MR. COX'S HISTORY OF GREECE.*
THESE two volumes take us to the end of the Peloponnesian War ; a third is to follow, bringing down the story to the death of Alexander the Great ; and in a fourth, traversing ground which is in some parts almost untrodden, Mr. Cox proposes " to trace the fortunes of the Hellenic people down to the revolution which ended the reign of the Bavarian Otho." If we compare these dimensions with those of the histories of Thirlwall, Grote, and Curtius, it will be evident that the work before us has the advan- tage, by no means inconsiderable to the student, if not to the general reader, of being included within a smaller compass. When we add that Mr. Cox, by a rigid limitation of his subject to the topics with which the historian is necessarily concerned, has contrived to combine with this economy of space a treatment never wanting in fullness, we have already said much in favour of his work. And indeed it is a work which merits very high praise. We shall have something to say against the principle on which it is written, but we heartily recognise its merits. If it does not claim to supersede its great predecessors it may take a stand independent of them. There are points on which it is distinctly superior, and even supplements their defects. It is written throughout with force, and in a style which, though it displays occasional marks of haste, is at once attractive and vigorous. It awakens the attention and rouses the thought of the reader. And, not the least of its excellences, in days when materialism and the worship of force are so apt to obscure the insight and confuse the judgment of the historian, it expresses throughout a strong and earnest recognition of moral laws and of the divine government of the world.
After a preliminary chapter on the physical geography of the country, Mr. Cox begins at the very beginning of his subject. Seeking to treat of the " Origin and Growth of Hellenic Civilisation,"
• A History of Greece. By George W. Cox, M.A. 2 vols. London: Longman. 1874.
be goes back to the remotest conceivable period of human history, to the very moment, in fact, when, if the doctrine of evolution be true, the long-descended child of the Ascidian finally developed into man. " We must trace back," he says, "the society and laws of all the Aryan tribes to their earliest forms." He therefore ascends beyond the epoch of the "unity," when the Aryan horde must have already gained a certain amount of coherence, and pos- sessed the rudiments at least of social and even of political life, indeed, being so much implied in the fact of vast concerted migrations. The primitive Aryan, in his view, was " utterly isolated." His home was " a den, which he defended for his' mate and his offspring with the instinctive tenacity of a brute." Though it may be alleged that these speculations are suffi- ciently remote from the subject of Hellenic civilisation, which they touch only in the fact that the Hellenes were Aryans, the ability with which they are set forth by Mr. Cox, and the in- genuity with which he traces the growth of a society out of this primitive isolation, are such that no reader will be disposed to quarrel with the method pursued. The impulse towards the higher condition was given, he thinks, " by the primitive belief in the continuity of human life." The dead man was supposed still to ! inhabit the dwelling of which he had once been the living lord. , ' Hence a worship of which the eldest son was the natural priest, in which all kindred, but kindred only, had a right to share. Each household became an exclusive despotism, owning no community of interest or feeling beyond its own limits. To this fact are due some of the strangest phenomena of ancient life, the absolute patria potestas, for instance, recognised by the Roman law. It is, indeed, in the social and political system of Rome, rather than in that of Greece, that these phenomena are apparent. But the isolating tendency which they reveal powerfully modified the history of Greece. " If," says Mr. Cox, " the walls of separation between the orders in the State or city slowly crumbled away, the barriers which cut off the stranger from the rights of citizenship were never removed." The thought of the Greek, except in such rare exceptions as Callicratidas and Epaminondas, never rose above the thought of a GlAtc. The notion of a common fatherland he never had. He had in his lan- guage a word—Hellas—ready made, so to speak, for the conception, but to the conception as a practical reality he never reached. Even the desperate necessity of the Persian invasion united but a fragment of the race, and that in a very imperfect and short-lived union.
Mr. Cox's method of treating the mythology and early legends of Greece has been more than once discussed in these pages. The theory of solar myths has some remarkable recommendations, among which may possibly be reckoned the facility with which it is adapted to any story to which it may be wished to apply it. It is impossible not to observe that Mr. Cox is less at his ease when be gets beyond the region of the purely mythical. Though it would not be difficult to apply to such legends as the return of the Hera- the Doric invasion of Attica, and the Messeniau wars, the familiar imagery of how the bright Lord of Day goes forth to punish the robbers of the West, who have carried off the Dawn, the temptation must be eschewed as a dangerous challenge to the in- -credulous. Astyages is indeed, we are told, Azi-dahaka, the biting and throttling snake, who in the Vedic hymns imprisons the waters in his dungeons, and is slain by the spear of the Sun-god, Indra, but this is an almost solitary example. The heroes of the later Greek legends who cannot be turned into rays of sunshine or clouds are wholly unsatisfactory and unintelligible persons.
