CLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE. PERIOD OF INTERMEDIATE DARKNESS BEFORE THE DAWN OF HISTORICAL GREECE.

SECTION I.

RETURN OF THE HERAKLEIDS INTO PELOPONNESUS.

 

IN one of the preceding chapters, we have traced the descending series of the two most distinguished mythical families in Peloponnesus,—the Perseids and the Pelopids: we have followed the former down to Heracles and his son Hyllus, and the latter down to Orestes son of Agamemnon, who is left in possession of that ascendancy in the peninsula which had procured for his father the chief command in the Trojan war. The Herakleids, or sons of Heracles, on the other hand, are expelled fugitives, dependent upon foreign aid or protection: Hyllus had perished in single combat with Echemus of Tegea, (connected with the Pelopids by marriage with Timandra sister of Clytemnestra,) and a solemn compact had been made, as the preliminary condition of this duel, that no similar attempt at an invasion of the peninsula should be undertaken by his family for the space of one hundred years. At the end of the stipulated period the attempt was renewed, and with complete success; but its success was owing, not so much to the valor of the invaders as to a powerful body of new allies. The Herakleids reappear as leaders and companions of the Dorians,— a northerly section of the Greek name, who now first come into importance,—poor, indeed, in mythical renown, since they are never noticed in the Iliad, and only once casually mentioned in the Odyssey, as a fraction among the many-tongued inhabitants of Crete,—but destined to form one of the grand and predominant elements throughout all the career of historical Hellas.

Kleodeus—as well as his grandson Aristomachus, were now dead, and the lineage of Heracles was represented by the three sons of the latter,—Temenus, Kresphontes, and Aristodemus, and under their conduct the Dorians penetrated into the peninsula. The mythical account traced back this intimate union between the Herakleids and the Dorians to a prior war, in which Heracles himself had rendered inestimable aid to the Dorian king Egimius, when the latter was hard pressed in a contest with the Lapithae. Heracles defeated the Lapithae, and slew their king Koronus; in return for which Egimius assigned to his deliverer one third part of his whole territory, and adopted Hyllus as his son. Heracles desired that the territory thus made over might be held in reserve until a time should come when his descendants might stand in need of it; and that time did come, after the death of Hyllus. Some of the Herakleids then found shelter at Trikorythus in Attica, but the remainder, turning their steps towards Egimius, solicited from him the allotment of land which had been promised to their valiant progenitor. Egimius received them according to his engagement, and assigned to them the stipulated third portion of his territory and from this moment the Herakleids and Dorians became intimately united together into one social communion. Pamphylus and Dymas, sons of Egimius, accompanied Temenus and his two brothers in their invasion of Peloponnesus.

Such is the mythical incident which professes to explain the origin of those three tribes into which all the Dorian communities were usually divided,—the Hylleis, the Phamphyli, and the Dymanes,—the first of the three including certain particular families, such as that of the kings of Sparta, who bore the special name of Herakleids. Hyllus, Pamphylus, and Dymas are the eponymous heroes of the three Dorian tribes.

DORIAN INVASION OF PELOPONNESUS.

Temenus and his two brothers resolved to attack Peloponnesus, not by a land-march along the Isthmus, such as that in which Hyllus had been previously slain, but by sea, across the narrow inlet between the promontories of Rhium and Antirrhium, with which the Gulf of Corinth commences. According to one story, indeed,—which, however, does not seem to have been known to Herodotus,—they are said to have selected this line of march by the express direction of the Delphian god, who vouchsafed to expound to them an oracle which had been delivered to Hyllus in the ordinary equivocal phraseology. Both the Ozolian Lokrians, and the Etolians, inhabitants of the northern coast of the Gulf of Corinth, were favorable to the enterprise, and the former granted to them a port for building their ships, from which memorable circumstance the port ever afterwards bore the name of Naupaktus. Aristodemus was here struck with lightning and died, leaving twin sons, Eurysthenes and Prokles; but his remaining brothers continued to press the expedition with alacrity.

At this juncture, an Acarnanians prophet named Carnus presented himself in the camps under the inspiration of Apollo, and uttered various predictions: he was, however, so much suspected of treacherous collusion with the Peloponnesians, that Hippotes, great-grandson of Heracles through Phylas and Antiochus, slew him. His death drew upon the army the wrath of Apollo, who destroyed their vessels and punished them with famine. Temenus, in his distress, again applying to the Delphian god for succor and counsel, was made acquainted with the cause of so much suffering, and was directed to banish Hippotes for ten years, to offer expiatory sacrifice for the death of Carnus, and to seek as the guide of the army a man with three eyes. On coming back to Naupaktus, he met the Etolian Oxyltis, son of Andraemon, returning to his country, after a temporary exile in Elis, incurred for homicide: Oxylus had lost one eye, but as he was seated on a horse, the man and the horse together made up the three eyes required, and he was adopted as the guide prescribed by the oracle. Conducted by him, they refitted their ships, landed on the opposite coast of Achaia, and marched to attack Tisamenus, son of Orestes, then the great potentate of the peninsula. A decisive battle was fought, in which the latter was vanquished and slain, and in which Pamphylus and Dymas also perished. This battle made the Dorians so completely masters of the Peloponnesus, that they proceeded to distribute the territory among themselves. The fertile land of Elis had been by previous stipulation reserved for Oxylus, as a recompense for his services as conductor: and it was agreed that the three Herakleids,—Temenus, Kresphontes, and the infant sons of Aristodemus,—should draw lots for Argos, Sparta, and Messene. Argos fell to Temenus, Sparta to the sons of Aristodemus, and Messene to Kresphontes; the latter having secured for himself this prize, the most fertile territory of the three, by the fraud of putting into the vessel out of which the lots were drawn, a lump of clay instead of a stone, whereby the lots of his brothers were drawn out while his own remained inside. Solemn sacrifices were offered by each upon this partition: but as they proceeded to the ceremony, a miraculous sign was seen upon the altar of each of the brothers,—a toad corresponding to Argos, a serpent to Sparta, and a fox to Messene. The prophets, on being consulted, delivered the import of these mysterious indications: the toad, as an animal slow and stationary, was an evidence that the possessor of Argos would not succeed in enterprises beyond the limits of his own city; the serpent denoted the aggressive and formidable future reserved to Sparta; the fox prognosticated a career of wile and deceit to the Messenian.

MYTHICAL BEARING OF THE STORY

Such is the brief account given by Apollodorus of the Return of the Herakleids, at which point we pass, as if touched by the wand of a magician, from mythical to historical Greece. The story bears on the face of it the stamp, not of history, but of legend,— abridged from one or more of the genealogical poets, and presenting such an account as they thought satisfactory, of the first formation of the great Dorian establishments in Peloponnesus, as well as of the semi-Aetolian Elis. Its incidents are so conceived as to have an explanatory bearing on Dorian institutions,—upon the triple division of tribes, characteristic of the Dorians,—upon the origin of the great festival of the Karneia at Sparta, alleged to be celebrated in expiation of the murder of Carnus,—upon the different temper and character of the Dorian states among themselves,—upon the early alliance of the Dorians with Elis, which contributed to give ascendency and vogue to the Olympic games,—upon the reverential dependence of Dorians towards the Delphian oracle,—and, lastly, upon the etymology of the name Naupaktus. If we possessed the narrative more in detail, we should probably find many more examples of coloring of the legendary past suitable to the circumstances of the historical present.

Above all, this legend makes out in favor of the Dorians and their kings a mythical title to their Peloponnesian establishments; Argos, Sparta, and Messene are presented as rightfully belonging, and restored by just retribution, to the children of Heracles. It was to them that Zeus had especially given the territory of Sparta; the Dorians came in as their subjects and auxiliaries. Plato gives a very different version of the legend, but we find that he, too, turns the story in such a manner as to embody a claim of right on the part of the conquerors. According to him, the Achaeans, who returned from the capture of Troy, found among their fellow-citizens at home—the race which had grown up during their absence—an aversion to readmit them: after a fruitless endeavor to make good their rights, they were at last expelled, but not without much contest and bloodshed. A leader named Dorieus, collected all these exiles into one body, and from him they received the name of Dorians instead of Achaeans; then marching back, under the conduct of the Herakleids into Peloponnesus, they recovered by force the possessions from which they had been shut out, and constituted the three Dorian establishments under the separate Herakleid brothers, at Argos, Sparta, and Messene. These three fraternal dynasties were founded upon a scheme of intimate union and sworn alliance one with the other, for the purpose of resisting any attack which might be made upon them from Asia, either by the remaining Trojans or by their allies. Such is the story as Plato believed it; materially different in the incidents related, yet analogous in mythical feeling, and embodying alike the idea of a rightful reconquest. Moreover, the two accounts agree in representing both the entire conquest and the triple division of Dorian Peloponnesus as begun and completed in one and the same enterprise,—so as to constitute one single event, which Plato would probably have called the Return of the Achaeans, but which was commonly known as the Return of the Herakleids. Though this is both inadmissible and inconsistent with other statements which approach close to the historical times, yet it bears every mark of being the primitive view originally presented by the genealogical poets: the broad way in which the incidents are grouped together, was at once easy for the imagination to follow, and impressive to the feelings.

