Part 45

_H. orientalis_, the Lenten rose, has given rise to several fine hybrids with _H. niger_, some of the best forms being clear in colour and distinctly spotted. _H. foetidus_, stinking hellebore, is a native of England, where like _H. viridis_, it is confined chiefly to limestone districts; it is common in France and the south of Europe. Its leaves have 7- to 11-toothed divisions, and the flowers are in panicles, numerous, cup-shaped and drooping, with many bracts, and green sepals tinged with purple, alternating with the five petals.

_H. viridis_, or green hellebore proper, is probably indigenous in some of the southern and eastern counties of England, and occurs also in central and southern Europe. It has bright yellowish-green flowers, 2 to 4 on a stem, with large leaf-like bracts. O. Brunfels and H. Bock (16th century) regarded the plant as the black hellebore of the Greeks.

_H. lividus_, holly-leaved hellebore, found in the Balearic Islands, and in Corsica and Sardinia, is remarkable for the handsomeness of its foliage. White hellebore is _Veratrum album_ (see VERATRUM), a liliaceous plant.

[Illustration: _Helleborus niger_. 1, Vertical section of flower; 2, Nectary, side and front view.]

Hellebores may be grown in any ordinary light garden mould, but thrive best in a soil of about equal parts of turfy loam and well-rotted manure, with half a part each of fibrous peat and coarse sand, and in moist but thoroughly-drained situations, more especially where, as at the margins of shrubberies, the plants can receive partial shade in summer. For propagation cuttings of the rhizome may be taken in August, and placed in pans of light soil, with a bottom heat of 60 deg. to 70 deg. Fahr.; hellebores can also be grown from seed, which must be sown as soon as ripe, since it quickly loses its vitality. The seedlings usually blossom in their third year. The exclusion of frost favours the production of flowers; but the plants, if forced, must be gradually inured to a warm atmosphere, and a free supply of air must be afforded, without which they are apt to become much affected by greenfly. For potting, _H. niger_ and its varieties, and _H. orientalis_, _atrorubens_ and _olympicus_ have been found well suited. After lifting, preferably in September, the plants should receive plenty of light, with abundance of water, and once a week liquid manure, not over-strong. The flowers are improved in delicacy of hue, and are brought well up among the leaves, by preventing access of light except to the upper part of the plants. Of the numerous species of hellebore now grown, the deep-purple-flowered _H. colchicus_ is one of the handsomest; by crossing with _H. guttatus_ and other species several valuable garden forms have been produced, having variously coloured spreading or bell-shaped flowers, spotted with crimson, red or purple.

The rhizome of _H. niger_ occurs in commerce in irregular and nodular pieces, from about 1 to 3 in. in length, white and of a horny texture within. Cut transversely it presents internally a circle of 8 to 12 cuneiform ligneous bundles, surrounded by a thick bark. It emits a faint odour when cut or broken, and has a bitter and slightly acrid taste. The drug is sometimes adulterated with the rhizome of baneberry, _Actaea spicata_, which, however, may be recognized by the distinctly cruciate appearance of the central portion of the attached roots when cut across, and by its decoction giving the chemical reactions for tannin.[1] The rhizome is darker in colour in proportion to its degree of dryness, age and richness in oil. A specimen dried by Schroff lost in eleven days 65% of water.

