Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/493

 A Note on Greek Anthropology. 429

and carriage are tacitly assumed to be as at the present day. On the question of his size, there is less agreement. There was a widespread belief, found as early as Homer, that, (apart from a special race of giants), men had grown smaller. Empedocles thought that the men of his own day were as children compared to their first ancestors, (Plut. Ep. V. 27 = Diels, p. 440). The belief was no doubt supported by the discovery of mammoth bones etc., (see Frazer on Pans., viii., 29. i, and Adonis, p. 74). The Epi- cureans, as represented by Lucretius (v. 913 et seq.), denied the possibility of such giants, but allowed that the first men were hardier and bigger than their descendants, as being born direct from the hard earth. Clearly the Epicureans, the great champions of natural development, would have rejected any suggestion which would have made man weaker instead of stronger than at the present day. In fact, Lucretius definitely attributes the superiority of man over most of the wild beasts to " the wondrous strength of his hands and feet " (v. 966), whereby he was able to fight with stones and clubs. Before the Epicureans, Anaxagoras had noted that man is the most intelligent of animals because he has hands, thus showing his appreciation of man ' the tool-bearer,' whereas Aristotle, less fortunately, reversed the application, arguing that man possessed hands because he is the wisest, {Part. Anim., iv., p. 10). Later Epicurean accounts of early man agree with Lucretius in starting from the savage, e.g. Horace, Sat., i. 3. 99 et seq., (where prorepserimt only refers to the actual birth of man, as is shown by ungidbus et pugnis immediately following). Vitruvius (ii. i, a thoroughly Epicurean chapter) dis- tinguishes primitive man from the other animals by his erect posture and his hands. Diodorus (i. 8), who gives the official Epicurean view, also emphasises the value of the hand. Pliny {N.H., vii., i) speaks of a baby as qiiad- rupedi similem, without drawing any inference therefrom. His 'Indian Satyrs' (vii., 2), who are bipeds or quadrupeds