The existence of one legendary account must never be understood as excluding the probability of other accounts, current at the same time, but inconsistent with it: and many such there were as to the first establishment of the Peloponnesian Dorians. In the narrative which I have given from Apollodorus, conceived apparently under the influence of Dorian feelings, Tisamenus is stated to have been slain in the invasion. But according to another narrative, which seems to have found favor with the historical Achaeans on the north coast of Peloponnesus, Tisamenus, though expelled by the invaders from his kingdom of Sparta or Argos, was not slain: he was allowed to retire under agreement, together with a certain portion of his subjects, and he directed his steps towards the coast of Peloponnesus south of the Corinthian Gulf, then occupied by the Ionians. As there were relations, not only of friendship, but of kindred origin, between Ionians and Achaeans, (the eponymous heroes Ion and Achaeus pass for brothers, both sons of Xuthus), Tisamenus solicited from the Ionians admission for himself and his fellow-fugitives into their territory. The leading Ionians declining this request, under the apprehension that Tisamenus might be chosen as sovereign over the whole, the latter accomplished his object by force. After a vehement struggle, the Ionians were vanquished and put to flight, and Tisamenus thus acquired possession of Helike, as well as of the northern coast of the peninsula, westward from Sicyon; which coast continued to be occupied by the Achaeans, and received its name from them, throughout all the historical times. The Ionians retired to Attica, many of them taking part in what is called the Ionic emigration to the coast of Asia Minor, which followed shortly after. Pausanias, indeed, tells us that Tisamenus, having gained a decisive victory over the Ionians, fell in the engagement, and did not himself live to occupy the country of which his troops remained masters. But this story of the death of Tisamenus seems to arise from a desire, on the part of Pausanias, to blend together into one narrative two discrepant legends; at least the historical Achaeans in later times continued to regard Tisamenus himself as having lived and reigned in their territory, and as having left a regal dynasty which lasted down to Ogyges, after whom it was exchanged for a popular government.

The conquest of Temenus, the eldest of the three Herakleids, originally comprehended only Argos and its neighborhood; it was from thence that Troezen, Epidaurus, Egina, Sikyon, and Phlius were successfully occupied by Dorians, the sons and son-in-law of Temenus—Deiphontes, Phalkes, and Keisus—being the leaders under whom this was accomplished. At Sparta, the success of the Dorians was furthered by the treason of a man named Philonomus, who received as recompense the neighboring town and territory of Amyklae. Messenia is said to have submitted without resistance to the dominion of the Herakleid Kresphontes, who established his residence at Stenyklarus: the Pylian Melanthus, then ruler of the country, and representative of the great mythical lineage of Neleus and Nestor, withdrew with his household gods and with a portion of his subjects to Attica.

OXYLUS AND THE ETOLIANS IN ELIS

The only Dorian establishment in the peninsula not directly connected with the triple partition is Corinth, which is said to have been Dorized somewhat later and under another leader, though still a Herakleid. Hippotes—descendant of Heracles in the fourth generation, but not through Hyllus,—had been guilty (as already mentioned) of the murder of Karnus the prophet at the camp of Naupaktus, for which he had been banished and remained in exile for ten years; his son deriving the name of Aletes from the long wanderings endured by the father. At the head of a body of Dorians, Aletes attacked Corinth: he pitched his camp on the Solygeian eminence near the city, and harassed the inhabitants with constant warfare until he compelled them to surrender. Even in the time of the Peloponnesian war, the Corinthians professed to identify the hill on which the camp of these assailants had been placed. The great mythical dynasty of the Sisyphids was expelled, and Aletes became ruler and Ekist of the Dorian city; many of the inhabitants, however, Eolic or Ionic, departed.

The settlement of Oxylus and his Etolians in Elis is said by some to have been accomplished with very little opposition; the leader professing himself to be descended from Etolus, who had been in a previous age banished from Elis into Etelia, and the two people, Epeians and Etolians, acknowledging a kindred origin one with the other. At first, indeed, according to Ephorus, the Epeians appeared in arms, determined to repel the intruders, but at length it was agreed on both sides to abide the issue of a single combat. Degmenus, the champion of the Epeians, confided in the long shot of his bow and arrow; but the Etolian Pyraichmes came provided with his sling,—a weapon then unknown and recently invented by the Etolians,—the range of which was yet longer than that of the bow of his enemy: he thus killed Degmenus, and secured the victory to Oxylus and his followers. According to one statement, the Epeians were expelled; according to another, they fraternized amicably with the new-comers: whatever may be the truth as to this matter, it is certain that their name is from this moment lost, and that they never reappear among the historical elements of Greece: we hear from this time forward only of Eleians, said to be of Etolian descent.

One most important privilege was connected with the possession of the Eleian territory by Oxylus, coupled with his claim on the gratitude of the Dorian kings. The Eleians acquired the administration of the temple at Olympia, which the Achaeans are said to have possessed before them; and in consideration of this sacred function, which subsequently ripened into the celebration of the great Olympic games, their territory was solemnly pronounced to be inviolable. Such was the statement of Ephorus: we find, in this case as in so many others, that the Return of the Herakleids is made to supply a legendary basis for the historical state of things in Peloponnesus.

ACHAEAN LEGENDS ADOPTED DY THE DORIANS

It was the practice of the great Attic tragedians, with rare exceptions, to select the subjects of their composition from the heroic or legendary world, and Euripides had composed three dramas, now lost, on the adventures of Temenus with his daughter Hyrnetho and his son-in-law Deiphontes,—on the family misfortunes of Kresphontes and Merope,—and on the successful valor of Archelaus the son of Temenus in Macedonia, where he was alleged to have first begun the dynasty of the Temenid kings. Of these subjects the first and second were eminently tragical, and the third, relating to Archelaus, appears to have been undertaken by Euripides in compliment to his contemporary sovereign and patron, Archelaus king of Macedonia: we are even told that those exploits which the usual version of the legend ascribed to Temenus, were reported in the drama of Euripides to have been performed by Archelaus his son. Of all the heroes, touched upon by the three Attic tragedians, these Dorian Herakleids stand lowest in the descending genealogical series—one mark amongst others that we are approaching the ground of genuine history.

Though the name Achaeans, as denoting a people, is henceforward confined to the North-Peloponnesian territory specially called Achaia, and to the inhabitants of Achaea, Phthiotis, north of Mount Eta,—and though the great Peloponnesian states always seem to have prided themselves on the title of Dorians—yet we find the kings of Sparta, ever in the historical age taking pains to appropriate to themselves the mythical glories of the Achaeans, and to set themselves forth as the representatives of Agamemnon and Orestes. The Spartan king Kleomenes even went so far as to disavow formally any Dorian parentage; for when the priestess at Athens refused to permit him to sacrifice in the temple of Athene, on the plea that it was peremptorily closed to all Dorians, he replied: "I am no Dorian, but an Achaean." Not only did the Spartan envoy, before Gelon of Syracuse, connect the indefeasible title of his country to the supreme command of the Grecian military force, with the ancient name and lofty prerogatives of Agamemnon—but, in farther pursuance of the same feeling, the Spartans are said to have carried to Sparta both the bones of Orestes from Tegea, and those of Tisamenus from Helike, at the injunction of the Delphian oracle. There is also a story that Oxylus in Elis was directed by the same oracle to invite into his country an Achaean, as Ekist conjointly with himself; and that he called in Agorius, the great-grandson of Orestes, from Helike, with a small number of Achaeans who joined him. The Dorians themselves, being singularly poor in native legends, endeavored, not unnaturally, to decorate themselves with those legendary ornaments which the Achaeans possessed in abundance.

As a consequence of the Dorian establishments in Peloponnesus, several migrations of the preexisting inhabitants are represented as taking place:

1. The Epeians of Elis are either expelled, or merged in the new-comers under Oxylus, and lose their separate name.

2. The Pylians, together with the great heroic family of Neleus and his son Nester, who preside over them, give place to the Dorian establishment of Messenia, and retire to Athens, where their leader, Melanthus, becomes king: a large portion of them take part in the subsequent Ionic emigration.

3. A portion of the Achaeans, under Penthilus and other descendants of Orestes, leave Peloponnesus, and form what is called the Eolic emigration, to Lesbos, the Troad, and the Gulf of Adramyttium: the name Eolians, unknown to Homer, and seemingly never applied to any separate tribe at all, being introduced to designate a large section of the Hellenic name, partly in Greece Proper, and partly in Asia.

4. Another portion of Achaeans expel the Ionians from Achaia, properly so called, in the north of Peloponnesus; the Ionians retiring to Attica.

The Homeric poems describe Achaeans, Pylians, and Epeians, in Peloponnesus, but take no notice of Ionians in the northern district of Achaia: on the contrary, the Catalogue in the Iliad distinctly includes this territory under the dominions of Agamemnon. Though the Catalogue of Homer is not to be regarded as an historical document, fit to be called as evidence for the actual state of Peloponnesus at any prior time, it certainly seems a better authority than the statements advanced by Herodotus and others respecting the occupation of northern Peloponnesus by the Ionians, and their expulsion from it by Tisamenus. In so far as the Catalogue is to be trusted, it negatives the idea of Ionians at Helike, and countenances what seems in itself a more natural supposition—that the historical Achaeans in the north part of Peloponnesus are a small undisturbed remnant of the powerful Achaean population once distributed throughout the peninsula, until it was broken up and partially expelled by the Dorians.

The Homeric legends; unquestionably the oldest which we possess, are adapted to a population of Achaeans, Danaeans, and Argeians, seemingly without any special and recognized names, either aggregate or divisional, other than the name of each separate tribe or kingdom. The post-Homeric legends are adapted to a population classified quite differently—Hellens, distributed into Dorians, Ionians, and Aeolians. If we knew more of the time and circumstances in which these different legends grew up, we should probably be able to explain their discrepancy; but in our present ignorance we can only note the fact.

