Chapter II: Ethnology (3)

Lastly, the reputed derivation of the oracle at Dodona from Egypt harmonises with the Pelasgian character assigned to that seat of worship by Homer. The tradition to this effect reported by Herodotus[251] was Greek, and not Egyptian: it was obtained by him on the spot: and if Homer’s countrymen partook of the poet’s reserve, and his dislike of assigning a foreign source to anything established in Greece, a presumption arises that this particular statement would not have been made, had it not rested on a respectable course of traditionary authority.

_Silence of the Iliad._

It may however be asked, if the Pelasgians are to be regarded as Greeks, and as the base of the Greek nation, and if Homer was familiar with their name and position in that character, how happens it that he never calls the Greeks Pelasgians, as he calls them Danaans, Argeians, and Achæans, and never even gives us in the Iliad a Pelasgian race or tribe by name as numbered among the Greeks?

Now it is not a sufficient answer to say, that the Pelasgian race and name were falling under eclipse in the age of Homer; for we shall see reason hereafter to suppose that the appellations of Danaan and Argeian were likewise (so to speak) preterite, though not yet obsolete, appellations; still Homer employs them freely.

Their case is essentially different, however, as we shall find, from that of the Pelasgians, since those two names do not imply either any blood different from that of the Achæan or properly Greek body, or any particular race which had supplied an element in its composition: one of these the Pelasgian name certainly does imply. Those names too, without doubt, would not be used, unless they shed glory on the Greeks: the Pelasgian name could have no such treasure to dispense.

It should, however, here be observed, that an examination presently to be made of the force of the Argeian name will help us to account for the disappearance from Greece of the Pelasgian name, which it may perhaps have supplanted.

Let me observe, that if the Pelasgians did, in point of fact, supply an element to the Greek nationality, which had, while still remaining perceptibly distinct, become politically subordinate in Homer’s time, that is precisely the case in which he would be sure not to apply the name to the Greeks at large, nor to any Greek state, as its application could not under such circumstances be popular. His non-employment of it, therefore, for Greeks is _pro tanto_ a confirmation to the general argument of these pages.

If, again, there were a distinct people of Pelasgians among the Trojan auxiliaries, and on the Greek side a large but subordinate Pelasgic element, this would be ample reason both for his naming the Pelasgic allies of the Trojans, with a view to the truth of his recital, and for his not using the Pelasgic name in connection with the Greeks; for in no instance has he placed branches of the same race or tribe on both sides in the struggle. Glaucus and Sarpedon, the transplanted Æolids, cannot be considered as exceptions, first, from the old date of their Greek extraction: and secondly, because they are individuals, whereas we now speak of tribes and races. The name, too, was more suited to the unmixed Pelasgians of the Trojan alliance, than to a people, among whom it had grown pale beneath the greater splendour of famous dynasties and of more energetic tribes.

The application of this reasoning to the Pelasgi is fortified by its being applicable to other Homeric names.

_Thraces and Threicii._

It can hardly be doubted that the name Θρῇξ is akin to Τραχὶν and τρῆχυς[252], that it means a highlander, or inhabitant of a rough and mountainous country, and that it included the inhabitants of territories clearly Greek. This extended signification of the term explains the assertion of Herodotus[253], that the Thracians were the most numerous of all nations, after the Indians.

Now Homer makes Thamyris the Bard a Thracian; yet it is clear from his having to do with the Muses, and from the geographical points with which Homer connects his name, that he must be a Greek[254]. They are, Δώριον in the dominions of Pylos, where he met his calamity, and the Œchalia of Eurytus in Thessaly, from whence he was making his journey[255]. Strabo tells us that Pieria and Olympus were anciently Thracian[256], and moreover, that the Thracians of Bœotia consecrated Helicon to the Muses. Orpheus, Musæus, Eumolpus, were held to be Thracians by tradition, yet it also made them write in Greek. I think we may trace this descriptive character of the name Θρῇκες, and its not yet having acquired fully the force of a proper name with Homer, in his employment of it as an adjective, and not a substantive. It is very frequently joined in the poems with the affix ἄνδρες, which he does not employ with such proper names as are in familiar and established use, such as Danaan, Argive, or Achæan. He says Achæan or Danaan heroes, but never joins the names to the simple predicate ‘men.’ When he says Ἀχαιὸς ἄνηρ, it is with a different force; it is in pointing out an individual among a multitude. Indeed in Homer it is not Θρῇξ but Θρηίκιος which means Thracian, of or belonging to the country called Thrace, Θρῄκη. There is then sufficient evidence that Greeks of the highlands might be Thraces; and there may very probably have been whole tribes so called among the Greeks. Yet we never have Thracians named by Homer on the Greek side, while on the Trojan side they appear as supplying no less than two contingents of allies: one in the Catalogue, and another which had just arrived at the period of the Δολώνεια[257].

These two appear to be entirely distinct tribes: because no connection is mentioned between them; because the first contingent is described as being composed not of all the Thracians, but of all the Thracians within the Hellespont: and lastly, because the new comers have their own βασιλεὺς with them, as the first contingent had its leaders, Acamas and Peirous. The Hellespont meant here seems to be the strait, because it is ἀγαρρόος. And it is therefore possible, that while the first contingent was supplied by the nearer tribes, the second may have been composed of those Thracians who lay nearer the Greek border.

Notwithstanding that Mars, who is so inseparably associated with Thrace, fights on the Trojan side, we have no evidence from Homer which would warrant the assumption that he intended to connect the Thracians more intimately with the Pelasgians than with the Hellenes. It may be that the poet’s ethnical knowledge failed him. The wavering of Mars seems to indicate a corresponding uncertainty in his own mind. Perhaps with both the Thracian and Pelasgian names it was the breadth of their range that constituted the difficulty. Some part of Thrace is with him ἐριβώλαξ[258]; it is the part from which the first contingent came, as the son of Peirous belonged to it. And that part is less mountainous than the quarter which I have presumed may have supplied the contingent of Rhesus. The epithet is the very same as is applied to the Pelasgian Larissa[259]: and the Larissan Pelasgians are placed next to the first Thracian contingent in the Trojan Catalogue.

