CH. VII. The Intellectual Education of the Greeks. 25

attempt was made, at the cost of whatever failures or delusions, marked the great chasm between the thought of the Eastern and the Western Aryans, and insured the growth of the science of modern Europe. The Greek found himself the member of a human society with definite duties and a law which both challenged, and commended itself to, his obedience. But if the thought of this law and these duties might set him pondering on the nature and source of his obligations, he was surrounded by objects which carried his mind on to inquiries of a wider compass. He found himself in a world of everlasting change. The day gave place to night; the buds and germs put forth in the spring ripened through summer into fruits which were gathered in autumntide, and then the earth fell back into the sleep from which it was again roused at the end of winter. By day the sun accomplished his journey in calm or storm across the wide heaven; and by night were seen myriads of lights, some like motionless thrones, others moving in intricate courses. Sometimes living fires might leap from the sky with a deafening roar, or the earth might tremble beneath their feet and swallow man and his works in its yawning jaws. Whence came all these wonderful or terrible things? What was the wind which crashed among the trees, or spoke to the heart with its happy and heavenly music? These and a thousand other questions were all asked again and again, and all in one stage of thought received an adequate answer. The subject was one which admitted of no doubt, and the system thus gradually raised had the solemn sanction of religion. This system was the mythological, and it was marked by this special feature, that it never was, and never could be, at a loss for the solution of any difficulty. All things were alive, most things were conscious beings; and all the phenomena of the universe were but the actions of these personal agents. Such a belief as this might seem to give a dangerous scope to utterly capricious agents; but even here the theological explanation was forthcoming. There was a fixed and orderly movement of the sun through the sky, a stately march of the stars across the nightly heavens; but this was because the great Zeus ruled over all, and all were his obedient or unwilling servants. The movements of some were penal; with others they were the expression of gladness and joy. The stars and the clouds were the exulting dancers who clashed their cymbals round the cradle of Zeus; the sun was the hero

compelled to go his weary round for the children of men, or *crucified daily on his blazing wheel, or condemned to heave to the summit of the heaven the stone which thence rolled down to the abyss. This system might be developed to any extent; but it amounts to nothing more than the assertion that all phenomena were the voluntary or involuntary acts of individual agents. Its weak point lay in the forming of cosmogonies. It might be easy to say that the great mountains and the mighty sea, that Erebos and Night, were all the children of Chaos; but whence came Chaos? In other words, whence came all things? The weakest attempt to answer this question marked a revolution in thought; and the man who first nerved himself to the effort achieved a task beyond the powers of Babylonian and Egyptian priests with all their wealth of astronomical observations. He began a new work and he set about its accomplishment by the application of a new method. Henceforth the object to be aimed at was a knowledge of things in themselves, and the test of the truth or the falsity of the theory must be the measure in which it explained or disagreed with ascertained facts. His first steps, and the steps of many who should come after him might be like the painful and uncertain totterings of infants; but the human mind had now begun the search for truth, and the torch thus lit should be handed down from Thales to Aristarchos, and from Aristarchos to Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton.

CHAPTER VIII.

HELLAS SPORADIKÊ.

Ar the beginning of the historical age we find the whole of the Peloponnesos with the islands of the Egean sea and the lands lying between the ranges of Pindos and the Corinthian gulf in the possession of tribes claiming the common title of Hellenes. Beyond these limits lay a vast number of Hellenic cities in countries which contained among their inhabitants tribes either non-Hellenic or barbarian. Hellas thus became a land which had no borders, for, inserting itself in wedgelike fashion amongst indifferent or hostile races, it was found on the banks of the Tanais and under the ranges of the Caucasus, on the mouth of the Rhone and the shores of Spain. At Trapezous (Trebizond)

and Sinope, in Massalia (Marseilles), Aleria, and the Iberian Zakynthos (Saguntum) were seen societies of men who in language and religion, in manners and in forms of thought acknowledged some common bond; and the citizen of the Tauric Chersonesos or the Scythian Olbia, although he might know nothing of our modern national life, might yet take pride in the thought that he belonged to a people which stood in the front ranks of mankind. But if the light of Greek civilisation shed some lustre even on these distant settlements, it shone out with full splendour in the magnificent cluster of cities which lined the eastern shores of the Egean sea, and gave to the southern portion of the Italian peninsula its name of Megalê Hellas (Magna Græcia).

Whatever may be the precise order in which the Hellenic colonies in Sicily were founded, the great prosperity which they enjoyed for generations preceding the despotism of Peisistratos. at Athens is beyond question. These new communities were established in a land of singular fertility, the resources of which,. especially in its eastern and southern portions, had never been systematically drawn out; and, unlike the Greek communities. of Asia Minor or Africa, the Sicilian colonies soon acquired. sufficient strength to insure the failure of any attacks upon them by neighbouring populations.

