Читать книгу History of Greece (Vol. 1-12) - Grote George - Страница 66

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It has already been stated that the territory properly called Elis, apart from the enlargement which it acquired by conquest, included the westernmost land in Peloponnesus, south of Achaia, and west of Mount Pholoê and Olenus in Arcadia,—but not extending so far southward as the river Alpheius, the course of which lay along the southern portion of Pisatis and on the borders of Triphylia. This territory, which appears in the Odyssey as “the divine Elis, where the Epeians hold sway,”548 is in the historical times occupied by a population of Ætolian origin. The connection of race between the historical Eleians and the historical Ætolians was recognized by both parties, nor is there any ground for disputing it.549

That Ætolian invaders, or emigrants, into Elis, would cross from Naupaktus, or some neighboring point in the Corinthian gulf, is in the natural course of things,—and such is the course which Oxylus, the conductor of the invasion, is represented by the Herakleid legend as taking. That legend (as has been already recounted) introduces Oxylus as the guide of the three Herakleid brothers,—Têmenus, Kresphontês, and Aristodêmus,—and as stipulating with them that, in the new distribution about to take place of Peloponnesus, he shall be allowed to possess the Eleian territory, coupled with many holy privileges as to the celebration of the Olympic games.

In the preceding chapter, I have endeavored to show that the settlements of the Dorians in and near the Argolic peninsula, so far as the probabilities of the case enable us to judge, were not accomplished by any inroad in this direction. But the localities occupied by the Dorians of Sparta, and by the Dorians of Stenyklêrus, in the territory called Messênê, lead us to a different conclusion. The easiest and most natural road through which emigrants could reach either of these two spots, is through the Eleian and the Pisatid country. Colonel Leake observes,550 that the direct road from the Eleian territory to Sparta, ascending the valley of the Alpheius, near Olympia, to the sources of its branch, the Theius, and from thence descending the Eurotas, affords the only easy march towards that very inaccessible city: and both ancients and moderns have remarked the vicinity of the source of the Alpheius to that of the Eurotas. The situation of Stenyklêrus and Andania, the original settlements of the Messenian Dorians, adjoining closely the Arcadian Parrhasii, is only at a short distance from the course of the Alpheius; being thus reached most easily by the same route. Dismissing the idea of a great collective Dorian armament, powerful enough to grasp at once the entire peninsula,—we may conceive two moderate detachments of hardy mountaineers, from the cold regions in and near Doris, attaching themselves to the Ætolians, their neighbors, who were proceeding to the invasion of Elis. After having aided the Ætolians, both to occupy Elis and to subdue the Pisatid, these Dorians advanced up the valley of the Alpheius in quest of settlements for themselves. One of these bodies ripens into the stately, stubborn, and victorious Spartans; the other, into the short-lived, trampled, and struggling Messenians.

Amidst the darkness which overclouds these original settlements, we seem to discern something like special causes to determine both of them. With respect to the Spartan Dorians, we are told that a person named Philonomus betrayed Sparta to them, persuading the sovereign in possession to retire with his people into the habitations of the Ionians, in the north of the peninsula,—and that he received as a recompense for this acceptable service Amyklæ, with the district around it. It is farther stated,—and this important fact there seems no reason to doubt,—that Amyklæ,—though only twenty stadia or two miles and a half distant from Sparta, retained both its independence and its Achæan inhabitants, long after the Dorian emigrants had acquired possession of the latter place, and was only taken by them under the reign of Têleklus, one generation before the first Olympiad.551 Without presuming to fill up by conjecture incurable gaps in the statements of our authorities, we may from hence reasonably presume that the Dorians were induced to invade, and enabled to acquire, Sparta, by the invitation and assistance of a party in the interior of the country. Again, with respect to the Messenian Dorians, a different, but not less effectual temptation was presented by the alliance of the Arcadians, in the south-western portion of that central region of Peloponnesus. Kresphontês, the Herakleid leader, it is said, espoused the daughter552 of the Arcadian king, Kypselus, which procured for him the support of a powerful section of Arcadia. His settlement at Stenyklêrus was a considerable distance from the sea, at the north-east corner of Messenia,553 close to the Arcadian frontier; and it will be seen hereafter that this Arcadian alliance is a constant and material element in the disputes of the Messenian Dorians with Sparta.

