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 BAR S1220
Games and Festivals
in Classical Antiquity

2004   BELL & DAVIES (Eds)   GAMES AND FESTIVALS IN CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY
Proceedings of the Conference held
in Edinburgh 10–12 July 2000

Edited by

Sinclair Bell
Glenys Davies

BAR International Series 1220

B
A
9 781841 715803
R 2004
Published in 2016 by
BAR Publishing, Oxford

BAR International Series 1220

Games and Festivals in Classical Antiquity

© The editors and contributors severally and the Publisher 2004

The authors' moral rights under the 1988 UK Copyright,

Designs and Patents Act are hereby expressly asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be copied, reproduced,

stored, sold, distributed, scanned, saved in any form of digital format or
transmitted in any form digitally, without the written permission of the
Publisher.

ISBN 9781841715803 paperback

ISBN 9781407326320 e-format
DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781841715803
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

BAR Publishing is the trading name of British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Ltd.
British Archaeological Reports was first incorporated in 1974 to publish the BAR
Series, International and British. In 1992 Hadrian Books Ltd became part of the BAR
group. This volume was originally published by Archaeopress in conjunction with
British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Ltd / Hadrian Books Ltd, the Series principal
publisher, in 2004. This present volume is published by BAR Publishing, 2016.

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 Contents

List of contributors ii

List of Illustrations iv

Introduction v
Glenys Davies

1 Grasping the Bull by the Horns: Minoan Bull Sports 1

Eleanor Loughlin

2 Festival? What Festival? Reading Dance Imagery as Evidence 9

Tyler Jo Smith

3 Professional Foul: Persona in Pindar 25

Gráinne McLaughlin

4 Orestes the Contender: Chariot Racing and Politics

in Fifth Century Athens and Sophocles’ Electra 33
Eleanor Okell

5 From Agônistês to Agônios: Hermes, Chaos and Conflict

in Competitive Games and Festivals 45
Arlene Allan

6 Dionysiac Festivals in Aristophanes’ Acharnians 55

Greta Ham

7 The Perils of Pittalakos: Settings of Cock Fighting and Dicing in Classical Athens 65
Nick Fisher

8 Civic Self-Representation in the Hellenistic World:

The Festival of Artemis Leukophryene 79
Geoffrey Sumi

9 Roman Games and Greek Origins in Dionysius of Halicarnassus 93

Clemence Schultze

10 Epic Games and Real Games in Statius’ Thebaid 6 and Virgil’s Aeneid 5 107
Helen Lovatt

11 Sport or Showbiz? The naumachiae of Imperial Rome 115

Francesca Garello

12 Dionysiac Scenes on Sagalassian Oinophoroi from Seleuceia Sidēra in Pisidia 125

Ergün Lafli

13 Christianising the Celebrations of Death in Late Antiquity 137

Julia Burman

14 The Sala dei Cavalli in Palazzo Te: Portraits of Champions 143

Elizabeth Tobey

i
 Contributors

Arlene Allan is currently an Assistant Professor in on a book on Dionysos and male maturation ritual in
Classics at Trent University, Ontario. She held a Athens.
Leventis PhD research scholarship at the University
of Exeter from 1998-2001, and was awarded her PhD Ergün Laflı is an Assistant Professor of Classical
in 2003 with her dissertation, “The Lyre, The Whip Archaeology in the Department of Archaeology at the
and The Wand: Readings in the Homeric Hymn to Dokuz Eylül University, Izmir. He specialises in
Hermes.” Her research interests are located primarily Hellenistic, Roman and late Roman ceramic
in the socio-religious history of Greece, with a archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean, especially
particular emphasis in epic, drama and myth/ritual. Asia Minor, and is presently preparing a monograph
on terracotta unguentaria from Anatolia.
Sinclair Bell is a doctoral candidate in the School of
History and Classics at the University of Edinburgh Eleanor Loughlin is a post-doctoral researcher and
and a fellow of the American Academy in Rome. His tutor at the University of Edinburgh. She is
research focuses on the representation of chariot researching and publishing on several areas of Greek
racing in Roman art, particularly funerary sculpture. iconography, including the representation of Bronze
Age cattle and the depiction of statues in Greek
Julia Burman is a researcher in the “Death, Society art. She is also currently working on the Popham
and Gender in the Ancient World” project in the Archive Project.
Department of History at the University of Helsinki,
Finland. Her doctorate is concerned with changes in Helen Lovatt is a Junior Research Fellow at New
lifestyles and the community in late antiquity. Hall, Cambridge. She has recently completed a Ph.D.
thesis on Games and Realities in Statius, Thebaid 6
Glenys Davies is Senior Lecturer in Classical Art and and is currently working on a project on the gaze in
Archaeology in the School of History and Classics at ancient epic.
the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests
cover three main areas: Roman funerary art Gráinne McLaughlin lectures in the Faculty of Arts,
(especially the iconography of ash chests and grave University College Dublin. She has a particular
altars); collecting and restoring antiquities, especially interest in Classical and Hellenistic verse panegyric.
in the 18th century; and gender and body language in Her doctorate included comparative material from the
Classical art. She is near to completing a detailed medieval Gaelic bardic panegyric tradition. Current
catalogue of the ash chests and other funerary reliefs research includes study of the role of the Danaids
in the Ince Blundell Collection, and is currently in Greek and Latin poetry.
working with others on an A-Z of Classical Dress.
Eleanor OKell has just completed her Ph.D., entitled
Nick Fisher is Professor of Ancient History in the “Practising Politics in Sophocles”, under the
School of History and Archaeology at Cardiff supervision of Professor C.J. Gill at the University of
University. He has written books on Social Values in Exeter. Her thesis examines Sophocles’ use of
Classical Athens (1976), Hybris (1992), and Slavery contemporary Athenian political positions and
in Classical Greece (1993), and has recently practices to inform his audience’s understanding of
published an edition of Aeschines, Against Timarchos, the dramatic world of his plays and to define the
with introduction, translation and commentary (2001). terms in which their content is debated. She is
currently at the University of Nottingham, having
Francesca Garello, Chief Archivist at the previously taught Greek Drama at the University of
Fondazione Ugo Spirito, Rome, has worked on Leeds.
excavations with the Ministry of Cultural Property
and with the Archaeological Superintendancy, Rome. Clemence Schultze is Lecturer in the Department of
Her publications include articles on the history of Classics and Ancient History at the University of
ancient sport and on the hypogea of the Flavian Durham. She is mainly interested in Roman
Amphitheatre, the subject of her thesis at the republican history, especially the city of Rome,
University of Rome. ancient historiography, and the reception of antiquity
in later literature and art. She has written papers on
Greta Ham is Assistant Professor of Classics at Dionysius of Halicarnassus, sections of whose work
Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Penn. She has a she is currently engaged in translating and annotating,
particular interest in Greek religion and history and on Dorothy L. Sayers, and on the influence of Greek
has an article “The Choes and Anthesteria myth on the Victorian novelist Charlotte M. Yonge.
Reconsidered: Male Maturation Rites and the
Peloponnesian Wars,” in Rites of Passage in Ancient Tyler Jo Smith is an Assistant Professor of Art
Greece, ed. by M.W. Padilla. She is currently working History at the University of Virginia. Her research

ii
interests include representations of dance and festival political ceremony in the time of Caesar and
in Greek vase-painting, as well as Greek and Roman Augustus.
religion. She is currently preparing for publication her
Oxford D.Phil. thesis on the subject of black-figure Elizabeth Tobey is a doctoral student in the
komos scenes. Department of Art History at the University of
Maryland, where she is studying Italian Renaissance
Geoffrey S. Sumi is Associate Professor of Classics Art, with a minor in Roman Art and Archaeology. She
at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass. has worked at the National Gallery of Art, the
His main interests are in Hellenistic and Roman National Portrait Gallery (both in Washington, DC),
history and he is currently completing a study of and excavated at Roman sites in Italy.

iii
 List of Illustrations

Fig.1.1. Scene of wounded bull. Sealing from Haghia Triada (After AT 52).
Fig. 1.2. Painted larnax from Armenoi. (Drawing by author)
Fig. 1.3. Head of bull-shaped rhyton grappled by three figures, from Koumasa. (After PM I, fig. 137d)
Fig. 1.4. Taureador fresco, Knossos. (Drawing by author)
Fig. 1.5. Detail, Taureador fresco. (Drawing by author)
Fig. 1.6. Evans’ bull-leaping schema. (After Evans 1921, fig. 5)
Fig. 1.7. Bull wrestler. Sealing from Knossos (After Evans 1921, fig. 10).

Fig. 2.1. Athens N.M. inv. no. 234. Drawing of Laconian pyxis, from the Sanctuary of Apollo at Amyclae.
(After Boardman 1998, fig. 131).
Figs. 2.1-2.5. Berlin Staatliche Museen inv. no. 4856. Corinthian pyxis: Frauenfest and Komasts.
Fig. 2.6. Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts inv. no. 82.1. Laconian cup tondo: Piper and Komasts.
Fig. 2.7. Drawing of Boeotian tripod-kothon: sacrifice, banquet and revellers. (After Boardman 1998, fig. 441.2)
Fig. 2.8. Athens British School inv. no. A88. Boeotian lekanis interior: komasts in silhouette style.
Fig. 2.9. London British Museum inv. no. B80. Boeotian lekanis exterior: worship of Athena Itonia.
Fig. 2.10. London British Museum inv. no. 96.6-15.1. Detail of dancer from Clazomenian sarcophagus.

Fig. 3.1. East pediment, Temple of Zeus, Olympia. (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Athens)

Table 4.1. Athenian chariot victors.

Table 4.2. Other chariot victors.
Table 4.3. Age of known Olympic and Pythian four-horse chariot victors (610-390 B.C.).
Graph 4.4. Age of known Olympic and Pythian four-horse chariot victors (610-390 B.C.).

Table 6.1. References to Athenian festivals in Acharnians (in order of appearance).

Fig. 7.1. Oxford Ashmolean Museum inv. no. 1967.304. Brygos Painter, cup with scene of a boy holding
knucklebones.
Fig. 7.2. London British Museum inv. no. E205. Hydria with scene of women playing with knucklebones.

Table 10.1. The organisation of the epic programmes.

