GEORGE GROTE GROTE, GEORGE, a distinguished English historian; born at Clay Hill, near Beckenham, Kent, November 17, 1794; died in London, June 18, 1871. He was educated at the Charterhouse School, London, and at the age of fifteen entered the banking house of which his father was the senior partner. He, however, devoted much of his time to literature and politics. In 1832 he was returned to Parliament for the City of London. In 1841 he resigned his seat in Parliament in order to devote himself to his "History of Greece," for which he had begun to gather materials as early as 1823. This history comprises twelve volumes, of which Vols. I. and II. appeared in 1846; III. and IV. in 1847; V. and VI. in 1849; VII. and VIII. in 1850; IX. and X. in 1852; XI. in 1853; XII. in 1855. He proposed to supplement the "History" by an exhaustive work upon "Greek Philosophy," of which "Plato and the other Companions of Socrates" appeared in 1865; this was to be followed by "Aristotle," which, however, was never completed. In 1868 he succeeded Lord Brougham as President of the Council of the University of London. EARLY LEGENDARY HISTORY OF GREECE. (From "History of Greece.") To set forth the history of a people by whom the first spark was set to the dormant intellectual capacities of our natureHellenic phenomena as illustrative of Hellenic mind and character is the task which I propose to myself in the present work, not without a painful consciousness how much the deed falls short of the will, and a yet more painful conviction that full success is rendered impossible by an obstacle which no human ability can now remedy: the insufficiency of original evidence. For in spite of the valuable expositions of so many able commentators, our stock of information respecting the ancient world still remains lamentably inadequate to the demands of an enlightened curiosity. We possess only what has drifted ashore from the wreck of a stranded vessel; and though this includes some of the most precious articles among its once abundant cargo, yet if any man will cast his eyes over the citations in Diogenes, Laertius, Athenæus, or Plutarch, or the list of names. in Vossius's "De Historicis Græcis," he will see with grief and surprise how much larger is the proportion which through the enslavement of the Greeks themselves, the decline of the Roman empire, the change of religion, and the irruption of the barbarian conquerors has been irrecoverably submerged. We are thus reduced to judge of the whole Hellenic world, eminently multiform as it was, from a few compositions; excellent, indeed, in themselves, but bearing too exclusively the stamp of Athens. Of Thucydides and Aristotle, indeed, both as inquirers into matter of fact and as free from local feeling, it is impossible to speak too highly; but unfortunately that work of the latter which would have given us the most copious information regarding Grecian political life his collection and comparison of one hundred and fifty distinct town-constitutions - has not been preserved; while the brevity of Thucydides often gives us but a single word where a sentence would not have been too much, and sentences which we should be glad to see expanded into paragraphs. Such insufficiency of original and trustworthy materials, as compared with those resources which are thought hardly sufficient for the historian of any modern kingdom, is neither to be concealed nor extenuated, however much we may lament it. I advert to the point here on more grounds than one. For it not only limits the amount of information which an historian of Greece can give to his readers - compelling him to leave much of his picture an absolute blank-but it also greatly spoils the execution of the remainder. The question of credibility is perpetually obtruding itself, and requiring a decision, which, whether favorable or unfavorable, always introduces more or less of controversy; and gives to those outlines which the interest of the picture requires to be straight and vigorous a faint and faltering character. Expressions of qualified and hesitating affirmation are repeated until the reader is sickened; while the writer himself, to whom this restraint is more painful still, is frequently tempted to break loose from the unseen spell by which a conscientious criticism binds him down; to screw up the possible and probable into certainty, to suppress counterbalancing considerations, and to substitute a pleasing romance in place of half-known and perplexing realities. Desiring in the present work to set forth all which can be ascertained, together with such conjectures and inferences as can be reasonably deduced from it, but nothing more I notice at the outset that faulty state of the original evidence which renders discussion of credibility, and hesitation in the language of the judge, unavoidable. Such discussions though the reader may be assured that they will become less frequent as we advance into times better known are tiresome enough even with the comparatively late period which I adopt as the historical beginning; much more intolerable would they have proved had I thought it my duty to start from the primitive terminus of Deukalion or Inachus, or from the unburied Pelasgi and Leleges, and to subject the heroic ages to a similar scrutiny. I really know nothing so disheartening or unrequited as the elaborate balancing of what is called evidence the comparison of infinitesimal probabilities and conjectures, all uncertified-in regard to these shadowy times and personages. The law respecting sufficiency of evidence ought to be the same for ancient times as for modern; and the reader will find in this history an application to the former of certain criteria. analogous to those which have long been recognized in the latter. Approaching, though with a certain measure of indulgence, to this standard, I begin the real history of Greece with the first recorded Olympiad, 776 