Squaring the Shield: William Ridgeway's Two Models of Early Greece
2014; Routledge; Volume: 40; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/01916599.2013.870376
ISSN1873-541X
Autores Tópico(s)Classical Antiquity Studies
ResumoSummaryFrom the early 1880s the Cambridge-trained classicist William Ridgeway had applied cutting-edge anthropological theory to his reading of ancient Greek literature in order to develop an evolutionary account of the continuous development of early Greek social institutions. Then, at the turn of the century, he began to argue that archaeological evidence demonstrated that the Achaean warriors described by Homer were in origin Germanic tribesmen from north of the Alps who had but recently conquered Mycenaean Greece. The present paper inquires as to how Ridgeway reconciled these seemingly opposed visions of early Greek society. A fairly comprehensive survey of his writings leads to the suggestion that, in Ridgeway's opinion, Achaean invasion had left little lasting impact upon most early Greek social institutions, but that it had been responsible for a fundamental shift from matriarchy to patriarchy, and that this shift was the key to the subsequent greatness of Greek—and so ultimately Western—civilisation.Keywords: William Ridgewayhistory of archaeologypatriarchal theoryprehistoryHenry MaineHomer AcknowledgementsThe author of this paper knows no Greek and has been wholly reliant in this respect upon the expertise of Rachel Stroumsa. Happily he is married to Ms. Stroumsa and so this paper may be said to imitate an established Cambridge tradition such that one member of a scholarly partnership performs the hard work while the other lays claim to authorship. The author is also indebted to Professor James Whitley of Cardiff University for his eminently sensible approach to the interpretation of the life and work of his archaeological predecessors, his acute insights and helpful suggestions regarding Ridgeway and his students, and his generous willingness to bestow time and encouragement on an outsider to the field of Mediterranean Archaeology.Notes1 Unless explicitly stated, the term ‘evolutionary’ is used in this paper, as it was by Ridgeway and many of his contemporaries, to signify continuous development. As such, it has no necessary association with Darwin's idea of natural selection. Indeed, with regard to archaeology, ‘evolutionary models’ are usually seen as founded on the eighteenth-century stadial models developed in the Scottish Enlightenment. For a standard account of nineteenth-century ‘evolutionary archaeology’, see the chapter of this title in Bruce G. Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought, second edition (Cambridge, 2006).2 Ridgeway's standing, as well as some of his key concerns, is illustrated by his authorship in the famous 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica of articles on ‘Achaeans’, ‘Celts’, and ‘Hallstatt’.3 See, in particular, the introduction to James Whitley, The Archaeology of Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 2001); Mary Beard ‘The Invention (and Reinvention) of “Group D”: An Archaeology of the Classical Tripos, 1879–1894', in Classics in 19th and 20th Century Cambridge: Curriculum, Culture and Community, edited by Christopher Stray (Cambridge, 1999), 95–134. For useful background on nineteenth-century views on Greek art, and also on Homer, see Richard Jenkyns, The Victorians and Ancient Greece (Cambridge, MA, 1981).4 See William Ridgeway, The Relation of Archaeology to Classical Studies (1907); William Ridgeway, ‘Presidential Address: The Relation of Anthropology to Classical Studies’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 39 (1909), 10–25.5 William Ridgeway, The Early Age of Greece [hereafter EAG], 2 vols (Cambridge, 1901, 1931), I, 474.6 There is as yet no general study of this period, and at most a handful of partial publications that, however, paint a fairly clear picture. One pioneering work is Thomas R. Trautmann, Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship (Berkeley, CA, 1988), but see especially the appendix on ‘The Revolution in Ethnological Time’ added to the 2008 edition. Trautmann here drew attention to the significance of the discovery