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
In the case of Greece, as it is known to us in history, we have the
most remarkable disproportion between moral and physical power, and
between the green and the full grown product, which is offered to
view in the whole range of human experience. A circumscribed country,
with a small population, throws forth, without loss of vital power,
to the East and to the West, colonies greatly transcending itself, as
would appear, in wealth and population; continues for many centuries
to exercise a primary influence in the world; at one time resists and
repels, at another invades and terrifies, at a third overthrows and
crushes to atoms the great colossus of Eastern empire, and continues
to exercise, through the medium of mind, a singular mastery, enduring
down to our own time, and likely still to endure, over civilized man.
And even the miniature organization of Greece presents to us, within
its own limits, diversities of character almost enough for a quarter of
the globe.
Many of these diversities connect themselves with the ethnological
formation of the different communities. In the course of that process,
so far as can be discerned, certain admixtures of foreign influence
were supplied direct from Phœnicia, Egypt, or elsewhere: but the grand
component parts or factors in this composite product are two, the
Hellenic and the Pelasgic. To this dual combination, perhaps the double
invocation of Achilles (Il. xvi. 233, 4) is a witness.
The development of the national character is the most large and varied
in Attica, where the population, from successive immigrations of
bodies of refugees, and from the free general resort and reception of
strangers, presented also the largest and most varied ethnical compound.
In analysing that national character which thus resulted from the
amalgamation of ingredients chiefly Hellic and Pelasgic, we have now to
ask how far its different elements are referable to the Pelasgic or to
the Hellic root respectively? We have traced in some degree the course
and local circumscription of the races: can we affiliate upon them any
of the contributions which they severally made to the varied manners
and to the institutions of Greece?
The proof, as far as it is specific, can be only that which probable
and conjectural evidence afford: but that evidence is supported by the
fact, that it tends, as a whole, to an orderly result.
While they proceed from different sources, and present visible and
even permanent distinctions of character, there is no violent disparity
between the Hellic and the Pelasgic races: they afford a good material
for coalescence. We are not to suppose that whatever the one had,
the other had not. Of what belongs historically to the Pelasgi, much
may stand as theirs only through their priority of entrance into the
country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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