Chapter IV: , VII (107)

"About 1632 the French took possession of the western shore,
and increased so rapidly that the Spaniards found it
impossible to drive them out; and the footing they had gained
was recognized by the Treaty of Ryswick, in 1697, when the
western portion of Haiti was confirmed to France. The latter
nation was fully conscious of the importance of the new
acquirement, and under French rule it became of great value,
supplying almost all Europe with cotton and sugar. But the
larger eastern portion of the island, which still belonged to
Spain, had no share in this progress, remaining much in the
same condition as formerly; and thus matters stood—a sluggish
community side by side with a thriving one—when the French
Revolution broke out, and plunged the island into a state of
ferment. In 1790 the population of the western colony
consisted of half a million, of which number 38,360 were of
European origin, 28,370 free people of colour, and the whole
of the remainder negro slaves. The government of the island
excluded the free people of colour—mostly mulattoes—from
all political privileges, although they were in many cases
well-educated men, and themselves the owners of large estates.
… On the 15th May, 1790, the French National Assembly passed
a decree declaring that people of colour, born of free
parents, were entitled to all the privileges of French
citizens. When this news reached the colony, it set the
inhabitants in a perfect frenzy, the mulattoes manifesting an
unbounded joy, whilst the whites boiled at the indignity their
class had sustained. The representations of the latter caused
the governor to delay the operation of the decree until the
home government could be communicated with—a measure that
aroused the greatest indignation amongst the mulattoes, and
civil war appeared inevitable, when a third and wholly
unexpected party stepped into the arena. The slaves rose in
insurrection on August 23rd, 1791, marching with the body of a
white infant on a spear-head as a standard, and murdering all
Europeans indiscriminately. In the utmost consternation the
whites conceded the required terms to the mulattoes, and,
together with the help of the military, the rising was
suppressed, and there seemed a prospect of peace, when the
Assembly at Paris repealed the decree of the 15th May. The
mulattoes now flew to arms, and for several years a terrible
struggle was sustained, the horrors of which were augmented by
vindictive ferocity on both sides. Commissioners sent from
France could effect no settlement, for the camp of the whites
was divided into two hostile sections, royalist and
republican.
{1632}
The English and Spaniards both descended on the island, and
the blacks, under able chiefs, held impregnable positions in
the mountains. Apprehensive of a British invasion in force,
the Commissioners, finding they could not conquer the blacks,
resolved on conciliating them; and in August, 1793, universal
freedom was proclaimed—a measure ratified by the National
Convention early in the following year. Meanwhile the English
had taken Port-au-Prince, and were besieging the French
governor in Port de la Paix, when the blacks, relying on the
recent proclamation, came to his assistance, under the command
of Toussaint L'Ouverture, and effected his release. …
François Dominique Toussaint, a negro of pure blood, a slave
and the offspring of slaves, was born in 1743, and on
attaining manhood was first employed as a coachman, and
afterwards held a post of trust in connexion with the sugar
manufactory of the estate to which he belonged. The overseer
having taken a fancy to him, he was taught to read and write,
and even picked up some slight knowledge of Latin and
mathematics." He was slow to join the rising of the blacks;
"but at length, after having secured the escape of his master
and family, he joined the negro army in a medical capacity,"
but quickly rose to leadership. "At first the blacks fought
with the Spaniards against the French;" but Toussaint came to
the conclusion that they had more to hope from the French, and
persuaded his followers to march to the relief of the French
governor, Levaux. When the latter heard that Toussaint had won
the blacks to this alliance, he exclaimed, "'Mais cet homme
fait ouverture partout,' and from that day the black
commander-in-chief received the surname of L'Ouverture, by
which he is best known in history. Acting with wonderful
energy, Toussaint effected a junction with Levaux, drove the
English from their positions, took 28 Spanish batteries in
four days, and finally the British abandoned the island,
whilst the Spaniards [1797] gave up all claim to its western
end. Toussaint L'Ouverture—now holding the position of
commander-in-chief, but virtually dictator—succeeded with
great skill in combining all the hostile elements of the
colony. Peace was restored, commerce and agriculture revived,
the whites were encouraged to reclaim their estates, and by a
variety of prudent and temperate measures Toussaint showed the
remarkable administrative abilities that he possessed. At this
stage he assumed great state in public, being always guarded
by a chosen body of 1,500 men in brilliant uniform, but in
private life he was frugal and moderate. In the administration
of affairs he was assisted by a council of nine, of whom eight
were white planters. This body drew up a Constitution by which
L'Ouverture was named president for life, and free trade
established. The draft of this constitution, together with an
autograph letter, he forwarded to Bonaparte; but the First
Consul had no toleration for fellow-upstarts, and replied, 'He
is a revolted slave whom we must punish; the honour of France
is outraged.' At this time the whole island of Haiti was under
Toussaint's sway. As some excuse for Bonaparte it must be
acknowledged that Toussaint undoubtedly contemplated
independence. … Anxious to divest his new presidency of even
nominal subjection to France, he declared the independence of
the island, with himself as supreme chief, in July 1801. Most
unfortunately for the Haitian general, hostilities had for the
moment ceased between Great Britain and France, and the First
Consul was enabled to bestow his close attention on the former
French colony. Determined to repossess it, Bonaparte sent out
an army of 30,000 men, with 66 ships of war, under the command
of his brother-in-law General Leclerc. … During Toussaint's
presidency he had abolished slavery, the negroes still working
the plantations, but as free men, and under the name of
'cultivators.' … Leclerc now endeavoured by proclamations to
turn the cultivators against their chief, and also laboured to
sow dissension in the ranks of the black army, by making the
officers tempting offers, which they too often believed in and
accepted. For months a bloody war raged, in which great
cruelties were inflicted; but the discipline of the French was
slowly telling in their favour, when Leclerc made a political
blunder that destroyed the advantages he had gained. Thinking
that all obstacles were overcome, he threw off the mask, and
boldly declared the real object of the expedition—the
re-enslavement of the negro population. This news fell like a
thunderbolt amongst the blacks, who rallied round Toussaint in
thousands." Alarmed at the effect, Leclerc recalled his
proclamation, acknowledged it to be an error, and promised the
summoning of an assembly representative of all races alike.
"This specious programme won over Cristophe, Dessalines, and
other negro generals; and finally, on receiving solemn
assurances from Leclerc, Toussaint accepted his offers, and
peace was concluded." Soon afterwards, by an act of the
blackest treachery, the negro statesman and soldier was lured
into the hands of his mean enemy, and sent, a prisoner, to
France. Confined, without trial, or any hearing, in the
dungeons of the Château Joux, in the department of Doubs, he
was there allowed to pine away, without warm clothing and
with insufficient food. … Finally the governor of the prison
went away for four days, leaving his captive without food or
drink. On his return Toussaint was dead, and the rats had
gnawed his feet. It was given out that apoplexy was the cause
of death. … This breach of faith on the part of the French
aroused the fury and indignation of the blacks. … Under
Dessalines, Cristophe, Clerveaux, and others, the fires of
insurrection blazed out afresh." At the same time yellow fever
raged and Leclerc was among the victims. General Rochambeau,
who succeeded him, continued the war with unmeasured
barbarity, but also with continued defeat and discouragement,
until he was driven, in 1803, to surrender, and "the power of
the French was lost on the island."

