Volume I Part 7 (1/2)

DISSERTATION

UPON THE

h.e.l.lADIAN

AND OTHER

GRECIAN WRITERS.

???a p??a? ???t?? te, ?a? ?at??, e?s? ?e?e????.----PARMENIDES.

It may be proper to take some previous notice of those writers, to whose a.s.sistance we must particularly have recourse; and whose evidence may be most depended upon, in disquisitions of this nature. All knowledge of Gentile antiquity must be derived to us through the hands of the Grecians: and there is not of them a single writer, to whom we may not be indebted for some advantage. The h.e.l.ladians, however, from whom we might expect most light, are to be admitted with the greatest caution. They were a bigotted people, highly prejudiced in their own favour; and so devoted to idle tradition, that no arguments could wean them from their folly. Hence the surest resources are from Greeks of other countries. Among the Poets, Lycophron, Callimachus, and Apollonius Rhodius are princ.i.p.ally to be esteemed. The last of these was a native of Egypt; and the other two lived there, and have continual allusions to the antiquities of that country.

Homer likewise abounds with a deal of mysterious lore, borrowed from the antient Amonian theology; with which his commentators have been often embarra.s.sed. To these may be added such Greek writers of later date, who were either not born in h.e.l.las, or were not so deeply tinctured with the vanity of that country. Much light may be also obtained from those learned men, by whom the Scholia were written, which are annexed to the works of the Poets above-mentioned. Nonnus too, who wrote the Dionysiaca, is not to be neglected. He was a native of Panopolis in Egypt, [509]?? t?? ?a??? t??

????pt?? ?e?e??e???; and had opportunity of collecting many antient traditions, and fragments of mysterious history, which never were known in Greece. To these may be added Porphyry, Proclus, and Jamblichus, who professedly treat of Egyptian learning. The Isis and Osiris of Plutarch may be admitted with proper circ.u.mspection. It may be said, that the whole is still an enigma: and I must confess that it is: but we receive it more copiously exemplified; and more clearly defined; and it must necessarily be more genuine, by being nearer the fountain head: so that by comparing, and adjusting the various parts, we are more likely to arrive at a solution of the hidden purport. But the great resource of all is to be found among the later antiquaries and historians. Many of these are writers of high rank; particularly Diodorus, Strabo, and Pausanias, on the Gentile part: and of the fathers, Theophilus, Tatia.n.u.s Athenagoras, Clemens, Origenes, Eusebius, Theodoretus, Syncellus; and the compiler of the Fasti Siculi, otherwise called Chronicon Paschale. Most of these were either of Egypt or Asia. They had a real taste for antiquity; and lived at a time when some insight could be obtained: for till the Roman Empire was fully established, and every province in a state of tranquillity, little light could be procured from those countries, whence the mythology of Greece was derived. The native h.e.l.ladians were very limited in their knowledge. They had taken in the gross whatever was handed down by tradition; and a.s.sumed to themselves every history, which was imported. They moreover held every nation but their own as barbarous; so that their insuperable vanity rendered it impossible for them to make any great advances in historical knowledge. But the writers whom I just now mentioned, either had not these prejudices; or lived at a time when they were greatly subsided. They condescended to quote innumerable authors, and some of great antiquity; to whom the pride of Greece would never have appealed. I had once much talk upon this subject with a learned friend, since lost to the world, who could ill brook that Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, should be discarded for Clemens, Origen, or Eusebius; and that Lysias and Demosthenes should give way to Libanius and Aristides. The name of Tzetzes, or Eustathius, he could not bear. To all which I repeatedly made answer; that it was by no means my intention to set aside any of the writers, he mentioned: whose merits, as far as they extended, I held in great veneration. On the contrary, I should have recourse to their a.s.sistance, as far as it would carry me: But I must at the same time take upon me to weigh those merits; and see wherein they consisted; and to what degree they were to be trusted. The h.e.l.ladians were much to be admired for the smoothness of their periods, and a happy collocation of their terms. They shewed a great propriety of diction; and a beautiful arrangement of their ideas: and the whole was attended with a rhythm, and harmony, no where else to be found. But they were at the same time under violent prejudices: and the subject matter of which they treated, was in general so brief, and limited, that very little could be obtained from it towards the history of other countries, or a knowledge of antient times. Even in respect to their own affairs, whatever light had been derived to them, was so perverted, and came through so dim a medium, that it is difficult to make use of it to any determinate and salutary purpose. Yet the beauty of their composition has been attended with wonderful [510]influence. Many have been so far captivated by this magic, as to give an implicit credence to all that has been transmitted; and to sacrifice their judgment to the pleasures of the fancy.

