It began in Ionia. It may in truth have been a reawakening. But if this be so (and it is entirely probable), it was after so long and deep a slumber that scarcely even dreams were remembered. The Ionians used to say that they remembered coming from Greece, long ago, about a thousand years before Christ—as we reckon it—driven from their ancient home on the Peloponnesian coast of the Corinthian Gulf by “Dorians” out of the North. They fled to Athens, which carried them in her ships across the Aegean to that middle portion of the eastern shore which came to be known as Ionia. For this reason they were in historical times accounted (by the Athenians at least) “colonists of the Athenians.” Nobody in antiquity appears seriously to have disputed this account of the Ionians. There may be considerable truth in it; and if not, the Ionians were pretty good at disputing. The Athenians belonged to that race. But if you questioned the Ionians further and asked them about their origins in prehistoric Greece, you had to be content with the Topsy-like answer that the first Of course in historical times the Ionians were Greeks. But they may not always have been Greeks. Herodotus apparently thinks they were not. He says they learned to speak Greek from their Dorian conquerors. The natural inference from this would be that they were of a different racial stock. Herodotus, however, is nearly as fond of a hypothesis as Mr. Shandy, and it is quite possible that he is here labouring an argument (which in turn may have been mere Dorian propaganda), that the only pure-blooded Hellenes were the Dorian tribes, who admittedly came on the scene much later than the Ionians. In fact the Ionians may have been simply an earlier wave of a great invasion of Greek-speakers which came to an end with the Dorians. We do not know, and Herodotus did not know. The Ionians themselves did not know. There are two possibilities. Either they were an indigenous people who became Hellenized (as Herodotus supposes), or they were a folk of Hellenic affinities who were long settled in Greece in the midst of a still earlier population. What of that? Only this, that we have suddenly discovered a great deal about this prehistoric Aegean population, above all that it had developed a civilization which seems almost too brilliant to be true. Now if ArchÆologists, digging in the sites of old Ionian cities, have discovered evidence that the early settlers possessed something of the Aegean culture. The crown and centre of that culture was the island of Crete, and there existed some dim traditions of Cretans landing in Ionia; only then it was probably not called Ionia. This, and some other considerations, have prompted the suggestion that the Ionians really came from Crete. But it seems more in accordance with the evidence to suppose that the main body of them came from Greece proper, where they had learned the “Mycenaean” culture, which was the gift of Crete. The calamitous Dorians wrecked that wonderful heritage, but for some time at least the settlers in their new “Ionian” home would remember how to fashion a pot fairly and chant their traditional lays. Then, it would seem, they all but forgot; little wonder, when you consider how dire was their plight. Yet even in that uneasy sleep into which they fell of a recrudescent barbarism the Ionians remembered something as in a dream; and it became the most beautiful dream in the world, for it is Homer. Now let us appeal to history. The history of Ionia is a drama in little of what afterwards happened on a wider stage in Greece. The settlers found a beautiful land with (so Herodotus, not alone, exclaims) “the best climate in the world.” Considerable rivers, given to “meandering,” carve long valleys into the hilly interior The Ionians had always to struggle against being crowded into the sea by the more or less savage This was the kind of world into which the fugitives were thrown. It mattered the less perhaps because their real home was the sea. Yet even the sea gave them only a temporary escape from the Barbarian. Wherever they landed they met him again on the beach. Imagine, if you will, a ship trading from the chief Ionian harbour, Miletus. Imagine her bound for the south-east coast of the Black Sea for a cargo of silver. She would pick her way by coast and island till she reached the Dardanelles. From that point onwards she was in unfriendly waters. On one side were the hills of Gallipoli (Achi Baba and the rest—we do not know their ancient names), inhabited by “Thracians” of the sort called Dolonkoi; on the other side was the country of the kindred “Phrygians.” It was likely to go hard with a Greek ship cast away on either shore. Thence through the Sea of Marmara and the Bosphorus into the Euxine. Then came days and days of following the long Asiatic coast, dodging the tide-races about the headlands, finding the springs of fresh water known to the older hands, pushing at night into some rock-sheltered cove, sleeping on the beach upon beds of gathered leaves. And so at last to some harbour of “Colchians,” men whose complexion and hair would make you swear they were Egyptians, circumcised men, violently contrasting with their neighbours the Phasianoi, who live in the misty valley of the romantic Phasis—large, fat, sleepy-looking men, flabby men with pasty faces, who grow flax in the marshy meadows of their languid stream. From these partially civilized peoples the Greeks would glean news of the mountain-tribes of the interior, Or suppose our ship