The most probable supposition for Thracians as well as Pelasgians is, that they had affinities in both directions; that they existed among the Greeks diffusively, and were absorbed in names of greater splendour: but that on the Trojan side they still had distinct national existence, and therefore they are named on that side, while to avoid confusion silence is studiously maintained about them on the other. The whole race, says Grote, present a character more Asiatic than European[260].

_Caucones and Leleges._

Many other races have been recorded in the later traditions as having in pre-historic times inhabited various parts of Greece. Such are Temnices, Aones, Hyantes, Teleboi. Of these Homer makes no mention. But there are two other races whom he names, the Leleges and Caucones, and with respect to whom Strabo[261] has affirmed, that they were extensively diffused over Greece as well as over Asia Minor.

Homer has proceeded, with respect to the Caucones, exactly in the same way as with respect to the Pelasgi. In the Iliad he names them[262] among the Trojan allies, and is wholly silent about them in dealing with the Greek races. But in the Odyssey, where he had no national distinctions to keep in view, he names them as a people apparently Greek, and dwelling on the western side of Greece. The pseudo-Mentor is going among them on business, to obtain payment of a debt[263]: and the manner in which they are mentioned, without explanation, shows that the name must have been familiar to Nestor and the other persons addressed. Probably therefore they were a neighbouring tribe: certainly a Greek tribe, for we do not find proof that the Homeric Greeks carried on commerce except with their own race.

The poet names them with a laudatory epithet: they are the Καύκωνες μεγάθυμοι. This may remind us of his bounty in the same kind to the Pelasgians: and it seems as though he had had a reverence for the remains of the ancient possessors of the country.

We have abundant signs of the Leleges on the Trojan side in the war. In the Tenth Book they appear as a contingent: but besides this, Priam had for one of his wives Laothee, daughter of Altes, king of the Lelegians, who are here called φιλοπτόλεμοι[264]. What is more important, we find the expressions Λέλεγες καὶ Τρῶες[265] used together in such a way, as implies the wide extension of the former as a race. In the Twentieth Iliad, Æneas in speaking of Achilles refers to his former escape from the great warrior. He fought, says Æneas, under the auspices of Minerva: who shed light before him, and bid him slay Lelegians and Trojans,

ἠδ’ ἐκέλευεν
ἔγχεï χαλκείῳ Λέλεγας καὶ Τρῶας ἐναίρειν.

The Trojan force was in two main portions, each with many subdivisions: first, the army of Priam, with those of his kindred or subordinate princes: and, secondly, the allies, with their numerous and widely dispersed races. In the passage just quoted, the word _Leleges_ must either mean the great body of allies, or else it must, conjointly with _Troes_, signify the whole mass of what we may call the indigenous troops. Now the former is highly improbable. Such differences as are implied in the combination of Thracians, Lycians, and Pelasgians, could not well be, and nowhere else are comprehended by Homer under a single name as one race or nation, though the Lycians, on account of their excellence, are sometimes[266] taken to represent the whole body of the allies. And again, if the Leleges meant the whole body of allies, the Pelasgians would appear as a branch of them, which is contrary to all evidence and likelihood. If then the two words together represent those indigenous troops, as contradistinguished from the allies, who were arrayed in the five divisions that are enumerated in vv. 816-39 of the Second book, the question is, how is the sense to be distributed between them. And here there is not much room for doubt. The name Τρῶες had been assumed four generations before the war from King Tros, and was therefore a political or dynastic name, not a name of race. It most probably therefore indicates either the inhabitants of Priam’s own city and immediate dominions, or else the ruling race, who held power here, as elsewhere, among a subject population. In either case we must conclude that the word Leleges is meant to indicate the blood, and also the blood-name (so to speak) of the bulk of the population through a considerable tract of country: and it will be observed that in the fourth and fifth of the divisions[267] in the Trojan Catalogue Homer specifies no blood-name or name of race whatever.

This being so, we find an important light cast upon the meaning of the word Leleges. As we proceed with these inquiries, we shall find accumulating evidence of the Pelasgianism of the mass of the population on the Trojan side: and thus when it appears that that mass or a very great part of it was Lelegian, it also appears probable that the Leleges were at least akin to the Pelasgians, though some have taken them to be distinct[268].

In answer therefore to the question, who were these Caucones and these Leleges, while we are deficient in the means of detailed and particular reply, we may, I think, fall back with tolerable security upon the words used by Bishop Thirlwall in closing an ethnological survey:

“The review we have just taken of the Pelasgian settlements in Greece appears inevitably to lead to the conclusion that the name Pelasgians was a general one, like that of Saxons, Franks, or Alemanni: but that each of the Pelasgian tribes had also one peculiar to itself[269].”

Upon our finding, as we find, the Pelasgian name in certain apparent relations with others, such as Leleges and Caucones, it appears more reasonable to presume a relationship between them, than the reverse: for nothing can be more improbable than the simultaneous presence at that early period of a multitude of races, radically distinct from each other, and yet diffused intermixedly over the same country upon equal terms, and if there was a relationship, it would most probably be that of subdivision, under which Leleges and Caucones might be branches of the widely spread Pelasgian family.

