cannot be sufficiently commended. It made all the leading men of the several states of Greece personally known to each other, and led to a communication of every sort of knowledge and improvement. It had a powerful effect in civilizing a rude nation, and repressing those petty feuds between its separate cantons, and that encroaching and predatory spirit, so common in such a state of society, and so hostile to all advancement and general prosperity. Without some such bond of union, Greece, from the nature of its separate governments, could never have formed a considerable power in the scale of the nations of antiquity, nor ever have withstood the force of such formidable enemies as we shall see she had to encounter. Contemporary with this real or fabulous Amphictyon was Cadmus, who, about 1519 years before the Christian era, is said to have imported from Phoenicia into Greece the art of alphabetic writing. The Phoenician alphabet, which is generally supposed to be the root of all the others, consisted only of sixteen letters, and the ancient Greeks had no more for many centuries afterwards. Before the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet by Cadmus, it is probable that the Greeks used either the hieroglyphic mode, or the more ancient manner of expressing their ideas by rude pictures. The word çaqɛiv being used to signify either to write or to paint, countenances this supposition. After the introduction of the alphabetic mode, the Greeks wrote, not as afterwards, constantly from left to right, but alternately from left to right and from right to left. This mode of writing, of which there are some specimens preserved among the Arundelian marbles at Oxford, was termed Boustrophedon, from its resemblance to the furrows described in ploughing a field. With the art of writing, Cadmus brought likewise from Phoenicia a knowledge of all those arts and sciences which were practised and cultivated at this time in that early civilized country. The Greeks gradually advancing in improvement, and shaking off their original barbarism, begin, from this period, to figure as an united people, and to turn their thoughts, as we shall presently see, to ambitious and hazardous enterprises. But, before proceeding to notice these, I shall here take occasion to offer a few reflections on the short preceding sketch of the first and rudest period of the Grecian history. force of arms, and do my endeavors to destroy those cities which are guilty of such attempts. If any devastations be committed in the territory of Apollo, if any shall be privy to such offence, or entertain any design against the temple, I will use my hands, my feet, my whole force to bring the offender to just punishment." The latter part of the oath was intended as a guard upon the purity of the national religion; and this care was always understood to form a very important part of the function of the Amphictyonic council. This oath was guarded by the most dreadful curses and awful imprecations of vengeance upon any deputy who should violate the obligations which he thus came under. CHAPTER VII. Reflections on the first and rudest periods of the Grecian History-Extreme Barbarism of the Aborigines-Circumstances which retarded CivilizationOrigin of the Greek Theology-Uncertainty of Mythological Researches Superstitious Character of the Greeks-Oracles-Games-Effects of them on the National Character. THE topographical appearance of the country of Greece, when surveyed upon a map, presents to the view a large irregular peninsula, surrounded on the east, south, and west, by the Mediterranean, which deeply indents its coasts, and divided internally by several large chains of mountains, which, with their lateral branches, form so many intersections, that the whole face of the country appears cut into a great number of small valleys, surrounded almost on every side by hills. Hence, while the coasts of the peninsula formed a multitude of bays and harbors, easily accessible to strangers who came thither with a view either to colonize or to make spoil, it must have been extremely difficult for those invaders to penetrate into the interior parts of the country; and troops of an enemy, after the conquest of one canton, would find fresh difficulties, and a war to recommence, at every step of their progress. From the same cause, the internal structure of the country, it would necessarily happen, that even after a colony of strangers had formed a permanent establishment, and begun to spread improvement and civilization around them, the progress of that civilization would be extremely slow. For the inhabitants of the different cantons living altogether detached, and feeling very few wants to incite to intercourse or to union, any improvement which they received would be partial, and very slowly communicated to their neighboring provinces. The conformity, indeed, of the language of the Greeks, would seem to countenance the notion of their having free communication and intercourse; but this general conformity may be accounted for from their having all the same origin; and if the original language was the same, it must, in such a state of barbarism, have long remained without much change, even though the different districts of the country had no intercourse with each other. And here it may be remarked, that the admirable structure of the Greek language, highly complicated, yet at the same time wonderfully regular, and at once the most copious and most elegant of the known tongues, is of itself a proof of that tradition which attributes the first civilization of this people to a colony of strangers from one or other of the more polished countries of the East; for this language, such as we find it to have been in the days of Homer and of Hesiod, is a phenomenon altogether inconsistent with the state of society in which it is found, and with the rude and barbarous manners of the people who used it. It must, therefore, have been imported and taught to this people by the colony of a refined and polished nation among whom it had its birth. That the ancient inhabitants of this peninsula were rude and uncultivated savages, is a fact which the moderns have no reasonab.e grounds for doubting, when we find it the uniform belief of the nation itself in all periods of its annals, and the common opinion of its best historians. "Who could imagine," says M. Goguet, "that that ingenious people to whom Europe is indebted for all its knowledge, were descended from savages who wandered in the woods and fields, without laws or leaders, having no other retreat but dens and caverns, ignorant even of the use of fire, and so barbarous as even to cat one another?" Why should we doubt of these facts, when we know for a truth that other nations, in times comparatively modern, were upon their first discovery found in a state equally barbarous? The inhabitants of the Marian Islands, when they were discovered by Magellan in 1521, had, till that time, never seen fire, and expressed the utmost astonishment at it. They believed it to be an animal which fixed itself upon wood and fed upon it, and when approaching so near as to be burnt, they thought they were bit by it. The inhabitants of the Philippine and Canary Islands were, at their first discovery, in a state of equal ignorance. There are, it is true, but few countries in which lightning is not seen at times, and its effects perceived; but as those effects are always destructive, a savage would naturally regard the phenomenon with horror; and if a similar effect should by chance manifest itself from the collision of hard substances, he would not readily conceive that it could be turned to useful purposes; and, therefore, instead of preserving the fire, would naturally either endeavor to suppress and extinguish it, or, if he found that impracticable, would fly from it and leave it to its ravages. That the ancient inhabitants of Greece were anthropophagi is no more incredible, than that there are savage tribes at this day in Asia, Africa, and America, who make a common practice of feeding on human flesh.