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
Thus we see plainly enough the history of the rise of the Argive name.
Belonging to the subjects of the ruling part of Greece, it grows so as
to be applicable to all Greeks, in cases where no confusion can arise
from its being thus employed. Thus the Roman name became applicable
to Campanians or Calabrians as subjects of Rome, in contradistinction
to Germans, Dacians, or Parthians; but if the subject in hand were
domestic and Italian, the domestic distinction would naturally revive.
Even so Homer’s Greeks are all Argeians in the _Troica_: but at home
they have their local meaning, like Cadmeans, Ætolians, Pylians,
Elians, Epeans, Arcadians, Locrians, and also, as we shall find,
Achæans.
It is at the very period of the local prevalence of the Argive name,
that we find also from Homer unequivocal appearances of a Cretan
empire, circumscribing it by sea, and possibly more or less by
land, though perhaps the Minoan power and dynasty may not at once
have acquired its Grecian character. If then, with respect to the
word Ἀργεῖοι, we see that it was originally of limited and local
application; we have no reason whatever to suppose that the Danaan name
could ever have been of wider scope. Two questions then arise.
First, why does Homer use the Danaan and Argive names as national, when
they were only local?
Secondly, the priority of the Danaan name being clear, as we see
that the Danaan dynasty preceded that one whose subjects were called
Argives, why did the Argive name supplant or succeed the Danaan?
The first question will be resumed hereafter, but I will now touch upon
the second.
The name Danaan, in all likelihood, was that of a dynasty originating
beyond seas; and if so, it could not well, until softened by the mellow
haze of distance, be more popular with the Greeks, when they had
awakened under Hellic influence to a full consciousness of national
life, than it would have been with the English in the last century to
be called Hanoverians or Brunswickers.
The Danaid line ceased, when Perseus came to the throne, as he was
descended on the father’s side from another source.
Nothing could be more natural, than that with this change of dynasty
an old and merely dynastic name should disappear. But why should it be
succeeded by the name Ἀργεῖοι?
_Relation of Argeian and Pelasgian names._
I hope it will not be thought too bold, if, founding myself on the
probable, perhaps I might say, plain resemblance of meaning between
Πελασγοὶ and Ἀργεῖοι, I conjecture that on the disappearance from use
of the name Δαναοὶ, instead of falling back upon the old agricultural
name Πελασγοὶ, which had by a Danaan conquest become that of a
subordinate, if not servile class, the people may have come to bear the
name Ἀργεῖοι; borrowed, like the other, from the region they inhabited,
and from their habits of life in it, and of equal force, but without
the taint which attached to the designation of a depressed race.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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