This opinion is supported, not only by presumptions, but by much indirect evidence. It is indisputable that various names were applied, by the custom of the Homeric age, to the same people, and at the same period. The poet calls the inhabitants of Elis both Elians and Epeans. The people of Ithaca are Ithacesians (Ἰθακήσιοι), but there are also Ἀχαιοί[270], and in the Catalogue they are included under the Cephallenians[271]. The Dolopians in the speech of Phœnix[272] are included under the Phthians; and are also within the scope of the other names applied by the Catalogue to the followers of Achilles, who were called by the name of Myrmidons, or of Hellens, or of Achæans. Of these the first seems to be the denomination, which the ruling race of that particular district had brought with it into the country. The third probably belongs to the Myrmidons, as members of that tribe, of Hellic origin, which at the time predominated in Greece generally. The second, as we shall find, was the common name for all Greek tribes of that origin, and was the name which ultimately gained a complete ascendancy in the country. Of the five nations of Crete in the Seventeenth Odyssey[273], either all or several are probably included in the Κρῆτες of the Second Iliad[274]. Nay, we may now declare it to be at least highly probable[275], that the Ionian name was a sub-designation of the Pelasgians. Thus we have abundant instances of plurality in the designations of tribes. On the whole, we shall do best to assume that the names in question of Leleges and Caucones indicated Pelasgian subdivision. The inquiry is, however, one of ethnical antiquarianism only; these names are historically insignificant, for, apart from the Pelasgian, they carry no distinctive character or special function in reference to Greece.

_Erratum._--I have inadvertently, in p. 103, rendered κητώεσσαν ‘full
of wild beasts.’ It ought to have been translated ‘deep-sunken.’ See
Buttmann’s Lexilogus, _in voc._

FOOTNOTES:

[126] Il. ii. 681-5.

[127] Hermann Gr. Staats-alt. sect. 12.

[128] Il. ii. 841.

[129] Inf. sect. viii.

[130] Il. xiii. 686, et seqq.

[131] So Strabo, p. 221.

[132] The discussion is reviewed in Cramer’s Greece, vol. i. 115.

[133] Il. ii. 750.

[134] Od. xiv. 327; xix. 296.

[135] Cramer’s Ancient Greece, i. 353.

[136] Cramer’s Greece, i. 370.

[137] Hesiod ap. Strab. vii. 327.

[138] Schol. ad Trach. v. 1169.

[139] Vid. inf. sect. iii.

[140] Od. xix. 175.

[141] This question is discussed, inf. sect. ix.

[142] See inf. sect. ix.

[143] Il. ii. 735.

[144] Od. iv. 83. xiv. 199, 245. xvii. 448.

[145] Strabo viii. 6. p. 370.

[146] Cramer’s Greece, iii. 244.

[147] Inf. sect. viii.

[148] Il. xx. 215 and seqq.

[149] Thuc. i. cap. 2.

[150] Od. xii. 260-5.

[151] This state of ideas and habits is well illustrated by Odyss. xiv. 222-6: and see inf. sect. 7.

[152] Strabo viii. p. 383.

[153] Xenoph. Hell. vii. 1, 23, and Cramer iii. 299.

[154] Il. ii. 610.

[155] Il. ii. 609.

[156] 630-5.

[157] See inf. sect. vii.

[158] Xenoph. Hell. vii. 1. 23.

[159] Thuc. i. 2.

[160] Xenoph. Hellen. vii. 1. 23.

[161] Thucyd. vii. 57.

[162] B. i. 2.

[163] See also Müller, Orchomenus p. 77, and his references.

[164] Il. ii. 498.

[165] Strabo ix. p. 433.

[166] Aristot. Meteorol. i. 14.

[167] Paus. ii. 22. 2.

[168] Od. v. 125.

[169] Hesiod. Theog. 971.

[170] Od. xi. 281-4.

[171] See inf. sect. 8.

[172] Il. xv. 332, 7.

[173] Inf. sect. vi.

[174] Hymn. Cer. 123.

[175] Il. xxiii. 148. Od. viii. 362. Il. viii. 48.

[176] Il. xiii. 635.

[177] Il. iv. 328.

[178] Heyne in loc.

[179] In loc.

[180] From the Greek βῶλος, according to Richardson, who quotes _The Fox_ (v. 2.)

If Italy
Have any glebe, more fruitful than these fallows,
I am deceived.

[181] Od. i. 407.

[182] Od. v. 463.

[183] Od. vii. 332.

[184] Il. xxi. 232.

[185] Od. xi. 309.

[186] (ii. 132 Serr. Steph.)

[187] Inf. sect. 7.

[188] Od. xxi. 255.

[189] Payne Knight in loc.

[190] Od. xi. 302-4.

[191] Il. iii. 243.

[192] Eustath. in loc. et alii.

[193] Schol. A. in loc.

[194] In loc.

[195] Obss. in loc.

[196] Eustath. in loc.

[197] Schol. BL. in loc.

[198] Herod. vii. 161.

[199] Lord Aberdeen’s Inquiry, p. 100.

[200] Il. xvi. 419.

[201] See Od. xx. 72.

[202] Il. xii. 331.

[203] Il. ii. 756.

[204] Il. ii. 748.

[205] Ibid. 703-7.

[206] Od. iii. 307.

[207] Il. i. 194.

[208] Il. v. 1-8.

[209] V. 2, 3.

[210] Il. iv. 64-74.

[211] Il. vii. 34.

[212] Il. xxiv. 25-30.

[213] Il. v. 59.

[214] Il. viii. 362-9: cf. Od. xi. 626.

[215] Il. xx. 146.

[216] See inf. Religion and Morals, Sect. II.

[217] Vid. inf. as before.

[218] Eurip. Ion 64. 1590. Grote i. 144.

[219] Thirlwall, vol. ii. p. 2.

[220] Herod. v. 65.

[221] Thuc. i. 6.

[222] i. 2.

[223] Herod. i. 56.

[224] i. 57.

[225] Höck’s Creta ii. 109.

[226] Thuc. i. 3.

[227] Herod. vi. 137, 8.

[228] B. viii. p. 333.

[229] Herod. i. 139.

[230] Od. xiv. 243.

[231] Ibid. 257.

[232] Il. ix. 363.

[233] Od. iii. 318.

[234] Döllinger Heidenthum und Judenthum vi. 136. p. 427.

[235] Inf. p. 176.

[236] Note xvii.

[237] Il. ii. 614.

[238] Smith, Antiq. p. 331. Niebuhr, Hist. iii. 282.

[239] Works and Days 616 et seqq.

[240] Vid. inf. sect. 4. Nägelsbach (Hom. Theol. ii. 9.) may be consulted in an opposite sense.

