DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.29898#0022
XVlll
PREFACE.
discrepancy exists ; but it has appeared to me an almost inevitable
consequence of the different modes of investigation pursued. Almost
all those who have hitherto written on these subjects have derived
their information from Greek and Roman written texts; but, if I am
not very much mistaken, these do not suffice. The classic authors
were very imperfectly informed as to the history of the nations who
preceded or surrounded them ; they knew very little of the archaeology
of their own countries, and less of their ethnography. So long, there-
fore, as our researches are confined to what they had written, many
important problems remain unsolved, and must ever remain as un-
solvable as they have hitherto proved.
- My conviction is, that the lithic mode of investigation is not only
capable of supplementing to a very great extent the deficiencies of
the graphic method, and of yielding new and useful results, but
that the information obtained by its means is much more trust-
worthy than anything that can be elaborated from the books of that
early age. It does not therefore terrify me in the least to be told that
such men as Niebuhr, Oornewall Lewis, or Grote, have arrived at
conclusions different from those I have ventured to express in the
following pages. Their information is derived wholly from what is
written, and it does not seem ever to have occurred to them, or to any
of our best scholars, that there was either history or ethnography
built into the architectural remains of antiquity.
While they were looking steadily at one side of the shield, I fancy
I have caught a glimpse of the other.
It has been the accident of my life—I do not claim it as a merit—
that I have wandered all over the Old World. I have seen much that
they never saw, and I have had access to sources of information of
which they do not suspect the existence. While they were trying to
reconcile what the Greek or Roman authors said about nations who
never wrote books, and with regard to whom they consequently had
little information, I was trying to read the history which these very
people had recorded in stone, in characters as clear and far more in-
delible than those written in ink. If, consequently, we arrived at
different conclusions, it may possibly be owing more to the sources
from which the information is derived than to any difference between
the individuals who announce it.
Since the invention of printing, I am quite prepared to admit that
the “ litera sci’ipta ” may suffice. In an age like the present, when
nine-tenths of the population can read, and every man who has any-
thing to say rushes into print, or makes a speech which is printed next
PREFACE.
discrepancy exists ; but it has appeared to me an almost inevitable
consequence of the different modes of investigation pursued. Almost
all those who have hitherto written on these subjects have derived
their information from Greek and Roman written texts; but, if I am
not very much mistaken, these do not suffice. The classic authors
were very imperfectly informed as to the history of the nations who
preceded or surrounded them ; they knew very little of the archaeology
of their own countries, and less of their ethnography. So long, there-
fore, as our researches are confined to what they had written, many
important problems remain unsolved, and must ever remain as un-
solvable as they have hitherto proved.
- My conviction is, that the lithic mode of investigation is not only
capable of supplementing to a very great extent the deficiencies of
the graphic method, and of yielding new and useful results, but
that the information obtained by its means is much more trust-
worthy than anything that can be elaborated from the books of that
early age. It does not therefore terrify me in the least to be told that
such men as Niebuhr, Oornewall Lewis, or Grote, have arrived at
conclusions different from those I have ventured to express in the
following pages. Their information is derived wholly from what is
written, and it does not seem ever to have occurred to them, or to any
of our best scholars, that there was either history or ethnography
built into the architectural remains of antiquity.
While they were looking steadily at one side of the shield, I fancy
I have caught a glimpse of the other.
It has been the accident of my life—I do not claim it as a merit—
that I have wandered all over the Old World. I have seen much that
they never saw, and I have had access to sources of information of
which they do not suspect the existence. While they were trying to
reconcile what the Greek or Roman authors said about nations who
never wrote books, and with regard to whom they consequently had
little information, I was trying to read the history which these very
people had recorded in stone, in characters as clear and far more in-
delible than those written in ink. If, consequently, we arrived at
different conclusions, it may possibly be owing more to the sources
from which the information is derived than to any difference between
the individuals who announce it.
Since the invention of printing, I am quite prepared to admit that
the “ litera sci’ipta ” may suffice. In an age like the present, when
nine-tenths of the population can read, and every man who has any-
thing to say rushes into print, or makes a speech which is printed next