Part 17

Wherever we meet with notices of the Cyclades in the historical times, they are at first all independent of one another; with the exception of Cythnos, all received Ionian colonists from Athens, whence we there find the relation of masters and serfs, as for example at Naxos, where Lygdamis was tyrant. Wherever we have a trace of history, we catch a glimpse, as it were in the twilight, of an oligarchical relation. After the Persian wars, the Cyclades came under the supremacy of Athens, for each by itself was too weak: even Miltiades had tried to subdue Paros and Naxos, and afterwards the plan succeeded. Naxos, which revolted, received a cleruchia. Delos was changed by the Athenians into a national sanctuary; the ancient inhabitants were expelled, and a colony was sent thither. In obedience to the command of an oracle, the Athenians dug up all the dead bodies in the island, and conveyed them to Rhenea; but even for many years previously it had not been allowed to bury any one there. Although the islands were fertile, yet they were powerless, and after the battle of Naxos, again acknowledged the supremacy of Athens. In the Macedonian period, Delos alone seems to have remained in the hands of the Athenians, and after the war of Perseus, it was given back to them by the Romans; whether the Romans had a right to do so, I know not. During the Roman period, Delos, which had formerly been venerable for religious reasons, acquired a different kind of importance: it became the place of the greatest fair in those parts, being the entrepot between Alexandria and the towns on the Euxine; it was resorted to by merchants from the most distant countries, and even by the Romans so far as they carried on their commerce from Puteoli. To Athens it was of great importance on account of its harbour dues. It was also a central point for the slave-trade, and on one occasion 10,000 slaves are said to have been sold there in one day. From this fact some modern authors have made out, that this was the number of slaves sold there every day all the year round. At a later time Delos lost this importance; the piracy of the Cilicians and Cretans seems to have inflicted on Delos a deadly blow, and in the time of Augustus and Strabo it had lost its commercial importance, trade having taken a different direction.

PAROS is celebrated for its white marble, the most beautiful for purposes of sculpture: the Carrara marble which enjoys a great reputation, is of a much inferior kind, containing more lime, while the Parian is more like crystal and precious stone, nor has it the disagreeable suggary whiteness of the Carrara marble, which becomes a little yellowish only by exposure to the air. Opposite to Paros is the small island of Antiparos, remarkable for its grotto with its stalactites, the most celebrated in the world, though the ancients do not mention it. In early times, the town of Paros was one of the most enterprising, and, in a commercial point of view, one of the most important places; besides the island itself, the Parians had colonies extending far into the interior of the Adriatic, and the town of Paros there is said to have been of Parian origin; they also took part in the establishment of a colony on the Liris. Archilochus, one of the greatest poets of Greece, was a native of Paros. Some Greeks whose judgment is of great weight, placed him by the side of Homer: and legendary stories say, that the gods were so favourably disposed towards him as to order Corax, who had murdered him, to quit their sanctuary and not to return to it, until he had propitiated the shade of the poet. Paros also possesses an excellent harbour, suited even to great ships of war; but it is little noticed in ancient history. It may be said in general that those islands were rich in harbours.

SIPHNOS, remarkable in a mineralogical point of view, is not far distant from Paros; previous to the Persian period, it had silver mines, through which it became wealthy; but when they were exhausted, it sank into the greatest wretchedness, for it is a barren island.

The neighbouring SERĪPHOS (not Serĭphos) is still more barren, being a mere rock; it acts a prominent part in the mythus about Perseus. The Romans in after-times banished their criminals to Seriphos and Cythnos.

CEOS, not far from Attica, was beautiful and populous; it contained four towns, of which I will mention _Carthaea_ and _Iulis_. The latter was the birth-place of Bacchylides, and probably also of his uncle, the elder Simonides. The site of Carthaea has been ascertained only in modern times by Bröndstedt and Haller of Nürnberg, who caused excavations to be made there and found ruins and inscriptions. I only trust that these inscriptions may not prove to be forgeries; for a friend at Athens sent me them long before they were known in Europe, having probably been copied by some Greek; but those people are too unscrupulous about truth, and you cannot trust them. These inscriptions, however, are very important; a few only belong to the early period during which Athens was free; most of them were made in the Macedonian and Aetolian times. I have supplemented the deficiencies, and Bröndstedt has published them with my emendations and additions, without even intimating that they are only probable conjectures, and he has altered the mistakes in writing without informing his readers as to whether they occur on the stones or not. This is a violation of historical fidelity. The ancient traditions about Ceos contain strange stories. The moral purity and the severity of the Ceans are much praised, and in the descriptions of manners in the comedies of Menander, they are spoken of in the highest terms. The other statement, that they killed their old men, in order to save them from the miseries of decrepitude, is, I hope, founded on some confusion, or is limited to one particular instance. The land is fertile.