Fig. 12.1.a-i. Morphological and decorative character of Sagalassian oinophoroi from Seleuceia Sidēra (E. Laflı).
Fig. 12.2.a-c. A circular oinophoros from the Round Building in Seleuceia Sidēra; front, rear and side views (E.
Laflı).
Fig. 12.3.a-b. A circular oinophoros with Gorgons, from Seleuceia Sidēra (E. Laflı).
Fig. 12.4. An oinophoros sherd with scene of a gladiator, from Seleuceia Sidēra (E. Laflı).
Fig. 12.5. An oinophoros sherd with scene of a warrior (?), from Seleuceia Sidēra (E. Laflı).
Fig. 12.6. An oinophoros sherd with a Maenad, from Seleuceia Sidēra (E. Laflı).
Fig. 12.7. An oinophoros sherd with a relaxing Dionysiac (?) figure, from Seleuceia Sidēra (E. Laflı).
Fig. 12.8. An oinophoros sherd with a young boy, from Seleuceia Sidēra (E. Laflı).
Fig. 12.9. An oinophoros (?) handle fragment with a naked male (Dionysiac?) figure, from Seleuceia Sidēra (E.
Laflı).

Fig. 14.1. Diagram of the Sala dei Cavalli, Palazzo Te, Isola Te.
Fig. 14.2. Chestnut horse with Jupiter and Juno, with painted relief of Hercules and Nemean lion shown above, east
wall, Sala dei Cavalli (E. Tobey, courtesy of the Museo Civico, Palazzo Te).
Fig. 14.3. Painted bust of Federico Gonzaga as the emperor Hadrian on the north wall (E. Tobey, courtesy of the
Museo Civico, Palazzo Te).
Fig. 14.4. Morel Favorito, with painted relief of Hercules and Cerberus above, south wall, Sala dei Cavalli (E.
Tobey, courtesy of the Museo Civico, Palazzo Te).
Fig. 14.5. Battaglia, north wall, Sala dei Cavalli (E. Tobey, courtesy of the Museo Civico, Palazzo Te).
Fig. 14.6. Detail, chestnut horse, east wall, Sala dei Cavalli (E. Tobey, courtesy of the Museo Civico, Palazzo Te).
Fig. 14.7. Left: Detail of Zannetta brand on the flank of the chestnut horse (E. Tobey, courtesy of the Museo Civico,
Palazzo Te). Right: Zannetta brand from a Gonzaga stud book, Envelope 258, Archivio Gonzaga, Archivio di
Stato, Mantua (After Malacarne 1995).
Fig. 14.8. Circus horse “Amicus.” Line drawing of a bone counter in the Vatican Museums, Rome. (Drawing by
author after Toynbee 1973, fig. 87)

iv
 Introduction
GLENYS DAVIES

Games and festivals were at the heart of Classical societies, playing a much more important role than in modern
western societies (even taking football into account). Festivals structured the year and were inextricably bound up
with the structures of society (as Ham’s study of the Dionysiac festivals in the Acharnians shows: in war-torn
Athens the ordered conduct of the familiar festivals which bound social groups together was seen as both necessary
for and a consequence of peace). Games and festivals are also closely linked, as most competitive games took place
at a festival, or at least in a religious context, even, it seems, cock fighting and dicing, and many festivals contained
elements of competition. Competitiveness pervades Greek and Roman life (especially the life of men in a position
to compete for prestige and power)—and this is reflected in literature and art. Luck, chance, the approval of the
gods, innate skill and worth all produced winners, and it is the victors we hear most about, whether it is Hermes the
trickster, those commemorated by Pindar’s victory odes, or the famous horses who won chariot races and were
immortalised in mosaic. Yet there are a few losers in these pages: most prominent is Pittalakos, who lost out in what
Fisher describes as a “turf war” at the shrine of Athena Skiras at Phaleron. The fighting quails and cocks were not
the only competitors in this dramatic story of Athens in the fourth century B.C.

Competition is closely allied to politics, and it is not surprising to find a connection between the games of the
classical world and political conduct. Games could be a metaphor for the competition of war, even a structured
substitute for it, and those who excelled in one arena might be expected to do well in the other too. It is by his
conduct in the Olympic Games that Orestes in Electra shows that he is a worthy successor to his father, and warns
Clytemnestra that he is a real threat to her. Okell shows us that Sophocles uses the model of Athenian statesmen
(such as Cylon and Alcibiades who entered and won important chariot races just before standing for office as
generals in Athens) to alert the audience to the significance of Orestes’ behaviour. At the end of the 3rd century B.C.
the city of Magnesia-on-the-Maeander attempted to use the expansion of its festival of Artemis Leukophryene to
assert its own position and to promote panhellenism in the face of the decidedly volatile political climate of the
time. Sumi analyses the inscribed documents recording the city’s presentation of itself and its history and the
responses of city states all over the Greek world: the festival, with its dramatic, athletic and equestrian competitions
was intended to have the stature of the Pythian Games at Delphi, and was to express Greek values and panhellenic
unity. Much later, in 16th-century Mantua, Federico Gonzaga chose the imagery of the Classical world and six of his
favourite thoroughbred horses to express his perception of his own political position. Tobey discusses how images
of esteemed figures from antiquity (including emperors) were assimilated to portraits of the Gonzaga family, how
they used Mantuan Virgil and especially the Georgics to glorify themselves, and in particular how the chariot races
of Rome were evoked by the magnificent portraits of the Gonzaga horses.

Competitiveness is not the only feature of games and festivals discussed in this volume. Loughlin looks at the
famous bull-leaping “sport” of Minoan Crete from a new perspective: the practical skills needed to control and
manage domestic, wild and feral cattle. Garello and Burman also emphasise the role of spectacle in the Roman
world: Garello suggests that real competition would have been difficult to achieve in the famous naumachiae given
the likely conditions in which they were staged, and they must often have been aquatic displays rather than full-
scale re-enactments of naval engagements or competitive games. Burman compares Christian funerals of the later
fourth century with earlier pagan practices, again pointing to the spectacular aspects of the funerals of saints such as
Macrina and Basil, with their huge candle-lit processions, psalm singing (in preference to lamentation) and
communal meals.

Inevitably, as with any collection of papers on the Classical world, many papers deal with questions of the evidence
and its interpretation, whether the sources used are literary, artistic or archaeological. Loughlin’s paper includes a
re-evaluation of how the Taureador fresco should be read. Smith’s study concerns the interpretation of dancers on a
variety of black-figure vases: dancers of various kinds, both male and female, but especially the padded male
komasts who both dance and drink, and are sometimes more interested in the latter activity than the former. Smith
queries how far we can interpret these activities as taking place on a religious or festival occasion, and whether
specific festivals (such as the Laconian festivals of Artemis Orthia) can be identified. She concludes that scholars of
the past have been rather too keen to relate some of these scenes to specific events. Garello also examines the
literary and physical evidence for the venues where naumachiae were held, concluding that in some cases there was
insufficient room for full-scale re-enactments of battles, or even life-sized ships. The Colosseum, however, does
show signs that it was originally designed to be flooded for aquatic displays, even if there would only have been
room for two full-size ships, which would not have been able to manoeuvre.

v
It is those papers dealing with literary texts that provide the most complex and subtle use of games and festival
imagery, indicating how thoroughly these events had permeated Greek and Roman thinking and consciousness. The
games at Rome are the institution par excellence that Dionysius of Halicarnassus uses to illustrate his hypothesis
that Rome’s culture should be seen as basically Greek (and thus Greece is now dominated by fellow Hellenes, not
by barbarians). Schultze examines the structure of Dionysius’ argument and his perceptions of cultural difference
and the process of cultural change as demonstrated by his treatment of this one aspect of early Roman society.
McLaughlin exposes the subtlety and complexity of another much earlier author, Pindar, through his treatment of
the theme of the foundation of the Olympic Games, and specifically the question of who founded the Games.
Seeming to contradict other versions (and indeed what he himself says elsewhere), Olympian I gives the impression
that the founder was Pelops, and Pindar seems to be asserting the superiority of his own version of the myth while
at the same time praising the victor: this rhetorical posturing validates poet and patron.

Neither Dionysius nor Pindar is giving a straightforward, factual account of games, but they can rely on their
audiences to know the details of the games they are talking about. Statius has been mined by “sports historians”
hoping for just such details of games, and seems to be more “factual” than Virgil, but Lovatt explores how both
these authors combine the epic convention of games (as handed down from Homer) with more recent developments
in the real world, producing new epic versions set in imaginary locations that recall venues such as the Circus
Maximus. Allan’s analysis of the roles of Hermes in Greece, especially as revealed in his Homeric Hymn, also
shows the close association he and the myths surrounding him had with real competition and games. Allan’s
analysis of his multifaceted character revolves around Hermes as a gamester and a competitor; but although Hermes
is shown to be a colourful, even rather shady, character, he embodies important concepts for human society: order
created from chaos, the possibility of the resolution of conflict—and that means war as well as competition at
games.

When we put out a general call for papers for a conference on Games and Festivals we had no idea the response
would be so varied—ranging from Minoan bull leaping to Samoan kilikiti—or that the papers would turn out to be
so thematically interrelated. The response has shown that it is not so much the mechanics of the games or the
actions carried out at ancient festivals that fascinate modern scholars as their social and political significance and
the way the theme could be manipulated by writers and artists.

This volume contains about half of the papers given at the conference; others are to be published elsewhere or are
part of other projects.∗ The conference was held under the auspices of the Traditional Cosmology Society, and its
theme was proposed by its president, Emily Lyle. The assistance and advice of several members of the Department
of Classics were instrumental in its smooth running, especially Elaine Hutchison, Kate Collingridge, Jill Shaw, and
Keith Rutter. It would never have taken off in such style without the energy and dedication of Sinclair Bell—
indeed, so successful was he in promoting the conference that it had to be moved to larger premises, thus
necessitating further funding, which was generously and expeditiously supplied by a grant from the University of
Edinburgh’s Small Project Fund.