[241] Od. xiii. 272. xiv. 228.

[242] Herod. iv. 42.

[243] i. 13.

[244] Inf. Religion and Morals, sect. iii.

[245] Sup. p. 148.

[246] Od. xiv. 271.

[247] Od. v. 278-86.

[248] Ibid. ix. 84, 94.

[249] Ibid. iv. 220.

[250] Ibid. 584.

[251] Herod. ii. 54. According to the Egyptian tradition there reported, the Phœnicians carried into Greece the priestess who founded the Dodonæan oracle. This again leads us to view the Phœnicians as the chief medium of intercourse between Egypt and Greece.

[252] Mure, Lit. Greece, vol. i.

[253] Herod. v. 2.

[254] Il. ii. 594-600.

[255] Il. ii. 730.

[256] Strabo x. p. 471.

[257] Il. ii. 844, and x. 434.

[258] Il. xx. 485.

[259] Il. ii. 841.

[260] Hist. Greece, iv. 28.

[261] Strabo viii. 7. p. 321, 2.

[262] Il. x. 429; xx. 329.

[263] Od. iii. 366.

[264] Il. xxi. 85.

[265] Il. xx. 96.

[266] Inf. p. 182.

[267] Il. ii. 828-39.

[268] Höck’s Creta, ii. p. 7.

[269] Thirlwall’s Hist. of Greece. Ch. ii. Vol. i. p. 41. 12mo.

[270] Od. passim.

[271] Il. ii. 631.

[272] Il. ix. 184, and xvi. 196.

[273] Od. xix. 175.

[274] Il. ii. 645.

[275] See supr. p. 126.

SECT. III.

_Pelasgians continued: and certain States naturalised or akin to Greece._

_a._ Crete. _b._ Lycia. _c._ Cyprus.

_Crete and the traditions of Minos._

This appears to be the place for a more full consideration of the testimony of Homer with respect to, probably, the greatest character of early Greek history, and one who cannot be omitted in any inquiry concerning the early Pelasgians of Greece: in as much as they stand in a direct Homeric relation to Crete, of which he was the king.

In the poems of Homer, Minos appears to stand forth as the first great and fixed point of Greek nationality and civilization. He is not indeed so remote from the period of Homer himself as others, even as other Europeans, whom the poet mentions, and whom he connects by genealogy with the Trojan period, particularly the Æolids. But the peculiarities meeting in his case, as compared with most of them, are these:

1. That he is expressly traced upwards as well as downwards.

2. That he is connected with a fixed place as its sovereign.

3. That so much is either recounted or suggested of his character and acts.

4. That the Homeric traditions as to Minos are so remarkably supported from without.

Minos is mentioned, and somewhat largely, in no less than six different passages of the Iliad and Odyssey. Homer has given us a much fuller idea of him, than of the more popular hero Hercules, although he is not named in nearly so many passages; and it is singular, that the more ancient of the two personages is also by much the more historical. Again, the poet has told us more about Minos, although he is of foreign extraction, than he has said about all the rest of the older Greek heroes put together. Of Theseus, Pirithous, Castor, Pollux, Meleager, Perseus, Jason, and the rest, his notices are very few and meagre. In dealing with Homer, I should quote even this fact of the greater amount of his references, which in the case of most other poets would be immaterial, as a strong presumption of the superior historical importance of the person concerned.

Minos, according to Homer, had Jupiter for his father, a Phœnician damsel for his mother, and Rhadamanthus for his younger brother. The name[276] of his mother is not recorded, but Jupiter calls her far-famed. This fame, if due to her beauty, would probably have kept her name alive; but as it has not been preserved, it is more probably a reflection from the subsequent greatness of her son.

The story thus far appears probably to indicate that Minos was a Phœnician by birth, but without a known ancestry, and raised into celebrity by his own energies and achievements.

The mode, by which he rose to fame, was by the government of men and the foundation of civil institutions. At nine years old he received, such is the legend, revelations from Jupiter,[277] and reigned, in the great or mighty city (μεγάλη πόλις) of Cnossus, over Crete: such was the form, copied by the politic legislator of Rome, in which a title to veneration was secured for his laws. No other city, besides this capital, is described in Homer by the epithet μεγάλη, or by any equivalent word.

A further vivid mark of his political greatness is afforded us by that passage in the Odyssey, which exhibits him not simply as exercising in the world beneath[278] the mere office of a judge, but rather as discharging there a judicial function in virtue of his sovereignty. Such is the force of the word θεμιστεύειν,[279] which signifies rather to give law than to administer it: or, at least, to exercise the function of a king rather than of a judge[280] (ἵστωρ). He is described as still the illustrious son of Jupiter, Διὸς ἀγλαὸς υἱός. Even there he appears not as one of the suffering or bewildered inhabitants of that lower world, but in the exercise of power as an actual ruler among the spirits of the departed;

οἱ δέ μιν ἀμφὶ δίκας εἴροντο ἄνακτα.

He only is invested with any character of this kind. Every other apparition below is either in actual suffering, or gloomy and depressed.

The epithet ὀλοόφρων, applied to Minos in an earlier passage of the Νεκυία, might perhaps convey the same idea as Virgil has rendered by his _durissima_ regna,[281] in the description of Rhadamanthus: and we may also compare the address of Menelaus in the Third Iliad to Jupiter,

Ζεῦ πάτερ οὔτις σεῖο θεῶν ὀλοώτερος ἄλλος.[282]

A reasonable construction would refer the word to the commercial character of the Phœnician people, at once cunning and daring[283]; and there is much probability in the opinion of Höck, who interprets the word as meaning ‘exactor of tribute,’ or as alluding to the exaction by Minos of a tribute from Attica[284]. On this we shall shortly have to enlarge.