_C. H. Eden,
The West Indies,
chapter 13._

_Toussaint L'Ouverture: A Biography.
(by J. R. Beard) and an Autobiography._

ALSO IN:
_H. Martineau,
The Hour and the Man._

_J. Brown,
History of St. Domingo._

_H. Adams,
Historical Essays,
chapter 4._

HAYTI: A. D. 1639-1700.
The Buccaneers.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1639-1700.

{1633}

HAYTI: A. D. 1804-1880.
Massacre of whites.
The Empire of Dessalines.
The kingdom of Christophe.
The Republic of Pétion and Boyer.
Separation of the independent Republic of San Domingo.
The Empire of Soulouque.
The restored Republic of Hayti.

"In the beginning of 1804 the independence of the negroes
under Dessalines was sufficiently assured: but they were not
satisfied until they had completed a general massacre of
nearly the whole of the whites, including aged men, women and
children, who remained in the island, numbering, according to
the lowest estimate, 2,500 souls. Thus did Dessalines, in his
own savage words, render war for war, crime for crime, and
outrage for outrage, to the European cannibals who had so long
preyed upon his unhappy race. The negroes declared Dessalines
Emperor: and in October 1804 he was crowned at Port-au-Prince
by the title of James I. Dessalines was at once a brave man
and a cruel and avaricious tyrant. He acquired great influence
over the negroes, who long remembered him with affectionate
regret: but he was not warmly supported by the mulattoes, who
were by far the most intelligent of the Haytians. He abolished
the militia, and set up a standing army of 40,000 men, whom he
found himself unable to pay, from the universal ruin which had
overtaken the island. The plantation labourers refused to
work. … Dessalines authorised the landowners to flog them.
Dessalines was himself a large planter: he had 32 large
plantations of his own at work, and he forced his labourers to
work on them at the point of the bayonet. Both he and his
successor, Christophe, like Mahomed Ali in Egypt, grew rich by
being the chief merchants in their own dominions. … He
failed in an expedition against St. Domingo, the Spanish part
of the island, whence the French general Ferrand still
threatened him: and at length some sanguinary acts of tyranny
roused against him an insurrection headed by his old comrade
Christophe. The insurgents marched on Port-au-Prince, and the
first black Emperor was shot by an ambuscade at the Pont Rouge
outside the town. The death of Dessalines delivered up Hayti
once more to the horrors of civil war. The negroes and
mulattoes, who had joined cordially enough to exterminate
their common enemies, would no longer hold together; and ever
since the death of Dessalines their jealousies and differences
have been a source of weakness in the black republic. In the
old times, Hayti, as the French part of the island of Española
was henceforth called, had been divided into three provinces:
South, East, and North. After the death of Dessalines each of
these provinces became for a time a separate state. Christophe
wished to maintain the unlimited imperialism which Dessalines
had set up: but the Constituent Assembly, which he summoned at
Port-au-Prince in 1806, had other views. They resolved upon a
Republican constitution." Christophe, not contented with the
offered presidency, "collected an army with the view of
dispersing the Constituent Assembly: but they collected one of
their own, under Pétion, and forced him to retire from the
capital. Christophe maintained himself in Cap François, or, as
it is now called, Cap Haytien; and here he ruled for 14 years.
In 1811, despising the imperial title which Dessalines had
desecrated, he took the royal style by the name of Henry I.
Christophe, as a man, was nearly as great a monster as
Dessalines. … Yet Christophe at his best was a man capable
of great aims, and a sagacious and energetic ruler." In 1820,
finding himself deserted in the face of a mulatto
insurrection, he committed suicide. "In a month or two after
Christophe's suicide the whole island was united under the
rule of President Boyer." Boyer was the successor of Pétion,
who had been elected in the North, under the republican
constitution which Christophe refused submission to. Pétion,
"a mulatto of the best type," educated at the military academy
of Paris, and full of European ideas, had ruled the province
which he controlled ably and well for eleven years. In
discouragement he then took his own life, and was succeeded,
in 1818, by his lieutenant, Jean Pierre Boyer, a mulatto. "On
the suicide of Christophe, the army of the Northern Province,
weary of the tyranny of one of their own race, declared for
Boyer. The French part of the island was now once more under a
single government: and Boyer turned his attention to the much
larger Spanish territory, with the old capital of St. Domingo,
where a Spaniard named Muñez de Caceres, with the aid of the
negroes, had now followed the example in the West, and
proclaimed an independent government. The Dominicans, however,
were still afraid of Spain, and were glad to put themselves
under the wing of Hayti: Boyer was not unwilling to take
possession of the Spanish colony, and thus it happened that in
1822 he united the whole island under his Presidency. In the
same year he was elected President for life under the
constitution of Pétion, whose general policy he maintained:
but his government, especially in his later years, was almost