Whatever difficulty modern criticism may find in regard to the event called “The Return of the Herakleids”, no doubt is expressed about it even by the best historians of antiquity. Thucydides accepts it as a single and literal event, having its assignable date, and carrying at one blow the acquisition of Peloponnesus. The date of it he fixes as eighty years after the capture of Troy. Whether he was the original determiner of this epoch, or copied it from some previous author, we do not know. It must have been fixed according to some computation of generations, for there were no other means accessible—probably by means of the lineage of the Herakleids, which, as belonging to the kings of Sparta, constituted the most public and conspicuous thread of connection between the Grecian real and mythical world, and measured the interval between the Siege of Troy itself and the first recorded Olympiad. Heracles himself represents the generation before the siege, and his son Tlepolemus fights in the besieging army. If we suppose the first generation after Heracles to commence with the beginning of the siege, the fourth generation after him will coincide with the ninetieth year after the same epoch; and therefore, deducting ten years for the duration of the struggle, it will coincide with the eightieth year after the capture of the city; thirty years being reckoned for a generation. The date assigned by Thucydides will thus agree with the distance in which Temenus, Kresphontes, and Aristodemus, stand removed from Heracles. The interval of eighty years, between the capture of Troy and the Return of the Herakleids, appears to have been admitted by Apollodorus and Eratosthenes, and some other professed chronologists of antiquity: but there were different reckonings which also found more or less of support.

 

SECTION II.

MIGRATION OF THESSALIANS AND BEOTIANS.

 

In the same passage in which Thucydides speaks of the Return of the Herakleids, he also marks out the date of another event a little antecedent, which is alleged to have powerfully affected the condition of Northern Greece. “Sixty years after the capture of Troy (he tells us) the Boeotians were driven by the Thessalians from Arne, and migrated into the land then called Kadmeis, but now Boeotia, wherein there had previously dwelt a section of their race, who had contributed the contingent to the Trojan war”."

The expulsion here mentioned, of the Boeotians from Arne “by the Thessalians”, has been construed, with probability, to allude to the immigration of the Thessalians, properly so called, from the Thesprotid in Epirus into Thessaly. That the Thessalians had migrated into Thessaly from the Thesprotid territory, is stated by Herodotus, though he says nothing about time or circumstances. Antiphus and Pheidippus appear in the Homeric Catalogue as commanders of the Grecian contingent from the islands of Kos and Karpathus, on the south-east coast of Asia Minor: they are sons of Thessalus, who is himself the son of Heracles. A legend ran that these two chiefs, in the dispersion which ensued after the victory, had been driven by storms into the Ionian Gulf, and cast upon the coast of Epirus, where they landed and settled at Ephyre in the Thesprotid. It was Thessalus, grandson of Pheidippus, who was reported to have conducted the Thesprotians across the passes of Pindus into Thessaly, to have conquered the fertile central plain of that country, and to have imposed upon it his own name instead of its previous denomination Aeolis.

Whatever we may think of this legend as it stands, the state of Thessaly during the historical ages renders it highly probable that the Thessalians, properly so called, were a body of immigrant conquerors. They appear always as a rude, warlike, violent, and uncivilized race, distinct from their neighbors the Achaeans, the Magnetes, and the Perrhaebians, and holding all the three in tributary dependence: these three tribes stand to them in a relation analogous to that of the Lacedoemonian Perioeki towards Sparta, while the Penestae, who cultivated their lands, are almost an exact parallel of the Helots. Moreover, the low level of taste and intelligence among the Thessalians, as well as certain points of their costume, assimilates them more to Macedonians or Epirots than to Hellens. Their position in Thessaly is in many respects analogous to that of the Spartan Dorians in Peloponnesus, and there seems good reason for concluding that the former, as well as the latter, were originally victorious invaders, though we cannot pretend to determine the time at which the invasion took place. The great family of the Aleuads, and probably other Thessalian families besides, were descendants of Heracles, like the kings of Sparta.

There are no similar historical grounds, in the case of the alleged migration of the Boeotians from Thessaly to Boeotia, to justify a belief in the main fact of the legend, nor were the different legendary stories in harmony one with the other. While the Homeric Epic recognizes the Boeotians in Boeotia, but not in Thessaly, Thucydides records a statement which he had found of their migration from the latter into the former; but in order to escape the necessity of flatly contradicting Homer, he inserts the parenthesis that there had been previously an outlying fraction of Boeotians in Boeotia at the time of the Trojan war, from whom the troops who served with Agamemnon were drawn. Nevertheless, the discrepancy with the Iliad, though less strikingly obvious, is not removed, inasmuch as the Catalogue is unusually copious in enumerating the contingents from Thessaly, without once mentioning Boeotian. Homer distinguishes Orchomenus from Boeotia, and be does not specially notice Thebes in the Catalogue: in other respects his enumeration of the towns coincides pretty well with the ground historically known afterwards under the name of Boeotia.

Pausanias gives us a short sketch of the events which he supposes to have intervened in this section of Greece between the Siege of Troy and the Return of the Herakleids. Peneleos, the leader of the Boeotians at the siege, having been slain by Eurypylus the son of Telephus, Tisamenus, son of Thersander and grandson of Polynikes, acted as their commander, both during the remainder of the siege and after their return. Autesion, his son and successor, became subject to the wrath of the avenging Erinnyes of Laius and Edipus: the oracle directed him to expatriate, and he joined the Dorians. In his place, Damasichthon, son of Opheltas and grandson of Peneleos, became king of the Boeotians: he was succeeded by Ptolemnus, who was himself followed by Xanthus. A war having broken out at that time between the Athenians and Boeotians, Xanthus engaged in single combat with Melanthus son of Andropompus, the champion of Attica, and perished by the cunning of his opponent. After the death of Xanthus, the Boeotians passed from kingship to popular government. As Melanthus was of the lineage of the Neleids, and had migrated from Pylus to Athens in consequence of the successful establishment of the Dorians in Messenia, the duel with Xanthus must have been of course subsequent to the Return of the Herakleids.

MIGRATION OF BOEOTIANS FROM THESSALY.

Here, then, we have a summary of alleged Boeotian history between the Siege of Troy and the Return of the Herakleids, in which no mention is made of the immigration of the mass of Boeotians from Thessaly, and seemingly no possibility left of fitting in so great and capital an incident. The legends followed by Pausanias are at variance with those adopted by Thucydides, but they harmonize much better with Homer.

So deservedly high is the authority of Thucydides, that the migration here distinctly announced by him is commonly set down as an ascertained datum, historically as well as chronologically. But on this occasion it can be shown that he only followed one amongst a variety of discrepant legends, none of which there were any means of verifying.

Pausanias recognized a migration of the Boeotians from Thessaly, in early times anterior to the Trojan war; and the account of Ephorus, as given by Strabo, professed to record a series of changes in the occupants of the country. First, the non-Hellenic Aones and Temmikes, Leleges and Hyantes; next, the Kadmeians, who, after the second siege of Thebes by the Epigoni, were expelled by the Thracians and Pelasgians, and retired into Thessaly, where they joined in communion with the inhabitants of Arne— the whole aggregate being called Boeotians. After the Trojan war, and about the time of the Eolic emigration, these Boeotians returned from Thessaly and reconquered Boeotia, driving out the Thracians and Pelasgians—the former retiring to Parnassus, the latter to Attica. It was on this occasion (he says) that the Minyae of Orchomenus were subdued, and forcibly incorporated with the Boeotians. Ephorus seems to have followed, in the main, the same narrative as Thucydides, about the movement of the Boeotians out of Thessaly; coupling it, however, with several details current as explanatory of proverbs and customs.

The only fact which we make out, independent of these legends, is, that there existed certain homonymies and certain affinities of religious worship, between parts of Boeotia and parts of Thessaly, which appear to indicate a kindred race. A town named Arne, similar in name to the Thessalian, was enumerated in the Boeotian Catalogue of Homer, and antiquaries identified it sometimes with the historical town Charroneia, sometimes with Akraephium. Moreover, there was near the Boeotian Koroneia a river named Kuarius, or Koralius, and a venerable temple dedicated to the Itonian Athene, in the sacred ground of which the Pambeotia, or public council of the Boeotian name, was held; there was also a temple and a river of similar denomination in Thessaly, near to a town called Iton, or Itonus. We may from these circumstances presume a certain ancient kindred between the population of these regions, and such a circumstance is sufficient to explain the generation of legends describing migrations backward and forward, whether true or not in point of fact.

What is most important to remark is, that the stories of Thucydides and Ephorus bring us out of the mythical into the historical Boeotia. Orchomenus is Boeotized, and we hear no more of the once-powerful Minyae: there are no more Kadmeians at Thebes, nor Beotians in Thessaly. The Minyaa and the Kadmeians disappear in the Ionic emigration, which will be presently adverted to. Historical Beotia is now constituted, apparently in its federative league, under the presidency of Thebes, just as we find it in the time of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.

 

 

SECTION III

EMIGRATIONS FROM GREECE TO ASIA AND THE ISLANDS OF THE AEGEAN.

 

To complete the transition of Greece from its mythical to its historical condition, the secession of the races belonging to the former must follow upon the introduction of those belonging to the latter. This is accomplished by means of the Eolic and Ionic migrations.

The presiding chiefs of the Aeolic emigration are the representatives of the heroic lineage of the Pelopids: those of the Ionic emigration belong to the Neleids; and even in what is called the Doric emigration to Thera, the Ekist Theras is not a Dorian but a Kadmeian, the legitimate descendant of Edipus and Kadmus.

