Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 1 of 3: I. Prolegomena II. Achæis; or, the Ethnology of the Greek RacesGladstone, W. E. (William Ewart)
History
Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 1 of 3: I. Prolegomena II. Achæis; or, the Ethnology of the Greek Races
Gladstone, W. E. (William Ewart)
Civilization, Homeric; Epic poetry, Greek -- History and criticism; Homer
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].
For the origin of the group of names, having Λύκος or some similar
word for their root, it seems most natural to infer its identity with
the Latin _lucus_, essentially the same with _lupus_, and to presume
that it had a Pelasgic source, but that the word corresponding with
it, probably Λύκος, meaning a wood or grove, had become obsolete in
the later Hellenic tongue. There is every reason for a supposition of
this kind, as these words, etymologically connected, evidently hang
round some common centre, which centre has reference to primitive and
to Pelasgic life, as well as to the somewhat specially Pelasgic deity
Apollo. Nor is it strange that the root of a name associated with the
Pelasgi should have been lost to the Greek tongue, while the name
itself remains: we have another example in Larissa.
But if there was such a word, with such a meaning, the link, which
may perhaps connect it with Pelasgic life, is evident. For the first
agricultural settlers must often be, as such, in a greater or less
degree, dwellers in woods. It may be said that in the United States,
at the present day, the proper name for an agricultural settler is
‘backwoodsman.’ In British colonies of Australia, they, who pass beyond
the limits of existing settlement, in order to extend it, are said to
go into the bush. Thus the idea at the root of the Lycian name is in
all probability twin, or rather elder brother, to that which properly
would indicate the agricultural settler.
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