∗
These include the following:
Gebhard, E. 2002. “The Beginnings of Panhellenic Games at the Isthmus.” In Olympia 1875-2000. 125 Jahre Deutsche Ausgrabungen.
Internationales Symposion, Berlin 9.-11. November 2000, edited by H. Kyrieleis, 221-37. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern.
König, J. 2001. “Favorinus’ Corinthian Oration in its Corinthian context.”PCPS 47:141-71.
Niederstadt, L. 2002. “Of Kings and Cohorts: The Game of Genna in Ethiopian Popular Painting.” International Journal of History of Sport 19.1.
Nijf, O. van 2003. “Athletics, Andreia and the Askêsis-Culture in the Roman East.” In Andreia: Studies in Manliness and Courage in Classical
Antiquity, edited by R. Rosen and I. Sluiter, 263-86. Mnesmoyne Suppl. 238. Leiden: Brill.

vi
 Chapter 1

Grasping the Bull by the Horns:

Minoan Bull Sports
ELEANOR LOUGHLIN

Cattle have been the subject of more studies of Bronze components of a mixed farming economy.5 Remains from
Age Greek animal iconography than any other species Neolithic Knossos and the majority of subsequent Neolithic
and bull sports have received more scholarly attention and Bronze Age sites indicate that the main elements of the
than any other type of cattle imagery.1 The prominence of faunal assemblage were sheep, goats, pigs and cattle. The
the subject is evident from A Bibliography for Aegean only notable additions to the original range of imported
Glyptic in the Bronze Age: of the sixteen references to animals were horses and donkeys, which are attested, albeit
works relating to cattle imagery, ten deal specifically with in small numbers, as early as the Late Neolithic period.6
bull sports.2 These studies are based on a sizable body of
evidence, the bulk of which comes from Late Bronze Age Whether the settlers imported wild or domestic cattle has
glyptic. Interest in this area has been fuelled further in been a source of considerable debate. The range of bone
recent years by the discovery of fragments of wall sizes does however suggest that both domestic and the
paintings at Tell el-Dab`a, on the Nile Delta. Among larger wild cattle were imported throughout the Neolithic
these are images of confrontation between men and cattle and Bronze Age.7 It is further likely that the continued
that it is argued exhibit Minoan characteristics.3 importation of livestock, possibly from different regions,
would have served to freshen the gene pool and, in the case
As the majority of studies have concentrated purely on the of cattle, the presence of both domestic and wild animals
images, the benefit to be gained from looking at bull would have provided hybrids for bull games.8 Another
sports in the wider context of Bronze Age Greek society feasible interpretation of the evidence is that cattle hunted
has only recently been recognised.4 The purpose of this during the Bronze Age were the descendants of Neolithic
paper is therefore first to explore the complex way in domestic cattle that had become feral.9 In only a short
which man (the hunter and herdsman) and animal interact period of time, feral cattle can revert to a physiological
in an agricultural and rural context and to consider how type more akin to their wild ancestors, as attested by the
our knowledge of the techniques employed to control cattle left by the migrating islanders on the Scottish island
cattle is relevant to our understanding of Minoan of Swona only twenty-five years ago. Not only has this
depictions of bull sports. Secondly, the imagery of the herd become feral but, after only five generations of
Taureador Fresco from Knossos will be reassessed in the natural selection, the animals have developed sufficient
light of this evidence. genetic distinctions to be recognised as a new breed. In
terms of temperament, these animals have become not
The use of culturally unrelated material for comparative only wary of man but at times aggressive.10
purposes is a contentious issue but, in the case of bull
sports, it is advantageous to draw on the diverse range of The archaeological record provides extensive evidence of
evidence available in order both to clarify our own the exploitation of cattle. The slaughtered animal served as
perceptions of the norm, and to understand more fully the a one-off source of meat, bone marrow, fat, glue, skin,
range of possible manifestations. Comparative material bone and horn. In the second phase of domestication,
will therefore be used judiciously, as it is important not to known as the Secondary Products Revolution, the live
substitute ideas derived purely from this source for animal provided not only faeces and milk, but was also
detailed study of the original material. exploited as a source of motive power.11 In modern-day
India, 80% of agricultural work involves the use of cattle
THE UTILISATION OF CRETAN CATTLE as a source of motive power and the evidence from
Bronze Age Crete suggests a similar scenario.12 Cattle
Analysis of the floral and faunal remains from the Aceramic were no doubt used to pull carts and ploughs and to serve
to Early Neolithic Period (c. 6000–5000 B.C.) shows that
the earliest settlers brought both the knowledge and 5
Broodbank and Strasser 1991.
6
Reese 1995, 193.
7
Gamble 1980, 288; Nobis 1989, 1990, 1993.
1 8
For a survey of the literature relating to the subject and a full Nobis 1990, 17; 1993, 117-8.
9
catalogue see Younger 1976; 1983; 1995. Bloedow 1996, 31-2.
2 10
Younger 1991. Dobson 1999, 9.
3 11
Bietak 1992; Bietak et al. 1994; Morgan 1997, 31; Bietak et al. 2000. Sherratt 1981, 1982, 1983.
4 12
Marinatos 1993; Younger 1995. Lensch 1987, 57.

1
GAMES AND FESTIVALS IN CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

as pack animals.13 In order to take full advantage of the

animal, it was necessary for hunters and herdsmen to
develop techniques to capture, restrain and control this
formidable and often dangerous creature.

The intention to capture or kill cattle is represented in

many images of the interaction between men and cattle.
For example, on Minoan seals and sealings the inclusion
of nets serves to represent capture,14 while the painting of
net patterns on the bodies of some terracotta cattle
figurines may have similar connotations.15 A Late Minoan
IIIA ivory pyxis from Katsamba is decorated with a scene
of men and a charging bull in a rural setting. One figure
brandishes a spear while another holds what may be a
net.16 A galloping bull with a net stretched across its body
is represented on a Late Minoan II fragment of a rhyton
from Knossos.17
FIG. 1.2. PAINTED LARNAX FROM ARMENOI.
On some seals and sealings man is not represented, but (DRAWING BY AUTHOR)
his presence and capacity to injure is implied by the
representation of spears and projectiles above or piercing If the intention is to keep the animal alive and to exploit it
the backs of cattle (fig. 1.1).18 as a source of food, motive power, as breeding stock or
for sport, then it is essential to contain and control the
animal for a prolonged period of time. This can involve
keeping a group of animals in a particular area or
controlling an individual through physical restraint.

Wooden fences have not been preserved, but there are

several examples of architectural elements within
FIG.1.1. SCENE OF WOUNDED BULL. settlements that probably served as pens, albeit for
SEALING FROM HAGHIA TRIADA (AFTER AT 52). smaller animals. The house at Katsamba has an attached
open yard, possibly used as an enclosure for animals,21
A single image may represent several aspects of the while a walled rock shelter in front of the two-roomed
relationship between man and beast. For example, a Late structure at Magasá may have served a similar purpose.22
Minoan IIIA-B larnax from the cemetery at Armenoi is Areas 12, 13 and 14 of the Early Minoan II settlement at
painted with a scene of three men hunting a goat and two Myrtos consist of an unusual sequence of narrow
cattle, all with young (fig. 1.2).19 Spears have been passages, the entrances to which are too narrow for easy
thrown while one figure brandishes an axe and another human access. It has been suggested that these represent
casts a net. Whereas the projectiles and axe indicate an an area where sheep and goats could be penned within the
intention to wound and kill the animals, the presence of a settlement.23 At the Late Minoan IIIC refuge site of
net suggests that capture was also an aim. This image may Katalimata Area B, a terrace with a single access route
in fact represent the killing of the mothers and capture of shows evidence of a simple shelter that may have served
the more manageable young, particularly as the figures as a temporary refuge area for flocks.24 In discussing the
appear to be casting nets, rather than driving the animals Miniature Fresco from the West House at Akrotiri,
into secured nets, a technique more appropriate for the Warren made a comparison between the ‘oval fold’ to
capture of small or young animals.20 which animals are being led and the mandhra, a type of
sheep and goat fold still used in Crete today.25
13
PM 2:156-7; Crouwel 1981, 54; Palaima 1992, 466. The day-to-day management of cattle and, in particular,
14
CMS 8:52; CS 236; AT 55, 60, 61. bulls can often demand a hands-on approach and the most
15
Marinatos 1986, 30-1; Younger 1995, 525-6.
16
Poursat 1977, 166, 168, 178, pls. X3, X4; Younger 1995, 524.
17 (Vaphio Tholos), one of the two cups (the quiet cup) has been described
Popham 1973, 58, fig. 38.
18 as being of Minoan origin (Davis 1977, 2-3). As this is debatable it will
CMS 1:492, 494; CMS 2.2:60; CMS 2.7:44, 54; CMS 4:300; CMS not be discussed as Minoan in the current study.
5S 1A:152; CMS 5S IB:232; CMS 5:279; CMS 8:47; CMGC 3123; AT 21
Alexiou 1954, 371; Weinberg 1970, 617; Sakellarakis 1973, 135.
52, 53, 159. 22
19 Hutchinson 1962, 51.
Tzedakis 1971, 216-22, fig. 4. 23
20 Warren 1972, 29.
Scenes of men capturing bulls are represented on the Vaphio cups. 24
Of particular note is the bull caught in a net tied between two trees on Haggis and Nowicki 1993, 327.
25
the violent cup (Davis 1977). Although discovered at a mainland site Warren 1979, 122; Haggis and Nowicki 1993, 309.

