Human history / by G. Elliot Smith.

  • Grafton Elliot Smith
Date:
1934
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Human history / by G. Elliot Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    generally agreed that the poems represent mainly the conditions of a generation or generations falling somewhere at the end of the Mycenaean or beginning of the Geometric Age of the archaeolo¬ gists. The important point for our purpose is that this ‘Heroic Age* is manifestly dependent culturally on the great age of Mycenae, and is equally clearly the beginning of Greek civilization. The Epic itself is proof that the cultural tradition between the Heroic Age and Classical Greece was unbroken. We need not here go into the questions of the origin of the Achaeans, and the introduction of the Greek language into the iEgean. The most diverse opinions have been expressed by scholars on the subject. It has been held that the Achaeans were Celts from Central Europe, who only learnt Greek from the inhabitants of the .Egean; that they were the invaders from the North who first introduced the Greek language; or that they were indigenous in Greece, or on the coast of Asia. Egyptian and Hittite inscriptions suggest the possibility that both the Greek language and the Achaean name were in the iEgean in the twelfth or even the fourteenth century B.c. -that is, in the Mycenaean Age, before the time with which we are concerned here. The disappearance of the name from the greater part of Greece suggests that it belonged properly only to a ruling group. The poems of Homer show us a state of society in which local, tribal, and racial ties seem to have been completely broken down. Even family ties seem loosened; and Homer mentions the tale of Orestes without any indication of the horror which it rouses in the mind of iEschylus. The only important social bond was allegiance to a prince, who was often of different tribe and race from his subjects. Little consciousness of racial differences is shown; and, combined with this internationalism, is extreme individualism. The Achaeans have been aptly compared to the Goths of the fifth and sixth centuries a.d., and to the Vikings and Normans of a later date. They seem also to have been peculiarly free from the domination of a priesthood; they had few hampering superstitions, and no mysticism in their religion. Though custom is held in great honour, it is a simple custom; there are no complicated taboos, no elaborate social organization,