_H. niger_, _orientalis_, _viridis_, _foetidus_, and several other species of hellebore contain the glucosides _helleborin_, C36H42O6, and _helleborein_, C23H20O15, the former yielding glucose and _helleboresin_, C30H38O4, and the latter glucose and a violet-coloured substance _helleboretin_, C14H20O3. Helleborin is most abundant in _H. viridis_. A third and volatile principle is probably present in _H. foetidus_. Both helleborin and helleborein act poisonously on animals, but their decomposition-products helleboresin and helleboretin seem to be devoid of any injurious qualities. Helleborin produces excitement and restlessness, followed by paralysis of the lower extremities or whole body, quickened respiration, swelling and injection of the mucous membranes, dilatation of the pupil, and, as with helleborein, salivation, vomiting and diarrhoea. Helleborein exercises on the heart an action similar to that of digitalis, but more powerful, accompanied by at first quickened and then slow and laboured respiration; it irritates the conjunctiva, and acts as a sternutatory, but less violently than veratrine. Pliny states that horses, oxen and swine are killed by eating "black hellebore"; and Christison (_On Poisons_, p. 876, 11th ed., 1845) writes: "I have known severe griping produced by merely tasting the fresh root in January." Poisonous doses of hellebore occasion in man singing in the ears, vertigo, stupor, thirst, with a feeling of suffocation, swelling of the tongue and fauces, emesis and catharsis, slowing of the pulse, and finally collapse and death from cardiac paralysis. Inspection after death reveals much inflammation of the stomach and intestines, more especially the rectum. The drug has been observed to exercise a cumulative action. Its extract was an ingredient in Bacher's pills, an empirical remedy once in great repute in France. In British medicine the rhizome was formerly official. _H. foetidus_ was in past times much extolled as an anthelmintic, and is recommended by Bisset (_Med. Ess._, pp. 169 and 195, 1766) as the best vermifuge for children; J. Cook, however, remarks of it (_Oxford Mag._, March 1769, p. 99): "Where it killed not the patient, it would certainly kill the worms; but the worst of it is, it will sometimes kill both." This plant, of old termed by farriers ox-heel, setter-wort and setter-grass, as well as _H. viridis_ (Fr. _Herbe a seton_), is employed in veterinary surgery, to which also the use of _H. niger_ is now chiefly confined in Britain.

In the early days of medicine two kinds of hellebore were recognized, the white or _Veratrum album_ (see VERATRUM), and the black, including the various species of _Helleborus_. The former, according to Codronchius (_Comm.... de elleb._, 1610), Castellus (_De helleb. epist._, 1622), and others, is the drug usually signified in the writings of Hippocrates. Among the hellebores indigenous to Greece and Asia Minor, _H. orientalis_, the rhizome of which differs from that of _H. niger_ and of _H. viridis_ in the bark being readily separable from the woody axis, is the species found by Schroff to answer best to the descriptions given by the ancients of black hellebore, the [Greek: helleboros melas] of Dioscorides. The rhizome of this plant, if identical, as would appear, with that obtained by Tournefort at Prusa in Asia Minor (_Rel. d'un voy. du Levant_, ii. 189, 1718), must be a remedy of no small toxic properties. According to an early tradition, black hellebore administered by the soothsayer and physician Melampus (whence its name _Melampodium_), was the means of curing the madness of the daughters of Proetus, king of Argos. The drug was used by the ancients in paralysis, gout and other diseases, more particularly in insanity, a fact frequently alluded to by classical writers, e.g. Horace (_Sat._ ii. 3. 80-83, _Ep. ad Pis._ 300). Various superstitions were in olden times connected with the cutting of black hellebore. The best is said by Pliny (_Nat. hist._ xxv. 21) to grow on Mt Helicon. Of the three Anticyras that in Phocis was the most famed for its hellebore, which, being there used combined with "sesamoides," was, according to Pliny, taken with more safety than elsewhere.

The British Pharmaceutical Conference has recommended the preparation which it terms _the tinctura veratri viridis_, as the best form in which to administer this drug. It may be given in doses of 5-15 minims. The tincture is prepared from the dried rhizome and rootlets of green hellebore, containing the alkaloids jervine, veratrine and veratroidine. It is recommended as a cardiac and nervous sedative in cerebral haemorrhage and puerperal eclampsia. Black hellebore is a purgative and uterine stimulant.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] For the microscopical characters and for figures of transverse sections of the rhizome, see Lanessan, _Hist. des drogues_, i. 6 (1878).