2
 ELEANOR LOUGHLIN: GRASPING THE BULL BY THE HORNS: MINOAN BULL SPORTS

effective way to control the movements of a bull is to take There are, for example, images where cattle are
control of its head. This may include taking hold of the represented with spears or swords sticking in their withers
animal by the highly sensitive membrane around the (fig. 1.1). Such images present us with evidence of the
mouth and nose. The image of a bull being led on a rope intention to injure or kill the animal and our instinctive
attached to a hoop through its nose is common to many response is to classify these images as representing
cultures. Similarly, nineteenth-century Texan ranchers hunting. Even so, this may not always have been the case.
trained dogs to bite and hold onto the animals' lips, thus Younger suggests that such injuries may have been
rendering the straying animal immobile.26 Another inflicted during bull sports to anger the animal and render
method is to take control of the horns and thus the head. it frantic, thus creating more of a challenge for the
Techniques developed by American cowboys on the leapers.31 He makes a comparison with Spanish bullfights
range can be seen in the modern rodeo, where steer where the picadors puncture the muscle at the back of the
wrestlers grab one horn and the jaw of the animal, thus bull’s neck using a long lance (vara) and the
gaining enough control to turn the animal onto its back.27 banderilleros place pairs of steel pointed sticks
In Minoan art, some representations of figures clasping (banderillas) in the same muscle. As Younger suggests,
the horns of bulls have been classed as representing this does indeed serve to anger the bull and make it more
capture and restraint rather than bull sports.28 aggressive, but in fact it also slows the bull down and
limits the extent to which it is able to raise its head, thus
reducing the danger to the matador32 and theoretically the
bull leaper.33

Disagreement about the context of the interaction also

arises in discussion of images of capture and restraint.
This has been the case in the analysis of two very similar
Early Minoan III-Middle Minoan clay bull shaped rhyta
or pouring vessels from Porti34 and Koumasa (fig. 1.3)35
and fragments of a third from Iuktas (Middle Minoan I-
II).36

It has been argued that these are representations of

FIG. 1.3. HEAD OF BULL-SHAPED RHYTON GRAPPLED BY THREE sacrificial bulls37 or bull sports.38 Younger categorises
FIGURES, FROM KOUMASA. these objects as representing bull catching but adds that
(AFTER PM I, FIG. 137D) they probably represent the origins of bull sports, man
pitting himself against animal in a rural environment prior
Controlling the animal’s head can also involve ropes, to the sport becoming formalised.39 The only certainty is
evidence of which is limited although there are images of that the image is one of restraint and control and thus
tethered cattle in glyptic.29 Some terracotta animal serves as a clear indication of the adversarial nature of the
figurines are painted and modeled with harnesses.30 relationship between man and cattle.
INTERACTION BETWEEN MAN AND CATTLE: THE TAUREADOR FRESCO
IDENTIFYING THE CONTEXT
The fragments of at least four fresco panels were
The desire to subjugate cattle is at the heart of all discovered in the Court of the Stone Spout in the east
interaction between man and bulls and therefore features wing of the palace at Knossos and have been dated to
prominently in visual descriptions. Recognition of this Late Minoan II–IIIA.40 The frescoes had fallen from the
theme, however, should not be equated with an
understanding of the subject of individual images,
31
particularly as similar techniques would have been Younger 1983, 72-3.
32
employed to control cattle in rural, agricultural and Greenfield 1961, 32-50; Whitlock 1977, 72-7.
33
sporting contexts. The same technique is employed in Portuguese bullfights to allow
the focados to grasp the head and horns of the bull (Pinsent 1983, 259).
34
26 Xanthoudídes 1924, 62, pls. VII, XXXVII no. 5052.
Atwood Lawrence 1982, 34. 35
27 Xanthoudídes 1924, 40, pls. II, XXVIII no. 4126.
Atwood Lawrence 1982, 34; Morris 1993, 201-2. 36
28 Foster 1982, 81-2, 109.
CMS 2.3:9, 271; Pinsent 1983, 265. On the Ship Procession Fresco 37
from the island of Thera (1500 BC), a figure in front of the arrival town Matz 1961, 222.
38
is represented leading a calf by the horns (Morgan 1988, 56, pl. 13). PM 1:189-90; CMGC:87-8.
29 39
CMS 5S 1A:173; CMS 7:102. Younger 1995, 509; J. Evans 1963, 140-1. John Evans will be
30 referred to as J. Evans while Arthur Evans will be referred to as Evans.
Guggisberg 1996, nos. 475, 482, 523. A figure binds the back legs of
40
a bull on the Quiet Vaphio Cup (Davis 1977, fig. 10). Younger (1995, Late Minoan II-IIIA is now widely accepted to be a period during
535-6) catalogues images of tethered cattle in glyptic from the mainland which the Mycenaeans controlled Crete and in particular the Palace at
and of unknown provenance. Knossos (Weingarten 1990, 112-3; Popham 1994, 89, 93; Renfrew

3
GAMES AND FESTIVALS IN CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

wall of an upper floor and may have originally formed a charging bull would gore anyone in its path. Rather than
frieze of panels about 0.78m high.41 As the most complete throwing its head back, as would be necessary to facilitate
restoration, the panel displayed in the Heraklion Museum a somersault, the animal would throw its head to the
has received most attention (fig. 1.4). In the centre of the sides.46 Evans reconciled his schema with this evidence
panel is a large bull running left. The three figures by suggesting that, to avoid injury, the figure would have
represented in the field are depicted with one each on approached and grasped the horn from the side.47 The
either side of the bull while a third, the bull leaper, is discrepancy between what the image appears to represent
represented above the animal’s back. and what is physically possible he attributed to an
imaginative attempt on the part of the artist to represent
the sequence of movements.48

FIG. 1.4. TAUREADOR FRESCO, KNOSSOS.

(DRAWING BY AUTHOR)

Discussion of this painting and bull sports tend to focus

on the image of the bull leaper which sometimes results in FIG. 1.5. DETAIL, TAUREADOR FRESCO.
an underestimation of the importance of other types or (DRAWING BY AUTHOR)
aspects of bull sports and the complexity of the whole
process. In order to understand more fully what the image
may represent as a whole, I shall therefore concentrate on
the actions of the figure represented to the left of the bull
rather than the leaper (fig. 1.5).

The panel was originally classed as a representation of

bull leaping by Evans, who discussed it in terms of its
similarity to the schema he derived from study of a
bronze group of a bull and leaper and comparable seals
and sealings (fig. 1.6).42 The figure to the left of the bull
correlates almost completely to position one in the
schema that Evans described as showing “the charging
bull seized by the horns near their tips”.43 FIG. 1.6. EVANS’ BULL-LEAPING SCHEMA.
(AFTER EVANS 1921, FIG. 5)
In his discussion of the Taureador Fresco, Evans argued
Many subsequent authors have followed Evans’
that the figure represented before the bull grasps the horn
description of the front figure as a leaper grasping the
in order to “gain a purchase for a backward somersault
horns in order to be propelled over the back of the bull.49
over the animal’s back”.44 However, he also recognised
Younger, by contrast, classes the image as a whole as
that stage one is physically impossible45 and cited the
conforming to a “diving-leaper” schema in which the
evidence of a rodeo steer wrestler who claimed that a
leaper dives onto the animal's back from an elevated
position, such as a platform or the shoulders of an
1996, 11-4). The plain background, the border and the composition of assistant. He further describes the figure to the left of the
the Taureador Fresco are comparable to Mycenaean art and similar
paintings have been recovered from mainland sites (Shaw 1997). The
bull as an assistant rather than a leaper and suggests that
image is classed as Minoan, however, primarily because of its context this person’s role was to assist the leaper by controlling
but also because it is a continuation of the Minoan tradition of
representing bull sports.
41
See Marinatos (1993, fig. 58) and Shaw (1997, colour pls. C, D1) for
Cameron’s proposed reconstruction of the four panels. 46
PM 3:212.
42 47
Evans 1921; PM 3:209-32. Evans 1921, 256.
43 48
Evans 1921, 252; PM 3:222. PM 3:222.
44 49
PM 3:212. J. Evans 1963, 141; Immerwahr 1990, 91; Shaw 1997, 179;
45
PM 3:222. Hitchcock and Preziosi 1999, 167-9.

4
 ELEANOR LOUGHLIN: GRASPING THE BULL BY THE HORNS: MINOAN BULL SPORTS

the bull’s head and therefore limit its movement.50 The fallen or injured athlete.53 In the rodeo sport of bull
likelihood of this assessment being correct becomes all riding, the clowns are vital to ensuring the safety of the
the more certain when we consider exactly what is riders, assisting thrown riders whose hands get caught in
represented, a process that demands we recognise the the rope that they use to hold onto the animal.54 The
distinctions between the canons governing the Minoan clowns also attempt to distract the bull as, unlike a bronc
visual language and our own. Minoan art was not that runs away from a thrown rider, it may continue to
restricted by the one-point perspective and inclination trample and attempt to gore anyone on the ground.55 The
towards photographic realism that shapes post- rodeo steer wrestler is accompanied by a hazer, a man on
Renaissance European art; instead, artists were able to horse back whose job it is to keep the steer moving in a
combine different viewpoints within single images and straight line. This allows the wrestler to ride up alongside
possibly even create synoptic representations of events.51 the animal, a position from which he is then able to leap
and take hold of the horn and jaw.56 The role played by
We intuitively interpret the figure to the left of the panel as assistants is vital in cattle sports and their level of skill
standing in front of and facing the bull. Yet upon closer and importance should not be underestimated.
examination, it becomes evident that the figure is not
represented between the horns, as both are represented It is also possible that rather than representing a particular
passing behind the torso, but to the outside of the horn moment, the Taureador Fresco may be synoptic in nature, a
closest to the viewer. The bull’s horns are represented as if composite image of a series of events that would occur
they spring almost vertically from its head. But osteological during bull sports rather than a snapshot of a particular
evidence and three-dimensional representations of cattle moment. If this is the case, the figure grasping the horns
prove that the horns of Minoan cattle extended out to the may be a wrestler who performed separately from the
side curving forward at the tip, and thus did not project leaper. Images described as representations of bull
forward in such a way.52 In reality the figure, rather than wrestlers occur in Minoan glyptic (fig. 1.7).57
standing in front of the bull, would be either facing the side
of the bull or facing in the same direction, in a position
similar to the figures clinging to the horns of the bull
shaped rhyta from Porti, Koumasa (fig. 1.2) and Iuktas.