We may thus trace a reasonable sequence of events, showing how two bodies of Dorians, having first assisted the Ætolo-Eleians to conquer the Pisatid, and thus finding themselves on the banks of the Alpheius, followed the upward course of that river, the one to settle at Sparta, the other at Stenyklêrus. The historian Ephorus, from whom our scanty fragments of information respecting these early settlements are derived,—it is important to note that he lived in the age immediately succeeding the first foundation of Messênê as a city, the restitution of the long-exiled Messenians, and the amputation of the fertile western half of Laconia, for their benefit, by Epameinondas,—imparts to these proceedings an immediate decisiveness of effect which does not properly belong to them: as if the Spartans had become at once possessed of all Laconia, and the Messenians of all Messenia: Pausanias, too, speaks as if the Arcadians collectively had assisted and allied themselves with Kresphontês. This is the general spirit which pervades his account, though the particular facts in so far as we find any such, do not always harmonize with it. Now we are ignorant of the preëxisting divisions of the country, either east or west of Mount Taygetus, at the time when the Dorians invaded it. But to treat the one and the other as integral kingdoms, handed over at once to two Dorian leaders, is an illusion borrowed from the old legend, from the historicizing fancies of Ephorus, and from the fact that, in the well-known times, this whole territory came to be really united under the Spartan power.

At what date the Dorian settlements at Sparta and Stenyklêrus were effected, we have no means of determining. Yet, that there existed between them in the earliest times a degree of fraternity which did not prevail between Lacedæmon and Argos, we may fairly presume from the common temple, with joint religious sacrifices, of Artemis Limnatis, or Artemis on the Marsh, erected on the confines of Messenia and Laconia.554 Our first view of the two, at all approaching to distinctness, seems to date from a period about half a century earlier than the first Olympiad (776 B. C.),—about the reign of king Têleklus of the Eurystheneid or Agid line, and the introduction of the Lykurgean discipline. Têleklus stands in the list as the eighth king dating from Eurysthenes. But how many of the seven kings before him are to be considered as real persons,—or how much, out of the brief warlike expeditions ascribed to them, is to be treated as authentic history,—I pretend not to define.

The earliest determinable event in the internal history of Sparta is the introduction of the Lykurgean discipline; the earliest external events are the conquest of Amyklæ, Pharis, and Geronthræ, effected by king Têleklus, and the first quarrel with the Messenians, in which that prince was slain. When we come to see how deplorably great was the confusion and ignorance which reigned with reference to a matter so preëminently important as Lykurgus and his legislation, we shall not be inclined to think that facts much less important, and belonging to an earlier epoch, can have been handed down upon any good authority. And in like manner, when we learn that Amyklæ, Pharis, and Geronthræ (all south of Sparta, and the first only two and a half miles distant from that city) were independent of the Spartans until the reign of Têleklus, we shall require some decisive testimony before we can believe that a community so small, and so hemmed in as Sparta must then have been, had in earlier times undertaken expeditions against Helos on the sea-coast, against Kleitor on the extreme northern side of Arcadia, against the Kynurians, or against the Argeians. If Helos and Kynuria were conquered by these early kings, it appears that they had to be conquered a second time by kings succeeding Têleklus. It would be more natural that we should hear when and how they conquered the places nearer to them,—Sellasia, or Belemina, the valley of the Œnus, or the upper valley of the Eurotas. But these seem to be assumed as matters of course; the proceedings ascribed to the early Spartan kings are such only as might beseem the palmy days when Sparta was undisputed mistress of all Laconia.

The succession of Messenian kings, beginning with Kresphontês, the Herakleid brother, and continuing from father to son,—Æpytus, Glaukus, Isthnius, Dotadas, Subotas, Phintas, the last being contemporary with Têleklus,—is still less marked by incident than that of the early Spartan kings. It is said that the reign of Kresphontês was troubled, and himself ultimately slain by mutinies among his subjects: Æpytus, then a youth, having escaped into Arcadia, was afterwards restored to the throne by the Arcadians, Spartans, and Argeians.555 From Æpytus, the Messenian line of kings are stated to have been denominated Æpytids in preference to Herakleids,—which affords another proof of their intimate connection with the Arcadians, since Æpytus was a very ancient name in Arcadian heroic antiquity.556