bound for the corn-bearing region behind the modern port of Odessa in South Russia. Once through the Bosphorus, she would make her course along the shore of a wide and wintry territory inhabited by red-haired, blue-eyed Thracians, a race akin to certain elements in the population of Greece itself, warlike, musical, emotional, mystical, cruel. Here and there the merchant would land for water or fresh meat—at Salmydessos, at Apollonia, at Mesembria, at Odessos, at Tomi (but we do not know when these places got their names)—till he reached the mouths of the Danube. Wherever he touched he might have the chance to hear of wild races further inland, such as the Getai, very noble savages, who believed in the immortality of men, or at least of the Getai. They were of the opinion that when one of them left this life he “went to Salmoxis.” Salmoxis, he lived in an underground house and was their god. Every four years they sent a messenger to him to tell what they wanted. Their method was this. First they told the messenger what he must ask, and then they tossed him in the air, catching him as he fell on the points of their spears. If he died, this meant a favourable answer from Salmoxis. But if the messenger did not die, then they blamed the messenger and “dispatched” another. Also they used to shoot arrows at the sun and moon, Beyond the Danube was “Scythia.” All that district between the river and the Crimea was from the earliest times of which we have record what it is to-day, a grain-growing country. Its capital was the “Market of the Borysthenites,” which preferred to call itself Olbia, “the City of Eldorado.” Here the merchant would find a curious population, very fair in type, great horsemen, wearing peaked caps of felt and carrying half-moon shields. In the Russian army which fought Napoleon in 1814 were Siberian archers whom the French nicknamed Les Amours. I do not venture to say that these were Scythians, but it is clear that an ancient Scythian (half naked, with his little recurved bow) must have looked rather like an overgrown barbaric The Scythians were not all savages. Some of them were skilled farmers. With these the Greek settlers intermarried, and as early as Herodotus there was a considerable half-breed population. A motley town like Olbia was the place for stories—stories of the “Nomads” who neither plough nor sow, but wander slowly over the interminable steppes with their gipsy vans in which the women and children huddle under the stretched roof of skins; stories of the Tauri, who live in the Crimea, and sacrifice the shipwrecked to their bloody idol, clubbing them on the head like seals. And their enemies when they subdue them they treat as follows. Every man cuts off a head and carries it away to his house, and then fixing it on a long pole sets it up high above the house, generally above the chimney; for they will have it that the whole house is protected by the heads up there. They live by plunder and fighting. The Neuroi, another of these Scythian tribes, were driven from their original home by “serpents,” and look as if they might be sorcerers. For the Scyths and the Greeks who live in Scythia say that once a year every man of the Neuroi turns into a wolf, but is restored to human shape after a day or two. Now when they say this they do not convince me—Herodotus—still they say it and even take an oath in saying it. But the Man-Eaters are the worst savages of all, for they follow neither rule nor law of any kind. They are nomads, and are dressed like Scyths, and have a Beyond the Boudinoi lived a folk that were bald from birth—men and women—besides having snub noses and large chins. The bald ones lived upon wild cherries, straining the juice off thick and dark, and then licking it up or drinking it mixed with milk. They dwelt under trees, every man under his tree, on which in winter he stretched a piece of white felt to make a kind of tent. On the mountains leaped goat-footed men; and beyond the goat-footed lived men who slept away six months of the year. The IssÊdones ate their dead fathers, whose skulls they afterwards gilded and honoured with sacrifices. “In other respects” they were accounted just, and the women had as much authority among them as the men. Then came the one-eyed Arimaspeans and the gold-guarding griffins.... Suppose we change the scene, and send the Milesian ship on a voyage to the African coast. What would the merchant find there? Herodotus will tell us. By the shores of the Greater Syrtis live the NasamÔnes. They in summer (he tells us) leave their flocks by the seashore and go up-country to gather dates at an oasis. They catch locusts, dry them, pound them, sprinkle the dust on milk, and swallow the draught. Beyond their territory are the Garamantes “in the Wild Beast Country.” They run away when they see anybody, and do not know how to fight. West of the NasamÔnes on the coast are The Nomads roam from oasis to oasis over a land of salt and sand. Here is found the race of Troglodytes or Cave Men, swiftest of human beings; whom the Garamantes hunt in four-horse chariots. The Troglodytes feed upon snakes and lizards and other reptiles. Their language does not sound human at all but like the squeaking of bats. At some distance from the Garamantes dwell the Atarantes, among whom nobody has a name. These, when the sun is excessively hot, curse him and cry him shame for scorching them and their land. The Atlantes, whose dwelling is under Mount Atlas and its shrouded peaks, are said to be vegetarians