of prehistory on the history of anthropology, which he posited as a crucial context of Morgan's comparative kinship studies. My own forthcoming article shows how, from the 1880s onward, an archaeologically inspired racial invasion model challenged the hitherto dominant model of prehistory in terms of Volk migrations derived from comparative philology; see Simon Cook, ‘Making of the English: English History, British Identity, Aryan Villages, 1870–1914’, Journal of the History of Ideas, forthcoming. This last paper is itself a general account of an historiographical shift that I first encountered while working on the historical thought of the late Victorian economist Alfred Marshall; see, in particular, Simon Cook, ‘Race and Nation in Marshall’s Histories', European Journal of Economic Thought, 20 (2013), 940–56; Simon Cook, ‘From Ancients and Moderns to Geography and Anthropology: The Meaning of History in the Thought of Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Alfred Marshall’, History of Political Economy, 45 (2013), 311–43, especially the last section.7 Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1895), II, 240. Such inquiries were soon given an authoritative treatment in H. Munro Chadwick, The Origin of the English Nation (Cambridge, 1907), which was published as part of the new ‘Cambridge Archaeological and Ethnological Series’. For further discussion, see Cook, ‘Making of the English’.8 Ridgeway was clearly the prime mover in the establishment of both archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge University; see Grahame Clark, Prehistory at Cambridge and Beyond (Cambridge, 1989), 18, 27; Pamela Jane Smith, ‘Ridgeway and the Board’ in A ‘Splendid Idiosyncrasy’: Prehistory at Cambridge 1915–50 (Oxford, 2009). Given Ridgeway's close working relationship with W. H. Rivers in the running of the new Cambridge Anthropological Board after 1904, the question arises as to whether Ridgeway's ideas of prehistoric invasion might have some connection to Rivers' subsequent conversion from evolutionary anthropology to models of cultural diffusion by way of the contact of peoples. That this question seems never to have been posed bears testimony to the blinkered perspectives established by disciplinary histories.9 For transcriptions of the notes that Marshall took from his reading of Maine and others, see Alfred Marshall, ‘Marshall’s Early Historical Notes', edited by Simon Cook, Marshall Studies Bulletin, 10 (2008), http://www.dse.unifi.it/CMpro-v-p-139.html (accessed 10 November 2013).10 Perceval Laurence, The Law and Custom of Primogeniture. (Being an Essay Which, Jointly with Another, Obtained the Yorke Prize of the University of Cambridge) (Cambridge, 1878).11 Perceval Laurence, ‘Judges and Litigants’, Journal of Philology, 8 (1879), 125–32 (125). ‘I need hardly say’, added Laurence, ‘that Mr. Shilleto was one of the very few philologists whose commendations, bestowed on so brilliant a scholar as Sir Henry Maine, would be other than absurd; see Laurence, ‘Judges and Litigants’, 125.12 William Ridgeway, ‘Some Notes on the Politics of Aristotle’, Transactions of the Cambridge Philological Society, 2 (1882), 123–53. See also Ridgeway's later account of this dissertation where he also credits Maine with being the first to apply the comparative method to ancient civilisations: ‘my personal obligations to whom I can never forget’; see Ridgeway, ‘Presidential Address’, 11.13 The question here revolves around the reading and meaning of the word o͑μόκαπος (homokapos). Ridgeway's contention is that in Aristotle's account of the first family association, homokapoi, derived from κῆπος (kepos, meaning ‘land’) should be preferred to the reading homokapnoi, from καπνός (kapnos, meaning ‘smoke’), the reading of Grote and Susehmil, or to homokapoi, from κᾶπος (kapos, meaning ‘manger’), the reading of Jowett and Newman. Grote and Susemihl's reading emphasises the common cooking of the food; Jowett and Newman's reading focuses on the common storage of the food; but Ridgeway's textual manipulations allow him to put the spotlight not on the food but on the plot of land from which it comes (and hence on the common production of food). For other commentaries, see especially William Lambert