Doric Greek

“ For, in the first place, it is plain that no Greek city was wholly without choral poetry; and that prosodia, pæans, and dithyrambs, as soon as they obtained a separate existence, spread in a short time over the whole of Greece. Secondly, among the chief founders and masters of the Dorian lyric poetry, the smaller number only were Dorians, the others being either of Æolian or Ionian descent. Thus Terpander, the ancient pæan-singer, Arion, the inventor of the dithyramb, and Pindar, were Æolians; Ibycus of Rhegium, Bacchylides, and Simonides of Ceos, were Ionians ”

“ It is true that there are great differences between the literary Doric, the dialect of Corinth and Argos, and the dialects of Laconia and Crete, and that there are affinities between the dialect of Laconia and the non-Dorian dialects of Arcadia and Elis. It is equally true, however, and of far more consequence, that all the Doric dialects are distinguished from all other Greek dialects by certain common characteristics. Perhaps the strongest sentiment in the Dorian nature is the pride of race. ”

“ The Dorians of the Peloponnesus, Sicily and Magna Graecia then perfected the choral lyric for festivals and religious worship; and here again an earnest faith, a strong pride in Dorian usage and renown had an apt interpreter in the massive and sonorous Doric. Finally, the Attic branch of the Ionian stock produced the drama, blending elements of all the other kinds, and developed an artistic literary prose in history, oratory and philosophy. It is in the Attic literature that the Greek mind receives its most complete interpretation. ”

“ These characteristics distinguish the Doric and Ionic temperaments as exhibited in art also, notably in architecture, and to some extent also in sculpture. Athens appears to have occupied a middle position between the Peloponnese and Ionia. The Peloponnesians seem to have clung throughout their history to the Dorian dress, as the Ionians probably did to the Ionic; but in Athens we find change and development most strongly marked. In very early days the Athenians wore the Doric dress ”

“ It is my intention in the present chapter to collect and arrange the various accounts respecting the alterations in the constitution of those Doric states, which deviated more from their original condition than Crete and Sparta: having been more affected by the general revolutions of the Greek governments, and drawn with greater violence into the strong current of political change. ”

“ For different literary purposes Greek had different κοιναί. A poet who would write an epic must adopt a form of language modelled on that of Homer and Hesiod; Alcaeus and Sappho were the models for the love lyric, which was therefore Aeolic; Stesichorus was the founder of the triumphal ode, which, as he was a Dorian of Sicily, must henceforth be in Doric, though Pindar was an Aeolian, and its other chief representatives, Simonides and Bacchylides, were Ionians from Ceos. The choral ode of tragedy was always conventional Doric, and in the iambics also are Doric words like δράω, λάω, &c. ”

“ The Doric, a variety of the Aeolic, characterized by its strength, was spoken in Peloponnesus, and in the Doric colonies of Asia Minor, Lower Italy, and Sicily. The Ionic, the most soft and liquid of all the dialects, belonged to the Ionian colonies of Asia Minor and the islands of the Archipelago. It was the language of Homer, Hesiod, and Herodotus. The Attic, which was the Ionic developed, enriched, and refined, was spoken in Attica, and prevailed in the flourishing period of Greek literature. ”

“ At the same time, the [p. 53] life of each peculiar city continues distinct, and even gathers to itself a greater abundance of facts and internal interests. So that during the two centuries now under review there was in the mind of every Greek an increase both of the city-feeling and of the Pan-Hellenic feeling, but on the other hand a decline of the old sentiment of separate race,—Doric, Ionic, Æolic. ”

“ An entirely different manner of building had early appeared by the side of the Doric style, which cannot be accounted of quite equal birth with that eldest male offspring of Hellenic civilization, but, to carry out the simile, should rather be considered as a step-sister. The development of the peripteral plan, the echinos coronation of the channelled shafts, and the entablature of triglyphs, metopes, and mutules, appear autochthonic and purely Greek ”

“ Of Dorian literature we know little. The works of Archimedes written in the Syracusan dialect were much altered in language by the late copyists. The most striking development of the late classical age in Doric lands is that of pastoral poetry, which, like Spenser, is “writ in no language,” but, on a basis of Syracusan and possibly Coan Doric, has in its structure many elements borrowed from the Aeolic love lyric and from epic. ”

“ This different position in society was also marked by the dress, which was lighter and less strict among the unmarried women; for it is these alone who are charged with exposure of their persons. This charge of the Athenians was, however, caused by a strange forgetfulness of ancient custom; for after the mode of treatment of their women had become precisely similar to that of the eastern nations, the ancient Greek usage appeared to them unnatural;1249 and the dress of the Doric women caused in their minds the same notions as the German dress in those of the Romans ”

“ OF GREECE.
We must never deduce the etymology of an Egyptian or oriental term from the Greek language. Eustathius well observes, Ει βαρβαρον το ονομα ου χρη ζητειν Ἑλληνικην ετυμολογιαν αυτου.
We should recur to the Doric manner of expression, as being nearest to the original.
The Greeks adopted all foreign history: and supposed it to have been of their own country.
They mistook temples for Deities, and places for persons.
They changed every foreign term to something similar in their own language; to something similar in sound, however remote in meaning; being led solely by the ear. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The argument for its Doric origin, derived from the name κωμῳδία, “the village-song” (the Peloponnesians calling their villages κῶμαι, and the Athenians δῆμοι) , is by no means conclusive, as the derivation of that name from the word κῶμος, a tumultuous festival procession, is far more probable. The early time at which comedy must have flourished may be seen from the fact, that it passed over to Athens in the 50th Olympiad;1638 but of its character we should form a very partial judgment, if we trusted implicitly to the accounts of the Athenian neighbours ”