It may be said, that the writers, to whom I chiefly appeal, are, in great measure, dry and artless, without any grace and ornament to recommend them.

They were likewise posterior to the h.e.l.ladians; consequently farther removed from the times of which they treat. To the first objection I answer, that the most dry and artless historians are, in general, the most authentic. They who colour and embellish, have the least regard for the truth. In respect to priority, it is a specious claim; but attended with no validity. When a gradual darkness has been overspreading the world, it requires as much time to emerge from the cloud, as there pa.s.sed when we were sinking into it: so that they who come later may enjoy a greater portion of light, than those who preceded them by ages. Besides, it is to be considered, that the writers, to whom I chiefly appeal, lived in parts of the world which gave them great advantages. The whole theology of Greece was derived from the east. We cannot therefore but in reason suppose, that Clemens of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, Tatia.n.u.s of a.s.syria, Lucia.n.u.s of Samosata, Cyril of Jerusalem, Porphyry of Syria, Proclus of Lycia, Philo of Biblus, Strabo of Amasa, Pausanias of Cappadocia, Eratosthenes of Cyrene, must know more upon this subject than any native h.e.l.ladian. The like may be said of Diodorus, Josephus, Cedrenus, Syncellus, Zonaras, Eustathius: and numberless more. These had the archives of antient [511]temples, to which they could apply: and had traditions more genuine than ever reached Greece. And though they were posterior themselves, they appeal to authors far prior to any h.e.l.ladians: and their works are crowded with extracts from the most curious and the most antient [512]histories.

Such were the writings of Sanchoniathon, Berosus, Nicholaus Damascenus, Mocus, Mnaseas, Hieronymus aegyptius, Apion, Manethon: from whom Abydenus, Apollodorus, Asclepiades, Artapa.n.u.s, Philastrius, borrowed largely. We are beholden to Clemens[513], and Eusebius, for many evidences from writers, long since lost; even Eustathius and Tzetzes have resources, which are now no more.

It must be after all confessed, that those, who preceded, had many opportunities of information, had they been willing to have been informed.

It is said, both of Pythagoras and Solon, that they resided for some time in Egypt: where the former was instructed by a Son-chen, or priest of the Sun. But I could never hear of any great good that was the consequence of his travels. Thus much is certain; that whatever knowledge he may have picked up in other parts, he got nothing from the Grecians. They, who pretended most to wisdom, were the most dest.i.tute of the blessing.

[514]???a pa? a????? s???e?ae???, ???? pa?a t?? s?f?? ??????? e?e??

??de?, pe??? s?f?a? ?a? ap???? s????????t??. And as their theology was before very obscure, he drew over it a mysterious veil to make it tenfold darker. The chief of the intelligence transmitted by Solon from Egypt contained a satire upon his own country. He was told by an antient [515]priest, that the Grecians were children in science: that they were utterly ignorant of the mythology of other nations; and did not understand their own. Eudoxus likewise and Plato were in Egypt; and are said to have resided there some time: yet very few things of moment have been transmitted by them. Plato had great opportunities of rectifying the history and mythology of Greece: but after all his advantages he is accused of trifling shamefully, and addicting himself to fable. [516]??at?? de, ?

d???? t?? ??????? s?f?tat?? ?e?e??s?a?, e?? p?s?? f??a??a? e????se?. Yet all the rites of the h.e.l.ladians, as well as their G.o.ds and Heroes, were imported from the [517]east: and chiefly from [518]Egypt, though they were unwilling to allow it. Length of time had greatly impaired their true history; and their prejudices would not suffer them to retrieve it. I should therefore think it by no means improper to premise a short account of this wonderful people, in order to shew whence this obscurity arose; which at last prevailed so far, that they, in great measure, lost sight of their origin, and were involved in mystery and fable.