ANDROS and TENOS are large and fertile, but have no history.

SYROS is remarkable as the birth-place of the philosopher Pherecydes, the instructor of Pythagoras.

On the one side of Delos was the island of RHENEA, and on the other that of MYCONOS; the former is insignificant, but Myconos is somewhat larger.

NAXOS is the most splendid of all the Cyclades, and was justly regarded as the favourite isle of Dionysus. Its form is like that of most volcanic islands in the south sea, rising from the waters like a cone: it is a mountain with broad sloping sides, and fertile to its very top; it does not indeed produce corn all the way up, but it is clad with vines and olive groves. The island is a real paradise, and even at this day one of the most flourishing in the Archipelago. Its summit was crowned with a temple of Zeus, though the island itself was sacred to Dionysus. In the early times it was powerful, especially during the age of Pisistratus; at the period of transition, it fell into the hands of Lygdamis, who protected the demos against the aristocracy; he became a usurper, but was a mild ruler, and beneficial to his subjects. During the Persian period, Naxos was still important and rich, but soon after came under the supremacy of Athens. It then revolted, but was subdued and received cleruchi, who however were expelled after the Peloponnesian war. During the period which then followed, nothing is known about Naxos. When the power of the Macedonians in Egypt was at its height, that is, in the reigns of Philadelphus and Euergetes, all the Cyclades were governed by the kings of Alexandria. After the fourth king, when the empire was decaying, those islands had no ruler and no protection, for which reason they endeavoured to enter into the relation of sympolity with the Aetolians as early as the time of Euergetes, and those who did not form this relation were infested by Aetolian and Illyrian pirates.

These are the Cyclades as we find them enumerated by Scylax, a highly respectable authority. But wherever a whole consists of a definite number of parts, the same number not unfrequently embraces different parts at different times, new parts being introduced in place of earlier ones; if you remember this, it will help you out of many an historical labyrinth. Such also was the case with the twelve Cyclades; they were not the same at all times, but the southern islands, which are not included by the ancients, were regarded as belonging to them at a time which cannot now be defined, so that some must have been omitted, which, accordingly, had either abandoned the connection or were forgotten on account of their insignificance. The same is the case with the twelve Achaean towns, and the seven hills of Rome, two of which are sometimes regarded as one, so that a new one is added. In this manner we have four more small islands, which are classed among the Cyclades, for which we must suppose that others, such as Seriphos and Rhenea, were omitted from the list. Delos, however, was always regarded as the centre, whence the phrase was, “Delos and the Cyclades.” The number twelve might thus be kept up in a variety of ways. The four islands before alluded to are _Melos_ and _Thera_, which were Doric, and _Ios_ and _Amorgos_, which were Ionic; Scylax includes them all among the Sporades.

MELOS was a Lacedaemonian colony, but during the Peloponnesian war it was conquered by the Athenians at the instigation of Alcibiades. The discussion of this subject in Thucydides is an ever-memorable masterpiece of the development of conflicting opinions; the transaction itself is a stain upon Athenian history; fortunately the number of such stains is but small. The inhabitants of Melos were sold as slaves; after the Peloponnesian war the island was indeed restored, but it remained insignificant. It is a beautiful volcanic island with hot sulphureous springs and the like, and contains much fertile land. Its modern name is Milo. The ruins of the theatre excite our astonishment, especially considering that it was a Doric place; they are evidence of a numerous and wealthy population. The excellent torso of Aphrodite, which is now in Paris, was found in Melos.

THERA, according to tradition, was colonised in the very earliest times by the guardian of the kings Eurysthenes and Procles, belonging to the family of the Labdacidae. This account, however, is purely mythical; it reads very pleasantly in Herodotus, but has not the least historical foundation. This much only we see from the whole series of Dorian colonies, that they belong to a period, when most of the Dorians, with the exception of Corinth and Aegina, had no maritime power, while Sparta must still have possessed a navy, since without it the colonies could not have subsisted. The most important point in the history of Thera is, that it became the metropolis of Cyrene, which reflected its lustre upon it. Thera had formerly been a Phoenician colony, and the name of Membliaros, whose family resided there, is entirely Phoenician. The island is particularly remarkable in a physical point of view; historically it is of no importance. There is not a spot on the earth that is so much subject to earthquakes as Thera; hence new islands have been formed in its vicinity at different periods. The ancients mention an island of the name of Hiera, which was raised up by volcanic agency, and in this manner three new islands have appeared there, the last of which rose up in the year 1707. This, accordingly, is one of the points where the fire burning in the bowels of the earth shows its direct agency. The name of Anaphe, a small island in the vicinity, also alludes to this.

