PREHISTORIC MAN, ETC. 337 



absent by which the Greek race was denoted historically ; 

 by its western neighbours as "EAXiji'tc, by its eastern neigh- 

 bours as 'laoveg (Javan). This inconsistency was attributed 

 by the Greeks themselves to a period of invasion and 

 migration analogous to that which broke up the Graeco- 

 Roman civilisation of the Mediterranean. Dorian, 

 Thessalian and Boeotian mountaineers were represented as 

 forcing the barrier, or descending from the highlands, of the 

 Balkans, bringing the old established " Achaean " civilisa- 

 tion to an abrupt close, and reducing the /Egean, and 

 mainland Greece in particular, to a chaotic and barbarous 

 state, the recovery from which is the dawn of the historical 

 Hellenic genius. 



3. Some facts within their own experience went to 

 confirm this view. Here and there tribes retained the names 

 and the mode of life of the earlier age ; or a noble family 

 professed to trace its descent beyond the limits of current 

 genealogy, and to identify itself with a Royal house of 

 Achaean princes ; and here and there ruined fortresses 

 remained, or ancient tombs had been disturbed, which 

 seemed to confirm the description of Achaean splendour in 

 the ballads. 



4. Thus much had been established from the beginning 

 of Greek History onwards, and had not been seriously 

 shaken by successive attempts to discredit the traditional 

 view. The theories that the lays are comparatively late 

 compositions, and that they stand in no close relation to 

 a pre- Hellenic age ; that the Achaean Age is an invention, 

 and the Period of the Migrations a hypothesis to explain its 

 inconsistency with the facts of historical geography, all 

 prove too much, and may be met with argument a ad 

 hominem from the same traditional data. No literary 

 critic of the Epic has yet purged himself of a sediment of 

 traditional preconception ; and, in proportion as one or 

 another has attempted to do so, he has been reduced to a 

 merely agnostic position. 



5. Further, until very recent years, every attempt which 

 was made to elucidate the civilisation of the Homeric Age 

 by the monuments of early Greek civilisation rested upon 



