He details the victories of Alexan- 
 der, but has to pass by the results of those victories. He 
 shows us the Greeks breaking the narrow bounds of 
 their race and becoming masters of Asia and Africa, but 
 
414 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XV. 
 
 gives us no account of what they did with those conti- 
 nents when they had acquired them. He leads us into 
 the middle of the greatest revolution that ever took place 
 in Hellenic manners and life, and then leaves us to find 
 our way through the maze as best we can. 
 
 The historic sense of Grote did not exclude prejudices, 
 and in this case he was probably led astray by political 
 bias. At the close of his ninety-sixth chapter, after 
 mentioning the embassies sent by the degenerate Athen- 
 ians to King Ptolemy, King Lysimachus, and Antipater, 
 he throws down his pen in disgust, "and with sadness 
 and humiliation brings his narrative to a close." Athens 
 was no longer free and no longer dignified, and so Mr. 
 Grote will have done with Greece at the very moment 
 when the new Comedy was at its height, when the 
 Museum was founded at Alexandria, when the plays of 
 Euripides were acted at Babylon and Cabul, and every 
 Greek soldier of fortune carried a diadem in his baeeaee. 
 Surely the historian of Greece ought either to have 
 stopped when the iron hand of Philip of Macedon put an 
 end to the liberties and the political wranglings of Hellas, 
 or else persevered to the time when Rome and Parthia 
 crushed Greek power between them, like a ship between 
 two icebergs. 
 
 No doubt his reply would be, that he declined to regard 
 the triumph abroad of Macedonian arms as a continua- 
 tion of the history of Hellas. In Philip of Macedon he 
 sees only the foreign conqueror of the Greeks, in Alex- 
 ander a semi-barbarian soldier of fortune. No doubt it 
 is possible, by accepting the evil told us by historians 
 about Alexander, and rejecting the good, to make him 
 appear a monster. But were Alexander even less noble 
 and less far-sighted than Mr. Grote supposes him to have 
 been, this would not in any way alter the tendencies of 
 his conquests. Wherever the Macedonian settled, the 
 
Chap. XV.] The Successors of Alexander. 415 
 
 Greek became his fellow-citizen, and had over him the 
 advantage of a greater talent for civil life. The Mace- 
 donians spoke the Greek language, using a peculiar 
 dialect, but that dialect disappears with their other pro- 
 vincialisms when they suddenly become dominant. We 
 find no trace in Asia of any specially Macedonian deities ; 
 it is the gods of Hellas that the army of Alexander bears 
 into the East. Even in manners and customs there seems 
 to have been small difference between Greek and Mace- 
 donian ; in our own day many primitive Greek customs, 
 which have died out elsewhere, survive in remote districts 
 of Macedonia. No doubt there was a great deal of 
 Thracian blood among the hardy shepherds who followed 
 the standards of Philip and Alexander ; but if not only 
 the nobility but even the common people had no lan- 
 guage, religion, or customs different from those of the 
 Greeks, how was it possible to prevent the races from 
 becoming mingled ? The more wealthy and educated 
 classes in Macedonia were mostly Greek by blood, and 
 entirely Greek in everything else except the practice of 
 self-government. Wherever Alexander went, Homer and 
 Aristotle went too. In the wake of his army came the 
 Greek philosopher and man of science, the Greek archi- 
 tect and artist, the Greek merchant and artisan. And 
 Alexander must have known this. When he tried to 
 fuse Greeks, Macedonians, and Persians, into one race, 
 he must have known that whose blood soever ruled the 
 mixture, Greek letters, science, and law must needs gain 
 the upper hand. He must have known that the Greek 
 schoolmasters would make Homer and Hesiod familiar 
 to the children ; that the strolling companies of Dionysiac 
 artists would repeat in every city the masterpieces of the 
 Greek drama ; and that the Odes of Simonides and Pindar 
 would be sung wherever there was a Greek lyre. 
 
 It is well known that the ancients themselves took a 
 
41 6 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XY. 
 
 view of the career of Alexander very different from Mr. 
 Grote's. We will cite but a single passage from Plutarch, 
 who wrote ages after the glamour and glare, which for 
 long after Alexander's death concealed the reality of 
 his achievements, had died away : " He taught the Hyr- 
 canians the institution of marriage, the Arachosians 
 agriculture ; he caused the Sogdians to support, not kill, 
 their parents, the Persians to respect, not wed, their 
 mothers. Wondrous philosopher ! who made the Indians 
 worship the gods of the Greeks, the Scythians bury their 
 dead instead of eating them. Asia, ordered by Alex- 
 ander, read Homer ; the sons of the Persians, Susians, 
 Gedrosians, repeated the tragedies of Euripides and So- 
 phocles." This may be rhetorical, but still the rhetoric 
 is very careful in its sweep to avoid collision with fact. 
 It was precisely the people of North India who did 
 receive the Greek deities ; it was, above all tragedians, 
 Sophocles and Euripides who were in favour with the 
 Asiatics. What Plutarch says about the Sogdians is 
 completely confirmed by Strabo. 
 
 The truth is, that the history of Greece consists of two 
 parts, in every respect contrasted one with the other. 
 The first recounts the stories of the Persian and Pelo- 
 ponnesian wars, and ends with the destruction of Thebes 
 and the subjugation of Athens and Sparta. The Hellas 
 of which it speaks is a cluster of autonomous cities in 
 the Peloponnesus, the Islands, and Northern Greece, 
 together with their colonies scattered over the coasts of 
 Italy, Sicily, Thrace, the Black Sea, Asia Minor, and 
 Africa. These cities care only to be independent, or at 
 most to lord it over one k another. Their political insti- 
 tutions, their religious ceremonies, their customs, are civic 
 and local. Language, commerce, a common Pantheon, 
 and a common art and poetry are the ties that bind 
 them together. In its second phase, Greek history 
 
Chap. XV.] The Successors of Alexander. 417 
 
 begins with the expedition of Alexander. It reveals to 
 us the Greek as everywhere lord of the barbarian, as 
 founding kingdoms and federal systems, as the instructor 
 of all mankind in art and science, and the spreader of 
 civil and civilized life over the known world. In the first 
 period of her history Greece is forming herself, in her 
 second she is educating the world. We will venture to 
 borrow from the Germans a convenient expression, and 
 call the history of independent Greece the history of 
 Hellas, that of imperial Greece the history of Hellenism. 
 
 In England Hellenism has been less fortunate as to 
 its historians than in Germany, where it has occupied the 
 attention, among others, of Niebuhr, Heeren, and Droysen. 
 The period of the Diadochi or Successors of Alexander 
 does not attract the student. The tone of Greek life was 
 everywhere lowered, and manners had become luxurious 
 and corrupt. Literature survived, and in some branches 
 such as the Idyl and the Epigram flourished, but it had 
 lost its freshness and become full of affectations. Philo- 
 sophy was eagerly pursued, and went on developing, but 
 there was no Plato to write it. It is difficult to discover 
 any political matter of interest amid the incessant wars 
 of the Antiochi and Ptolemies. To most readers Hellas, 
 in the third and second centuries before our era, is like a 
 man smitten with foul and incurable disease, and they are 
 glad when the Roman conquest gives the coup de grace, 
 and affords an opportunity of decent burial. And yet 
 in this unattractive period is to be found the transition 
 from ethnic and national to universal morality, from 
 merely civic or autocratic to federal or imperial govern- 
 ment, from ancient to modern sentiment and feeling. In 
 it domestic life was largely developed, and the ground 
 was prepared in which the seeds of Christianity were to 
 be sown. 
 
 To write the history of Hellenism requires talents of no 
 
 2 E 
 
41 8 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XV. 
 
 common order. In this field we have no leading authority 
 like Thucydides or Tacitus. We have to piece together 
 the scattered testimonies of Justin, Appian, and Dio- 
 dorus ; sometimes to try and fill up the enormous gaps 
 they leave with quotations from writers like Zonaras and 
 the Syncellus. An incidental statement of Pliny, of 
 Lucian, or of Strabo, may contain all that we know of 
 what happened during half a century in a great kingdom. 
 These remarks apply of course rather to the eastern 
 provinces of the empire of Alexander than to those 
 bordering on the Mediterranean. Of the latter we have 
 a tolerably consecutive account, especially when the 
 Roman history of Polybius comes to our help. But in 
 all cases the historians are far more ready to record 
 the intestine wars which raged in the kingdoms of the 
 Diadochi, and the crimes of their rulers, than to give us 
 any notion of the systems of government, the municipal 
 constitutions, the laws, the commerce, and the customs 
 prevailing in the world of Hellenism. Yet these are the 
 subjects on which now we eagerly desire information', 
 while we are comparatively indifferent as to the results 
 of the combats of the mercenaries of the Antiochi, the 
 Antigoni, and the Ptolemies. 
 
 To a certain extent the silence of historians is com- 
 pensated by the existence of less accessible but deeper 
 and more trustworthy sources of information. The Greek 
 inscriptions found in the cities of Asia Minor furnish us 
 with numerous details as to the civic life, the habits, 
 and the religious observances of the dwellers in those 
 cities under Seleucid and Roman rule. From existing 
 Egyptian papyri M. Lumbroso has compiled 'an account 
 of the government, the trade, and the general condition 
 of Egypt under the Ptolemies. Professor Helbig has 
 traced in the mural paintings of Pompeii the entire 
 history of painting from Alexander the Great onwards, 
 
Chap. XV.] The Successors of Alexander. 419 
 
 and by an admirable induction has established a num- 
 ber of propositions as to the nature of the art of the 
 Hellenistic world ; whence we may learn much as to 
 the emotions and perceptions of that world. Of the 
 Greek kingdoms of Bactria and Cabul scarcely any 
 memorial remains, except the abundant and interesting 
 coins from which General Cunningham has been able 
 to extract a surprising amount of information. Using 
 these and other sources, and especially the masterly 
 history of Droysen, who has brought all the rivulets 
 of information together and united them into a stream 
 of narrative, we will endeavour slightly to sketch the 
 main characteristics of Hellenism, and to estimate the 
 effects of the conquests of Alexander on Greece and 
 Macedonia, on the various provinces of the old Persian 
 Empire, in fact on the whole Oriental world, from 
 Epirus on the west to India on the east, and from 
 Pontus in the north to Egypt and Libya on the south. 
 How slight such a sketch must be within the present 
 limits of space, it is hardly necessary to point out. 
 
