DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.2532#0051
30
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
.
inherent tendency to group round the most famous and historical figures. There can,
for instance, be no doubt that Charlemagne and Arthur and Vergil and Alexander the
Great are historical figures, with a continuous roll of sober historical records preceding
their own lives and times and following upon them. And yet there is a rich mine of
legend clustering about the name of Charlemagne, the Arthurian Court, about Alexander
the Great and Vergil, and, I might add, the Greek philosopher Pythagoras. These
legends were sometimes formed by slow growth centuries after the period in which the
central hero lived. Nay, we can, in our own day, immediately about us, study and realize
the process by which story and legend are formed and crystallized about one central
figure, when Ave but notice or recall how striking incidents or deeds, clever or epigram-
matic sayings, witty or comic remarks or actions, show a natural tendency to be fathered
upon persons whom we have known ourselves, and who were remarkable for any one of
the qualities or actions mentioned above. So the imaginative and wonder-loving mind
of the people spins its web of legend round the solid core of some prominent personality
in the actual tradition of its past; and if not round a person, then round a striking
object or locality. As Belger has shown in discussing Mycenae,1 this is especially the
case with graves and sepulchral monuments. And he has shown this process in a com-
paratively recent instance in the case of the tomb of a certain Count Gleichen. We can
furthermore hardly be charged with arguing in a circle if, in considering carefully and
giving due weight to the earliest Argive chronologies as preserved in the traditions
handed down especially by Pausanias, we lay stress upon the fact that the residuum of
fact which we thus obtain is strengthened by all collateral evidence in extant literature
and in the ancient monuments at our disposal, and is supported by all the results of our
excavations at the Heraeum. When once we grasp and control the confused mass of
literary traditions concerning this earliest period of Greek history, and carefully sift the
crude statements, placing them side by side in an orderly manner, the logical sobriety,
the salient figures, and their organic relation to one another become manifest and con-
As regards the earliest Argive genealogies, Pausanias is and will ever remain the chief
and safest guide. His account in the sixteenth and eighteenth chapters of the second
book was evidently derived from the best traditions extant in the localities themselves in
his day — and this at a time when the printing-press had not yet destroyed the per-
sistence and accuracy of individual as well as traditional memory. Moreover, the student
of Pausanias must realize that this very sphere of antiquarian research was the one in
which that author was most interested and showed considerable critical capacity. In
this very (sixteenth) chapter we are struck by the critical selection he makes of what
is on the face of it the soundest tradition, and then adds the popular variants. Take,
for instance, the careful manner in which he renders the doubtful record ascribed to
Acusilaus concerning an eponymous hero of Mycenae, — Mycenaeus as a son of a simi-
larly fictitious Sparton — and then rejects it. " I cannot accept the account which they
attribute to Acusilaus, that Mycenaeus was a son of Sparton, and Sparton a son of
Phoroneus; for the Lacedaemonians themselves do not admit it. The Lacedaemonians
certainly have in Amyclae a statue of a woman Sparta; but it would surprise them even
to hear of Sparton, son of Phoroneus."
At first sight we must be somewhat confused by the two different accounts of the
genealogy of Argive rulers, as given in the sixteenth and eighteenth chapters of Pausa-
1 Die Mykenische Lokalsage, pp. 1 ft'. Cf. also article " Ileros," in Roscher's Lexikon, and Rhode's Psyche, pp. 1G4 ft'.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
.
inherent tendency to group round the most famous and historical figures. There can,
for instance, be no doubt that Charlemagne and Arthur and Vergil and Alexander the
Great are historical figures, with a continuous roll of sober historical records preceding
their own lives and times and following upon them. And yet there is a rich mine of
legend clustering about the name of Charlemagne, the Arthurian Court, about Alexander
the Great and Vergil, and, I might add, the Greek philosopher Pythagoras. These
legends were sometimes formed by slow growth centuries after the period in which the
central hero lived. Nay, we can, in our own day, immediately about us, study and realize
the process by which story and legend are formed and crystallized about one central
figure, when Ave but notice or recall how striking incidents or deeds, clever or epigram-
matic sayings, witty or comic remarks or actions, show a natural tendency to be fathered
upon persons whom we have known ourselves, and who were remarkable for any one of
the qualities or actions mentioned above. So the imaginative and wonder-loving mind
of the people spins its web of legend round the solid core of some prominent personality
in the actual tradition of its past; and if not round a person, then round a striking
object or locality. As Belger has shown in discussing Mycenae,1 this is especially the
case with graves and sepulchral monuments. And he has shown this process in a com-
paratively recent instance in the case of the tomb of a certain Count Gleichen. We can
furthermore hardly be charged with arguing in a circle if, in considering carefully and
giving due weight to the earliest Argive chronologies as preserved in the traditions
handed down especially by Pausanias, we lay stress upon the fact that the residuum of
fact which we thus obtain is strengthened by all collateral evidence in extant literature
and in the ancient monuments at our disposal, and is supported by all the results of our
excavations at the Heraeum. When once we grasp and control the confused mass of
literary traditions concerning this earliest period of Greek history, and carefully sift the
crude statements, placing them side by side in an orderly manner, the logical sobriety,
the salient figures, and their organic relation to one another become manifest and con-
As regards the earliest Argive genealogies, Pausanias is and will ever remain the chief
and safest guide. His account in the sixteenth and eighteenth chapters of the second
book was evidently derived from the best traditions extant in the localities themselves in
his day — and this at a time when the printing-press had not yet destroyed the per-
sistence and accuracy of individual as well as traditional memory. Moreover, the student
of Pausanias must realize that this very sphere of antiquarian research was the one in
which that author was most interested and showed considerable critical capacity. In
this very (sixteenth) chapter we are struck by the critical selection he makes of what
is on the face of it the soundest tradition, and then adds the popular variants. Take,
for instance, the careful manner in which he renders the doubtful record ascribed to
Acusilaus concerning an eponymous hero of Mycenae, — Mycenaeus as a son of a simi-
larly fictitious Sparton — and then rejects it. " I cannot accept the account which they
attribute to Acusilaus, that Mycenaeus was a son of Sparton, and Sparton a son of
Phoroneus; for the Lacedaemonians themselves do not admit it. The Lacedaemonians
certainly have in Amyclae a statue of a woman Sparta; but it would surprise them even
to hear of Sparton, son of Phoroneus."
At first sight we must be somewhat confused by the two different accounts of the
genealogy of Argive rulers, as given in the sixteenth and eighteenth chapters of Pausa-
1 Die Mykenische Lokalsage, pp. 1 ft'. Cf. also article " Ileros," in Roscher's Lexikon, and Rhode's Psyche, pp. 1G4 ft'.