Dorians

“ Who were the Dorian invaders, and in what relation did they stand to the rest of the population of Greece? (3) How far do the Dorian states, or their characteristics, represent the descendants, or the culture, of the original invaders?
The Homeric poems (12th–10th centuries) know of Dorians only in Crete, with the obscure epithet τριχάϊκες, and no hint of their origin. All those parts of Peloponnese and the islands which in historic times were “Dorian” are ruled by recently established dynasties of “Achaean” chiefs; the home of the Asiatic Dorians is simply “Caria” ”

“ Apophthegmatic style of expression used by the Dorians. § 3. Apophthegms of the Seven Sages. § 4. Griphus invented by the Dorians. § 5. Symbolical language of the Pythagorean philosophy. 1. It has been shown in the preceding chapter that the national and original poetry of the Doric race was not the epic, but the lyric; which is occupied rather in expressing inward feelings, than in describing outward objects. If this predilection may be considered as natural to the whole race, it will enable us to explain why history neither originated among, nor was cultivated by the Dorians. ”

“ The Dorians were not so much to be blamed for their abbreviating, as the other Greeks were for their unnecessary terminations, and inflexions. The more simple the terms, the more antient and genuine we may for the most part esteem them: and in the language of the Dorians we may perceive more terms relative to the true mythology of the country, and those rendered more similar to the antient mode of expression, than are elsewhere to be found. ”

“ With all these facts before him, though many of them he has suppressed, the historian of the Doric race, in direct contradiction to Plato and Aristotle, contends naïvely that it would be erroneous to conclude that the aim of bodily exercise among the Dorians was war, or that in their result they rendered the youth either brutal or ferocious. Their object, in his opinion, was to obtain something like ideal beauty of form, strength, and health, which, he says, they accordingly attained, being, about B. C. 540, the healthiest of the Greeks and most renowned for beautiful men and women. ”

“ When the customs of the ancient Dorians are viewed without prejudice, the fact will doubtless be observed that they originated not in a depraved and licentious state of society, but, on the contrary, that they were the direct result of that freedom of action which characterizes purity of life and a high standard of thought and action. ”

“ The Dorians were something more than fighters, they seem to have possessed some sort of civilization, and to have been endowed with a natural capacity for the arts, which after two or three centuries of experiment will find its own splendid expression within very definite and original lines. ”

“ The Dorians required a poetry which should be public, which should admit of the participation of many individuals, which should give utterance to national enthusiasms, which should combine the movements of men and women in choric evolutions with the melodies of music and the sublime words of inspired prophecy. In brief, the Dorians needed poets able—
"to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility, to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the affections in right tune ”

“ There is, however, in antiquity another nation, whose idea was also something more than a blind instinct, but which, from the earliest times we hear of it, knew itself to be a moral being, and did not live by accident. This nation was the Dorians, whose antiquities and whole life have been faithfully set forth to modern times by Karl Otfried Müller, but which has not yet been considered sufficiently with reference to general edification in social science. ”

“ Among the Dorians, however, every thing is more strongly expressed, and comes forward in a more prominent light than among the Æolians; and as their dialect everywhere prefers the broad, strong, and rough tones, and introduces them throughout with unbending regularity, so we might naturally look among them for a disposition to carry a spirit of austerity and of reverence for ancient custom through the entire frame of civil and private society. ”

“ Although historical tradition does not extend so far as to prove and verify this view of the subject, still it agrees with all that is characteristic of the Dorians. In the first place then, we know that sculpture was diligently cultivated at an early time in several Doric cities; first perhaps in Crete, the most ancient abode of Doric civilisation;1748 then in Ægina,1749 Sicyon, Corinth, Argos,1750 and Sparta ”

“ The ancient traditions represent the sons of Achæus as migrating to Argos, where they married the daughters of Danaus the king, but did not mount the throne.
Of the Dorians. The early fortunes of the Dorians are involved in great obscurity, nor is there much that is satisfactory in the early history of any of the Hellenic tribes. Our information is chiefly traditional, derived from the poets. Dorus, the son of Deucalion, occupied the country over against Peloponnesus, on the opposite side of the Corinthian Gulf, comprising Ætolia, Phocis, and the Ozolian Locrians. ”

“ There were in the ancient country of the Dorians some noble families which referred their origin to the conquest of Ephyra; and these were designated by the names of Tlepolemus, Antiphus, and Pheidippus; those families went with the other Dorians to Peloponnesus, and passed through Argos and Epidaurus to Rhodes and Cos, where they partly new-modelled their original family legends. ”

“ The Dorians in general had evidently less poetical skill and feeling than the Athenians, and did not cultivate those rude attempts of wit and mirth which the festivals called forth, and of which the Athenians knew so well how to take advantage. This incapacity or negligence of the early times enables us to explain why several kinds of Doric poetry were not received into the literature of civilized Greece until the Alexandrian age, of which we may particularly specify the bucolic poetry, and the phlyaces of Tarentum. ”

“ Its area coincides also approximately with that of the previous Achaean conquests; and if the Dorians were as backward culturally as traditions and archaeology suggest, it is not improbable that they soon adopted the language of the conquered, as the Norman conquerors did in England. As evidence of an intrusion of northerly folk, however, the distribution of dialects remains important. ”