as despotic as that of Christophe. Boyer was the first Haytian
who united the blacks and mulattoes under his rule. It was
mainly through confidence in him that the government of Hayti
won the recognition of the European powers. … In 1825 its
independence was formally recognised by France, on a
compensation of 150,000,000 of francs being guaranteed to the
exiled planters and to the home government. This vast sum was
afterwards reduced: but it still weighed heavily on the
impoverished state, and the discontents which the necessary
taxation produced led to Boyer's downfall," in 1843, when he
withdrew to Jamaica, and afterwards to Paris, where he died in
1850. A singular state of affairs ensued. The eastern, or
Spanish, part of the island resumed its independence (1844),
under a republican constitution resembling that of Venezuela,
and with Pedro Santana for its President, and has been known
since that time as the Republic of San Domingo, or the
Dominican Republic. In the Western, or Haytian Republic, large
numbers of the negroes, "under the names of Piquets and
Zinglins, now formed themselves into armed bands, and sought
to obtain a general division of property under some
communistic monarch of their own race. The mulatto officials
now cajoled the poor negroes by bribing some old negro, whose
name was well known to the mass of the people as one of the
heroes of the war of liberty, to allow himself to be set up as
President. The Boyerists, as the mulatto oligarchy were
called, thus succeeded in re-establishing their power," and
their system (for describing which the word "gerontocracy" has
been invented) was carried on for some years, until it
resulted, in 1847, in the election to the Presidency of
General Faustin Soulouque. "Soulouque was an illiterate negro
whose recommendations to power were that he was old enough to
have taken part in the War of Independence, having been a
lieutenant under Pétion, and that he was popular with the
negroes, being devotedly attached to the strange mixture of
freemasonry and fetish worship by which the Haytian blacks
maintain their political organisation."
{1634}
The new President took his elevation more seriously than was
expected, and proved to be more than a match for the mulattoes
who thought to make him their puppet. He gathered the reins
into his own hands, and crushed the mulattoes at
Port-au-Prince by a general massacre. He then "caused himself
to be proclaimed Emperor, by the title of Faustinus the First
(1849)," and established a grotesque imperial court, with a
fantastic nobility, in which a Duke de Lemonade figured by the
side of a Prince Tape-à-l'œil. This lasted until December
1858, when Soulouque was dethroned and sent out of the
country, to take refuge in Jamaica, and the republic was
restored, with Fabre Nicholas Geffrard, a mulatto general, at
its head. Geffrard held the Presidency for eight years, when
he followed his predecessor into exile in Jamaica, and was
succeeded by General Salnave, a negro, who tried to
re-establish the Empire and was shot, 1869. Since that time
revolutions have been frequent and nothing has been constant
except the disorder and decline of the country. Meantime, the
Dominican Republic has suffered scarcely less, from its own
disorders and the attacks of its Haytian neighbors. In 1861 it
was surrendered by a provisional government to Spain, but
recovered independence three years later. Soon afterwards one
of its parties sought annexation to the United States, and in
1869 the President of the latter republic, General Grant,
concluded a treaty with the Dominican government for the
cession of the peninsula of Samana, and for the placing of San
Domingo under American protection. But the Senate of the
United States refused to ratify the treaty.

_E. J. Payne,
History of European Colonies,
chapter 15._

ALSO IN:
_Sir S. St. John,
Hayti, or the Black Republic,
chapter 3._

----------HAYTI: End--------

HEAD-CENTER, Fenian.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1858-1867.

HEARTS OF OAK BOYS. HEARTS OF STEEL BOYS.

See IRELAND: A. D.1760-1798.

HEAVENFIELD.
Battle of the (635).

Defeat of the Welsh, with the death of Cadwallon, the "last
great hero of the British race," by the English of Bernicia,
A.D. 635. "The victory of the Heaven-field indeed is memorable
as the close of the last rally which the Britons ever made
against their conquerors."

_J. R. Green,
The Making of England,
page 275._

ALSO IN:
_Bede,
Ecclesiastical History,
book 3, chapters 1-2._

HÉBERT AND THE HÉBERTISTS IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1790; 1793 (MARCH-JUNE),
(SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER), to 1793-1794 (NOVEMBER-JUNE).

HEBREW, The Name.

See JEWS: THEIR NATIONAL NAMES.

----------HEBRIDES: Start--------

HEBRIDES OR WESTERN ISLANDS, The.

"The Hebrides or Western Islands comprise all the numerous
islands and islets which extend along nearly all the west
coast of Scotland; and they anciently comprised also the
peninsula of Cantyre, the islands of the Clyde, the isle of
Rachlin, and even for some time the isle of Man."

_Historical Tales of the Wars of Scotland,
volume 3, page 60._

HEBRIDES: 9th-13th Centuries.
The dominion of the Northmen.

See
NORMANS.
NORTHMEN: 8TH-9TH CENTURIES,
and 10TH-13TH CENTURIES;
also, SODOR AND MAN.

HEBRIDES: A. D. 1266.
Cession to Scotland.

See SCOTLAND; A. D. 1266.

HEBRIDES: A. D. 1346-1504.
The Lords of the Isles.

