Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/64

 4g HISTOR OF GREECE. gists, ought at the same time to have abandoned their problems as insoluble. Genealogies of real persons, such as Herodotus and Eratosthenes believed in, afford a tolerable basis for calcula- tions of time, within certain limits of error: "genealogies contain- ing many real persons, but incorporated with many fictitious names," (to use the language just cited from Mr. Clinton,) are essentially unavailable for such a purpose. It is right here to add, that I agree in Mr. Clinton's view of these eponymous persons : I admit, with him, that " the genea- logical expression may often be false, when the connection which it describes is real." Thus, for example, the adoption of Hyllus by JEgimius, the father of Pamphylus and Dymas, to the privileges of a son and to a third fraction of his territories, may reasonably be construed as a mythical expression of the fraternal union of the three Dorian tribes, Hylleis, Pamphyli, and Dymanes : so about the relationship of Ion and Achseus, of Dorus and -ZEolus. But if we put this construction on the name of Hyllus, or Ion, or Achaeus, we cannot at the same time employ either of these persons as units in chronological reckoning : nor is it consistent to recognize them in the lump as members of a distinct class, and yet to enlist them as real individuals in measuring the dura- tion of past time. 4. Mr. Clinton, while professing a wish to tell the story of the Greeks as they have told it themselves, seems unconscious how capitally his point of view differs from theirs. The distinction which he draws between real and fictitious persons would have appeared unreasonable, not to say offensive, to Herodotus or Eratosthenes. It is undoubtedly right that the early history (if BO it is to be called) of the Greeks should be told as they have told it themselves, and with that view I have endeavored in the previous narrative, as far as I could, to present the primitive legends in their original color and character, pointing out at the same time the manner in which they were transformed and distilled into history by passing through the retort of later an- nalists. It is the legend, as thus transformed, which Mr. Clinton seems to understand as the story told by the Greeks themselves, which cannot be admitted to be true, unless the meaning of the expression be specially explained. In his general distinc- tion, however, between the real and fictitious persons of the