Doric people

“ I was staying at a little inn by myself."
"My dear boy," said Lord Henry smiling, "anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so uncivilized. There are only two ways, as you know, of becoming civilized. One is by being cultured, the other is by being corrupt. Country-people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate."
"Culture and corruption," murmured Dorian. "I have known something of both. It seems to me curious now that they should ever be found together. For I have a new ideal, Harry. ”

“ Lady so very much wishes no Row.’
Edward Dorrit, Esquire, led a little apart by the button, assumed a diplomatic expression of countenance in replying, ‘Why you must confess, that when you bespeak a lot of rooms beforehand, and they belong to you, it’s not pleasant to find other people in ’em.’
‘No,’ said the other, ‘I know it isn’t. I admit it. Still, let you and I try to make it all right, and avoid Row. The fault is not this chap’s at all, but my mother’s. Being a remarkably fine woman with no biggodd nonsense about her—well educated, too—she was too many for this chap. ”

“ States of this description must soon lose all firmness and character, and fall to pieces from their own weakness; while those which never admit of innovation will at last, after having long stood as ruins in a foreign neighbourhood, yield to the general tide of human affairs, and their destruction is commonly preceded by the most complete anarchy.
2. This description expresses, though perhaps too forcibly, the difference between the Doric and Ionic races. The former had, of all the Grecians, the [pg 004] greatest veneration for antiquity ”

“ Merdle! O ye sun, moon, and stars, the great man! The rich man, who had in a manner revised the New Testament, and already entered into the kingdom of Heaven. The man who could have any one he chose to dine with him, and who had made the money! As he went up the stairs, people were already posted on the lower stairs, that his shadow might fall upon them when he came down. So were the sick brought out and laid in the track of the Apostle—who had not got into the good society, and had not made the money.
Mr Dorrit, dressing-gowned and newspapered, was at his breakfast. ”

“ Every individual was to remain within those limits which were prescribed by the regulation of the whole body.1828 Thus in the Doric form of government no individual was allowed to strive after personal independence, nor any class or order to move from its appointed place. The privileges of the aristocracy, and the subjection of the inferior orders, were maintained with greater strictness than in other tribes,1829 and greater importance was attached to obedience, in whatever form, than to the assertion of individual freedom. ”

“ At the close of the evening, when she rose to retire, Mr Dorrit took her by the hand as if he were going to lead her out into the Piazza of the people to walk a minuet by moonlight, and with great solemnity conducted her to the room door, where he raised her knuckles to his lips. Having parted from her with what may be conjectured to have been a rather bony kiss of a cosmetic flavour, he gave his daughter his blessing, graciously. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Penal system of Sparta: fine, infamy, § 4. exile, and death. § 5. Origin of the laws respecting the penalty of death in the Doric states. § 6. Connexion of Locri with the Doric race. § 7. Laws of Zaleucus. 1. The law, as well as the economy, of the Dorians, seems to bear a character of very great antiquity, as far as our scanty means of information permit us to judge. It exhibits strong marks of the early time at which it originated, and it is impossible not to recognise in it a certain loftiness and severity of character. ”

“ It appeared on the whole, to Little Dorrit herself, that this same society in which they lived, greatly resembled a superior sort of Marshalsea. Numbers of people seemed to come abroad, pretty much as people had come into the prison; through debt, through idleness, relationship, curiosity, and general unfitness for getting on at home. They were brought into these foreign towns in the custody of couriers and local followers, just as the debtors had been brought into the prison. They prowled about the churches and picture-galleries, much in the old, dreary, prison-yard manner. ”

“ The age of manhood was in Crete dated from the time of admittance into the male gymnasia (there called δρόμοι;) 1452 hence a person who had exercised ten years among the men was called δεκάδρομος;1453 the youth who had not as yet wrestled or run in them ἀπόδρομος.1454 We have no account respecting other Doric towns, and merely know that the classes of the ephebi at Cyrene were called from the number of each, the “three hundred.”1455
4. Thus far respecting the arrangements for training the youths. ”

“ The representative of the state is Hercules the Doric hero: moreover, the free spirit, the bravery, and the good laws of the Selgæans (although the reverse is sometimes attributed to them) were derived from their mother-state.509 The wrestling youths in the act of grasping one another (ἀκροχειριζόμενοι) represented on their coins, bespeak a love for gymnastic exercises. It should, however, be remembered, that the founders of this colony were, according to a more exact statement, Amyclæans,510 i.e. fugitive Periœci, who perhaps had [pg 139] passed through Cnidos in their way to these districts. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Mr Dorrit, on the altar of whose dignity all this was incense, made a gracious reply; and said that his people should—ha—countermand his horses, and he would—hum—overlook what he had at first supposed to be an affront, but now regarded as an honour. Upon this the bosom bent to him; and its owner, with a wonderful command of feature, addressed a winning smile of adieu to the two sisters, as young ladies of fortune in whose favour she was much prepossessed, and whom she had never had the gratification of seeing before. ”