IOS is known from the very ancient tradition, that Homer was buried there. It was an Ionian colony,like AMORGOS, which was celebrated for its textures, for the _vestes Amorginae_ were prized as highly as the _Coae_; it is very probable that cotton may have been cultivated there, but it is possible also that it was imported from Egypt and Syria.

CRETE.

The antiquities of Crete are as much a mystery to us as those of ancient Boeotia and several other countries. Minos is to us a mere name, but we may believe the statement of Thucydides, that the recollection of Crete having once ruled over the Cyclades was connected with the period represented by Minos. But what connection there existed between Minos and the later Cretans, is a question about which we know nothing at all. He can scarcely have been a Greek, and the subsequent Greek population of Crete has no more to do with him than the Tyrrhenians have with the Etruscans. I am convinced that he was connected only with the Eteocretans, as is clearly stated by Herodotus. These earlier Cretans probably continued to live in the island as subjects of the later inhabitants, and only two of their towns, Praesos and Polichna, maintained their independence. All the other towns of Crete are Dorian, Argive, or in general Peloponnesian colonies. What are called the laws of Minos, unquestionably belong to the Greek immigrants, and if the question be raised, as to whether the Spartans obtained their laws from Crete, I do not hesitate for a moment to assert, that the laws of both nations are originally Doric, and that the Dorian immigrants introduced them among the Cretans; though the later inhabitants boasted of having preserved the ancient laws of the conquered original inhabitants. I believe no more in the historical personality of Minos than I do in that of Lycurgus. We must not, however, imagine, that the subsequent Cretans were an entirely new population, for they were in fact only the ruling party. If we compare the history of different nations we find several instances of conquerors adopting the name of the conquered people: thus the Spanish tyrants of Mexico called themselves children of Montezuma; in Peru this is still more common, though nearly all the Peruvians are hybrids. In like manner the Dorian conquerors did not go to Crete with their wives and children, but the later population was descended on the mother’s side from the ancient Cretans. Those whom we call Ionians, were descended in the same manner from the Carians.

I cannot say much that is satisfactory about Crete; in my opinion, this is another of those points in regard to which a sober inquirer must be content with very few results. I feel it my duty to caution you against all those Ogygian inquiries in ancient Greek history; they are very often no inquiries at all, but mere gossip about notions taken up at random and vaguely conceived—things which rouse the indignation of a genuine philologer. I cannot accordingly, in the case of Crete, go back to the earliest times, simply because we have no information. Cnosos and Cydon, according to some obscure account, were Argive colonies; of Lyctos it is certain that it was a Dorian colony, though neither time nor circumstances are mentioned; respecting most of the towns, no information at all has come down to us. The statement in the Odyssey,[71] where Crete is spoken of accidentally, is very singular; it does not afford us much assistance, but only leads us to the conclusion, that all the statements in the Odyssey are much more recent than those in the Iliad, and that the conclusion of the Odyssey is even of much later origin than the rest: the part I allude to must have been composed at a time which we cannot place farther back than the commencement of the Olympiads. Odysseus there says, that he comes from Crete, which was inhabited by the Dorians, Pelasgians, Cydonians, and Eteocretans. The Eteocretans are here mentioned as the most ancient inhabitants; next come the Cydonians, without any remark being made as to their nationality; the Pelasgians are otherwise not mentioned at all in those parts; and the Dorians, of course, are the later immigrants from Peloponnesus. Another and more probable statement, in Herodotus, is, that the Cretans were either Carians or Lycians, or Carians mixed with Lycians. These nations, whom we regard as barbarous, are said to have emigrated from Crete, which implies nothing beyond the fact that they belonged to the same race. The ancient inhabitants, as I have already said, afterwards appear partly in subject places, and partly as serfs in the larger towns.

At no period of our history did Crete form one connected state; it consisted of a number of independent towns which, tradition says, amounted to one hundred; this is at least a proof of a very dense population.

The Eteocratans, as a nation, disappear in history, without there being any definite mention of the immigration of their later rulers, and stories were invented in ancient times to account for this disappearance. According to one tradition, all the old Cretans, with the exception of two tribes, emigrated, in order to avenge the death of Minos, and all perished; while, according to another, they were all carried off by a plague, which occurred after the Trojan war. But all this is foolish.

Crete is a large island, presenting a grave, and not an Ionian aspect, but in many parts it is rich and fertile. The great woody mountain Ida (Ἴδη is the Ionian name of a woody mountain) extends through the whole length of the island. Mythology describes this mountain as the birth-place of Zeus, and the other statement that he was born on mount Ida near Troy arose only from a confusion. The Cretan Ida is covered with most magnificent forests, and furnishes not only timber for shipbuilding, but is also rich in medicinal herbs. The coast contains a number of the most fertile plains. All the promontories of Crete are branches issuing from mount Ida.