Newman, The Politics of Aristotle, 8 vols (Oxford, 1887–1902), II, 113; Franz Susemihl and Robert Drew Hicks, The Politics of Aristotle: A Revised Text (London, 1894), books I–V, especially 143–46.14 Ridgeway's reading requires him to assume a Doric lengthening in the quote from Epimenides mentioned by Aristotle. While Ridgeway asserts confidently that nothing ‘is more likely’, this reading is not entirely obvious: it requires us to assume that Epimenides used Doric forms (possible, but not known), and that the portmanteau word ὁόμόκῆπος (homokepos) was in use (theoretically possible but not otherwise known).15 Ridgeway, ‘Some Notes on the Politics of Aristotle’, 126 note.16 Ridgeway, ‘Some Notes on the Politics of Aristotle', 126. See also the summary of this argument given in Ridgeway, EAG, II, 65. For an appropriate statement of Maine’s views, see, for example, Henry Maine, The Early History of Institutions (New York, NY, 1875), 81–82.17 Ridgeway, ‘Some Notes on the Politics of Aristotle’, 127. See Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society (New York, NY, 1877), 47–81.18 Note that Maine himself shifted ground somewhat during the 1870s, conceding in 1875 for example that the ‘naturally organised, self-existing, Village Community can no longer be claimed as an institution specially characteristic of the Aryan races’; see Maine, Early History of Institutions, 77.19 A further factor at play here was the anti-German reaction amongst French scholars that followed the Franco-Prussian war, which led to a concerted attempt to demonstrate that the modern French nation did not have Germanic roots; see in particular Fustel de Coulanges, Recherches sur quelques problèmes d'histoire (Paris, 1885).20 John F. McLennan, Primitive Marriage: An Inquiry into the Origin of the Form of Capture in Marriage Ceremonies (Edinburgh, 1865), v–vii.21 Henry Maine, Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Early History Society, and Its Relation to Modern Ideas, third American edition from the fifth English edition (New York, NY, 1879), 358.22 Maine, Ancient Law, 364.23 William Ridgeway, ‘The Homeric Trial Scene’, Journal of Philology, 10 (1882), 30–33 (31).24 William Ridgeway, ‘The Homeric Land System’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 6 (1885), 319–39 (327, 334).25 Ridgeway, ‘Homeric Land System’, 336–37. Ridgeway here tells us: ‘In the shield the poet’s aim is to give a series of pictures of the various sides of human existence (except those which are sad and mournful)'; see Ridgeway, ‘Homeric Land System’, 337.26 See, for example, Henry Maine, ‘The Chief and the Land’, 147–84, in Early History of Institutions; Henry Maine, ‘The Process of Feudalisation’, 131–74, in Village Communities in the East and West, third edition (New York, NY, 1876).27 W. J. Ashley, ‘The Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards’, Political Science Quarterly, 9 (1894), 148–50 (149).28 William Ridgeway, ‘The Homeric Talent: Its Origin, Values and Affinities’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 8 (1887), 133–58 (133). The importance of cattle as early capital is emphasised in Maine, ‘The Chief and the Land’, in Early History of Institutions. It is also emphasised in a long quotation from Morgan's Ancient Society in Ridgeway's 1882 dissertation on Aristotle's Politics; see Morgan, Ancient Society, 25; Ridgeway, ‘Some Notes on the Politics of Aristotle’, 147.29 Ridgeway, ‘Homeric Talent’, 136.30 William Ridgeway, The Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards (Cambridge, 1892), 8–9, and ‘Appendix A: The Homeric Trial Scene’.31 William Ridgeway, ‘What People Produced the Objects Called Mycenean?’