“ Some peculiarities of the Doric dialect of Corinth and Sicyon have been noticed above; in general, however, we know little of these dialects; but of the Megarian we are better informed by means of the Acharneans of Aristophanes, and this probably gives a tolerably correct notion of the Doric of Peloponnesus, except Sparta. The Dryopians of Hermione also spoke Doric; at least an Hermionean inscription contains such Dorisms as ἐπιδαμῶντι, ποττὰν πόλιν, τοὺς δὲ λαΐναν δόμεν στάλαν, Boeckh No. ”

“ They had shrunk past homeless people, lying coiled up in nooks. They had run from drunkards. They had started from slinking men, whistling and signing to one another at bye corners, or running away at full speed. Though everywhere the leader and the guide, Little Dorrit, happy for once in her youthful appearance, feigned to cling to and rely upon Maggy. ”

“ This Heraclea Pontica, a settlement in part of Bœotians, but chiefly from Megara,795 had doubtless originally possessed the same constitution as other Doric colonies; and the different classes were, first, the possessors of the original lots; secondly, a demus, or popular party, who had settled either at the same time or subsequently; and, thirdly, the bondslaves, the Mariandynians.796 Although we are not able to give any detailed account of the changes in the government of this state, it may be observed, that for a time the citizens alone had political power (the πολίτευμα) ”

“ 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. ”

“ Before we proceed to consider the heroic mythology of the Dorians, which is chiefly confined to Hercules, we will first attempt to sketch the principal features of the religious character of the Dorians, as seen in the several worships already enumerated. Both in the development of modes of religion peculiar to that race, and in the adoption and alteration of those of other nations, an ideal tendency may be perceived, which considered the deity not so much in reference to the works or objects of nature, as of the actions and thoughts of men. ”

“ On the profits of his intrepidity, Mrs Sparkler and Mrs Merdle, inhabiting different floors of the genteel little temple of inconvenience to which the smell of the day before yesterday’s soup and coach-horses was as constant as Death to man, arrayed themselves to fight it out in the lists of Society, sworn rivals. And Little Dorrit, seeing all these things as they developed themselves, could not but wonder, anxiously, into what back corner of the genteel establishment Fanny’s children would be poked by-and-by, and who would take care of those unborn little victims. ”

“ They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion—these are the two things that govern us. And yet——"
"Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good boy," said the painter, deep in his work, and conscious only that a look had come into the lad's face that he had never seen there before. ”

“ But agricultural labour, festivals, and the natural slowness of the Doric race, often very much retarded the assembling of this army. The contributions, chiefly perhaps voluntary, both of states and individuals, were registered on stone: and there is still extant an inscription found at Tegea, in which the war supplies of the Ephesians, Melians, &c, in money and in corn, are recorded.780 But the Lacedæmonians never exacted from the Peloponnesian confederacy a regular annual contribution, independent of circumstances ”

“ The only thing that stands in its way, sir, is the Credit.’
This drawback, rather severely felt by most people who engaged in commercial transactions with the inhabitants of Bleeding Heart Yard, was a large stumbling-block in Mrs Plornish’s trade. When Mr Dorrit had established her in the business, the Bleeding Hearts had shown an amount of emotion and a determination to support her in it, that did honour to human nature. ”

“ A man so much in want of airing that he had a blue mould upon him, sat watching this dark place from a hole in a corner, like a spider; and he told her that he would send a message up to Miss Dorrit by the first lady or gentleman who went through. The first lady who went through had a roll of music, half in her muff and half out of it, and was in such a tumbled condition altogether, that it seemed as if it would be an act of kindness to iron her. ”

“ He opened the drawers and found them filled with papers and clippings, covering, as Dorian learned, a long period of search and collecting. He opened again the package which he had out the evening of Uncle Zed's death, and looked over some of the papers. These, evidently, had been selected for Dorian's special benefit, and so he settled himself comfortably to read them. The very first paper was in the old man's own hand, and was a dissertation on "Faith." and read thus: "Some people say that they can believe only what they can perceive with the senses. Let us see: The sun rises, we say. ”

“ Mr Dorrit, seeing the whole Marshalsea and all its testimonials in the pause, instantly flew at him with, ‘How dare you, sir? What do you mean?’
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ pleaded Mr Tinkler, ‘I was wishful to know——’
‘You wished to know nothing, sir,’ cried Mr Dorrit, highly flushed.
‘Don’t tell me you did. Ha. You didn’t. You are guilty of mockery, sir.’
‘I assure you, sir——’ Mr Tinkler began.
‘Don’t assure me!’ said Mr Dorrit. ‘I will not be assured by a domestic. You are guilty of mockery. You shall leave me—hum—the whole establishment shall leave me. ”

“ 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. ”