Conclusion Of The Dawn Of History

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

AT this point, where we are bringing our inquiries to a conclusion, we would feign look a little nearer into the mists which shroud the past, and descry, were it possible, the actual dawn of history for the individual nations see not only how the larger bodies of men have travelled through the prehistoric stages of their journey, but how, having reached their settled home, each people begins to emerge from the obscurity that surrounds its early days. What were the exact means, we ask, whereby a collection of nomadic or half-nomadic tribes separated, reunited, separated again, and developed upon different soils the qualities which distinguish them from all others ? What is, in fact, the beginning of real national life ?

The worlds which circle round our sun, or rather, the multitudinous systems of orbs which fill space, might pose a like inquiry. There was a time when these which are now distinct worlds were confounded as continuous nebulae, a thin vapor of matter whirling round in one unchanging circle. In time, their motion became less uniform, vortices as the word is set in, smaller bodies of vaporous matter which, obeying the universal movement, set up internal motions among themselves, and cooling, separated into separate orbs. How like is all this to the history of nations. These, conformed once together in one unstable mass of wandering tribes, have in like manner separated from their nebulous brethren, and, setting up their internal vortices, have coalesced into nations. And yet as a system of planets, albeit with their own distinctive motions, do all revolve in one direction round. one central force, so the different families of nations, which we may call the planets of a system, seem in like manlier compelled by a power external to themselves in one particular course to play a particular part in the world's history. The early stone age Turanians, the Cushite civilizers of Egypt and Chaldaea, the Semitic people, may all be looked upon as different systems of nations, each with their mission to the human race; and thus the Aryan people, after they had become so separated as to lose all family remembrance, are found working together to finish an assigned destiny, migrating in every direction, and carrying with them everywhere the seeds of a higher civilization.

If we desire to get any idea of the process by which the separation of the Aryan people became completed, we must put quite upon one side the idea of a nation as we see it now. Now, when we speak the word, we think of a political unit subject to one government, stationary, and confined within pretty exact limits of space. But very different was the nation during the process of its foundation; there was scarcely any political unity among them, their homes were unfixed, the members constantly shifting and changing combinations, like those heaps of sand we see carried along in a cyclone. Let us then forget our political atlases, with their different colors and well-marked boundaries, and think not of the inanimate adjunct of a nation, the soil on which it happens to dwell, but of the nation as the men of whom it is made up. The earliest things we discern are those vortices set up in the midst of a homogeneous people, an attractive power somewhere in the midst of them which draws them into closer fellowship. It acts like the attractive power of a crystal in selecting from any of the surrounding matters the fragments most suited to its proper formation. Thus the earliest traditions of a people are generally the history of some individual tribe from which the whole nation feigns itself descended; either because of its actual pre-eminence from the beginning, the power it had of drawing other tribes to share its fortunes, or because, out of many tribes drawn together by some common interest or sentiment, the bards of later days selected this one tribe from among the others, and adopted its traditions for their own. If we remember this, much that would otherwise appear a hopeless mass of contradiction and ambiguity is capable of receiving a definite meaning.