HELLENISM (from Gr. [Greek: hellenizein], to imitate the Greeks, who were known as [Greek: Hellenes], after [Greek: Hellen], the son of Deucalion). The term "Hellenism" is ambiguous. It may be used to denote ancient Greek culture in all its phases, and even those elements in modern civilization which are Greek in origin or in spirit; but, while Matthew Arnold made the term popular in the latter connexion as the antithesis of "Hebraism," the German historian J. G. Droysen introduced the fashion (1836) of using it to describe particularly the latter phases of Greek culture from the conquests of Alexander to the end of the ancient world, when those over whom this culture extended were largely not Greek in blood, i.e. _Hellenes_, but peoples who had adopted the Greek speech and way of life, _Hellenistai_. Greek culture had, however, both in "Hellenic" and "Hellenistic" times, a common essence, just as light is light whether in the original luminous body or in a reflection, and to describe this by the term Hellenism seems most natural. But whilst using the term in the larger sense, this article, in deference to the associations which have come to be specially connected with it, will devote its principal attention to Hellenism as it appeared in the world after the Macedonian conquests. But it will be first necessary to indicate briefly what Hellenism in itself implied.

No verbal formula can really enclose the life of a people or an age, but we can best understand the significance of the old Greek cities and the life they developed, when, looking at the history of mankind as a whole, we see the part played by reason, active and critical, in breaking down the barriers by which custom hinders movement, in guiding movement to definite ends, in dissipating groundless beliefs and leading onwards to fresh scientific conquests--when we see this and then take note that among the ancient Greeks such an activity of reason began in an entirely novel degree and that its activity in Europe ever since is due to their impulsion. When Hellenism came to stand in the world for something concrete and organic, it was, of course, no mere abstract principle, but embodied in a language, a literature, an artistic tradition. In the earliest existing monument of the Hellenic genius, the Homeric poems, one may already observe that regulative sense of form and proportion, which shaped the later achievements of the race in the intellectual and artistic spheres. It was not till the great colonizing epoch of the 8th and 7th centuries B.C., when the name "Hellene" came into use as the antithesis of "barbarian," that the Greek race came to be conscious of itself as a peculiar people; it was yet some three centuries more before Hellenism stood fully declared in art and literature, in politics and in thought. There was now a new thing in the world, and to see how the world was affected by it is our immediate concern.

I. THE EXPANSION OF HELLENISM BEFORE ALEXANDER.--In the 5th century B.C. Greek cities dotted the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea from Spain to Egypt and the Caucasus, and already Greek culture was beginning to pass beyond the limits of the Greek race. Already in the 7th century B.C., when Hellenism was still in a rudimentary stage, the citizens of the Greek city-states had been known to the courts of Babylon and Egypt as admirable soldiers, combining hardihood with discipline, and Greek mercenaries came to be in request throughout the Nearer East. But as Hellenism developed, its social and intellectual life began to exercise a power of attraction. The proud old civilizations of the Euphrates and the Nile might ignore it, but the ruder barbarian peoples in East and West, on whose coasts the Greek colonies had been planted, came in various degrees under its spell. In some cases an outlying colony would coalesce with a native population, and a fusion of Hellenism with barbarian customs take place, as at Emporium in Spain (Strabo iii. p. 160) and at Locri in S. Italy (Polyb. xii. 5. 10). Perinthus included a Thracian phyle. The stories of Anacharsis and Scylas (Herod, iv. 76-80) show how the leading men of the tribes in contact with the Greek colonies in the Black Sea might be fascinated by the appeal which the exotic culture made to mind and to eye.

The great developments of the century and a half before Alexander set the Greek people in a very different light before the world. In the sphere of material power the repulse of Xerxes and the extension of Athenian or Spartan supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean were large facts patent to the most obtuse. The kings of the East leant more than ever upon Greek mercenaries, whose superiority to barbarian levies was sensibly brought home to them by the expedition of Cyrus. But the developments within the Hellenic sphere itself were also of great consequence for its expansion outwards. The political disunion of the Greeks was to some extent neutralized by the rise of Athens to a leading position in art, in literature and in philosophy. In Athens the Hellenic genius was focussed, its tendencies drawn together and combined; nor was it a circumstance of small moment that the Attic dialect attained, for prose, a classical authority; for if Hellenism was to be propagated in the world at large, it was obviously convenient that it should have some one definite form of speech to be its medium.