“ Greece refers exclusively to the history of the Dorians; and conversely all the actions of the Doric race in their earlier settlements are mythically represented under the person of Hercules. Now this cannot be accounted for by supposing that there was only a temporary connexion between this hero and the Doric race. ”

“ Greece in which tradition makes the pre-Dorian population “Ionic,” and in which the political structure shows that the conquered were less completely subjugated, exhibit the Ionic -ει and -ου; (4) that as we go north, similar though more barbaric dialects extend far up the western side of central-northern Greece, and survive also locally in the highlands of south Thessaly; (5) that east of the watershed Aeolic has prevailed over the area which has legends of a Boeotian and Thessalian migration, and replaces Doric in the northern Doris. ”

“ Do'ris, a small territory in the north-eastern angle of Ætolia proper—a rough but fertile country—was the early seat of the Dorians, the most enterprising and the most powerful of the Hellenic tribes, if we take into account their numerous migrations, colonies and conquests. Their colonies in Asia Minor founded six independent republics, which were confined within the bounds of as many cities. From this people the Doric order of architecture—a style typical of majesty and imposing grandeur, and the one the most employed by the Greeks in the construction of their temples—derived its origin. ”

“ But in retaining his conviction respecting a Doric settlement in Crete before the migration of the Heraclidæ, and in viewing it as the only means of explaining many facts in the religious and political history of the Greeks, the Author does not imply that this Doric colony was exactly similar to a later migration of Dorians from Argos and Sparta. The condition of the Dorians in Hestiæotis must have been very different from that to which the same race attained in Peloponnesus. ”

“ We have seen the Ionic capital in use on the Athenian akropolis, and it certainly would have looked more in place as a finish to the columns of Nemea than the form which seems the natural finish at Poseidônia and even at Athens. But they are grand objects all the same. Nothing can wholly take away the inherent majesty of the Doric architecture, and beside them is a relic of even greater interest than themselves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At a later period, and when the civilization of the Greeks was more advanced, in the true flourishing era of their power and literature, the two principal races among this people, the Ionians and the Dorians, were completely opposed to each other in arts and manners, in government, modes of thinking, and even in philosophy. Athens was at the head of the Ionic race; Sparta took the lead in the Doric confederacy ”

“ A considerable majority of the legends which have been related in the preceding section are Dorian, and the Dorians gave the earliest and most marked encouragement to Greek love. Nowhere else, indeed, except among the Dorians, who were an essentially military race, living like an army of occupation in the countries they had seized, herding together in barracks and at public messes, and submitting to martial drill and discipline, do we meet with paiderastia developed as an institution. In Crete and Lacedæmon it became a potent instrument of education. ”

“ Doris, in the limited meaning of the term, was the valley of the river Pindus. Whenever the Doric Tripolis is mentioned, the three cities meant are Bœum, Cytinium, and Erineus;145 which last place, as being the most considerable, appears to have been also called Dorium:146 but when writers speak of a Tetrapolis, Acyphas (or Pindus) is added as a fourth town.147 This is the country which Dorus the son of Hellen is said to have inhabited, when he brought together his nation on the side of Parnassus;148 a tradition which totally loses sight of the more ancient settlements of the Doric race. ”

“ The theori of Ægina, Mantinea, Messenia, Trœzen, and Thasos, who composed separate colleges, ate together, and who were regular magistrates, not being like the theori of Athens, [pg 016] chosen for a single theoria, may be compared with the Pythians.48
10. This comparison again leads us back to our former position, that in the genuine Doric form of government there were certain predominant ideas, which were peculiar to that race, and were also expressed in the worship of Apollo, viz., those of harmony and order (τὸ εὔκοσμον) ”

“ It is, however, pretty well agreed that the several Æolic dialects together contained more remains of the primitive Grecian or (if we will so call it) Pelasgic language, than either the Doric, Ionic, or Attic; and that at the same time many forms of the latter were preserved with great fidelity in the Latin tongue; partly because the life of the Italian husbandmen bore a nearer resemblance to that of the ancient Greeks than that of the later Greeks themselves, and because neither their literature, nor any fastidious sense of euphony and rhythm, induced them to soften and refine their language. ”

“ The Doric migration gave rise to many others, which spread the worship of Apollo in various directions; no longer, however, as a peculiar deity of the Dorians and Cretans, but, in a more extended sense, as the national god of the Greeks. This was chiefly occasioned by the influence of Delphi, which seems to have given the chief stimulus to that great migration. ”

“ Upon the whole, Crete was the most fortunate of all the Doric states in this circumstance, that it could follow up its own institutions with [pg 054] energy and in quiet, without any powerful obstacle; although its very tranquillity and far-extended commerce at length occasioned a gradual decline of ancient customs. The reverse took place at Argos, whose Doric inhabitants, pressed on all sides, were at length compelled to renounce the institutions of their race, and adopt those of the natives. ”