Hellenes

“ A beautiful heritage of all Hellenes was their appreciation and enjoyment of art—of poetry and music as well as the plastic arts. A warm feeling not only for the beautiful, but for the ideal and the noble,—among the best elements also for right and harmoniously developed life,—and a fine taste in art and in ethical perception have never been denied the Greeks. ”

“ We call ourselves Christians and are proud of the name; but we also call ourselves Hellenes, and are proud of that name too. It was under the protection of the old gods, whose fall is about to be consummated, that the Greeks achieved marvellous deeds, nurturing the gifts of the intellect which the Almighty bestowed on their race, like faithful gardeners, and making them bring forth marvellous fruit. In the realm of thought the Greek is sovereign of the nations, and he has given to perishable matter a perfection of form which has elevated and vivified it to immortality. ”

“ The Hellenes must learn that they have no friends, save in the unprejudiced and charitable individuals who know them well enough to be able to overlook their foibles and petty vices, in view of the solid and genuine claims which they have to our liking and the support of Christendom. As one of those, I await the day when Greece shall have been mistress of herself long enough to prove whether or not she can govern herself wisely, before I lend my voice to her blame for her failures or her offences. ”

“ But when he had been to Macedonia, and had seen the enemy of himself and of the Hellenes, were his speeches couched any more in the same or a similar tone? Far from it! He told you that you must neither remember your forefathers nor mention your trophies, nor go to the aid of any one. He was amazed, he said, at those who urged you to confer with the rest of the Hellenes in regard to the Peace with Philip, as though there was any need to convince some one else about a matter which was purely your own affair. ”

“ To these zealots the moment seemed propitious for putting their doctrine into practice. "Hellenes!" cried one of their journals, "our great Chief, our great patriot, the man who has made Greece great and prosperous, the man who has made us proud to be called Greeks, has been murdered by the instruments of the ex-King. Hellenes, rise up all of you, and drive the murderers out of the fatherland." The Hellenes in general remained unmoved. ”

“ For as it was not without reason and just cause that the Hellenes in old days were so prompt for freedom, so it is not without reason or cause that they are now so prompt to be slaves. There was a spirit, men of Athens, a spirit in the minds of the people in those days, which is absent to-day—the spirit which vanquished the wealth of Persia, which led Hellas in the path of freedom, and never gave way in face of battle by sea or by land; a spirit whose extinction to-day has brought universal ruin and turned Hellas upside down. ”

“ Do you think it right that Hellenes should enslave Hellenic States, or allow others to enslave them, if they can help? Should not their custom be to spare them, considering the danger which there is that the whole race may one day fall under the yoke of the barbarians? ”

“ Does he not send one body of mercenaries to Porthmus, to expel the popular party of Eretria, and another to Oreus, to set up Philistides as tyrant? And yet the Hellenes see these things and endure them, gazing (it seems to me) as they would gaze at a hailstorm--each people praying that it may not come their way, but no one trying to prevent it. Nor is it only his outrages upon Hellas that go unresisted. 34 No one resists even the aggressions which are committed against himself. ”

“ From their love for individuality and diversity of customs, manners and modes of thinking, sprang the national unity of the Greeks in the fairy realms of Poetry and Art. When they began to feel themselves a people, they assumed the name of Hellenes; and their first historical deed was the admirable completion of a language which, for simplicity, power, and beauty, has remained up to our own days a model for all other languages, for it alike possesses eurythmy and power of expression. The overwhelming metaphysical subtleties of the Sanskrit are simplified ”

“ As regards morals, the descent of the modern Hellenes is equally evident. Like their ancestors, they are fond of change, and inquisitive; as the descendants of free citizens, they have preserved a feeling of equality; and, still infatuated with dialectics, they hold forth at all times as if they were in the ancient market-place, or Agora. They frequently stoop to flattery: like the ancient Greeks, too, they are apt to rate intellectual merit above purity of morals. {44} Like sage Ulysses of the Homeric poem, they well know how to lie and cheat with grace ”

“ In literature generally they were no less original, and have exercised a no less permanent influence. Neither writing, nor sculpture, nor painting, nor the art of modelling in clay began in Greek lands with the Hellenic world. The discoveries in the Troad, at Mycenae and Tiryns, and in Crete, already referred to, show that these arts existed many centuries before the dwellers in Greece were the Hellenes. But literature begins with them. The author, or authors, of the Iliad and Odyssey, indeed, wrote or recited before the Greeks began to speak of themselves generally as Hellenes ”

“ It may be said of almost all great Hellenes that they appear to have come too late: it was thus with Æschylus, with Pindar, with Demosthenes, with Thucydides: one generation—and then it is passed for ever. That is the stormy and dismal element in Greek history. We now, it is true, admire the gospel of the tortoises. To think historically is almost the same thing now as if in all ages history had been made according to the theory "The smallest possible amount in the longest possible time!" Oh! how quickly Greek history runs on! Since then life has never been so extravagant—so unbounded. ”