1. _The Persians._--The ruling race of the East, the Persian, was but little open to the influences of the new culture. The military qualities of the Greeks were appreciated, and so, too, was Greek science, where it touched the immediately useful; a Greek captain was entrusted by Darius with the exploration of the Indus; a Greek architect bridged the Bosporus for him; Greek physicians (e.g. Democedes, Ctesias) were retained for enormous fees at the Persian court. The brisk diplomatic intercourse between the Great King and the Greek states in the 4th century may have produced effects that were not merely political. We certainly find among those members of the Persian aristocracy, who came by residence in Asia Minor into closer contact with the Greeks, some traces of interest in the more ideal side of Hellenism. A man like the younger Cyrus invited Greek captains to his friendship for something more than their utility in war, and procured Greek hetaerae for something more than sensual pleasure. There is the Mithradates who presented the Academy with a statue of Plato by Silanion, not improbably identical (though the supposition implies a correction in the text of Diogenes Laertius) with that Mithradates who, together with his father Ariobarzanes, received the citizenship of Athens (Dem. xxiii. 141, 202). Exactly how far Greek influence can be traced in the remains of Persian art, such as the royal palaces of Persepolis and Susa may be doubtful (see Gayet, _L'Art persan_; R. Phene Spiers, _Architecture East and West_, p. 245 f.), but it is certain that the engraved gems for which there was a demand in the Persian empire were largely the work of Greek artists (Furtwangler, _Antike Gemmen_, iii. p. 116 f.).

2. _The Phoenicians._--As early as the first half of the 4th century we find communities of Phoenician traders established in the Peiraeus (_C.I.A._ ii. 86). In Cyprus, on the frontier between the Greek and Semitic worlds, a struggle for ascendancy went on. The Phoenician element seems to have been dominant in the island when Evagoras made himself king of Salamis in 412, and restored Hellenism with a strong hand. The words of Isocrates (even allowing for their rhetorical colour) give us a vivid insight into what such a process meant. "Before Evagoras established his rule, they were so hostile and exclusive, that those of their rulers were actually held to be the best who were the fiercest adversaries of the Greeks; but now such a change has taken place, that it is a matter of emulation who shall show himself the most ardent phil-hellen, that for the mothers of their children most of them choose wives from amongst us, and that they take pride in having Greek things about rather than native, in following the Greek fashion of life, whilst our masters of the fine arts and other branches of culture now resort to them in greater numbers than were once to be found in those quarters they specially frequented" (Isoc. 199 = _Evag._ SS 49, 50). Even into the original seats of the Phoenicians Hellenism began to intrude. Evagoras at one time (about 386) made himself master of Tyre (Isoc. _Evag._ S 62; Diod. xv. 2, 4). His grandson Evagoras II. is found as governor of Sidon for the Persian king 349-346. (Babelon, _Perses Achemenides_, p. cxxii.; cf. Diod. xvi. 46, 3).

Abdashtart, king of Sidon (374-362 B.C.), called Straton by the Greeks, had already entered into close relations with the Greek states, and imitated the Hellenic princes of Cyprus (_Athen._ xii. 531; _C.I.A._ ii. 86; _Corp. inscr. Semit._ i. 114). The Phoenician colonists in Sardinia purchased or imitated the work of Greek artists (Furtwangler, _Antike Gemmen_, iii. 109).