 In no country were the changes produced by Alex- 
 ander more striking than in his own Macedonia. Before 
 his time and his father's, that land was a kingdom of 
 the old Homeric type, whose ruler was ava% dvSpwv, but 
 no despotic lord, and which was full of a sturdy and 
 free population of ploughmen and shepherds. Even 
 Philip never places his effigy on his coins nor calls 
 himself King. But the Antigonid princes who after- 
 wards ruled in Macedon were despots of the Asiatic 
 type. They wore the diadem, were surrounded by a 
 court, and were the centre of a bureaucratic and military 
 system. They regarded their people as taxable pro- 
 perty and as material for the manufacture of armies. 
 And that people itself was sadly fallen and diminished. 
 The Macedonian, lord throughout Asia, was at home 
 
 2 E 2 
 
420 Neiv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XV. 
 
 little better than a thrall. While he pushed his con- 
 quests down the Indus and up the Nile, he was at 
 home scarcely able to make head against barbarous 
 neighbours. All the youth and energy of the country 
 flowed in a never-ceasing stream towards the East ; only 
 the unenterprising of the population remained at home. 
 And this led to the most disastrous results. It was the 
 age of the great eastward expeditions of the Gauls. A 
 large body of them poured, about 280 B.C., through the 
 passes of the Balkans down upon the devoted land. 
 The King, Ptolemy Ceraunus, fell in battle, and like a 
 flood the Gallic swarms swept over the plains of 
 Macedon, slaying, torturing, burning, and committing 
 every hideous excess which the heart of a barbarian can 
 invent. In their own land, the Macedonians felt ten- 
 fold all the misery and shame which they had inflicted 
 on Persia. This was no case of the overthrow of one 
 Greek state by another, it was no contest between civi- 
 lized or semi-civilized nations, but the wasting of a 
 settled land by a barbarous horde, whose only desires 
 were to satisfy every brutal and bloodthirsty passion, to 
 carry off all that could be carried, and to leave nothing 
 behind but a broad track of fire and blood. For 
 a moment the militia of the land, rallied by the 
 gallant Sosthenes, who ought to be better known to 
 history, made a stand, but again they were swept away 
 by fresh waves of barbarism. Under Brennus the Gauls 
 swarm southwards until they reach the very gates of 
 Greece. And for a moment Greece remembers her old 
 self, and the day when the Persians were advancing on 
 the same road. Thermopylae must again be garrisoned. 
 Antiochus, King of Syria, remembered his relationship 
 to Hellas, and sent a contingent. The Boeotians, 
 Phocians, and Aetolians mustered in force, Athens de- 
 spatched 1500 men. The story of the defence of the 
 
Chap. XV.] The Successors of Alexander. 421 
 
 pass reminds one of old Greek days. Brennus, like 
 Xerxes, could not force a way until traitors showed him 
 the old path over the mountains ; then like Xerxes he 
 took the defenders in rear, and but for the presence of 
 Athenian triremes at hand to which they could fly, the 
 little Greek army must have shared the fate of Leonidas. 
 But the pass was forced, and Aetolia and Phocis lay 
 at the mercy of the barbarians. Xerxes had made 
 an attempt upon Delphi, and the god of Delphi had 
 interfered to protect his temple ; but, in spite of fears, 
 the rich treasures of the temple induced the Gauls to 
 repeat the sacrilegious attempt. We fancy that we are 
 reading romance rather than history, when we find in 
 Justin's narrative how Apollo appeared in person, accom- 
 panied by the warlike virgins Athene and Artemis, and 
 wrought terrible havoc on the invading hosts ; how an 
 earthquake and a terrific storm completed the discom- 
 fiture of the Gauls, and Brennus fell by his own hand. 
 At all events, whether the foes of the invaders at Delphi 
 were mortal or superhuman, certainly they penetrated no 
 further into Greece. Those who were not destroyed 
 made a hasty retreat northward. Meantime their breth- 
 ren, who had remained in Macedon, had been put to 
 the sword by the hereditary King, Antigonus Gonatas, 
 who had enticed them into his own deserted camp, and 
 then fallen on them while they were feasting and spoil- 
 ing. A third body of Gauls crossed over at Byzantium 
 into Asia and founded the Gallo-Greek kingdom of 
 Galatia in the heart of Phrygia. A fourth body settled 
 in Thrace, and levied tribute on the Greek city of 
 Byzantium. 
 
 The flood had spent its fury and had ebbed, and as 
 it retired it left Macedon and Greece exhausted and 
 depopulated, but not demoralized. Almost all great out- 
 bursts in the life of nations have followed the successful 
 
 v 
 
422 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XV. 
 
 repulse of a powerful invader. So Holland awoke after 
 expelling the Spaniard, and the England of Elizabeth 
 after frustrating him. So in Greece the great burst of 
 Hellenic literature and art followed on the retreat of 
 Xerxes. And after the repulse of the Gauls, we find 
 among the northern Greeks a political revival, and even 
 a certain after-bloom of art, if the theory be true which 
 sees in the Apollo Belvedere and the Artemis of the 
 Louvre the representations in contemporary sculpture of 
 the deities of Delphi, as they appeared to the terror- 
 stricken barbarians. It was Antigonus Gonatas, as we 
 said, who so severely defeated the Gauls : and the same 
 monarch before his death had formed a new Macedon. 
 During his reign Greek culture and manners advanced 
 ever more and more towards the north, and influenced 
 even the rude Triballi and Dardani as far as the Danube. 
 The population began to recover and the cities to grow, 
 and Macedon to become once more a great power. The 
 old Homeric freedom was gone for ever, but order and 
 civilization had taken its place. 
 
 If we turn to the Hellas which was contemporary with 
 Antigonus and his successors, we shall find that the 
 differences between it and the Hellas of Thucydides 
 were rather deep-seated and radical than prominent and 
 obvious. Thessaly was incorporated with the Macedonian 
 kingdom. But in all Greece south of Thessaly the 
 appearance of autonomy remained. No Macedonian 
 harmost or oligarchy held sway in the cities. Only one 
 or two of them, notably Corinth, usually contained a 
 Macedonian garrison. Had the Greek cities now been 
 content with an obscure autonomy, the kings of Macedon 
 would probably have seldom interfered with them. But 
 any city which adopted a lofty tone in dealing with its 
 neighbours was sure to attract the attention of the 
 King ; any city which attained wealth and prosperity 
 
Chap. XV.] The Successors of Alexander. 423 
 
 would certainly be called on to pay a subsidy to his 
 exchequer. The Greeks, though much of their spirit was 
 gone, were not so humbled as willingly to accept this 
 position. Two courses were open to them. The meaner 
 and more slavish of the cities sought to buy for them- 
 selves the protection of one of the new kings of Asia 
 or Africa by embassies, flatteries, and presents. The 
 more sturdy and independent cities, in their efforts to 
 escape from a humiliating position, made a great political 
 discovery. 
 
 This was the federal system of government. Hitherto, 
 in Greece, either the cities had been independent one of 
 another, or, if a confederacy was formed, the lead in it 
 was always taken by one powerful state, which was 
 practically master of the rest. The Athens of Pericles 
 was dictator among the cities which had joined her 
 alliance. Corinth, Sparta, Thebes, were each the political 
 head of a group of towns, but none of the three 
 admitted these latter to an equal share in their councils, 
 or adopted their political views. Even in the Olynthian 
 League, the city of Olynthus occupied a position quite 
 superior to that of the other cities. But the Greek cities 
 had not tried the experiment of an alliance on equal 
 terms. This was now attempted by some of the lead- 
 ing cities of the Peloponnese, and the result was the 
 Achaean League, whose history sheds a lustre on the 
 last days of independent Greece, and whose generals will 
 bear comparison with the statesmen of any Greek Republic. 
 
 Twice a year the ordinary assemblies of the League 
 were held at Aegium ; but extraordinary assemblies 
 might be convoked by the General to meet elsewhere. 
 By this Assembly was made the selection of the officers 
 of the League ; the General, who was its head, and his 
 colleagues, the Admiral, the Master of the Horse, the 
 Secretary, and ten Councillors. The Assembly had 
 
424 New Chapters in Greek History. [Cbap. XV. 
 
 further to deliberate on, and either accept or reject, 
 measures brought before it by the Senate of the League. 
 The voting took place, not by counting individuals, but 
 by cities, and we have reason to believe that in the 
 manner of reckoning the votes by individual cities some 
 allowance was made for the influence of property. How 
 this was done remains doubtful in the absence of exact 
 details ; perhaps there was some regulation that the 
 journey to Aegium should not be undertaken by all 
 who had a fancy, but only by certain approved persons. 
 Mr. Freeman, in his History of Federal Government, 
 suggests that the length of the journey and the necessity 
 of remaining for some time from home would in itself 
 deter the poor of the Achaean cities from attending 
 the meetings at Aegium, but it seems doubtful if that 
 natural restriction were the only one. All the cities 
 would appear to have had an equal number of . votes, 
 but it was quite a matter of arrangement what was 
 reckoned as a city. In the case of the Messenians, for 
 example, three cities were accepted as members of the 
 League, and then all the rest counted as one city of 
 " the Messenians." So some of the suburbs of Mega- 
 lopolis claimed to enter the League separately. We find 
 here, then, no pure democracy, but a political system 
 carefully constructed on representative and timocratic 
 principles. The General was almost absolute master, but 
 his power ceased at the end of a year, and he was not 
 immediately re-eligible, so that he could hold his office 
 in alternate years only. Aratus, who formed the League 
 and was General seventeen times, is one of the most 
 interesting characters of antiquity. His statesmanship 
 and his power of ruling men were unrivalled, and, con- 
 sidering the circumstances of the age, it adds greatly to 
 our interest in his character that, as a soldier, he was 
 more than suspected of cowardice. 
 