“ I must confess that I am looking forward to a sight of this country, though I do not regard its classic age with the same unbounded and uncritical enthusiasm as many of our countrymen, to whom the ancient Greek is the embodiment of all historical and cultural virtues. One thing only even the blackest envy cannot deny to the Hellenes of old—a courage in colonial enterprise which we should do well to imitate both now and in the future. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It professes to be a revival, or rather an emphatic realization, of something very old. The new spirit of classical Greece, with all its humanity, its intellectual life, its genius for poetry and art, describes itself merely as being 'Hellenic'—like the Hellenes. And the Hellenes were simply, as far as we can make out, much the same as the Achaioi, one of the many tribes of predatory Northmen who had swept down on the Aegean kingdoms in the dawn of Greek history. [40:1]
This claim of a new thing to be old is, in varying degrees, a common characteristic of great movements. ”

“ But we _have_ to take counsel for the good of all the Hellenes, in view of the grave peril in which they stand. And I wish to tell you on what grounds I am so alarmed at the situation, in order that if my reasoning is correct, you may share my conclusions, and exercise some forethought for yourselves at least, if you are actually unwilling to do so for the Hellenes as a whole ”

“ Nor is there a true collective name. There are indeed Hellenes (though the name occurs in one passage only, Iliad ii. 684) , and there is a Hellas; but his Hellas, whatever its precise signification may be, is, at any rate, not equivalent either to Greece proper or to the land of the Greeks, and his Hellenes are the inhabitants of a small district to the south of Thessaly. 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is impossible to decide the exact date when the Hellenes obtained the general ascendency or when the Greeks received from that Thessalian tribe their common appellation. The Greeks were not termed Hellenes in the time in which the Iliad was composed—they were so termed in the time of Hesiod. But even in the Iliad, the word Panhellenes, applied to the Greeks, testifies the progress of the revolution [74] , and in the Odyssey, the Hellenic name is no longer limited to the dominion of Achilles. ”

“ The Hellenes of to-day may be spiritual children of Hellas, physically they are certainly the result of a mixing of races—Illyrian, Ionian, Hellenes, Latins, Goths, Slavs of various tribes, Vlachs, Albanians, and a dash contributed by the pious Crusaders of Western Europe. These Greeks are widely distributed over the Balkan Peninsula, throughout the Turkish Empire, and over the Archipelago, and are considered a nation on the basis of an assertion made by M. Kapodistrias, the first President of the new Hellenic State. ”

“ This people, the classic Greeks, the Hellenes, had inhabited the Peloponese Peninsula from those dark ages{234} before recorded history, and even in prehistoric times had occupied the islands between Greece and Asia Minor. No doubt the Hellenes moved down from the plains of Central Europe, the cradle of the Aryan race, in successive waves, being urged forward by seething masses of young nations behind them. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Imagine, in God's name, what would happen, if the Hellenes were to call you to account for the opportunities which, in your indolence, you have now let pass, and were to put to you the question, {35} 'Is it true, men of Athens, that you send envoys to us on every possible occasion, to tell us of Philip's designs against ourselves and all the Hellenes, and of the duty of keeping guard against the man, and to warn us in every way?' We should have to confess that it was true. ”

“ Her absolute military superiority was founded upon the national character, the energetic public spirit, the voluntary subordination to law and discipline and the capacity for conceiving and realising great political ideas. The Hellenes could gain and assert permanently the ascendency over the entire Mediterranean world, and impress upon it for all time the stamp of their nationality, provided only that they were united and saw the way to gather together all their resources into a single firmly knit great power. ”

“ The question of the exact origin of the Hellenes is still much in doubt, but the more the matter is investigated, the more certain it becomes that this wonderful people was a mixed race. Throughout history everywhere, the ethnologist points out that it is the mixed race which develops the greatest potentialities; and the case of Greece is no exception to the rule. One speaks of the Greeks as Aryans, and, therefore, naturally associates them with the Persians and Indians on the one hand and the Germanic races on the other. ”

“ The social aspect of Greek life henceforward becomes its most attractive feature. After a long period of storm and stress, the European Hellenes had relapsed into a quiet and resigned frame of mind which stands in sharp contrast on the one hand with the energy and ability, and on the other with the vulgar intriguing of their Asiatic kinsmen. Seeing no future before them, the inhabitants were content to dwell in contemplation amid the glories of the past. National pride was fostered by the undisguised respect with which the leading Romans of the age treated Hellenic culture. ”

“ He tracked the progress and dispersion of the Hellenes from their mythical cradle in Thessaly, and showed how those who settled near the sea-shores, and were compelled into commerce and intercourse with strangers, gave to Greece her marvellous accomplishments in arts and letters,—the flowers of the ancient world. How others, like the Spartans; dwelling evermore in a camp, on guard against their neighbors, and rigidly preserving their Dorian purity of extraction, contributed neither artists, nor poets, nor philosophers to the golden treasure-house of mind. ”

“ The Hellenes never formed one nation; they never ceased to fight and destroy one another. And yet all spoke the same language, worshipped the same gods, [Pg 108] and lived the same sort of a life. In these respects they recognized the bonds of a common race and distinguished themselves from all other peoples whom they called barbarians and regarded with disdain. ”