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WITH AN INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND CONCLUSION BY FEANK BYEON JEVONS, M.A., Litt.D., PRINCIPAL OF BISHOP HATFIELD'S HALL, UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM. ^ OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON: CHARLES GRIFFIN AND COMPANY, Limited; EXETER STREET, STRAND. 1903. ^ [All rights reserved.] 6L77I ^%>ft (41 Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson &^ Co. At the Ballantyne Press CONTENTS Introduction, by the Editor ix-xxix I. THE LAND. Introduction .... Hellas as a Land of Experiments Security and Development Diversity and Individuality . Intercourse, Progress, Expansion Material Progress The Breaking-down of Prejudice Colonisation .... Development of Character . Development of Liberty PAGE I 3 4 5 lo 14 15 17 19 i9 PAGE Climate and Energy . . . 20 Natural Resources and Self-help . 24 The Present State of Greece . 42 Stimulation of Thought and Inquiry 43 Volcanic Phenomena ... 44 Earthquakes and Disappearances of Land . . . . .48 Phenomena connected with Water 5 2 Beauty 64 II. GREEK LANGUAGE. First Experiment : The Language The Basis of the Experiment The Giving of Names . Word Building Words are Symbols of Ideals Words made ready for the Mas- ter's Use . The Dialects ^olic Doric Ionic . §111 Introduction . The Grseco-Aryans . The Pelasgian Age . The Tribes of the West The Tribes of the East The Minyse Achseans and Hellenes Cadmeians (Thebans) The Thracians The lonians Pelasgi, Danaans and Achseans The oldest Monuments of Greece Mycense The Walls .... PAGE . 82 The Dialects (continued). • 85 Attic III . 88 Place of the Dialects in Litera- . 91 ture ..... 112 • 93 How Dialects were superseded 3- by a Common Language 112 . 106 The Koine-Hellenistic Greek . 113 . 109 The Result of the Experiment . 114 . 109 Greek the Language of the New no Testament . . . . 117 III How the Experiment affects us . 118 I. THI I PEOPLE. PAGE PAGE 121 Mycense (continued). • 123 The Lower City and Suburbs 165 . 128 The Pit-graves of Mycense . 167 ■ 130 Tiryns 172 • 133 Influences of the East on early • 134 Greece 174 . 142 Egypt 175 . 144 Asia Minor 177 . 146 The Phoenicians . . . . 179 . 148 The Achaean Age . . ... 189 . 156 The Thessalian Invasion . 193 . 160 The Achaeans (Boeotians) 195 . 164 The Great Migrations 201 . i6s 169109 VI CONTENTS §IV. RELIGION. PAGE Introduction 208 The Basis of the Experiment . -215 The Prehistoric Period . . . 224 Witness of Names . Localisation of Cults Nature Worship PAGE 225 226 232 §V. THE HOMERIC AGE. The Supremacy of Zeus . Zeiis supreme over Nature . Zeus on the Mountain-tops Zeus in relation to the Gods Zeus supreme in the Moral World .... Zeus as the God of Social Life Zeus supreme over Fate The Web of Fate . The Balance of Fate The Character of Zeus The Gods of Olympus PAGE 242 242 243 244 245 247 248 249 249 250 254 PAGE Revelation 258 Omens and Portents . . . 260 The Great Unwritten Laws . .261 The Oath and Hospitality . . 276 The Homeric Ideals . . .283 Sin 286 The Future Life . . . .292 The Ethical Unity of the Homeric Poems 295 Summary 306 The Nature of God . . . 306 Revelation 307 §VL PREPARATION FOR THE SECOND GREAT PERIOD. Hesiod .... The Theogony The Works and Days . The Idea of God The Invisible Justice Moral Ideals Summary . The Oracle Dodona and Delphi PAGE 309 310 311 313 313 315 318 319 320 The Oracle {continued). The Character of Apollo . .321 The Delphic Priesthood . . 323 Rise of the Great Festivals . .327 Rise of the People . . . '330 The Seven Wise Men : the Gnomic Poets 331 Rise of Philosophy . . . -334 §VIL CLASSICAL PERIOD: PINDAR. PAGE The Idea of God .... 340 The Ideals 343 Proved Worth .... 344 Truth 345 The Ideals : Peace . Sin The Great Unwritten Laws The Future Life PAGE 346 349 353 356 VIII. JESCHYLUS. The Idea of God Sin The Great Unwritten Laws The Ideals of ^schylus . PAGE 361 363 360 369 The Oresteia 375 Sincerity 379 True Freedom .... 380 True Patriotism . . . .381 CONTENTS Vll §IX. SOPHOCLES. The Idea of God The World Ideal of Sophocles Sin The Great Unwritten Laws The Trilogy . 384 385 386 388 394 CEdipus the King . OEdipus at Colonus . Antigone . The Ideals of Sophocles PAGE 396 404 412 427 X. EURIPIDES. Life and Works Euripides as a Philosopher . His Apparent Moral Contradic tions .... The Idea of God Introduction The Slaying of Clytemnestra The Sin of Helen The Temptation of Helen . The Orgiastic Cults What God is . God's Mode of CorDmunicating His Will 430 431 431 432 432 440 442 443 445 448 451 What God is (continued). Omens and Portents . The Oracle .... Sin, Misery, Impurity Hippolytus .... General Tendency of the Drama The Christian and the Pagan Con ception of Sin . Moral Purity The Consequence of Sin The Great Unwritten Laws . The Great Laws The Ideals .... §XL HERODOTUS. The Idea of God . Sin and Retribution The Great Unwritten Laws Plato and the Popular Religion Plato and the Religion of his Day God is Good God is True .... God as the Creator Plato's Account of the Creation of the World God's Method of Working . The Body of the Universe . The Soul of the Universe The Joy of God in His Creation God Creates Time Resemblances between the Mosaic and the Platonic Accounts of Creation The Four Races .... Creation of the Visible Gods Creation of the Invisible Gods Address of the Eternal God to the Created Gods .... PAGE . 502 . 509 . 512 §XIL PAGE . 541 541 The Hellenic Ideals . The Battle of Salamis PLATO. 543 544 544 547 548 548 549 551 551 552 552 553 553 553 Some Difficulties of the Timseus Plato and his Predecessors God in Relation to the Invisible World .... God and the Ideas Plato's Idea of Man : his Psychology The Creation of Man . The Soul and her Wings . Plato's Conception of Sin The Soul's Progress Death and Immortality . How the Good Man regards Death The Hope of Immortality . Objections .... Socrates Refutes the Objections The Dialectical Proof . The Practical Conclusions . The Ideal Ruler Nature of the Lover of Wisdom Definition of the Philosopher 451 452 454 454 457 458 460 460 460 470 477 PAGE 525 532 PAGE 555 560 561 563 567 567 573 577 586 590*^ 591 594 601 605 606 608 612 616 620 VUl CONTENTS Plato's Limits .... Plato and the Masses . How Plato regards the People Plato's Views on Slavery PAGE 624 624 625 Plato's Views on Work and Trade 627 629 Plato's Limits (continued). Plato's Conception of Woman Plato's Communism PAGE 631 634 The Isolation of the Philosopher . 636 §XIIL ARISTOTLE. The " Metaphysic " of Aristole The Ladder of Knowledge . What is Wisdom . The Highest Step in the Ladder of Knowledge . Summary .... Aristotle's Definition . The Ladder of Inquiry Summary of the Argument . Aristotle's Psychology Introduction The Early Theories concerning the Nature of the Soul . PAGE 639 639 640 641 642 645 646 649 651 651 653 Aristotle's Definition of the Soul The Ladder of Life . The Vegetative Soul . The Sentient and Perceiving Soul The Discriminating Soul The Imaginative Faculty Nous : Spirit and Mind The Immortality of the Spirit The Motive Power . The Basis of the Moral Conflict The Idea of God . The Nature of God God and the Universe . PAGE 655 658 658 660 664 666 668 671 676 677 678 678 683 CONCLUSION . .687 INDEX 692 5 hsi}) .hoi) INTRODUCTION The author of The Makers of Hellas died before the book was in print, before even the manuscript of the work was completed, and left a request that I would prepare it for the press and publish it without revealing the writer's name. Even if the author had lived until the book appeared in print, I believe the book would have been published anonymously or under a 'nom de plume. The reason for this reticence, or this self-suppression, will not be apparent to those who merely scan the title of the work — The Makers of Hellas — for the title scarcely suggests the dominant 'thought of the book. The dominant thought and feeling of the whole work is religious. The makers of Hellas are not those who made — and unmade — her politically, nor even the artists and authors who made her what she is in literature and art. They are those through whom the spirit of religion spoke. At a time, such as the present, when the material monuments of Greece, and the isles of Greece, are claiming an ever-increasing share of the work of classical students and of the attention of the cultured world, when the sun of solar mythology has set, and folklore is absorbing the study both of ritual and belief, it may seem remote from the general trend of thought to consider seriously the religion, rather than the religious monuments or the rites or myths of ancient Greece. On the other hand, to those whose interest in myths, monuments, and rites alike is weak, it may seem excessive even to speak of the religion of a people who undeniably were pagan. If, then, either to those who know or to those who claim no special know- ledge of the thought of ancient Greece, it should yet appear, after perusal of The Makers of Hellas, that religion played no small part in the making of the Hellenic mind and spirit, the reader will perhaps surmise a reason why the author's name does not appear. If there be any praise — non nobis, Domine. The main thought of the work then is that the Greeks were " the world's greatest Pioneers and Experimenters " (p. 3). But, whereas their services to mankind in literature and art are fully recognised, the value of their contributions to religion has generally been overlooked. It is to these evidences of religion that the author wishes to call the attention not only of students of Greek thought, not only of the growing number of those engaged in studying the history or the science of religion, but also of the general reader, and particularly of the religious reader. To the last it may seem, the author is afraid (p. 208), preposterous to talk about religion in connec- tion with pagans, " or of faith in connection with their deities." But I am inclined to think that, justifiable as this fear once was, the occasion for it has much diminished in the last quarter of a century, and that there is a general disposition to pay increased attention to the authority of St. Paul, who declared of " every nation of men " that it was determined " that they should seek after God, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him." In any case, the purpose of this book is to show that the Greeks did seek X INTRODUCTION after God, and to maintain that they did not wholly fail to find Him, for " He is not far from each one of us." The evidence of this is sought not in religious or " sacral " antiquities, or in mythology, or in rites and customs, but in the literature of Greece. The limits, then, of the work are pretty plainly marked out ; and there is no difficulty in pointing out the lines within which it moves. In the first place, if we distinguish, as we ought, between the philosophy and the history of religion, the book is not concerned with the philosophy of religion. The history of religious belief has nothing directly to do with the justification of belief. If a belief exists, and exists for a sufficient time, the history of that belief may be written, if the materials for the history exist and a writer is to be found. Doubtless, the history may be written "with a purpose." Thus a History of Philosophy was written by Mr. G. H. Lewes with a purpose — with the purpose of showing that philosophy, as a matter of historic fact, was futile. Histories of religion — and more frequently histories of some particular religion — have been written with a view to show the validity of religion or the truth of some particular religion. But, in either case, such histories have not been purely ''objective." Their purpose has been not merely to record facts, but to interpret them, and to interpret them in one, or other, particular way. They have been, consciously or unconsciously — generally unconsciously — philosophies, as well as histories, of religion. And unconscious philosophy is specially liable to go wrong and to walk into some pitfalls which the avowed philosopher has learnt to avoid. Theoretically, the historian who is to be purely "objective" should have — we will not say no philosophy, for such ignorance may lead him into those very pitfalls to which we have just alluded, but should have — an absolute impartiality for facts, and should surrender himself absolutely to facts. As a matter of fact, whatever may be the case with social or political history, this is not yet the case with religious history. Every historian of religion starts from a definite point in philosophy, with a decided attitude towards the philosophy of religion, and that attitude may be — indeed generally is — none the less definite and decided because the writer himself is unaware of it. So far as the philosophic prepossessions of the writer tend to shut out facts from his view, or to distort his view of facts, the remedy lies, for the reader, in the hope that other writers, because they start from a different philosophic point and follow a different prepossession, may strike upon facts hitherto ignored or may reach a less distorted view. In fine, it must be with religious history as it has been with political or social history : the personal, religious equation may not be immediately ascertain- able, and it may not at the time and for the moment be possible to make the right allowance for it ; but in course of time and with the advance of knowledge, we may take it for granted that, as long as the desire for truth is active, errors will slowly cancel themselves out, and there will be a gradually and increasing recognition of certain facts as " objective," and as undoubtedly true, whatever philosophic standpoint we take up. Indeed to a large extent, and especially in the case of a historic people, such as the Hellenes, we have already at our disposal a large number of facts which will at once be recognised, by those competent to judge, as " objective " and as historically true. It is, that is to say, historically and objectively fact that the Hellenes held certain religious beliefs. It is with this kind of objective fact that history of religion has exclusively to do. To establish such objective fact may in some cases require the utmost — and even more than the utmost — that the historian can do. Thus it may be difficult or impossible to trace back, beyond a certain point, the belief in a future life, or in the immortality of the INTRODUCTION xi soul, or in punishments and rewards after death. But thus to trace belief backwards and forwards is the work of the historian : and that, and that only, is his work. To inquire what is the value of the belief, when it has been traced, or before it has been traced ; to ask what evidence there is — not that the belief