Page:Troja by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/14

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
vi
PRIMITIVE GREEK HISTORY.
[Preface.

better materials. Even while the decisions of Grote were still ruling our conceptions of primaeval Greece, Professor Ernst Curtius had perceived with the eye of genius that they were not, and could not be, final. The ethnology of Greece at the dawn of literary history presupposes the ethnology of the heroic age, and ancient myths could not have been attached to certain events and been localized in certain regions, unless there had been some reason for their being so. Cyrus and Charlemagne are heroes of romance only because they were first of all heroes of reality. But Professor Ernst Curtius perceived more than this. The discoveries of Botta and Layard in Nineveh and of Renan in Phoenicia had revealed to him that the germs of the art, and therewith of the culture, of primitive Greece, must have come from the East. The discredited theories which had connected the East and West together were revived, but in a new and scientific form; no longer based on wild speculations, but on the sure foundations of ascertained facts. Curtius even saw already that Oriental influence must have flowed to Greece through two channels, not through the Phoenicians only, but along the high roads of Asia Minor as well.

But what Curtius had divined he was not in a position to prove. The conclusions of Grote still held almost undisputed sway, and the 6th or 7th century B.C. was fixed upon by classical scholars as the mystical period beyond which neither civilization nor history was possible. Even now we are still under the influence of the spirit of scepticism which has resulted from the destructive criticism of the last half-century. The natural tendency of the student of to-day is to post-date rather than to ante-date, and to bring everything down to the latest period that is possible. The same reluctance which the scientific world felt in admitting the antiquity of man, when first asserted by Boucher de Perthes, has been felt by modern scholars in admitting the antiquity of civilization. First, however, the

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.