Chap. XV.] The Successors of Alexander. 425 
 
 The rival of the Achaean League in the Peloponnese 
 was a reformed and renewed Sparta. Sparta was the 
 last city in Greece to fall from pristine simplicity and 
 hardihood into the luxury and loose morality of the 
 Macedonian times, and at no city were such vigorous 
 and noble efforts made to return to the lost virtue. 
 When Agis, the son of Eudamidas, ascended the throne 
 in 244 B.C., he found not only luxury and avarice 
 domiciled in Sparta, but the whole of the land, which 
 Lycurgus had divided into equal lots, absorbed in the 
 possession of one hundred wealthy families, and even 
 in great part in the hands of women. To restore the 
 sternness and simplicity of ancient manners, and to 
 provide Sparta with new citizens and every citizen with 
 a plot of land, was the conservative idea of this young 
 statesman. Every one may read, in the inimitable narra- 
 tive of Plutarch, how his noble enthusiasm cost him his 
 life, and how his schemes, living on in the love and 
 reverence of his wife, Agiatis, passed to her second 
 husband, the new king, Cleomenes, and launched him 
 on a desperate effort to overthrow the Ephors and to 
 restore the habits and constitution established by 
 Lycurgus. The part that women took in the promotion 
 of and opposition to his plans, is characteristic of the 
 times and of the city where women were ever held in 
 more honour than elsewhere. 
 
 No more painful occurrence can perplex and disturb 
 the reader of history than when two honest and noble 
 men, in the accomplishment of their unselfish plans, are 
 so thrown into hostility one against the other, that one 
 must fall, and one set of plans be ruined. So it was in 
 this case. Achaia and Sparta both required consolida- 
 tion by success. The Peloponnese was not wide enough 
 for Cleomenes and Aratus. Either, left to himself, might 
 have restored the liberties of Greece, though in different 
 
 
426 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XV. 
 
 ways ; their rivalry made liberty more impossible than 
 ever. Aratus, as the weaker in the field, stultified his 
 whole life, which had been devoted to the securing of 
 independence to the Achaeans, by calling in the King 
 of Macedon to take his part against Cleomenes. On 
 the field of Sellasia the glorious hopes of Cleomenes 
 were wrecked, and the recently reformed Sparta was 
 handed over to a succession of bloodthirsty tyrants, 
 never again to emerge from obscurity. But to the 
 Achaeans themselves the interference of Macedon was 
 little less fatal. Henceforth a Macedonian garrison 
 occupied Corinth, which had been one of the chief cities 
 of the League; and King Antigonus Doson was the 
 recognized arbiter in all disputes of the Peloponnesian 
 Greeks. 
 
 In Northern Greece a strange contrast presented it- 
 self. The historic races of the Athenians and Boeotians 
 languished in peace, obscurity, and luxury. With them 
 every day saw something added to the enjoyments and 
 elegancies of life, and every day politics drifted more 
 and more into the background. On the other hand, 
 the rude semi-Greeks of the West, Aetolians, Acar- 
 nanians, and Epirotes, to whose manhood the repulse of 
 the Gauls was mainly due, came to the front and showed 
 the bold spirit of Greeks divorced from the finer facul- 
 ties of the race. The Acarnanians formed a league 
 somewhat on the plan of the Achaean. But they were 
 overshadowed by their neighbours the Aetolians, whose 
 union was of a different character. It was the first time 
 that there had been formed in Hellas a state framed in 
 order to prey upon its neighbours. Among themselves, 
 the Aetolians constituted the pure democracy peculiar 
 to men who live with arms in their hands. Yearly they 
 met at the stronghold of Thermus, where was stowed 
 the booty won in their piratical expeditions, in order to 
 
Chap. XV.] The Successors of Alexander. 427 
 
 elect a general and decide on peace and war. But the 
 contrast between these freebooters and the Achaeans is 
 sufficiently marked by the circumstance that, when the 
 latter admitted a city into their league, it entered with 
 a full share of rights and had the same privileges as 
 other cities. But when we hear of a city joining the 
 Aetolian league, all that seems to be implied is that it 
 paid an annual tribute in order to buy off the attacks 
 of the Aetolians and to secure their protection against 
 its neighbours. That such a city would send deputies 
 to the Aetolian Assembly, or have a voice in the elec- 
 tion of a general, there is no reason to believe. Epirus 
 continued unchanged by the side of renovated Mace- 
 donia, a kingdom of the old Homeric type, in which 
 the power of the king was by no means unlimited, but 
 subject to the control alike of the nobility and the 
 prostates or president, whose name we find on inscrip- 
 tions beside the king's. After the death of Pyrrhus and 
 his son, the Epirotes, instead of falling into the hands of 
 the Macedonian sovereign, formed a republic, democracy 
 being far more suited to their habits and traditions than 
 submission to any absolute ruler. 
 
 Of the kingdoms founded by the generals of Alex- 
 ander, the most compact and highly organised was Egypt. 
 In Egypt Alexander was welcomed as a deliverer by a 
 superstitious race ; he gave out that he was the son of 
 the Egyptian deity Ammon. To the Egyptians it was 
 an easy thing to add to the number of their gods, and 
 to Alexander a distinguished place in the royal section 
 of the Pantheon was at once accorded. Ptolemy, to 
 whom good fortune had assigned Egypt as a satrapy on 
 the death of his master, had no difficulty in taking his 
 place in matters religious as well as political. He found 
 a priest-ridden country, and, by closely binding the 
 priesthood to himself, he gained the veneration of the 
 
4 2 § New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. xv. 
 
 people. He found settled laws and an elaborate ad- 
 ministrative machinery ; he retained both in the main, 
 though modifying each with the political talent for 
 which he was so justly famed. The commerce, the 
 wealth, and the population of Egypt advanced at a 
 wonderful pace under his wise rule ; so that the armies, 
 the ships, the riches, the literary and artistic treasures 
 of Egypt became within half a century the wonder of 
 the world. 
 
 In the administration of Egypt Ptolemy adopted and 
 utilized that division into districts, or nomes, which had 
 been in use from the earliest times. But the general 
 government of the individual nomes became more mili- 
 tary in character, while at the same time the various 
 branches of the civil government were placed in the 
 hands of separate officials. At the head of every nome 
 was a Macedonian strategus, or general, assisted by an 
 administrative officer, called an epistates, and a secretary. 
 In every nome there were agoranomi, Hellenic function- 
 aries, entrusted with the inspection of markets, the regu- 
 lation of trade, and the settlement of the disputes between 
 merchants. Graver causes were tried by commissions of 
 three judges, who passed in circuit from city to city ; or 
 they were carried to Alexandria for decision. Villages 
 and sub-districts had each their group of officers, and 
 the nomes themselves were gathered into larger pro- 
 vinces, under the headship of a provincial governor. 
 
 At the head of the whole bureaucracy stood the King, 
 whose decree was law throughout the length and breadth 
 of the land, and around whom was a military court, 
 with innumerable grades of honour and distinction. To 
 be enrolled in the bodyguard, to gain a right to the 
 title of the King's Friend or the King's Cousin, was 
 the ambition of Greek mercenaries and native Egyp- 
 tians ; and as these titles and honours were to a great 
 
Chap. XV.] The Successors of Alexander. 429 
 
 extent hereditary in Egypt, they occupied the same 
 relative position as the old German titles of office. But 
 of course, in a land where a word of the sovereign could 
 raise to honour or condemn to disgrace, any indepen- 
 dent order of aristocracy was out of the question. All 
 the higher honours, both about the person of the 
 monarch and in the provinces, were in the hands of 
 Macedonians and Greeks, the leaders of the hired troops 
 who represented the physical force of the Egyptian 
 kingdom. Any restraint which existed on the arbitrary 
 power of the king came from them. On the demise of 
 a king, they appointed his successor out of the princes 
 of the Ptolemaic race, and, when a king became dis- 
 tasteful to them, they possessed means for depriving 
 him of the diadem. The native Egyptians seem to 
 have accepted calmly a position of inferiority, out of 
 which a man here and there rose by talent or fortune. 
 They had long been unused to independence, and the 
 respect paid to their laws and religion by their new 
 masters made them disposed cheerfully to submit to 
 their supremacy and protection. Only the great ports 
 of Alexandria and Naucratis, with Ptolemais, a city 
 built in Upper Egypt in order to dominate Thebes, — 
 all three of which cities had in the main a Greek 
 population, — enjoyed to a large extent the right of 
 self-government, and formed small imperia in imperio. 
 
 Both in political skill and in love of letters, the 
 Kings of Pergamus were not inferior to the Ptolemies. 
 Their territory was small ; yet one of them, Attalus I., 
 was able to inflict a crushing defeat on the Gauls, and 
 afterwards to use them as mercenaries against his neigh- 
 bours. It was the traditional policy of the race to 
 stand beside Rome in her wars in the East ; a course 
 of conduct which brought a rich reward. All the princes 
 of this dynasty were literary. Attalus I. composed a 
 
43° New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XV. 
 
 treatise on botany; Eumenes II. was noted as a muni- 
 ficent patron of authors ; Attalus II. corresponded with 
 the philosopher Polemo ; and, when Mummius sacked 
 Corinth, he did his best to save from destruction the 
 masterpieces of art of which that city was full. The 
 library of Pergamus contained 200,000 volumes when 
 Antony presented it to Cleopatra ; and the parchment 
 of Pergamus has played a greater part even than the 
 papyrus of Egypt in preserving for us copies of ancient 
 works. Unlike the later Ptolemies, the Kings of Per- 
 gamus possessed civic and domestic virtues. They cared 
 little for regal state, and liked to appear to their people 
 as only the leading citizens. In a dissolute age it is 
 remarkable to find the two sons of Attalus I. erecting 
 a temple at Cyzicus, not to their mistresses but to their 
 mother Apollonis, who was a native of the city. 
 