The first rays of European history shine upon the island-dotted sea and bounding coasts of the AEgean. Here sprang into life the Greek people, who have left behind so splendid a legacy of art and philosophy. These, as has been already said, made their entry into Europe traversing the southern shores of the Euxine, along which passed, still as one people, the ancestors of the Greeks and the Italians. The former, at all events, seem to have delayed long upon their route, and it was upon these shores, or perhaps rather in the table-land of ancient Phrygia, that first began the separation of two races who reunited to form the Greek nation. Some, the older race, the Pelasgi, made their way to the Hellespont, and by that route into European Greece; the others, the Ionians as they subsequently became, passed onward to the sea-shore of Asia Minor, and, tempted no doubt by the facilities of the voyage, crossed from this mainland to the neighboring islands, which lie so thickly scattered over the AEgean that the mariner passing from shore to shore of Asiatic and European Greece need never on his voyage lose sight of land. They did not, however, find these islands deserted, or occupied by savages only. The Phoenicians had been there beforehand, as they were beforehand upon almost every coast in Europe, and had made mercantile stations and established small colonies for the purposes of trading with the Pelasgi of Greece. The adventurous Ionians were thus brought early into contact with the advanced civilization of Asia, and from this source gained in all probability a knowledge of navigation, letters, and some of the Semitic mythical legends. Thus while the mainland Greeks had altered little of the primitive culture, the germs of a Hellenic civilization, of a Hellenic life, were being fostered in the islands of the AEgean. We see this reflected in many Greek myths; in the legend, for example, of Minos and his early Cretan kingdom, in the myth of Aphrodite springing from the sea by Cythera, and in the worship of Phoebus Apollo which sprang up in Delos. Legend spoke of two Minoi, one, the legislator of Crete, representative of all that was most ancient in national polity, and for that reason transferred to he the judge of souls in Hell; the second, he who made war against the Athenians, and compelled them to pay their dreadful yearly tribute of seven youths and seven maidens to be devoured of the Minotaur in the Cretan labyrinth. Until Theseus came. No doubt the two Minoi are but amplifications of one being, who, whether mythical or historical, is an echo in the memory of Greeks of the still older Cretan kingdom. In both tales Minos has a dreadful aspect; perhaps because this " Lord of the Isles " had been inimical to the early growing communities of the mainland.

The myths of Aphroditê and Apollo have been already commented upon as enfolding within them the history of their origin. Aphroditê is essentially an Asiatic divinity; she springs to life in a Phoenician colony. But Phoebus Apollo is before all things the god of the Ionian Greeks; and as their first national life begins in the islands, his birth too takes place in one of these, the central one of all, Delos. In Homer, Delos, or Ortygia, is feigned to be the central spot of the earth.

Thus the Greeks were from the beginning a commercial people. Before their history began, there is prof that they had established a colony in the Delta of the Nile; and the frequent use of the word Javan1 in the Bible which here stands for Ionians shows how familiar was their name to the dwellers in Asia. Wherever these mariners came in contact with their brethren of the continent they excited in them the love of adventure, and planted the germs of a new life, so that it was under their paramount influence that these primitive Greeks began to coalesce from mutually hostile tribes into nations. In northern Greece it was that the gathering together of tribes and cities first began. These confederations were always based primarily upon religious union, the protection of a common deity, a union to protect and support a common shrine. They were called Amphictyonies, confederations of neighbors, a name which lived long in the history of Greece. These amphictyonies seem first to have arisen in the north. Here too the words Hellenic, Hellenes, first spring up as national epithets. Hellas never extended farther north than the north of Thessaly, and was naturally marked off from foreign countries by Olympia and Pierus. But the term spread southwards till it embraced all Greek-speaking lands to the extremity of the peninsula, and over the islands of the AEgean, and the coast of Asia Minor, on to the countless colonies which issued from Greek shores; for Hellas was not a geographical term, it included all the peoples of true Hellenic speech, and distinguished them from the barbaroi, the " babblers," of other lands.

The two great nations of the Greco-Italic family kept up some knowledge of each other after they had forgotten the days of their common life, and, strange to say, in days before either of the two races had come to regard itself as a distinct people, each was so regarded by the other. The Italians classed the Greeks in the common name of Greci or Graii, and the Greeks bestowed the name of 'Ottikos upon the nation of the Italians. It is curious to reflect upon the different destinies which lay ahead of these two races, who came under such similar conditions into their new homes. Whether it were through some peculiarity in their national character, or a too rapid civilization, or the too great influences of a changeful character and adventurous life, the Greeks never welded properly together the units of their race; the Italians through a much slower process of integration lived to weld their scattered fragments into the most powerful nation the world has ever seen.