B. C. To such as are accustomed to the habits once universal, and still not uncommon, in investigating the ancient world, I may appear to be striking off one thousand years from the scroll of history; but to those whose canon of evidence is derived from Mr. Hallam, M. Sismondi, or any other eminent historian of modern events, I am well assured that I shall appear lax and credulous rather than exigent or sceptical. For the truth is that historical records, properly so called, do not begin until long after this date; nor will any man, who candidly considers the extreme paucity of attested facts for two centuries after 776 B. C., be astonished to learn that the State of Greece in 900, 1000, 1100, 1200, 1300, 1400 B.C., etc. or any earlier century which it may please chronologists to include in their computed genealogies-cannot be described to him upon anything like decent evidence. I shall hope, when I come to the lives of Socrates, and Plato, to illustrate one of the most valuable of their principles, - that conscious and confessed ignorance is a better state of mind than the fancy, without the reality, of knowledge. Meanwhile I begin by making that confession in reference to the real world of Greece anterior to the Olympiads: meaning the disclaimer to apply to anything like a general history-not to exclude rigorously every individual event. If The times which I thus set apart from the region of history are discernible only through a different atmosphere, that of epic poetry and legend. To confound together these disparate matters is, in my judgment, essentially unphilosophical. I describe the earlier times by themselves, as conceived by the faith and feeling of the first Greeks, and known only through their legends without presuming to measure how much or how little of historical matter these legends may contain. the reader blame me for not assisting him to determine thisif he ask me why I do not undraw the curtain and disclose the picture I reply, in the words of the painter Xeuxis, when the same question was addressed to him on exhibiting his masterpiece of imitative art: "The curtain is the picture." What we now read as poetry and legend was once accredited history, and the only genuine history which the first Greeks could conceive or relish of their past time. The curtain conceals nothing behind, and cannot by any ingenuity be withdrawn. I undertake only to show it as it stands not to efface, still less to repaint it. HOMER AND THE HOMERIC POEMS. (From "History of Greece.") WHO or what was Homer? What date is to be assigned. to him? What were his compositions? A person putting these questions to Greeks of different towns and ages would have obtained answers widely discrepant and contradictory. Since the invaluable labors of Aristarchus and the other Alexandrine critics on the text of the "Iliad' and "Odyssey" it has indeed been customary to regard these two (putting aside the "Hymns" and a few other minor poems) as being the only genuine Homeric compositions; and the literary men called "Chorizontes," or the "Separators," at the head of whom were Xenon and Hellanikos, endeavored still further to reduce the number by disconnecting the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," and pointing out that both could not be the work of the same author. Throughout the whole course of Grecian antiquity the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" and the "Hymns" have been received as Homeric. But if we go back to the time of Herodotus, or still earlier, we find that several other epics also were ascribed to Homer, and there were not wanting critics earlier than the Alexandrine age who regarded the whole epic cycle, together with the satirical poem called "Margites," the "Batrachomyomachia," and other smaller pieces, as Homeric works. The cyclic "Thebais" and the "Epigoni " (whether they be two separate poems or the latter a second part of the former) were in early days currently ascribed to Homer. The same was the case with the "Cyprian Verses." Some even ascribed to him several other poems, the "Capture of Echalia," the "Lesser Iliad," the "Phokais," and the "Amazonia." The title of the poem called "Thebais" to be styled Homeric depends upon evidence more ancient than any which can be produced to authenticate the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," for Kallius, the ancient elegiac poet (B. C. 640) mentioned Homer as the author of it; and his opinion was shared by many competent judges. From the remarkable description given by Herodotus of the expulsion of the Rhapsodes from Sikyon, by the despot Kleisthenes, in the time of Solon (about B. C. 580), we may form a probable judgment that the Thebais" and the "Epigoni" were then rhapsodized at Sikyon as Homeric productions. And it is clear from the language of Herodotus that in his time the general opinion ascribed to Homer both the "Cyprian Verses" and the "Epigoni," though he himself dissents. In spite of such dissent, however, that historian must have conceived the names of Homer and Hesiod to be nearly co-extensive with the whole of the ancient epic, otherwise he would hardly have delivered his memorable judgment that they two were the framers of Grecian theogony. 66 That many different cities laid claim to the birth of Homer (seven is rather below the truth, and Smyrna and Chios are the most prominent among them) is well known; and most of them had legends to tell respecting his romantic parentage, his alleged blindness, and his life of an itinerant bard, acquainted with poverty and sorrow. The discrepancies of statement respecting the date of his reputed existence are no less worthy of remark; for out of the eight different epochs assigned to him, the oldest differs from the most recent by a period of four hundred and sixty years. Thus conflicting would have been the answers returned in different portions of the Grecian world to any questions respect |