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
As in the Homeric times, while the Achæans were the leaders of Greece,
they might claim to represent the whole Hellenic stock, so, when the
Dorians had dethroned them and occupied the seat of power, when the
Æolian name was widely diffused, and, again, when Athens with its mixed
race became great, and claimed, along with its vaunts of antiquity and
continuity, to pass over, as Herodotus says, to the Hellenic class,
but without an Achæan descent, then the Achæan name could no longer
adequately represent the title to nationality, and the various races
naturally fell back on the designation which gave no exclusive right
or preeminence to any of them, and which they were all entitled to
enjoy in common. They apparently however chose to be connected with the
rich plains of Thessaly, where they first learned civilization, and
organized their collective or national life, rather than with the rude
and coarse manners of their more remote ancestors in the hills. They
were therefore not Helli, but Hellenes.
This may be considered as the _rationale_ of the common and palpably
manufactured tradition respecting Hellen and his family, of which we
have the earliest form in Hesiod.
_Summary of the Evidence._
Our conclusions respecting the names by which Homer describes the
inhabitants of Greece may now be summed up as follows:
1. We set out from the point at which Greece is, probably for the first
time, settled by a race given to tillage and pacific habits, under
the general name of Pelasgians, with subdivision under minor names of
particular tribes, or partially and locally intermixed with fragments
of other races.
2. A dynasty of foreign origin, in a portion of Greece which then
became, and ever after continued to be most famous, leads the march of
events; and, apparently without displacing the Pelasgians themselves,
yet seems to have displaced, in a certain quarter, the Pelasgic by
the Danaan name; at any rate, it attains to such celebrity, that its
history, in the eye of Homer, fills the whole breadth of its own epoch,
and its name stands in after time, poetically at least, for a national
title.
3. An Hellenic dynasty of Perseids, belonging to the Greek Peninsula,
follows this dynasty; and, effacing the trace of foreign rule, governs
its subjects under the Argeian or Argive name; which, without reviving
the title of the Pelasgi, a word now becoming or become subordinate,
yet like that title is founded on the physical character of the regions
in which the population was settled, and upon the employments suited
thereto.
4. Next appears upon the scene the Achæan name, which bears no mark of
relationship to the soil, or to any particular employment, or to any
particular eponymist, but appears to be the designation of a race, not
indeed foreign, yet new to the Peloponnesus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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