This second half, then, of the Greco-Italic family, crossing the Hellespont like (or with) the first dwellers in Greece proper, proceeded onwards until, skirting the shores of the Adriatic, they found out a second peninsula, whose fertile plains tempted them to dispute the possession of the land with the older inhabitants. Who were these older inhabitants? In part they must have been those lake-dwellers of northern Italy to whom reference was made in our second chapter, and who were evidently closely allied to the stone-age men of Switzerland; but besides these we have almost no trace of the men who were dispossessed by the Italic tribes, and these last who pushed to the farthest extremity of the peninsula must have completely absorbed, or completely exterminated, the aborigines. The process by which the Italians spread over the land is altogether hidden from us. Doubtless their several seats were not assigned to the different branches at once, or without bloodshed. Though still no more than separate tribes, we are able to divide the primitive Italicans into stocks of which the southern most resembled the ancient type of the Pelasgic family; those in the centre formed the Latin group; while north of these lay the Etruscans, the most civilized of all the three. At this time the tribes seem to have acknowledged no common bond, nothing corresponding to the word Hellenic had sprung up to unite their interests: existence was as yet to the strongest only. And while the land was in this chaotic state, one tribe, or small confederacy of tribes, among the Latin people began to assert its pre-eminence. We see them dimly looming through a cloud of fable, daring, warlike, unscrupulous in their dealings with their neighbors, firm in their allegiance to each other. This tribe gradually increased in strength and proportions till, from being a mere band of robbers defending themselves within their rude fortifications, they grew in the traditions of their descendants, and of the other tribes whom in course of time they either subdued or absorbed, to be regarded as the founders of Rome. They did not accomplish their high destiny without trials and reverses. More powerful neighboring kingdoms looked on askance during the days of their rise, and found opportunity more than once to over-throw their city and all but subdue their state. Their former brethren, the Kelts,1 who had been beforehand of all the Aryan races in entering Europe, and now formed the most powerful people in this quarter of the globe, several times swept down upon them like a devastating storm. But after each reverse the infant colony arose with renewed Antaean vigor.

Thus in Italy, the development from the tribal to the national state was internal. No precocious maritime race awoke in many different centres the seeds of nationality; rather this nationality was a gradual growth from one root, the slow response to a central attractive force. The energy of Rome did not go out in sea adventure, or in the colonization of distant lands; but it was firmly bound to absorb the different people of her own peninsula, people of like blood with herself, but in every early stage of culture from an almost nomadic condition to one of considerable advancement in the arts of peace.

When from the Greeks and Romans we turn to the Kelts and Teutons, we must descend much lower in the records of history before we can get any clear glimpse at these. The Kelts, who were probably the first Aryans in Europe, seem gradually to have been forced farther and farther west by the incursions of other peoples. At one time, however, we have evidence that they extended eastward, at least as far as the Rhine, and over all that northern portion of Italy now Lombardy and part of Sardinia which to the Romans went by the name of Cisalpine Gaul. The long period of subjection to the Roman rule which Gaul experienced, obliterated in that country all traces of its early Keltic manners, and we are reduced for our information concerning these to the pages of Roman historians, or to the remains of Keltic laws and customs preserved in the western homes of the race. The last have only lately received a proper attention. The most primitive Irish code the Brehon laws has been searched for traces of the primitive Keltic life. From both our sources we gather that the Kelts were divided into tribes regarded as members of one family. These clans were ruled over by chiefs, whose offices were hereditary, or very early became so. They were thus but slightly advanced out of the most primitive conditions, they cannot be described as a nation. Had they been so, extensive and warlike as they were, they would have been capable of subduing all the other infant nationalities of Aryan folk. As it was, as mere combinations of tribes under some powerful chieftain (Caesar describes just such), they gave trouble to the Roman armies even under a Caesar, and were in early days the most dreadful enemies of the Republic. Under Brennus, they besieged and took Rome, sacked the city, and were only induced to retire on the payment of a heavy ransom. A hundred years later, under another Brennus, they made their way into Thrace, ravaged the whole country, and from Nicomedes, King of Bithynia, obtained a settlement in Asia Minor in the district which from them received the name of Galatia. The occurrence of those two names Brennus shows us that this could hardly have been a mere personal name. It is undoubtedly the Celtic Brain, a king or chieftain, the same from which we get the mythic Bran,' and in all probability the Irish O'Brien. The recognition of the Celtic fighting capacity in the ancient world is illustrated by another circumstance, and this is more especially interesting to us of the modern world, whose army is so largely made up of Kelts from Ireland and Scotland (Highlanders). Hierôn I., the powerful tyrant of Syracuse, founded his despotism, as he afterwards confessed, chiefly upon the 30,000 Gaulish mercenaries whom he kept in pay.

