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
1. Ἕλληνες, Il. ii. 684. }
2. Πανέλληνες, ibid. 530. } National or tribal names.
3. Σελλοὶ, Il. xvi. 234. }
And, lastly, the territorial name of
4. Ἕλλας.
Observing the order of derivation as it has been pointed out by
Mure[497], we shall naturally look to the word Ἕλλας as a guide to
the meaning of its derivatives, Ἕλληνες and Πανέλληνες. It is itself
drawn from Ἑλλοὶ or Σελλοί: but as that name is only once used in the
Poems, and as by far the largest body of evidence tells upon the word
Ἕλλας, the decision upon the whole group of words will turn mainly upon
the inquiry we shall have to make into the use of that word by Homer.
With it therefore we shall commence. Is there, we have to ask, clear
proof, that it went beyond the dominions of Peleus? If it went beyond
them, how far did it go? and did it include that division of Greece, in
which Locris lay, whose inhabitants a particular line of the Catalogue
classes with the Panhellenes? For no suspicion of spuriousness can
justly arise out of the fact (if it be one), that Homer calls by the
name of Hellenes the inhabitants of any country, which was itself
within the scope of the territorial name Hellas: inasmuch as this is
little more than, the word Yorkshire being given, to make use also of
the word Yorkshiremen.
At the outset, however, it is essential to observe, that a certain
elasticity in the use of geographical as well as political names could
not but belong to the age, in which Homer lived: first, because of the
successive movements of tribes, like wave on wave, so that the use of
any such name would ordinarily be either growing or declining, but
not stationary: secondly, because of the indeterminate forms which
political authority assumed, as resting on a mixture, in unknown
proportions, of the various elements of custom, compact, reverence, and
force: and, thirdly, because of the want of well-defined geographical
boundaries.
We are not entitled to assume that the territory, which we call Greece,
was, in Homer’s time, subdivided with precision between a given number
of territorial names. We hear of Phthia, Ægialus, Elis, Arcadia:
but these seem to be the exceptions rather than the rule. For many
parts of it there are no local names whatever; and we must not look
for any thing resembling the manner in which England is made up of
its counties, France of its departments, or the later Greece of its
individual states.
The passages in which the word Hellas is used by Homer stand as follows
in the order of the Poems:
1. A verse in the Catalogue, Il. ii. 683:
οἵ τ’ εἶχον Φθίην ἠδ’ Ἑλλάδα καλλιγυναῖκα.
2. (Achilles _loquitur_), ix. 395:
πολλαὶ Ἀχαΐιδές εἰσιν ἀν’ Ἑλλάδα τε Φθίην τε.
3. (Phœnix _loq._), ibid. 447:
οἷον ὅτε πρῶτον λίπον Ἑλλάδα καλλιγυναῖκα.
4. (Phœnix _loq._), ibid. 478:
φεῦγον ἔπειτ’ ἀπάνευθε δι’ Ἑλλάδος εὐρυχόροιο,
Φθίην δ’ ἐξικόμην ἐριβώλακα.
5. (In the narrative), Il. xvi. 595:
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