that different strata are to be distinguished in the Homeric poems. There are passages which seem to assume the conditions of the Mycenaean age; there are others which presuppose the conditions of a later age. It may be that the latter passages reflect the circumstances of the poet’s own times, while the former ones reproduce those of an earlier period. If so, the substitution of iron for bronze must have been effected in the interval between the earlier and the later periods.
It has already been pointed out that the question whether the makers of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations were Greeks must still be regarded as an open one. No such question can be raised as to the Homeric Age. The Achaeans may or may not have been Greek in blood. What is certain is that the Achaean Age The Homeric state. forms an integral part of Greek history. Alike on the linguistic, the religious and the political sides, Homer is the starting-point of subsequent developments. In the Greek dialects the great distinction is that between the Doric and the rest. Of the non-Doric dialects the two main groups are the Aeolic and Ionic, both of which have been developed, by a gradual process of differentiation, from the language of the Homeric poems. With regard to religion it is sufficient to refer to the judgment of Herodotus, that it was Homer and Hesiod who were the authors of the Greek theogony (ii. 53 οὗτοί εἰσι οἱ ποιήσαντες θεογονίην Ἔλλησι). It is a commonplace that Homer was the Bible of the Greeks. On the political side, Greek constitutional development would be unintelligible without Homer. When Greek history, in the proper sense, begins, oligarchy is almost universal. Everywhere, however, an antecedent stage of monarchy has to be presupposed. In the Homeric system monarchy is the sole form of government; but it is monarchy already well on the way to being transformed into oligarchy. In the person of the king are united the functions of priest, of judge and of leader in war. He belongs to a family which claims divine descent and his office is hereditary. He is, however, no despotic monarch. He is compelled by custom to consult the council (boulē) of the elders, or chiefs. He must ask their opinion, and, if he fails to obtain their consent, he has no power to enforce his will. Even when he has obtained the consent of the council, the proposal still awaits the approval of the assembly (agora), of the people.
Thus in the Homeric state we find the germs not only of the oligarchy and democracy of later Greece, but also of all the various forms of constitution known to the Western world. And a monarchy such as is depicted in the Homeric poems is clearly ripe for transmutation into oligarchy. The chiefs are addressed as kings (βασιλῆες), and Homeric society. claim, equally with the monarch, descent from the gods. In Homer, again, we can trace the later organization into tribe (φυλή), clan (γένος), and phratry, which is characteristic of Greek society in the historical period, and meets us in analogous forms in other Aryan societies. The γένος corresponds to the Roman gens, the φυλή to the Roman tribe, and the phratry to the curia. The importance of the phratry in Homeric society is illustrated by the well-known passage (Iliad ix. 63) in which the outcast is described as “one who belongs to no phratry” (ἀφρήτωρ). It is a society that is, of course, based upon slavery, but it is slavery in its least repulsive aspect. The treatment which Eumaeus and Eurycleia receive at the hands of the poet of the Odyssey is highly creditable to the humanity of the age. A society which regarded the slave as a mere chattel would have been impatient of the interest shown in a swineherd and a nurse. It is a society, too, that exhibits many of the distinguishing traits of later Greek life. Feasting and quarrels, it is true, are of more moment to the heroes than to the contemporaries of Pericles or Plato; but “music” and “gymnastic” (though the terms must be understood in a more restricted sense) are as distinctive of the age of Homer as of that of Pindar. In one respect there is retrogression in the historical period. Woman in Homeric society enjoys a greater freedom, and receives greater respect, than in the Athens of Sophocles and Pericles.
4. The Growth of the Greek States.—The Greek world at the beginning of the 6th century B.C. presents a picture in many respects different from that of the Homeric Age. The Greek race is no longer confined to the Greek peninsula. It occupies the islands of the Aegean, the western seaboard of Asia Minor, the coasts of Macedonia and Thrace, of southern Italy and Sicily. Scattered settlements are found as far apart as the mouth of the Rhone, the north of Africa, the Crimea and the eastern end of the Black Sea. The Greeks are called by a national name, Hellenes, the symbol of a fully-developed national self-consciousness. They are divided into three great branches, the Dorian, the Ionian and the Aeolian, names almost, or entirely, unknown to Homer. The heroic monarchy has nearly everywhere disappeared. In Greece proper, south of Thermopylae, it survives, but in a peculiar form, in the Spartan state alone. What is the significance and the explanation of contrasts so profound?
It is probable that the explanation is to be found, directly or indirectly, in a single cause, the Dorian invasion. In Homer the Dorians are mentioned in one passage only (Odyssey xix. 177). They there appear as one of the races which inhabit Crete. In the historical period the whole Peloponnese, with the exception of Arcadia, Elis and Achaea, Dorian invasion. is Dorian. In northern Greece the Dorians occupy the little state of Doris, and in the Aegean they form the population of Crete, Rhodes and some smaller islands. Thus the chief centres of Minoan and Mycenaean culture have passed into Dorian hands, and the chief seats of Achaean power are included in Dorian states. Greek tradition explained the overthrow of the Achaean system by an invasion of the Peloponnese by the Dorians, a northern tribe, which had found a temporary home in Doris. The story ran that, after an unsuccessful attempt to force an entrance by the Isthmus of Corinth, they had crossed from Naupactus, at the mouth of the Corinthian Gulf, landed on the opposite shore, and made their way into the heart of the Peloponnese, where a single victory gave them possession of the Achaean states. Their conquests were divided among the invaders into three shares, for which lots were cast, and thus the three states of Argos, Sparta and Messenia were created. There is much in this tradition that is impossible or improbable. It is impossible, e.g. for the tiny state of Doris, with its three or four “small, sad villages” (πολεις μικραὶ καὶ λυπρόχωροι, Strabo, p. 427), to have furnished a force of invaders sufficient to conquer and re-people the greater part of the Peloponnese. It is improbable that the conquest should have been either as sudden, or as complete, as the legend represents. On the contrary, there are indications that the conquest was gradual, and that the displacement of the older population was incomplete. The improbability of the details affords, however, no ground for questioning the reality of the invasion.[1] The tradition can be traced back at Sparta to the 7th century B.C. (Tyrtaeus, quoted by Strabo, p. 362), and there is abundant evidence, other than that of legend, to corroborate it. There is the Dorian name, to begin with. If, as Beloch supposes, it originated on the coast of Asia Minor, where it served to distinguish the settlers in Rhodes and the neighbouring islands from the Ionians and Aeolians to the north of them, how came the great and famous states of the Peloponnese to adopt a name in use among the petty colonies planted by their kinsmen across the sea? Or, if Dorian is simply Old Peloponnesian, how are we to account for the Doric dialect or the Dorian pride of race?
It is true that there are great differences between the literary Doric, the dialect of Corinth and Argos, and the dialects of Laconia and Crete, and that there are affinities between the dialect of Laconia and the non-Dorian dialects of Arcadia and Elis. It is equally true, however, and of far more consequence, that all the Doric dialects are distinguished from all other Greek dialects by certain common characteristics. Perhaps the strongest sentiment in the Dorian nature is the pride of race. Indeed, it looks as if the Dorians claimed to be the sole genuine Hellenes. How can we account for an indigenous population, first imagining itself to be immigrant, and then developing a
- ↑ It has been impugned by J. Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, i. 149 ff.
