The Mediterranean World and the Early Greeks 125 ^gean not long after 2000 B.C. The Greek peninsula which they had entered contains about twenty-five thousand square miles.-^ It is everywhere cut up by mountains and inlets of the sea into small plains and peninsulas, sepa- rated from each other either by the sea or the mountain ridges (Fig. 87). The Greeks found the Thessalian plains dotted with the settlements of mud-plastered wattle huts, the agricultural villages of the Europeans of the Late Stone Age (p. 123), while the islands which the new- comers could dimly discern across the w^aters were al- ready carrying on busy in- dustries in pottery and metal, which a thriving com- merce was distributing. With a wonder like that of the North American In- dians as they beheld the first European ships, these earliest Greeks must have looked out upon the white sails that flecked the blue surface of the ^gean Sea. Fig. 68. The Main Entrance of THE Castle of Mycenae, called THE " Lion Gate " A good example of the masonry of the two Mycenaean cities in the plain of Argos (Plate II and map, p. 146). The gate is surmounted by a large triangu- lar relief showing two lions grouped on either side of a central column, the whole doubtless forming the emblem of the city, or the " arms " of its kings It was to be long, however, before 1 It is about one sixth smaller than the state of South Carolina. The very limited extent of Greece will be evident if the student notes that Mount Olympus on the northern boundary of Greece can be seen over a large part of the peninsula. From the mountains of Sparta one can see from Crete to the mountains north of the Corinthian Gulf (see Fig. 87), a distance of t^^'O hundred twenty-five miles.