In the historical times, the number of Cretan towns, if we gather the names from the different writers, amounts to thirty. How many of them were sovereign and how many subject, is a question which can be answered only approximately.

The greatest towns were CNOSOS (better than Cnossos) and GORTYN, or in Latin poets Gortyna, like Cortona and Ancona. The Latin language does not recognise the termination _on_, whence in names of male persons the Greek ων is shortened into a single _o_; hence the Romans in the earlier times did not say _Solon_, but _Solo_, and the editors of Cicero should always write the name in this manner. In later times this practice was forgotten; and Pliny has Hieron and Solon; but names of towns are generally lengthened by the addition of _a_. Both Cnosos and Gortyn were very ancient Cretan towns, but were taken possession of by later settlers. The magnitude of the ruins of Gortyn, situated on a beautiful table land, points to a brilliant period, which must have been a very early one. Near them is the labyrinth, the construction of which is ascribed to Minos; it is however not fabulous, but a mighty palace-like building of the heroic age. CYDONIA reminds us of the people of the same name in the Odyssey. LYCTOS is expressly mentioned as a Spartan colony.

I point out these places to you because they are of some historical importance; I might add a great many others, but they are only empty names.

During the Peloponnesian war, when all Greece was divided between Athens and Sparta, the Cretans sided with neither. There are a tolerable number of Cretan monuments with inscriptions, belonging to the period of the power of the Aetolians; they are for the most part treaties by which they were admitted by the Aetolians into the relation of sympolity.

The Cretan towns are spoken of, especially by Aristotle, as if all of them had had one common constitution (πολιτεία Κρητῶν). Every Cretan town, even the subject places, seems according to the constitution to have been equal to the largest; all had a close aristocracy and ruling houses (a patriciate), and this proves that the country had at one time been conquered. Their highest magistrates, eligible only from among the _gentes_, were called κόσμοι; they were five in number, and possessed despotic power; they seem to have been elected annually. Insurrection was lawful in Crete, as in Poland, for when the oppression became too severe, the nobles refused obedience to the magistrates, and elected new ones. The greatest anarchy was thus legalised, and this was the consequence of a constitution, which had in itself no organic protection: a proof of the barbarous character of the people. The Cretans were the worst of all the Greek nations; they were an object of detestation and indignation. You remember the expression of St. Paul, in the Epistle to Titus; their character gave rise to the verb κρητίζειν. Polybius confirms this judgment with an undisguised hatred of the Cretans, a hatred which is even stronger than that of the Aetolians. In his time they were completely devoid of all sense of honour; treason and faithlessness towards their superiors being no disgrace among them. Thus they treacherously delivered up the unfortunate Achaeus who had revolted against Antiochus; they shewed, in fact, all the degeneracy which we now find among the unhappy Greeks in their enslavement. The Cretans, however, had no foreign tyranny as a palliation, for no part of Greece remained so free from foreign oppression, and they never were under the supremacy of Macedonia, except in the reign of the last Philip, who was chosen by them as arbitrator; he had, however, no garrison in the island, but exercised only his personal influence. Crete then remained independent, and the Romans were altogether indifferent about it. But the pirates of the Asiatic coasts established themselves among them, and the Cretans even took part in the trade, whence in A.U.C., 685 they were conquered by the Romans. In the earlier times they sold their services as mercenaries, serving as light-armed troops and forming a peculiar kind of infantry. At their conquest by the Romans, they were chastised, and many of their towns were destroyed. After this they are no longer mentioned in Roman history, so that we cannot even say to what province they belonged. It is only occasionally, when disturbances broke out, that a praetor was sent to them.

CARPATHOS is situated in the north-east of Crete, towards Rhodes; in the same direction we have ASTYPALAEA and NISYROS. All three were Dorian settlements; Carpathos in the end came under the supremacy of Rhodes.

RHODES.

Rhodes was a state of which the Greeks, in the last period of their history had reason to be proud; its peculiarity was its freedom from all that for which otherwise the Greeks are justly censured. Its character is honesty, conscientiousness, and thoughtful prudence, like that of the Dutch republics, the Swiss cantons, and the free cities of the German empire in their best times; nor was literary and intellectual culture foreign to the Rhodians. Their greatest prosperity belongs to the time when the sun of Greek intellect had already set; but they still had, comparatively speaking, a happy period.

Rhodes was an ancient Dorian settlement, but it is foolish to suppose that it existed even before the time of the Trojan war, as is stated in the Homeric Catalogue in the account about Tlepolemus, for at that time the Dorians did not inhabit any country from which they could have sent a colony to Rhodes. The reason of the interpolation is apparent.[72] The true tradition probably is that the Dorians went thither after the conquest of Peloponnesus; but this too is very obscure, for the period subsequent to the Doric migration is not clearer to us than that which preceded it.