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 16 (1896), 77–119. On the editorial row, see Mary Beard, ‘While Ridgeway Lives, Research Can Ne’er Be Dull', in The Owl of Minerva: The Cambridge Praelections of 1906, edited by Christopher Stray (Cambridge, 2005), 111–41 (121).32 Ridgeway, ‘What People?’, 77. The quotation is taken from the very first sentence of Ridgeway's article.33 Ridgeway, ‘What People?’, 115. The depiction on the shield of a potter at work is also briefly discussed; see Ridgeway, ‘What People?’, 117.34 On the shift away from the East in Mycenaean studies, see David Hogarth, ‘Prehistoric Greece’, in Authority and Archaeology, second edition (London, 1899), 220–53; Arthur Evans, ‘“The Eastern Question” in Anthropology, Presidential Address to Section H.’, in Report of the Sixty-Sixth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (London, 1896), 906–22. An initial impetus to this British shift of focus was given by Salomon Reinach, Le mirage oriental (Paris, 1893).35 Ridgeway, ‘What People?’, 119.36 Jane Harrison, ‘The Dawn of Greece’, Quarterly Review, 194 (1901), 218–43 (231–32).37 H. J. Rose, ‘The Early Age of Greece’, Man, 32 (1932), 75–77 (76).38 See for example the reference to the 1885 discussion of ‘the Greeks of the Homeric Age’ (Ridgeway, ‘Homeric Land System’) as a discussion of the Homeric Achaeans (Ridgeway, EAG, II, 397), and the presentation of a statement about early matriarchy in Athens in the dissertation on Aristotle (Ridgeway, ‘Some Notes on the Politics of Aristotle’, 127) as a statement ‘that kinship at Athens was originally traced through females’ (Ridgeway, EAG, II, 65). For Ridgeway's autobiographical take, in which his shift from evolutionary studies to invasion theory is presented as an intensification of (an almost patriotic) campaign against a ruling orthodoxy of ex Oriente lux, see Ridgeway, ‘Presidential Address’, 15.39 Ridgeway, ‘What People?’, 80.40 William Ridgeway, ‘Had the People of Pre-Historic Mycenae a Weight Standard?’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 10 (1889), 90–92. See also William Ridgeway, ‘How Were the Primitive Weight Standards Fixed?’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 10 (1889), 92–97; William Ridgeway, ‘The Origin of the Stadion’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 9 (1888), 18–26; William Ridgeway, ‘Pecus and Pecunia’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 9 (1888), 26–30.41 See Ridgeway, ‘Had the People?’, 92.42 Ridgeway, ‘What People?’, 80. My emphasis.43 Ridgeway, EAG, II, 1.44 Walter Leaf, ‘The Trial Scene in Iliad XVIII’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 8 (1887), 122–32; Leaf's article directly preceded Ridgeway's article, ‘The Homeric Land System’.45 Leaf, ‘Trial Scene’, 130. Leaf also states that the trial scene is said to illustrate ‘the state in its corporate capacity engaged in the actual creation of criminal law, in full consciousness of its momentous task’; see Leaf, ‘Trial Scene’, 126.46 Leaf, ‘Trial Scene’, 130.47 See Homer, The Iliad. Edited with English Notes and Introduction by Walter Leaf, 2 vols (London, 1888), II, 252–54 (as in his 1887 paper, Leaf here refers approvingly to Ridgeway's work on the Homeric talent); William Ridgeway, ‘Leaf’s Iliad', Classical Review, 4 (1890), 19–21 (20). Attention should perhaps be drawn to Henry Sidgwick's article, which, engaging with recent arguments by the German scholar J. H. Lipsius, foreshadows the position that Ridgeway will return to; see Henry Sidgwick, ‘The Trial Scene in Homer’, Classical Review, 8 (1894), 1–3. Sidgwick accepts (with Lipsius and Maine, against Leaf) that the dispute is over whether blood money has been paid, but (with Maine, against Lipsius and Leaf) argues that the two talents are indeed payment for the judges.48 Ridgeway, EAG, II, 377.49 Ridgeway, EAG, II, 405. This particular victory of aboriginal over intrusive institution Ridgeway explained by reference to the strength and endurance of Pelasgian religion, which had shaped the conception of spilled blood as pollution in the first place.50 See William Ridgeway, ‘The Homeric Dialect’, in EAG, I, 631–84.51 See, for example, Ridgeway, EAG, I, 373, 404–05.52 Ridgeway, EAG, I, 397.53 Ridgeway, EAG, I, 397–98. Harrison quotes this ‘beautiful and pathetic passage’ in her review of Ridgeway's EAG; see Harrison, ‘Dawn of Greece’, 231. One of the anonymous reviewers of this paper astutely points out that Ridgeway's own resolutely non-Celtic Anglo-Irish identity may have some bearing on this wistfully lyrical account of the impermanence of settler peoples and legacies.54 Ridgeway, EAG, I, vii.55 William Greenwell, British Barrows: A Record of the Examination of Sepulchral Mounds in Various Parts of England (London, 1877), 122, 129. For discussion of this