* We think of this with horror, and execrate *The New Zealanders, beyond doubt, are cannibals. See Hawkesworth and Cooke's last Voyage in 1777. They eat, however, only their enemies, and expressed great abhorrence when asked if they eat their friends who had been killed. [See also Earle's Residence in New-Zealand, 1833—Ellis's Polynesian Researches, 1829--and Sir Stamford Raffles on Java.] the idea as shocking and unnatural. We, who do not know what it is to want the supplies of a vast variety of aliment, study to excite the satiated appetite by skilful combinations and ingenious refinements of cookery: but we should judge more impartially, if, while we thought of those bloody repasts, we took likewise into view the nigardly provision which nature in many regions of the earth has made for man; the barren deserts which he inhabits, the climate which often locks up or annihilates their scanty produce, and the dreadful extremities to which even civilized man has been known to proceed for the support of life. Necessity only, in the most savage nations, could at first get the better of the strongest instinct; but that once overcome, a habit is soon acquired, and will not be laid aside as long as subsistence remains in any degree precarious. In a nation so barbarous as we must believe Greece to have been at this period, there were many circumstances which retarded the advances to refinement. The Titans, the first colony of strangers from the East, might have introduced a degree of civilization, but it could be only temporary. They taught the Greeks agriculture; but the continual wars in which they were engaged among themselves rendered the improvement of the country quite impracticable, for no man had any security for reaping the fruits of his labor. These strangers were extirminated, and Greece, in a few years, relapsed into her original barbarism. The second and third colonies from the East founded a few cities, then termed kingdoms; for every city was a separate state, and we may form a judgment of the nature of these states from this circumstance, that at the time of Cecrops, when Attica consisted of twelve separate states or cities, the inhabitants of the whole district amounted only to 20,000. The detached situation of the Greeks, of which we have already taken notice, and the natural barriers between the different cantons, gave to the inhabitants a certain spirit of independence, which, even after the foundation of a political union, would very much resist all attempts towards the establishment of general laws, and, consequently, afford the greatest obstacles to general civilization. One powerful engine, best fitted to overcome these obstacles, was the introduction of a national religion, which Greece, as we have already observed, owed to those eastern colonies. It is a very just remark of an ingenious historian,* that the theology of any country is an indication of the state of manners when that system was first formed. "By knowing the adventures and attributes of any false deity, we can pronounce with some certainty what must have been the state of society and manners when he was elevated to that dignity. The mythology of Greece plainly * Robertson's Historical Disquisition concerning India, Appendix, p. 317. It must indicates the character of the age in which it was formed. have been in times of the greatest licentiousness, anarchy, and violence, that divinities of the highest rank could be supposed capable of perpetrating actions, or of being influenced by passions, which, in more enlightened periods, would be deemed a disgrace to human nature: it must have been when the earth was still infested with destructive monsters, and mankind, under forms of government too feeble to afford them protection, were exposed to the depredations of lawless robbers, or the cruelty of savage oppressors, that the well-known labors of Hercules, by which he was raised from earth to heaven, could have been necessary, or would have been deemed highly meritorious." What was the original worship of the ancient inhabitants of this country we are entirely at a loss to know; but barbarous as they were, they probably had some notions of religion, and receiving from strangers a new system of theology, of which at first their ideas must have been very confused, they would naturally graft the one upon the other; as we know that in modern times several savage nations have done in blending their own idolatries with the tenets of Christianity. Hence if we still trace the gods of the Phoenicians and of the Egyptians in those of the Greeks, with respect to the great characterizing circumstances of their powers and attributes, it is a very fruitless labor which some learned men have undertaken in attempting to prove a coincidence in all the minute particulars of their fabulous lives, exploits, and metamorphoses. I know of no subject which has afforded so much disquisition, or so many opposite opinions, as the attempts that have been made to reconcile the mythologies of different nations, or to trace up all the absurd fables of the pagan theologies to one common origin. It would be idle to enter deeply into a subject of this nature; yet I think it of consequence to take notice at least of one theory or system with regard to the origin of the pagan mythologies which some very good men have adopted, from a mistaken zeal in the cause of religion. Some of these authors, with wonderful learning, but with much indiscretion, have attempted to show that most of the fables regarding the heathen deities and their illustrious exploits derive their origin from the sacred Scriptures, and are nothing else than the lives and actions of the first patriarchs vitiated and disguised in passing by tradition to barbarous and unenlightened nations. Thus the learned Bochart finds out the patriarch Noah in the pagan Saturn, his son Shem in Pluto, Ham in Jupiter Ammon, and Japhet in Neptune.* Moses alone is said to have furnished the idea of Apollo, Esculapius, Priapus, Prometheus, Tiresias, Proteus, Typhon, Perseus, Orpheus, Janus, Adonis; because certain fabulous exploits, attributed * Bochart, Thomassin, Cumberland, Vossius, Huet, Fourmont, &c. |