Helle

“ This may be the place most convenient for observing, that there can be little hesitation in regarding the northern route as that by which the Hellic tribes came into Greece. They, a highland people, came along a mountain country. They left their name upon the Hellespont, the sea of Helle, which means not the mere strait so called in later times, but the whole northern Ægean [398] ; and upon the river Selleeis, which discharges itself into the sea of Marmora. ”

“ Upon this primitive Pelasgian stock was afterward engrafted a branch called Hellenic, identical with it in origin, but forced to a higher state of development in the garden of Asiatic culture, and ready to burst into blossom on the soil of Greece. The new-comers were the Helle’nes, a people of greater vigor, physical and intellectual. Mingling with their Pelasgian kinsmen in the Grecian peninsula, they formed a new nation, endowed with fresh life; and the Pelasgic dialect, modified and energized by their more cultivated tongue, was converted into Greek. ”

“ Ere now they have passed o'er the sea, the manifold host of the king—
They have gone forth to sack and to burn; ashore on the Westland they spring!
With cordage and rope they have bridged the sea-way of Helle, to pass
O'er the strait that is named by thy name, O daughter of Athamas! ”

“ The symmetry, the clear outlines, the cheerful repose of Classical art, are wedded to the sentiment, passion, and variety of the Romantic. The great German poet felt, and has expressed with wonderful subtlety, the truth that no modern can absolutely dissociate the Hellenic influence from the others which have contributed to shape our modern life; no one can now be a pure Hellene, nor, if he could, would it be desirable; but everyone should recognise the special elements with which the Hellenic ideal can ennoble and chasten the modern spirit, and these he should by all means cultivate. ”

“ From among the Helli of the mountains, who nowhere appear among the contingents of the Greek army, must have proceeded the migratory bands who gave to the Thessalian plain the name of Hellas. Their descendants fix themselves as settlers there. Beguiled into civilization, they become Hellenes; they spread, by their inborn elastic energies, towards the south, and carry with them, only a little in their rear, the very title of their Hellenic origin, as well as their own peculiar name. ”

“ What Hellene, what foreigner, is so dense, or so uninstructed, or so fierce in his hatred of our city, that if one were to put to him this question, and say, 'Tell me now; of all Hellas, as it now is—all this inhabited country—is there any part which would have been called by this name, or inhabited by the Hellenes who now possess it, unless those who fought at Marathon and Salamis, our forefathers, had displayed that high prowess on their behalf?' Why, I am certain that not one would answer 'Yes': they would say that all these regions must have been conquered by the barbarians. ”

“ Summarily, we must conclude that the political application of Hellenic religion seems wholly a native and independent product of the Hellenic spirit, and reflected the characteristically Hellenic forms of civic life. ”

“ STORY OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE.
Athamas, king of Bœotia, had married Nephele, a cloud-nymph, and their children were Helle and Phryxus. The restless and wandering nature of Nephele, however, soon wearied her husband, who, being a mortal, had little sympathy with his ethereal consort; so he divorced her, and married the beautiful but wicked Ino (sister of Semele) , who hated her step-children, and even planned their destruction. But the watchful Nephele contrived to circumvent her cruel designs, and succeeded in getting the children out of the palace. ”

“ HELLAS Beyond the great Persian Empire, on the other side of the Hellespont, was the little country of Hellas, or Greece. The Hellenes, or Greeks, as they are often called, were a race of men who had for centuries trained themselves in the art of noble thinking and noble living, and they looked down with some scorn on their less cultivated neighbours, to whom they gave, one and all, the name of Barbarians. ”

“ Prose literature—The drama—Greek art. The Greeks, who called themselves Hellenes, were a race rather than a nation. Though they were the predominant people in certain parts of Europe and Asia, and though they gave their name to the land which still retains it, there was, in fact, no one country with a capital and seat of government which we can speak of as Hellas, as we might of France or Spain. ”

