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
So far as this part of the evidence of Homer is concerned, it goes to
this only, that with the aid of Hesiod it serves to exhibit Ceres in
direct relations with two countries; both with Thessaly, and, as will
now be shown, with Crete; in which also, as we know from Homer (brought
down by Hesiod to a later date), the Pelasgian name still remained when
it had apparently been submerged elsewhere in Greece; and in which
therefore it may be inferred that the Pelasgian element was more than
usually strong and durable.
In the fifth Odyssey[168] we are told that Ceres fell in love with a
son of Iasus (Iasion, in Hesiod Iasios), whom she met νειῷ ἐνὶ τριπόλῳ;
in what country Homer does not say, but Hesiod, repeating the story,
adds it was in Crete, Κρήτης ἐν πίονι δήμῳ[169]. Thus the double
connection is made good.
Over and above this, the name Iasus goes of itself to establish a
Pelasgian origin.
1. Because Ἴασον Ἄργος is an old name for the Peloponnesus, or else
a large portion of it; whereas the Hellenic name was, as we know,
Ἀχαικὸν Ἄργος. And the Ἰασίδαι reigned in Orchomenus[170] two or three
generations before the Neleids. This probably touches a period when
no Hellic tribes had, as far as we know, found their way into the
Peloponnesus[171], and when the dynasties even of the middle and north
were, as is probable, chiefly Pelasgian.
2. Because Ἴασος[172] was the name of one of the Athenian leaders, and
the Athenians were, as we shall find, manifestly Pelasgian. His father
Sphelus is also the son of Boucolus, a name which will be shown to be
of Pelasgic and not Hellenic character[173].
3. Because Dmetor the son of Iasus was the ruler of Cyprus at the
epoch of the Troica, and that island seems to have stood in an
anomalous relation of half-dependence to Agamemnon, which is best
capable of explanation if we suppose it to have been inhabited by a
population still retaining its Pelasgian character. To this question I
shall shortly have occasion to return in a more full consideration of
the case of Cyprus.
Of later tradition, there is abundance to connect Ceres with the
Pelasgians: their character as tillers of the soil, and hers as the
giver of grain: the worship of her at Eleusis, dating from time
immemorial, and purporting to be founded upon rites different from
those in vogue at a later epoch: this too taken in connection with the
Pelasgian origin of Athens, and its long retention of that character.
In the ancient hymn to Ceres, estranged from Jupiter and the other
gods, she comes to Eleusis, and there herself founds the worship; and
she announces in her tale that she was come from Crete:
νῦν αὖτε Κρήτηθεν, ἐπ’ εὐρέα νῶτα θαλάσσης,
ἤλυθον, οὐκ ἐθέλουσα[174].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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