The first inhabitants of the country, called afterwards h.e.l.las, were the sons of Javan; who seem to have degenerated very early, and to have become truly barbarous. Hence the best historians of Greece confess, that their ancestors were not the first inhabitants; but that it was before their arrival in the possession of a people, whom they style [519]?a?a???, or Barbarians. The h.e.l.ladians were colonies of another family: and introduced themselves somewhat later. They were of the race which I term Amonian; and came from Egypt and Syria: but originally from Babylonia. They came under various t.i.tles, all taken from the religion, which they professed. Of these t.i.tles I shall have occasion to treat at large; and of the imaginary leaders, by whom they were supposed to have been conducted.

As soon as the Amonians were settled, and incorporated with the natives, a long interval of darkness ensued. The very union produced a new language: at least the antient Amonian became by degrees so modified, and changed, that the terms of science, and wors.h.i.+p, were no longer understood. Hence the t.i.tles of their G.o.ds were misapplied: and the whole of their theology grew more and more corrupted; so that very few traces of the original were to be discovered. In short, almost every term was misconstrued, and abused.

This[520] aera of darkness was of long duration: at last the Asiatic Greeks began to bestir themselves. They had a greater correspondence than the h.e.l.ladians: and they were led to exert their talents from examples in Syria, Egypt, and other countries. The specimens, which they exhibited of their genius were amazing: and have been justly esteemed a standard for elegance and nature. The Athenians were greatly affected with these examples. They awoke, as it were, out of a long and deep sleep; and, as if they had been in the training of science for ages, their first efforts bordered upon perfection. In the s.p.a.ce of a century, out of one little confined district, were produced a group of worthies, who at all times have been the wonder of the world: so that we may apply to the nation in general what was spoken of the school of a philosopher: cujus ex ludo, tanquam ex Equo Trojano, meri Principes exierunt. But this happy display of parts did not remedy the evil of which I have complained. They did not retrieve any lost annals, nor were any efforts made to dispel the cloud in which they were involved. There had been, as I have represented, a long interval; during which there must have happened great occurrences: but few of them had been transmitted to posterity; and those handed down by tradition, and mixed with inconsistency and fable. It is said that letters were brought into Greece very early, by [521]Cadmus. Let us for a while grant it; and inquire what was the progress. They had the use of them so far as to put an inscription on the pediment of a temple, or upon a pillar; or to scrawl a man's name upon a tile or an oyster-sh.e.l.l, when they wanted to banish or poison him. Such scanty knowledge, and so base materials, go but a little way towards science. What history was there of Corinth, or of Sparta? What annals were there of Argos, or Messena; of Elis, or the cities of Achaia?

None: not even of [522]Athens. There are not the least grounds to surmise that any single record existed. The names of the Olympic victors from Corbus, and of the priestesses of Argos, were the princ.i.p.al memorials to which they pretended: but how little knowledge could be obtained from hence! The laws of Draco, in the thirty-ninth Olympiad, were certainly the most antient writing to which we can securely appeal. When the Grecians began afterwards to bestir themselves, and to look back upon what had pa.s.sed, they collected whatever accounts could be [523]obtained. They tried also to separate and arrange them, to the best of their abilities, and to make the various parts of their history correspond. They had still some good materials to proceed upon, had they thoroughly understood them; but herein was a great failure. Among the various traditions handed down, they did not consider which really related to their country, and which had been introduced from other[524] parts. Indeed they did not chuse to distinguish, but adopted all for their own; taking the merit of every antient transaction to themselves. No people had a greater love for science, nor displayed a more refined taste in composition. Their study was ever to please, and to raise admiration. Hence they always aimed at the marvellous, which they dressed up in a most winning manner: at the same time they betrayed a seeming veneration for antiquity. But their judgment was perverted, and this veneration attended with little regard for the truth.