In 1346, the dominion of most of the Hebrides became
consolidated under John, son of Ronald or Angus Oig, of Islay,
and he assumed the title of "Lord of the Isles." The Lords of
the Isles became substantially independent of the Scottish
crown until the battle of Harlaw, in 1411 (see HARLAW, BATTLE
OF). The lordship was extinguished in 1504 (see SCOTLAND: A.
D. 1502-1504).

_Historical Tales of the Wars of Scotland,
pages 65-72._

----------HEBRIDES: End--------

HEBRON.

In the settlement of the tribes of Israel, after the conquest
of Canaan, Caleb, one of the heroes of Judah, "took possession
of the territory round the famous old city of Hebron, and
thereby gained for his tribe a seat held sacred from
Patriarchal times. … Beginning with Hebron, he acquired for
himself a considerable territory, which even in David's time
was named simply Caleb, and was distinguished from the rest of
Judah as a peculiar district. … Hebron remained till after
David's time celebrated as the main seat and central point of
the entire tribe, around which it is evident that all the rest
of Judah gradually clustered in good order."

_H. Ewald,
History of Israel,
book 2, section 3, A._

"Hebron was a Hittite city, the centre of an ancient
civilization, which to some extent had been inherited by the
tribe of Judah. It was undoubtedly the capital of Judah, a
city of the highest religious character full of recollections
and traditions. It could boast of fine public buildings, good
water, and a vast and well-kept pool. The unification of
Israel had just been accomplished there. It was only natural
that Hebron should become the capital of the new kingdom [of
David]. … It is not easy to say what induced David to leave
a city which had such ancient and evident claims for a hamlet
like Jebus [Jerusalem], which did not yet belong to him. It is
probable that he found Hebron too exclusively Judahite."

_E. Renan,
History of the People of Israel,
book 2, chapter 18._

See, also, ZOAN;
and JEWS: THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL IN EGYPT.

HECANA, Kingdom of.

One of the small, short-lived kingdoms of the Angles in early
England, its territory was in modern Herefordshire.

_N. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 7, section 70._

See ENGLAND: A. D. 547-633.

HECATOMB

"Large sacrifices, where a great number of animals were
slaughtered, [among the ancient Greeks] are called hecatombs."

_G. F. Schömann,
Antiquity of Greece: The State,
page 60._

HECATOMBÆON, Battle of.

Fought, B. C. 224, by Cleomenes of Sparta with the forces of
the Achæan League, over which he won a complete victory. The
result was the calling in of Antigonus Doson, king of
Macedonia, to become the ally of the League, and to be aided
by it in crushing the last independent political life of
Peloponnesian Greece.

_C. Thirlwall,
History of Greece,
chapter 62._

{1635}

HECATOMPEDON, The.

See PARTHENON AT ATHENS.

HECATOMPYLOS.

The chief city of Parthia Proper, founded by Alexander the
Great, and long remaining one of the capitals of the Parthian
empire.

HEDGELEY MOOR, Battle of (1464)

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1455-1471.

HEDWIGA, Queen of Poland, A. D. 1382-1386.

HEELERS.

See BOSSISM.

HEERBAN, The.

The "heerban" was a military system instituted by Charlemagne,
which gave way to the feudal system under his successors. "The
basis of the heerban system was the duty of every fighting man
to answer directly the call of the king to arms. The freeman,
not only of the Franks, but of all the subject peoples, owed
military service to the king alone. This duty is insisted upon
in the laws of Charlemagne with constant repetition. The
summons (heerban) was issued at the spring meeting, and sent
out by the counts or missi. The soldier was obliged to present
himself at the given time, fully armed and equipped with all
provision for the campaign, except fire, water, and fodder for
the horses."

_E. Emerton,
Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages,
chapter 14._

HEGEMONY.

"A hegemony, the political ascendancy of some one city or
community over a number of subject commonwealths."

_Sir H. S. Maine,
Dissertations on Early Law and Custom,
page 131._

HEGIRA, The.

See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 609-632.

HEGIRA, Era of the.

See ERA, MAHOMETAN.

----------HEIDELBERG: Start--------

HEIDELBERG: A. D. 1622.
Capture by Tilly.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1621-1623.

HEIDELBERG: A. D. 1631.
Burning of the Castle.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1631-1632.

HEIDELBERG: A. D. 1690.
Final destruction of the Castle.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1689-1690.

----------HEIDELBERG: End--------

HEIDELBERG UNIVERSITY.

See EDUCATION, MEDIÆVAL: GERMANY.

HEILBRONN, Union of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1632-1634.

HELAM, OR HALAMAH, Battle of.

A decisive victory won by King David over the Syrians.

_II. Samuel,
x. 15-19._

HELENA, Arkansas, The defense of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1863 (JULY: ON THE MISSISSIPPI).

HELEPOLIS, The.

See RHODES: B. C. 305-304.

HELIÆA, The.

Under Solon's constitution for the government of Athens, "a
body of 6,000 citizens was every year created by lot to form a
supreme court, called Heliæa, which was divided into several
smaller ones, not limited to any precise number of persons.
The qualifications required for this were the same with those
which gave admission into the general assembly, except that
the members of the former might not be under the age of
thirty. It was, therefore, in fact, a select portion of the
latter, in which the powers of the larger body were
concentrated and exercised under a judicial form."

_C. Thirlwall,
History of Greece,
chapter 11._

HELICON.

See THESSALY.

HELIGOLAND: A. D. 1814.
Acquisition by Great Britain.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1813-1814.

HELIGOLAND: A. D. 1890.
Cession to Germany.

See AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1891.

----------HELIOPOLIS: Start--------

HELIOPOLIS.

See ON.

HELIOPOLIS: Battle of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1800 (JANUARY-JUNE).

----------HELIOPOLIS: End--------

HELLAS. HELLENES. GRAIKOI. GREEKS.

