CHAP. IV - THE HELLENIC NATION

Summary

A very slight acquaintance with the works of the authors from whom we have received our accounts of the earliest ages of Grecian history, will be sufficient to lead any attentive reader to observe the extreme proneness of the Greeks to create fictitious persons for the purpose of explaining names, the real origin of which was lost in remote antiquity. Almost every nation, tribe, city, mountain, sea, river, and spring, known to the Greeks, was supposed to have been named after some ancient hero, of whom, very often, no other fact is recorded. These fictions manifestly sprang up not accidentally, but from the genius of the people, which constantly tended to embody the spiritual, and to personify the indefinite. When therefore we are seeking, not for poetry, but for historical facts, we cannot but feel a great distrust of every such legend, and the more, in proportion to the distance of the period to which it carries us back. On the other hand, it would be rash to pronounce that every legend which refers the origin and the name of a Greek tribe to an individual, is on that account incredible. Causes may certainly be imagined, through which the name of a chief might sometimes be transferred to his people. But still it will always be the safest rule to withhold our belief from such traditions, whenever they are not supported by independent trustworthy evidence; and we shall have the stronger reason for rejecting them, the earlier the period to which they relate, and the more obscure the person whose name they record.