was entertained or how it came to be entertained, but — that it is a true or justifiable belief ; those are questions, which, if asked, cannot be answered by history, for all that history can testify is that the beliefs have been held, not that they are true. Whether the beliefs have or have not value, whether they are or are not true, are questions which may be answered by the individual seeker after truth either on his own responsibility and at his own risk, or may be referred for their solution to philosophy. When answered by the individual, however, the principles on which he gives his answer and undertakes his responsibility are evidently capable of generalisation and should be as valid for other people as for himself. In other words, they form poten- tially a philosophy, a theory of the universe which all other people would hold, if only they saw the facts in the same way — assuming, of course, that it is, as it appears to the holder of the view to be, the right way. If, however, the individual thinker, instead of answering the questions on his own responsibility, proceeds to philosophy for their solution, he will find at the end that he must choose his own philosophy on his own responsibility and at his own risk. But by following this course he will gain great advantages : he will at anyrate, before making his choice, have duly considered the solutions proposed by the greatest philosophic minds ; he will have discovered that some errors have been definitely recognised and discarded ; and he will, by avoiding those errors, be guided to some extent in the right direction. He will be less in danger of inventing an unconscious philosophy which no one else can share with him ; and more likely to realise truths which a majority of those qualified to judge consider to be true. The disrepute into which philosophy has fallen, in England at anyrate, of late years, is due to the extraordinary development of the theory of Evolution, which has done so much for knowledge that was unexpected that no bounds are recognised to what may be expected from it. It is undoubtedly considered to do away with the necessity of philosophy, either because it is itself the sole, sufiicient philosophy, or because, confining itself to facts, it explains them, and so dispenses with the need of any further philosophic explanation. From this point of view all that is supposed to be necessary for the proper understanding of any matter is facts, positive facts, and their relation to one another. For the proper understanding of the present, as it is, all that is required, on this supposition, is to know the actual facts which led up to it and caused it. The ideal — unattainable, indeed, in the historic sciences, but none the less to be aimed at — would be, from this point of view, to attain a series of equations, which should resemble chemical equations, and which should be such that on one side of the historic equation there should be stated all the causes at work at a given moment, while on the other side the outcome of the causes should be stated with such precision that every single atom which was postulated on the one side should appear — though in different combinations — on the other side. When everything postulated on the one side was accounted for on the other side, when every factor in the process of evolution which was at work as a cause at any given moment was seen to appear, though in a different form, in the sum total of effects, then the effect would be scientifically and totally accounted for. The history of the thing would then be complete. And though such precision in the quantitative causes and effects of human thought and action is impossible, the Historic Method seeks to approximate as closely xii INTRODUCTION to this ideal as the nature of its subject-matter permits, and to realise the working of cause and effect roughly and in outline. For the successful application of the Historic Method there is one condition which is plainly indispensable : it is that the historian must not tamper with the facts. He must not have a theory to prove or disprove — for that might lead him astray — and every fact, as fact, must be as valuable in his eyes as any other fact. Truth, in a word, is the only value which he can allow to facts. If he has prepossessions in favour of this cause or that, in favour of this country or that, this character or that, he must resolutely suppress them and rigorously exclude them from his work. From the beginning he must know no partiality ; and at the end he must show no satisfaction at the triumph of this movement or the downfall of that. His business is to ascertain facts, not to estimate their value. To ascertain the facts of Mary's reign is the work of a historian. The value of her work will be differently estimated by the Protestant and the Roman. But thus to assign the religious worth or moral value of the facts that took place is no part of the historian's work. It is, indeed, practically impossible to rest content with the objective results of the Historic Method : if the historian himself refuses to pass any judgment upon the facts, the reader will form a judgment of his own ; and in doing so he will, consciously or unconsciously, be doing the philosopher's work. In other words, rigorously as the historian may exclude philosophy and the valuation of facts in order to ascertain simply what events took place, what were their causes and what their effects, no one is content to remain satisfied with the facts, every one passes his own judgment upon them and draws his own philosophic conclusions. The Historic Method is simply a means to an end ; its object is to ascertain facts, but the facts are to be ascertained in order that a judgment may be passed upon them. And such judgment is part of philosophy. What is thus true of a particular reign, is true of the whole story of Evolu- tion. Interesting as the story itself may be, more interesting are the questions, what are we to think of it ? what conclusions are we to draw from it ? how is it to affect our actions, our beliefs, our hopes ? These questions may be answered, indeed, as they have been answered, very simply, by the dictum that Evolution is Progress. This answer may be right or it may be wrong. Evidently it implies that we know, roughly but sufficiently well, what evolution is, and what progress is ; and that, on coming to look at both, we discover that they coincide. It implies that we have a standard of the good ; that we can test the process of evolution by it ; and that, when we so test it, we find the movement of evolution is always in the direction of the good. Unless we have the standard, we cannot measure the movement or ascertain its direction. Two things are necessary : that we should have knowledge of the movement and that we should have the standard whereby to measure it. We cannot measure a thing, if we have nothing to measure it by ; or ascertain the direc- tion of a movement, if we have no fixed point from or by which to ascertain it. If we know what good is, or what progress is, we can determine whether the movement of evolution is towards it or away from it ; if not, not. But to ascertain, in the first place, what good is or wherein progress consists, is a philosophical inquiry. Thus we come back to our original position, that, when we have ascertained what, as a matter of objective fact, has happened — what the evolution or the history of a thing has been — there still remains the inevitable task of de- termining whether the thing was right or wrong, a thing to be acquiesced in or to be remedied, to be avoided in future, or to be promoted. And thus to determine the value of what has been or is is part of the work of philosophy. INTRODUCTION xiii There can be little doubt that, the moment we come to test in this way the value of things that have happened and of movements that have taken place in the past, we recognise that some were good and some bad ; that deterioration as well as improvement takes place ; in fine, that, though progress is always a process of evolution, evolution is neither necessarily improvement nor always progress. The moment we have a standard whereby to measure, a goal to which movement ought to be directed, we can determine whether and to what extent progress is being made, and whether a given movement is progress or deterioration. Nor can it be doubted that for the history of religion we are bound to assume some such standard, implicitly or explicitly. To begin with, it is impossible to pretend to undertake the history of religion if we have not the least idea of what we mean by religion and have no means of distinguishing, roughly at least, religious facts from non-religious facts. We must at the outset make up our minds that there are many things done by man and many thoughts elaborated by him which it is not necessary for the historian of religion to take notice of. When we set aside such facts as not bearing directly upon religion, we thereby, however roughly or even erroneously, testify to the fact that we have some conception, even if we give no definition, of religion. But some such conception, if not definition, must be present to our minds, or else we could not separate out those facts which seem to us to belong to the history of religion, and discard those which are irrelevant to our purpose. The history of religion cannot begin unless and until we have such a conception or definition ; and the work of framing such a definition belongs to the philosophy of religion. With such a definition, the historian of religion is in a position not only to select his facts, that is, to discriminate between those facts in the general history of his period which do and those which do not belong to the history of religion ; but he is also able to distinguish, by reference to his definition of religion, movements of progress from movements of deterioration ; and to determine whether the whole period has been one of religious progress or of religious decay. But it is only by reference to his definition of religion that he can do this ; and it is only on the assumption of the correctness of his definition that what he regards as progress can be admitted to be progress. If we wish to contest or he wishes to maintain the correctness of his definition, the discussion ceases to be one of historic facts and becomes one of philosophy. But until his definition is disputed, he is concerned with the purely historic function of determining objectively what movements actually took place, and what their direction was. The philosophic starting-point then of The Makers of Hellas is given on page 212: there are " two facts which stare us in the face, viz. (i) that in all ages men have been believers in the Unseen ; and (2) that the Unseen has exercised over their lives an influence far transcending that of the seen, the visible." With the question whether this belief is justifiable or reasonable, the author of The Makers of Hellas has nothing to do. That is a philosophic question, and this is a historical work. Whatever the philosophic answer to the philosophic question may be, the historic fact that in all ages men have been subject to these beliefs remains untouched and unassailable. That any scien- tific or historic account of religion must start by recognising this fact and must be built upon this fact as its foundation is recognised and insisted upon by Professor William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience, who says (p. 465): ''The religious phenomenon, studied as an inner fact, and apart from ecclesiastical or theological complications, has shown xiv INTRODUCTION itself to consist everywhere, and at all its stages, in the consciousness which individuals have of an intercourse between themselves and higher powers with which they feel themselves to be related. This intercourse is realised at the time as being both active and mutual." He quotes from M. Auguste Sabatier (JSsquisse d'une PMlosopMe de la Religion, pp. 24-26) the words: "Religion is an intercourse, a conscious and voluntary relation, entered into by a soul in distress with the mysterious power upon which it feels itself to depend, and upon which its fate is contingent. Prayer is religion in act ; that is prayer is real religion. . . . This act is prayer, by which term I understand no vain exercise of words, no mere repetition of certain sacred formulae, but the very movement itself of the soul, putting itself in a personal relation of contact with the mysterious power of which it feels the presence — it may be even before it has a name by which to call it." The Makers of Hellas, then, starts from a strictly scientific starting-point. To some readers, and particularly to those whom our author specially addresses, that is to those whose faith in the Christian religion happily requires none of the doubtful props of philosophy and fears nothing from the circumscriptions by which science surrounds itself, it may seem that the limitation thus self- imposed is alike unnecessary and fraught with danger. It may seem to be an unduly narrow limitation of the scope of " primal revelation." The answer to this objection is to be found in the theory of evolution, rightly understood. The objection itself seems to be based upon an implicit confusion of "primal revelation " with final revelation. To assume that primitive man started with a full and complex revelation of God in all His attributes — His wisdom, justice, holiness — is indeed to surround ourselves with difficulties which are perfectly insuperable. The history of the ages, the common experience of man- kind, the testimony of nature, will set themselves in array against us, and demand our warrant for the assumption (pp. 212, 213). The assumption is indeed set aside by the words of St. Paul, that the nations were "to seek the Lord if haply they might feel after Him and find Him." The finding follows after the search ; it does not precede it. The "feeling after" the Lord implies that there is a limitation of knowledge in the " primal revelation." That the knowledge, thus limited in the case of primitive man, should develop and in- crease, is in accord with all that we see around us : " everywhere we see the Perfect slowly evolving out of the less perfect or the imperfect : the dawn pre- ceding the day ; the acorn sending forth the shoot, the shoot growing into the sapling, the sapling into the oak." Above all, and on the highest authority, so it is in the spiritual life : " the same law is laid down by the Master as the law of His kingdom, whether in a single soul or in that aggregate of souls, which we call a church or a nation : ' First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear'" (p. 213). Man was indeed made in