"To the Greek of the historical ages the idea of Hellas was
not associated with any definite geographical limits. Wherever
a Greek settlement existed, there for the colonists was
Hellas. … Of a Hellas lying within certain specified bounds,
and containing within it only Greek inhabitants, they knew
nothing."

_G. W. Cox,
History of Greece,
book 1, chapter 1._

"Their language was, … from the beginning, the token of
recognition among the Hellenes. … Where this language was
spoken—in Asia, in Europe, or in Africa—there was Hellas.
… A considerable number of the Greek tribes which immigrated
by land [from Asia] into the European peninsula [of Greece]
followed the tracks of the Italicans, and, taking a westward
route through Pæonia and Macedonia, penetrated through Illyria
into the western half of the Alpine country of Northern
Greece, which the formation of its hill ranges and valleys
renders more easily accessible from the north than Thessaly in
its secluded hollow. The numerous rivers, abounding in water,
which flow close by one another through long gorges into the
Ionian Sea, here facilitated an advance into the south; and
the rich pasture-land invited immigration; so that Epirus
became the dwelling-place of a dense crowd of population,
which commenced its civilized career in the fertile lowlands
of the country. Among them three main tribes were marked out,
of which the Chaones were regarded as the most ancient. …
Farther to the south the Thesprotians had settled, and more
inland, in the direction of Pindus, the Molossians. A more
ancient appellation than those of this triple division is that
of the Greeks (Graikoi), which the Hellenes thought the
earliest designation of their ancestors. The same name of
Græci (Greeks) the Italicans applied to the whole family of
peoples with whom they had once dwelt together in these
districts. This is the first collective name of the Hellenic
tribes in Europe. … Far away from the coast, in the
seclusion of the hills, where lie closely together the springs
of the Thyamis, Aous, Aracthus, and Achelous, extends at the
base of Tomarus the lake Ioannina, on the thickly wooded banks
of which, between fields of corn and damp meadows, lay Dodona,
a chosen seat of the Pelasgian Zeus, the invisible God, who
announced his presence in the rustling of the oaks, whose
altar was surrounded by a vast circle of tripods, for a sign
that he was the first to unite the domestic hearths and civic
communities into a great association centering in himself.
This Dodona was the central seat of the Græci; it was a sacred
centre of the whole district before the Italicans commenced
their westward journey; and at the same time the place where
the subsequent national name of the Greeks can be first proved
to have prevailed; for the chosen of the people, who
administered the worship of Zeus, were called Selli or Helli,
and after them the surrounding country Hellopia or Hellas."

{1636}

_E. Curtius,
History of Greece,
book 1, chapters 1 and 4 (volume 1)._

ALSO IN:
_G. Grote,
History of Greece,
part 2, chapter 2 (volume 2)._

_G. W. Cox,
History of Greece,
book 1, chapter 4._

_W. E. Gladstone,
Juventus Mundi,
chapter 4._

HELLENIC GENIUS AND INFLUENCE. HELLENIC AND HELLENISTIC CULTURE. HELLENISM.

"It was the privilege of the Greeks to discover the sovereign
efficacy of reason. They entered on the pursuit of knowledge
with a sure and joyous instinct. Baffled and puzzled they
might be, but they never grew weary of the quest. The
speculative faculty which reached its height in Plato and
Aristotle, was, when we make due allowance for time and
circumstance, scarcely less eminent in the Ionian
philosophers; and it was Ionia that gave birth to an idea,
which was foreign to the East, but has become the
starting-point of modern science,—the idea that Nature works
by fixed laws. A fragment of Euripides speaks of him as 'happy
who has learned to search into causes,' who 'discerns the
deathless and ageless order of nature, whence it arose, the
how and the why.' The early poet-philosophers of Ionia gave
the impulse which has carried the human intellect forward
across the line which separates empirical from scientific
knowledge; and the Greek precocity of mind in this direction,
unlike that of the Orientals, had in it the promise of
uninterrupted advance in the future,—of great discoveries in
mathematics, geometry, experimental physics, in medicine also
and physiology. … By the middle of the fifth century B. C.
the general conception of law in the physical world was firmly
established in the mind of Greek thinkers. Even the more
obscure phenomena of disease were brought within the rule.
Hippocrates writing about a malady which was common among the
Scythians and was thought to be preternatural says: 'As for me
I think that these maladies are divine like all others, but
that none is more divine or more human than another. Each has
its natural principle and none exists without its natural
cause.' Again, the Greeks set themselves to discover a
rational basis for conduct. Rigorously they brought their
actions to the test of reason, and that not only by the mouth
of philosophers, but through their poets, historians, and
orators. Thinking and doing—clear thought and noble
action—did not stand opposed to the Greek mind. The
antithesis rather marks a period when the Hellenic spirit was
past its prime, and had taken a one-sided bent. The Athenians
of the Periclean age—in whom we must recognise the purest
embodiment of Hellenism—had in truth the peculiar power,
which Thucydides claims for them, of thinking before they
acted and of acting also. … To Greece … we owe the love of
Science, the love of Art, the love of Freedom: not Science
alone, Art alone, or Freedom alone, but these vitally
correlated with one another and brought into organic union.
And in this union we recognise the distinctive features of the
West. The Greek genius is the European genius in its first and
brightest bloom. From a vivifying contact with the Greek
spirit Europe derived that new and mighty impulse which we
call Progress. Strange it is to think that these Greeks, like
the other members of the Indo-European family, probably had
their cradle in the East; that behind Greek civilisation,
Greek language, Greek mythology, there is that Eastern
background to which the comparative sciences seem to point.
But it is no more than a background. In spite of an
resemblances, in spite of common customs, common words, common
syntax, common gods, the spirit of the Greeks and of their
Eastern kinsmen—the spirit of their civilisation, art,
language, and mythology—remains essentially distinct. …
From Greece came that first mighty impulse, whose far-off
workings are felt by us to-day, and which has brought it about
that progress has been accepted as the law and goal of human
endeavour. Greece first took up the task of equipping man with
all that fits him for civil life and promotes his secular well
being; of unfolding and expanding every inborn faculty and
energy, bodily and mental; of striving restlessly after the
perfection of the whole, and finding in this effort after an
unattainable ideal that by which man becomes like to the gods.
The life of the Hellenes, like that of their Epic hero
Achilles, was brief and brilliant. But they have been endowed
with the gift of renewing their youth. Renan, speaking of the
nations that are fitted to play a part in universal history,
says 'that they must die first that the world may live through
them;' that a people must choose between the prolonged life,
the tranquil and obscure destiny of one who lives for himself,
and the troubled stormy career of one who lives for humanity.
The nation which revolves within its breast social and
religious problems is always weak politically. Thus it was
with the Jews, who in order to make the religious conquest of
the world must needs disappear as a nation.' 'They lost a
material city, they opened the reign of the spiritual
Jerusalem.' So too it was with Greece. As a people she ceased
to be. When her freedom was overthrown at Chaeronea, the page
of her history was to all appearance closed. Yet from that
moment she was to enter on a larger life and on universal
empire. Already during the last days of her independence it
had been possible to speak of a new Hellenism, which rested
not on ties of blood but on spiritual kinship. This
presentiment of Isocrates was marvellously realised. As
Alexander passed conquering through Asia, he restored to the
East, as garnered grain, that Greek civilisation whose seeds
had long ago been received from the East. Each conqueror in
turn, the Macedonian and the Roman, bowed before conquered
Greece and learnt lessons at her feet. To the modern world too
Greece has been the great civiliser, the oecumenical teacher,
the disturber and regenerator of slumbering societies. She is
the source of most of the quickening ideas which re-make
nations and renovate literature and art. If we reckon up our
secular possessions, the wealth and heritage of the past, the
larger share may be traced back to Greece. One half of life
she has made her domain,—all, or well-nigh all, that belongs
to the present order of things and to the visible world."

