A General History for Colleges and High Schools (Myers)/Chapter 9
SECTION II— GRECIAN HISTORY.
CHAPTER IX.
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE.
Divisions of Greece.—Long arms of the sea divide the Grecian peninsula into three parts, called Northern, Central, and Southern Greece.
Northern Greece included the ancient districts of Thessaly and Epirus. Thessaly consists mainly of a large and beautiful valley, walled in on all sides by rugged mountains. It was celebrated far and wide for the variety and beauty of its scenery. On its northern edge, lay a beautiful glen, called the Vale of Tempe, the only pass by which the plain of Thessaly could be entered from the north. The district of Epirus stretched along the Ionian Sea on the west. In the gloomy recesses of its forests of oak was situated the renowned Dodonean oracle of Zeus.
Central Greece was divided into eleven districts, among which were Phocis, Bœotia, and Attica. In Phocis was the city of Delphi, famous For its oracle and temple; in Bœotia, the city of Thebes; and in Attica, the brilliant Athens.
Southern Greece, or the Peloponnesus, was also divided into eleven provinces, of which the more important were Arcadia, embracing the central part of the peninsula; Achaia, the northern part; Argolis, the eastern; and Messenia and Laconia, the southern. The last district was ruled by the city of Sparta, the great rival of Athens.
Mountains.—The Cambunian Mountains form a lofty wall along a considerable reach of the northern frontier of Greece, shutting out at once the cold winds and hostile races from the north. Branching off at right angles to these mountains is the Pindus range, which runs south into Central Greece. In Northern Thessaly is Mount Olympus, the most celebrated mountain of the peninsula. The ancient Greeks thought it the highest mountain in the world (it is 9700 feet in height), and believed that its cloudy summit was the abode of the celestials.
South of Olympus, close by the sea, are Ossa and Peliom celebrated in fable as the mountains which the giants, in their war against the gods, piled one upon another, in order to scale Olympus.
Parnassus and Helicon, in Central Greece,—beautiful mountains clad with trees and vines and filled with fountains,—were believed to be the favorite haunts of the Muses. Near Athens are Hymettus, praised for its honey, and Pentelicus, renowned for its marbles.
The Peloponnesus is rugged with mountains that radiate in all directions from the central country of Arcadia,—"the Switzerland of Greece."
Islands about Greece.—Very much of the history of Greece is intertwined with the islands that lie about the mainland. On the east, in the Ægean Sea, are the Cyclades, so called because they form an irregular circle about the sacred isle of Delos, where was a very celebrated shrine of Apollo. Between the Cyclades and Asia Minor lie the Sporades, which islands, as the name implies, are sown irregularly over that portion of the Ægean.
Just off the coast of Attica is a large island called by the ancients Eubœa, but known to us as Negropont. Close to the Asian shores are the large islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, and Rhodes.
To the west of Greece lie the Ionian Islands, the largest of which was called Corcyra, now Corfu. The rugged island of Ithaca was the birthplace of Odysseus, or Ulysses, the hero of the Odyssey. Cythera, just south of the Peloponnesus, was sacred to Aphrodite (Venus), as it was here fable said she rose from the sea-foam. Beyond Cythera, in the Mediterranean, midway between Greece and Egypt, is the large island of Crete, noted in legend for its labyrinth and its legislator Minos.
Influence of Country.—The physical features of a country have much to do with the moulding of the character and the shaping of the history of its people. Mountains, isolating neighboring communities and shutting out conquering races, foster 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 Phœnicia stirred the naturally quick and versatile Greek intellect to early and vigorous thought. The islands strewn with seeming carelessness through the Ægean 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.
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[1] 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.[2]
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 Phœnicia 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.
- ↑ 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 Minor, Southern Italy, Sicily, and elsewhere. "Wherever were Hellenes, there was Hellas."
- ↑ At first, this term meant scarcely more than "unintelligible folk"; but later, it came to express aversion and contempt.