[525]They had a high opinion of themselves, and of their country in general: and, being persuaded that they sprang from the ground on which they stood, and that the Arcadians were older than the moon, they rested satisfied with this, and looked no farther. In short, they had no love for any thing genuine, no desire to be instructed. Their history could not be reformed but by an acknowledgment which their pride would not suffer them to make. They therefore devoted themselves to an idle mythology: and there was nothing so contradictory and absurd but was greedily admitted, if sanctified by tradition. Even when the truth glared in their very faces, they turned from the light, and would not be undeceived. Those who, like Euemerus and Ephorus, had the courage to dissent from their legends, were deemed atheists and apostates, and treated accordingly. Plutarch more than once insists that it is expedient to veil the truth, and to dress it up in [526]allegory. They went so far as to deem inquiry a [527]crime, and thus precluded the only means by which the truth could be obtained.

Nor did these prejudices appear only in respect to their own rites and theology, and the history of their own nation: the accounts which they gave of other countries were always tinctured with this predominant vanity. An idle zeal made them attribute to their forefathers the merit of many great performances to which they were utterly strangers: and supposed them to have founded cities in various parts of the world where the name of Greece could not have been known; cities which were in being before Greece was a state. Wherever they got footing, or even a transient acquaintance, they in their descriptions accommodated every thing to their own preconceptions; and expressed all terms according to their own mode of writing and p.r.o.nunciation, that appearances might be in their favour. To this were added a thousand silly stories to support their pretended claim. They would persuade us that Jason of Greece founded the empire of the Medes; as Perseus, of the same country, did that of the Persians. Armenus, a companion of Jason, was the reputed father of the Armenians. They gave out that Tarsus, one of the most antient cities in the world, was built by people from [528]Argos; and that Pelusium of Egypt had a name of Grecian [529]original. They, too, built Sais, in the same [530]country: and the city of the Sun, styled Heliopolis, owed its origin to an [531]Athenian.

They were so weak as to think that the city Can.o.bus had its name from a pilot of Menelaus, and that even Memphis was built by Epaphos of [532]Argos. There surely was never any nation so incurious and indifferent about truth. Hence have arisen those contradictions and inconsistences with which their history is [533]embarra.s.sed.

It may appear ungracious, and I am sure it is far from a pleasing task to point out blemishes in a people of so refined a turn as the Grecians, whose ingenuity and elegance have been admired for ages. Nor would I engage in a display of this kind, were it not necessary to shew their prejudices and mistakes, in order to remedy their failures. On our part we have been too much accustomed to take in the gross with little or no examination, whatever they have been pleased to transmit: and there is no method of discovering the truth but by shewing wherein they failed, and pointing out the mode of error, the line of deviation. By unravelling the clue, we may be at last led to see things in their original state, and to reduce their mythology to order. That my censures are not groundless, nor carried to an undue degree of severity, may be proved from the like accusations from some of their best writers; who accuse them both of ignorance and forgery.

[534]Hecataeus, of Miletus, acknowledges, _that the traditions of the Greeks were as ridiculous as they were numerous_: [535]and Philo confesses _that he could obtain little intelligence from that quarter: that the Grecians had brought a mist upon learning, so that it was impossible to discover the truth: he therefore applied to people of other countries for information, from whom only it could be obtained_. Plato[536] owned _that the most genuine helps to philosophy were borrowed from those who by the Greeks were styled barbarous_: and [537]Jamblichus gives the true reason for the preference. _The h.e.l.ladians_, says this writer, _are ever wavering and unsettled in their principles, and are carried about by the least impulse.