_S. H. Butcher,
Some Aspects of the Greek Genius,
pages 9-43._

"The part assigned to [the Greeks] in the drama of the nations
was to create forms of beauty, to unfold ideas which should
remain operative when the short bloom of their own existence
was over, and thus to give a new impulse, a new direction, to
the whole current of human life.
{1637}
The prediction which Thucydides puts into the mouth of the
Athenian orator has been fulfilled, though not in the sense
literally conveyed; 'Assuredly we shall not be without
witnesses,' says Pericles; 'there are mighty documents of our
power, which shall make us the wonder of this age, and of ages
to come.' He was thinking of those wide-spread settlements
which attested the empire of Athens. But the immortal
witnesses of his race are of another kind. Like the victims of
the war, whose epitaph he was pronouncing, the Hellenes have
their memorial in all lands, graven, not on stone, but in the
hearts of mankind. … Are we not warranted by what we know of
Greek work, imperfect though our knowledge is, in saying that
no people has yet appeared in the world whose faculty for art,
in the largest sense of the term, has been so comprehensive?
And there is a further point that may be noted. It has been
said that the man of genius sometimes is such in virtue of
combining the temperament distinctive of his nation with some
gift of his own which is foreign to that temperament; as in
Shakespeare the basis is English, and the individual gift a
flexibility of spirit which is not normally English. But we
cannot apply this remark to the greatest of ancient Greek
writers. They present certainly a wide range of individual
differences. Yet so distinctive and so potent is the Hellenic
nature that, if any two of such writers be compared, however
wide the individual differences may be,—as between
Aristophanes and Plato, or Pindar and Demosthenes,—such
individual differences are less significant than those common
characteristics of the Hellenic mind which separate both the
men compared from all who are not Hellenes. If it were
possible to trace the process by which the Hellenic race was
originally separated from their Aryan kinsfolk, the
physiological basis of their qualities might perhaps be traced
in the mingling of different tribal ingredients. As it is,
there is no clue to these secrets of nature's alchemy: the
Hellenes appear in the dawn of their history with that unique
temperament already distinct: we can point only to one cause,
and that a subordinate cause, which must have aided its
development, namely, the geographical position of Greece. No
people of the ancient world were so fortunately placed.
Nowhere are the aspects of external nature more beautiful,
more varied, more stimulating to the energies of body and
mind. A climate which, within three parallels of latitude,
nourishes the beeches of Pindus and the palms of the Cyclades;
mountain barriers which at once created a framework for the
growth of local federations, and encouraged a sturdy spirit of
freedom; coasts abounding in natural harbors; a sea dotted
with islands, and notable for the regularity of its
wind-currents; ready access alike to Asia and to the western
Mediterranean,—these were circumstances happily congenial to
the inborn faculties of the Greek race, and admirably fitted
to expand them."

_R. C. Jebb,
The Growth and Influence of Classical Greek Poetry,
pages 27-31._

"The sense of beauty which the Greeks possessed to a greater
extent than any other people could not fail to be caught by
the exceptionally beautiful natural surroundings in which they
lived; and their literature, at any rate their poetry, bears
abundant testimony to the fact. Small though Greece is, it
contains a greater variety, both in harmony and contrast, of
natural beauty than most countries, however great. Its
latitude gives it a southern climate, while its mountains
allow of the growth of a vegetation found in more northern
climes. Within a short space occur all the degrees of
transition from snow-topped hills to vine-clad fountains. And
the joy with which the beauty of their country filled the
Greeks may be traced through all their poetry. … The two
leading facts in the physical aspect of Greece are the sea and
the mountains. As Europe is the most indented and has
relatively the longest coast-line of all the continents of the
world, so of all the countries of Europe the land of Greece is
the most interpenetrated with arms of the sea. …

'Two voices are there: one is of the Sea,
One of the Mountains; each a mighty voice:
In both from age to age thou didst rejoice;
They were thy chosen music, Liberty!'