The Aeolic, Ionic, and Doric colonies were planted along the western coast of Asia Minor, from the coasts of the Propontis southward down to Lycia (I shall in a future chapter speak more exactly of their boundaries); the Eolic occupying the northern portion, together with the islands of Lesbos and Tenedos; the Doric occupying the southernmost, together with the neighboring islands of Rhodes and Kos; and the Ionic being planted between them, comprehending Chios, Samos, and the Cyclades islands.

1. AEOLIC EMIGRATION.

The Aeolic emigration was conducted by the Pelopids: the original story seems to have been, that Orestes himself was at the head of the first batch of colonists, and this version of the event is still preserved by Pindar and by Hellanikus. But the more current narratives represented the descendants of Orestes as chiefs of the expeditions to Aeolis—his illegitimate son Penthilus, by Erigone daughter of Egisthus, together with Echelatus and Gras, the son and grandson of Penthilus, together with Kleues and Malaus, descendants of Agamemnon through another lineage. According to the account given by Strabo, Orestes began the emigration, but died on his route in Arcadia; his son Penthilus, taking the guidance of the emigrants, conducted them by the long land-journey through Boeotia and Thessaly to Thrace; from whence Archelaus, son of Penthilus, led them across the Hellespont, and settled at Daskylium on the Propontis. Gras, son of Archelaus, crossed over to Lesbos and possessed himself of the island. Kleues and Malaus, conducting another body of Achaeans, were longer on their journey, and lingered a considerable time near Mount Phrikium, in the territory of Lokris; ultimately, however, they passed over by sea to Asia and took possession of Kyme, south of the Gulf of Adramyttium, the most considerable of all the Aeolic cities on the continent. From Lesbos and Kyme, the other less considerable Aeolic towns, spreading over the region of Ida as well as the Troad, and comprehending the island of Tenedas, are said to have derived their origin.

Though there are many differences in the details, the accounts agree in representing these Aeolic settlements as formed by the Achaeans expatriated from Laconia under the guidance of the dispossessed Pelopids. We are told that in their journey through Boeotia they received considerable reinforcements, and Strabo adds that the emigrants started from Aulis, the port from whence Agamemnon departed in the expedition against Troy. He also informs us that they missed their course and experienced many losses from nautical ignorance, but we do not know to what particular incidents he alludes.

2. IONIC EMIGRATION.

The Ionic emigration is described as emanating from and directed by the Athenians, and connects itself with the previous legendary history of Athens, which must therefore be here briefly recapitulated.

The great mythical hero Theseus, of whose military prowess and errant exploits we have spoken in a previous chapter, was still more memorable in the eyes of the Athenians as an internal political reformer. He was supposed to have performed for them the inestimable service of transforming Attica out of many states into one. Each deme, or at least a great many out of the whole number, had before his time enjoyed political independence under its own magistrates and assemblies, acknowledging only a federal union with the rest under the presidency of Athens: by a mixture of conciliation and force, Theseus succeeded in putting down all these separate governments, and bringing them to unite in one political system, centralized at Athens. He is said to have established a constitutional government, retaining for himself a defined power as king, or president, and distributing the people into three classes: Eupatridae, a sort of sacerdotal noblesse; Geomori and Demiurgi, husbandmen and artisans. Having brought these important changes into efficient working, he commemorated them for his posterity by introducing solemn and appropriate festivals. In confirmation of the dominion of Athens over the Megarid territory, he is said farther to have erected a pillar at the extremity of the latter towards the Isthmus, marking the boundary between Peloponnesus and Ionia.

But a revolution so extensive was not consummated without creating much discontent; and Menestheus, the rival of Theseus—the first specimen, as we are told, of an artful demagogue—took advantage of this feeling to assail and undermine him. Theseus had quitted Attica, to accompany and assist his friend Peirithous, in his journey down to the underworld, in order to carry off' the goddess Persephon,—or (as those who were critical in legendary story preferred recounting) in a journey to the residence of Aidoneus, king of the Molossians in Epirus, to carry off his daughter. In this enterprise, Peirithous perished, while Theseus was cast into prison, from whence he was only liberated by the intercession of Heracles. It was during his temporary absence, that the Tyndarids Castor and Pollux invaded Attica for the purpose of recovering their sister Helen, whom Theseus had at a former period taken away from Sparta and deposited at Aphidnae; and the partisans of Menestheus took advantage both of the absence of Theseus and of the calamity which his licentiousness had brought upon the country, to ruin his popularity with the people. When he returned, be found them no longer disposed to endure his dominion, or to continue to him the honors which their previous feelings of gratitude had conferred. Having, therefore, placed his sons under the protection of Elephenor, in Euboea, he sought an asylum with Lykomedes, prince of Scyros, from whom, however, he received nothing but an insidious welcome and a traitorous death.

Menestheus, succeeding to the honors of the expatriated hero, commanded the Athenian troops at the Siege of Troy. But though he survived the capture, he never returned to Athens—different stories being related of the place where he and his companions settled. During this interval, the feelings of the Athenians having changed, they restored the sons of Theseus, who had served at Troy under Elephenor, and had returned unhurt, to the station and functions of their father. The Theseids Demophoon, Oxyntas, Apheidas, and Thymoetes had successively filled this post for the space of about sixty years when the Dorian invaders of Peloponnesus (as has been before related) compelled Melanthus and the Neleid family to abandon their kingdom of Pylus. The refugees found shelter at Athens, where a fortunate adventure soon raised Melanthus to the throne. A war breaking out between the Athenians and Boeotians, respecting the boundary tract of Enoe, the Boeotian king Xanthus challenged Thymoetes to single combat: the latter declining to accept it, Melanthus not only stood forward in his place, but practiced a cunning stratagem with such success as to kill his adversary. He was forthwith chosen king, Thymoetes being constrained to resign .

Melanthus and his son Kodrus reigned for nearly sixty years, during which time large bodies of fugitives, escaping from the recent invaders throughout Greece, were harbored by the Athenians: so that Attica became populous enough to excite the alarm and jealousy of the Peloponnesian Dorians. A powerful Dorian force, under the command of Aletes from Corinth and Althaemenes from Argos, were accordingly dispatched to invade the Athenian territory, in which the Delphian oracle promised them success, provided they abstained from injuring the person of Kodrus. Strict orders were given to the Dorian army that Kodrus should be preserved unhurt; but the oracle had become known among the Athenians, and the generous prince determined to bring death upon himself as a means of salvation to his country. Assuming the disguise of a peasant, he intentionally provoked a quarrel with some of the Dorian troops, who slew him without suspecting his real character. No sooner was this event known, than the Dorian leaders, despairing of success, abandoned their enterprise and evacuated the country. In retiring, however, they retained possession of Megara, where they established permanent settlers, and which became from this moment Dorian—seemingly at first a dependency of Corinth, though it afterwards acquired its freedom and became an autonomous community. This memorable act of devoted patriotism, analogous to that of the daughters of Erechtheus at Athens, and of Menoekeus at Thebes, entitled Kodrus to be ranked among the most splendid characters in Grecian legend.

Kodrus is numbered as the last king of Athens: his descendants were styled Archons, but they held that dignity for life—a practice which prevailed during a long course of years afterwards. Medon and Neileus, his two sons, having quarreled about the succession, the Delphian oracle decided in favor of the former; upon which the latter, affronted at the preference, resolved upon seeking a new home. There were at this moment many dispossessed sections of Greeks, and an adventitious population accumulated in Attica, who were anxious for settlements beyond sea. The expeditions which now set forth to cross the Aegean, chiefly under the conduct of members of the Kodrid family, composed collectively the memorable Ionic Emigration, of which the Ionians, recently expelled from Peloponnesus, formed a part, but, as it would seem, only a small part; for we hear of many quite distinct races, some renowned in legend, who withdraw from Greece amidst this assemblage of colonists. The Kadmeians, the Minyae of Orchomenus, the Abantes of Euboea, the Dryopes; the Molossi, the Phokians, the Boeotians, the Arcadian Pelasgians, and even the Dorians of Epidaurus — are represented as furnishing each a proportion of the crews of these emigrant vessel. Nor were the results unworthy of so mighty a confluence of different races. Not only the Cyclades islands in the Aegean, but the great islands of Samos and Chios, near the Asiatic coast, and ten different cities on the coast of Asia Minor, from Miletus in the south to Phocaea in the north, were founded, and all adopted the Ionic name. Athens was the metropolis or mother city of all of them: Androklus and Neileus, the Ekists of Ephesus and Miletus, and probably other Ekists also, started from the Prytaneium at Athens, with those solemnities, religions and political, which usually marked the departure of a swarm of Grecian colonists.

Other mythical families, besides the heroic lineage of Neleus and Nestor, as represented by the sons of Kodrus, took a leading part in the expedition. Herodotus mentions Lykian chiefs, descendants from Glaukus son of Hippolochus, and Pausanias tells us of Philotas descendant of Peneleos, who went at the head of a body of Thebans: both Glaukus and Peneleos are commemorated in the Iliad. And it is a remarkable fact mentioned by Pausanias (though we do not know on what authority), that the inhabitants of Phocaea,— which was the northernmost city of Ionia on the borders of Eolis, and one of the last founded — consisting mostly of Phokian colonists under the conduct of the Athenians Philogenes and Daemen, were not admitted into the Pan-Ionic Amphiktyony until they consented to choose for themselves chiefs of the Kodrid family. Prokles, the chief who conducted the Ionic emigrants from Epidaurus to Samos, was said to be of the lineage of Ion, son of Xuthus.