For the rest; we know little of the internal Keltic life and of the extent of its culture. Probably this differed considerably in different parts, in Gaul for instance, and in Ireland. The slight notices of Gaulish religion which Caesar gives refer chiefly to its external belongings, to the hereditary sacerdotal class, who seem also to have been the bardic class; of its myths and of their real significance we know little more than what can be gathered by analogy of other nations. We may assert that their nature-worship approached most nearly to the Teutonic form among those of all the Aryan peoples.

Peculiarly interesting to us are such traces as can be gleaned of the Teutonic race. The first time that they show themselves upon the stage of History is in company with the Kelts, if indeed the Teutones, who in company with the Cimbri, the Tigurini and the Ambrones were defeated by Marius (B.C. 101) were really Teutons. The second of these four names is the same with the still extant Cymri (pronounced Cnmri), the native name of the Welsh, who are of course Kelts; so that, if this be the first appearance of Germans, we find them in company with the Kelts. What branch of the German family (if any) the Teutones were, is quite uncertain. Again, in the pages of Caesar we meet with several names of tribes evidently of German origin. The Treviri, the Marcomanni (Mark men, men of the march or boundary), Allemanni (all-men, or men of the great or the mixed'' nation), the Suevi (Suabians), the Cherusci men of the sword, perhaps the same as Saxons, whose name has the same meaning.

It is not till after the death of Theodosius at the end of the fourth century of our era that the Germans fill a conspicuous place on the historical canvas. By this time they had come to be divided into a number of different nations, similar in most of the elements of their civilization and barbarism, closely allied in languages, but politically unconnected, or even opposed.

Most of these Teutonic peoples grew into mighty nations and deeply influenced the future of European history. It is there-fore right that we pass them rapidly in review. 1. The Goths had been long settled in the region of the Lower Danube, chiefly in the country called Moesia, where Ulfilas, a Gothic prince who had been converted to Christianity, returned to preach to his countrymen, became a bishop among them, and by his translation of the Bible into their tongue, the Moeso-Gothic, has left a perpetual memorial of the language. During the reign of Honorius, the son of Theodosius, a portion of this nation, the West or Visi-goths, quitted their home and undertook under Alaric (All-king) their march into Italy, thrice besieged and finally took Rome. Then turning aside, they founded a powerful kingdom in the south of Gaul and in Spain. A century later the East-Goths (Ostro-Goths), under the great Theodoric (People's-king) again invaded Italy and founded an Ostrogothic kingdom upon the ruins of the Western Empire. 2, 3, 4, 5. The Suevi, Alani, Burgundians, and Vandals crossed the Rhine in 405, and entered Roman territory never again to return to whence they came. The Burgundians (City-men) fixed their abode in east-central Gaul (Burgundy and Switzerland), where their kingdom lasted till it was subdued by the Franks; but the other three passed on into Spain, and the Vandals (Wends) ' from Spain into Africa, where they founded a kingdom. 6. The Franks, (Free-men) having been for nearly a century settled between the Meuse and the Scheldt, began under Clovis (Chlodvig, Hludwig, Lewis,) (480 A.D.) their career of victory, from which they did not rest until the whole of Gaul owned the sway of Merovingian kings. 7. The Longobardi (Long-beards, or men of the long borde, long stretch of alluvial land), who after the Ostrogoths had been driven out of Italy by the Emperor of the East, founded in defiance of his power a second Teutonic kingdom in that country, a kingdom which lasted till the days of Charlemagne. 8. And last, but we may safely say not least, the Saxons (Sword-men, from seaxa, a sword) who invaded Britain, and under the name of Angles founded the nation to which we belong, the longest lived of all those which rose upon the ruins of the Roman Empire.

