The investigation into the two great
problems of the origin of society and the philosophy of history occupy such an
important position in the evolution of Greel thought
that, to obtain any clear view of the workings of the critical spirit, it will
be necessary to trace at some lentgh their rise and
scientific development as evinced not merely in the works of historians proper,
but also in the philosophical treatries of Plato and
Aristotle. The important position which these two great thinkers occupy in the
progress of historical criticism can hardly be over-estimated. I do not mean
merely as regards their treatment of the Greek Bible, and Plato's endeavours to
purge sacred history of its immortality by the application of ethical canons at
the time when Aristotle was beginning to undermine tha basis of miracles by his
scientific conception of law, but with reference to these two wider questions
of the rise of civil institutions and the philosophy of history.
And first, as regards the current theories
of the primitive condition of society, there was a wide divergence of opinion
in Hellenic society, just as there is now, for while the majority of the
orthodox public, of whom Hesiod may be taken as the representative, looked
back, as a great many of our own day still do, to a fabulous age of innocent
happiness, a lovely golden age where sin and death were unknown and men and
women were like Gods, the foremost men of intellect such as Aristotle and
Plato, Aeschylus and many of the other poets, saw in primitive man "a few
small sparks of humanity preserved on the tops of mountains after some
deluge," without an idea of cities, governments or legislation,"
"living the lives of wild beasts in sunless caves," "their only
law being the survival of the fittest."
And this, too was the opinion of
Thucydides, whose Archaeologia as it
is contains a most valuable disquisition on the early condition of
Now as regards the means employed generally
by Thucydides for the elucidation of ancient history, I have already pointed
out how that, while acknowledging that "it is the tendency of every poet
to exaggerate, as it is of every chronicler to seek to be attractive at the
expense of truth," he yet assumes in the thoroughly euhemeristic way, that
under the veil of myth and legend there does yet exist rational basis of fact
discoverable by the method of rejecting all supernatural interference as well
as any extraordinary motives influencing the actors. It is in complete
accordance with this spirit that he appeals, for instance, to the Homeric
epithet of ajfneiov" [prosperous], as applied to
Corinth, as a proof of the early commercial prosperity of that city; to the
fact of the generic name Hellenes not
occurring in the Iliad as a
corroboration of his theory of the essentially disunited character of the
primitive Greek tribes; and he argues from the line: "O'er many islands
and all Argos ruled," as applied to Agamemnon, that his forces must have
been partially naval, "for Agamemnon's was a continental power, and he
could not have been master of any but the adjacent islands, and these would not
be many but through the possession of a fleet."
Anticipating in some measure the
comparative method of research, he argues from the fact of the more barbarous
Greek tribes, such as the Aetolians and Acarnanians, still carrying arms in his
own day, that this custom was the case originally over the whole country. "The
fact," he says, "that the people in these parts of
As regards the evidence afforded by ancient
remains, while adducing as a proof of the insecure character of early Greek
society the fact of their cities being always built at some distance from the
sea, he is yet careful to warn us, and the caution ought to be borne in mind by
all archaeologists, that we have no right to conclude from the scanty remains
of any city that its legendary greatness in primitive times was a mere
exaggeration. "We are not justified," he says, "in rejecting the
tradition of the magnitude of the Trojan armament, because
Plurtarch remarks that the only evidence Greece possesses of the
truth that the legendary power of Athens is no 'romance or idle story', is the
public and sacred buildings. This is an instance of the exaggerated importance
given to ruins against which Thucydides is warning us. On the other hand,
Thucydides is quite conscious of the value of the positive evidence afforded by
archaeological remains. He appeals, for instance, to the character of the
armour found in the Delian tombs and the peculiar mode of sepulture, as
corroboration of his theory of the predominance of the Carian element among the
primitive islanders, and to the concentration of all the temples either in the
Acropolis, or in its immediate vicinity, to the name of asty (town) by which it was still known, and to the extraordinary
sanctity of the spring of water there, as proof that the primitive city was
originally confined to the citadel, and the district immediately beneath it
(ii. 16). And lastly, in the very opening of his history, anticipating one of
the most scientific of modern methods, he points out how in early states of
civilisation immense fertility of the soil tends to favour the personal
aggrandisement of individuals, and so to stop the normal progress of the
country through "the rise of factions, that endless source of ruin";
and also by the allurements it offers to a foreign invader, to necessitate a
continual change of population, one immigration following on another. He
exemplifies his theory by pointing to the endless political revolutions that
characterised Arcadia, Thessaly, and Boeotia, the three richest spots in
Greece, as well as by the negative instance of the undisturbed state in
primitive time of Attica, which was always remarkable for the dryness and
poverty of its soil.
Now, while undobtedly in these passages we
may recognise the first anticipation of many of the most modern principles of
research, we must remember how essentially limited is the range of the archaeologia, and how no theory at all
is offered on the wider questions of the general conditions of the rise and
progress of humanity, a problem which is first scientifically discussed in the Republic of Plato.
And at the outset it must be premised that,
while the study of primitive man is an essentially inductive science, resting
rather on the accumulation of evidence than on speculation, among the Greeks it
was prosecuted rather on deductive principles. Thucydides did, indeed, avail
himself of the opportunities afforded by the unequal development of
civilisation in his own day in Greece, and in the places I have pointed out
seems to have anticipated the comparative method. But we do not find later
writers availing themselves of the woderfully accurate and picturesque accounts
given by Herodotus of the customs of savage tribes. To take one instance, which
bears a good deal on modern questions, we find in the works of this great
traveller the gradual and progressive steps in the development of the family
life clearly manifested in the mere gregarious herding together of the Agathrysi,
their primitive kinsmanship through women common, and the rise of a feeling of
paternity from a state of polyandry. This tribe stood at that time on that
borderland between umbilical relationship and the family which has been such a
difficult point for modern anthropologists to find.
The ancient authors, however, are unanimous
in insisting that the family is the ultimate unit of society, though, as I have
said, an inductive study of primitive races, or even the accounts given of them
by Herodotus, would have shown them that the neossia idia (private nest) of a personal household, to use Plato's
expression, is really a most complex notion appearing always in a late stage of
civilisation, along with recognition of private property and the rights of
individualism.
Philology also, which in the hands of
modern investigators has proved such a splendid instrument of research, was in
ancient days studied on too unscientific principles to be of much use. Herodotus
points out that the word Eridanos is
essentially Greek in character, that consequently the river supposed to run
round the world is probably a mere Greek invention, as in the case of Piromis, and the ending of the Persian
names, show on what unsound basis his knowledge of language rested.
In the Bacchae
of Euripides there is an extremely interesting passage in which the immoral
stories of the Greek mythology are accounted for on the principle of that
misunderstanding of words amd metaphors to which modern science has given the
name of a disease of language. In answer to the impious rationalism of Pentheus
– a sort of modern Philistine – Teiresias, who may be termed the Max Muller of
the Theban cycle, points out that the story of Dionysus being inclosed in Zeus'
thigh really arose from the linguistic confusion between mhro;" (thigh)
and o{mhro" (surety).
TO BE CONTINUED