Of the twelve Ionic states constituting the Pan-Ionic Amphiktyony—some of them among the greatest cities in Hellas —I shall say no more at present, as I have to treat of them again when I come upon historical ground.

3. DORIC EMIGRATIONS

The Aeolic and Ionic emigrations are thus both presented to us as direct consequences of the event called the Return of the Herakleids: and in like manner the formation of the Dorian Hexapolis in the south-western corner of Asia Minor: Kos, Cnidus, Halicarnassus, and Rhodes, with its three separate cities, as well as the Dorian establishments in Krete, Melos, and Thera, are all traced more or less directly to the same great revolution.

Thera, more especially, has its root in the legendary world. Its Ekist was Theras, a descendant of the heroic lineage of Edipus and Kadmus, and maternal uncle of the young kings of Sparta, Eurysthenes and Prokles, during whose minority he had exercised the regency. On their coming of age, his functions were at an end: but being unable to endure a private station, he determined to put himself at the head of a body of emigrants: many came forward to join him, and the expedition was farther reinforced by a body of interlopers, belonging to the Minyae, of whom the Lacedaemonians were anxious to get rid. These Minyae had arrived in Laconia, not long before, from the island of Lemnos, out of which they had been expelled by the Pelasgian fugitives from Attica. They landed without asking permission, took up their abode and began to “light their fires” on Mount Taygetus. When the Lacedaemonians sent to ask who they were, and wherefore they had come, the Minyae replied that they were sons of the Argonauts who had landed at Lemnos, and that being expelled from their own homes, they thought themselves entitled to solicit an asylum in the territory of their fathers: they asked, withal, to be admitted to share both the lands and the honors of the state. The Lacedaemonians granted the request, chiefly on the ground of a common ancestry— their own great heroes, the Tyndarids, having been enrolled in the crew of the Argo: the Minyae were then introduced as citizens into the tribes, received lots of land, and began to intermarry with the preexisting families. It was not long, however, before they became insolent: they demanded a share in the kingdom (which was the venerated privilege of the Herakleids), and so grossly misconducted themselves in other ways, that the Lacedaemonians resolved to put them to death, and began by casting them into prison. While the Minyae were thus confined, their wives, Spartans by birth, and many of them daughters of the principal men, solicited permission to go in and see them: leave being granted, they made use of the interview to change clothes with their husbands, who thus escaped and fled again to Mount Taygetus. The greater number of them quitted Laconia, and marched to Triphylia, in the western regions of Peloponnesus, from whence they expelled the Paroreatae and the Kaukones, and founded six towns of their own, of which Lepreum was the chief. A certain proportion, however, by permission of the Lacedaemonians, joined Theras, and departed with him to the island of Kalliste, then possessed by Phoenician inhabitants, who were descended from the kinsmen and companions of Kadmus, and who had been left there by that prince, when he came forth in search of Europa, eight generations preceding. Arriving thus among men of kindred lineage with himself, Theras met with a fraternal reception, and the island derived from him the name, under which it is historically known, of Thera.

Such is the foundation-legend of Thera, believed both by the Lacedaemonians and by the Theraeans, and interesting as it brings before us, characteristically as well as vividly, the persons and feelings of the mythical world — the Argonauts, with the Tyndarids as their companions and Minyae as their children. In Lepreum, as in the other towns of Triphylia, the descent from the Minyae of old seems to have been believed in the historical times, and the mention of the river Minyeius in those regions by Homer tended to confirm it. But people were not unanimous as to the legend by which that descent should be made out; while some adopted the story just cited from Herodotus, others imagined that Cloris, who had come from the Minyeian town of Orchomenus as the wife of Neleus to Pylus, had brought with her a body of her countrymen.

These Minyae from Lemnos and Imbros appear again as portions of another narrative respecting the settlement of the colony of Melos. It has already been mentioned, that when the Herakleids and the Dorians invaded Laconia, Philonomus, an Achaean, treacherously betrayed to them the country, for which he received as his recompense the territory of Amyklae. He is said to have peopled this territory by introducing detachments of Minyae; from Lemnos and Imbros, who, in the third generation after the return of the Herakleids, became so discontented and mutinous, that the Lacedaemonians resolved to send them out of the country as emigrants, under their chiefs Polis and Delphos. Taking the direction of Crete, they stopped in their way to land a portion of their colonists on the island of Melos, which remained throughout the historical times a faithful and attached colony of Lacedaemon. On arriving in Crete, they are said to have settled at the town of Gortyn. We find, moreover, that other Dorian establishments, either from Lacedaemon or Argos, were formed in Crete; and Lyktos in particular, is noticed, not only as a colony of Sparta, but as distinguished for the analogy of its laws and customs. It is even said that Crete, immediately after the Trojan war, had been visited by the wrath of the gods, and depopulated by famine and pestilence; and that, in the third generation afterwards, so great was the influx of emigrants, the entire population of the island was renewed, with the exception of the Eteokretes at Polichnae and Praesus.

There were Dorians in Crete in the time of the Odyssey: Homer mentions different languages and different races of men, Eteokretes, Kydones, Dorians, Achaeans, and Pelasgians, as all coexisting in the island, which he describes to be populous and to contain ninety cities. A legend given by Andron, based seemingly upon the statement of Herodotus, that Dorus the son of Hellen had settled in Histiaeotis, ascribed the first introduction of the three last races to Tektaphus son of Dorus—who had led forth from that country a colony of Dorians, Achaeans, and Pelasgians, and had landed in Crete during the reign of the indigenous king Kres. This story of Andron so exactly fits on to the Homeric Catalogue of Cretan inhabitants, that we may reasonably presume it to have been designedly arranged with reference to that Catalogue, so as to afford some plausible account, consistently with the received legendary chronology, how there came to be Dorians in Crete before the Trojan war— the Dorian colonies after the return of the Herakleids being of course long posterior in supposed order of time. To find a leader sufficiently early for his hypothesis, Andron ascends to the primitive Eponymus Dorus, to whose son Tektaphus he ascribes the introduction of a mixed colony of Dorians, Achaeans, and Pelasgians into Crete: these are the exact three races enumerated in the Odyssey, and the king Kres, whom Andron affirms to have been then reigning in the island, represents the Eteokretes and Kydenes in the list of Homer. The story seems to have found favor among native Cretan historians, as it doubtless serves to obviate what would otherwise be a contradiction in the legendary chronology.

Another Dorian emigration from Peloponnesus to Crete, which extended also to Rhodes and Kos, is farther said to have been conducted by Althaemenes, who had been one of the chiefs in the expedition against Attica, in which Krodus perished. This prince, a Herakleid, and third in descent from Temenus, was induced to expatriate by a family quarrel, and conducted a body of Dorian colonists from Argos first to Crete, where some of them remained; but the greater number accompanied him to Rhodes, in which island, after expelling the Karian possessors, he founded the three cities of Lindus, Ialysus, and Kamairus.

It is proper here to add, that the legend of the Rhodian archaeologists respecting their oekist Althaemenes, who was worshipped in the island with heroic honors, was something totally different from the preceding. Althaemenes was a Cretan, son of the king Katreus, and grandson of Minos. An oracle predicted to him that he would one day kill his father: eager to escape so terrible a destiny, he quitted Crete, and conducted a colony to Rhodes, where the famous temple of the Atabyrian Zeus, on the lofty summit of Mount Atabyrum, was ascribed to his foundation, built so as to command a view of Crete. He had been settled on the island for some time, when his father Katreus, anxious again to embrace his only son, followed him from Crete: he landed in Rhodes during the night without being known, and a casual collision took place between his attendants and the islanders. Althaeenes hastened to the shore to assist in repelling the supposed enemies, and in the fray had the misfortune to kill his aged father.

Either the emigrants who accompanied Althaeanes, or some other Dorian colonists afterwards, are reported to have settled at Cnidus, Karpathos, and Halicarnassus. To the last mentioned city, however, Anthes of Troezen is assigned as the oekist: the emigrants who accompanied him were said to have belonged to the Dymanian tribe, one of the three tribes always found in a Doric state: and the city seems to have been characterized as a colony sometimes of Troezen, sometimes of Argos!

We thus have the Aeolic, the Ionic, and the Doric colonial establishments in Asia, all springing out of the legendary age, and all set forth as consequences, direct or indirect, of what is called the Return of the Herakleids, or the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus. According to the received chronology, they are succeeded by a period, supposed to comprise nearly three centuries, which is almost an entire blank, before we reach authentic chronology and the first recorded Olympiad,—and they thus form the concluding events of the mythical world, out of which we now pass into historical Greece, such as it stands at the last-mentioned epoch. It is by these migrations that the parts of the Hellenic aggregate are distributed into the places which they occupy at the dawn of historical daylight,—Dorians, Arcadians, Aetolo-Eleians, and Achaeans, sharing Peloponnesus unequally . among them — Aeolians, Ionians, and Dorians, settled both in the islands of the Aegean and the coast of Asia Minor. The Return of the Herakleids, as well as the three emigrations, Aeolic, Ionic, and Doric, present the legendary explanation, suitable to the feelings and belief of the people, showing how Greece passed from the heroic races who besieged Troy and Thebes, piloted the adventurous Argo, and slew the monstrous boar of Kalydon - to the historical races, differently named and classified, who furnished victors to the Olympic and Pythian games.