 In most respects the vast and ill-compacted empire 
 of the Seleucidae formed a marked contrast to the 
 highly organized kingdom of Egypt. Seleucus and his 
 successors never succeeded, like the Ptolemies, in con- 
 ciliating the national and religious prejudices of the 
 races over which they ruled. The policy of Alexander, 
 who had determined to make one race of Greeks and 
 Persians, died with him. The Kings of Syria did not 
 adopt like him the Persian dress, nor marry like him 
 Asiatic wives. We trace in such fragments of their 
 history as have come down to us strong indications of 
 hostility between them and the creeds of the subject- 
 races. On the occasion of the foundation by Seleucus 
 of the city of Seleucia on the Tigris, the Magi tried to 
 cheat the King into choosing an unpropitious site. To 
 the Persian worshippers of Ormazd the image-worship 
 of the Greeks seemed a degrading superstition. An- 
 tiochus IV. made a vigorous endeavour to introduce the 
 worship of Zeus Olympius in the cities of his dominion, 
 
Chap. XV.] The Successors of Alexander. 431 
 
 even in the temple of Jehovah at Jerusalem. So, while 
 in Egypt the population was quiescent, in the Syrian 
 Empire we have a long series of national revolts under 
 patriotic leaders, beginning with the secession of the 
 Persians in Iran and Media, and ending with the suc- 
 cessful struggle of the Jewish Maccabees for inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 In fact in all Asia, save Asia Minor and Syria, the 
 Hellenistic princes had very little hold on the peoples 
 of the country except that arising from fear. What then 
 were the means by which they so long retained their 
 sway in the midst of a hostile population ? The answer 
 to this important question contains the secret of the 
 history of Asia during the three centuries before the 
 Christian era. 
 
 In the first place, the Greek kings in Asia could 
 always secure the services of Greek and Macedonian 
 mercenaries. At the time of Alexander's expedition 
 against the Persian Empire there were stored in all the 
 great cities, Susa, Ecbatana, Babylon, and the rest, 
 enormous treasures of gold and silver. These were the 
 hoarded results of the Persian exactions, and prodigal 
 as Alexander was in his expenditure, he could not quite 
 exhaust the vast supply, but left a proportion for his 
 successors. As the shedding of honey draws together 
 a cloud of flies, so the gradual melting of the mountain 
 of Persian gold drew over into Asia a constant stream 
 of soldiers of fortune. These men, who came chiefly 
 from Crete, Arcadia, Macedon, and Thrace, were unscru- 
 pulous indeed, but under good generals they made fair 
 soldiers, and the descendants of Seleucus knew how to 
 attach them to their service. We have a racy picture 
 of one of these gentry in the Pyrgopolinices of Plautus, 
 and no doubt the figure was familiar enough to the new 
 Attic comedy. 
 
43 2 Neiv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XV. 
 
 But a mere mercenary army is not in itself sufficient 
 to bind together a civilized State. It is well shown by 
 Droysen that the main source of Greek power through- 
 out Asia was in the cities founded everywhere in extra- 
 ordinary numbers by Alexander and his successors. From 
 the earliest days of Hellas the city had been a self-com- 
 plete unit, organized and independent. The Greek cities 
 of Asia Minor, even when under the sway of the Persian 
 kings they had paid tribute and admitted a garrison, 
 yet possessed in many respects their autonomy, appointed 
 their own magistrates, and regulated their own commerce. 
 Hence it would appear that the great Alexander conceived 
 the idea of binding to himself the provinces which he 
 overran by building a chain of cities across them, cities 
 with mixed population, but dominated by a Greek faction, 
 and trained to the enjoyment of Hellenic privilege. With 
 Alexander, to conceive an idea and to put it into execu- 
 tion was the same thing. He found the people of several 
 districts living scattered in villages ; he drew them to- 
 gether into cities, at the head of which he placed a few 
 of his followers to organize. The result was a complete 
 change in the manners of such people. From scattered 
 and ignorant cultivators they became artisans or mer- 
 chants, and remained for centuries attached to the Greek 
 rule, which had so enlarged their ideas and improved 
 their position. At the mouth of the Nile, near the shores 
 of the Caspian, along the course of the Oxus, at the 
 foot of the Paropamisus, on the banks of the Indus, 
 wherever the arms of Alexander were victorious and the 
 country seemed fertile, the great conqueror halted his 
 army for a brief period, or detached a body of troops, 
 and in a few weeks the walls of a city were rising to 
 dominate the district. To fill those walls he left a few 
 veterans weary of fighting and marching, and some of 
 the merchants and artisans who followed his march in 
 
Chap. XV.] The Successors of Alexander. 433 
 
 crowds, and then summoned the inhabitants of the neigh- 
 bourhood to complete the number of citizens. The 
 Seleucid and other Greek princes continued the practice. 
 So it was not long before the cities of Alexander and 
 his generals absorbed the trade of Asia, and every one 
 of them was a centre whence the Greek language, Greek 
 ideas, and Greek religion spread over the East. We 
 need only mention among them Alexandria, Antioch, 
 Seleucia, Nicaea, Kandahar, to remind the reader how 
 many of the great cities of the world then came into 
 being. 
 
 We may divide these cities into groups, according to 
 their position, and will speak first of the fate of those 
 founded in the far East. In the remote districts to the 
 north of Cabul it must be confessed that the fruits of 
 Alexander's conquests were not lasting. No sooner was 
 the King dead, than the Macedonians settled on the 
 Oxus and Jaxartes, to the number of 20,000 infantry 
 and 3000 cavalry, smitten with a sudden despair at the 
 thought of their distance from home, left their cities, 
 and in full battle array took the road for Europe. The 
 generals at Babylon could resist and slaughter them, 
 but could not send them back across the Oxus, and by 
 their desertion the barrier erected to keep out the bar- 
 barous nomads of Turkistan was most fatally weakened. 
 A century later one of those great migrations of nations 
 which have so often changed the face of Asia set in. 
 Relieved from the pressure of Persian power on the 
 south, the barbarous nations of Sacae or Scythians on 
 the borders of China began to migrate in masses towards 
 the Oxus and Bactria. They had, no doubt, to make 
 their way by hard fighting ; but the flood rolled on 
 slowly and irresistibly, and in considerably less than 
 two centuries after Alexander's death it had submerged 
 the plains of Bactria and Sogdiana ; and the semi-Greek 
 
 2 F 
 
434 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XV. 
 
 cities to the north of the Paropamisus or Indian Caucasus 
 were either destroyed or left cut off from the world to 
 starve slowly and become barbarous. 
 
 The Macedonians and Greeks were driven into the 
 Great natural strong-hold which fortune and the policy 
 of Alexander had left them in that region. This is the 
 Cabul valley, where for centuries a Hellenistic civilization 
 maintained itself. When the Macedonian army first 
 entered that region and approached the city of Nysa, in 
 the neighbourhood of Jellalabad, they at once found 
 themselves in a country resembling their own. Here 
 grew the ivy and the vine ; here the people drank wine 
 freely, and claimed to be descended from the army of 
 Bacchus, the conqueror of India, who on his return had 
 founded their city. Believing, like all his contemporaries, 
 that the Indian expeditions of Bacchus and of Heracles 
 were historical fact, Alexander received the people of 
 Nysa with great favour, and granted them autonomy. 
 It is probable that in this district the common worship 
 of Bacchus brought about a certain fusion between Greek 
 and barbarian, and this as well as the natural strength 
 of the country may have helped the Greeks to make a 
 stand. But after a while even this stronghold was 
 stormed, and the unhappy Greeks were driven first into 
 the Panjab and then crushed between the advancing 
 hordes of Scythia and the Indian kingdom of Magadha ; 
 and in the first century of our era Scythian chiefs ruled 
 from Bactria to the mouth of the Indus. 
 
 It is sometimes said that the conquests of Alexander 
 had no influence on Indian civilization ; but the student 
 of the antiquities of the Panjab knows better. The 
 Scythians and the native dynasties of North India were 
 lonsf enough in contact with the Greeks to learn their 
 language, their religion, and their art. The coins of the 
 Gupta kings of Magadha bear types of Greek origin, 
 
Chap, xv.] The Successors of Alexander. 435 
 
 those of the Sah kings of Guzerat bear Greek inscrip- 
 tions, those of the wealthy Saka kings of Cabul present 
 to us not only Greek legends, but figures of Greek deities, 
 of Artemis, Heracles, and Pallas, and that certainly as 
 late as the second century of our era. Buddhist figures, 
 whether from the topes of Afghanistan, or even from 
 China, show to any one accustomed to Greek art indu- 
 bitable traces of a close affinity with it. And it is in 
 the last degree improbable that peoples, which borrowed 
 the style of their money and their religious art from 
 the Greeks, should have borrowed nothing else. 
 
 The fate of the Hellenistic cities in those more western 
 regions of Asia which fell under the dominion of the. 
 Parthians was less harsh. The Parthians, who lived on 
 horseback, and did not willingly venture within the walls 
 of a city, found it wise to tolerate them, and, in return 
 probably for a fixed tribute, allowed them autonomy and 
 protected their trade. The Parthian king even assumed 
 the title Philhellen, Greek was his court language, and 
 he beguiled his leisure by witnessing Greek plays and 
 conversing with Greek travellers. The usual type of the 
 Parthian coins represents a Greek city offering a wreath 
 to the king ; their legend is Greek, and they are dated 
 according to the Greek era of Syria. In some cases, 
 when there was war between Parthia and the Seleucid 
 kings of Syria, the Hellenistic cities of Parthia seem to 
 have sided with the latter power, and taken the Syrian 
 troops into friendly winter-quarters. How completely 
 independent of the central power the greater cities were 
 may be judged from the circumstance that in the popu- 
 lous city of Seleucia on the Tigris there were internal 
 civil wars between the Greek, Jewish, and Syrian factions 
 without any interference on the part of the Parthians. 
 
 Even the cities of Syria and Asia Minor, although 
 under the rule of kings of Macedonian race, were pro- 
 
 2 F 2 
 
43^ New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. XV. 
 
 bably to a great extent self-governing. They had their 
 senate and popular assembly, their magistrates elected by 
 themselves, their alliances, monetary and commercial, with 
 one another, and their decrees, which in most matters of 
 internal police, religious worship, and commerce, had the 
 force of law. The king exacted a revenue from them, and 
 kept in them a garrison, whose chief must have had 
 criminal jurisdiction, and power of life and death, but it 
 is improbable that he interfered with their internal ar- 
 rangements, the laws with regard to property, or the 
 market regulations. Freedom from both taxes and gar- 
 risons was gradually conferred on most of the great 
 cities of Asia Minor and Syria by one or another of 
 their rulers during the third and second centuries before 
 our era. An extraordinary size and architectural splen- 
 dour was attained by many of them. In some districts, 
 such as Cyrrhestica in Northern Syria, they were so 
 thickly scattered that the land became thoroughly Hel- 
 lenized, and barbaric manners and barbaric language died 
 out. Thus over all western Asia, including even 
 countries which like Cappadocia retained their own 
 kings, a mesh of Hellenistic and half-autonomous cities 
 was spread, which with every generation became stronger, 
 binding the land to civilization and law, and bringing in 
 that state of extraordinary wealth and prosperity which we 
 find at the time of the Christian era. 
 