the image {eikon) and after the likeness (homoiosis) of God (Gen. i. 26); but Gregory of Nyssa and the early Fathers taught that whereas the " image " of God was something in which men were created, the "likeness "of God "was something toivard which man was created, that he might strive after and attain it" (Trench, Synonyms, p. 52). It is precisely with this process, this "striving after" the homoiosis, this "feeling after" the Lord, that the history of religion has to do. And it is precisely this process that constitutes the evolution of religion. Or perhaps we should rather say that the evolution of religion comprises all the attempts that have been made by man, whether successful or unsuccessful ; but that evolution is not neces- sarily progress. The term Progress can only be applied to those attempts which have achieved some measure of success, not to those phases of evolution INTRODUCTION xv which may have resulted in the abandonment of the search, or which may have themselves been abandoned as leading to nothing or worse than nothing. If, then, the evolution of religion is the history of the many attempts that man has made to search after the Lord, peradventure he may find Him, it is ex hypothesi inconsistent and impossible to assume that the primal was a full revelation : "to imagine the primal revelation to have consisted in the full knowledge of God as He is, is to postulate an impossibility, to reverse the course of Nature and of Providence, to set ourselves against the order of the universe — the Divine Law of Progress" (p. 213). The intercourse, active and mutual, between the individual and the "Unseen, which, from a strictly scien- tific point of view^ we are warranted in taking as the starting-point alike for the psychology and the history of religion, may cheerfully be accepted as the point of departure by those whose first, vital and permanent interest is in religion itself rather than in the history of religion or its psychology. But it is only as a point of departure that it will or should be so accepted. More important, all-absorbing is the attempt to trace the course which, starting from that point, man has struck out. Or, rather we should say, to follow the many tracks, leading in many directions, which men have struck out, groping after the truth. To trace these courses and lay them out upon the map of life is indeed the work of the history of religion ; and it is the business of its historian to record them all, for even those which ultimately proved unsuccessful, must for a time and in some way not have been entire failures : " He is not far from each one of us." But readers whose interest is in religion, and not in its history or its psychology, will demand Qui bono? to whom is it of any use to study acknowledged failures? Students of physical science are required to understand and to accept the acknowledged truths of science : only by so doing can they expect to proceed to the conquest of fresh truths. Physical science has indeed had its history, has accepted in the past as fact what subsequent investigation has shown not to be fact, has held hypotheses which increasing knowledge has demonstrated to be false hypotheses. But all these have been shovelled aside ; the records of them can be discovered by those who are interested in such things. But for practical purposes and by practical men they are ignored. Nothing is to be gained by dwelling amid them : they cumber the ground. Is the case otherwise with religion and its history ? In one striking point it is otherwise. There are many religions. There are many forms of Christianity. Science is one. If there were as many theories of gravitation as there are sects of Christianity, acquaintance with their history would be a matter of first-rate scientific importance. It would be an indispensable preliminary to weeding out the wrong theories or the wrong elements in any one of them. Church History is a matter of first-rate theological importance. It is a record of the steps by which the creed of the individual believer has been reached, of the arguments by which fallacies or heresies have been set aside, and by which the truth has been established. But what is thus true of Church History is also true of the History of Religion : it aims at giving the whole story, the complete record, of all the steps from the very beginning. If there were the same unanimity in religious belief as there is in scientific belief, the history of error in religion might, perhaps, be as remote from practical interest as the history of exploded doctrines in science. But there is not. And because there is not, the individual has a personal responsibility for the religious belief which he holds, such as he has not for his scientific belief. Or we may put it in another way. In any large business concern, the share- b xvi INTRODUCTION holders feel no interest in the trial balance-sheets which have to be got out and corrected before the final balance-sheet, certified by the auditors, can be placed before them. If they trust the accountant and auditors, they accept the balance-sheet : they have no interest in seeing the trial balances, or hearing the process by which errors were detected, or studying the causes which lead to mistakes. They are concerned simply and solely with the final form of the accounts, certified to be correct. The result is everything ; the process, or rather a history of the process, by which this error or that was tracked from book to book and its genesis made plain, would be worse than, useless : it would involve a waste of time, and delay them from proceeding promptly to fresh commercial enterprises, which must be undertaken at once or not at all. Now, in science we are all shareholders ; and, as long as we receive our dividends, we feel no interest in the clerks, the book-keepers, the accountants, and the auditors, or in the history of the process by which, after making mistakes and correcting them, they contrive to get out the balance. But in life we are not merely shareholders : we have our personal, private accounts. In them, indeed, others are shareholders ; and on us falls the responsibility of keeping them correctly. We have to render an account ; and the process by which accounts can be kept properly becomes a matter of the first importance. In this instance we have a very direct interest in the accoun- tant's business, in the means and processes by which errors are detected and corrected, in the causes which lead to errors ; and the history of such errors is a matter in which we have a vital concern. The process by which we, or others acting for us, have arrived at our conclusions, whether in religion or morals, is of the utmost importance ; and it is to the history of that process that we must return again and again, if we are to find out whether and where a mistake has arisen. And our accounts are never in this life finally made up. We never reach the stage of the final balance-sheet, from which we can look back and see all our errors finally corrected. There is always the possibility, the probability, the certainty of many errors not yet corrected, not yet detected. We may from time to time strike a provisional balance-sheet, and find, perhaps, that we are somewhat nearer to the desired end, that we have made some progress, but we also discover that there is always still something wrong somewhere, much to correct, progress to be made. What is thus true of the individual and of the account that he has to render is also true of the race and of the principles of morality. Men's notions of right and wrong have varied infinitely in the course of their evolution and development. Men have always tried more or less to keep their accounts straight, and have had no doubt that they could be kept straight. It is because they have, rightly, cherished this belief, and have repeatedly made this attempt, that they have, with wider and longer experience, discovered and to some extent corrected their first mistakes. An obvious instance of this process is afforded by the history of the sacred duty of revenge. A blow for a blow, an eye for an eye, a life for a life are maxims of conduct which certainly lead to the gratification of the desire for vengeance, and may, in some cases, satisfy justice. An eye for an eye is a maxim which can be acted on by the individual, who has suffered injustice and desires revenge, without appealing to the community. The case is different with the principle of a life for a life : the person murdered cannot take his revenge — it must be taken by the survivors. Doubtless they are actuated partly or mainly by the desire for vengeance, but their motives are not entirely personal : it is not purely revenge which they wish to take, but to some extent, however small, it is justice that they desire to carry INTRODUCTION xvii out. When the avenging party includes persons who are but remotely akin to the dead man, the desire for personal revenge must in their case be less potent and active than the desire for justice. But even in their case the motive assigned and accepted for their action is vengeance rather than justice ; and, so long as this is so, the blood-feud and the vendetta flourish. Revenge, not justice, alone is understood and accepted ; and revenge never finally settles the account, or rather it always opens a fresh one. Thus the blood-feud may be transmitted from one generation to another, and is so transmitted, until there arises a power superior to that of the families at feud. This power is inherent in the state to which the families belong or may come to belong ; and it becomes effective when the necessity for its intervention is great enough to call it into action. Its action is primarily directed to the termination of the feud, and it may terminate it either by settling the compensation to be made or by itself inflicting the punishment of exile or death on the murderer. Thus a limit is imposed on the spirit of revenge ; and the court, however constituted, is not actuated by any desire for personal vengeance, but by the duty of seeing that revenge does not proceed beyond the bounds of justice. A further step in this direction is taken when the relatives of the murdered man are no longer expected or allowed to prosecute, and the state undertakes, not merely to judge a defendant brought before it, but by its police and its public prosecutor to detect the criminal and to bring him before the judge. The whole process then is taken out of the sphere of private personal revenge, and is conducted from beginning to end by state officials whose only interest is the discharge of justice and who are absolutely untouched by any desire for personal vengeance. The object aimed at by the whole proceeding is no longer the gratification of the injured party's vengeful feelings — a just punishment frequently fails to satisfy them completely — but the impartial distribution of even-handed justice. There will be no doubt that justice is more effectually done in the criminal court of a modern civilised country than by the uncivilised methods of the blood-feud or vendetta. There can, however, be no doubt that in the earlier stages of the development of justice the desire for revenge and the excesses of the vendetta are approved, as right, by the community : they are accepted as the proper method of squaring accounts. But, as a matter of fact, the growth of experience tends to show that they do not balance the account, as they are originally intended to do, but produce further deviations ; and when these further deviations are recognised to be serious, and to be the inevitable consequence of this method of keeping accounts, approval of them becomes impossible — originally pronounced right they are now condemned as morally wrong. In other words, we are convinced that there has been not only evolution, but also progress in the development of the idea of justice. But evolution is not in all cases progress. Modern courts of justice and the excesses of the vendetta are both evolutions from the same rough notion of justice ; but in the former case there has been progress, the movement has been in the direction of ideal justice ; in the latter case the move- ment has been farther and farther away from justice, and more and more a degradation. Returning once more to the question why should we bestow upon the history of morals or religion an attention which the student of science is not expected to pay to the history of exploded scientific notions, we can see at least one obvious reason : the average student of science is in no such immediate danger of rediscovering, for instance, "the great Kepler's view of the celestial harmonies produced by the various and varying velocities of the several xviii INTRODUCTION planets" (H. Sidgwick, PTiilosophy : Its Scope and Relations, p. 165), that it is necessary to spend much time in convincing him of its futility. But the average moral agent is exposed, when wronged, to the desire for vengeance ; and much, or most, of such moral progress as we individually make, we make at our own cost and loss, by doing wrong and bitterly repenting it. Embryology shows that in the earliest stages of his growth the individual human being passes summarily through the process of evolution by which the race has attained its present human form. It is a commonplace not merely of psychology but of ordinary observation that the child, with less rapidity, may pass through the stages by which man has reached his present civilisation. He may, of course, suffer from arrested development and ultimate degradation : the " little savage " may pass into " a savage brute," and so on to the gallows. The individual, at every stage of his youthful development, finds a variety of paths before him, of which he may choose any one, and all of which have been tried by his predecessors before him. The record of the success or want of success which has attended their attempts is contained in the moral code of his time. On that map of life the experience of his predecessors has recorded the issue of their experiments, and has marked the various paths "right" or " wrong." The blind desires which drove some or most of his predecessors down the wrong path operate on him also. Hence the necessity of blocking the way as effectually as possible. Hence, too, the difference between the moral agent and the student of science. The errors which have been made in the history of science have been committed by individuals, those in the history of morals by the race. The temptations by which the moral agent is led astray recur in the history of every man, whereas presumably the majority of those who study astronomy are filled rather with astonishment that the great Kepler should have formulated his