The Races and Peoples

“NATIONS do not retain the memory of their earliest days any more than individuals.” ¹ Of the early history of the lands which became Greece the Greeks themselves knew nothing. They contented themselves with mythical tales in which the adventures of men were mixed with the adventures of gods. When the legends had been collected into works like the Homeric poems, the literary value of which obliged all Greeks to know and study them, they seemed beyond criticism. When Thucydides makes his rapid survey of primitive Greece, ² he draws on Homer for his premisses; yet he makes a praiseworthy attempt at reconstruction, making use, in the interpretation of his texts, of all that was furnished him by the sciences which are the handmaidens of history—geography, comparative ethnology, and even archæology. When Aristotle wishes to draw a picture of primitive Athens, ³ he seeks to reconstruct ancient institutions in the light of those of his own time, and cites survivals as indications or evidence of what existed formerly. So in Thucydides and Aristotle the history of early times is no more than a work of reconstruction, quite as hypothetical as that of modern scholars. It would be a very strange mistake to invoke as historical evidence what they say about the Greece of Minos or pre-Solonian Athens.