A patient and learned French writer, M. Raoul Rochette —who construes all the events of the heroic age, generally speaking, as so much real history, only making allowance for the mistakes and exaggerations of poets — is greatly perplexed by the blank and interruption which this supposed continuous series of history presents, from the Return of the Herakleids down to the beginning of the Olympiads. He cannot explain to himself so long a period of absolute quiescence, after the important incidents and striking adventures of the heroic age; and if there happened nothing worthy of record during this long period—as he presumes, from the fact that nothing has been transmitted—he concludes that this must have arisen from the state of suffering and exhaustion in which previous wars and revolution had left the Greeks: a long interval of complete inaction being required to heal such wounds.

Assuming M. Rochette’s view of the heroic ages to be correct, and reasoning upon the supposition that the adventures ascribed to the Grecian heroes are matters of historical reality, transmitted by tradition from a period of time four centuries before the recorded Olympiads, and only embellished by describing poets — the blank which he here dwells upon is, to say the least of it, embarrassing and unaccountable. It is strange that the stream of tradition, if it had once begun to flow, should (like several of the rivers in Greece) be submerged for two or three centuries and then reappear. But when we make what appears to me the proper distinction between legend and history, it will be seen that a period of blank time between the two is perfectly conformable to the conditions under which the former is generated. It is not the immediate past, but a supposed remote past, which forms the suitable atmosphere of mythical narrative—a past originally quite undetermined in respect to distance from the present, as we see in the Iliad and Odyssey. And even when we come down to the genealogical poets, who affect to give a certain measure of bygone time, and a succession of persons as well as of events, still, the names whom they most delight to honor and upon whose exploits they chiefly expatiate, are those of the ancestral gods and heroes of the tribe and their supposed contemporaries; ancestors separated by a long lineage from the present hearer. The gods and heroes were conceived as removed from him by several generations, and the legendary matter which was grouped around them appeared only the more imposing when exhibited at a respectful distance, beyond the days of father and grandfather, and of all known predecessors. The Odes of Pindar strikingly illustrate this tendency. We thus see how it happened that, between the times assigned to heroic adventure and those of historical record, there existed an intermediate blank, filled with inglorious names; and how, amongst the same society which cared not to remember proceedings of fathers and grandfathers, there circulated much popular and accredited narrative respecting real or supposed ancestors long past and gone. The obscure and barren centuries which immediately precede the first recorded Olympiad, form the natural separation between the legendary return of the Herakleids and the historical wars of Sparta against Messene— between the province of legend, wherein matter of fact (if any there be) is so intimately combined with its accompaniments of fiction, as to be undistinguishable without the aid of extrinsic evidence,—and that of history where some matters of fact can be ascertained, and where a sagacious criticism may be usefully employed in trying to add to their number.

 

SECTION FOUR

APPLICATION OF CHRONOLOGY TO GRECIAN LEGEND.

 

I NEED not repeat, what has already been sufficiently set forth in the preceding pages, that the mass of Grecian incident anterior to 776 BC appears to me not reducible either to history or to chronology, and that any chronological systems which may be applied to it must be essentially uncertified and illusory. It was however chronologised in ancient times, and has continued to be so in modern; and the various schemes employed for this purpose may be found stated and compared proposed in the first volume (the last published) of Mr. Fynes Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici. There were among the Greeks, and there still are among modern scholars, important differences as to the dates of the principal events. Eratosthenes dissented both from Herodotus and from Phanias and Callimachus, while Larcher and Raoul Rochette (who follow Herodotus) stand opposed to O. Müller and to Mr. Clinton. That the reader may have a general conception of the order in which these legendary events were disposed, I transcribe from the Fasti Hellenici a double chronological table, in which the dates are placed in series, from Phoroneus to the Olympiad of Corcebus in BC 776 - in the first column according to the system of Eratosthenes, in the second according to that of Kallimachus.

“The following table (says Mr. Clinton) offers a summary view of the leading periods from Phoroneus to the Olympiad of Coroebus, and exhibits a double series of dates, the one proceeding from the date of Eratosthenes, the other from a date founded on the reduced calculations of Phanias and Callimachus, which strike out fifty-six years from the amount of Eratosthenes. Phanias, as we have seen, omitted fifty-five years between the Return and the registered Olympiads; for so we may understand the account : Callimachus, fifty-six years between the Olympiad in which Coroebus won. The first column of this table exhibits the current years before and after the fall of Troy : in the second column of dates the complete intervals are expressed”.

Wherever chronology is possible, researches such as those of Mr. Clinton, which have conduced so much to the better understanding of the later times of Greece, deserve respectful attention. But the ablest chronologist can accomplish nothing, unless he is supplied with a certain basis of matters of fact, pure and distinguishable from fiction, and authenticated by witnesses, both knowing the truth and willing to declare it. Possessing this preliminary stock, he may reason from it to refute distinct falsehoods and to correct partial mistakes : but if all the original statements submitted to him contained truth (at least wherever there is truth), in a sort of chemical combination with fiction, which he has no means of decomposing, he is in the condition of one who tries to solve a problem without data: he is first obliged to construct his own data, and from them to extract his conclusions.

The statements of the epic poets, our only original witnesses in this case, correspond to the description here given. Whether the proportion of truth contained in them be smaller or greater, it is at all events unassignable, and the constant and intimate admixture of fiction is both indisputable in itself, and indeed essential to the purpose and profession of those from whom the tales proceed. Of such a character are all the deposing witnesses, even where their tales agree; and it is out of a heap of such tales, not agreeing, but discrepant in a thousand ways, and without a morsel of pure authenticated truth, that the critic is called upon to draw out a methodical series of historical events adorned with chronological dates.

If we could imagine a modern critical scholar transported into Greece at the time of the Persian war endued with his present habits of appreciating historical evidence, without sharing in the religious or patriotic feelings of the country and invited to prepare, out of the great body of Grecian epic which then existed, a History and Chronology of Greece anterior to 776 BC, assigning reasons as well for what he admitted as for what he rejected I feel persuaded that he would have judged the undertaking to be little better than a process of guess-work. But the modern critic finds that not only Pherekydes and Hellanikus, but also Herodotus and Thucydides have either attempted the task or sanctioned the belief that it was practicable, a matter not at all surprising, when we consider both their narrow experience of historical evidence and the powerful ascendency of religion and patriotism in predisposing them to antiquarian belief, and he therefore accepts the problem as they have bequeathed it, adding his own efforts to bring it to a satisfactory solution. Nevertheless, he not only follows them with some degree of reserve and uneasiness, but even admits important distinctions quite foreign to their habits of thought. Thucydides talks of the deeds of Hellen and his sons with as much confidence as we now speak of William the Conqueror; Mr. Clinton recognizes Hellen with his sons Dorus, Eolus and Nuthus, as fictitious persons. Herodotus recites the great heroic genealogies down from Kadmus and Danaus with a belief not less complete in the higher members of the series than in the lower: but Mr. Clinton admits a radical distinction in the evidence of events before and after the first recorded Olympiad, or 776 BC, the first date in Grecian chronology which can be fixed upon authentic evidence, the highest point to which Grecian chronology, reckoning upward, can be carried. Of this important epoch in Grecian development, the commencement of authentic chronological life, Herodotus and Thucydides had no knowledge or took no account : the later chronologists, from Timaeus downwards, noted it, and made it serve as the basis of their chronological comparisons, so far as it went : but neither Eratosthenes nor Apollodorus seems to have recognized (though Varro and Africanus did recognize) a marked difference in respect of certainty or authenticity between the period before and the period after.

ERATOSTHENES. THE FIRST OLYMPIAD.

In further illustration of Mr. Clinton’s opinion that the first recorded Olympiad is the earliest date which can be fixed upon authentic evidence, we have the following just remarks in reference to the dissentient views of Eratosthenes, Phanias and Callimachus, about the date of the Trojan war : “The chronology of Eratosthenes (he says), founded on a careful comparison of circumstances, and approved by those to whom the same stores of information were open, is entitled to our respect. But we must remember that a conjectural date can never rise to the authority of evidence; that what is accepted as a substitute for testimony, is not an equivalent; witnesses only can prove a date, and in the want of these, the knowledge of it is plainly beyond our reach. If, in the absence of a better light, we seek for what is probable, we are not to forget the distinction between conjecture and proof; between what is probable and what is certain. The computation then of Eratosthenes for the war of Troy is open to inquiry; and if we find it adverse to the opinions of many preceding writers, who fixed a lower date, and adverse to the acknowledged length of generation in the most authentic dynasties, we are allowed to follow other guides, who give us a lower epoch”.

Here Mr. Clinton again plainly acknowledges the want of evidence and the irremediable uncertainty of Grecian chronology before the Olympiads. Now the reasonable conclusion from his argument is, not simply that "the computation of Eratosthenes was open to inquiry" (which few would be found to deny), but that both Eratosthenes and Phanias had delivered positive opinions upon a point on which no sufficient evidence was accessible, and therefore that neither the one nor the other was a guide to be followed. Mr. Clinton does indeed speak of authentic dynasties prior to the first recorded Olympiad, but if there be any such, reaching up from that period to a supposed point coeval with or anterior to the war of Troy I see no good reason for the marked distinction which he draws between chronology before and chronology after the Olympiad of Koroebus, or for the necessity which he feels of suspending his upward reckoning at the last-mentioned epoch, and beginning a different process, called “a downward reckoning”, from the higher epoch (supposed to be somehow ascertained without any upward reckoning) of the first patriarch from whom such authentic dynasty emanates. Herodotus and Thucydides might well, upon this supposition, ask of Mr. Clinton, why he called upon them to alter their method of proceeding at the year 776 BC, and why they might not be allowed to pursue their “upward chronological reckoning” without interruption from Leonidas up to Danaus, or from Peisistratus up to Hellen and Deucalion, without any alteration in the point of view. Authentic dynasties from the Olympiads, up to an epoch above the Trojan war, would enable us to obtain chronological proof of the latter date, instead of being reduced (as Mr. Clinton affirms that we are) to “conjecture” instead of proof.

