Chapter 13
第十三章
The Greeks
希腊人
Meanwhile the Indo-European tribe of the Hellenes was taking possession of Greece
印欧语系的赫愣人占据了希腊半岛
THE Pyramids were a thousand years old and were beginning to show the first signs of decay, and Hammurabi, the wise king of Babylon, had been dead and buried several centuries, when a small tribe of shepherds left their homes along the banks of the River Danube and wandered southward in search of fresh pastures. They called themselves Hellenes, after Hellen, the son of Deucalion and Pyrrha. According to the old myths these were the only two human beings who had escaped the great flood, which countless years before had destroyed all the people of the world, when they had grown so wicked that they disgusted Zeus, the mighty God, who lived on Mount Olympus.
在历史上的某一天，当一支印欧种族的小游牧部落离开多瑙河畔的家园，向南找寻新鲜牧场时，金字塔已经屹立1000年了，正开始显出衰败的征兆，而巴比伦的睿智帝王汉漠拉比，此时也已长眠于地下数个世纪。这支游牧部落称自己为赫愣人，即希腊人的祖先。根据古老的神话，很久以前，这个世界的人类曾一度变得异常邪恶。居住在奥林匹斯山的众神之王宙斯对此大发雷霆之怒，以洪水冲毁了整个尘世，杀死所有人类，只有狄优克里安和他的妻子皮拉得以幸免。赫楞即狄优克里安与皮拉的儿子。
Of these early Hellenes we know nothing. Thucydides, the historian of the fall of Athens, describing his earliest ancestors, said that they "did not amount to very much," and this was probably true. They were very ill-mannered. They lived like pigs and threw the bodies of their enemies to the wild dogs who guarded their sheep. They had very little respect for other people's rights, and they killed the natives of the Greek peninsula (who were called the Pelasgians) and stole their farms and took their cattle and made their wives and daughters slaves and wrote endless songs praising the courage of the clan of the Ach?ans, who had led the Hellenic advance-guard into the mountains of Thessaly and the Peloponnesus.
我们对这些早期的赫愣人了解不多。记述雅典衰落的历史学家修昔底德曾以鄙夷的口气谈起过自己的这些先祖，说他们"不值一提"。他说的多半是实话。这些赫愣人粗野无礼，过着牲畜一般的生活。他们对敌人异常残忍，常常将他们的尸体扔给凶猛的牧羊狗分食。他们毫不尊重其他民族的权利，大肆残杀希腊半岛的土著皮拉斯基人，掠夺其农庄和牲畜，并将他们的妻女卖为奴隶。亚该亚人曾充当赫愣人的前锋，引导他们进入塞萨利和伯罗奔尼撒的山区，于是赫愣人写了很多颂歌来赞美亚该亚人"的勇气。