There is considerable resemblance between the alleged behavior of Kresphontês on first settling at Stenyklêrus, and that of Eurysthenês and Proklês at Sparta,—so far as we gather from statements alike meagre and uncertified, resting on the authority of Ephorus. Both are said to have tried to place the preëxisting inhabitants of the country on a level with their own Dorian bands; both provoked discontents and incurred obloquy, with their contemporaries as well as with posterity, by the attempt; nor did either permanently succeed. Kresphontês was forced to concentrate all his Dorians in Stenyklêrus, while after all, the discontents ended in his violent death. And Agis, the son of Eurysthenês, is said to have reversed all the liberal tentatives of his father, so as to bring the whole of Laconia into subjection and dependence on the Dorians at Sparta, with the single exception of Amyklæ. So odious to the Spartan Dorians was the conduct of Eurysthenês, that they refused to acknowledge him as their œkist, and conferred that honor upon Agis; the two lines of kings being called Agiads and Eurypontids, instead of Eurystheneids and Prokleids.557 We see in these statements the same tone of mind as that which pervades the Panathenaic oration of Isokratês, the master of Ephorus,—the facts of an unknown period, so colored as to suit an idéal of haughty Dorian exclusiveness.

Again, as Eurysthenês and Proklês appear, in the picture of Ephorus, to carry their authority at once over the whole of Laconia, so too does Kresphontês over the whole of Messenia,—over the entire south-western region of Peloponnesus, westward of Mount Taygetus and Cape Tænarus, and southward of the river Neda. He sends an envoy to Pylus and Rhium, the western and southern portions of the south-western promontory of Peloponnesus, treating the entire territory as if it were one sovereignty, and inviting the inhabitants to submit under equal laws.558 But it has already been observed, that this supposed oneness and indivisibility is not less uncertified in regard to Messenia than in regard to Laconia. How large a proportion of the former territory these kings of Stenyklêrus may have ruled, we have no means of determining, but there were certainly portions of it which they did not rule,—not merely during the reign of Têleklus at Sparta, but still later, during the first Messenian war. For not only are we informed that Têleklus established three townships, Poiêessa, Echeiæ,559 and Tragium, near the Messenian gulf, and on the course of the river Nedon, but we read also a farther matter of evidence in the roll of Olympic victors. Every competitor for the prize at one of these great festivals was always entered as member of some autonomous Hellenic community, which constituted his title to approach the lists; if successful, he was proclaimed with the name of the community to which he belonged. Now during the first ten Olympiads, seven winners are proclaimed as Messenians; in the 11th Olympiad, we find the name of Oxythemis Korônæus,—Oxythemis, not of Korôneia in Bœotia, but of Korônê in the western bend of the Messenian gulf,560 some miles on the right bank of the Pamisus, and a considerable distance to the north of the modern Coron. Now if Korônê had then been comprehended in Messenia, Oxythemis would have been proclaimed as a Messenian, like the seven winners who preceded him; and the fact of his being proclaimed as a Korônæan, proves that Korônê was then an independent community, not under the dominion of the Dorians of Stenyklêrus. It seems clear, therefore, that the latter did not reign over the whole territory commonly known as Messenia, though we are unable to assign the proportion of it which they actually possessed.

The Olympic festival, in its origin doubtless a privilege of the neighboring Pisatans, seems to have derived its great and gradually expanding importance from the Ætolo-Eleian settlement in Peloponnesus, combined with the Dorians of Laconia and Messenia. Lykurgus of Sparta, and Iphitus of Elis, are alleged to have joined their efforts for the purpose of establishing both the sanctity of the Olympic truce and the inviolability of the Eleian territory. Hence, though this tale is not to be construed as matter of fact, we may see that the Lacedæmonians regarded the Olympic games as a portion of their own antiquities. Moreover, it is certain, both that the dignity of the festival increased simultaneously with their ascendency,561 and that their peculiar fashions were very early introduced into the practice of the Olympic competitors. Probably, the three bands of coöperating invaders, Ætolians and Spartan and Messenian Dorians, may have adopted this festival as a periodical renovation of mutual union and fraternity; from which cause the games became an attractive centre for the western portion of Peloponnesus, before they were much frequented by people from the eastern, or still more from extra-Peloponnesian Hellas. For it cannot be altogether accidental, when we read the names of the first twelve proclaimed Olympic victors (occupying nearly half a century from 776 B. C. downwards), to find that seven of them are Messenians, three Eleians, one from Dymê, in Achaia, and one from Korônê; while after the 12th Olympiad, Corinthians and Megarians and Epidaurians begin to occur; later still, extra-Peloponnesian victors. We may reasonably infer from hence that the Olympic ceremonies were at this early period chiefly frequented by visitors and competitors from the western regions of Peloponnesus, and that the affluence to them, from the more distant parts of the Hellenic world, did not become considerable until the first Messenian war had closed.