They want steadiness; and if they obtain any salutary knowledge, they cannot retain it; nay, they quit it with a kind of eagerness; and, whatever they do admit, they new mould and fas.h.i.+on, according to some novel and uncertain mode of reasoning. But people of other countries are more determinate in their principles, and abide more uniformly by the very terms which they have traditionally received._ They are represented in the same light by Theophilus: [538]he says, _that they wrote merely for empty praise, and were so blinded with vanity, that they neither discovered the truth theirselves, nor encouraged others to pursue it_. Hence Tatia.n.u.s says, with great truth, [539]_that the writers of other countries were strangers to that vanity with which the Grecians were infected: that they were more simple and uniform, and did not encourage themselves in an affected variety of notions_.

In respect to foreign history, and geographical knowledge, the Greeks, in general, were very ignorant: and the writers, who, in the time of the Roman Empire, began to make more accurate inquiries, met with insuperable difficulties from the mistakes of those who had preceded. I know no censure more severe and just than that which Strabo has pa.s.sed upon the historians and geographers of Greece, and of its writers in general. In speaking of the Asiatic nations, he a.s.sures us, that there never had been any account transmitted of them upon which we can depend. [540]_Some of these nations_, says this judicious writer, _the Grecians have called Sacae, and others Ma.s.sagetae, without having the least light to determine them. And though they have pretended to give a history of Cyrus, and his particular wars with those who were called Ma.s.sagetae, yet nothing precise and satisfactory could ever be obtained; not even in respect to the war. There is the same uncertainty in respect to the antient history of the Persians, as well as to that of the Medes and Syrians. We can meet with little that can be deemed authentic, on account of the weakness of those who wrote, and their uniform love of fable. For, finding that writers, who professedly dealt in fiction without any pretensions to the truth, were regarded, they thought that they should make their writings equally acceptable, if in the system of their history they were to introduce circ.u.mstances, which they had neither seen nor heard, nor received upon the authority of another person; proceeding merely upon this principle, that they should be most likely to please people's fancy by having recourse to what was marvellous and new. On this account we may more safely trust to Hesiod and Homer, when they present us with a list of DemiG.o.ds and Heroes, and even to the tragic poets, than to Ctesias, Herodotus, and h.e.l.lanicus, and writers of that cla.s.s. Even the generality of historians, who wrote about Alexander, are not safely to be trusted: for they speak with great confidence, relying upon the glory of the monarch, whom they celebrate; and to the remoteness of the countries, in which he was engaged; even at the extremities of Asia; at a great distance from us and our concerns. This renders them very secure. For what is referred to a distance is difficult to be confuted_. In another place, speaking of India, he says, that it was very difficult to arrive at the truth: _for the [541]writers, who must necessarily be appealed to, were in continual opposition, and contradicted one another.

And how_, says Strabo, _could it be otherwise? for if they erred so shamefully when they had ocular proof, how could they speak with certainty, where they were led by hearsay?_ In another place[542] he excuses the mistakes of the antient poets, saying, that we must not wonder if they sometimes deviated from the truth, when people in ages more enlightened were so ignorant, and so devoted to every thing marvellous and incredible.

He had above given the poets even the preference to other writers: but herein his zeal transported him too far. The first writers were the poets; and the mischief began from them. They first infected tradition; and mixed it with allegory and fable. Of this Athenagoras accuses them very justly; and says, [543]_that the greatest abuses of true knowledge came from them.

I insist_, says this learned father, _that we owe to Orpheus, Homer, and Hesiod, the fict.i.tious names and genealogies of the Pagan Daemons, whom they are pleased to style G.o.ds: and I can produce Herodotus for a witness to what I a.s.sert. He informs us, that Homer and Hesiod were about four hundred years prior to himself; and not more. These, says he, were the persons who first framed the theogony of the Greeks; and gave appellations to their Deities; and distinguished them according to their several ranks and departments. They at the same time described them under different appearances: for till their time there was not in Greece any representation of the G.o.ds, either in sculpture or painting; not any specimen of the statuary's art exhibited: no such subst.i.tutes were in those times thought of._