As a compositional device, the opening up of the image

enabled the artist to minimise overlap and to describe the
protagonists and their actions fully as well as filling the
field and creating a sense of balance. Grabbing the horn
from the side would allow the participant to gain a better
grip not only of the horn but also the neck and jaw, the
technique employed in rodeo steer wrestling.
Approaching from the front would not only make
grasping the animal’s head more difficult, but also mean FIG. 1.7. BULL WRESTLER. SEALING FROM KNOSSOS
that the participant would run a far greater risk of being (AFTER EVANS 1921, FIG. 10).
gored.
This is a tentative suggestion as there are serious doubts
Younger’s description of the figure as an assistant whose about the restoration of these fragments as a single panel.
role it was to secure the bull to enable the leaper to The current restoration shows the figure grasping the horn
perform may be correct. The struggle to control and with his or her left hand, an unlikely bodily contortion. It
restrain the animal is at the heart of all interaction has been argued that the hand is in fact a right hand.58 If
between man and cattle, including sports and, in modern this is the case, the fragments depicting the upper right
events, in addition to the leaper, fighter or wrestler others arm and torso cannot be joined and would therefore not
are involved, either before, during or after the belong to this panel. The remaining fragments, however,
performance in controlling and limiting the potential do show the horn passing under the left arm and therefore
danger to the performer. In Course Landaise, a sport the relative position of the bull and figure remains the
popular throughout southwest France, the aim of the
participants is to leap over and around—rather than to 53
Felius 1995, 232-3; Talbot 2000.
kill—the animal. Throughout the performance the cow is 54
Atwood Lawrence 1982, 30-1.
kept on a length of rope to prevent it from attacking a 55
Atwood Lawrence 1982, 181-2.
56
Whitlock 1977, 88; Atwood Lawrence 1982, 34; Morris 1993, 201-
50
Younger 1976, 129, 135; 1983, 74; 1995, 510-1. 2.
51 57
Damiani Indelicato 1988. Walberg (1986, 110) argues against the CMS 2.3:105; CS 52S (fig. 7); KSPI C43; Younger 1995, 526-7.
possibility of Minoan art being synoptic. 58
Hood 1994, 60. In his review of the Knossos Fresco Atlas, Warren
52
Boyd-Dawkins 1902; Chapouthier et al. 1962, pl. XL; Nobis 1993, (1969, 182) outlines D.L. Page’s objections to the current restoration,
109-10; Younger 1995, 537-8. made in an unpublished paper.

5
GAMES AND FESTIVALS IN CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

same regardless of whether the figure grasps the horn im östlichen Nildelta (1989-1991).” Ägypten und
with their left or right hand. Levante. Internationale Zeitschrift fur ägyptische
Archäologie und deren Nachbargebiete 4:9–80.
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In this paper I have sought to return Bronze Age Cretan Paintings of Thera: Proceedings of the First
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8
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 Treaty of The British government lamented these cruel
America, 1670. aggressions upon people whose only offence was
that of having been born Spaniards, and in 1670 a
Sack of Panama.
treaty was made between Spain and Great Britain
for the express purpose of putting an end to
buccaneering. This interesting treaty, which was
Morgan conceived in an unusually liberal and enlightened
absconds.
spirit, was called the treaty of America. As soon as
the buccaneers heard of it, they resolved to make
a defiant and startling exhibition of their power. Thirty-seven ships,
carrying more than 2,000 men of various nationalities, were
collected off the friendly meat-curing coast of Hispaniola. Morgan
was put in the chief command, and it was decided to capture
Panama. On arriving at the isthmus they stormed the castle at the
mouth of the river Chagres and put the garrison to the sword. Thus
they gained an excellent base of operations. Leaving part of his force
to guard castle and fleet, Morgan at the head of 1,200 men made
the difficult journey across the isthmus in nine days. Panama was
not fortified, but a force of 2,000 infantry and 400 horse confronted
the buccaneers. In an obstinate battle, without quarter asked or
given, the Spaniards lost 600 men and gave way. The city was then
at the mercy of the victors. It contained about 7,000 houses and
some handsome churches, but Morgan set fire to it in several places,
and after a couple of days nearly all these buildings were in ashes.
By the light of those flames most hideous atrocities were to be seen,
—such a carnival of cruelty and lust as would have disgraced the
Middle Ages. After three bestial weeks the buccaneers departed with
a long train of mules laden with booty, and several hundred
prisoners, most of whom were held for ransom. Among these were
many gentlewomen and children, whom Morgan treated savagely.
He kept them half dead with hunger and thirst, and swore that if
they failed to secure a ransom he would sell them for slaves in
Jamaica. Exquemeling draws a pathetic picture of the poor ladies
kneeling and imploring at Morgan’s feet while their starving children
moaned and cried; the only effect upon the ruffian was to make him
ask them how much ransom they might hope to secure if these
things were made known to their friends. When the party arrived at
Chagres, there was a division of spoil, and the rascals were amazed
to find how little there seemed to be to distribute. Morgan was
accused of loading far more than his rightful share upon his own
vessels, whereupon, not wishing to argue the matter, he made up
his mind to withdraw from the scene, “which he did,” says our
chronicler, “without calling any council or bidding any one adieu, but
went secretly on board his own ship and put out to sea without
giving notice, being followed only by three or four vessels of the
whole fleet, who it is believed went shares with him in the greatest
part of the spoil.” All that can be said for him is that most of his
comrades would gladly have done the same by him.

Scotching the With Morgan’s departure the pirate fleet was

snake. scattered, and plenty of strong language was used
in reference to their tricksome commodore.308 The
arrival of a new English governor at Jamaica, with instructions to
enforce the treaty of America, led to the hanging of quite a number
of buccaneers; and a crew of 300 French pirates, shipwrecked on
the coast of Porto Rico, were slaughtered by order of the Spanish
governor. But such casualties produced little effect upon the
swarming multitude of rovers, and within half a dozen years we find
the governor of Jamaica conniving at them and sharing in their
plunder. One pirate crew brought in a Spanish ship so richly
freighted that there was £400 for every man after a round sum in
hush-money had been handed to the governor. Then the pirates
burned the ship and embarked in respectable company for England,
“where,” says Exquemeling, “some of them live in good reputation to
this day.”

Morgan’s But what shall we say when we find the devil

metamorphosis. turning monk, when we see the arch-pirate
Morgan administering the king’s justice upon his
quondam comrades and sending them by scores to
the gallows! It reads like a scene in comic opera, how this dirty
fellow, after absconding with a lion’s share of the Panama spoil and
bringing it to Jamaica, suddenly put on airs of righteousness, wooed
and won the fair daughter of one of the most eminent personages
on the island, and was appointed a judge of the admiralty court. The
finishing touch was put upon the farce when Charles II. decorated
him with knighthood. It is not clear how he won the king’s favour,
but we know that Charles was not above taking tips. After this our
capacity for amazement is so far exhausted that we read with
benumbed acquiescence how in 1682 Sir Henry Morgan was
appointed deputy-governor of Jamaica.309 But when we find him
handing over to the tender mercies of the Spaniards a whole crew of
English buccaneers who had fallen into his clutches, we seem to
recognize the old familiar touch, and cannot repress the suspicion
that he sold them for hard cash! He remained in office three years,
until James II. ascended the throne, when the Spanish government
accused him of secret complicity with the pirates. On this charge he
was removed from office and sent to England, where he was for
some years imprisoned but never met the fate which he deserved.

Decline of Exquemeling expresses the opinion that, after the

buccaneering. trick which Morgan played upon his comrades at
Chagres, he must have thought it more prudent to
be on the side of government than to stay with the
buccaneers. He may also have foreseen that sooner or later the
treaty of America was likely to interfere with the business of piracy.
It is curious that, after all his caution, his downfall on a charge
brought by Spain before the British government was due to the
treaty of America. Although imperfectly enforced, that treaty seems
to have marked the turning point in the history of buccaneering. The
sack of Panama was the apogee of the golden age of pirates; the
events that followed are incidents in a gradual but not slow decline.
In 1684 the number of French buccaneers in the West Indies and on
adjacent coasts was estimated at 3,000, and of other nationalities
there were perhaps as many more; but their operations were on a
smaller and tamer scale than those of Olonnois and Morgan.
 Buccaneers of About this time the South Sea began to be the
the South Sea. favourite field of work for some of the most
famous buccaneers. In 1680 the first party crossed
the isthmus and set sail on the Bay of Panama in a
swarm of canoes, with which on the same day they captured a
Spanish vessel of 30 tons. With this ship they captured another the
next day, and so on till at the end of the week they were in
possession of quite a fleet, comprising some ships of 400 tons. They
cruised as far as the island of Juan Fernandez and beyond, capturing
many ships and much treasure, but not doing much harm ashore.
One of the officers, Basil Ringrose, an educated man, left a journal
of this cruise, the original manuscript of which is in the British
Museum. Other voyages followed until the buccaneers had visited
such remote places as the Ladrone Islands, Easter Island, the coasts
of Australia, and Tierra del Fuego. Among their commanders were
men of far better type than those that have hitherto been
mentioned; such were Ambrose Cowley, Edward Davis, the surgeon
Lionel Wafer, and the celebrated William Dampier, whom we are
more wont to remember as a great navigator and explorer than as a
pirate. Cowley, Wafer, and Dampier have left charming narratives of
their adventures, in which a mixture of scientific inquisitiveness with
the love of barbaric independence is more conspicuous than mere
greed. As Henry Morgan was a pirate of the worst type, so Edward
Davis, discoverer of Easter Island, was of the best. He never would
permit acts of cruelty or wanton bloodshed, and his loyalty and
kindness to his comrades won their affection, so that his mellowing
influence over rough natures was remarkable. In 1688 he took
advantage of a royal proclamation of amnesty to quit buccaneering
and go to England, where he was afterward counted as
“respectable.”

Plunder of As we read the journals of those remote voyages it

Peruvian towns. is easy to forget for a moment that the business is
piracy. We seem to see the staunch ships, superbly
handled by their expert sailors, blithely cleaving
the blue waters under the Southern Cross; we breathe the cool salt
breeze; we watch with interest the gray cliffs, the strange foliage,
the birds and snakes and insects which arouse the curiosity of the
mariners; we follow them to the Galapagos Islands, which first
suggested to Darwin and afterward to Wallace the theory of natural
selection; we note with pleasure their description of the uncouth
natives of Australia; and we remember Thackeray when we
encounter oysters so huge that Basil Ringrose has to cut them in
quarters.310 In the careless freedom of life on an unknown sea with
each morrow bringing its new adventures, we forget what company
we are in, till suddenly the victim ship heaves in sight, the brief
chase ends in a deadly struggle, the Spanish colours go down before
the black flag, a few bodies are buried in the depths, and a rich spoil
is divided. It is vulgar robbery and murder after all, and there was a
good deal of it in the South Sea. The coast of Peru, where there
were the richest towns, suffered the most. The Lima Almanacs for
1685-87, comprising an official record of events for each year
immediately preceding, mention the towns of Guayaquil, Santiago de
Miraflores, and five others as plundered by the pirates. When Davis
divided his booty at Juan Fernandez, there was enough to give every
man a sum equivalent to $20,000. Very often a pirate got more gold
and silver than he could handle or carry, but it was apt to slip away
easily. Many of Davis’s company quickly lost every dollar in gambling
with their comrades. Our friend Raveneau de Lussan, who took to
piracy in order to satisfy his creditors, tells his readers that his
winnings at play, added to his share of booty, amounted to 30,000
pieces of eight, which would now be equivalent to at least $120,000;
so we may hope that he paid his debts like an honest man.