The whole question, as to the value of the reckoning from the Olympiads up to Phoroneus, does in truth turn upon this one point : Are those genealogies which profess to cover the space between the two authentic and trustworthy or not? Mr. Clinton appears to feel that they are not so, when he admits the essential difference in the character of the evidence, and the necessity of altering the method of computation before and after the first recorded Olympiad : yet in his Preface he labors to prove that they possess historical worth and are in the main correctly set forth : moreover, that the fictitious persons, wherever any such are intermingled, may be detected and eliminated. The evidences upon which he relies, are 1. Inscriptions; 2. The early poets

CHRONOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF INSCRIPTIONS.

1. An inscription, being nothing but a piece of writing on marble, carries evidentiary value under the same conditions as a published writing on paper. If the inscriber reports a contemporary fact which he had the means of knowing, and if there be no reason to suspect misrepresentation, we believe this assertion : if, on the other hand, he records facts belonging to a long period before his own time, his authority counts for little, except in so far as we can verify and appreciate his means of knowledge.

In estimating therefore the probative force of any inscription, the first and most indispensable point is to assure ourselves of its date. Amongst all the public registers and inscriptions alluded to by Mr. Clinton, there is proved not one which can be positively referred to a date anterior to 776 BC. The quoit of Iphitus, the public registers at Sparta, Corinth, and Elis, the list of the priestesses of Juno at Argos are all of a date completely uncertified. O. Müller does indeed agree with Mr. Clinton (though in my opinion without any sufficient proof) in assigning the quoit of Iphitus to the age ascribed to that prince : and if we even grant thus much, we shall have an inscription as old (adopting Mr. Clinton’s determination of the age of Iphitus) as 828 BC. But when Mr. Clinton quotes O. Müller as admitting the registers of Sparta, Corinth, and Elis, it is right to add that the latter does not profess to guarantee the authenticity of these documents, or the age at which such registers began to be kept. It is not to be doubted that there were registers of the kings of Sparta carrying them up to Heracles, and of the kings of Elis from Oxylus to Iphitus : but the question is, at what time did these lists begin to be kept continuously? This is a point which we have no means of deciding, nor can we accept Mr. Clinton’s unsupported conjecture, when he tell us “Perhaps these were begun to be written as early as BC 1048, the probable time of the Dorian conquest”. Again he tells us “At Argos a register was preserved of the priestesses of Juno, which might be more ancient than the catalogues of the kings of Sparta or Corinth. That register, from which Hellanikus composed his work, contained the priestesses from the earliest times down to the age of Hellanikus himself ... But this catalogue might have been commenced as early as the Trojan war itself, and even at a still earlier date”. Again, respecting the inscriptions quoted by Herodotus from the temple of the Ismenian Apollo at Thebes, in which Amphitryo and Laodamas are named, Mr. Clinton says “They were ancient in the time of Herodotus, which may perhaps carry them back 400 years before his time : and in that case they might approach within 300 years of Laodamas and within 400 years of the probable time of Kadmus himself”. “It is granted (he adds in a note) that these inscriptions were not genuine, that is, not of the date to which they were assigned by Herodotus himself. But that they were ancient cannot be doubted”, &c.

The time when Herodotus saw the temple of the Ismenian Apollo at Thebes can hardly have been earlier than 450 BC : reckoning upwards from hence to 776 BC, we have an interval of 326 years : the inscriptions which Herodotus saw may well therefore have been ancient, without being earlier than the first recorded Olympiad. Mr. Clinton does indeed tell us that ancient “may perhaps” be construed as 400 years earlier than Herodotus. But no careful reader can permit himself to convert such bare possibility into a ground of inference, and to make it available, in conjunction with other similar possibilities before enumerated, for the purpose of showing that there really existed inscriptions in Greece of a date anterior to 776 BC. Unless Mr. Clinton can make out this, he can derive no benefit from inscriptions, in his attempt to substantiate the reality of the mythical persons or of the mythical events.

The truth is that the Herakleid pedigree of the Spartan kings (as has been observed in a former chapter) is only one out of the numerous divine and heroic genealogies with which the Hellenic world abounded, a class of documents which become historical evidence only so high in the descending series as the names composing them are authenticated by contemporary, or nearly contemporary, enrolment. At what period this enrolment began, we have no information. Two remarks however may be made, in reference to any approximate guess as to the time when actual registration commenced : First, that the number of names in the pedigree, or the length of past time which it professes to embrace, affords no presumption of any superior antiquity in the time of registration : Secondly, that looking to the acknowledged paucity and rudeness of Grecian writing even down to the 60th Olympiad (540 BC), and to the absence of the habit of writing, as well as the low estimate of its value, which such a state of things argues, the presumption is, that written enrolment of family genealogies did not commence until a long time after 776 BC, and the obligation of proof falls upon him who maintains that it commenced earlier. And this second remark is farther borne out when we observe, that there is no registered list, except that of the Olympic victors, which goes up even so high as 776 BC. The next list which O. Müller and Mr. Clinton produce, is that of the Karneoniks or victors at the Karneian festival, which reaches only up to 676 BC.

If Mr. Clinton then makes little out of inscriptions to sustain his view of Grecian history and chronology anterior to the recorded Olympiads, let us examine the inferences which he draws from his other source of evidence the early poets. And here it will be found, First, that in order to maintain the credibility of these witnesses, he lays down positions respecting historical evidence both indefensible in themselves, and especially inapplicable to the early times of Greece: Secondly, that his reasoning is at the same time inconsistent inasmuch as it includes admissions, which if properly understood and followed out, exhibit these very witnesses, as habitually, indiscriminately, and unconsciously, mingling truth and fiction, and therefore little fit to be believed upon their solitary and unsupported testimony.

To take the second point first, he says “The authority even of the genealogies has been called in question by many able and learned persons, who reject Danaus, Kadmus, Hercules, Theseus, and many others, as fictitious persons. It is evident that any fact would come from the hands of the poets embellished with many fabulous additions: and fictitious genealogies were undoubtedly composed. Because, however, some genealogies were fictitious, we are not justified in concluding that all were fabulous ... In estimating then the historical value of the genealogies transmitted by the early poets, we may take a middle course; not rejecting them as wholly false, nor yet implicitly receiving all as true. The genealogies contain many real persons, but these are incorporated with many fictitious names. The fictions however will have a basis of truth : the genealogical expression may be false, but the connection which it describes is real. Even to those who reject the whole as fabulous, the exhibition of the early times which is presented in this volume may still be not unacceptable : because it is necessary to the right understanding of antiquity that the opinions of the Greeks concerning their own origin should be set before us, even if these are erroneous opinions, and that their story should be told as they have told it themselves. The names preserved by the ancient genealogies may be considered of three kinds; either they were the name of a race or clan converted into the name of an individual, or they were altogether fictitious, or lastly, they were real historical names”.

Enough has been said to show that the witnesses upon whom Mr. Clinton relies blend truth and fiction habitually, indiscriminately and unconsciously, even upon his own admission. Let us now consider the positions which he lays down respecting historical evidence. He says : “We may acknowledge as real persons all those whom there is no reason for rejecting. The presumption is in favor of the early tradition, if no argument can be brought to overthrow it. The persons may be considered real, when the description of them is consonant with the state of the country at that time, when no national prejudice or vanity could be concerned in inventing them, when the tradition is consistent and general, when rival or hostile tribes concur in the leading facts, when the acts ascribed to the person (divested of their poetical ornament) enter into the political system of the age, or form the basis of other transactions which fall within known historical times. Kadmus and Danaus appear to be real persons; for it is conformable to the state of mankind, and perfectly credible, that Phoenician and Egyptian adventurers, in the ages to which these persons are ascribed, should have found their way to the coasts of Greece : and the Greeks (as already observed) had no motive from any national vanity to feign these settlements. Hercules was a real person. His acts were recorded by those who were not friendly to the Dorians; by Achaeans and Aeolians and Ionians, who had no vanity to gratify in celebrating the hero of a hostile and rival people. His descendants in many branches remained in many states down to the historical times. His son Tlepolemus and his grandson and great-grandson Cleodaeus and Aristomachus are acknowledged (i.e. by O. Müller) to be real persons : and there is no reason that can be assigned for receiving these, which will not be equally valid for establishing the reality both of Hercules and Hyllus. Above all, Hercules is authenticated by the testimonies both of the Iliad and Odyssey”.