views on the celestial harmonies than with any wish to re-formulate them for themselves. If, for the practical purposes of understanding or carrying forward a science, a knowledge of the past history of its exploded hypotheses is unnecessary, whereas for the practical work of morality a careful record of the consequences of following the wrong paths is of vital importance, the plain reason is that in the one case the individual is perpetually presented with the choice of paths, and in the other he is rarely exposed to the temptation. In the one case the wrong path has been trodden broad by the number of those who have plunged down it ; in the other case the footprints of the solitary genius who adventured on it have so disappeared that the wayfaring student is unconscious of them. The tendency to go wrong has been transmitted and inherited in the one case ; and the temptation is there. There is no inherited tendency in the other case, and no recurring temptation. If the temptation to assuage the thirst for revenge occurred no oftener than the temptation to formulate Keplerian theories of the celestial harmonies, there would be no need of any law to check it ; nor would the practical value of tracing the consequences of leaving the temptation unchecked be any greater in the one case than in the other. Nor is there in reality any greater doubt about the validity of our moral precepts than there is about the laws of motion or of gravitation : the difference lies in the fact that whereas particles of matter cannot choose but gravitate, individual men can and do choose not to obey the laws of morality. It is because of this power of choice that it is a matter of importance to study historically the consequences of the action chosen. We thus may profit by the experience of others rather than learn at our own cost. If the vendetta has been abandoned, it is because the community after trial of it has eventually chosen to put it down : the experiment of unlicensed revenge has been tried INTRODUCTION xix and has been pronounced a failure. Its consequences have been such that it has been pronounced to be intolerable by the community. Those consequences have been twofold : the perpetual danger to individual members of the com- munity and the growing sense that justice is not achieved. Both of these evil consequences are averted when it is at length, as a matter of experience and by the process of trial and error, discovered that justice is a matter in which not only the individual but the community is concerned, and that justice can only be efficiently done when it is disentangled from the vengeful motives of the individual and administered by the community. The process by which public justice is thus evolved out of the impulses and actions of the individual throws some light on the way in which religion, from being an individual instinct, impulse or aspiration, becomes a public institution, and, as such, rises as far above its first expression as modern justice stands above the blood-feud. The religious phenomenon, as Professor James says in the passage already quoted, when reduced to its simplest terms, consists every- where "in the consciousness which individuals have of an intercourse between themselves and higher powers with which they feel themselves to be related." That they may and do frequently misapprehend the nature and the meaning of this intercourse is apparent to any student of the subject, whether he approaches it from the side of the history of religion or from the side of psychology, as set forth in Professor James' Varieties of Religious Experi- ence. But they also frequently misapprehend the nature and meaning of justice : in the beginning, as we have seen, it is overlaid and distorted by the vengeful feelings; and at the present day, if those feelings less frequently succeed in perverting the course of justice, it is because the administration of justice has been removed from the influence of personal caprice and is dealt out by the community. The final determination of justice, experience has shown, cannot be entrusted to the individual : it is too liable to perversion. And as the political community has sought to eliminate errors from the doing of justice by refusing to allow the individual to be the judge of his own cause, so the religious community has found itself compelled to determine the limits within which the experiences of the individual can be interpreted to be religious. There is no hesitation on the part of civilised man to believe that justice is more surely done by a modern court of law in crimmal cases than it was or could be done in the time of the blood-feud or in countries where the vendetta prevails : the efforts of advancing civilisation have been directed, not unsuccess- fully, towards disengaging the requirements of justice from the excesses into which the spirit of revenge when unrestrained has regularly run. The higher conception of justice which has thus been reached has undoubtedly reacted on the individual in such a way that in many or most cases he would^ even if unrestrained by external forces, be less liable to be carried away by the desire for vengeance, or would sooner be recalled from excessive steps. But if the political community has been thus successful in raising and enforcing the conception of justice, the religious community has done perhaps not less in raising the conception and enforcing the practice of religion. It is true that in different political communities, or in different periods of any one political community, the actual administration of justice may vary much from the ideal and fall short of it in various degrees. It is true that the very constitution of the political community may place the administration of justice in the hands of a favoured class, and that generations and centuries may be spent in the struggle to escape from the abuses thereby entailed. There is therefore no reason to be surprised, and no reason to doubt the reality of either justice or religion, if different religious communities, or different stages in the XX INTRODUCTION history of any one religious community, have fallen short of the religious ideal in various degrees. In the case of the political community and in the matter of justice, the authority of the community is undoubted ; and the consequences which ensue, when the community does not as yet exercise its authority, or falls to pieces and is unable to exercise it, are convincing proofs of its necessity. It is not merely that the community, when healthily organised, has might, such as no individual member of it can exercise by himself, and which is necessary if even-handed justice is to be dealt to rich and poor, to the mighty and the weak alike, but that it has right, and that the tendency to justice, which does exist in the individual but is always liable to perversion by the temptations to which the individual is exposed, is set free when it becomes an affair of the com- munity and attains a development which otherwise it could not reach. The flower of justice can only bloom in a garden from which have been cast out the weeds that otherwise would over-run it. That it is as impossible for the religious as for the political communi^by to abstain from the exercise of its power, and yet to perform the functions for which it exists, may be seen by any one who chooses to read Professor James' Varieties of Religious Experience, and can draw the right conclusions from it. In that work are given numerous examples, not merely of the varieties of religious experience, but of the vagaries of individual souls ; and the reader of the documents quoted, if they were the only facts he had to go by, would be as puzzled to make out what religion is, and as likely to doubt its objective existence and validity, as he would be to comprehend the nature and reality of justice, if the only facts he had to guide him were the records of a series of vendettas. The truth is that in both cases we have presented to us the behaviour of the individual when unchecked and uncorrected by the authority of the community ; and in both we see the extravagances which ensue when that authority is non-existent or non-effective. In both cases we are warranted, and indeed compelled, to believe that there resides in the community not only greater power to enforce its beliefs than there does in any individual, but a higher conception and a purer ideal. In both cases the garden must be weeded, if the flowers are to grow ; and in both cases there must be the power to decide what are weeds and what are flowers. And in neither case is the individual, by his own unaided powers, competent to decide in all cases what should flourish. In the Varieties of Religious Experience we have a copious demon- stration of what weeds may grow up in plots removed from the community's control. The extravagances into which the individual soul is liable to run, in the field of religion, when uncontrolled, are parallel to the errors which are committed in the matter of justice when every man does what is right in his own eyes. It is the community which checks excesses in both cases ; and, for that purpose, ecclesiastical organisation is as necessary as political organisation. But as political systems may perform their functions with very different degrees of success, and may even break down altogether because they fail to perform them in a way satisfactory to their members, so may religious systems. When either does so break down, it is because a majority of the individual members find that their own ideals of justice or of religion are not satisfied by the constitution or the action of the community. If a community of either kind, political or ecclesiastical, is to continue to exist, there must be in its members a spontaneous recognition of the authority under which they find themselves. The individual must be able to look into his own heart and there find confirmation of the legitimacy of the authority to which he is subjected or INTRODUCTION sad submits himself. He must indeed be able to find that the authority imposed upon, or accepted by him, approves itself as a better guide to religion or morality than his own unaided and unguided impulse. It should lead him to find in his own heart what, without its guidance, he might fail to find. The conviction that by submitting to its guidance he will ultimately, though he may not at first, find from his own personal inner experience an abiding satisfaction to which he would not otherwise attain, is a matter of faith, for which he has evidence of precisely the same kind as he has for his faith in the uniformity of nature and the science that is built upon that faith. But though his own personal experience may confirm the faith which he shares with others, and though it is his own experience of what his faith has done for him — whether it be faith in science or in religion — that is the guarantee of his faith ; this does not set the individual above the community or make him the final arbiter to the exclusion of the community, political or religious, to which he belongs. His own experience of what has been is satisfactory evidence to himself of the good that he has attained by accepting and acting on principles, whether of science or religion, which he did not invent or discover for himself, but which were the heirlooms of the society of which he is a member. His past experi- ence warrants him in continuing to act on those principles in the faith that it will be better for him to act on them than to reject them. It does not warrant him in setting up the individual as a judge superior to the community. Un- fortunately it does not always and invariably prevent him from so setting up himself. Those who take vengeance into their own hands, for example, do set up themselves as judges superior to the judges of the land ; and those who break away from the religious community to which they belong and surrender themselves to their own subjective impulses, set themselves up as individually capable of better judgment than the community is. In the matter of science similar variations occur : there are always to be found some few persons, incapable of appreciating the weight and value of scientific evidence, who main- tain that the earth is flat, and who are as convinced of the truth of their assertion as the vengeful person is of the justice of his action. In all these cases the individual sets himself up as superior to the com- munity to which he belongs, and to the principles by which it is regulated. The community, on the other hand, punishes him, excommunicates him, or severely leaves him alone, as the case may be. But in no case does it allow validity to action or belief subversive of its own principles. Progress, indeed, may and does require the extension of the buildings already erected, their alteration and in many cases their partial reconstruction. But in no case does it demand or permit of the total destruction of the whole edifice and the razing of its very foundations. Nor have any reforms, which have been truly reforms, required it. They have always proceeded on the faith that the prin- ciples on which the community — political, scientific, or religious — is based, call for reform in some of the superstructures erected on those principles. But it is always on the strength of those principles that the reformer has acted, and to the faith of the community in those principles that he has appealed. The positive religions of the world, i.e. those which " trace their origin to the teaching of great religious innovators," such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, were all reforms of pre-existing religious systems. " A new scheme of faith can find a hearing only by appealing to religious instincts and suscepti- bilities that already exist in its audience, and it cannot reach these without taking account of the traditional forms in which all religious feeling is embodied" (Robertson Smith, The Religion of -the Semites, p. 2). Until a great religious innovator has sprung up, and by his teaching has founded a xxii INTRODUCTION positive religion, what prevails is a traditional religion, " a body of religious usage and belief which cannot be traced to the influence of individual minds, and was not propagated on individual authority, but formed part of that inheritance from the past into which successive generations of the race grew up as it were instinctively " {ibid ). It is with a traditional religion that the author of The Makers of Hellas has to do. The obvious and outstanding features of such a religion are its myths and its ritual. So impressive are they at first sight that for a time there was a tendency to regard mythology as constituting the whole and sole religion