_Power of Crete._

As to the family and kingdom of Minos, we should gather in the first place from Homer, that Crete had under him been preeminent in power. He was king of the island (Κρήτῃ ἐπίουρος)[285], and he reigned, at the age of nine years only (ἐννέωρος βασίλευε), in Cnossus over the five nations. The island had ninety, or in the rounder numbers, an hundred cities. Two generations had passed since Minos; Idomeneus his grandson did not apparently reign, like Minos himself, over the whole of it: for if this had been the case, it is very improbable, presuming that we may judge by the analogies which the order of the army in general supplies, that Meriones would have been made his associate, which in some manner he is, in the command; and again, the feigned story of Ulysses in the Odyssey, though it introduces Idomeneus, does not represent him as king of the whole island, but rather implies that his pretended brother, Æthon, also exercised a sovereignty there[286]. But even then the Cretan contingent, although the towns named as supplying it do not extend over the whole island[287], amounted to eighty ships, and thus exceeded any other, except those of Agamemnon and of Nestor. And then, when Minos had so long been dead, it was still the marked and special distinction of the country, that it was the seat of his race. So Eumæus, describing the disguised stranger to Penelope, says[288],

φησὶ δ’ Ὀδυσσῆος ξεῖνος πατρώïος εἶναι,
Κρήτῃ ναιετάων, ὅθι Μίνωος γένος ἐστίν.

A passage which perhaps testifies that the family of Minos had been ξεῖνοι to the predecessors of Ulysses.

But perhaps there is no country in Greece which Homer so rarely mentions without a laudatory epithet. Though (περίρρυτος) sea-girt, it is not with him an island: it is Κρήτη γαῖα, Κρήτη εὐρεῖα, Κρήτη ἑκατόμπολις[289], and in the principal description, Homer exalts it more highly, I think, than any other territory,

Κρήτη τις γαῖ’ ἐστὶ, μέσῳ ἐνὶ οἴνοπι πόντῳ
καλὴ καὶ πίειρα, περίρρυτος· ἐν δ’ ἄνθρωποι
πολλοὶ, ἀπειέσιοι, καὶ ἐννήκοντα πόληες[290].

If it should be thought that the evidence to the character of Minos as a lawgiver is slight, we must call to mind that even the word _law_ is not found in Homer. The term afterwards used by the Greeks to express what we mean by a law, νόμος, only occurs with Homer in a sense quite different. He tells us of nothing more determinate than δίκαι and θέμιστες. But relatively to his pictures of other governors, the legislatorial character of Minos is as strongly marked as that of Numa is in Livy, relatively to other kings of Rome.

In conclusion, as to the region of Crete, it was inhabited by five races: namely,

1. Ἀχαιοί.
2. Ἐτεοκρῆτες.
3. Κυδῶνες.
4. Δωριέες.
5. Πελάσγοι.

_Pelasgianism in Crete._

Of these the Achæans and Dorians are evidently Greek. We are now examining at large the title of the Pelasgi to the same character. With respect to the Cydones, we may draw an inference from the facts, that they lived (Od. iii. 292), on a Cretan river Iardanus, and that this was also the name of a river of Peloponnesus (Il. vii. 133). I should even hold that this stream, which is not identified, was most probably in Arcadia: first, because in the contest with the Hellic tribes of Pylos, the Arcadians as Pelasgians would be on the defensive, and would therefore fight on their own ground: secondly, because the battle was on the ὠκύροος Κελάδων. These words are most suitable to some mountain feeder of the Iardanus, with its precipitate descent, rather than to the usually more peaceful course of a river near the sea, especially near the sea coast of sandy Pylus, which reached to the Alpheus[291]. This supposition respecting the Celadon will also best account for what otherwise seems singular; namely, that the battle was at once on the Celadon, and also about the Iardanus (Ἰαρδάνου ἀμφὶ ῥεέθρα[292]). Again, the battle was between Arcadians and Pylians, and therefore, from the relative situation of the territories, was probably on some Arcadian feeder of the Alpheus, lying far inland. Now if Iardanus was an Arcadian river, and if the Arcadians were Pelasgi, it leads to a presumption that the Cydonians of Crete, who dwelt upon an Iardanus, were Pelasgian also.

There remain the Ἐτεοκρῆτες, apparently so called, to distinguish them as indigenous from all the other four nations, who were ἐπήλυδες, or immigrant. This is curious, because it refers us elsewhere for the origin of the Pelasgi. It is the only case in which we hear of any thing anterior to them, upon the soils which they occupied. Lastly, Crete lay between Greece and Cyprus, and Cyprus is clearly indicated in the Odyssey as on the route to Egypt[293].

But we hear also of Rhadamanthus as the brother of Minos, of Deucalion as his son, and of Ariadne as his daughter[294]. And the notices of these personages in Homer all tend to magnify our conception of his power and his connections.

Theseus, who is glorified by Nestor as a first rate hero[295], and described as a most famous child of the gods[296], whom both Homer, and also the later legends connect with Attica, marries Ariadne, who dies on her way to Athens[297]. The marriages of Homer were generally contracted among much nearer neighbours. This more distant connection cannot, I think, but be taken as indicating the extended relations connected with the sovereignty of Minos and his exalted position.

_Traditions of Deucalion._

The genealogy of Idomeneus runs thus[298]; ‘Jupiter begot Minos, ruler of Crete. Minos begot a distinguished son, Deucalion. Deucalion begot me, a ruler over numerous subjects in broad Crete.’

Here it is to be remarked,

1. That while Minos and Idomeneus, the first and third generations, are described as ruling in Crete, Deucalion of the second is not so described.

2. That Idomeneus is nowhere described as having succeeded to the throne of his grandfather Minos, but only as being a ruler in Crete: and that, as we have seen, from the qualified conjunction of Meriones with him in the command, perhaps also from the limited range of the Cretan towns in the Catalogue, there arises a positive presumption that he had succeeded only to a portion of the ancient preeminence and power of his ancestor.