 As by hard fighting the Greeks had mastered the 
 treasures of Persia and Babylon, so by commercial en- 
 terprise they appropriated the resources of Tyre and 
 Sidon. Those cities indeed survived their captuie by 
 Alexander, living on as Hellenistic cities, and even re- 
 covered prosperity, but they had lost their high rank for 
 ever. Hitherto they had been the great intermediaries 
 between East and West, and the trade of Egypt, Persia, 
 and India had flowed through their markets. But with 
 
Chap. XV.] The Successors of Alexander. 437 
 
 the building of Alexandria near the mouth of the Nile 
 a new era began. Henceforth only part of the trade 
 of India passed by the caravan routes to the coast of 
 Phoenicia. Much of it came direct to the shore of the 
 Red Sea. Harpalus discovered or rediscovered the course 
 of the monsoons, and at the proper seasons Arabian 
 fleets went to and fro between the Malabar coast and 
 the harbours sedulously constructed by the Ptolemies on 
 the Red Sea, whence the wares passed overland to the 
 basin of the Nile. India sent ivory, silk, precious stones, 
 rice, scented woods ; and received in return gold and 
 silver as well as the products of Egypt. To our own 
 days gold coins of the early Roman emperors are not 
 unfrequently found in India. The trade which passed 
 up the courses of the Euphrates and the Tigris re- 
 ceived a great impetus from the foundation, in the 
 neighbourhood of Babylon, of the immense Greek 
 trading city of Seleucia, and near the Syrian coast of 
 Antioch with its seaport, also called Seleucia. Between 
 the two Seleucias there must have been constant inter- 
 course. Along all the great caravan routes eastward from 
 the Mediterranean arose flourishing Greek cities, a number 
 of which still survive, and would still flourish under a just 
 government. Even the Oxus was in those days a high- 
 way of commerce, floating the productions of Bactria into 
 the Caspian Sea. The first Antiochus is said to have 
 projected a canal which should join the Caspian Sea 
 with the Euxine, and thus secure a water-highway from 
 the Mediterranean into Upper Asia. This plan was un- 
 fortunately never realized, but the importance of Sinope 
 shows how extensive a trade passed towards the Caspian 
 Sea from the west by land. If the growth of trade be 
 an indication of advancing civilization, then civilization 
 must have advanced very rapidly in the century which 
 followed Alexander's death. 
 
438 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. xv. 
 
 The great intermediary between Europe and Asia was 
 the island of Rhodes. About 408 B.C. the cities of Rhodes 
 combined to build a new capital to their island, which 
 they called Rhodus. Almost immediately the young city 
 started on a splendid commercial career, the period of her 
 rise closely corresponding with that of the downfall of 
 Athens. Her commercial navy was soon known in every 
 port of the Mediterranean, and her ships of war assisted 
 Alexander in the conquest of Tyre. Then came the 
 celebrated siege of the city by Demetrius Poliorcetes, 
 a siege full of spirit and chivalric feelings on both sides. 
 When Demetrius became convinced that he could not 
 take the city, he made a treaty of alliance with the 
 Rhodians, and cemented it by presenting to them the 
 engines of war with which he had been lately battering 
 their walls, to the value of three hundred talents. Truly 
 Rhodes was the spoilt child of the old age of Hellas, for 
 when fifty years later the city was shaken and damaged 
 by an earthquake, the kings of Egypt, Syria, and even 
 Syracuse vied with the free Greek cities of Asia in pre- 
 senting ships, money, and building materials, and in ac- 
 cording to the Rhodian ships immunity from tolls in 
 their ports. 
 
 So Rhodes grew great, not through her prosperity 
 alone, but also through her calamities. And it cannot 
 be said that her unparalleled good fortune was wholly 
 unmerited. In spite of their great wealth and over- 
 flowing commerce, the people of the island retained 
 something of the old Dorian honesty and simplicity. 
 Their government was a mixture of one of the wisest 
 forms, a commercial aristocracy, and the freest, a demo- 
 cracy ; for though all votes had to be passed in popular 
 assembly, yet this assembly could only discuss points 
 brought before it by the senate. Rhodian commercial 
 law was adopted by the Romans on account of its jus- 
 
Chap. XV.] The Successors of Alexander. 439 
 
 tice, and remains to this day the foundation of the Law 
 of Nations. Twice did the Rhodians support in arms 
 the freedom of Greek commerce, standing forth as cham- 
 pions on behalf of weaker powers ; once when they put 
 down the pirates who had already begun to swarm in 
 the Eastern Mediterranean, and once when they com- 
 pelled Byzantium to give up the power she had assumed 
 of levying a tax on all the Greek vessels that passed the 
 Golden Horn on their way to and from the Black Sea. 
 
 But Rhodes, like the Achaean League and every pro- 
 mising institution of later Greece, was destined to decay 
 under the withering shadow of Roman jealousy. True 
 that the Rhodians were firm allies of Rome, .and vigor- 
 ously hostile to her enemies in Macedon and Asia. Yet 
 the power and wealth of the island remained, and these 
 were in themselves a sufficient cause for the enmity of a 
 state which would not endure the faintest shadow of a 
 rival. The Romans in 167 B.C. conceded the island of 
 Delos to Athens, and made it a free port under their 
 special protection. From that day Rhodes declined, and 
 Delos became the emporium of Greece. One great staple 
 of Delian trade was slaves, of whom we are told that 
 sometimes ten thousand were landed in the morning and 
 sold before evening. The Syrians and other Jews of 
 antiquity flocked to Delos, and Rhodes was deserted. 
 But even then the island remained the home of art and 
 of philosophy. The group of Laocoon exists to our day 
 to testify to the excellence of Rhodian sculpture, and 
 Julius Caesar went to Rhodus to attend the lectures of 
 Molo at the University. 
 
 Other cities which grew in commerce and power in the 
 times of the successors of Alexander, besides the new 
 foundations and Rhodus, were some of those on the 
 Black Sea, notably the Pontic 'HeTaclea, "Sinope, and 
 Panticapaeum. The trade of the Euxine had' been almost 
 
44-0 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XV. 
 
 monopolized hitherto, first by Miletus, and, after the fall 
 of Miletus, by Athens. Now it was open to many states. 
 The o-reat wheat-harvests of the Crimea, and the abundant 
 fish of the Borysthenes, with the cattle and hides supplied 
 by the Scythians, and timber from the vast forests of 
 Thrace, made the export trade which flowed through the 
 Bosphorus of great value. We have already mentioned 
 how the people of Byzantium sought to levy a toll on the 
 commerce of the Euxine, and how their attempt was 
 frustrated by the Rhodians. The passage of the Bos- 
 phorus remained free, and as a consequence the Greek 
 cities of the Euxine remained flourishing and powerful 
 in the face of surrounding Hellenistic potentates and 
 barbarous tribes of Scythians until the time of Mithri- 
 dates the Great. 
 
 Our limited space now compels us to turn from the 
 external and political aspects of the world of Hellenism 
 to its internal aspects ; to the religion and manners of 
 the later Greeks, and to the changes which these under- 
 went in the centuries which followed Alexander's expe- 
 dition. The religion of the Greeks had never claimed 
 a universal character ; nor had they attempted to make 
 proselytes among other nations. As Greeks they wor- 
 shipped Zeus and Pallas and Apollo, but it seemed to 
 them perfectly natural that other nations should have 
 deities of their own, that the Egyptians should venerate 
 Osiris and the Thracians Bendis. In their ruder days 
 they were ready to slay the worshippers of strange 
 deities, because the very fact of that worship would prove 
 that they were aliens ; but they would never have consented 
 to admit strangers to a share in their own sacrifices. The 
 Pantheon of the Greeks was a national institution, and 
 as the Greeks forced their way to a prominent place 
 among the nations, so their deities became more powerful 
 and more widely worshipped. But they would never 
 
Chap. XV] The Successors of Alexander. 441 
 
 deign to receive the sacrifice of a barbarian, or to listen 
 to his prayer. Even the clans and the cities of Greece 
 had all their own guardian deities, who were thoroughly 
 identified with the places they protected, and hostile to 
 all strangers and enemies. Indeed to the common people 
 the true object of their worship was the local or civic 
 deity, as embodied in some well-known statue or picture, 
 and the deities of the Olympic circle were little more 
 than abstractions. The object which the uncultivated 
 people of Phigaleia really venerated was the black De- 
 meter with the horse's head ; and the mob of Ephesus 
 implicitly trusted for the defence of their persons and 
 their city to the barbarous many-breasted figure which 
 stood in their great temple. The more cultivated classes 
 of course saw the deity behind the statue, and for them 
 the Pantheon which Homer and Hesiod had formed was 
 a national institution, but even they would not see what 
 barbarians had to do with it. 
 
 In the course of the Peloponnesian War Greek religion 
 began to lose its hold on the Greeks. This was partly 
 the work of the sophists and philosophers, who sought 
 more lofty and moral views of Deity than were furnished 
 by the tales of popular mythology. Still more it re- 
 sulted from growing materialism among the people, who 
 saw more and more of their immediate and physical 
 needs, and less and less of the underlying- spiritual ele- 
 ments in life. But though philosophy and materialism 
 had made the religion of Hellas paler and feebler, they 
 had not altered its nature or expanded it. It still re- 
 mained essentially national, almost tribal. When, there- 
 fore, Greeks and Macedonians suddenly found themselves 
 masters of the nations of the East, and in close contact 
 with a hundred forms of religion, an extraordinary and 
 rapid change took place in their religious ideas. 
 
