Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/447

 9*s. vii. JUNE i,i9oi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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1655 he was on military service in Scotland, bein^ in July of that year appointed one of the eight Council in Edinburgh to administer affairs. W. D. PINK.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The Early Age of Greece. By William Ridgeway,

M.A. Vol. I. (Cambridge, University Press.) THE views of Prof. Ridgeway concerning the Pelas- gian origin of the Mycenean civilization are well known to scholars. In putting them forth in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, and elsewhere, he has encountered much opposition, and also received much important support. The questions he dis- cusses and the points he raises are of the highest ethnological ana archaeological interest, and it is a distinct gain to scholarship to have a formal expo- sition of his views and the observations on which they are founded in a work one volume of which, dealing with the monumental, traditional, and linguistic aspects of the subject, is now before us, while the second, treating of institutions and reli- gion, is in the press and is promised for an early date. It is only within the last quarter of a cen- tury that an investigation such as is now being carried out became possible. Earlier scholars had, of course, an all but inexhaustible treasure- house in the Itinerary of Pausanias and in the writings of Hesiod, Homer, Thucydides, Herodotus, and the four great dramatists. The famous re- searches of Schliemann lifted, as Prof. Ridgeway says in his opening sentence, a " corner of the veil which had so long enshrouded the older age of Hellas." Since that time discovery has followed discovery, and a partial reconstruction of the world to which are owing the so-called Mycenean monu- ments becomes possible. A main purpose of the volume is to explain to what civilization are attri- butable the remains (for convenience collectively known as Mycenean) which have been found in abundance on the mainland of Greece, in the JEgean islands, and also in Egypt, Etruria, Sicily, and elsewhere. The opening chapter is devoted to these prehistoric relics and their distribution. They consist mainly apart from the architectural remains, in themselves of high value and interest of gold ornaments^ of bronze weapons, and of pottery. Archaeologists have long been familiar with the rich stores of ornament and the like dis- covered in the graves at Mycenae and elsewhere stores so rich, indeed, that the majority of scholars accepted the conclusions of Schliemann that in the graves on the Acropolis of Mycenae had been dis- covered the remains of Agamemnon, Cassandra, and other victims of Clytemnestra and ^Egisthus. Some scholars have naturally doubted such " facile ascription," and Prof. Ridgeway now constitutes himself the mouthpiece of those who find discre- pancies between the culture of the Mycenean age and that depicted in the ' Iliad ' and the ' Odyssey.' The question as to what people are responsible for the Mycenean civilization is one of the most interest- ing and important in early Greek history. That these were the Acheans has long been the notion gener- ally accepted. This idea Prof. Ridgeway disputes, showing that the civilization had reached its height before the introduction of iron, and maintaining

that the strongest claim to the authorship is pos- sessed by the Pelasgians. While Homeric culture belongs to the Iron Age, that of the Mycenean age, as found in Argolis, Attica, Thessaly, and else- where, belongs to the Age of Bronze. Except in the shape of finger - rings, one or two of which appear in tombs in the Lower Town at Mycenae and at Vaphio, assigned to the close of the Myce- nean age, iron is absent from the graves generally at Mycenae. Those who, because bronze (xaXicoc) appears more frequently than iron (oiSripoc), hold the Homeric poems to deal with the Bronze Age, are misled, the terms chalkem and chalkeion for blacksmith and forge having survived from the time when the labour subsequently bestowed upon iron had been employed upon bronze and copper. For defensive armour bronze retained its use up to and through the Middle Ages, just as, with regard to such purposes as grinding corn, the Stone Age may still be said to exist. The dress of the Greeks of the Bronze Age was more primitive than that of the Homeric, men in Mycenean remains (and women also) being represented either as naked or clad only in a loin-cloth or a chiton, which seems to have started at the waist. It is difficult, however, to build trustworthy conclusions upon the rude designs extant. This portion of Prof. Ridge way's book is forcibly argued, and his conclusions, though much is necessarily conjecture, carry great weight. Quite impossible is it to follow the long argument by which Prof. Ridgeway shows that the home (or, as he calls it, the "focus") of the Mycenean grand style is on the mainland of Greece. Attica had in early days neither great wealth nor political im- portance. All that could bring wealth, if not security, existed " in the rich plain of Argos, in the fertile alluvium of Copais in Boeotia, and in the rich grass-lands of Thessaly, and in the Troad," and it is assumed that it was probably " under the shelter of the great walls of Tiryns, Mycenae, and Goulas that the Pelasgian art took its highest form." Whatever may be held concerning Prof. Ridgeway's conclusions, it will be generally con- ceded that in his efforts to establish them he opens out fields offering high rewards to the students of folk-lore, ethnology, archaeology, anthropology, and kindred subjects, and he has produced a work of thorough and far-seeing erudition. A worker of the same character as Dr. J. G. Frazer, to whom his book is dedicated, he claims the serious con- sideration of all scholars, and is likely to revo- lutionize opinion in many respects. We have marked scores of passages for comment. Chapters to be warmly commended to the reader are those on ' Whence came the Acheans ? ' and 'Inhumation, Cremation, and the Soul.' In the former Prof. Ridgeway shows himself dis- posed to believe that the Homeric Acheans came from the head of the Adriatic and from the great fair-haired communities of Central Europe. Their supposed migrations are traced, and the comparison is made that "the Paniabis may be regarded as occupying much the same kind of position in India as the Macedonians and JEto- lians did in the Balkan peninsula." In the chapter on * Inhumation, Cremation, and the Soul ' the fact is shown that, as the dead needed both food and clothing, which militates against the notion that the Pelasgians went about naked, so it was natural that their last home should resemble their earthly habitation. Hence the terra-cotta coffins in which