LITMIR.BIZ

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a Greek? Did he deem that he had severed himself from Greece? Did he even deem that he had broken off from all duty and fellowship towards the city from whence he had set forth? No; dwell where he might, the Greek remained a Greek; wherever he went he carried Hellas with him; in Asia, in Libya, in Sicily, in Italy, in Gaul, far away by the pillars that guarded the mouth of Ocean, far away in the inmost recesses of the Inhospitable Sea, wherever he trod, a new Hellas, if we will, a Greater Hellas, sprang into being; on those new shores of Hellas he kept his old Hellenic heart, his old Hellenic fellowship; he still kept the tongue and customs of his folk; he clave to the gods of his folk; he could go to the old land and consult their oracles, he could claim his place in their sacred games, as freely as if he still dwelled by the banks of the Spartan Eurôtas or under the shadow of the holy rock of Athens. And how fared he towards the city of his birth, the metropolis, the mother-city of his new home, the birthplace and cradle of himself and his fellow-citizens of his new city? Political tie none remained; no such tie could remain among a system of cities. Parent and child were on the political side necessarily parted; the colonist could exercise no political rights in the mother-city, nor did the mother-city put forward any claim to be lady and mistress of her distant daughter. Still the love, the reverence, due to a parent was never lacking. The tie of memory, the tie of kindred, the tie of religion, were of themselves so strong that no tie of political allegiance was needed to make them stronger. The sacred fire on the hearth of the new city was kindled from the hearth of its mother; the parent was honoured with fitting honours, her gods were honoured with fitting offerings; her citizens were welcomed as elder brethren when they visited the younger city. And when the child itself became a parent, when the new city itself sent forth its colonies, the mother-city of all was prayed to share in the work and to send forth elder brethren of her own stock to be leaders in the enterprise of her children.

      In truth the ordinary story of the relations between a Greek colony and its metropolis, relations that is between a perfectly independent state and another state to which it looks up with traditional reverence, is perhaps the most attractive feature of Greek political life. The history of the relations between Corinth and Syracuse is a pleasing tale throughout. During all the centuries of the joint independence of the two cities, the relations between the metropolis and its great colony are ever fresh, ever friendly. The Syracusan is not a Corinthian; the sea that rolls between Ortygia and the Isthmus forbids that. But he never forgets that he is a child of Corinth, a child of Peloponnêsos; he cleaves with pride to the local speech of his fathers; he cherishes the worship of the gods and heroes of the city of his fathers, their names and their legends live on his lips; Syracuse may grow into a greater and mightier city than her parent; but that Corinth is the parent is a thought that never dies out from any Syracusan heart. Yet the child is free and independent, free and independent from its beginning. Corinth makes not the slightest claim to authority or superiority over Syracuse; but she is ever ready to step in when any need on the part of Syracuse calls for her help; she steps in as bound to something which to her is dearer and more recked of than the most cherished among allies who are not her children. The mother-city steps in alike when Syracuse is pressed by foreign enemies and when she is torn by domestic seditions. She acts as a mediator between Syracuse and her foes; she shelters alike her banished patriots, her banished tyrant, even the foreign enemy whom Syracuse has spared and has given to her mother’s keeping. And, a gift precious above all, she sends her own deliverer to be in turn the deliverer of his brethren. And this friendship between Corinth and Syracuse is no friendship that stands alone; it is the common tie which binds Greek metropolis and Greek colony to one another. And all this becomes the more striking when we come to compare the tale of Corinth and Syracuse with some really exceptional cases in which the relations of metropolis and colony were less amiable. Strange to say, we can find them in the history of this very Corinth and this very Syracuse. No War of Independence, no Declaration of Independence, was ever needed between Corinth and Syracuse, because Syracuse was from the beginning independent of her metropolis, and therefore friendly to her metropolis. But perhaps a declaration of independence, certainly a war of independence, was needed between Corinth and Korkyra, between Syracuse and Kamarina. In each of those cases the metropolis did claim some measure of authority over the colony. The fruit of this departure from the common system of Greek settlement was that abiding ill-will between Korkyra and her parent Corinth which stands out among the best known facts of Grecian history. And yet perhaps in the only case where we see Corinth and Korkyra acting together in friendly guise, it shows that something of the better, the more usual, feeling was not wholly banished from Corinthian and Korkyraian hearts; we once see the two cities join to do the duty of a parent and a sister as mediators on behalf of Syracuse against an enemy. As for the other less famous case, we read that Kamarina, a colony of Syracuse, revolted against her metropolis and was swept from the earth as a punishment. The doom was heavy; the fault may have been grave; but between Corinth and Syracuse, between Phôkaia and Massalia, there was no room for revolt or for its penalties.