of the ancient Greeks, and comparative mythology as containing the key to the religion of the Indo-Europeans generally. That religious feeling in any proper sense of the word might be entirely wanting from these myths was a fact which did not at first fix attention. That many of the myths were immoral in the eyes not only of ourselves but of the more reflective Greeks, was a difficulty which was set aside either by the assumption that the myths did not mean what they said, but were originally descriptive of solar or other natural phenomena, and as such were perfectly innocent of the abominations which ensued when by a disease of language the phenomena were personalised ; or by the alternative argument of Mr. A. Lang, which has now gained practically universal acceptance, that those myths mean what they say, and are survivals from the time when the ancestors of the civilised Greeks were still in a state of barbarism or even of savagery. But if the second alternative is accepted, there still remains the original difficulty of discovering any religion or religious feeling in those and in other myths. The " aetiological " theory of myths does not aid in the discovery. According to that theory man has always required, more or less instantly, an explanation of things that arrest his attention ; and has supplied that explanation by framing hypotheses to account for them. The explanations thus advanced to account for the customs observed by men in their dealings with their gods, or for the course of nature as it affected man, naturally and indeed inevitably took the form of assigning, as a reason for what happened or was done, that some personal being or agent had once behaved in a certain way, and that way of behaving had been faithfully followed ever since. Obviously here, allowing that the aetiological theory may account for many myths, we do not necessarily strike upon anything religious by following it out. It might be that, in seeking for an explanation of the fact that required accounting for, the primitive framer of crude hypotheses would hit upon something that would be now recognised as religious. It is certain that in the vast majority of cases he did not. Indeed not only is it the case that myths are not religious, from our point of view : belief in them was not exacted from members of the community in which they were current, as compliance with the ritual of the State was enforced. " Belief in a certain series of myths was neither obligatory as a part of true religion, nor was it supposed that, by believing, a man acquired religious merit and conciliated the favour of the gods " (Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites^ p. 17). On the other hand, compliance with ritual was obligatory, and, by such compliance, men were held to acquire religious merit and to conciliate the favour of the gods. By compliance with ritual is meant not only the performance of sacrifice but the making of offerings in the manner and after the custom observed and prescribed at any given sanctuary. The nature of the offerings, the particular kind of animal to be sacrificed, its precise colour, the exact ritual to be followed, were all of course prescribed in each sanctuary ; and the due fulfilment of every point was ensured by the priests in charge of the shrine and responsible for the proper performance of the rites. INTRODUCTION xxiii If offerings were to be made, they had to be made in accordance with the rites and customs of the place and the occasion. But, in point of fact, the duty of public worship was not a hypothetical but a categorical imperative ; and it was enforced ordinarily by public opinion, and, if necessary, by the action of the State and the criminal courts. There were indeed many offer- ings, e.g. those made for deliverance from disease or danger of death, the neglect of which would not entail an indictment for "impiety" or involve penalties inflicted by the State. But custom and public opinion were quite strong enough to ensure the due performance of these offerings. The question then remains whether compliance with ritual, which was required by public opinion and could be enforced, if necessary, by law, is to be regarded as constituting the whole of the religion of the Greeks. If, indeed, we accept the view of Professor James, already quoted, that " the religious phenomenon . . . has shown itself to consist everywhere, and at all its stages, in the consciousness which individuals have of an intercourse between them- selves and higher powers with which they feel themselves to be related," we may at first be tempted to wonder whether we are justified in seeing any religion whatever in the ritual of the Greeks, and whether ritual of any kind is or can be part of "the religious phenomenon." The words of M. Sabatier, quoted by Professor James, tend to confirm the view that ritual is not part of the religious phenomenon : " Prayer is real religion . . . prayer ... by which I understand no vain exercise of words, no mere repetition of certain sacred formulae, but the very movement itself of the soul, putting itself in a personal relation of contact with the mysterious power of which it feels the presence." Religion is thus definitely identified with " the very movement itself of the soul " ; it is a " consciousness which individuals have " ; it is therefore apparently distinguished, and indeed dissociated, from any outward act whatever, and consequently from the performance of all ritual acts. Here then we have contrasted, apparently two extreme views. The Greek community would not tolerate the abstention from the outward, ritual acts, whatever might be the consciousness which the abstaining citizen had, or what- ever " the very movement itself " of his soul. The modern thinkers will not admit any outward act, any repetition of sacred formulae, any act of ritual or any external act at all, to be part of " the religious phenomenon," or of " real religion." But it would be a misapprehension of the ancient position to infer that, because compliance with ritual was required and enforced, no movement of the worshipper's soul itself was contemplated or expected, or that the individual worshipper had no consciousness of intercourse between himself and the higher powers whom he approached with his offerings. The performance of the ritual could be enforced by law and public opinion, because it is possible to see whether outward acts are or are not gone through in the way prescribed by law or custom. The intercourse which is purely internal, the movement of the soul itself, evades the eye and eludes the grasp of the law. The State did all that it could do, if it insisted on the due performance of the outward act. But we are not warranted in inferring from this that nothing more than the out- ward act took place, or that nothing more was expected by the community from the worshipper. The outward acts were performed regularly and multi- tudinously ; their performance must have been accompanied and dictated by consciousness and motives of some kind. They certainly were not accompanied, as an ordinary thing, with a conviction that the whole business was a meaning- less mummery ; nor was the motive which dictated them simply the desire to avoid a prosecution for impiety. If such had been the unanimous conviction xxiv INTKODUCTION of the community, public opinion would have expressed it plainly. But public opinion was very strongly the other way. Accordingly, the motive cannot have been to avoid prosecution for impiety. The community, as a whole, was not impious or unbelieving : the Athenians were Seto-tSat/xoveo-Te/oot. If we seek to learn what was the nature of the motives at work upon them and inducing them to perform ritual acts, to make offerings and to offer sacrifice, in the due and customary way, we may perhaps turn to the Euthyjpliro of Plato. If w e do, we shall learn that the popular opinion of the nature of sacrifice, when, examined by a philosopher, might be reduced to this : that it consisted in giving something to the gods in order to get something out of them ; that it was, in fact, a species of higgling in the celestial market. It might, indeed, be thus reduced ; and was perhaps always in danger of such reduction. But this danger is not confined to the case of sacrifice. It is equally great, and from the same causes, if we regard service, and not sacrifice, as the essential feature of religion. If a man adopts as his motto, in his dealing with the gods, do ut des, it matters not whether he gives sacrifices or service : in both cases his principle is purely commercial. It may be business, but it is not religion. The utmost exactitude and the strictest punctilio in the performance of everything demanded by the terms of the covenant produce not religion, but formalism. A bargain is not the less a bargain because one party to it discharges his side of it with the greatest care to do not one jot less — or more — than the terms stipulate for. Sacrifice, then, like service, may be reduced to huckstering. But are we, or was Plato, justified by the facts of the case in holding that it had in his time been reduced to its lowest terms, to the point at which it is obvious to all beholders that religion has entirely evaporated from it? A glance at Mr. Rouse's Greek Votive Offerings (Cambridge : 1902) suffices to show that even in the fourth century B.C., when " Greek religion began to lose its sincerity," and " the religious conception of the gods decays," it had not yet become a mere process of huckstering and higgling ; still less had it reached that point of dissolution and decay in the centuries preceding. Memorials of honour and office, originally thank-offerings due to the feeling of gratitude, were in the beginning occasional ; but in the long-run such dedications became the regular thing. " It is in the fourth century that this change begins, and it coincides with other changes in the old simple ways, which rob the votive offering of its grace and moral worth, and turn it into a formality" (p. 260). The change has, indeed, stripped the offering of its religious value, but it has not reached the depth of degradation indicated by Plato. It may have become a formality : it has not descended to the level of a bargain. " There are indications that these offerings, with those for victory in the games, were even made compulsory by law " (p. 261), and we might infer from this that the idea was that debts due to the gods should be recoverable at law. But the inference would be incorrect. The offerings were originally the outcome of gratitude, and were thank-offerings. They became customary, and the custom may even have come to be enforced by the law. But even so, the gratitude may not always have utterly vanished. Many of the customary phrases of ceremonial language say much more than is meant by the speaker or writer, and are not taken by the person addressed to mean as much as they say ; but they still have some meaning and some value, or they would be dropped altogether. Indeed, many have disappeared entirely ; and those which survive are retained because they have some function to perform. If we turn to the offerings catalogued by Mr. Rouse under the head of those made on occasions of Disease and Calamity, we shall find some, and mTRODUCTION xxv perhaps the only, examples which warrant the gloomy view taken of sacrifice generally by Plato, and taken, or mis-taken, by him undoubtedly under the influence of that loathing for the democracy which the condemnation and the execution of Socrates produced in him. Offerings of this class undoubtedly do lend themselves to misinterpretation, both on the part of the observer who watches them made and on the part of the person who makes them. They lend themselves to misinterpret£i'tion because, save in the somewhat exceptional cases when the offering is made at once, before the calamity is averted, the vow is not discharged until the prayer has been granted. Thus the whole process lends itself to interpretation as a purely commercial transaction ; and the Greek, who was a good business man, is then made to pose as one who does not pay for goods that he has ordered until they are delivered. But though this is a possible interpretation, it is not the only interpretation possible. Prayer may be made, delivery granted, and offerings may be taken to the shrine with heartfelt gratitude for the mercy shown. In such a case it is an insult, gross and unwarrantable, to speak of higgling and huckstering in connection with it. Thus we have two possible interpretations of the offerings made on occasions of Disease and Calamity, the commercial and the religious. That the religious is in many cases not only a possible, but the only possible, interpretation is beyond doubt. One of the most ancient of these offerings is the dedication of hair. The commercial value of these clippings and shearings may safely be reckoned as nil. Yet " it was often vowed in time of peril and offered in gratitude" (p. 245). We may safely compare such offerings, which are, of course, not confined to Greece, with the widespread custom of attaching pins and rags to sacred images, crosses, trees, wells, cairns, and temples. This custom has been investigated by Mr. Sidney Hartland in his Legend of Perseus, and he calls attention not merely " to the pins in wells and the rags on trees, but also to the nails in trees, the pins in images, the earth or bricks hung on the sacred tree in India, the stones and twigs, flowers and cocaquids thrown upon cairns, the pellets which constellate Japanese idols, the strips of cloth and other articles which decorate Japanese temples, the pilgrims' names written on the walls of the temple of Kapila on the banks of the Hugli, the nails fixed by the consuls in the Cella Jovis at Rome, and those driven into the galleries or floors of Protestant churches in Eastern France" (ii. 212). Whatever the motive of making these offerings may have been, it is impossible to suppose that they had or were imagined to have any commercial value. The dedication was not a commercial transaction. But though on the strength of these analogies we may safely claim that many of the offerings made on occasions of Disease and Calamity were neither bribes, nor payments for value received, we must admit that in the case of costly offerings they would tend in that direction, and that their tendency was in a direction utterly fatal to all religious feeling. But it is necessary to bear in mind that Greek votive offerings are not confined to vows made and paid in time of calamity and disease. Such vows make up but one section out of the ten into which Mr. Rouse distributes Greek votive offerings. The offering of first-fruits and tithes, the dedication