Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/138

Rh who were not troubled by many scruples. It could not be expected that such men would act with great mercy or prudence in dealing with Turks who had butchered or en slaved their kinsmen and kinswomen for generations. Even amongst the foreigners who volunteered to aid the Greeks, few if any were found of supreme ability, and after the kingdom was established the Greeks were unfortunate in the strangers who came to direct them. Otho had been brought up in a despotic court, and knew no other method of ruling. He brought along with him Bavarians, to whom he entrusted the entire power, and the Greeks had the mortification of knowing that, though their kingdom was independent, no Greek had a chance of being elevated to any ministerial office of importance. Accordingly a revolu tion broke out in 1843 ; the Bavarians were dismissed, and Otho agreed to rule through responsible ministers and a representative assembly. But he failed to fulfil his promise. Discontent reached its height in 1862, when another revolu tion broke out and Otho had to leave Greece. The great mass of the people longed for a constitutional monarchy, and gave a striking proof of this by electing Prince Alfred king of Greece. This choice was determined by universal suffrage, and out of 241,202 Greek citizens who voted 230,016 recorded their votes in favour of the English prince. The vote meant simply that the Greek people were tired of unconstitutional princes, and hoped that they would end their troubles if they had a prince accustomed to see parliamentary government respected and enforced. The three protecting powers, England, France, and Russia, had however bound themselves to allow no one related to their own ruling families to become king of Greece. When the Greek people received this news, they begged England to name a king, and after several refusals England found one in Prince William of Schleswig-Holstein, son of the king of Denmark. The Greek people accepted him, and in 1863 he became king with the name of George I. Britain added the Ionian islands to his kingdom. In 1875 the ministry gave great offence to the Greek people by its unconstitutional procedure, but the king persisted in stand ing by it. The people, however, persevered in the use of legitimate means to oust the ministry ; the king at last prudently yielded ; and thus a revolution was prevented. The effort of the Greeks to extend their boundaries is the last phase of their history, and is still in progress. In 1853 when the Crimean war broke out, the Greeks sided with the Russians, and in 1854 they made inroads into Thessaly and Epirus, but English and French troops landed at the Piraeus, and forcibly put an end to the Russian alliance and to Greek ileas of acquiring additional territory. In 1866 to 1869 the Cretans struggled bravely but unsuccess fully to throw off the Turkish yoke and become a part of the Greek kingdom. And recently when the Russians made war on the Turks the Greeks were eager to enter Thessaly and Epirus to aid their fellow-countrymen in asserting their freedom. But England interfered with the promise that Greece would gain more by maintaining a peaceful attitude. A clause in the Berlin Treaty affords a basis for the fulfilment of this promise ; but the promise has still to be fulfilled. The Greeks themselves believe that with the extension of their boundaries there will be less occasion for intrigue, ministries will be more permanent, and the Greeks who now flock from all parts to the little kingdom of Greece for official employment will have a wider sphere and will be more contented.

1em (J. D.)

  The possession of a common language was always re garded by the Greeks themselves as the most significant and important of the bonds which united the scattered mem bers of the Hellenic nationality. Wherever there was a community speaking the Greek tongue, whether in Europe, Asia, or Africa, from Olbia on the Hypanis to Gyrene in Libya, from Salatnis in Cyprus to Alaelaca near the Pillars of Hercules, there was a portion of the Hellenic people linked to the rest by mutual intelligibility, and sharply marked off from the jabbering and inarticulate fidpfiapoL who surrounded them. The earliest written records of this speech are probably to be found in what was at the same time the most precious common possession of this great nationality, the poems that bear the name of Homer. It is possible indeed that, in the form in which they have come down to us, they are later than the fragments of the earliest elegiac and iambic poets, such as Callinus, Mimnermus, Archilochus, and Simonides of Amorgus ; but it cannot be doubted that in substance they go back to an earlier date. These, however, are in a literary language, a language which bears the most evident marks of a free combination for artistic purposes of various popular dialects, along with many reminiscences of archaic forms and usages, and not a few formations due only to false analogy. For the early history of the Greek language we are obliged to have recourse to the reconstructions of linguistic science.

Origin of the Greek Language. Comparative philology shows us that there was a time when the ancestors of the various nations which speak what are generally known as Indo-Germanic 1 languages lived together and had a common speech. From the extent and character of the agreement between these various languages at the time when they first become known to us from written records, it is possible to a certain extent to determine which groups remained the longest in con nexion with each other, and which parted off the soonest from the common stock. Unfortunately scholars are as yet by no means at one as to the results to which this method of inquiry leads us. Schleicher, e.g., held that the agreement between the Aryan or Asiatic group of languages and the South-European (in which he includes not only Greek and Italian, but also Celtic) is closer and more significant than that between the latter and the North-European, i.e., the Teutonic and the Letto- Slavonic group. Max Miiller and Joh. Schmidt maintain that the relations of the various languages are so compli cated that it is impossible to establish any &quot; genealogical

1 The numerous and forcible objections to the term &quot; Aryan&quot; have been often pointed out, and the word finds little favour with most philologists. For the most recent defence of it see Zimmer in Bezzenberger s Beitrdge, vol. iii. pp. 137-158. The name &quot;Indo-European&quot; is apparently, but not really, more exact.