Now there is no direct evidence in Homer connecting Deucalion with Thessaly. The later tradition, however, places him there: and this tradition may probably claim an authority as old as that of Hesiod. A fragment of that poet[299], with the text partially corrupt, speaks of Locrus, leader of the Leleges, as among those whom Jupiter raised from the earth for Deucalion. This reference to Locrus immediately suggests the name of the Locrian race, and so carries us into the immediate neighbourhood of Thessaly; and the general purport of the words is to express something a little like the later tradition about Deucalion, which had that country for its scene. Combining this with the negative evidence afforded by the Homeric text, we thus find established a communication seemingly direct between Crete under Minos, and Thessaly, to which country we have already found it probable that Deucalion immigrated, and where he may have reigned.

The usual statement is, that the name Deucalion was common to two different persons, one the son of Minos, and the other the king of Thessaly. But we must be upon our guard against the device of the later Greek writers, who at once unravelled the accumulated intricacies that had gradually gathered about their traditions, and enlarged the stock of material for pampering vanity, and exciting the imagination, by multiplying the personages of the early legends. As regards the case now before us; the tradition, which makes Hellen son of the latter of these Deucalions, would certainly make him considerably older than he could be if a son of Minos. It must be admitted, that Homer repeats the name of Deucalion, for a Trojan so called is slain by Achilles in Il. xx. 478. It has pleased the fancy of the poet there to use the names of a number of dead heroes to distinguish the warriors who fell like sheep under the sword of the terrible Achilles: we find among them a Dardanus, a Tros, and a Moulius; and it is so little Homer’s practice to use names without a peculiar meaning, that we may conjecture he has done it, in preference to letting Achilles slaughter a crowd of ignoble persons, in order that in every thing his Protagonist might be distinguished from other men. But the poet seems to take particular care to prevent any confusion as to his great Greek, and indeed as to all his great living, personages. I am not aware of more than one single passage in the Iliad[300], among the multitude in which one or other of the Ajaxes is named, where there can be a doubt which of the two is meant. It is exceedingly unlikely that if a separate Deucalion of Thessaly had been known to Homer, he should not have distinguished him from the Deucalion of Crete. This unlikelihood mounts to incredibility, when we remember (1) that this other Deucalion of Thessaly is nothing less than the asserted root of the whole Hellenic stock, and (2) that the poet repeatedly uses the patronymic Deucalides as an individual appellation for Idomeneus, whereas the adverse supposition would make all the Achæans alike Δευκαλίδαι. We may therefore safely conclude at least, that Homer knew of no Deucalion other than the son of Minos.

_Of Rhadamanthus and the Phæacians._

We come now to Rhadamanthus, who is thrice mentioned by Homer. Once[301], as born of the same parents with Minos[302]. Once, as enjoying like him honours from Jupiter beyond the term of our ordinary human life: for he is placed amidst the calm and comforts of the Elysian plain. The third passage is remarkable. It is where Alcinous[303] promises Ulysses conveyance to his home, even should it be farther than Eubœa, which the Phæacian mariners consider to be their farthest known point of distance, and whither they had conveyed Rhadamanthus,

ἐποψόμενον Τίτυον, Γαιήιον υἱόν·

on his way to visit, or inspect, or look after, Tityus. This Tityus we find in the νεκυία suffering torture for having attempted violence upon Latona[304], as she was proceeding towards Pytho, through Panopeus. Panopeus was a place in Phocis, on the borders of Bœotia, and on the line of any one journeying between Delos and Delphi.

There is in this legend the geographical indistinctness, and even confusion, which we commonly find where Homer dealt with places lying in the least beyond the range of his own experience or that of his hearers, as was the case with Phæacia. If Tityus was in Panopeus, the proper way to carry Rhadamanthus was by the Corinthian gulf. But from various points in the geography of the Odyssey, it may, in my opinion, be gathered, that Homer had an idea, quite vague and indeterminate as to distance, of a connection by sea between the north of the Adriatic, and the north of the Ægean, either directly, or from the sea of Marmora: and it suited his representation of the Phæacians, and best maintained their as it were aerial character, to give them an unknown rather than a known route. However that might be, if we look into the legend in order to conjecture its historic basis, it appears to suggest the inferences which follow:

1. That according to tradition, the empire or supremacy of Minos, which may in some points have resembled that afterwards held by Agamemnon, embraced both Corcyra and likewise middle Greece, where Panopeus and Pytho or Delphi lay.

We must, however, presume the empire of Minos to have been in great part insular. There were contemporary kingdoms on the mainland, which give no sign of dependence upon it.

2. That the Phæacians acted as subjects of Minos in carrying Rhadamanthus by sea from one part of the dominions of that king to another.

3. That Rhadamanthus went to punish Tityus as an offender within the realm of Minos, and did this on the part and in lieu of Minos himself.

4. That though he was not Greek by birth, his person, and family, and empire were all Greek in the view of Homer.

This conjectural interpretation of the legend derives support from many quarters.

It is in thorough harmony, as to the extended rule of Minos, with the Eleventh Odyssey, which represents Minos as acting in the capacity of a sovereign in the shades below; which also exhibits, as suffering judicially the punishments that he awarded, offenders connected with various portions of Greek territory, and among them this very Tityus.

_Minos: post-Homeric tradition._

It is now time to look to the post-Homeric traditions.

The extent of the sway of Minos is supported by the tradition of Pelasgus, in the Supplices of Æschylus[305], which represents the whole country from (probably) Macedonia to the extreme south of the peninsula, as having been formerly under one and the same sway. The empire of Minos may have been magnified into this tradition.

The authority of Thucydides is available for the following points[306]:--

1. That Minos was the earliest known possessor of maritime power: thus harmonising with the hypothesis that the Phæacians, whose great distinction was in their nautical character, were acting as his subjects when they carried Rhadamanthus.

2. That his power extended over the Grecian sea, or Ægean (Ἑλληνικὴ θάλασσα) generally (ἐπὶ πλεῖστον); thus indicating a great extent of sway.

3. That he appointed his children to govern his dominions on his behalf (τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ παῖδας ἡγεμόνας ἐγκαταστήσας): which supports the idea that his brother Rhadamanthus may have acted for him at a distance.