Both voices spoke impressively to Greece, and her literature
echoes their tones. So long as Greece was free and the spirit
of freedom animated the Greeks, so long their literature was
creative and genius marked it. When liberty perished,
literature declined. The field of Chæronea was fatal alike to
the political liberty and to the literature of Greece. The
love of liberty was indeed pushed even to an extreme in
Greece; and this also was due to the physical configuration of
the country. Mountains, it has been said, divide; seas unite.
The rise and the long continuance in so small a country of so
many cities, having their own laws, constitution, separate
history, and independent existence, can only be explained by
the fact that in their early growth they were protected, each
by the mountains which surrounded it, so effectually, and the
love of liberty in this time was developed to such an extent,
that no single city was able to establish its dominion over
the others. … Everyone of the numerous states, whose
separate political existence was guaranteed by the mountains,
was actually or potentially a separate centre of civilisation
and of literature. In some one of these states each kind of
literature could find the conditions appropriate or necessary
to its development. Even a state which produced no men of
literary genius itself might become the centre at which poets
collected and encouraged the literature it could not produce,
as was the case with Sparta, to which Greece owed the
development of choral lyric. … The eastern basin of the
Mediterranean has deserved well of literature, for it brought
Greece into communication with her colonies on the islands and
on the surrounding coasts, and enabled the numerous Greek
cities to co-operate in the production of a rich and varied
literature, instead of being confined each to a one-sided and
incomplete development. The process of communication began in
the earliest times, as is shown by the spread of epic
literature. Originating in Ionia, it was taken up in Cyprus,
where the epic called the Cypria was composed, and, at the
beginning of the sixth century it was on the coast of Africa
in the colony of Cyrene. The rapid spread of elegiac poetry is
even more strikingly illustrated, for we find Solon in Athens
quoting from his contemporary Mimnermus of Colophon. Choral
lyric, which originated in Asia Minor, was conveyed to Sparta
by Alcman, and by Simonides of Ceos all over the Greek world.
But although in early times we find as much interchange and
reaction in the colonies amongst themselves as between the
colonies and the mother-country, with the advance of time we
find the centripetal tendency becoming dominant.
{1638}
The mother-country becomes more and more the centre to which
all literature and art gravitates. At the beginning of the
sixth century Sparta attracted poets from the colonies in Asia
Minor, but the only form of literature which Sparta rewarded
and encouraged was choral lyric. No such narrowness
characterised Athens, and when she established herself as the
intellectual capital of Greece, all men of genius received a
welcome there, and we find all forms of literature deserting
their native homes, even their native dialects, to come to
Athens. … As long as literature had many centres, there was
no danger of all falling by a single stroke; but when it was
centralised in Athens, and the blow delivered by Philip at
Chæronea had fallen on Athens, classical Greek literature
perished in a generation. It is somewhat difficult to
distinguish race-qualities from the characteristics impressed
on a people by the conditions under which it lives, since the
latter by accumulation and transmission from generation to
generation eventually become race-qualities. Thus the Spartans
possessed qualities common to them and the Dorians, of whom
they were a branch, and also qualities peculiar to themselves,
which distinguished them from other Dorians. … The ordinary
life of a Spartan citizen was that of a soldier in camp or
garrison, rather than that of a member of a political
community, and this system of life was highly unfavourable to
literature. … Other Dorians, not hemmed in by such
unfavourable conditions as the Spartans, did provide some
contributions to the literature of Greece, and in the nature
of their contributions we may detect the qualities of the
race. The Dorians in Sicily sowed the seeds of rhetoric and
carried comedy to considerable perfection. Of imagination the
race seems destitute: it did not produce poets. On the other
hand, the race is eminently practical as well as prosaic, and
their humour was of a nature which corresponded to these
qualities. … The Æolians form a contrast both to the
Spartans and to the Athenians. The development of
individuality is as characteristic of the Æolians as its
absence is of the Spartans. But the Æolians, first of all
Greeks, possessed a cavalry, and this means that they were
wealthy and aristocratic. … This gives us the distinction
between the Æolians and the Athenians: among the former,
individuality was developed in the aristocracy alone; among
the latter, in all the citizens. The Æolians added to the
crown of Greek literature one of the brightest of its
jewels-lyric poetry, as we understand lyric in modern times,
that is, the expression of the poet's feelings, on any subject
whatever, as his individual feeling. … But it was the
Ionians who rendered the greatest services to Greek
literature. They were a quick-witted race, full of enterprise,
full of resources. In them we see reflected the character of
the sea, as in the Dorians the character of the mountains. The
latter partook of the narrowness and exclusiveness of their
own homes, hemmed in by mountains, and by them protected from
the incursion of strangers and strange innovations. The
Ionians, on the other hand, were open as the sea, and had as
many moods. They were eminently susceptible to beauty in all
its forms, to the charm of change and to novelty. They were
ever ready to put any belief or institution to the test of
discussion, and were governed as much by ideas as by
sentiments. Keenness of intellect, taste in all matters of
literature and art, grace in expression, and measure in
everything distinguished them above all Greeks. The
development of epic poetry, the origin of prose, the
cultivation of philosophy, are the proud distinction of the
Ionian race. In Athens we have the qualities of the Ionian
race in their finest flower."

_F. B. Jevons,
A History of Greek Literature,
pages 485-490._

HELLENIC GENIUS AND INFLUENCE:
Hellenism and the Jews.