This part of Mr. Cox's work, however, we shall leave, to pass at once to the historical or quasi-historical period. Acknowledging the acuteness of his criticism and the value of many of his specula- tions and suggestions, we must yet take decided exception to what we cannot but think the extravagant length to which his scepticism is pushed. If he is really justified in expressing the distrust which he does express in the testimony of Herodotus, and even Thucydides, we can only say that Greek history cannot be written at all. And, indeed, there is an end of all history, if we are to judge by our own standards of probability, and judge, of course, without that complete knowledge of circumstances which often explains seemingly impossible incidents, what credible and well- informed witnesses affirm. We shall not discuss any of the larger questions, which, indeed, would require more space than we can command, but deal with two or three points of minor importance indeed, but still significant of Mr. Cox's mode of dealing with his subject. He disbelieves the story of how Pheidippides, the Athenian courier, ran from Athens to Sparta to ask for help before the battle of Marathon, starting on one day and arriving on the next. He begins by saying, " The distance is not leas than 150 miles." As a matter of fact, the distance is 1,140 etadii, or about 132 miles. He speaks of the road being " not very much less rough than now," and leading " the traveller over a succession of precipitous and rugged hills, where it is impossible to move at a greater speed than three or three and a half miles an hour." The distance given was measured along the great road leading through Tegea and Argos, a road hilly indeed, but con- tinually traversed by carriages, and therefore not to be described as a " track." This also disposes of Mr. Cox's idea that the courier could not have continued his journey during the dark hours of the night. When he says that "no feat of Indian or Persian runners will bear comparison with such an exploit," he is clearly wrong. Kinneir, as quoted by Professor Rawlinson, says that the rate (of seventy miles a day) is attained by modern Persian foot-passengers. Nor do we doubt that many of our readers could cite from their own knowledge pedestrian feats quite equal to 132 miles in a couple of days. Mr. Cox's note that the word " Pheidippides " " denotes a man who spares horses by using his own feet ; the name, therefore, if historical, must have been given to him after he had gained reputation as a runner," seems perfectly ludicrous. Every one knows of instances where a man's name bears a curious relation to his occupation. If we were to read of a great cricketer named "Bowles," would it follow that this name had been given him after he had attained celebrity ? Was Aristides so called because he was the best of men ? Another incident which Mr. Cox is inclined to disbelieve is the anecdote which Herodotus declares himself to have heard from one Thersandros, who told him how, being at a feast to which some of the chief officers in the army of Mardonius had been invited, he heard from his neighbour, a Persian, the most doleful presentiment of the fate which was about to overtake the Persian force. Now, of course, Thersandros may have invented the story, or Herodotus may have invented it. Mr. Cox does not think that they did, but the tale seems to him to express the Greek feeling about the matter so exactly, and to be so unlike what a Persian would have thought, that he pronounces the whole to be untrustworthy. But is it possible to put aside evidence for subjective reasons of this kind? Is there any limit to a scepticism which dares so much ? A still more remarkable ex- ample is to be found in Mr. Cox's treatment of Thucydides' story of the investment of Platsea. Can we imagine any man in a better position to become acquainted with the facts of the case than Thucydides was? He was in Athens at the time ; he must have often talked with the fugitives who escaped. He complains indeed elsewhere of the difficulty of arriving at the truth about contemporary events, but we cannot but think that if he had thought that about a thing so close at hand, and testified to by such a multitude of competent witnesses, he was being grossly deceived, he would have given up his task in despair. We cannot examine at length Mr. Cox's criticism on the narrative, but we must remark that though he has given to it a separate appendix, he has not stated the facts fully. It is true that the investing army is said to have been occupied for seventy days in throwing up a mound against the city wall, but it is also stated by the historian that they made another important contribution to the investment of the place, namely, a complete fortification of timber, which they constructed out of the trees cut down in the neighbouring plain. But it is useless, we consider, to argue about details in such a case. If Thucydides is not to be believed here, when is he credible?
The excessive scepticism which these instances reveal is, we think, a blemish on Mr. Cox's work. Happily there is a consider- able portion in which the occasions for calling it forth are absent, or but seldom occur. Here, when the writer feels that the ground is quite sure beneath his feet, he is an excellent guide, whom every student may consult, if he does not follow with undoubted profit.
His treatment of the Peloponnesian war, a subject which in accordance with the Oxford tradition he treats at great length— devoting to it, indeed, nearly the whole of his second volume—is especially excellent. He deals hard measure, indeed, to the aristo- cratic party—his judgment of Nicias, for instance, is peculiarly harsh—but he does not seem, as Mr. Grote sometimes seems, to be holding a brief for the Demos. We may not always agree with his conclusions, but we always feel that they are drawn from a thoroughly impartial estimate of the merits of the case.
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