3. _The Carians and Lycians._--The seats of the Greeks in the East touched peoples more or less nearly related to the Hellenic stock, with native traditions not so far remote from those of the Greeks in a more primitive age, the Carians and the Lycians. It came about in the last century preceding Alexander that the first of these peoples was organized as a strong state under native princes, the line founded by Hecatomnus of Mylasa. Hecatomnus made himself master of Caria in the first decade of the 4th century, but it was under his son Mausolus, who succeeded him in 377-376 that the house rose to its zenith. These Carian princes ruled as satraps for the Great King, but they modelled themselves upon the pattern of the Greek tyrant. The capital of Mausolus was a Greek city, Halicarnassus, and all that we can still trace of his great works of construction and adornment shows conformity to the pure Hellenic type. His famous sepulchre, the Mausoleum (the remains of it are now in the British Museum), was a monument upon which the most eminent Greek sculptors of the time worked in rivalry (Plin. _N.H._ xxxvi. 5, S 30; Vitruv. vii. 13). His court gave a welcome to the vagrant Greek philosopher (Diog. Laert. viii. 8, S 87). Even the Carian town of Mylasa now shows the forms of a Greek city and records its public decrees in Greek (_C.I.G._ 2691 c, d, e = Michel 471). In Lycia, which in spite of "the son of Harpagus" and King Pericles, had never been brought under one man's rule, the Greek influence is more limited. Here, for the most part in the inscriptions, the native language maintains itself against Greek. The proper names are (if not native) mainly Persian. But the Greek language makes an occasional appearance; Greek names are borne by others beside Pericles. The coins are Greek in type. And above all the monumental remains of Lycia show strong Greek influence, especially the well-known "Nereid Monument" in the British Museum, whose date is held to go back to the 5th century (Gardner, _Handbook of Gk. Sculp._ p. 344).

4. _South Russia._--Hellenic influences continued to penetrate the Scythian peoples from the Greek colonies of the Black Sea, at any rate in the matter of artistic fabrication. Our evidence is the actual objects recovered from the soil. (See SCYTHIA.)

5. _Egypt._--From the time of Psammetichus (d. 610 B.C.) Greek mercenaries had been used to prop Pharaoh's throne. At the same time Greek merchants had begun to find their way up the Nile and even to the Oases. A Greek city Naucratis (q.v.) was allowed to arise at the Bolbitinic mouth of the Nile. But the racial repugnance to the Greek, which forbade an Egyptian even to eat an animal which had been carved with a Greek's knife (Hdt. ii. 41), probably kept the soul of the people more shut against Hellenic influences than was that of the other races of the East.

6. _Macedonia._--In Macedonia the native chiefs had been attracted by the rich Hellenic life at any rate from the beginning of the 5th century, when Alexander I., surnamed "Phil-hellen," persuaded the judges at Olympia that the Temenid house was of good Argive descent (Hdt. v. 22). And, although their enemies might stigmatize them as barbarians, the Macedonian kings maintained that they were not Macedonians, but Greeks (cf. [Greek: aner Hellen Makedonon hyparchos], Hdt. v. 20). It was not probably till the reorganization of the kingdom by Archelaus (413-399) that Greek culture found any abundant entrance into Macedonia. Now all that was most brilliant in Greek literature and Greek art was concentrated in the court of Aegae; the palace was decorated by Zeuxis; Euripides spent there the end of his days. From that time, no doubt, a certain degree of literary culture was general among the Macedonian nobility; their names in the days of Philip are largely Greek; the Macedonian service was full of men from the Greek cities within Philip's dominions. The values recognized at the court would naturally be recognized in noble families generally, and Philip chose Aristotle to be the educator of his son. How far the country generally may be regarded as Hellenized is a problem which involves the vexed question what right the Macedonian people itself has to be classed among the Hellenes, and Macedonian to be considered a dialect of Greek.[1] As the literary and official language, Greek alone would seem to have had any status.

7. _In the West: the Native Races of Sicily._--Italy and the south of Gaul had not remained unaffected by the neighbourhood of the Greek colonies. Under the rule of the elder and younger Dionysius in the 4th century, the hellenization of the Sicels in the interior of Sicily seems to have become complete (Freeman, _History of Sicily_, ii. 387, 388, 422-424; Beloch, _Griech. Gesch._ iii. [i.] 261).

The alphabets used by the various Italian races from the 5th century were directly or indirectly learnt from the Greeks. The peoples of the south (Lucanians, Bruttians, Mamertines) show a Greek principle of nomenclature (Mommsen, _Unterital. Dialekt_, p. 240 f.). The Pythagorean philosophy, whose seat was in southern Italy, won adherents among the native chiefs (Cic. _De senec._ 12, cf. Dio Chrys. _Orat. Cor._ 37, S 24). From the Greeks of southern Gaul Hellenic influences penetrated the Celtic races so far that imitations of Greek coins were struck even on the coasts of the Atlantic.