The condition of the German people, even so late as the time when they began their invasion of the Roman territory, was far behind that of the majority of their Aryan fellows. It is likely that they were little more civilized than the Greeks and Romans were, in days when they lived together as one people. For the moment when we catch sight of these the Greeks and Romans in their new homes, we see them settled agriculturists, with no trace left of their wandering habits. It was not so with the Teutons : they knew agriculture certainly, they had known it before they separated from the other peoples of the European family (for the Greek and Latin words for plough reappear in Teutonic speech'), but they had not altogether bid adieu to their migratory life ; we see them still flowing in their nebulous condition into the Roman lands. Even the Tartars of our day the very picture of a nomadic people —practise some form of agriculture. They plant buckwheat, which, growing up in a few months, allows them to reap the fruits of their industry without tying them long to a particular spot. The Teutons were more stationary than the Tartars, but doubtless they too were constantly shifting their homes choosing fresh homesteads, as Tacitus says they did, wherever any spot or grove or stream attracted them. The condition of society called the village community, which has been described in a former chapter, though long abandoned by the cultivated Greeks and Romans, was still suitable to the exigencies of their life; but these exigencies imposed upon it some fresh conditions. Their situation, the situation of those who made their way into the western countries of Europe, was essentially that of conquerors ; for they must keep in subjection the original inhabitants, whether Romans or Celts ; and so all their social arrangements bent before the primary necessity of an effective war footing. Age and wisdom were of less value to the community than youthful vigor. The patriarchal chief, chosen for his reputation for wisdom and swaying by his mature counsels the free assemblies of the states, gives place with them to the leader, famous for his valor and fortunes in the field, by virtue of which he exacts a more implicit obedience than would be accorded in unwarlike times, until by degrees his office becomes hereditary ; the partition of the conquered soil among the victors, and the holding of it upon conditions of military service, conditions which led so easily to the assertion of a principle of primogeniture, and thence, by slow but natural stages, to the conditions of tenure known as feudal ; these are the marks of the early Teutonic society.

Such germs of literary life as they had were enshrined in the ballads, such as all nations possess in some form. The re-echoes of these have come down to us in the earliest known poems by men of Teutonic race, all of which are unfortunately of very recent date. All are distinguished by the principle of versifying which is essentially Teutonic ; the trusting of the cadence, not to an exact measurement of syllables or quantities, but to the pauses or beats of the voice in repetition, the effect of these beats being heightened by the use of alliteration. Poems of this true Teutonic character are the elder (or Soemund's) "Edda " in the Icelandic, our Saxon poem "Beowulf " and the " Bard's Tale," and one or two Low German ballads, the most celebrated of which, though one of the latest, is the "Nibelungen lied." These poems repeat the old mythic legends which had for centuries been handed down-from father to son, and display the mythology and religion of our German ancestors, such as in a former chapter we endeavored to sketch them out. Slight as they are, they are of inestimable value, in that they help us to. read the mind of heathen Germany, and to weigh the significance of the last great revolution in Europe's history, a revolution wherein we through our ancestors have taken and through ourselves are still taking part, and in which we have therefore so close an interest.

But having carried the reader down to this point, our task comes to an end. Even for Europe, the youngest born as it were. in the world's history, when we have passed the epoch of Teutonic invasion, the star of history sera rubens has definitely risen. Nations from this time forward emerge more and more into light, and little or nothing falls to the part of pre-historic study.