These positions appear to me inconsistent with sound views of the conditions of historical testimony. According to what is here laid down, we are bound to accept as real all the persons mentioned by Homer, Arktinus, Lesches, the Hesiodic poets, Eumelus, Asius, &c., unless we can adduce some positive ground in each particular case to prove the contrary. If this position be a true one, the greater part of the history of England, from Brute the Trojan down to Julius Caesar, ought at once to be admitted as valid and worthy of credence. What Mr. Clinton here calls the early tradition, is in point of fact the narrative of these early poets. The word tradition is an equivocal word, and begs the whole question; for while in its obvious and literal meaning it implies only something handed down, whether truth or fiction it is tacitly understood to imply a tale descriptive of some real matter of fact, taking its rise at the time when that fact happened, and originally accurate, but corrupted by subsequent oral transmission. Understanding therefore by Mr. Clinton's words early tradition, the tales of the old poets, we shall find his position totally inadmissible that we are bound to admit the persons or statements of Homer and Hesiod as real, unless where we can produce reasons to the contrary. To allow this, would be to put them upon a par with good contemporary witnesses; for no greater privilege can be claimed in favor even of Thucydides, than the title of his testimony to be believed unless where it can be contradicted on special grounds. The presumption in favor of an asserting witness is either strong, or weak, or positively nothing, according to the compound ratio of his means of knowledge, his moral and intellectual habits, and his motive to speak the truth. Thus, for instance, when Hesiod tells us that his father quitted the Eolic Kyme and came to Askra in Boeotia, we may fully believe him; but when he describes to us the battles between the Olympic gods and the Titans, or between Heracles and Kyknus, or when Homer depicts the efforts of Hector, aided by Apollo, for the defense of Troy, and the struggles of Achilles and Odysseus, with the assistance of Here and Poseidon, for the destruction of that city, events professedly long past and gone we cannot presume either of them to be in any way worthy of belief. It cannot be shown that they possessed any means of knowledge, while it is certain that they could have no motive to consider historical truth : their object was to satisfy an uncritical appetite for narrative, and to interest the emotions of their hearers. Mr. Clinton says, that “the persons may be considered real when the description of them is consistent with the state of the country at that time”. But he has forgotten, first, that we know nothing of the state of the country except what these very poets tell us; next, that fictitious persons may be just as consonant to the state of the country as real persons. While therefore, on the one hand, we have no independent evidence either to affirm or to deny that Achilles or Agamemnon are consistent with the state of Greece or Asia Minor at a certain supposed date 1183 BC, so, on the other hand, even assuming such consistency to be made out, this of itself would not prove them to be real persons.

PLAUSIBLE FICTION.

Mr. Clinton’s reasoning altogether overlooks the existence of plausible fiction, fictitious stories which harmonize perfectly well with the general course of facts, and which are distinguished from matters of fact not by any internal character, but by the circumstance that matter of fact has some competent and well-informed witness to authenticate it, either directly or through legitimate inference. Fiction may be, and often is, extravagant and incredible; but it may also be plausible and specious, and in that case there is nothing but the want of an attesting certificate to distinguish it from truth. Now all the tests, which Mr. Clinton proposes as guarantees of the reality of the Homeric persons, will be just as well satisfied by plausible fiction as by actual matter of fact; the plausibility of the fiction consists in its satisfying those and other similar conditions. In most cases, the tales of the poets did fall in with the existing current of feelings in their audience: “prejudice and vanity” are not the only feelings, but doubtless prejudice and vanity were often appealed to, and it was from such harmony of sentiment that they acquired their hold on men's belief. Without any doubt the Iliad appealed most powerfully to the reverence for ancestral gods and heroes among the Asiatic colonists who first heard it : the temptation of putting forth an interesting tale is quite a sufficient stimulus to the invention of the poet, and the plausibility of the tale a sufficient passport to the belief of the hearers. Mr. Clinton talks of “consistent and general tradition”. But that the tale of a poet, when once told with effect and beauty, acquired general belief is no proof that it was founded on fact : otherwise, what are we to say to the divine legends, and to the large portion of the Homeric narrative which Mr. Clinton himself sets aside as untrue under the designation of “poetical ornament”. When a mythical incident is recorded as “forming the basis” of some known historical fact or institution as for instance the successful stratagem by which Melanthus killed Xanthus in the battle on the boundary, as recounted in my last chapter, we may adopt one of two views : we may either treat the incident as real, and as having actually given occasion to what is described as its effect or we may treat the incident as a legend imagined in order to assign some plausible origin of the reality.

In cases where the legendary incident is referred to a time long anterior to any records as it commonly is the second mode of proceeding appears to me far more consonant to reason and probability than the first. It is to be recollected that all the persons and facts, here defended as matter of real history by Mr. Clinton, are referred to an age long preceding the first beginning of records.

I have already remarked that Mr. Clinton shrinks from his own rule in treating Kadmus and Danaus as real persons, since they are as much eponyms of tribes or races as Dorus and Hellen. And if he can admit Herakles to be a real man, I do not see upon what reason he can consistently disallow any one of the mythical personages, for there is not one whose exploits are more strikingly at variance with the standard of historical probability. Mr. Clinton reasons upon the supposition that “Hercules was a Dorian hero”: but he was Achaean and Kadmeian as well as Dorian, though the legends respecting him are different in all the three characters. Whether his son Tlepolemus and his grandson Kleodaeus belong to the category of historical men, I will not take upon me to say, though O. Müller (in my opinion without any warranty) appears to admit it; but Hyllus certainly is not a real man, if the canon of Mr. Clinton himself respecting the eponyms is to be trusted. “The descendants of Hercules (observes Mr. Clinton) remained in many states down to the historical times”. So did those of Zeus and Apollo, and of that god whom the historian Hekataeus recognized as his progenitor in the sixteenth generation : the titular kings of Ephesus, in the historical times, as well as Peisistratus, the despot of Athens, traced their origin up to Eolus and Hellen, yet Mr. Clinton does not hesitate to reject Eolus and Hellen as fictitious persons. I dispute the propriety of quoting the Iliad and Odyssey (as Mr. Clinton does) in evidence of the historic personality of Hercules. For even with regard to the ordinary men who figure in those poems, we have no means of discriminating the real from the fictitious; while the Homeric Heracles is unquestionably more than an ordinary man, he is the favorite son of Zeus, from his birth predestined to a life of labor and servitude, as preparation for a glorious immortality. Without doubt the poet himself believed in the reality of Hercules, but it was a reality clothed with superhuman attributes.

Mr. Clinton observes that “because some genealogies were fictitious, we are not justified in concluding that all were fabulous”. It is no way necessary that we should maintain so extensive a position : it is sufficient that all are fabulous so far as concerns from what gods and heroes, some fabulous throughout, and none ascertainably true, for the period anterior to the recorded Olympiads. How much, or what particular portions, may be true, no one can pronounce. The gods and heroes are, from our point of view, essentially fictitious; but from the Grecian point of view they were the most real (if the expression may be permitted, i.e. clung to with the strongest faith) of all the members of the series. They not only formed parts of the genealogy as originally conceived, but were in themselves the grand reason why it was conceived, as a golden chain to connect the living man with a divine ancestor. The genealogy therefore taken as a whole (and its value consists in its being taken as a whole) was from the beginning a fiction; but the names of the father and grandfather of the living man, in whose day it first came forth, were doubtless those of real men. Wherever therefore we can verify the date of a genealogy, as applied to some living person, we may reasonably presume the two lowest members of it to be also those of real persons : but this has no application to the time anterior to the Olympiads still less to the pretended times of the Trojan war, the Kalydonian boar-hunt, or the deluge of Deucalion. To reason (as Mr. Clinton does), “Because Aristomachus was a real man, therefore his father Cleodaeus, his grandfather Hyllus, and so farther upwards, &c., must have been real men”, is an inadmissible conclusion. The historian Hekataeus was a real man, and doubtless his father Hegesander also but it would be unsafe to march up his genealogical ladder fifteen steps to the presence of the ancestorial god of whom he boasted : the upper steps of the ladder will be found broken and unreal. Not to mention that the inference, from real son to real father, is inconsistent with the admissions in Mr. Clinton's own genealogical tables; for he there inserts the names of several mythical fathers as having begotten real historical sons.

The general authority of Mr. Clinton's book, and the sincere respect which I entertain for his elucidations of the later chronology, have imposed upon me the duty of assigning those grounds on which I dissent from his conclusions prior to the first recorded Olympiad. The reader who desires to see the numerous and contradictory guesses (they deserve no better name) of the Greeks themselves in the attempt to chronologise their mythical narratives, will find them in the copious notes annexed to the first half of his first volume. As I consider all such researches not merely as fruitless in regard to any trustworthy result, but as serving to divert attention from the genuine form and really illustrative character of Grecian legend, I have not thought it right to go over the same ground in the present work. Differing as I do, however, from Mr. Clinton's views on this subject, I concur with him in deprecating the application of etymology as a general scheme of explanation to the characters and events of Greek legend. Amongst the many causes which operated as suggestives and stimulants to Greek fancy in the creation of these interesting tales, doubtless Etymology has had its share; but it cannot be applied (as Hermann, above all others, has sought to apply it) for the purpose of imparting supposed sense and system to the general body of mythical narrative. I have already remarked on this topic in a former chapter.

It would be curious to ascertain at what time, or by whom, the earliest continuous genealogies, connecting existing persons with the supposed antecedent age of legend, were formed and preserved. Neither Homer nor Hesiod mentioned any verifiable present persons or circumstances : had they done so, the age of one or other of them could have been determined upon good evidence, which we methodize the past, even though they do so on fictitious principles, being as yet unprovided with those records which alone could put them on a better course. The Homeric man was satisfied with feeling, imagining, and believing, particular incidents of a supposed past, without any attempt to graduate the line of connection between them and himself: to introduce fictitious hypotheses and media of connection is the business of a succeeding age, when the stimulus of rational curiosity is first felt, without any authentic materials to supply it. We have then the form of history operating upon the matter of legend the transition-state between legend and history; less interesting indeed than either separately, yet accessory as a step between the two.