 In religion, as in other matters, Egypt set to the world 
 
44 2 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XV. 
 
 an example of prompt fusion of the ideas of Greeks 
 and natives. To Ptolemy Soter, when the new city of 
 Alexandria was just rising, there appeared in a vision a 
 divine form, which bade the king fetch the image of his 
 divinity from Pontus. The Egyptian priests could not 
 interpret the dream, but the Eumolpid priest, Timotheus 
 of Eleusis, who was then at Alexandria, after hearing 
 the king's description of his visitant, declared him to be 
 a half-Greek deity worshipped at the city of Sinope 
 under the name of Sarapis. An embassy was de- 
 spatched to Delphi, and the oracle of Apollo com- 
 manded that they should act upon the vision. With great 
 pomp, and of course in the midst of supernatural mani- 
 festations, the image of Sarapis was solemnly conducted 
 from Sinope to Alexandria. Who or what Sarapis was 
 originally has been much disputed ; all that is certain 
 is that he was in a special sense the deity of the 
 heavens above and of the future life. The Egyptians at 
 once saw in him a form of their national deity Osiris, 
 and, as he had left behind at Sinope the goddess who 
 was there his consort, they associated Isis with his wor- 
 ship. The Greeks identified the new god sometimes 
 with Zeus and sometimes with Hades or Pluto. In the 
 splendid temple which was erected to receive the statue 
 from Sinope, both nationalities could meet in a common 
 worship. It is known that Alexander the Great in his 
 last illness had sent to inquire at the temple of Sarapis 
 as to his chances of recovery, and it may be suspected 
 that the dream of Ptolemy, who was a real statesman, 
 was a politic invention. If so, no imposture was ever 
 more successful. Sarapis perfectly represented the new 
 Egypt, and with his Egyptian consort he received as a 
 marriage-portion all the arcana of the sacred lore. Greek- 
 philosophy stepped in to adapt the new religion to the 
 tastes of the educated classes. The cultus of Sarapis 
 
Chap. XV.] The Successors of A lexander. 443 
 
 and Isis spread rapidly over Egypt, and thence through 
 Asia Minor and Greece. 
 
 In fact that cultus supplied one of the great needs of 
 the Hellenistic world. The decay of civic life and the 
 disruption of family ties threw at this time greater stress 
 on the personal and individual ; Greek men for the first 
 time began to feel the need of a personal religion. 
 Hitherto processions and sacrifices had belonged to the 
 community, and had been the expression of its common 
 life ; now they were burdened with personal wants and 
 prayers. And the more disorganised the old framework 
 of society became, the more stress did hope and imagina- 
 tion lay upon the future life. But the religion of the 
 Egyptians had always been much occupied with the 
 next world, and in its new form it offered to all who 
 accepted the guardianship and guidance of Sarapis and 
 his consort a safe path amid the perils which attended 
 on death and a happy future in the land of spirits. It 
 also appealed to men and women one by one, drawing 
 its votaries from the midst of cities and of families. No 
 doubt it was mixed with much that was merely cere- 
 monious and much that was superstitious, yet history 
 justifies us in considering it as a forerunner of Chris- 
 tianity, for which it prepared the way, and to which at 
 a later time it became so formidable a rival. The his- 
 tory of art quite confirms this view. The face of the 
 Hellenic Zeus becomes more spiritual, mild, and mys- 
 terious in that of Sarapis. 
 
 With regard to the religions of other Eastern countries 
 we have less definite information than in the case of 
 Egypt. But it would appear that other ancient systems 
 of belief underwent a change, and appeared in a new 
 form under the influence of Hellenism. The Phrygian 
 races in Asia Minor had long worshipped Cybele, a 
 deity of the moon and of the rude powers of nature. 
 
444 Neiv Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. xy. 
 
 Her worship had spread among the Greeks, who had 
 identified her with the Rhea of their own mythology. 
 That worship suited the new times. It offered to the 
 vulgar gay shows and imposing ceremonies, to the ex- 
 citable enthusiastic rites in which religious and sensuous 
 excitement were strangely blended, while the sceptic 
 could imagine that in adoring the mother of the gods 
 he was only worshipping the mysterious powers of 
 Nature. The cult spread rapidly through the Greek 
 world, and during the Hannibalic wars the Romans sent 
 for the statue of Cybele from her temple at Pessinus, in 
 Phrygia, and made her a home in the Eternal City. Of 
 a similar character to the worship of Cybele was that of 
 Mithras, a deity brought into prominence by the contact 
 of the primitive sun-worship of the Persians with Hel- 
 lenistic influence. In Syria Mithras, and in Asia Minor 
 Cybele, offered a common worship to Greek and, bar- 
 barian, and largely stimulated the fusion of races. 
 
 We have already mentioned that the Greek invaders 
 found in the Cabul valley traditions of heroic conquerors, 
 whom they at once identified with the Bacchus and 
 Heracles of their own mythology. The people of the 
 place at once accepted an identification which placed 
 them, as descended from the followers of Bacchus, on a 
 footing of cousinship with the Greeks. These two 
 heroes, together with Zeus and Pallas, the special- 
 guardian deities of Alexander, were singled out for 
 special devotion by the Greeks of the far East, and 
 adopted by the nations round them. Even the Parthians 
 and the barbarous Sacae who destroyed eventually 
 the Greek cities of India incorporated these deities in 
 their very eclectic Pantheons. On gold coins of the 
 Scythic kings of the Panjab we find the names and the 
 figures of Heracles and Sarapis beside those of Varuna 
 and Siva, of Mithras and of Buddha. The worship of 
 
CiiAr. xv.] The Successors of A lexander. 445 
 
 Dionysus in particular, being fitted by its enthusiastic 
 character, and the orgies which adhered to it from its 
 Thracian origin, to rival the religion of Cybele herself, 
 spread rapidly among the native races of Asia, and then 
 returned in altered and Asiatic shape to Greece and the 
 West. The Dionysiac festivals passed into Italy, and 
 appeared to the Romans so fatal to morality and de- 
 cency that the senate, in 186 B.C., passed a stringent 
 decree forbidding them, and they were put down, not 
 without much bloodshed. 
 
 In the cities newly founded by the successors of Alex- 
 ander these new deities found abundant welcome and 
 crowds of votaries. But not to the exclusion of the 
 older Greek gods. The troops settled in a particular 
 city usually came from the same town or district in 
 Greece or Macedon. They often gave to their new 
 home the name of the old, whence names such as 
 Edessa, Cyrrhus, and Chalcis were not rare in Syria 
 and Asia Minor. And they often transplanted with 
 them the guardian deity of their ancestral city, Zeus or 
 Apollo or Artemis, who became their protector and 
 friend amid their new surroundings. The festal pro- 
 cessions and ceremonies migrated with the deity. In 
 particular, we know, from the testimony of coins and 
 inscriptions, that in a large number of the cities of the 
 Hellenistic Asiatics games resembling the Pythia and 
 Nemea of Hellas were held at stated intervals, and 
 occupied a prominent place in the energies of the 
 people. Whether the competitors had to establish some 
 claim to Hellenic parentage we know not, but in any 
 case the crowds of spectators must have been mixed ; 
 and before all were held up the ideals of Greek athletic 
 training and physical beauty. To the effeminate Asiatics 
 there must have come on such occasions quite a revela- 
 tion of manliness and simplicity. 
 
446 New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. xy. 
 
 Into Greece proper, in return for her population which 
 flowed out, there flowed in a crowd of foreign deities. 
 Isis was especially welcomed at Athens, where she found 
 many votaries. In every cult the more mysterious ele- 
 ments were made more of, and the brighter and more 
 materialistic side passed by. Old statues which had 
 fallen somewhat into contempt in the days of Pheidias 
 and Praxiteles were restored to their places and received 
 extreme veneration, not as beautiful, but as old and 
 strange. On the coins of the previous period the re- 
 presentations of deities had been always the best that 
 the die-cutter could frame, taking as his models the 
 finest contemporary sculpture ; but henceforth we often 
 find on them strange, uncouth figures, remnants of a 
 period of struggling early art, like the Apollo at Amy- 
 clae, or the Hera of Samos. 
 
 At the same time the recognized civic cults, with their 
 ancient temples, their hereditary orders of priesthood, 
 their orthodox sacrifices and processions, grew more and 
 more distasteful to the many, and the desire for some- 
 thing more exciting spread further and further. There 
 had been, even before the Macedonian age, among the 
 Greeks societies called erani or thiasi, voluntary associa- 
 tions established by the concert of individuals for the 
 worship of foreign deities. These dissenting sects, if we 
 may so term them, had a fund, supplied by the contribu- 
 tions of the members. They erected their own shrines, 
 and elected their own priests and priestesses. The state 
 looked with dislike and contempt on these societies, and 
 their usual members were slaves and women. Under 
 their auspices Sabazius and Cybele had become already 
 domiciled at Athens. But after the time of Alexander 
 the erani came forth from their lurking-places, and were 
 an important element in Greek society. In the open 
 streets might be seen processions in honour of the 
 
Chap. XV.] The Successors of Alexander. 447 
 
 deities of Asia and Egypt, Atys and Mithras and An- 
 ubis, and the respectable burghers frequently found to 
 their horror that their trusted slaves, nay, their wives 
 and daughters, were constant attendants at the secret 
 rites which characterised the meetings of the crani. We 
 are told that those rites were disgraced with debauchery 
 and the vilest excesses ; it may probably have been so, 
 but we must remember that similar tales were told of 
 the sacred meetings of the early Christians. Certainly 
 much charlatanry and imposture hid under the mask of 
 the foreign religions. Their priests boldly claimed a 
 knowledge of the future. Under the influence of a 
 frantic religious excitement, into which they worked 
 themselves in the nominal worship of their deity, they 
 uttered broken sentences in reply to the questions of 
 their [votaries, sentences which these latter accepted as 
 the oracles of supernatural knowledge. And they pro- 
 fessed to cure the diseases of those who applied to them 
 by throwing them into a similar state of frenzy. 
 
