Читать книгу History of Greece (Vol. 1-12) - Grote George - Страница 14

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In the Hesiodic Theogony, as well as in the “Works and Days,” the legend of Promêtheus and Epimêtheus presents an import religious, ethical, and social, and in this sense it is carried forward by Æschylus; but to neither of the characters is any genealogical function assigned. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women brought both of them into the stream of Grecian legendary lineage, representing Deukaliôn as the son of Promêtheus and Pandôra, and seemingly his wife Pyrrha as daughter of Epimêtheus.213

Deukaliôn is important in Grecian mythical narrative under two points of view. First, he is the person specially saved at the time of the general deluge: next, he is the father of Hellên, the great eponym of the Hellenic race; at least this was the more current story, though there were other statements which made Hellên the son of Zeus.

The name of Deukaliôn is originally connected with the Lokrian towns of Kynos and Opus, and with the race of the Leleges, but he appears finally as settled in Thessaly, and ruling in the portion of that country called Phthiôtis.214 According to what seems to have been the old legendary account, it is the deluge which transferred him from the one to the other; but according to another statement, framed in more historicizing times, he conducted a body of Kurêtes and Leleges into Thessaly, and expelled the prior Pelasgian occupants.215

The enormous iniquity with which earth was contaminated—as Apollodôrus says, by the then existing brazen race, or as others say, by the fifty monstrous sons of Lykaôn—provoked Zeus to send a general deluge.216 An unremitting and terrible rain laid the whole of Greece under water, except the highest mountain-tops, whereon a few stragglers found refuge. Deukaliôn was saved in a chest or ark, which he had been forewarned by his father Promêtheus to construct. After floating for nine days on the water, he at length landed on the summit of Mount Parnassus. Zeus having sent Hermês to him, promising to grant whatever he asked, he prayed that men and companions might be sent to him in his solitude: accordingly Zeus directed both him and Pyrrha to cast stones over their heads: those cast by Pyrrha became women, those by Deukaliôn men. And thus the “stony race of men” (if we may be allowed to translate an etymology which the Greek language presents exactly, and which has not been disdained by Hesiod, by Pindar, by Epicharmus, and by Virgil) came to tenant the soil of Greece.217 Deukaliôn on landing from the ark sacrificed a grateful offering to Zeus Phyxios, or the God of escape; he also erected altars in Thessaly to the twelve great gods of Olympus.218

The reality of this deluge was firmly believed throughout the historical ages of Greece: the chronologers, reckoning up by genealogies, assigned the exact date of it, and placed it at the same time as the conflagration of the world by the rashness of Phaëtôn, during the reign of Krotôpas king of Argus, the seventh from Inachus.219 The meteorological work of Aristotle admits and reasons upon this deluge as an unquestionable fact, though he alters the locality by placing it west of Mount Pindus, near Dôdôna and the river Achelôus.220 He at the same time treats it as a physical phenomenon, the result of periodical cycles in the atmosphere, thus departing from the religious character of the old legend, which described it as a judgment inflicted by Zeus upon a wicked race. Statements founded upon this event were in circulation throughout Greece even to a very late date. The Megarians affirmed that Megaros, their hero, son of Zeus by a local nymph, had found safety from the waters on the lofty summit of their mountain Geraneia, which had not been completely submerged. And in the magnificent temple of the Olympian Zeus at Athens, a cavity in the earth was shown, through which it was affirmed that the waters of the deluge had retired. Even in the time of Pausanias, the priests poured into this cavity holy offerings of meal and honey.221 In this, as in other parts of Greece, the idea of the Deukalionian deluge was blended with the religious impressions of the people and commemorated by their sacred ceremonies.

The offspring of Deukaliôn and Pyrrha were two sons, Hellên and Amphiktyôn, and a daughter, Prôtogeneia, whose son by Zeus was Aëthlius: it was however maintained by many, that Hellên was the son of Zeus and not of Deukaliôn. Hellên had by a nymph three sons, Dôrus, Xuthus, and Æolus. He gave to those who had been before called Greeks,222 the name of Hellênes, and partitioned his territory among his three children. Æolus reigned in Thessaly; Xuthus received Peloponnêsus, and had by Creüsa as his sons, Achæus and Iôn; while Dôrus occupied the country lying opposite to the Peloponnêsus, on the northern side of the Corinthian Gulf. These three gave to the inhabitants of their respective countries the names of Æolians, Achæans and Iônians, and Dôrians.223

Such is the genealogy as we find it in Apollodôrus. In so far as the names and filiation are concerned, many points in it are given differently, or implicitly contradicted, by Euripidês and other writers. Though as literal and personal history it deserves no notice, its import is both intelligible and comprehensive. It expounds and symbolizes the first fraternal aggregation of Hellênic men, together with their territorial distribution and the institutions which they collectively venerated.

