LEGENDARY GREECE
CHAPTER XIX
.
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.