of war- spoils, the arms or treasure of the vanquished, the victor's arms, the prizes won in games, the instruments with which they were won, sculptures commemorat- ing the victory — none of them lend themselves to the idea that they were intended or regarded as the discharge of a bargain made between the offerer and the gods to whom they were dedicated. There is little doubt that in all these cases it was the custom, and in some even the law, that offerings should be made. Public opinion required them, and doubtless ensured them in cases xxviii INTRODUCTION At the same time his experience, of either world, is neither identical with theirs, for it is his and not theirs — a difference which is at times all-impor- tant — nor is it ever exactly similar. Where it differs, or appears to differ, there arises the question : Which is he to trust — his or theirs ? In the case of the external world, he learns in many cases that theirs, not his, is the trust- worthy guide: the wise man learns by the experience of others. With the internal or spiritual world the case is the same : mistakes are just as possible with regard to its content as with regard to what happens and to what may happen in the external world. The individual is not left in entire isolation in it by the community to which he belongs. He is taught, even in the most savage communities, what to expect and how to bear himself. He finds that often, even here, the experience of others saves him from errors which he would himself have committed had he not been guided by the accumulated experience of the community which is communicated to him. The accumulated experience of the community is preserved in the customs of the community, and those customs are both customary modes of action and customary modes of thought and habits of belief. To argue that he, who in religion adopts and follows the course of thought and action which prevails in the community, thereby proves that he has no true religion, is precisely the same, and for the same reasons, as if we were to argue that the citizen who adopts and follows the moral and civic course of thought and action which prevails in the community, is no good citizen. And this is equally true, whether we take as the basis of the argument the false assumption that a line of action customary in the community cannot be a genuine movement of the individual soul that follows it ; or whether we vainly endeavour to limit religion to a purely individual consciousness, and to the very movement itself of the individual soul. It is patently erroneous, whether we are speaking of a member of a political community or of the civitas Dei, to maintain or imply that the man who believes in the laws of the State and does his best to act up to them is not a good citizen; or to argue that true citizenship consists in ignoring the fact that there are others, besides oneself, who are citizens and conceivably better citizens than one is oneself. Thus far we have concerned ourselves with an indispensable quality of the good citizen, viz. readiness to obey the laws of the State. It may also be the duty of the good citizen to try to improve them. Such improvements may amount, and, where positive religions such as Judaism, Christianity, or Islam have been established, they have amounted to revolutions. The founder of the new religion has opened up new regions of the inner, spiritual world, and his followers, so far as they have ventured after him, have the evidence of their own experience to testify to the truth and reality of his revelation. But no new religion is founded unless the new departure calls after it a sufficient number of followers, and unless they frame themselves an organisation. If a new organisation is to be formed, the teaching which is to provoke it must be so markedly different from traditional belief that it can find no satisfactory home in the existing religious community. A break there must be — either an expulsion or a voluntary emigration of the followers of the new doctrine : either the old community or the disciples of the new teaching must feel that rupture is inevitable. Now, during the period with which the author of The Makers of Hellas deals, no such rupture, and no occasion for any such rupture, occurred. New teaching, to a certain extent, there always and continually was ; but a collision between the old and the new was rendered practically difficult by the un- developed and even amorphous condition of the traditional religious life. INTRODUCTION xxix Compliance with ritual was demanded by the State, and was so easy that Socrates had no difficulty in rendering it. But belief was bound neither by creed nor dogma. If sacrifice were made to the gods, the demands of the State were satisfied. What was to be believed about the gods had not been reduced to any form of words, and was not imposed by authority in the shape of any creed or dogma. There was a consequent elasticity of belief which easily stretched far enough to cover all the developments of the poets from Homer to Euripides. The State did not prescribe what a man should think, but what he should in certain cases do. It was therefore difficult or impossible for the mere thinker to come into collision with the State, But the very reasons, which made it difficult for his speculations to find anything to collide with, also made it impossible for them to become anything more than in- dividual speculations. For the performance of the inherited usages in religion, spiritual principles were but dimly necessary ; and if this practically ensured the traditional usages from unnecessary collision with individual speculations, it also made it practically impossible for men to realise that spiritual principles must be principles of action to be real. Indeed they can hardly be called spiritual principles when the will to enforce them is not strong enough to find or seek the means of so doing. Spiritual they may be, but principles of action they are not, until they are adopted by a community resolved to act on them and enforce them. It is these potential principles, as they are found in classical Greek literature, and as they were to be realised in Christianity, that are dealt with in The Makers of Hellas. THE MAKERS OF HELLAS § I.— THE LAND INTRODUCTION "Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs." — Tennyson. " The Race of Man That receives life in parts to live in a whole, And grow here according to God's clear plan." — Robert Browning. Among all the wanderings and migrations of the ancient races of mankind — • wanderings which took place in both East and West during the dim hoary time which we vaguely call the " prehistoric period," and which resulted in the settlement of the various nations of the world in their several historic homes — there are two which have for us a very special interest. One is the movement of a Semitic race towards the shores of the Mediterranean ; the other, that of a branch of the Aryan stock, the stock to which we ourselves belong, towards the shores of the ^gsean Sea. With the story of the first movement — the march of the Chosen People to the Promised Land — we are all perfectly familiar ; but the story of the other movement — the march of the Hellenes into the land which they were destined to render so famous — is enveloped in mystery. Whence the Aryans came ; where their original home lay, whether in Asia or in Europe ; how long the wanderings of the Hellenic branch had lasted before it finally settled on the mainland and islands of Greece and the shores of Asia Minor — all these are questions which are still being investigated, and to which it may, perhaps, never be possible to give an entirely satisfactory answer. Nevertheless, while recognising this, it has been found possible, out of the fragmentary records of language, to learn the story so far, and to construct a picture, not only of the primitive Aryans themselves, but of their Old Home, wherever that may have lain. These results have been arrived at, as we all know, by what is termed " linguistic palaeontology" — by the piecing-together, that is, of the indications afforded by fossil- words — root-words which have been found buried beneath the existing languages of Europe and Asia.^ All such attempts to penetrate the mystery that surroupds the primitive Aryans are full of the deepest interest — an interest which centres specially round the history of the Grseco-Aryans, or Hellenes. They were the first of the European Aryans to begin the work of civilisation — they led the van of culture — and we naturally desire to be able to trace back step by step each phase of their progress, each stage of their journey, until we finally reach the Old Home, ^ A brief sketch of the method, and of the facta arrived at by its means, is given in § 5 at page 46 of Hellas. A 2 THE LAND where, in the beginning, the Greek dwelt with his brethren — the Indian, the Persian, the Roman, the Celt, the Teuton, the Slav — when as yet there were no such divisions of the Family in existence, but simply the mother-tribe that sent out later the daughter-clans, destined to develop into great and mighty nations. ^' Beginnings have charms for us all," and hence it is that we follow with such eagerness the labours of men like Kuhn, Weber, Max Miiller, Schrader, and many others, men who have lifted to a certain extent the veil of darkness, and reconstructed for us that primitive world. Certain very important links in the chain are still wanting, however. As we have seen, the site of the Old Home itself is still a matter of dispute, and therefore any attempt to trace the journey of the Hellenes to their New Home, as we can trace that of the Hebrews to theirs, would be time lost.* And yet, all that concerns the Hellenes is a matter of importance to us — subordinate only to the still more vital interest that attaches itself to the history of the Hebrews. How so ? asks the reader. Why should we spend time in drawing any picture at all of those old Grseco- Aryans ? How does the settlement of a wandering shepherd-tribe on the shores of the Archipelago affect us ? What has it, or Hellas either, to do with the present century ? Simply this, that at least one-half of the knowledge, art, and culture of our time has grown — as naturally as a tree from its roots — out of the foundation laid by the descendants of those same rude wandering shepherds. To understand this, we must look at the unique position which the Hellenes occupy in the world's history. Reverting to the comparison with which we started, we can see that in the great World-plan (if we may use the term with reverence) the two nations whose wanderings we have glanced at — the Hebrews and the Hellenes — seem to have been specially singled out by Providence for the accomplishment of very definite ends. To the Hebrews among Semitic nations was entrusted the custody of a great and priceless treasure — the know- ledge of the One God ; whilst to the Hellenes, pre-eminently among all the Aryan nations, was given that task which is best described in the words of St. Paul, as a seeking for God, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him. The best minds of both nations worked consciously and unconsciously towards the fulfilment of this their divinely-appointed mission — the Jews within their narrow bounds keeping alight the torch of truth ; the Hellenes feeling after God in nature, seeking for Him in the depths of their own hearts, and everywhere striving to give utterance, in all noble and beautiful forms, to the great thoughts which came to them in answer to this their seeking. The Jews were thus the great Conservators of the old world, the Hellenes the great Pioneers, for in their seeking and groping after the Truth, they found many lesser truths, and worked out many experiments which were all, so to speak, necessary steps in the world-development. It is this which makes the history of the Hellenes so full of interest to us, for we are still reaping the fruits of the seed sown by them. There is well-nigh no department of thought or energy in which the Greeks did not experiment. True it is that others had been in the field before them. The Greeks borrowed, as we know, some elements of culture from their Semitic brethren in the East ; but this does not affect their character as experimenters, for whatever they borrowed ^ they transformed and transmuted to suit their own needs and their own ideal. There was no such thing as slavish imitation among the Greeks. Of by far the greater number of their experiments, what has been said of their literature ^ And after all, it was not much, see p. 58 et seq. of Hellas. HELLAS AS A LAND OF EXPERIMENTS 3 holds good — viz., that " without example or guide before them, they began, as it were in play, to solve the highest tasks, and followed independently their own course." ^ The Greeks were the grand pioneers of thought ; it was they who opened up the paths on which the intellectual culture of the world pro- gresses, and we moderns, on whom the ends of the world have come, learn alike from their successes and their failures. We cannot, therefore, begin a study of the Greek people better than by looking at them first of all in their true character as the world's greatest Pioneers and Experimenters. Here, before going further, let us just try to fix in our minds exactly what we mean by the term "experimenters." The word ^^ experiments^ has come to be used generally amongst ourselves in a very secondary and contracted sense. To most of us it calls up nothing but the vision of a laboratory, and the various chemical or physical tests associated therewith. But the experiments to which we refer now were not made in a laboratory, neither were they performed in a few hours, neither were they easy. Some of them took centuries to work out ; all of them cost infinite labour and pains ; in a few, the experimenters were themselves experimented upon and put to the test, for death itself had to be faced. When, therefore, we talk of the Hellenic " experiments," we use the word in its primary and real significance. Our "^experiment," as we know, is derived from the Latin ex-perior, to go through and come out again. Hence it means, properly, not only a something performed, but a something passed through, a something borne for a certain definite aim and end.