 Those elements in the recognized Greek religions 
 which lent themselves to such a transformation became 
 more and more transfigured into the likeness of the 
 Asiatic enthusiasms. The mysteries of Eleusis lost 
 their sobriety ; mysterious cults like that of Tropho- 
 nius attracted increasing crowds, and the temples of 
 Asclepius were filled with votaries hoping for the 
 personal appearance and inspiration of the healing 
 deity. 
 
 We need say little or nothing of the history of philo- 
 sophy during the Hellenistic period, because this is a 
 subject which has not been neglected like most of the 
 phases of later Greek life. Mr. Grote remarks that, at 
 the point where he closes his work, philosophy alone 
 of all the productions of Greek activity has life in it 
 and a career before it. All historians of philosophy 
 
44§ New CJiapters in Greek History. [Chap. XV. 
 
 spare a few pages to the successors of Plato and Aris- 
 totle, though the understanding of them is somewhat 
 marred by the incomplete idea usually possessed of 
 their surroundings. The fact is that the same change 
 came over philosophy at this period as came over re- 
 ligion and morality, a change which may be expressed 
 in its most general form when we say that the in- 
 dividual and moral point of view is substituted for the 
 civic. With Plato and Aristotle a man is first a citizen 
 and then an individual ; with their successors he is a 
 human being first, and a citizen only in the second place. 
 His relation to his city is eclipsed by his relations to 
 pleasure, to virtue, and to the order of the universe. 
 
 The most complete sceptic of antiquity, Pyrrho, is 
 said to have travelled to India in the train of Alex- 
 ander, and to have conversed with the Indian Gymno- 
 sophists. The story is characteristic. On the impulsive 
 nature of a Greek, the reserve and self-containment of 
 the Brahmin would produce a great effect, and the 
 entire newness of the ideas held by him as to truth and 
 falsehood, and even as to right and wrong, might easily 
 lead an admirer, if not to adopt these ideas, at least 
 to lose all belief in his own. Thousands of Greeks, 
 when they found the best and noblest of the Asiatics 
 differing from their own traditional views of morality, 
 must have hastily leapt to the conclusion that morality 
 is a matter of pure convention ; that right and wrong 
 vary in various countries, and exist in the fancies of 
 men rather than in the relations of things. There is 
 but a step from the belief that all religions are true 
 to the belief that all religions are false, and in philo- 
 sophy as in religion, the experience of mankind may 
 lead either to large-minded toleration or to complete 
 scepticism. 
 
 In the intellectual life of Athens there was still left 
 
 
Chap. XV.] The Successors of Alexander. 449 
 
 vitality enough to formulate the two most complete ex- 
 pressions of the ethical ideas of the times, the doctrines 
 of the Stoics and the Epicureans, towards one or the 
 other of which all educated minds from that day to 
 this have been drawn. No doubt our knowledge of 
 these doctrines, being largely drawn from the Latin 
 writers and their Greek contemporaries, is somewhat 
 coloured and unjust. With the Romans a system of philo- 
 sophy was considered mainly in its bearing upon conduct, 
 whence the ethical elements in Stoicism and Epicu- 
 reanism have been by their Roman adherents so thrust 
 into the foreground, that we have almost lost sight of 
 the intellectual elements, which can have had little less 
 importance in the eyes of the Greeks. Notwithstanding, 
 the rise of the two philosophies must be held to mark 
 a new era in the history of thought, an era when the 
 importance of conduct was for the first time recognized 
 by the Greeks. 
 
 It is often observed that the ancient Greeks were 
 more modern than our own ancestors of the Middle 
 Ages. But it is less generally recognized how far more 
 modern than the Greeks of Pericles were the Greeks 
 of Aratus. In very many respects the age of Hellenism 
 and our own age present remarkable similarity. In 
 both there appears a sudden increase in the power over 
 
 i material nature, arising alike from the greater accessi- 
 bility of all parts of the world and from the rapid 
 development of the sciences which act upon the physi- 
 cal forces of the world. In both this spread of science 
 and power acts upon religion with a dissolving and, if 
 we may so speak, centrifugal force, driving some men 
 to take refuge in the most conservative forms of faith, 
 some to fly to new creeds and superstitions, some to 
 
 I drift into unmeasured scepticism. In both the facility 
 of moving from place to place, and finding a distant 
 
 2 g 
 

 450 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XV. 
 
 home, tends to dissolve the closeness of civic and family- 
 life, and to make the individual rather than the family 
 or the city the unit of social life. And in the family 
 relations, in the character of individuals, in the state 
 of morality, in the condition of art, we find at both 
 periods similar results from the similar causes we have 
 mentioned. 
 
 It is well known how brilliant an assembly of scientific 
 and learned men the first two Ptolemies assembled at 
 Alexandria. At the Museum Euclid was professor of 
 mathematics ; Hipparchus and Eratosthenes made won- 
 derful progress in the science of astronomy ; Herophilus 
 and Erasistratus taught medicine and anatomy. The 
 king was ready to welcome any traveller who had infor 
 mation to give, and his emissaries penetrated India and 
 Ethiopia in eager search for new facts or commercial 
 openings. Astronomers, geographers, grammarians, his- 
 torians, flocked to the Egyptian court, and their mutual 
 friction produced in scientific matters a sharp and critical 
 spirit such as science loves. Nor were there lacking 
 engineers eager to turn the amassed knowledge to 
 account. It is true that much of their ingenuity was 
 employed for purposes of scientific destruction, as in 
 the case of the wonderful engines which Demetrius 
 Poliorcetes employed in vain against the Rhodians, and 
 of the enormous war-galleys which the Kings of Egypt 
 constructed. Nevertheless much progress was made in 
 more peaceful arts. Some of the inventions of Archi- 
 medes were of a character to make toil easier all over 
 the world. In the construction of cities a vast improve- 
 ment took place : wide and paved streets, colonnades, 
 parks, convenient agoras, took the place of the fortuitous 
 collections of hovels which had previously been called 
 cities. Great roads, artificial havens, and canals made 
 communication easier between town and town, and agrii 
 
chap. XV.] The Successors of Alexander. 451 
 
 culture received an impulse from the importation of new 
 seeds from the East. 
 
 The sudden wealth of the Greeks and the sudden 
 increase in their power over material nature could not 
 but very much increase the ease and luxury of their , 
 lives. The grandees began to erect for themselves 
 splendid palaces filled with all the richest produce of 
 East and West, Etruscan bronzes and Attic pottery, 
 Babylonian carpets and Coan curtains. The best artists 
 painted their walls ; their courts were adorned with the 
 statues of great sculptors ; their gold and silver vessels 
 were masterpieces of toreutic art. Soft couches and 
 clothes of most delicate fabric took the place of the 
 simple coverlets and coarse cloaks of the heroes of 
 Marathon. The new Greeks ever went about smelling 
 of sweet unguents, and the use of paint for the face and 
 false hair was not confined to the female sex. The 
 poorer citizens followed the example of luxury as best 
 they might, the bounds being set by their poverty and 
 not their will. In many parts of Greece comfortable 
 inns arose at intervals on the chief routes for the accom- 
 modation of travellers, who were not now contented with 
 a roof and some straw. The soldier, instead of march- 
 ing barefoot like Socrates and Agesilaus, carried with 
 him a train of camp-followers of both sexes, and sub- 
 mitted to hardship only in the battle-field. Of course 
 this luxury was more marked and notable among the 
 Asiatic Greeks, but it affected the tone of all Hellenes 
 just as surely as American customs spread into our 
 colonies and affect ourselves. And with luxury there 
 went, as always, laxity in morals and a proneness to 
 the more sensual forms of vice. Their greater fineness 
 of organization and better taste kept the Greeks at their 
 J worst from ever falling into the bestial sensuality of 
 their Roman imitators ; but there can be no doubt that 
 
 </ 
 
452 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XV 
 
 in the Hellenistic age they carried a good many old 
 Hellenic vices to a far higher pitch of degraded refine- 
 ment, and adopted other vices from the conquered 
 nations. Murder became extremely common when times 
 were unsettled, and even the violation of temples was 
 no longer rare. These are the blots which are so 
 obvious on the period, and which too often dispose the 
 reader to wish to know no more about it. Yet such a 
 judgment is historically unsound. A time when vice 
 lies everywhere on the surface may be as important to 
 the student of history as a person suffering from a 
 chronic disease may be to the physiologist, and in both 
 cases the defect may be accompanied by overflowing 
 force and vitality in another direction. The reason of 
 the general profligacy, and at the same time that which 
 above all other things makes the Hellenistic Greeks 
 seem modern to us, is the rise and growth among them 
 of sentiment or sentimentality, which is nearly always 
 the result of leisure and of comfortable surroundings. 
 Sentiment may be said to bear the same relation to 
 feeling which imagination bears to fact. When a nation, 
 standing on a high level of civilization, suddenly feels a 
 lightening of the material cares of life, the energy of 
 feelings no longer required in the daily struggle is 
 turned into more fanciful channels, and goes out towards 
 the distant and the imagined. And the introduction of 
 imagination makes good men better and bad men worse, 
 so that the extremes of morality are farther apart than 
 in simpler times. The same age produces Domitian and 
 Trajan, Borgia and Savonarola. Such was the case with 
 the Greeks of the age after Alexander. Cleanthcs and 
 other early Stoics advanced above the previous level of 
 morality, and it would be difficult to find a j lister ruler 
 than the first Ptolemy, a nobler enthusiast than the 
 martyr Agis, or a grander woman of the political class 
 
 
Chap. XV.] The Successors of Alexander. 453 
 
 than his wife Agiatis. But on the other hand a great 
 number of men and women, including the greater part 
 of those princes and princesses of whom alone history- 
 speaks, were cruel and treacherous, dead to natural feel- 
 ing, and prone to hideous vices. But if the bulk of the 
 people had followed the example of their leaders they 
 could never have prospered as they did. And certainly 
 any who were ambitious to excel in virtue might now 
 find opportunities far greater than before. This general 
 enlargement of the Greek horizon is well exhibited in 
 a passage of Droysen, which we cannot do better than 
 transcribe : — 
 