There were two great holding-points in common for every section of Greeks. One was the Amphiktyonic assembly, which met half-yearly, alternately at Delphi and at Thermopylæ; originally and chiefly for common religious purposes, but indirectly and occasionally embracing political and social objects along with them. The other was, the public festivals or games, of which the Olympic came first in importance; next, the Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian,—institutions which combined religious solemnities with recreative effusion and hearty sympathies, in a manner so imposing and so unparalleled. Amphiktyôn represents the first of these institutions, and Aëthlius the second. As the Amphiktyonic assembly was always especially connected with Thermopylæ and Thessaly, Amphiktyôn is made the son of the Thessalian Deukaliôn; but as the Olympic festival was nowise locally connected with Deukaliôn, Aëthlius is represented as having Zeus for his father, and as touching Deukaliôn only through the maternal line. It will be seen presently, that the only matter predicted respecting Aëthlius is, that he settled in the territory of Elis, and begat Endymiôn: this brings him into local contact with the Olympic games, and his function is then ended.

Having thus got Hellas as an aggregate with its main cementing forces, we march on to its subdivision into parts, through Æolus, Dôrus and Xuthus, the three sons of Hellen;224 a distribution which is far from being exhaustive: nevertheless, the genealogists whom Apollodôrus follows recognize no more than three sons.

The genealogy is essentially post-Homeric; for Homer knows Hellas and the Hellênes only in connection with a portion of Achaia Phthiôtis. But as it is recognized in the Hesiodic Catalogue225—composed probably within the first century after the commencement of recorded Olympiads, or before 676 B. C.—the peculiarities of it, dating from so early a period, deserve much attention. We may remark, first, that it seems to exhibit to us Dôrus and Æolus as the only pure and genuine offspring of Hellên. For their brother Xuthus is not enrolled as an eponymus; he neither founds nor names any people; it is only his sons Achæus and Iôn, after his blood has been mingled with that of the Erechtheid Kreüsa, who become eponyms and founders, each of his own separate people. Next, as to the territorial distribution, Xuthus receives Peloponnêsus from his father, and unites himself with Attica (which the author of this genealogy seems to have conceived as originally unconnected with Hellên) by his marriage with the daughter of the indigenous hero, Erechtheus. The issue of this marriage, Achæus and Iôn, present to us the population of Peloponnêsus and Attica conjointly as related among themselves by the tie of brotherhood, but as one degree more distant both from Dôrians and Æolians. Æolus reigns over the regions about Thessaly, and called the people in those parts Æolians; while Dôrus occupies “the country over against Peloponnêsus on the opposite side of the Corinthian Gulf,” and calls the inhabitants after himself, Dôrians.226 It is at once evident that this designation is in no way applicable to the confined district between Parnassus and Œta, which alone is known by the name of Dôris, and its inhabitants by that of Dôrians, in the historical ages. In the view of the author of this genealogy, the Dôrians are the original occupants of the large range of territory north of the Corinthian Gulf, comprising Ætôlia, Phôkis, and the territory of the Ozolian Lokrians. And this farther harmonizes with the other legend noticed by Apollodôrus, when he states that Ætolus, son of Endymiôn, having been forced to expatriate from Peloponnêsus, crossed into the Kurêtid territory,227 and was there hospitably received by Dôrus, Laodokus and Polypœtês, sons of Apollo and Phthia. He slew his hosts, acquired the territory, and gave to it the name of Ætôlia: his son Pleurôn married Xanthippê, daughter of Dôrus; while his other son, Kalydôn, marries Æolia, daughter of Amythaôn. Here again we have the name of Dôrus, or the Dôrians, connected with the tract subsequently termed Ætôlia. That Dôrus should in one place be called the son of Apollo and Phthia, and in another place the son of Hellên by a nymph, will surprise no one accustomed to the fluctuating personal nomenclature of these old legends: moreover the name of Phthia is easy to reconcile with that of Hellên, as both are identified with the same portion of Thessaly, even from the days of the Iliad.