^ In thinking of the great experiment of the Greeks as a nation, then, we must use the word in the sense in which it is true of the life of every one amongst ourselves ; " My life — what shall I make of it ? " Their national life — what did the Hellenes make of it? And the result of the countless experi- ments which the Hellenes made in their national life, we sum up in another word — also derived from experior — and we say that, on the Experience gained by the Hellenes — what they went through in their experiments — more than half the culture of the modern world rests. HELLAS AS A LAND OF EXPERIMENTS Now that we have seen exactly what force to ascribe to the term " experi- ments," we must make another halt, and look for a space at the Experimenters themselves and the Land in which they carried on their work. First, then, the Land. If the original home of the Greek (as of the other) Aryans is still a terra incognita, the very reverse is the case as regards their historic home. Here we are on firm ground ; we have no need of hypotheses, conjectures, or theories of any kind, for everything lies spread out before us in the sunlight. Well- nigh every part of Greece has been, or is being, explored ; and not only the surface of the country — the land of the living — is known, but its secret recesses — the chambers of the dead— have been unearthed and made to yield up their secrets to us in these latter days. An account of Hellas itself (and by " Hellas " we mean here the country ^ Bergk (Theodor), Griechische Literaturgeschichte, i. p. 5. 2 The Latin ex-perior is allied to Sans. par = to carry over; Gk. per-do = to pass through ; Goth. far-an = to go. The same root has given the Gk. peirdo = to try; peira = a. test, an ex- periment, and empeiria = experience ; the modern High German ^r/aArunp' = experience, and G'e/aAr = danger ; and, through the Latin, our own experiment, experience, expert, peril — all denoting something gone through, worked out, or endured. (G. Curtius, Max Miiller, Tick.) 4 THE LAND now known as " Greece "),^ of its physical features, its rivers, mountains, and cities, will be found in the Geographical Section of this work, and therefore here we need trouble ourselves with no details, but shall simply ask the ques- tion, and answer it as best we can : Was Hellas adapted to be a land of experiments ? In other words : Was it suited to a race whose great business was to be " seeking," striving, constant tentative effort? SECURITY AND DEVELOPMENT The first essential for any one with serious work in hand is, that he shall be undisturbed. " Leave me alone ! " he says, " don't molest me. Let me work out my plans in peace ! " Well, if we study the physical configuration of the land, we shall find that Hellas answers in a most wonderful way to this primary condition. In the first place, the country is surrounded on three sides by the sea, which, as in our own little island, " serves in the office of a wall." Hellas abounds in good harbours, as we shall presently see ; nevertheless, to vessels which have not access to these harbours her coasts at certain points are extremely dangerous, as her enemies found out more than once to their cost. Then again, turning to the North, the only land-side, we see that before an invading force could descend upon the country, it would have to surmount a fivefold rampart. Leaving out of sight the mighty Balkan-chain, which barricades the peninsula against the interior of Europe — (i) the first line of defence is the Cambunian range, which stretches across the country from Acroceraunia to Olympus, from sea to sea. The only natural break in this mountain-wall is the gorge of Tempe, through which the Peneius wends its way to the sea — a gorge so narrow that it could be held by ten men. The troubles of an invader, however, would not end here. Olympus crossed, he would find himself confronted by two other great bulwarks — first (2) Othrys, then (3) (Eta — a network of mountains from which there is only one way of escape. And even supposing that he found this, and finally emerged through Thermopylae — the Gates of Greece — if he tried to continue his conquering career into Attica, he would be met by (4) the Cithseron- Parnes range, whilst further south (5) the chains of Geraneia and Oneia with Acrocorinthus and the narrow isthmus lying between them, would all have to be passed before we could advance into Peloponnesus, " the inner heart of Hellas." Thus, we find Greece provided with no fewer than five great natural lines of defence, any one of which in any other country would have been regarded as of paramount strategic importance. Granted that over each of these ranges Passes exist (two or three in almost each case),^ the fact remains, that such Passes are merely mountain-paths, narrow glens, which could easily be defended by a handful of resolute men — so watchful was Nature in her care of the little country. Hence, as we have said, Hellas answers admirably to the first condition. It is really a great natural Fortress, sheltering and protecting its inhabitants. The Hellenes were for many centuries left undisturbed. Their mountains defended them against attack from the north, from the interior of Europe ; and the sea protected them on the three other sides ; for, in those early days of navigation, not every people looked upon the stormy ^ For the wider meaning of the terms "Hellas" and "Hellenes," see p. 1:6 et sea. of Hellas. . V i ^ ^ See the account of the Passes given in connection with each State. DIVERSITY AND INDIVIDUALITY 5 waters as an inviting " path." To most it proved a barrier rather than a bridge. This feature of " protection " was of the greatest importance in the infancy of Hellas. It gave her people time to develop in their own way ; and although by-and-by the invader did come down " like a wolf on the fold," he was not permitted to descend upon it until those within were well able to defend them- selves. Historians have speculated as to what would have been the probable fate, not only of Greece, but of Europe, had the whole might of the East been let loose upon the land even one generation earlier than the date at which the event actually took place. One thing is certain, that had the experiments of the Hellenes been stopped by invasions of '* barbarian " hordes either from north, south, east, or west, the whole civilisation of Europe would have been indefinitely thrown back. So nicely balanced were the time and the trial, that when the Persian arrived he found a people no less able than resolved to fight out the greatest experiment in the cause of National Freedom which the world has ever seen. The long immunity from invasion, however, which had enabled the Hellenes thus to grow into strength and manly vigour, was due, under Providence, to the geographical configuration of their land and its sheltering mountains. DIVERSITY AND INDIVIDUALITY . Not only, however, does the experimenter require to be safe from intrusion from without ; to be secure against interference from ivithin is a no less pressing necessity for him. And where the same experiment is being worked out by several experimenters, or by several bodies of experimenters, at one and the same time, the necessity for assigning to each a separate and distinct field of operation becomes imperative if the experiment is not to be ruined by perpetual collision and friction on the part of the workmen engaged in it. Now, as we know, the great " Hellenic aggregate " — what we call collectively the Hellenic ** nation " — comprised within itself many such distinct bands of workers, and, curiously enough, the country answered precisely to the need of each band for a separate working-place. When we think of the ancient Greeks, we must take care not to picture them to ourselves as one great undivided nation like the English or the French of to-day. The Hellenic " nation " consisted of a congeries or assembly of Inany different clans or tribes, perfectly independent one of the other, differing from each other in many ways, and without any political centre or head. Each one of these clans had to live its own life, to work out its own experiments, and, curiously enough, as we have said, provision was made for this. In the great house of Hellas were many separate chambers. We shall easily understand this if we take a glance at the map. There we shall see that Hellas is not only defended by mountains, but is well-nigh covered by them. Greece is one of the most mountainous countries of Europe. So innumer- able are the cross-bars, the spurs, the branches which strike off from the main systems — to say nothing of the isolated crags and peaks — that but a small proportion, comparatively, of level ground is left. The Peloponnesus especially has been described as a " mass of mountains," a " pile of mountains," a " marble rock," and to this part of Greece a recent writer ^ has aptly applied the legend ^ Tozer, Rev. H. F., Lectures on the Geography of Greece, p. 40. 6 THE LAND whereby the Montenegrins are wont to account for the excessive hilliness of their own country. The Maker of all things, they say, was on his way to sow the seed of the mountains, when, having accidentally opened his bag over Montenegro, out rolled the huge boulders pell-mell in every direction, thus giving to their land more than its fair share of rocky obstruction. The Grecian mountains, however, not excepting those of Peloponnesus, present no hilly chaos bewildering in its confusion ; they form a series of grand ranges connected, on what might be described as a systematic and well-defined plan, one with another, and, so far as the northern mountains are concerned, with their great root in the Balkan Alps. By these interlacings of the mountains and the action of the sea, Greece is divided into a great number of well-defined districts. Thus we have Thessaly and Arcadia, each with a fourfold mountain- wall, enclosing it on north, south, east, and west ; Bceotia, divided into two distinct lake-basins ; Doris, a valley shut in by mountains on three sides ; Attica, a peninsula, defended on the north by the Cithseron-Parnes range, on the remaining sides by the sea — and so on. Most of the districts which are known to us under a general historic or geographical name are again subdivided by Nature into yet smaller but equally distinct sections. Thus, under the one designation, " Argolis," we have a great variety of physical conditions : — a large plain, that of Argos ; a peninsula, separated from the plain by mountains, intersected by hills, and divided between three States, Epidaurus, Trcezen, and Hermione ; three river- valleys, those of Phlius-Sicyon, Nemea, and Cleonse, running northward from the plain of Argos, and opening on to another plain, stretching along the southern coast of the Corinthian Gulf ; and finally, we have Corinth itself with its Isthmus and mountain-gorge. The splitting up of Arcadia, again, by the lofty mountains of the interior, first into two halves, east and west, and then into very many distinct plains and valleys, affords a still more striking example of the minute subdivision carried out by the hand of Nature herself. In each of these " mountain-chambers," then, a separate clan — which may possibly have grown out of the union of one or two families only — would seem to have settled. Sometimes the first comers w^ere strong enough to hold their own ; sometimes they were forced to share the land with members of another tribe ; sometimes with settlers previously in possession. However this may have been — and we must bear in mind that we have only inferences, not facts, to guide us in tracing the earliest history of Greece — one thing is certain, viz. : that, whatever its origin, each clan, or the State into which it grew, constituted in historic times, to all intents and purposes, a little Nation in itself. We can easily see how such a state of things was favoured, nay brought about, by the nature of the country, as described above. Each tribe dwelt apart, isolated from its neighbours by a strong mountain-barrier which, in early days, few cared to pass. Each State thus grew up from its political infancy to its manhood, " nestling amid its own rocks," independent in itself, with all that it required within itself, ruled by its own traditions, observing its own manners and customs, drawn to its neighbours by the cord (a strong one certainly) of a common descent, language, and religion — but repelled again by the still stronger force of its own autonomy and self-interest. The result of this was, that National Unity was never attained in Hellas — the nature of the country forbade it. This minute " splitting up " is the most characteristic feature of the Greek national life, and it is impossible to understand Greek history without taking it into account, for in ancient Greece there were almost as many independent States as there were communities. DIVERSITY AND INDIVIDUALITY 7 In Boeotia alone, to take one instance, the number of independent States would seem to have been originally no less than fourteen. ^ Again, in the little valley of the Peloponnesian Asopus — a river so insignificant that in any other country it would hardly be considered a " river " at all — there flourished two States, Phlius and Sicyon, each of which maintained its independence nobly for centuries, and exhibited the greatest individuality in its religious, political, and artistic tendencies.^ Sometimes we find certain States, from ties of blood or pressure of circumstances, entering into relationship with one another and forming confederacies, such as the Boeotian and Phocian Leagues, the early Thessalian Tripolis (union of three cities) of the Dorians, the Attic Tetrapolis (union of four cities) round the Plain of Marathon, or the great Ionian Dodecapolis (union of twelve cities). Such unions existed, however, in historic times, merely for purposes of offence and defence, and any dictation on the part of the chief city of the League, such as was attempted by Thebes in Boeotia, was bitterly resented. Throughout Greek history nothing is more remarkable than the way in which the people resisted every attempt at centralisation or fusion. A notable instance of this is afforded by the founding of Megalopolis, the Great City, in Arcadia — intended by Epaminondas to be a check upon the ambition of Sparta. No fewer than forty independent little communities were brought in to form the population of the new city ; but, notwithstanding the (as we should think) evident advantages to be enjoyed by the citizens of a great democratic centre, many of those communities came against their will, and several went back to their mountain-valleys at the first opportunity. Some of the communities chosen, indeed, positively refused to join the new city. The men of Lycosura, who boasted that their own city was the oldest in Greece, the first ever shone upon by the sun, had to be left in peace. And that this feeling was not mere attachment to their native hills, such as we find among the mountaineers of all lands, is evident from the fact that the people of Trapezus, a tribe of Parrhasii, actually marched out to the farthest corner of the Black Sea and joined a daughter-city of their own there, rather than lose their communal inde- pendence.