“ That this cannot be done in a few words is evident; but that it can be done at all, I consider equally clear; and by no means agree with those who deny that a whole nation, like an individual, can have one character; an error which is perhaps best refuted by consideration of the different tribes of Greece. And thus the word Dorian conveyed to the ancient Greeks a clear and definite, though indeed a complex idea.1826
[pg 399] The first feature in the character of the Dorians which we shall notice is one that has been pointed out in several places,1827 viz. ”

“ Now it may with safety be asserted, that the principal deities of the Dorians were Apollo and Artemis, since their worship is found to have predominated in all the settlements of that race; and conversely the Doric origin can be either proximately or remotely traced wherever there were any considerable institutions dedicated to the worship of Apollo; insomuch that the adoration of this god may be shown from the most ancient testimonies of mythology to have gradually advanced with the extension of the Doric [pg 220] nation. ”

“ It is possible that the diffusion of the Hellenic name was due to the Dorian invaders. Its use can be traced back to the first half of the 7th century. Not less obscure are the causes of the fall of monarchy. It cannot have been the immediate effect of the Dorian conquest, for the states founded by the Dorians were at first monarchically governed. ”

“ We have already seen that paiderastia, as it existed in early Hellas, was a martial institution, and that it never wholly lost its virile character. This suggests the consideration of another class of circumstances which were in the highest degree conducive to its free development. The Dorians, to begin with, lived like regiments of soldiers in barracks. The duty of training the younger men was thrown upon the elder; so that the close relations thus established in a race which did not positively discountenance the love of male for male rather tended actively to encourage it. ”

“ But those common characters are not to be pressed too far. The northern Doris, for example, spoke Aeolic, while Elis, Phocis, and many non-Dorian districts of north-west Greece spoke dialects akin to Doric. Many Dorian states had additional “non-Dorian tribes”; Sparta, which claimed to be of pure and typical Dorian origin, maintained institutions and a mode of life which were without parallel in Peloponnese, in the Parnassian and in the Asiatic Doris, and were partially reflected in Crete only. ”

“ Heeren. and others.120.Od. XIX. 175. ἄλλη δ ̓ ἄλλων γλῶσσα μεμιγμένη.121.On this migration of the Dorians from their early settlements in the north of Greece to Crete, see Appendix III.122.Orchomenos, pp. 233, 234. According to Andron (Strabo X. p. 475) they came directly from Hestiæotis under mount Parnassus. According to Diodorus IV. 67, the Cadmeans drove out the Dorians, who then returned to Doris (Erineus, Cytinium, Boeum) . Lycophron v. ”

“ Most non-Dorian Greeks, in fact, seem to have accepted much as Dorian which was in fact only Spartan: this was particularly the case in the political, ethical and aesthetic controversies of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. Much, however, which was common (in art, for example) to Olympia, Argolis and Aegina, and might thus have been regarded as Dorian, was conspicuously absent from the culture of Sparta. ”

“ Lord Henry laughed. "If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart," he answered, sinking into an arm-chair.
Dorian Gray shook his head, and struck some soft chords on the piano. "'Like the painting of a sorrow,'" he repeated, "'a face without a heart.'"
The elder man lay back and looked at him with half-closed eyes. "By the way, Dorian," he said, after a pause, "'what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose'—how does the quotation run?—'his own soul'?"
The music jarred and Dorian Gray started, and stared at his friend. "Why do you ask me that, Harry?" ”

“ His life is dreadful. But you, Dorian, with your pure, bright, innocent face, and your marvellous untroubled youth – I can't believe anything against you. And yet I see you very seldom, and you never come down to the studio now, and when I am away from you, and I hear all these hideous things that people are whispering about you, I don't know what to say. Why is it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves the room of a club when you enter it? Why is it that so many gentlemen in London will neither go to your house or invite you to theirs? ”

“ Lord Henry went out to the garden, and found Dorian Gray burying his face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it had been wine. He came close to him, and put his hand upon his shoulder. "You are quite right to do that," he murmured. "Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul." ”

“ Yet one had ancestors in literature as well as in one's own race, nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly with an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious. There were times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole of history was merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived it in act and circumstance, but as his imagination had created it for him, as it had been in his brain and in his passions. ”

“ The fountain of knowledge dwells with God, and He dispenses it to His children as He pleases, and as they are prepared to receive it; consequently, it swallows up and circumscribes all'."
"Take these, Dorian; have them with you as inspirational mottoes for your life's work. Go on, there are a few more."
Dorian read again: "'The region of true religion and the region of a completer science are one.'—Oliver Lodge."
"You see one of the foremost scientists of the day agrees with Brigham Young," said Uncle Zed. ”

“ The task Dorian had set before him was a big one, but it was a very important one, and no one seemed to be doing it as yet. He might fail in accomplishing what he and Uncle Zed and perhaps the Lord had in mind regarding him, but he would do his very best, anyway.
"You'll not fail," the girl at his side assured him.
"I hope not. But I know some men who have gone in for all the learning they could obtain, and in the process of getting the learning, they have lost their faith. With me, the very object of getting knowledge is to strengthen my faith. ”

“ I turned half-way round and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. I did not want any external influence in my life. ”

“ What would be the music of the spheres to one bereft of hearing? What gain would come to a man with a heart of stone to be in an environment of perfect and eternal love!"
Dorian finished the reading and laid the paper on the desk. For some time he sat very still, thinking of these beautiful words from his dear friend to him. Surely, Uncle Zed was very much alive in any environment which his beautiful life had placed him. Would that he, Dorian, could live so that he might always be alive to the good and be dead to sin. ”