and to have no dreams. Beyond these stretches the unknown desert, where men live in houses built of salt, for it never rains there. Hereabouts wander a number of tribes concerning whom Herodotus remarks generally, “All these peoples paint themselves vermilion and eat monkeys.” Well, that was the kind of world in which Greek civilization was born. Do not say I have been describing a remote barbarism. Remoteness is relative to more than space, and to the Ionians the sea was no barrier, but the contrary. They knew the whole south coast of the Black Sea, for instance, better than their own Asiatic hinterland. But even if we exclude the Black Sea and Libya as remote, Naturally the process took time. The first century or so must have been largely lost in the mere struggle for survival. There may even have been in some ways a retrogression—a fading out of the Mycenaean culture, the admission of “Carian” elements needing gradual assimilation. That period is historically so much of a blank to us, that when we do begin to note the signs of expansion they give us the surprise of suddenness. Miletus is all at once the leading city of the Greek world. It plants colony after colony on the Dardanelles, in the Sea of Marmara, along the shores of the Euxine. Ionia is awake while Hellas is still asleep. Ionian traders, Ionian soldiers, Ionian ships are everywhere. The men of Phokaia opened to trade the Adriatic, Etruria, Spain. In the reign of Psammetichos—the First or Second—some Ionian and Carian pirates were The first great Ionian (discounting the view of some that Homer was an Ionian poet) was the greatest of all. This was Archilochus, who was born in the little island of Paros somewhere about the end of the eighth century before Christ. His poetry is all but lost, his life little more than a startling rumour. The ancients, who had him all to read, spoke of him in the same breath with Homer. He was not only so great a poet, but he was a new kind of poet. Before him men used the traditional style of the heroic epic. This Archilochus sings about himself. We hear in him a voice as personal, as poignant, as in Villon or Heine or Burns; it is a revolutionary voice. Modern literature has nothing to teach Archilochus. One can see that in the miserable scanty fragments of his astonishing poetry that have come down to us. As for the man himself, the case against him looks pretty black. He himself is quite unabashed. But he also complains of hard luck, and there may be something in this plea. If he was a bastard, much could be forgiven him; but that theory seems to rest on a misapprehension of his meaning. His father was evidently an important man among the Parians. There does not appear to be any good reason why Archilochus should have had so bad a time of it except the reason of temperament. One great thing I do know, quoth he, how to pay back in bitter Archilochus was sent to fight the Saioi, a wild tribe of the Thracian mainland opposite Thasos. It would seem that the Greeks were defeated. At any rate, he for one ran away, abandoning his shield—to Greek sentiment an unforgivable offence. Who tells us this? Archilochus himself, adding impudently that he doesn’t care; he can easily get another shield, and meantime his skin is whole. The ancient world never quite got over the scandal of this avowal. Archilochus aggravated it by a poem to a friend in which he remarks that a man who pays much attention to charges of cowardice won’t have very many pleasures. But cowards don’t become soldiers, and don’t write humorous accounts of their misbehaviour. He was a fighter to the last. A man of Naxos killed him. There are in the fragments of Archilochus notes Archilochus was absorbed in his own adventures, but even he must have noted the tremendous events which were changing the nations before his eyes. A fierce and numerous folk, known to the Greeks as the Cimmerians (Kimmerioi—their name survives in Crimea and Crim Tartary), broke loose or were thrust from their homes in the steppes and poured into Asia Minor, apparently through what is called the “Sangarios Gap” in Phrygia. You may see them fighting Ionians on a sarcophagus from Clazomenae which is in the British Museum. They rode bareback on half-tamed horses and slew with tremendous leaf-shaped swords. They destroyed the power of Phrygia, then the greatest in the peninsula, and King Midas, last of his race, killed himself (by drinking bull’s blood, men said). Lydia succeeded to the place and the peril of the Phrygians. She was under the rule of a new king (called “Gugu”), who made a strong fight of it, but was ultimately, about 650 b.c., defeated and slain by the half-naked riders under their king Tugdammi, who sacked the Ionian towns. The Ionians, however, made common cause with Ardys the son of Gugu or Gyges, as the Greeks called him, and along with the Lydians they beat this All this time, and even under the Persian, the Ionians continued to develop and enrich the mind of the world. If science means the effort to find a rational instead of a mythological explanation of things, then the Ionians invented science. Thales of Miletus predicted that eclipse. Anaximander of Miletus held a theory about the origin of life which anticipates modern speculation. He wrote a book about it, which was probably the first example of literary prose in Greek. He also made the first map. His fellow-citizen Hecataeus invented history.... These are just some of the things the Ionians did. The rest of the Hellenes—first the colonies |