Effects of the The event which did more than anything else to
alliance put an end to buccaneering was the accession of a
between France Bourbon prince, Philip V., to the throne of Spain in
and Spain. 1701. It was then that his grandfather, Louis XIV.,
declared there were no longer any Pyrenees. Ever
since the days of Ferdinand and Isabella, Spain and France had been
enemies. Their relations now became so friendly that all the ports of
Spanish America, whether in the West Indies or on the Pacific coast,
were thrown open to French merchants. This made trade more
profitable than piracy, and united the French and Spanish navies in
protecting it. The English and Dutch fleets also put forth redoubled
efforts, and during the next score of years the decline of the pirates
was rapid.

Carolina and the The first English settlements south of Virginia were
Bahamas. made at the time when buccaneering was mighty
and defiant. The colony of Sir John Yeamans, on
Cape Fear River, was begun in 1665, and it was in
1670, the very year of the treaty of America, that Governor Sayle
landed at Port Royal. The earliest settlers in Carolina, as we have
seen, were not of such good quality as those who came a few years
later. They furnished a convenient market for the pirates, who were
apt to be open-handed customers, ready to pay good prices in
Spanish gold, whether for clothes, weapons, and brandy brought
from Europe, or for timber, tar, tobacco, rice, or corn raised in
America. One of the Bahama Islands, called New Providence, had
been settled by the English. Its remarkable facilities for anchorage
and its convenient situation made it a favourite haunt of pirates,
whose evil communications corrupted the good manners of the
inhabitants. Rather than lose such customers they befriended them
in every possible way, so that the island became notorious as one of
the worst nests of desperadoes in the American waters. The malady
was not long in spreading to the mainland. The Carolina coast, with
its numerous sheltered harbours and inlets, afforded excellent
lurking-places, whither one might retreat from pursuers, and where
one might leisurely repair damages and make ready for further
mischief. The pirates, therefore, long haunted that coast, and it was
rather a help than a hindrance to them when settlements began to
be made there. For now instead of a wilderness it became a market
where they could buy food, medicines, tools, or most of such things
as they needed. So long as they behaved moderately well while
ashore, it was not necessary for the Carolinians to press them with
questions as to what they did on the high seas. For at least thirty
years after the founding of Carolina, nearly all the currency in the
colony consisted of Spanish gold and silver brought in by freebooters
from the West Indies.

Effect of the Nothing went so far toward making the colonists

Navigation tolerate piracy as the Navigation Laws which we
Laws. have already described. We have seen how they
enabled English merchants to charge exorbitant
prices for goods shipped to America, and to pay as little as possible
for American exports. The contrast between such customers and the
pirates was entirely in favour of the latter, who could afford to be
liberal both with goods and with cash that had cost them nothing
but a little fighting.311 After the founding of Charleston, the dealings
with pirates there were made the subject of complaint in London. In
1684 Robert Quarry, acting governor of Carolina, a man of marked
ability and good reputation, was removed from office for complicity
with pirates. This did not, however, prevent his being appointed to
other responsible positions. His successor, Joseph Morton, actually
gave permission to two buccaneer captains to bring their Spanish
prizes into the harbour. Soon afterward John Boon, a member of the
council, was expelled for holding correspondence with freebooters.
At the close of Ludwell’s administration, it was said that Charleston
fairly swarmed with pirates, against whose ill-got gold the law was
powerless. Along with such commercial reasons, the terror of their
fame conspired to protect them. Desperadoes who had sacked
Maracaibo and Panama might do likewise to Charleston or New York.
It was not only in Carolina that such fears combined with the
Navigation Laws to sustain piracy. In Pennsylvania a son of the
deputy-governor Markham was elected to the Assembly, but not
allowed to take a seat because of dealings with the freebooters.
Governor Fletcher, of New York, was deeply implicated in such
proceedings, and the record of distant New England was far from
stainless.

Effect of rice But at the end of the seventeenth century a

marked change became visible. In South Carolina
 culture. the cultivation of rice had reached such dimensions
that tonnage enough could not be found to carry
the crop of 1699 across the Atlantic. The colonists were allowed to
sell in foreign markets such goods as were not wanted in England,
and England took very little rice. Most of it went to Holland,
Hamburg, Bremen, Sweden, Denmark, and Portugal. As rice was
thus becoming the chief source of income for South Carolina, people
began to be sorely vexed when pirates captured their cargoes.
Besides this, the character of the population was entirely changed by
the influx of steady, law-abiding English dissenters under Blake, and
by the immigration of large numbers of Huguenots. The pirates
became unpopular, and the year 1699 witnessed the hanging of
seven of them at Charleston. As the colony yearly grew stronger and
the administration firmer, such rigours increased, and the great
gallows on Execution Dock was decorated with corpses swinging in
chains, a dozen or more at a time, until the pirates came to think of
that harbour as a place to be shunned.

North Carolina. There still remained for them, however, an

excellent place of refuge in the neighbourhood. In
the year 1700 Edward Randolph reported that the
population of North Carolina consisted of smugglers, runaway
servants, and pirates. There is no doubt that for the latter it
furnished a favourite hiding-place.

Swarms of For some years after 1700 the vigorous measures

pirates. of South Carolina kept her own coast
comparatively safe, but the snake was as yet only
scotched. Swarms of buccaneers, though far
thinner than of old, were still harboured in the West Indies, and
when occasion was offered they came out of their dens. In 1715,
when South Carolina was nearly exhausted from her great Indian
war, with crops damaged and treasury empty and military gaze
turned toward the frontier and away from the coast, the pirates
swarmed there again, with numbers swelled by rovers and bandits
turned adrift by the peace of Utrecht in 1713. James Logan,
Secretary of Pennsylvania, reported in 1717 that there were 1,500
pirates on our coasts, with their chief headquarters at Cape Fear and
New Providence, from which points they swept the sea from
Newfoundland to Brazil. For South Carolina there was ground of
alarm lest wholesale pillage of rice cargoes should bring ruin upon
the colony. But that year 1717 saw the arrival of the able governor
Robert Johnson, who was destined, after some humiliation, to
suppress the nuisance of piracy.

New Providence The next year, 1718, was the beginning of the end.
redeemed. In midsummer an English fleet, under Woodes
Rogers, captured the island of New Providence,
expelled the freebooters, and established there a
strong company of law-abiding persons. Henceforth New Providence
became a smiter of the wicked instead of their hope and refuge. It
was like capturing a battery and turning it against the enemy. One of
its immediate effects, however, was to turn the whole remnant of
the scoundrels over to the North Carolina coast, where they took
their final stand. For a moment the mischief seemed to have
increased. One deed, in particular, is vivid in its insolence.

Blackbeard, the Among these corsairs one of the boldest was a

“Last of the fellow whose name appears in court records as
Pirates.” Robert Thatch, though some historians write it
Teach. He was a native of Bristol in England, and
his real name seems to have been Drummond. But the soubriquet by
which he was most widely known was “Blackbeard.” It was a name
with which mothers and nurses were wont to tame froward children.
This man was a ruffian guilty of all crimes known to the law, a
desperate character who would stick at nothing. For many years he
had been a terror to the coast. In June, 1718, he appeared before
Charleston harbour in command of a forty-gun frigate, with three
attendant sloops, manned in all by more than 400 men. Eight or ten
vessels, rashly venturing out, were captured by him, one after
another, and in one of them were several prominent citizens of
Charleston, including a highly respected member of the council, all
bound for London. When Blackbeard learned the quality of his
prisoners, his fertile brain conceived a brilliant scheme. His ships
were in need of sundry medicines and other provisions, whereof a
list was duly made out and entrusted to a mate named Richards and
a party of sailors, who went up to Charleston in a boat, taking along
one of the prisoners with a message to Governor Johnson. The
message was briefly this, that, if the supplies mentioned were not
delivered to Blackbeard within eight-and-forty hours, that eminent
commander would forthwith send to Governor Johnson, with his
compliments, the heads of all his prisoners.

South Carolina It was a terrible humiliation, but the pirate had

government calculated correctly. Governor and council saw that
over-awed. he had them completely at his mercy. They knew
better than he how defenceless the town was;
they knew that his ships could batter it to pieces without effective
resistance. Not a minute must be lost, for Richards and his ruffians
were strutting airily about the streets amid fierce uproar, and, if the
mob should venture to assault them, woe to Blackbeard’s captives.
The supplies were delivered with all possible haste, and Blackbeard
released the prisoners after robbing them of everything they had,
even to their clothing, so that they went ashore nearly naked. From
one of them he took $6,000 in coin. After this exploit Blackbeard
retired to North Carolina, where it is said that he bought the
connivance of Charles Eden, the governor, who is further said to
have been present at the ceremony of the pirate’s marriage to his
fourteenth wife.312

Epidemic of While the arch-villain, thus befriended, was

piracy; cases of roaming the coast as far as Philadelphia and
Kidd and bringing his prizes into Pamlico Sound, another
Bonnet. rover was making trouble for Charleston. Major
Stede Bonnet, of Barbadoes, had taken up the
Fate of Bonnet. business of piracy scarcely two years before. He
had served with credit in the army and was now
past middle life, with a good reputation and plenty
of money, when all at once he must needs take the short road to the
gallows. Some say it was because his wife was a vixen, a droll
reason for turning pirate. But in truth there was a moral contagion in
this business. The case of William Kidd, a few years before Bonnet,
is an illustration. Kidd was an able merchant, with a reputation for
integrity, when William III. sent him with a swift and powerful ship
to chase pirates; and, lo! when with this fine accoutrement he brings
down less game than he had hoped, he thinks it will pay better to
turn pirate himself. In this new walk of life he goes on achieving
eminence, until on a summer day he rashly steps ashore in Boston,
is arrested, sent to London, and hung.313 Evidently there was a spirit
of buccaneering in the air, as in the twelfth century there was a spirit
of crusading. And even as children once went on a crusade, so we
find women climbing the shrouds and tending the guns of pirate
ships.314 Major Bonnet soon became distinguished in his profession,
and committed depredations all the way from Barbadoes to the
coast of Maine. Late in the summer of 1718 Governor Johnson
learned that there was a pirate active in his neighbourhood, and he
sent Colonel William Rhett, with two armed ships, to chase him. The
affair ended in an obstinate fight at the mouth of Cape Fear River, in
the course of which all the ships got aground on sand-bars. It was
clear that whichever combatant should first be set free by the rising
tide would have the other at his mercy, and we can fancy the
dreadful eagerness with which every ripple was watched. One of
Rhett’s ships was first to float, and just as she was preparing to
board the pirate he surrendered. Then it was learned that he was
none other than the famous Stede Bonnet. At the last his brute
courage deserted him, and the ecstasy of terror with which he
begged for life reminds one of the captive in “Rob Roy” who was
hurled into Loch Lomond. But entreaty fell upon deaf ears. It was a
gala day at Execution Dock when Bonnet and all his crew were hung
in chains.

