THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

THE HOMERIC DIALECT. 663
664 THE HOMERIC DIALECT.
9
of the Acheans, we are confronted by a serious difficulty.
Yet
it is quite possible to find an historical solution for this apparent
contradiction.
Let us briefly recapitulate the history of the Achean
concjuest, as reconstructed from our sources at an earlier stage
of this work. Some bodies of a vigorous fair-haired race had
made their way into Pelojjonnesus ; the chiefs of these warriors
married the daughters of the kings of the ancient race in
Argolis and Sparta, and in all probability their followers had
likewise married the women of the land Atreus had become
;
king- of Mycenae not by conquest, but by deliberate choice, and
the great nuuss of the population was of the old pre-Acheau
race (p. 97), and therel'ore their language remained in the main
the language of Argolis, and was in all likelihood partially
adopted by their Achean lords, who merged into their subjects,
as tlie Normans in England were absorbed into their Saxon
subjects and the Tartars into the Chinese.
The language of Ai-goli.s })robably with a few modifications
derived from the Acheans continued to be that of the old race,
but this older })eople were the .same race as that which survived
throughout the historical pericxl in Arcadia, and nnist have
spoken a language almost the same.
But it has to be boi-ne in mind that the ancient critics
held that before the Return of tlie Heracleids and the Doiian
(on([uest "the Ari^nvos spoke the same dialect as the
Atlu-nians."' It was on this ground that AiThiphon detected the
spuviousness of eertain works ascribed to Philammon which
we'ie written in the Doiic dialect'.
jjut the Ache'an doiiiinat inn was net eontined to Argelis. for
Achean .\igos{p. 11:!) meiuded i>aeonia. In all this aica are
tound the I'emains ot a veiy
ancient civilizatmn, wiiich iiad
giadually dcxrldped un the ti-oni
spot the Stone Age to its
Zenith ill the ad\anced IJi-enze .Vue. This penple
liail net only
leacht-d a gceal excellence in the arl>, but had also a s\sleni ef
wi'iling. ])Mt writing is the et'tspi-ing
i>\'
litei-ary
instinct,
'i'hiis the Incas taiiij-ht their histnrv te their children li\' the
11. .-iT,
rude mnemonic quipus. It is in songs that man has everywhere
first recorded his personal achievements.
We have seen evidence that the dialect of the Homeric
poems comes nearer to that of Arcadia, and consequently to
that of the ancient inhabitants of Argolis, than it does to those
of any other part of Greece.
How comes it that the glories of the Achean chieftains are
celebrated in this dialect ? Yet there is no reason for surprise
or incredulity. The exploits of the Normans in Ireland were
sung by the native Irish bards in the native Irish tongue, and
the renown of the present Tartar dynasty of China is recorded
not in Tartar, but in the old literary language of their Chinese
subjects.
From the Homeric poems
it is certain that there wa.s a
bard at the palace of every chief in early Greece. We therefore
cannot suppose that the court of Eurystheus the last of
the Perseid kings of Mycenae differed from that of chieftains
of lesser
note.
It is also certain that the craft of the minstrel, like all
other arts, was hereditary, for we know that there was a family
or gild of Homeridae at Chios, who claimed to be descended
fi'oin the author of the Iliad and Odt/ssei/. That such bards
were in the confidence of their lords is rendered clear by the
fact that Agamemnon left his wife, Clytetnnestra, in charge of
his rhapsode when he went to Troy. His confidence was well
merited, for we are t(ld that so long
as the bard lived no
criminal act took ])la(!e
betwe(Mi the (pieen and Aegisthus.
There is no reason why such hereditary minstrels sliould not
have continued to hold theii' office, even when the throne
]>assed to n