Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/355

 RKVIKVVS OF BOOKS A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great. By J. B. Bury, M.A., Litt.D., LL.D., Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Dublin. (London : Macmillan and Co. 1900. Pp. xxiii, 909.) There are already so many good histories of Greece that the inquisi- tive public asks each newcomer to ex])lain first of all why he was born. Though in his preface Mr. Bury does not offer the much desired apology, a glance at his book shows the main feature to be his novel treatment of prehistoric Greece. Undoubtedly the recent researches of Mr. Evans and other archaeologists have added much to our knowledge of that early age ; the simple question is whether Mr. Iiury has successfully adapted this new information to the already known facts. While as a rule authorities now agree that the Mycenaean civilization flourished as early as 1500 B. C., recent discoveries make it appear prob- able that this culture was preceded by more primitive stages, which reached back perhaps a thousand years further into the past. Mr. Bury, then, is safe in dating the beginnings of the ^Egean civilization from the third millenium B. C. His assertion, however, that this civilization preceded the arrival of the Greeks in their historic home is pure speculation ; for archaeology does not distinguish races ; we should not confound areas of civilization with ethnological groups. But Mr. Bury rests his faith on a few names of places. " Corinth and Tiryns, Parnassus and Olympus, Arne and Larisa, are names which the Greeks received from the peoples whom they dispossessed." While it is possible to make all sorts 01 guesses as to the origin of this or that word, no one can prove that the names in his list are not as thoroughly Greek as any in the language. Indeed it is most improbable that before the arrival of the Greeks, any one language extended over the coasts and islands of the ^-gean Sea. We could more reasonably assume a multitude of dialects with little or no relation to one another. Mr. Bury attempts, further, to trace the migrations, conquests, and .settlements of various races in Greece through the third and second mil- lenia B. C. To those who are acquainted with our lack of knowledge of this subject it is needless to say that his whole treatment is purely con- jectural. Even his positive as.sertions are either extremely doubtful or absolutely wrong. " We know," he says " that there were Pelasgians in Thessaly and in Attica." Rather we are almost certain there were no Pelasgians in Attica. He has also a theory, the product of his imagina- tion, that most of the historic Atticans were non-Hellenic, that the Ionian (345)