Epochs of Greek History: A Lecture

Extract

In choosing a subject which—to me at least—sounds at the same time simple and vague, I feel I have to start with a few explanations. It goes without saying that by Greek history I mean only ancient Greek history. But what are epochs? To distinguish various periods in history is an ordinary, though recently disputed, thing to do. They may be artificial, but they seem necessary to enable us to find a way within the limitless spread of our historical material. Epochs are periods too, but they may be not quite the same. We naturally look first at the original Greek words. 'Εпοχή, deriving from ἐпέχειν, indicates, according to Liddell and Scott, a check, a cessation, a stoppage. In terms of time, and that is to say, of history, it may mean a fixed or turning point. Still, that meaning only appears as late as the astronomer Ptolemaios, i.e. the second century A.d. The other word, пερίοδος, means a cycle within space or time. Pindar speaks of the seasons as ἐτέων пερίοδοι, as the recurring sections of the years; hence it is also used simply as an extent of time. It could be said (and has been said) that the two concepts together, the epochs forming the transitions between every two periods, mark a definite rhythm, a sort of short-long, short-long metre, of the course of history. That may be so; but the Greeks were never aware of it. Modern use, anyway, is different: epoch and period seem to be more or less interchangeable. This occurs, for instance, in Ranke's famous book Über die Epochen der neueren Geschichte. He was chiefly concerned with discussing the possibility of human progress. In his view it consisted in the fact that in each historical period a certain movement of the human mind is displayed, stressing now one and then another tendency. No generation is superior to the preceding one in every respect, each epoch has its own immediate bond with God (‘jede Epoche ist unmittelbar zu Gott’), or to put it more profanely: each epoch or period has its own character, its own achievements, its own faults, its own significance. In Mr. Eliot's words: ‘History is a pattern of timeless moments.’