A few weeks later, while Blackboard was lurking in Ocracoke Inlet,

with ship well armed and ready for some fresh errand, he was
 Fate of overhauled by two stout cruisers sent after him by
Blackbeard. Governor Spotswood, of Virginia. In a desperate
and bloody fight the “Last of the Pirates” was
killed. All the survivors of his crew were hanged,
and his severed head decorated the bowsprit of the leading ship as
she returned in triumph to James River.

Such forceful measures went on till the waters of Carolina were

cleared of the enemy, and by 1730 the fear of pirates was
extinguished. For year after year the deeds of Kidd and Blackbeard
were rehearsed at village firesides, and tales of buried treasure
caused many a greedy spade to delve in vain, until with the lapse of
time the memory of all these things grew dim and faded away.
 CHAPTER XVII.
FROM TIDEWATER TO THE MOUNTAINS.

Alexander It is time for our narrative to return to Virginia,

Spotswood. where in June, 1710, just a hundred years after
the coming of Lord Delaware, there arrived upon
Governor and
the scene one of the best and ablest of all the
burgesses. colonial governors. Alexander Spotswood was a
member of the old and honourable Scottish family
which took its name from the barony of
A sharp rebuke.
Spottiswoode, in Berwick. His great-great-
grandfather had been archbishop of St. Andrews
and chancellor of Scotland. His great-grandfather, Sir Robert
Spottiswoode, as secretary of state, had signed the commission of
Montrose, for which he was beheaded by the Covenanters in
1646.315 Alexander himself had been brought up from childhood in
the army, where he had seen some hard fighting. Already at the age
of eight-and-twenty he had attained the rank of colonel, and in that
year received an ugly wound at Blenheim. Six years after that great
battle he arrived in Virginia, a tall, robust man, with gnarled and
wrinkled face and an air of dignity and power. He was greeted at
Williamsburg with more than ordinary cordiality, because he brought
with him a writ confirming the claim of the Virginians that they were
as much entitled as other Englishmen to the privilege of habeas
corpus. Notwithstanding this auspicious reception he had a good
many wrangles with his burgesses, chiefly over questions of
taxation, and sometimes talked to them quite plainly. On one
occasion when, during the Yamassee war in Carolina, he requested
an appropriation for a force to be sent in aid of their southern
neighbours, he found the burgesses less liberal than he wished and
expected. They pleaded the poverty of the country as an excuse for
not doing more. The governor’s retort was a telling one, and might
be applied with effect to many a modern legislative body. If they felt
the poverty of the country so keenly, why did they persist in sitting
there day after day and drawing their pay, while they wasted the
country’s time in frivolities without passing laws that were much
needed? for in the last five-and-twenty days only three bills had
come from them. At the end of a stormy session he addressed them
still more sharply: “To be plain with you, the true interest of your
country is not what you have troubled your heads about. All your
proceedings have been calculated to answer the notions of the
ignorant populace; and if you can excuse yourselves to them, you
matter not how you stand before God, or any others to whom you
think you owe not your elections. In fine, I cannot but attribute
these miscarriages to the people’s mistaken choice of a set of
representatives whom Heaven has not ... endowed with the ordinary
qualifications requisite to legislators; and therefore I dissolve
you!”316

In spite of this stinging tongue Spotswood was greatly liked and

respected for his ability and honesty and his thoroughly good heart.
He was a man sound in every fibre, clear-sighted, shrewd,
immensely vigorous, and full of public spirit. One day we find him
establishing Indian missions; the next he is undertaking to smelt iron
and grow native wines; the next he is sending out ships to
exterminate the pirates. For his energy in establishing smelting
furnaces he was nicknamed “The Tubal Cain of Virginia.” For the
making of native wines he brought over a colony of Germans from
the Rhine, and settled them in the new county named for him
Spottsylvania, hard by the Rapidan River, where Germanna Ford still
preserves a reminiscence of their coming.

The Post-office Some of Spotswood’s disputes with the assembly

Act. brought up questions akin to those which agitated
the country half a century later, in the days of the
Stamp Act. A recent act of Parliament had extended the post-office
system into Virginia, whereupon the burgesses declared that
Parliament had no authority to lay any tax (such as postage) upon
the people of Virginia without the consent of their representatives;
accordingly they showed their independence by exempting from
postage all merchants’ letters. But we may let Spotswood speak for
himself: “Some time last Fall the Post M’r Gen’ll of America, having
thought himself Obliged to endeavour the Settling a post through
Virginia and Maryland, in ye same manner as they are settled in the
other Northern Plantations, pursu’t to the Act of Parliament of the
9th of Queen Anne, gave out Commissions for that purpose, and a
post was accordingly established once a fortnight from W’msburg to
Philadelphia, and for the Conveyance of Letters bro’t hither by Sea
through the several Countys. In order to this, the Post M’r Set up
printed Placards (such as were sent in by the Post M’r Gen’ll of Great
Britain) at all the Posts, requiring the delivery of all Letters not
excepted by the Act of Parliament to be delivered to his Deputys
there. No sooner was this noised about but a great Clamour was
raised against it. The people were made to believe that the Parl’t
could not Levy any Tax (for so they call ye Rates of Postage) here
without the Consent of the General Assembly. That, besides, all their
Laws317 were exempted, because scarce any came in here but what
some way or other concern’d Trade; That tho’ M’rs should, for the
reward of a penny a Letter, deliver them, the Post M’r could Demand
no Postage for the Conveyance of them, and abundance more to the
same purpose, as rediculous as Arrogant.... Thereupon a Bill is
prepared and passed both Council and Burg’s’s, w’ch, tho’ it
acknowledges the Act of Parliam’t to be in force here, does
effectually prevent its being ever put in Execution. The first Clause of
that Bill Imposes an Obligation on the Post Master to w’ch he is no
ways liable by the Act of Parliament. The second Clause lays a
Penalty of no less than £5 for every Letter he demands or takes from
a Board any Ships that stand Decreed to be excepted by the Act of
Parliament; and the last Clause appoints ye Stages and the time of
Conveyance of all Letters under an Extravagant Penalty. As it is
impossible for the Post Master to know whether the Letters he
receives be excepted or not, and y’t, according to the Interpreters,
Our Judges of the Act of Parl’t, all Letters sent from any Merch’t,
whether the same relate to Merchandize on board or not, are within
the exception of the Law, the Post M’r must meddle w’th no Letters
at all, or run the hazard of being ruin’d. And the last Clause, besides
its Contradiction to the Act of Parliament in applying the Stages,
w’ch is expressly Bestowed to the Post Master according to the
Instruction of the Soveraign, is so great an impossibility to be
complyed w’th that, considering the difficulty of passing the many
gr’t Rivers, the Post M’r must be liable to the penalty of 20s. for
every Letter he takes into his care during the whole Season of the
Winter. From whence yo’r Lo’ps may judge how well affected the
Major part of Our Assembly men are towards ye Collecting this
Branch of the King’s Revenue, and w’ll therefore be pleas’d to
Acquitt me of any Censure of Refusing Assent to such a Bill.”318
 Appointment of With an assembly so adroit and so stubborn, the
parsons. way of the postmaster was hard indeed. Another
source of irritation was the question as to
appointing parsons. In practice they were
appointed by the close vestries, but the governor wished to appoint
them himself. It also appeared that the king’s ministers would like to
send a bishop to Virginia. On these questions the worthy Spotswood
got embroiled with eight of the councilmen as well as with the
burgesses, and complained of being rather shabbily treated: “When
in Order to the Solemnizing his Maj’ty’s Birth-day,319 I gave a publick
Entertainment at my House, all gent’n that would come were
Admitted; These Eight Counsellors would neither come to my House
nor go to the Play w’ch was Acted on that occasion, but got together
all the Turbulent and disaffected Burg’s’s, had an Entertainment of
their own in the Burg’s House and invited all ye Mobb to a Bonfire,
where they were plentifully Supplyed with Liquors to Drink the same
healths without as their M’rs did within, w’ch were chiefly those of
the Council and their Associated Burg’s, without taking any [more]
Notice of the Gov’r, than if there had been none upon the place.”320

Beginning of In such disputes between the legislatures chosen

continental at home and the executive officials appointed
politics. beyond sea, Virginia, like the sister colonies in their
several ways, was getting the kind of political
education that bore fruit in 1776. In Virginia the appointment of
clergymen over parishes, in Maryland the forty per poll for a church
to which only one sixth of the people belonged, in Massachusetts the
perennial question of the governor’s salary,—all these were
occasions for disputes about matters of internal administration in
which far-reaching principles were involved. Other questions, like
that of postage just mentioned, showed that gradually but surely
and steadily a continental state of things was coming on. From the
Penobscot to the Savannah there was a continuous English world,
albeit a strip so narrow that it scarcely anywhere reached inland
more than a hundred and fifty miles from the coast. The work of
establishing postal communication throughout this region seemed to
require some continental authority independent of the dozen local
colonial legislatures. We see Parliament, with the best of intentions,
stepping in and exercising such continental authority; and we see
the Virginians resisting such action, on the ground that in laying the
species of tax known as postage rates Parliament was usurping
functions which belonged only to the colonial legislatures. Thus did
the year 1718 witness a slight presage of 1765.