“ And the women! white-armed Briseïs, motherly Hecuba, Andromache and gentle Cressida, Chryseïs, grave Cassandra, Penelope, Polyxena, Iphigenia, the lithe, dark-eyed beauty of Myrine the Amazon, and the golden radiance of Helen, her face like noon sunlight—Helen of Sparta, for whose sake the Greeks are forever named Hellenes, at whose shrine all men worship, and shall worship so long as beauty endures—these came into the high-roofed hall ”

“ Hellas, too, as a collective name, has been developed. On the coast of Asia there is an Æolis, a Doris, and an Ionia, all of which the Hellenes look upon as settlements from corresponding parts of Greece, and there is division of the Hellenes themselves, of considerable political importance, into two classes—the Dorian and Ionian. These differences between their own age and the Homeric, the great historians of the Golden Age of Greek literature explained as they best could. Are we bound to admit their explanation? ”

“ Burdened as we are with these defects of national character, the products of the subtler and more genial, if less solid and truthful, Hellenic race are particularly well worth our consideration. This has been so thoroughly recognized by thoughtful men in our generation as to require no further support by argument. It only remains that each of our Hellenists should do his best, in some distinct line, to make the life of the Greeks known to us with fairness and accuracy. ”

“ What wonder if the Hellenes were a joyous race, dwelling as they did in a radiant climate, amid scenes of undying beauty, in healthful communion with the Earth-spirit! They exercised the body in the palæstra, the mind in the portico, and, ever drinking in health, beauty, and the music of leaves, winds, and waves, were therefore easily able to attain and preserve that serene calm of existence, which we see stamped in vivid beauty on the faces of their marble masterpieces. ”

“ There is no fairer thing Than when the lord and lady with one soul One home possess. This was the poet's domestic ideal, and the ages have not brought a better one, though they have brought us many things to make it more beautiful. But what shall we say of Helen, the alluring child of fancy and romance, who stands as an eternal type of the beauty that led captive the Hellenic world ? ”

“ Now, for the first time, the national Hellenic mind rose to the highest consciousness of noble independence and dignity. Athens concentrated within herself, as in a focus, the whole exuberance and many-sidedness of Greek life, and glorified it into beautiful unity. Now, for the first time, the deepest thoughts of the Hellenic mind were embodied in sculpture, and the figures of the gods rose to that solemn sublimity in which art embodied the idea of divinity in purely human form. ”

“ If it were possible to trace the process by which the Hellenic race was originally separated from their Aryan kinsfolk, the physiological basis of their qualities might perhaps be traced in the mingling of different tribal ingredients. As it is, there is no clue to these secrets of nature's alchemy: the Hellenes appear in the dawn of their history with that unique temperament already distinct: we can point only to one cause, and that a subordinate cause, which must have aided its development, namely, the geographical position of Greece. ”

“ Hellenic thought means direct and fresh, if not always profound, thought; Hellenic art means art of consummate simplicity, art of clear principle. Hellenic style means in literature a perfect directness and lucidity, with just so much of the figurative as will flash light upon the sense.
This is what is meant by “Classical” Hellenism. True, no scholar would dare to say that even in the classical age every Greek who has left us a book or a fragment was always as perfect as Greek principles and ideals were perfect. Homer sometimes nods. We may find palpable blemishes not a few. ”

“ This notable aspect of Greek life is due to the fact that the ancient Hellene, as a rule, sought recreation and pleasure, not at the domestic hearth, but in the society of clever women, who had not only cultivated their physical charms, but had also trained their intellects and sensibilities so as to become virtuosi in all the arts of pleasure. Their pleasing forms of intercourse, their light and vivacious conversation, lent to association with them a peculiar seductiveness and fascination. ”

“ Wherever the cry of the oppressed goes up from Greek against Greek, it was the voice of Athens which should first remind the oppressor that Hellene differed from barbarian in postponing the use of force to the persuasions of equal law. Wherever a barbarian hand offered wrong to any city of the Hellenic sisterhood, it was the arm of Athens which should first be stretched forth in the holy strength of Apollo the Averter. ”