This story, that the Dôrians were at one time the occupants, or the chief occupants, of the range of territory between the river Achelôus and the northern shore of the Corinthian Gulf, is at least more suitable to the facts attested by historical evidence than the legends given in Herodotus, who represents the Dôrians as originally in the Phthiôtid; then as passing under Dôrus, the son of Hellên, into the Histiæôtid, under the mountains of Ossa and Olympus; next, as driven by the Kadmeians into the regions of Pindus; from thence passing into the Dryopid territory, on Mount Œta; lastly, from thence into Peloponnêsus.228 The received story was, that the great Dôrian establishments in Peloponnêsus were formed by invasion from the north, and that the invaders crossed the gulf from Naupaktus,—a statement which, however disputable with respect to Argos, seems highly probable in regard both to Sparta and Messênia. That the name of Dôrians comprehended far more than the inhabitants of the insignificant tetrapolis of Dôris Proper, must be assumed, if we believe that they conquered Sparta and Messênia: both the magnitude of the conquest itself, and the passage of a large portion of them from Naupaktus, harmonize with the legend as given by Apollodôrus, in which the Dôrians are represented as the principal inhabitants of the northern shore of the gulf. The statements which we find in Herodotus, respecting the early migrations of the Dôrians, have been considered as possessing greater historical value than those of the fabulist Apollodôrus. But both are equally matter of legend, while the brief indications of the latter seem to be most in harmony with the facts which we afterwards find attested by history.

It has already been mentioned that the genealogy which makes Æolus, Xuthus and Dôrus sons of Hellên, is as old as the Hesiodic Catalogue; probably also that which makes Hellên son of Deukaliôn. Aëthlius also is an Hesiodic personage: whether Amphiktyôn be so or not, we have no proof.229 They could not have been introduced into the legendary genealogy until after the Olympic games and the Amphiktyonic council had acquired an established ascendancy and universal reverence throughout Greece.

Respecting Dôrus the son of Hellên, we find neither legends nor legendary genealogy; respecting Xuthus, very little beyond the tale of Kreüsa and Iôn, which has its place more naturally among the Attic fables. Achæus however, who is here represented as the son of Xuthus, appears in other stories with very different parentage and accompaniments. According to the statement which we find in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Achæus, Phthius and Pelasgus are sons of Poseidôn and Larissa. They migrate from Peloponnêsus into Thessaly, and distribute the Thessalian territory between them, giving their names to its principal divisions: their descendants in the sixth generation were driven out of that country by the invasion of Deukaliôn at the head of the Kurêtes and the Leleges.230 This was the story of those who wanted to provide an eponymus for the Achæans in the southern districts of Thessaly: Pausanias accomplishes the same object by different means, representing Achæus, the son of Xuthus as having gone back to Thessaly and occupied the portion of it to which his father was entitled. Then, by way of explaining how it was that there were Achæans at Sparta and at Argos, he tells us that Archander and Architelês, the sons of Archæus, came back from Thessaly to Peloponnêsus, and married two daughters of Danaus: they acquired great influence at Argos and Sparta, and gave to the people the name of Achæans after their father Achæus.231

Euripidês also deviates very materially from the Hesiodic genealogy in respect to these eponymous persons. In the drama called Iôn, he describes Iôn as son of Kreüsa by Apollo, but adopted by Xuthus: according to him, the real sons of Xuthus and Kreüsa are Dôrus and Achæus,232—eponyms of the Dôrians and Achæans in the interior of Peloponnêsus. And it is a still more capital point of difference, that he omits Hellên altogether—making Xuthus an Achæan by race, the son of Æolus, who is the son of Zeus.233 This is the more remarkable, as in the fragments of two other dramas of Euripidês, the Melanippê and the Æolus, we find Hellên mentioned both as father of Æolus and son of Zeus.234 To the general public even of the most instructed city of Greece, fluctuations and discrepancies in these mythical genealogies seem to have been neither surprising nor offensive.