Beginning of the Nothing did so much toward bringing the several

seventy years’ colonies face to face with a great continental
struggle with situation as the struggle with France which began
France. with the expulsion of the Stuarts in 1689 and was
not to be decided until seventy years later, when
Wolfe climbed the Heights of Abraham. The destruction of the
Invincible Armada, a century before the downfall of James II., had
shown that Great Britain was to belong to the Protestant Reformers;
the latter event had shown that she was not to be won back to the
Catholic Counter-Reformation which, starting with the election of
Paul IV. in 1555, had gained formidable strength in many quarters.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the colony of
Virginia was founded, the France of Henry IV. was in sympathy with
England and hostile to Spain. Before the end of that century the
France of Louis XIV. had been won over to the Counter-Reformation.
The dethronement of England’s Catholic king came almost like a
rejoinder to the expulsion of a million Protestants from France. The
mighty struggle which then began was to determine whether North
America should be controlled by Protestantism and Whiggery, or by
the Counter-Reformation and the Old Régime.

The Continental The first notable effect wrought in English America

Congress of by the outbreak of hostilities was the assembling
1690. of a Continental Congress at New York in 1690, the
first meeting of that sort in America. The
continental aspects of the situation were not as yet apparent save to
a few prescient minds. The infant settlements in Carolina hardly
counted for much. Virginia was too far from Canada to feel deeply
interested in the organization of resistance to the schemes of
Frontenac, and so the southernmost colony represented in the first
American Congress was Maryland.

Franklin’s plan It was not long, however, before the continental

for a Federal aspects of the situation began to grow more
Union. conspicuous. The reader will remember how, in
1708, the government at Charleston, in an official
Origin of the report on the military resources of the colony, laid
Stamp Act. stress upon the circumstance that Carolina was a
frontier to all the English settlements on the
mainland. The occasion for this emphasis was the
great European war that broke out in 1701, when Louis XIV. put his
grandson, Philip of Anjou, on the vacant throne of Spain. The
alliance of Spain with France threatened English America at both
ends of the line. The destruction of Deerfield by an expedition from
Canada in 1704, and the attempt upon Charleston by an expedition
from Florida in 1706, were blows delivered by the common enemy,
Louis XIV., the persecutor of Huguenots, the champion of the
Counter-Reformation, the accomplice of the Stuarts. From that
moment we may date the first dawning consciousness of a
community of interests all the way from Massachusetts to Carolina.
But it was only a few clear-headed persons that were quick to
understand the situation. The average members of a legislature
were not among these; their thoughts were much more upon the
constituencies “to whom they owed their elections” than upon any
wide or far-reaching interests. Such of the royal governors as were
honest and high-minded men saw the situation much more clearly,
since it was their business to look at things from the imperial point
of view. Especially such a man as Spotswood, a soldier of noted
ability, who had himself been scarred in fighting the common enemy,
could not fail to understand the needs of the hour. His official letters
abundantly show his disgust over the froward and niggardly policy
that refused prompt aid to hard-pressed Carolina.321 To sit wrangling
over questions of prerogative while firebrand and tomahawk were
devouring their brethren on the frontier! To our valiant soldier such
behaviour seemed fit only for churls; while waiting for the danger to
come upon one, instead of marching forth to attack the danger, was
surely as impolitic as unchivalrous. So, without waiting on the
uncertain temper and devious arguments of many-headed King
Demos, the governor hurried his men on board ship as fast as he
could enlist and arm them, well knowing that in a “dangerous
conjuncture” the more precious minutes one loses, the more costly
grow those that are left. During half of the eighteenth century, as
the conflict with France was again and again renewed, such
experiences as those of Spotswood with his burgesses were
repeated in most of the colonies, until the royal governors became
profoundly convinced that the one thing most needed in English
America was a Continental Government that could impose taxes,
according to some uniform principle, upon the people of all the
colonies for the common defence. At the Albany Congress of 1754,
when the war-clouds were blacker than ever, Benjamin Franklin
came forward with a scheme for creating such a central government
for purely federal purposes. That scheme would have inaugurated a
Federal Union, with president appointed by the crown; it would have
lodged the power of taxation, for continental purposes, in a federal
council representing the American people; and it would have left
with the several states all governmental functions and prerogatives
not explicitly granted to the central government. Had Franklin’s plan
been adopted and proved successful in its working, the political
separation between English America and English Britain would not
have occurred when it did, and possibly might not have occurred at
all. But Franklin’s plan failed of adoption just at the moment when
American politics were becoming more completely and conspicuously
continental than ever before. In the presence of a gigantic war that
extended “from the coast of Coromandel to the Great Lakes of North
America,”322 the need for a continental government and the evils
that flowed from the want of it were felt with increasing severity; the
old difficulties which had beset honest Spotswood were renewed in
manifold ways; until, when the war was over, Parliament, with the
best of intentions but without due consideration, undertook in the
Stamp Act to provide a steady continental revenue for America.
When the Americans refused to accept Parliament as their
continental legislature, and, in alliance with Pitt and his New Whigs,
won a noble victory in the repeal of the Stamp Act, a great American
question became entangled in British politics, and a situation was
thus created which enabled the unscrupulous and half-crazy George
III. to force upon America the quarrel that parted the empire in
twain. Nowhere in history is the solidarity of events, in their causal
relations, more conspicuous than in America during the eighteenth
century; and for this reason the disputes of the royal governors with
their refractory assemblies are nearly always rich in political lessons.

The unknown Looking back from the present time at Spotswood’s

West. administration, we find its incidents perpetually
reminding us that the colonies were already
Spotswood
entering upon that long period of revolution from
crosses the Blue which they were not to emerge until the adoption
Ridge, 1716. of our Federal Constitution. We never lose
consciousness of the French and Indian
background against which the events are
projected. Toward this vast dim background Spotswood set his face
in 1716, in his memorable expedition across the Blue Ridge. For
more than a century since the founding of Jamestown had the
beautiful valley of the Shenandoah remained unknown to Virginians.
It was still part of the strange, unmeasured wilderness that
stretched away to the remote shores which Drake had once called by
the name New Albion.323 Some of its most savage solitudes had in
Spotswood’s youth been traversed by the mighty La Salle, and other
adventurous Frenchmen kept up explorations among freshwater seas
to the northwestward, where English and Scotch officials of the
Hudson Bay Company were beginning to come into contact with
them. What was to be found between those freshwater seas and the
Gulf of Mexico no Englishman could tell, save that it had been found
to be solid land, and not a Sea of Verrazano.324 So much might
Spotswood have gathered from reading and from hearsay, but not
through any work done by Englishmen. In the early days, as we
have seen, Captain Newport had tried to reach the mountains and
failed.325 In 1653 it was enacted that, “whereas divers gentlemen
have a voluntarie desire to discover the Mountains and supplicated
for lycence to this Assembly, ... that order be granted unto any for
soe doing, Provided they go with a considerable partie and strength
both of men and amunition.”326 But nothing came of this permission.
In Spotswood’s time the very outposts of English civilization had not
crept inland beyond tidewater. A strip of forest fifty miles or more in
breadth still intervened between the Virginia frontier and those blue
peaks visible against the western sky. This stalwart governor was not
the man to gaze upon mountains and rest content without going to
see what was behind them. Especially since the French were laying
claim to the interior, since they had for some time possessed the
Great Lakes, and since they had lately been busy in erecting forts at
divers remote places in the western country,327 it was worth while
for Englishmen to take a step toward them by crossing the
mountains.328 The expedition was extremely popular in Virginia. A
party of fifty gentlemen, with black servants, Indian guides, and
packhorses, started out toward the end of August and made quite
an autumn picnic of it. One can fancy what prime shooting it was in
the virgin forest all alive with the finest of game. To wash down so
much toothsome venison and grouse, the governor brought along
several casks of native wines—red and white Rapidan, so to speak—
made by his Spottsylvania Germans; but cognac and cherry cordial
were not forgotten, and champagne-corks popped merrily in the
wilderness. Crossing the Blue Ridge at Swift Run Gap,329 on nearly
the same latitude as Fredericksburg, the party entered the great
valley a little north of the present site of Port Republic, and about
eighty miles southwest from Harper’s Ferry. The exploits of Stonewall
Jackson in 1862 have clothed the region with undying fame.
Spotswood called the river the Euphrates, an early instance of the
vicious naming by which the map of the United States is so
abundantly disfigured, but happily the melodious native name of
Shenandoah has held its place. On the bank of that fair stream one
of the empty bottles was buried, with a paper inside declaring that
the river and all the soil it drained were the property of the King of
Great Britain. Having thus taken formal possession of the valley, the
picnickers returned to their tidewater homes.

Knights of the A letter of Rev. Hugh Jones, who preached in

Golden Bruton Church, says that Spotswood cut the name
Horseshoe. of George I. upon a rock at the summit of the
highest peak which the party climbed, and named
it Mount George, whereupon some of the gentlemen called the next
one Mount Alexander, in honour of the governor. “For this
expedition,” says Mr. Jones, “they were obliged to provide a great
quantity of horseshoes, things seldom used in the lower parts of the
country, where there are few stones. Upon which account the
governor upon their return presented each of his companions with a
golden horseshoe, some of which I have seen, studded with valuable
stones, resembling the heads of nails, with this inscription ... Sic
juvat transcendere montes.330 This he instituted to encourage
gentlemen to venture backwards and make discoveries and new
settlements, any gentleman being entitled to wear this golden shoe
that can prove his having drank [sic] his Majesty’s health upon
Mount George.”331 In later times this incident was called instituting
the order of Knights of the Golden Horseshoe.

Spotswood’s Spotswood’s letters to the Lords of Trade, in which

view of the he mentions this expedition to the mountains, are
situation. testimony to the soundness of his military
foresight. In recent years, he says, the French
have built fortresses in such positions “that the Brittish Plantations
are in a manner Surrounded by their Commerce w’th the numerous
Nations of Indians seated on both sides of the Lakes; they may not
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