new invasion theory see Cook, ‘Making of the English’.56 Of particular significance for Ridgeway was the recasting of the history of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain in light of the new invasion model, a discussion of which provided the introduction to the idea of an Achaean invasion in Ridgeway's 1896 article; see Ridgeway, ‘What People?’, 81–82. Such an introduction was intended to establish that among the learned (if not yet among classical scholars) it was now accepted wisdom that the nations of Europe were not composed of homogenous peoples, and that it should come as no surprise to discover that the ancient Greeks, no less than the modern English, were a mixed-race people.57 As Ridgeway would put it: ‘facts are always more important than mere terms’; see William Ridgeway, The Origin of Tragedy; with Special Reference to the Greek Tragedians (Cambridge, 1910), 70. But Ridgeway's opposition to the new formulation of comparative philology in fact predates his invasion writings. In the preface to his 1892 Origin of Metallic Currency, he emphasised that ‘Comparative Philology taken alone is a misleading guide in the study of Anthropology’ and singled out for special criticism Otto Schrader and Isaac Taylor, two representatives of the new generation of comparative philologers who supported the new Aryan model; see Ridgeway, Origin of Metallic Currency, vi, 61, 65. He then went on to present the combination of ‘literary remains and archaeological evidence’ as a methodological alternative to comparative philology; see Ridgeway, Origin of Metallic Currency, 65.58 See, for example, William Ridgeway, The Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse (Cambridge, 1905); William Ridgeway, ‘Who were the Romans?’, in From the Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. III (1907), 44; William Ridgeway, ‘The Application of Zoological Laws to Man’, in Report of the Seventy-Eighth Meeting of the British Association (London, 1908), 832–47.59 Ridgeway, EAG, II, 4.60 Ridgeway, EAG, II, 349.61 Ridgeway, EAG, II, 15–98.62 Ridgeway, EAG, II, 159. Note these observations: ‘Amid a society where reigned so noble a conception of domestic life and so strong a respect for the wife as that portrayed in Homer, there was not likely to be any place for the unspeakable sin which cankered Greek society in historical times […]. Nor are we unjust in ascribing to the Aegean people all that is grossest in historical Hellas’; see Ridgeway, EAG, II, 353–54.63 See William Ridgeway, ‘Aeschylus, Supplices, 304 sqq.’, in Praelections Delivered before the Senate of the University of Cambridge, 25, 26, 27 January 1906 (Cambridge, 1906), 139–64. See also Beard, ‘While Ridgeway Lives’, in The Owl of Minerva, edited by Stray. Ridgeway's praelection was essentially a job talk, made in an unsuccessful bid to replace (the recently deceased) Sir Richard Jebb as Regius Professor of Greek.64 Ridgeway, Origin of Tragedy, 55, 68.65 Ridgeway, Origin of Tragedy, 108.66 Ridgeway, Origin of Tragedy, 70. Ridgeway adds: ‘In the fully developed Tragedy the lyrics sung by the chorus represent the immemorial laments for the dead, whilst the messengers’ recitals and the dialogues of the dramatis personae correspond to the narrations and speeches of the Epic'; see Ridgeway, Origin of Tragedy, 70.67 Ridgeway, Origin of Tragedy, chapter one. See also Ridgeway, Origin of Tragedy, 108.68 William Ridgeway, ‘Who Were the Dorians?’, in Anthropological Essays presented to Edward Burnett Tylor, edited by W. H. Rivers, R. R. Marett, and Northcote W. Thomas (Oxford, 1907), 295–308. See also Ridgeway, EAG, II 131–41.69 Ridgeway, Origin of Tragedy, 194, 187.70 Ridgeway, Origin of Tragedy, 202. See also Ridgeway, ‘Aeschylus, Supplices’, in Praelections, 161.71 Ridgeway, Origin of Tragedy, 219.72 Ridgeway, Origin of Tragedy, 201.73 Ridgeway, Origin of Tragedy, 201–02.74 Ridgeway, Origin of Tragedy, 217–18.75 Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (London, 1890 [1874]), 63–67.76 See Simon Cook, The Intellectual Foundations of Alfred Marshall's Economic Science: ‘A Rounded Globe of Knowledge’ (Cambridge, 2009).77 Ridgeway, EAG, II, 355.78 Ridgeway, EAG, II, 358–59.
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