LITMIR.BIZ

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the spirit of local patriotism and preserve freedom; the sea, inviting abroad, and rendering intercourse with distant countries easy, awakens the spirit of adventure and develops commercial enterprise.

      Now, Greece is at once a mountainous and a maritime country. Abrupt mountain-walls fence it off into a great number of isolated districts, each of which in ancient times became the seat of a distinct community, or state. Hence the fragmentary character of its political history. The Hellenic states never coalesced to form a single nation.

      The peninsula is, moreover, by deep arms and bays of the sea, converted into what is in effect an archipelago. (No spot in Greece is forty miles from the sea.) Hence its people were early tempted to a sea-faring life. The shores of the Mediterranean and the Euxine were dotted with Hellenic colonies. Intercourse with the old civilizations of Egypt and Phoenicia stirred the naturally quick and versatile Greek intellect to early and vigorous thought. The islands strewn with seeming carelessness through the AEgean Sea were "stepping-stones," which invited the earliest settlers of Greece to the delightful coast countries of Asia Minor, and thus blended the life and history of the opposite shores.

      Again, the beauty of Grecian scenery inspired many of the most striking passages of her poets; and it is thought that the exhilarating atmosphere and brilliant skies of Attica were not unrelated to the lofty achievements of the Athenian intellect.

      THE PELASGIANS.—The historic inhabitants of the land we have described were called by the Romans Greeks, but they called themselves Hellenes, from their fabled ancestor Hellen.

      But the Hellenes, according to their own account, were not the original inhabitants of the country. They were preceded by a people whom they called Pelasgians. Who these folk were is a matter of debate. Some think that the Pelasgians and Hellenes were kindred tribes, but that the Hellenes, possessing superior qualities, gradually acquired ascendency over the Pelasgians and finally absorbed them.

      [Illustration: PREHISTORIC WALLS AT MYCENÆ. (The Lions' Gate.)]

      The Pelasgians were somewhat advanced beyond the savage state. They cultivated the ground, and protected their cities with walls. Remnants of their rude but massive masonry still encumber in places the soil of Greece.

      THE HELLENES.—The Hellenes were divided into four tribes; namely, the Ionians, the Dorians, the Achæans, and the Æolians. The Ionians were a many-sided, imaginative people. They developed every part of their nature, and attained unsurpassed excellence in art, literature, and philosophy. The most noted Ionian city was Athens, whose story is a large part of the history of Hellas.

      The Dorians were a practical, unimaginative race. Their speech and their art were both alike without ornament. They developed the body rather than the mind. Their education was almost wholly gymnastic and military. They were unexcelled as warriors. The most important city founded by them was Sparta, the rival of Athens.

      These two great Hellenic families divided Hellas [Footnote: Under the name Hellas the ancient Greeks included not only Greece proper and the islands of the adjoining seas, but also the Hellenic cities in Asia Minor, Southern Italy, Sicily, and elsewhere. "Wherever were Hellenes, there was Hellas."] into two rival parties, which through their mutual jealousies and contentions finally brought all the bright hopes and promises of the Hellenic race to utter ruin.

      The Achæans are represented by the Greek legends as being the predominant race in the Peloponnesus during the Heroic Age. The Æolians formed a rather ill-defined division. In historic times the name is often made to include all Hellenes not enumerated as Ionians or Dorians.

      These several tribes, united by bonds of language and religion, always regarded themselves as members of a single family. They were proud of their ancestry, and as exclusive almost as the Hebrews. All non-Hellenic people they called Barbarians [Footnote: At first, this term meant scarcely more than "unintelligible folk"; but later, it came to express aversion and contempt.].

      When the mists of antiquity are first lifted from Greece, about the beginning of the eighth century B.C., we discover the several families of the Hellenic race in possession of Greece proper, of the islands of the Ægean, and of the western coasts of Asia Minor. Respecting their prehistoric migrations and settlements, we have little or no certain knowledge.

      ORIENTAL IMMIGRANTS.—According to their own traditions the early growth of civilization among the European Hellenes was promoted by the settlement among them of Oriental immigrants, who brought with them the arts and culture of the different countries of the East.

      From Egypt, legend affirms, came Cecrops, bringing with him the arts, learning, and priestly wisdom of the Nile valley. He is represented as the builder of the citadel (the Cecropia) of what was afterwards the illustrious city of Athens. From Phoenicia Cadmus brought the letters of the alphabet, and founded the city of Thebes. The Phrygian Pelops, the progenitor of the renowned heroes Agamemnon and Menelaus, settled in the southern peninsula, which was called after him the Peloponnesus (the Island of Pelops).

      The nucleus of fact in all these legends is probably this—that the

       European Greeks received the primary elements of their culture from the

       East through their Asiatic kinsmen.

      LOCAL PATRIOTISM OF THE GREEKS: THE CITY THE POLITICAL UNIT.—The narrow political sympathies of the ancient Greeks prevented their ever uniting to form a single nation. The city was with them the political unit. It was regarded as a distinct, self-governing state, just like a modern nation. A citizen of one city was an alien in any other: he could not marry a woman of a city not his own, nor hold property in houses or lands within its territory.

      A Greek city-state usually embraced, besides the walled town, a more or less extensive border of gardens and farms, a strip of sea-coast, or perhaps a considerable mountain-hemmed valley or plain. The model city (or state, as we should say) must not be over large. In this, as in everything else, the ancient Greeks applied the Delphian rule—"Measure in all things." "A small city," says one of their poets, "set upon a rock and well governed, is better than all foolish Nineveh." Aristotle thought that the ideal city should not have more than ten thousand citizens.

CHAPTER X.

       Table of Contents

      THE LEGENDARY, OR HEROIC AGE.

       (From the earliest times to 776 B.C.)

      CHARACTER OF THE LEGENDARY AGE.—The real history of the Greeks does not begin before the eighth century B.C. All that lies back of that date is an inseparable mixture of myth, legend, and fact. Yet this shadowy period forms the background of Grecian history, and we cannot understand the ideas and acts of the Greeks of historic times without at least some knowledge of what they believed their ancestors did and experienced in those prehistoric ages.

      So, as a sort of prelude to the story we have to tell, we shall repeat some of the legends of the Greeks respecting their national heroes and their great labors and undertakings. But it must be carefully borne in mind that these legends are not history, though some of them may be confused remembrances of actual events.

      THE HEROES: HERACLES, THESEUS, AND MINOS.—The Greeks believed that their ancestors were a race of heroes of divine or semi-divine lineage. Every tribe, district, city, and village even, preserved traditions of its heroes, whose wonderful exploits were commemorated in song and story. Many of these personages acquired national renown, and became the revered heroes of the whole Greek race.

      Heracles was the greatest of the national heroes of the Greeks. He is represented as performing, besides various other exploits, twelve superhuman labors, and as being at last translated from a blazing pyre to a place among the immortal gods. The myth of Heracles, who was at first a solar divinity, is made up mainly of the very same fables that were told of the Chaldæan solar hero Izdubar (see p. 46). Through the Phoenicians, these stories found their way to the Greeks, who ascribed to their own Heracles the deeds of the Chaldæan sun-god.

      Theseus, a descendant of Cecrops,

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