 " In taking a general survey of the time we must not 
 forget amid the gloomy pictures of fratricidal wars, storm- 
 ing of towns, tyrannous violence, and the profligacy of 
 courts, to cast an eye on the brighter side, the splendour 
 of numberless blooming cities, the luxury of the most 
 varied productions of art and manufacture, the thousand 
 new enjoyments with which life is now adorned and 
 enriched, among them those nobler ones ministered by 
 the growing and fertile spread of a literature alike taste- 
 ful and many-sided. And this all spreading over the 
 wide regions of Hellenism and binding them together. 
 Think of the crowds of Dionysiac artists and their 
 joyous wandering life, the festivals and games of old 
 and new Greek cities even in the far East, to which 
 are gathered together from afar festive spectators in 
 common worship. As far as the colonies on the Indus 
 and Jaxartes, the Greek has kinsmen and finds country- 
 men ; the merchant seeks on the Chinese frontier wares 
 for the market of Puteoli and Massilia, and the bold 
 Aetolian seeks his fortune on the Ganges or at Meroe. 
 Scientific men explore the distant, the past, the wonders 
 of nature ; for the first time an educated research lays 
 open the ages gone by, the courses of the stars, the 
 
454 Neii' Chapters i)i Greek History. [Chap. XV. 
 
 language and literature of new peoples, whom of old 
 the Greeks in their pride despised as barbarians, looking 
 in stolid ignorance on their ancient monuments. In 
 the fixed lights of the starry heavens, science finds for 
 the first time means for measuring the earth, whose 
 distances are now known, and whose great forms are 
 surveyed and ordered. Science orders into system the 
 marvellous traditions of the Babylonians, Egyptians, 
 and Indians, and strives from a comparison of them 
 to gain new results. All these streams of civiliza- 
 tion, some subdued, some still raging and unbounded, 
 are now united in the cauldron of Hellenistic culture 
 and science, and preserved to history for all future 
 time." 
 
 In days when politics were the primary concern of 
 the Greek citizen, domestic life formed only the back- 
 ground of his existence, and occupied but a moderate 
 part of his attention. But in Hellenistic times domestic 
 life occupies a place by far more prominent, and the 
 consequence is a great change in the family ties. The 
 relation between father and son partakes less of autho- 
 rity and more of friendship. We should scarcely find, 
 before Alexander's time, so charming and cordial rela- 
 tions between father and son as existed between the 
 elder Antigonus and Demetrius, or between the first 
 Seleucus and Antiochus. Both of the young princes we 
 have named shared the thrones of their fathers ; Antiochus 
 received at the hand of his father not only a kingdom 
 but even, as a wife, his own young step-mother, of whom 
 he was passionately enamoured. The position of women 
 also changed unmistakably, and on the whole improved. 
 There were in Syria and Egypt princesses, who some- 
 times became queens, and occupied in the world of 
 Greek society such a position as women had never 
 before held. A number of cities, Laodicea, Berenice, 
 
Chap. XV.] The Successors of Alexander. 455 
 
 Apamea, Arsinoe, and the rest, were named after them. 
 The respect which they exacted tended to raise their 
 whole sex. In the laxity of the time a position scarcely 
 inferior to that of queens was occupied by the leading 
 hetaerae, who disposed of cities and made wars by the 
 favour of their admirers. Lamia exacted tribute on her 
 own account from the rich burghers of Athens, Glycera 
 required those who approached her to prostrate them- 
 selves in the Oriental fashion, to Pythionice a temple 
 and altar were erected at Athens as to an impersona- 
 tion of Aphrodite. The splendid success of these female 
 soldiers of fortune caused a host of the most able Greek 
 women, even the daughters of citizens, to follow in their 
 steps. 
 
 The best of these hetaerae were, if we may trust 
 Athenaeus, sufficiently disreputable, yet it can hardly 
 be doubted that their influence on the whole raised the 
 position of their sex. Professor Helbig has well pointed 
 out that it is in the Macedonian period of Greek his- 
 tory that we find the beginnings of gallantry between 
 the sexes in the modern sense of the word. Berenice, 
 wife of the first Ptolemy, had a regular following of 
 poets who were ever singing her praises ; the hair of 
 her younger namesake was by a conspiracy of astrono- 
 mers and poets raised to heaven, and gave its name to 
 a constellation. Theocritus sends to the wife of Nicias 
 at Miletus a spindle as a present, accompanied by a set 
 of verses. The rude savage Polyphemus becomes in the 
 Idyl of Theocritus a sentimental lover, who longs to 
 kiss the white hand of his mistress Galateia, and is so 
 far advanced in the lore of courtship, that when the lady 
 makes advances by pelting him with apples he pretends 
 not to see, in order to rouse her love by neglect. It 
 would appear that flattery and attention on the part of 
 men aroused in women all the arts of coquetry. Gallantry 
 
456 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XV. 
 
 on the one hand and coquetry on the other may not 
 be the highest form of sexual relations, but they indi- 
 cate an advance from the time when women were either 
 household drudges or slaves kept for the indulgence 
 of appetite. According to Pericles and his contem- 
 poraries, all outside the walls of her house should 
 be a closed world to a woman ; but we find Phila, 
 wife of Demetrius Poliorcetes, undertaking a diplomatic 
 mission on behalf of her husband ; and at Alexandria 
 we hear of female poets and painters, and even a 
 woman, Histiaea, who writes a learned topographical 
 commentary on the Iliad. How much liberty the wives 
 of the citizens of Alexandria enjoyed appears from the 
 Idyl of Theocritus, which represents Gorgo and Praxinoe 
 as going, attended only by a maid, to the festival of 
 Adonis, exchanging lively banter with the passers-by, 
 and in a crush accepting the protection of a friendly 
 stranger. 
 
 It will probably occur to the reader that our remarks 
 as to the altered status of women are not borne out 
 fully by what remains of the new Attic comedy. This 
 is to some extent the case ; the change took place 
 earliest in the great cities of Asia and Egypt ; perhaps 
 latest of all in Athens, where a vast mass of feeling and 
 tradition had to be encountered. Cultivated men of 
 the world, like Menander and Philemon, did not concern 
 themselves much with new movements in society, unless 
 they offered them a chance for ridicule. But they seem 
 to have violently attacked the growth of Oriental super- 
 stitions, and, if we knew more of their works, we might 
 find that some of the shafts of their ridicule were directed 
 against innovating women. 
 
 It is well pointed out by Hclbig that one circumstance 
 in which we may trace the growing sentiment of the 
 asre is the rise of a love of nature of a character new 
 
Chap. XV.] The Successors of Alexander. 457 
 
 to the Hellenic mind. As long as the Greeks lived in 
 the full enjoyment of their own beautiful country, their 
 love for the face of nature was a feeling which existed, 
 but of which they were scarcely conscious ; but when 
 they were cooped up in great cities in the plains of Asia 
 and Africa, that love became a sentiment and a longing. 
 Their desire for nature, being no longer satisfied with 
 daily enjoyment, led them to resort to the practice of 
 forming artificial parks, in which the scattered beauties 
 of nature were gathered as it were into a nosegay. Such 
 practice was not new in Asia, where the great kings of 
 Babylon and Persia had long ago stilled the same want 
 in the same manner, but it was new to Hellenes. Antioch 
 on the Orontes became celebrated for its splendid park, 
 Alexandria was full of open squares, and the west end 
 of the city of detached houses and pleasant gardens. 
 The same taste may be traced in the contemporary 
 poetry, more especially in that of Theocritus, and even 
 in the painting of contemporary vases, in which land- 
 scapes begin to appear, not quite conventionally treated, 
 but showing touches fresh from nature. Kindred to this 
 is the love of hunting, which is far more prominent 
 among the Successors of Alexander than in the previous 
 age. 
 
 With the sentiment for nature realism in art goes 
 naturally. In the statues of the school of Lysippus the 
 portrayal of the different parts of the body is complete ; 
 there is a careful rendering of muscles, sinews, veins, and 
 fat. Lysistratus, the brother of Lysippus, was the first 
 to take moulds of the faces which he intended to re- 
 present. The portraits of the time before Alexander 
 are treated ideally, and individual traits smoothed down. 
 Even of Alexander himself we possess no representation 
 which is not very highly idealized ; but of the Greek 
 princes who succeeded him we possess a gallery of 
 
 2 H 
 
45 8 New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. XV. 
 
 portraits, in which every individual character is brought 
 into the strongest relief, sometimes, one would think, 
 even exaggerated. Of the pictures of the same period 
 we have descriptions which show that they were extremely 
 realistic. Thus we are told that in the picture of Apelles, 
 which represented Alexander holding a thunderbolt, the 
 hand and the thunderbolt seemed to stand out from the 
 picture. All sorts of new subjects were chosen, such as 
 a Dutch painter might have envied ; Methe drinking out 
 of a glass through which her face showed ; Aphrodite 
 looking into the shield of Ares and seeing the reflection 
 of her own form. When the Greek artists- of the fifth cen- 
 tury had to represent Persians or Amazons, they could 
 only indicate their nationality by a modification of 
 dress ; the bodily forms remained the same ; but when the 
 sculptors of Pergamus were called on to represent their 
 king's victories over the Gauls, they proceeded in a very 
 different manner. Their study of nature and knowledge 
 of anatomy enabled them to see that the frame of the 
 northern barbarians was of ruder and less symmetrical 
 build than that of the Greeks, and led them to supply 
 to art quite a new series of bodily shapes. The same 
 truth to nature is clear in the terra-cottas of the period, 
 of which a large number have reached England from 
 Tanagra in Boeotia. 
 
 There are many more phases of Hellenistic life over 
 which we would gladly linger. We have not yet said 
 a word about the relations of the Jews to the successors 
 of Alexander, and the partial subjugation of their spirit 
 by that of the Hellenes. We have not touched on the 
 history of the Greek cities of Italy and Sicily, or on 
 the immense influence exercised by Hellenism on Rome. 
 These and many other such matters we must pass by 
 in silence. Perhaps it was rash to attempt to compress 
 into a short paper a statement of the leading charac- 
 
Chap. XV.] 
 
 The Successors of A lex cinder. 
 
 459 
 
 teristics of all the eastern world for a period of two or 
 three centuries. Our only justification is the desire to 
 call more general attention to a period of history, with 
 regard to which the general level of knowledge is very 
 low, and yet which is remarkably full of instruction for 
 modern times. 
 
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