“ But in the Belle Hélène the fun, easy and flowing, is of a very high quality, and it has root in mental, not physical, incongruity. Here indeed is the humorous touchstone of a whole system of government and of theology. And, allowing for the variations made with comic intent, it is altogether Greek in spirit—so Greek, in fact, that I doubt whether any one who has not given his days and nights to the study of Homer and of the tragedians, and who has not thus taken in by the pores the subtle essence of Hellenic life and literature, can truly appreciate this French farce. ”

“ The cities appear equally Hellenic in their political organs and functions with boulē and demos and popularly elected magistrates. Life was filled with the universal Hellenic interests, which centred in the gymnasium and the religious festivals, these last including, of course, not only athletic contests but performances of the classical dramas or later imitations of them. ”

“ There is nothing awesome, nothing pride-abasing, in nature to the Hellene as to the Hebrew.
When we come to deal with art, whether plastic art or the art of letters, there stands out the same difference of spirit. And on all sides it is admitted that in this region Hellenism reached nearly to perfection. It is scarcely worth while here to descant upon the work of Phidias or Sophocles, and to analyse its excellence. In the domain of art the word 'Hellenic' implies absolute truth of form, absolute truth of taste, grace and elegance. ”

“ PAN-HELLENIC FESTIVALS — OLYMPIC, PYTHIAN, NEMEAN, AND ISTHMIAN. In the preceding chapters I have been under the necessity of presenting to the reader a picture altogether incoherent and destitute of central effect,—to specify briefly each of the two or three hundred towns which agreed in bearing the Hellenic name, and to recount its birth and early life, as far as our evidence goes,—but without being able to point out any action and reaction, exploits or sufferings, prosperity or misfortune, glory or disgrace, common to all. ”

“ But the immortal witnesses of his race are of another kind. Like the victims of the war, whose epitaph he was pronouncing, the Hellenes have their memorial in all lands, graven, not on stone, but in the hearts of mankind. ... Are we not warranted by what we know of Greek work, imperfect though our knowledge is, in saying that no people has yet appeared in the world whose faculty for art, in the largest sense of the term, has been so comprehensive? ”

“ The alphabets derived from the Hellenic are (1) Greek, (2) Russian, (3) Coptic, (4) Latin.
(1) Greek.—To the ancient Greek Hellas meant no defined country, but simply the abode of the Hellenes, whether in Smyrna, Syracuse, Athens, or wherever else they might be found. The mountainous character of Greece explains its division into a crowd of petty states, many of which were no bigger than a modern township. This accorded with Aristotle's view that the area of the state should not be wider than an orator's voice would carry. ”

“ Aristotle, Politics, bk. 5, ch. 10.
Hellas, an ancient name of Thessaly, more generally applied to the territories of Acarnania, Attica, Ætolia, Doris, Locris, Bœotia, and Phocis, and also to all Greece. It received this name from Deucalion, and now forms a part of Livadia. Pliny, bk. 4, ch. 7.—Strabo, bk. 8.—Mela, bk. 2, ch. 3.—Pausanias, bk. 2, ch. 20.――A beautiful woman, mentioned by Horace as beloved by Marius: the lover killed her in a fit of passion, and afterwards destroyed himself. Horace, bk. 2, satire 3, li. 277.
Helle, a daughter of Athamas and Nephele, sister of Phryxus. ”

“ The Hellenic intellect had, indeed, long lost its genial creative power. The most ambitious effort of this age did not go beyond explanatory reproduction and scholarship. Upon theology, however, bound hard and fast in traditional propositions and Aristotelian formulæ, the revival of classical studies had relatively little influence, and where it did break the fetters it only gave entrance to a deluge of heathen Hellenic views that paganized Christianity. ”