4. That he drove the Carians out of the islands of the Ægean. This statement receives remarkable confirmation from Homer, who makes the islands up to the very coast of Caria contributors to the force of the Greek army: while Lesbos and others, situated farther north, and more distant from Crete, appear to have been, like Caria itself, in the Trojan interest.

In the Minos ascribed to Plato[307] we find the tradition of his direct relations with Attica, which were well known to the theatre. This supports the notice in Homer of the marriage contracted between Theseus and his daughter Ariadne.

Aristotle[308], like Thucydides, asserts the maritime power of Minos and his sovereignty over the islands, and adds, that he lost or ended his life in the course of an expedition to conquer Sicily[309].

Herodotus[310], like Thucydides, treats Minos as the first known sovereign who had been powerful by sea. He states, that Minos expelled his brother Sarpedon from Crete, and that Sarpedon with his adherents colonised Lycia, which was governed, down to the time of the historian himself, by laws partly Cretan[311]: and he also delivers the tradition that Minos was slain in an expedition against Sicily at Camicus, afterwards Agrigentum. A town bearing his name remained long after in the island.

Euripides laid the scene of his Rhadamanthus in Bœotia: and a Cretan colony is said to have established the Tilphosian temple there[312]. Höck finds traces of a marked connection between Crete and that district[313].

_Minos: Laconian and Cretan laws._

More important, however, than any isolated facts are the resemblances of the Lacedæmonian and Cretan politics, noticed by Aristotle[314], in combination with the admission always made by the Lacedæmonians, that their lawgiver Lycurgus initiated the Cretan institutions[315], and with the universal Greek tradition that in Crete, first of all parts of Greece, laws and a regular polity had been established by Minos. Again, in the Dialogue printed among the works of Plato, the author of it seeks to establish the fundamental idea of law: puts aside the injurious statements of the tragedians who represented Minos as a tyrant, declares his laws to have been the oldest and the best in Greece, and the models from which the prime parts of the Laconian legislation had been borrowed[316].

Among the resemblances known to us appear to be

1. The division between the military and the agricultural part of the community.

2. The περίοικοι of Crete, holding the same relation to the Cretans, as the Helots to the Spartans, and like them cultivating the land.

3. The institution of συσσίτια in both countries.

4. The organism of the government: the five ephors corresponding with the ten κοσμοὶ of Crete, and the βουλὴ being alike in both.

There also still remain etymological indications that Minos was the person who raised some tribe or class to preeminence in Crete, and depressed some other tribes or classes below the level of the free community. In Hesychius we read,

μνοῖα, οἰκετεία.

μνῆτοι, δοῦλοι.

μνῶα, δουλεία.

And Athenæus quotes from the Cretica of Sosicrates, τὴν μὲν κοινὴν δουλείαν οἱ Κρῆτες καλοῦσι μνοίαν· τὴν δὲ ἰδίαν ἀφαμιώτας· τοὺς δὲ περιοίκους, ὑπηκόους[317]. He also says, that, according to Ephorus, the general name for slave in Crete was κλαρώτης, and that it was derived from the custom of apportioning the slaves by lot. This remarkably fixes the character of Cretan slavery as owing its rise to some institutions public in the highest sense, for merely private slavery could not, it would appear, have had an origin such as to account for the name. It thus indirectly supports the idea implied in μνοία and μνῆτοι, that it was derived from Minos. Athenæus[318] again, quoting the _Creticæ glossæ_ of Hermon, gives us the words μνώτας, τοὺς εὐγενεῖς (otherwise read ἐγγενεῖς) οἰκέτας, and thus pointing to the reduction to servitude of some of the previously free population of the country.

There can be little doubt that it was the Pelasgic part of the population which thus succumbed before the more active elements of Cretan society, and which continued in the manual occupation of husbandry, while war, policy, and maritime pursuits became the lot of their more fortunate competitors. For is it difficult to divine which were those more active elements, since Homer points out for us among the inhabitants of Crete at least two tribes, the Achæans and the Dorians, of Hellic origin. Bishop Thirlwall points also to a Phœnician element in Crete, and to Homer as indicating the Phœnician origin of Minos. This is suggested not only by his birth, and by his maritime preeminence, but by Homer’s placing Dædalus in Crete[319]. For that name directly establishes a connection with the arts that made Sidon and Phœnicia so famous. The later tradition, indeed, places Dædalus personally in relations with Minos, as having been pursued by him after he had fled to Sicily[320].

Elsewhere I have shown reason for supposing that a second of the five Cretan nations, namely, the Κύδωνες, was Pelasgian: and there is a curious tradition, which supports this hypothesis. According to Ephorus[321], there were solemn festivals of the slave population, during which freemen were not permitted to enter within the walls, while the slaves were supreme, and had the right of flogging the free; and these festivals were held in Cydonia, the city of these Κύδωνες.

Our belief in a Cretan empire of Minos, founded on the evidence of the Poems, and sustained by the statement of Thucydides, need not be impaired by the fact that we find little post-Homeric evidence directly available for its support. In early times the recollection of dynasties very much depended on the interest which their successors had in keeping it alive. Now the Minoan empire was already reduced to fragments at the time of the _Troica_. The supremacy over Greece was then in the hands of a family that held the throne of the Perseids and the Danaids, a throne older than that of Minos himself, though in his time probably less distinguished: a throne whose lustre would have been diminished by a lively tradition of his power and greatness. And it was from the Pelopids that the Dorian sovereigns of Sparta claimed to inherit. Therefore the great Greek sovereignty, from the _Troica_ onwards, had no interest in cherishing the recollection of this ancient part of history; on the contrary, their interest lay in depressing it; and under these circumstances we need not wonder that, until the inquiring age of Greek literature and philosophy, when Athens gained the predominance, the traces of it should have remained but faint. But the traces of Cretans have been found extensively dispersed both over the islands, and on the coasts of the Ægean[322].

