Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/99

 78 Primitive Greece : Mycenian Art. virgin soil, and the facilities of communication it offered towards the sea, departed from their habitual course and ventured upon a settlement some distance inland, of which Thebes was ever the head-centre. The consensus of antiquity was at one in attributing the foundation of Thebes and her first royal dynasty to Cadmus. His name helps us to discover his real origin : it contains the Semitic word kedem, "the one in front," e.g. the '* East," that which is ** passed," left behind, Cadmus, is the Central Greece, by one of those audacious syntheses with which it is familiar, ascribed to this hero the sum of the inventions which it was aware were due to Phoenician influence. He starts from the Asiatic side, where dwell his brothers Phoenix and Cilix, in search of Europa, the moon-goddess, and he finds her in the West ; he plants cities wherever he lands during his voyage, such as Rhodes, Thera, Thasos, and Samothrace. He becomes the head of royal and priestly families. But nowhere is the part he plays so important as in Boeotia, where he gets domiciled. The art of mining, of manipulating ore, and the employment of metal thus obtained for military armour, were inventions of Cadmus. He is the founder of artificial irrigation, a civil engineer and architect, and builder of citadels and walls ; he cuts roads across morasses which he drains, and tracts parted by streams he connects by means of bridges. Last but not least, Cadmus' name stood immeasurably high as the introducer of Phoenician letters into Hellas. The characters of the oldest Greek alphabet were ever called Cadmic Letters ; they stood in the same order and bore the same names which they had in Phoenicia ; and many of their forms kept very close to the Semitic prototype. By themselves, they testify to a borrowing which even Greek pride never dreamt of disputing. But letters, names, shapes, and the situation they occupy in the alphabetical order, are by no means the only data by which may be tested the advantages which the ancestors of the Hellenes derived from their intercourse with the Semites. The story lan- guage has to tell in regard to the relations of the two races is no less plain. A curious and instructive list might be made of Greek words, which whilst they cannot be separated from the oldest body of the language, such as it appears in Homer and the Lyric poets, are not explainable by Aryan roots, inasmuch
 * ancient," or the ''Oriental one." Be that as it may, myth in