Having thus set forth the conjectures, to which our very scanty knowledge points, respecting the first establishment of the Ætolian and Dorian settlements in Elis, Laconia, and Messenia, connected as they are with the steadily increasing dignity and frequentation of the Olympic festival, I proceed, in the next chapter, to that memorable circumstance which both determined the character, and brought about the political ascendency, of the Spartans separately: I mean, the laws and discipline of Lykurgus.

Of the preëxisting inhabitants of Laconia and Messenia, whom we are accustomed to call Achæans and Pylians, so little is known, that we cannot at all measure the difference between them and their Dorian invaders, either in dialect, in habits, or in intelligence. There appear no traces of any difference of dialect among the various parts of the population of Laconia: the Messenian allies of Athens, in the Peloponnesian war, speak the same dialect as the Helots, and the same also as the Ambrakiotic colonists from Corinth: all Doric.562 Nor are we to suppose that the Doric dialect was at all peculiar to the people called Dorians. As far as can be made out by the evidence of Inscriptions, it seems to have been the dialect of the Phokians, Delphians, Lokrians, Ætolians, and Achæans of Phthiôtis: with respect to the latter, the Inscriptions of Thaumaki, in Achæa Phthiôtis, afford a proof the more curious and the more cogent of native dialect, because the Phthiôts were both immediate neighbors and subjects of the Thessalians, who spoke a variety of the Æolic. So, too, within Peloponnesus, we find evidences of Doric dialect among the Achæans in the north of Peloponnesus,—the Dryopic inhabitants of Hermionê,563—and the Eleuthero-Lacones, or Laconian townships (compounded of Periœki and Helots), emancipated by the Romans in the second century B. C. Concerning the speech of that population whom the invading Dorians found in Laconia, we have no means of judging: the presumption would rather be that it did not differ materially from the Doric. Thucydidês designates the Corinthians, whom the invading Dorians attacked from the hill Solygeius, as being Æolians, and Strabo speaks both of the Achæans as an Æolic nation, and of the Æolic dialect as having been originally preponderant in Peloponnesus.564 But we do not readily see what means of information either of these authors possessed respecting the speech of a time which must have been four centuries anterior even to Thucydidês.

Of that which is called the Æolic dialect there are three marked and distinguishable varieties,—the Lesbian, the Thessalian, and the Bœotian; the Thessalian forming a mean term between the other two. Ahrens has shown that the ancient grammatical critics are accustomed to affirm peculiarities, as belonging to the Æolic dialect generally, which in truth belong only to the Lesbian variety of it, or to the poems of Alkæus and Sappho, which these critics attentively studied. Lesbian Æolic, Thessalian Æolic, and Bœotian Æolic, are all different: and if, abstracting from these differences, we confine our attention to that which is common to all three, we shall find little to distinguish this abstract Æolic from the abstract Doric, or that which is common to the many varieties of the Doric dialect.565 These two are sisters, presenting, both of them, more or less the Latin side of the Greek language, while the relationship of either of them to the Attic and Ionic is more distant. Now it seems that, putting aside Attica, the speech of all Greece,566 from Perrhæbia and Mount Olympus to Cape Malea and Cape Akritas, consisted of different varieties, either of the Doric or of the Æolic dialect; this being true (as far as we are able to judge) not less of the aboriginal Arcadians than of the rest. The Laconian dialect contained more specialties of its own, and approached nearer to the Æolic and to the Eleian, than any other variety of the Dorian: it stands at the extreme of what has been classified as the strict Dorian,—that is, the farthest removed from Ionic and Attic. The Kretan towns manifest also a strict Dorism; as well as the Lacedæmonian colony of Tarentum, and, seemingly, most of the Italiotic Greeks, though some of them are called Achæan colonies. Most of the other varieties of the Doric dialect (Phokian, Lokrian, Delphian, Achæan of Phthiôtis) exhibit a form departing less widely from the Ionic and Attic: Argos, and the towns in the Argolic peninsula, seem to form a stepping-stone between the two.

These positions represent the little which can be known respecting those varieties of Grecian speech which are not known to us by written works. The little presumption which can be raised upon them favors the belief that the Dorian invaders of Laconia and Messenia found there a dialect little different from that which they brought with them,—a conclusion which it is the more necessary to state distinctly, since the work of O. Müller has caused an exaggerated estimate to be formed of the distinctive peculiarities whereby Dorism was parted off from the rest of Hellas.