_The Lycians._

To complete the statement of this part of the case, it is necessary to turn to another country, holding, with its inhabitants, a very peculiar position in the Iliad. The attentive reader of the poem must often inquire, with curiosity and wonder, why it is that Homer everywhere follows the Lycian name with favour so marked, that it may almost be called favouritism. At every turn, which brings that people into view, we are met by the clearest indications of it: and few of Homer’s indications, none of his marked indications, are without a cause and an aim.

Sarpedon, the Lycian commander in chief, performs the greatest military exploit on the Trojan side that is to be found throughout the poems[323]. That he does not obscure the eminence of Hector is only owing to the fact, that his share in the action of the poem is smaller, not to its being less distinguished. Everywhere he plays his part with a faultless valour, a valour set off by his modesty, and by his keen sense of public duty according to the strictest meaning of the term[324]; Jupiter, his father, sheds tears of blood for his coming death; and he is in truth the most perfect as well as the bravest man on the Trojan side. Glaucus, his second in command, is inferior to no Trojan warrior save Hector, though in the exchange of the arms with Diomed Homer has, as usual, reserved the superiority to the Grecian intellect.

The distinctions awarded to the Lycian people are in full proportion to those of their king Sarpedon. They formed one only among the eleven divisions of the auxiliary force, but the Lycian[325] name, and theirs only[326], evidently on account of their eminence, is often used to signify the entire body. In the great assault on the Greek trench and rampart, Sarpedon their leader commands all the allies, and chooses as his lieutenants Glaucus, and Asteropæus a Pæonian, but not the Pæonian general[327]. They are never mentioned with any epithet except of honour: and to them is applied the term ἀντίθεοι[328], which is given to no other tribe or nation in the Iliad, and in the Odyssey only to the Phæacians[329]; to these last it appertains doubtless on account of their relationship to the immortals. The Lycian attack in the Twelfth Book is the one really formidable to the Greeks[330], and in the rout of the Sixteenth Book we are told, that ‘not even the stalwart (ἴφθιμοι) Lycians’ held their ground after the death of Sarpedon[331]. They alone are appealed to in the name of that peculiar and sacred sentiment of military honour called αἰδὼς, which, with this single exception, seems to be the exclusive property of the Greeks[332].

It is difficult to account for this glowing representation, so consistently carried through the poem, except upon the supposition, that Homer regarded the Lycians as having some peculiar affinity or other relation with the Greeks; and that he on this account raised them out of what would otherwise more naturally have been a secondary position.

There are many signs of a specific kind, that this was actually his view of them.

1. To make Sarpedon the son of Jupiter was at once to establish some relationship with the Greek races.

2. The legend of Bellerophon, delivered on the field of battle, was not required, nor is it introduced, merely to fill up the time during which Hector goes from the camp to the city. It required no filling up: but Homer turns the interval to account by using it to give us this interesting chapter of archaic history, doubtless in order to illustrate, as all his other legends do, the beginnings and early relations of the Hellenic races. Accordingly we find that Antea, wife of Prœtus the Argive king, was a Lycian: that a familiar intercourse subsisted between the two courts, such as probably and strongly implies that the nations had other ties: and lastly that an Æolid line of sovereigns, descended through Sisyphus, were the actual governors of Lycia at the period of the _Troica_.

3. The very same ideas of kingship and its offices, which prevailed in Greece, are expressed by Sarpedon in his speech to Glaucus[333], and there is an indication of free institutions which enlarges the resemblance. The force of this circumstance will be more fully appreciated, when we shall have examined the Asiatic tinge which is perceptible in the institutions of Troy itself.

4. Besides the Æolid sovereignty, the etymology of the names of Lycian warriors connects itself not only with the Greek race, but with the Hellic element in that race[334].

5. On the other hand Apollo, whom we shall hereafter find to be the great Pelasgian, though also universal, god, is even, according to Homer, in close and peculiar connection with Lycia, although he is not localized there by Homer as he is in the later tradition. First as being λυκηγενής. Secondly as the great bowman: while Lycia was so eminent in this art, that Æneas, addressing Pandarus with a compliment on his skill, says no man before Troy can match him, and perhaps even in Lycia there may not be a better archer[335]. Thirdly, this Pandarus the archer, and son of Lycaon, received the gift of his bow from Apollo himself[336]: and says, that Apollo prompted or instructed him, as he came from Lycia[337]. It may, however, be reasonably questioned, whether we are here to understand the Lycia of the South, or the district of kindred name in Troas. In any case, Apollo in Lycia would be no more than the counterpart of Minerva in Pelasgian Athens.

6. The prevalence of that Lycian name in other quarters, such as Arcadia, of a marked Pelasgian character, further supports the supposition that Lycia had probably a Pelasgian race for the bulk of its population, holding the same subordinate relation to another race as we find in corresponding cases. In Arcadia[338] Pausanias reports a Lycaon son of Pelasgus; a Lycosura, the city he founded; Lyceon, the hill where it stood; and Lycea, the games he established.

All this evidence combines to show some correspondence between Lycia and Greece, as to the constituent elements of the population. The agreement could not have been perfect: for the records of the Lycian language, I believe, show a prevalence of other elements than the Greek. But we have thus a reason to suppose, that the community of architecture and other arts which has been found to subsist between the two countries, was not merely dependent on later colonisation, but was owing to an affinity of races and similarity of manners which dates from the heroic age.

Lastly, the fragments of Homeric evidence respecting the Lycians are combined by a later tradition, which links them to Crete, the main subject of our recent inquiry. According to this tradition, there was a Sarpedon earlier than the Sarpedon of the _Troica_, who, besides being son of Jupiter, was brother to Minos. He is said to have been expelled, with his adherents, by that sovereign from Crete; to have repaired to Lycia, and to have colonised that country, or a part of it. In the time of Herodotus, as we have seen, it retained laws of Cretan, that is to say of Greek, origin. And at two later periods of its history, far remote from Homer and from one another, its inhabitants signalised themselves by the most desperate valour in defence of Xanthus, its capital[339].