But great as were the attractions of Sicily, those of the neighbouring peninsula were far greater. On either side of the mountain range which forms its backbone magnificent forests rose above valleys of marvellous fertility, and pastures green in the depth of summer sloped down to plains which received the flocks and herds on the approach of winter. The exuberance of this teeming soil in wine, oil, and grain veiled the perils. involved in a region of great volcanic activity. This mighty force has in recent ages done much towards changing the face of the land, while many parts have become unhealthy and. noxious which in the days of Thucydides had no such evil reputation. When we allow for the effects of these causes and subtract further the results of misgovernment, if not of anarchy,. extended over centuries, we may form some idea of the wealth and splendour of southern Italy in the palmy days of Kroton and Sybaris, of Thourioi, Siris, Taras and Metapontion.

Whether planted earlier or later than the Sicilian settlements, these Italian colonies soon attained to a far greater

prosperity. Their dominion extended from sea to sea; but their predominance was secured much less by force than by the influence of that civilisation which had been moulded by the poetry, the worship, the tribal, and in a certain sense national, festivals of the mother country.

We might have supposed that the point from which all the ships sailing from the Peloponnesos struck off across the open water to the Italian peninsula would have been chosen as the spot for the earliest settlement in this direction; but Korkyra is said to have been colonised about the same time as the Sicilian Syracuse. The stern and rugged mountain country which on the main land rises to the magnificent Akrokeraunian range furnished, it is true, no great attraction for Hellenic colonists; but Korkyra with its broad plains and fertile valleys might have satisfied emigrants who had not been accustomed to the rich soil of Messênê. Severed from the main land by a strait at its northern end scarcely wider than that of Euripos, it still had the advantage of an insular position against attack from without, while its moderate size, not exceeding forty miles in length by half that distance in width, involved none of the difficulties and dangers of settlement on a coast line with barbarous and perhaps hostile tribes in the rear. Here it might be thought that a colony would have grown up which we might class among the most peaceful of Hellenic communities here in fact grew up perhaps the most turbulent, if not the most ferocious, of Greek societies. Alliance with Athens did little to soften the violence of their passions; and the rapid developement of the feud between the Korkyraian colony and the mother city of Corinth may be attested by the tradition that the first naval battle of the Greeks was fought by the fleets of these two cities.

In spite of their jealousies joint colonists from Corinth and Korkyra founded the settlement of Anaktorion at the southern entrance of the Ambrakian gulf. Another joint colony was founded at Leukas, now Santa Maura, which became an island when, in the fourth century B.C., the Leukadians cut through the narrow isthmus between the city and the main land. The joint foundation of the two northernmost Greek settlements on the Epeirotic coast had more important results in the later history of Greece. These two Korkyraian colonies were founded the one at Apollonia on the mouth of

the Aôos about sixty miles north of Korkyra, the other at Epidamnos, about the same distance still further north, with the Corinthian Phalios as Oikistes, or Settler. Corinth had thus a technical right of interference in their affairs, and the exercise of this right was one of the alleged causes for the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war.

Between the coast extending from Leukas to Bouthroton (opposite the northernmost promontory of Korkyra) and the mountain range of Pindos lay a number of tribes, some of which were regarded as belonging in some sort to the Hellenic stock, while others were looked upon as mere barbarians. Of these tribes the most reputable were the Akarnanians, who, though they preyed upon each other, met together near the Amphilochian Argos to settle their disputes, and, though they tended their flocks with arms in their hands, lacked the deep cunning and treachery which gave to their brutal Aitolian neighbours a decided advantage over them.

The tribes which lay to the north of the Akarnanian territory were known to the southern Greeks under the common term Epeirotai, or people of the main land: among themselves they were distinguished as Chaonians, Thesprotians, Molossians, or by other names.

Beyond these Epeirotic tribes stretched to the north and the east, from the Hadriatic to the Euxine seas, a vast region inhabited by races more or less nearly akin to each other, and all perhaps having some affinity with the ruder Hellenic clans. Of these tribes the most prominent are the Illyrians, Makedonians, and Thrakians, each of these being subdivided into several subordinate tribes, and all exhibiting characteristics common to the inhabitants of countries whose physical features present an effectual barrier to political union and the life of cities. More fortunate in their soil and in the possession of comparatively extensive plains watered by the Erigon, the Haliakmon, and the Axios, the Makedonians, although in the time of Herodotos they had not yet extended their conquests to the sea, were still far in advance of their neighbours.

A few generations after the time of Herodotos the Makedonians were to be lords of Hellas and almost of the world; but in his own day they were not the most formidable of the tribes to the north of the Kambounian hills. In his belief the Thrakians might with even moderate powers of combination