      Thus the old Greek citizen, in his settlements beyond the sea, founded cities, cities free and independent from the beginning. Let us see now what the modern European colonist, subject of a kingdom, has founded. He has founded settlements of very various kinds in different cases; but he has nowhere founded free and independent cities, like the Greek and the Phœnician before him. Cities indeed in one sense he has founded, vast and mighty cities, busy seats of arts and industry and commerce, but not cities in the elder sense, cities independent from their birth, cities that are born the political equals of the mightiest kingdoms. Cities like these the subject of a kingdom, bound wherever he goes to remain the subject of a kingdom, can never found. But what can be found instead? He cannot, in the nature of things, found kingdoms; it is the essence of his being that he and all that he has should remain part of an existing kingdom. His first act on entering an unknown land is to declare it to be part of the dominions of the prince from whose territories he has set forth. Wherever he goes, whatever he does, he is tied and hampered by the necessity of abiding in the allegiance of his original sovereign. It is wonderful to see how near some of the founders of modern European settlements came to the creation of really independent states. A slender line indeed distinguished the elder colonies of New England from states absolutely independent. The interference of the mother-country was, in many times and places, slight indeed. Still the final step was never taken; they were not absolutely and formally independent states, like the old settlements of Greece and Phœnicia. As all the world knows, even those settlements where local freedom was fullest, those which came most nearly to the level of actual independence, needed a Declaration of Independence, a War of Independence, to raise them to its full level. The settlements of modern Europe have not conformed to the pattern of Syracuse and Massalia; they have followed the exceptional pattern of Korkyra and Kamarina. In Greek Asia then, in Greek Sicily, in the Greater Greece itself on the forked peninsulas of Italy, we see a gathering of Greek settlements, each a free and independent city, each as a free and independent city carrying on its own political life, its questions, its disputes, perhaps its wars, with some fellow city; but all alike Greek, all glorying in the Hellenic name, all looking back to old Hellas as the motherland, each looking to its own mother-city, not with the dread of a subject, not with the helplessness of a child still in tutelage, but with the manly deference of a child of full age, whose reverence for his parent is none the less because he is no longer a member of the household. By way of contrast to that national life abiding in a new land, we see, in vast regions of the American continent, lands which once were English, which once were Spanish, which are still English and Spanish as far as common blood and speech and history can make them so, but which have ceased to be English or Spanish as political communities, and which grudgingly acknowledge the English or Spanish name. We see lands that parted in wrath from the motherland, and by whom the wrath of that parting has not wholly been forgotten. We see lands whose independence, instead of growing from the beginning with the good will of a watchful parent, has been won by the sword from the grasp of a parent who strove to keep her children in subjection. And all this has been the direct and necessary result of the theory of political life which the founders of those English and Spanish settlements carried with them. Subjects of a kingdom could do no otherwise; the theory of an allegiance which could never be cast aside obliged their settlements to become provinces, dependencies, whatever name is chosen, of the motherland. They could not found an independent kingdom any more than they could found an independent city. Dependence, tighter or slacker, was the necessity of the case. But it was no less in the necessity of the case

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