"The Jewish region … was, in ancient times as well as in the
Graeco-Roman period, surrounded on all sides by heathen
districts. Only at Jamnia and Joppa had the Jewish element
advanced as far as the sea. Elsewhere, even to the west, it
was not the sea, but the Gentile region of the Philistine and
Phenician cities, that formed the boundary of the Jewish.
These heathen lands were far more deeply penetrated by
Hellenism, than the country of the Jews. No reaction like the
rising of the Maccabees had here put a stop to it, besides
which heathen polytheism was adapted in quite a different
manner from Judaism for blending with Hellenism. While
therefore the further advance of Hellenism was obstructed by
religious barriers in the interior of Palestine, it had
attained here, as in all other districts since its triumphant
entry under Alexander the Great, its natural preponderance
over Oriental culture. Hence, long before the commencement of
the Roman period, the educated world, especially in the great
cities in the west and east of Palestine, was, we may well
say, completely Hellenized. It is only with the lower strata
of the populations and the dwellers in rural districts, that
this must not be equally assumed. Besides however the border
lands, the Jewish districts in the interior of Palestine were
occupied by Hellenism, especially Scythopolis … and the town
of Samaria, where Macedonian colonists had already been
planted by Alexander the Great … while the national
Samaritans had their central point at Sichem. The victorious
penetration of Hellenistic culture is most plainly and
comprehensively shown by the religious worship. The native
religions, especially in the Philistine and Phenician cities,
did indeed in many respects maintain themselves in their
essential character; but still in such wise, that they were
transformed by and blended with Greek elements. But besides
these the purely Greek worship also gained an entrance, and in
many places entirely supplanted the former. Unfortunately our
sources of information do not furnish us the means of
separating the Greek period proper from the Roman; the best
are afforded by coins, and these for the most part belong to
the Roman. On the whole however the picture, which we obtain,
holds good for the pre-Roman period also, nor are we entirely
without direct notices of this age. … In the Jewish region
proper Hellenism was in its religious aspect triumphantly
repulsed by the rising of the Maccabees; it was not till after
the overthrow of Jewish nationality in the wars of Vespasian
and Hadrian, that an entrance for heathen rites was forcibly
obtained by the Romans. In saying this however we do not
assert, that the Jewish people of those early times remained
altogether unaffected by Hellenism. For the latter was a
civilising power, which extended itself to every department of
life.
{1639}
It fashioned in a peculiar manner the organization of the
state, legislation, the administration of justice, public
arrangements, art and science, trade and industry, and the
customs of daily life down to fashion and ornaments, and thus
impressed upon every department of life, wherever its
influence reached, the stamp of the Greek mind. It is true
that Hellenistic is not identical with Hellenic culture. The
importance of the former on the contrary lay in the fact, that
by its reception of the available elements of all foreign
cultures within its reach, it became a world-culture. But this
very world-culture became in its turn a peculiar whole, in
which the preponderant Greek element was the ruling keynote.
Into the stream of this Hellenistic culture the Jewish people
was also drawn; slowly indeed and with reluctance, but yet
irresistibly, for though religious zeal was able to banish
heathen worship and all connected therewith from Israel, it
could not for any length of time restrain the tide of
Hellenistic culture in other departments of life. Its several
stages cannot indeed be any longer traced. But when we reflect
that the small Jewish country was enclosed on almost every
side by Hellenistic regions, with which it was compelled, even
for the sake of trade, to hold continual intercourse, and when
we remember, that even the rising of the Maccabees was in the
main directed not against Hellenism in general, but only
against the heathen religion, that the later Asmonaeans bore
in every respect a Hellenistic stamp-employed foreign
mercenaries, minted foreign coins, took Greek names, etc., and
that some of them, e. g. Aristobulus I., were direct favourers
of Hellenism,—when all this is considered, it may safely be
assumed, that Hellenism had, notwithstanding the rising of the
Maccabees, gained access in no inconsiderable measure into
Palestine even before the commencement of the Roman period."

_E. Schürer,
History of the Jewish People in the Time of Christ,
division 2, volume 1, pages 29-30._

HELLENIC GENIUS AND INFLUENCE:
Hellenism and the Romans.

"In the Alexandrian age, with all its close study and
imitation of the classical models, nothing is more remarkable
than the absence of any promise that the Hellenic spirit which
animated those masterpieces was destined to have any abiding
influence in the world. … And yet it is true that the vital
power of the Hellenic genius was not fully revealed, until,
after suffering some temporary eclipse in the superficially
Greek civilizations of Asia and Egypt, it emerged in a new
quality, as a source of illumination to the literature and the
art of Rome. Early Roman literature was indebted to Greece for
the greater part of its material; but a more important debt
was in respect to the forms and moulds of composition. The
Latin language of the third century B. C. was already in full
possession of the qualities which always remained distinctive
of it; it was clear, strong, weighty, precise, a language made
to be spoken in the imperative mood, a fitting interpreter of
government and law. But it was not flexible or graceful,
musical or rapid; it was not suited to express delicate shades
of thought or feeling; for literary purposes, it was, in
comparison with Greek, a poor and rude idiom. The development
of Latin into the language of Cicero and Virgil was gradually
and laboriously accomplished under the constant influence of
Greece. That finish of form, known as classical, which Roman
writers share with Greek, was a lesson which Greece slowly
impressed upon Rome. … A close and prolonged study of the
Greek models could not end in a mere discipline of form; the
beauty of the best Greek models depends too much on their
vital spirit. Not only was the Roman imagination enriched, but
the Roman intellect, through literary intercourse with the
Greek, gradually acquired a flexibility and a plastic power
which had not been among its original gifts. Through Roman
literature the Greek influence was transmitted to later times
in a shape which obscured, indeed, much of its charm, but
which was also fitted to extend its empire, and to win an
entrance for it in regions which would have been less
accessible to a purer form of its manifestation."

_R. C. Jebb,
The Growth and Influence of Classical Greek Poetry,
chapter 8._