^ This cantonal '' splitting up," in which every valley became a little world in itself, undoubtedly had its bad side. It created a great many clashing interests, and by limiting the political horizon it prevented the Greeks from taking that broad view of affairs which is inseparable from true national feeling. He was the true patriot in Hellas who could show his fellow-citizens, not how to promote the welfare of the whole land, but how to secure the aggrandise- ment of that particular little corner of the land to which he and they belonged. Each of the great States — Argos, Sparta, Athens, Thebes — regarded Herself as the centre of Hellas ; and, with the noble exception of Athens during the Persian War, not one could be induced to accept of a subordinate position for the good of the whole. In this way, through mutual rivalry and jealousy. National Unity, as we understand it, was never attained in Hellas. In this way, also, a door was opened for the machinations, first of Macedonia, and later of Borne. Both of these Powers studiously sowed discord among the several States, and then used the feeling of hatred thus fostered to serve their 1 The number of the Boeotian States seems to have sunk to ten at the time of the Peloponnesian War, to seven at that of the Battle of Leuctra (Thucyd. iv. 91 ; Diod. xv. 52, 53 ; Paus. ix. 13, 3). 2 Curtius (Ernst), Peloponnesus, ii. p. 469. Including the town of Orneas, mentioned in Homer, the little Asopus valley had no fewer than three States. ^ Paus. viii. 27, cf. Bursian, Geog. von Griechenland, ii. pp. 193, 240. 8 THE LAND own ends. As has been said over and over again, the internal divisions and quarrels of Greece made her fall inevitable, as soon as a concentrated military Power, like that of Macedonia, arose on her frontiers. Nevertheless, although from one standpoint this was matter greatly to be regretted — for it ultimately led to the political ruin of Hellas — yet we cannot but see that this very diversity (and even the per-versity into which it sometimes grew) was more favourable to the mission of the Hellenes than any National Unity could possibly have been. " How so ? " says an astonished reader ; " what could have been better for the Hellenes than that they should have formed one great whole instead of a mere aggregate of paltry little States ? " To have formed one great whole, we reply, might have been better in the end for the Hellenes themselves ; but not for us, the Nachwelt, and that for four very good reasons : — {a) First, the seclusion and isolation in which each State passed its youth must have tended wonderfully to strengthen that individuality which is so marked a feature in Greek character, and so all-essential an element in the making of experiments. {h) The second reason (a tolerably selfish one) is, that from the varied experiments of numerous States we moderns have had bequeathed to us a much richer experience than we should have possessed had one experiment only been made. The political experiments of Athens, for instance, were not those of Sparta, whilst those of Thebes differed from both. And we can learn from all. (c) But, thirdly, what shall we say when we reflect that, but for the configuration of the country and the special character which this stamped upon the separate little States, there probably would have been no Hellenic history at all worth recording ? Yet this is the opinion of thinkers. It is to her internal, friendly, dividing mountains that Hellas owes much of her greatness. Without these protecting walls, on the one hand, the Hellenic tribes in the earliest times would have fallen a prey to one another, and in the constant friction of petty wars (which, even as it was, seem to have gone on briskly) they would have sunk into lawlessness and barbarism, such as prevailed among the rude peoples on their borders. Without their pro- tecting walls, on the other hand, the Hellenes might have been forced into slavish submission to a native despot, and so shared the fate of the empires of the East.i This, however, was rendered impossible by the structure of the country ; it offers no one single point which could be used as a military position for dominating the rest of the land and so keeping it in subjection.^ Thus, Nature in Hellas did nothing to help forward the foundation of one united State — everything, rather, to promote the development of many little perfectly independent States ; and thus she marked out for the Hellenes that path whereby they were enabled to keep to the happy mean between law- lessness on the one hand and slavish submission on the other. {d) This brings us to our fourth reason, which follows naturally from what has been said. We of the present day are apt to smile at the dimensions ^ "If Hellas had formed one great State, it would easily have sunk into the same stagna- tion in patriarchal forms which we meet with everywhere, more or less, throughout the East." Hermann, Lehrbuch der Gr. Staatsalterthiimer, § 6 : 1875. 2 " There is no position in Greece analogous to that of the high Oastilian plateau, by which the Iberian peninsula is commanded. Neither is the country formed in such a way that the smaller valleys converge into one chief valley, which might thereby acquire such significance for the whole land, as, e.g., the Danube- valley possesses for Austria." — Neumann und Partscli, Physikal. Geog. von Griecherdand, p. 187. DIVERSITY AND INDIYIDUALITY 9 of an Hellenic State — often, as we have seen, a single city with the plain at its foot, or the land immediately surrounding it, constituted a " State " — and to make merry over its " parochial " organisation, its tiny fleet, and miniature army. Nevertheless, if we will but take the trouble to think the matter out, we shall see that the little Greek States were precisely fitted for the work which they had to do. This has been brought out very clearly by Ernst Ourtius in his charming Discourse on "Large and Small Cities," and their relative advantages.^ After conducting his hearers to the large cities of antiquity — Nineveh, which re- quired a three days' peregrination to wander through it ; Babylon, covering a space so vast that one part was in the hands of the enemy whilst, in the little-witting centre, dancing and festivities were going on — he takes them to the small typical Greek city, a city which might have been found in any district of Hellas, and which might be called with truth a real work of art, inasmuch as it corresponded to Aristotle's definition of the Beautiful: every part was subordinate to the Whole, and the Whole was not too large to be taken in at a glance. There, on the citadel-rock, were the temples of the guardian deities of the State ; beneath lay the market-place and the theatre ; beyond the walls a little way were the stadium and the gymnasium. Pro- portion and Order, governed by artistic intelligence, ruled the whole. Within these clearly defined limits grew up a healthy Public Opinion. The citizens knew one another, and felt themselves members of one community ; each would be ashamed to do aught in the eyes of his fellows that might injure the traditions or the laws. Every citizen was within reach of the Herald's voice — of the Orator's eloquence. Compare this picture — clear-cut and definite like a Greek mountain itself — with that of the overgrown monstrosity called a Nineveh or a Babylon. Can we not see how perfectly adapted the microcosm of a Greek " State " was to develop, in the world's infancy, all the best qualities of a citizen and a patriot ? The inhabitants of a Nineveh or a Babylon were not " citizens " ; they were mere units, ciphers valued only as swelling a gigantic total — a total too cumbrous and unwieldy to be able to exert its own strength. The citizens of a Greek State, on the other hand, were the rational members of an intelligent organism. Each knew that something depended upon Tiim, that by the wisdom of his counsel or the cunning of his hand — yea, hy the strength of his sinews or the fleetness of his foot — he could serve his Mother-city. Each had a voice in the passing of the laws, and thus grew up the sense of political responsibility, and with it the necessity for political liberty. Now we can understand, can we not 1 something of the passionate love with which the men of Trapezus clung to their city, insignificant and inartistic as it probably was ; the dogged resistance which they opposed to the attempt to merge their political individuality in that of a large and strange organism. Another feeling also was at work to deepen the sense of patriotism in a Greek — the fact that outside of his own city he had no rights whatever. This, however, will be more conveniently discussed in our next section. Here we have said enough to show how admii'ably fitted the Greek States were for the work which they had to do. In these little " parochial " States were made experiment after experiment in the art of government — experiments which, one and all, are intensely interesting in their gradual working-out, inasmuch as in no two States were the results arrived at the same. How to secure the due liberty of the individual with the due liberty of the whole is a question not to be solved in a ^ Curtius (E. ), Grosse und Kleine Stddte, reprinted in Alterthum und Gegenwart, i. p. 369. lo THE LAND day ; and hence, all sorts and forms of rule — monarchical, aristocratical, democratical, tyrannical in a good sense and tyrannical in a bad sense — had to be tried before the harmony of the Ideal State could be attained. As yet, however, we are a long way from the harmony of the Ideal State. The Grseco- Aryans have many preliminary experiments to make before they attain to this — if, indeed, they may be said ever to have fully attained to it. Nevertheless, the goal is always in view, and here are the separate sheltered valleys and plains waiting to afford a scene of action for the experiments. Nature, at least, has done her best to give each little Republic fair play, and make the ideal possible. Just, then, as the giant bulwarks on the north and on the encircling seas gave protection to the whole, and secured freedom to the nation, so, in a like manner, did the intersecting ranges of the interior, and the friendly bays and gulfs which run up far inland to meet them, defend the freedom of the individual State, and render possible the gaining of freedom by the Individual Citizen. INTERCOURSE— PROGRESS— EXPANSION The next essential (although a later one) for an experimenter is — com- munication with others. At first, his own efforts engross all his attention ; but afterwards, when he begins to feel strong within himself, when his plans have taken definite shape, he wishes to find out what others are doing, what progress they have made. As iron sharpens iron, so is a certain mental friction necessary to keep the faculties free from any trace of rust, and the wits keen and bright. Now, how did Hellas answer to this condition ? " Very badly indeed," says a reader. " So, at least, I should imagine. The separating mountain-walls must have been effectual in preventing intercourse." True — but you forget that almost all the Greek cantons opened, on one side at least, to the Sea. If the mountains acted as separating walls, the sea was a " uniting path " ; and that the Greeks knew very early how to make use of it in this way there is no doubt. The " watery ways " of Homer are not the rivers of Greece, for these are not navigable ; ^ they are the seas that encompass Hellas on every side except the north. The sea was the scene of some of the earliest experiments of the Hellenes, possibly of that very experiment which brought them into their historic home ; supposing, that is, the theory of the Asiatic origin of the Aryans to be true, and this theory has been by no means yet conclusively disproved. ^ It is believed on very good grounds that the Aryans had not seen the sea before the Dispersion,^ and, if this were the case, it must have requii'ed no ^ The Achelous in Northern Greece, and the Alpheius and Pamisus in Peloponnesus, may be termed "navigable," but only for light boats and for a short way. "^ For the probable route taken by the Aryans on this hypothesis, see Hellas, p. 51 et seq. ("The Dispersion.") 2 Whether the Aryans had seen the sea before the Separation or not, is still a keenly contested point. That they had not seen it, however, may fairly be inferred from four facts : — (a) There is no name for the Sea common to both the north-western (European) and south-eastern (Asiatic) Aryans. The names common to the European branch are as follows: Lat., Mar-e; Goth., mar-ei; Lith., mar-es ; Old Slav, mor-je ; Jr., muir. Corresponding to the Sanscrit, mar-u-s, "desert." All are probably traceable to a root mar, which has given the Latin mors, " death " — our mortal. In this European list, as will be noted, Greek and Albanian are wanting. The Greeks coined names for themselves. The names for the sea in the Asiatic branch (Indian and Persian), are also quite different, and INTERCOURSE—PROGEESS— EXPANSION 1 1 small courage and resolution to make the grand experiment, and trust them- selves for any distance upon it. The story of the effort seems to be contained in the names which the Greeks coined for the sea. They called it not only Hals, " the briny " ; Thalassa, " the troubled " ; and Pelagos, " the striker " (from the beating of the waves) ; but Pontos, " the pathway." It is as though at some crisis of their history, when it had become necessary to cross the sea, and most of those concerned were shrinking back in fear and dismay from venturing on tho stormy deep, some dauntless spirit had risen up in their midst and said only coined in historic times (c/. G. Curtius, Principles of Greek Etymology, 468 ; Max Miiller, Biographies of Words, pp. 109, 152). Dr. Schrader, Handelsgeschichte, p. 40, regards the connection of mare, &c., with Sans. marus, "desert," as "highly improbable" ; but he suggests no.better meaning to take its place. It is on the face of it by no means improbable that the name, "dead water," should have been given by a primitive people to the water of the sea, when they noticed its effect on vegetation, and found out by experience that it was not fit to drink. (6) Salt would seem to have been unknown to the Aryans before the Dispersion. The two great branches have no common name for it, and the oldest Indians and Persians do not appear to have been acquainted with it at all (Schrader, Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte, P- 373; V- Hehn, Das Salz, p. 16 etseq.). Hehn suggests that the Aryans, as they went west, would probably meet around the Aral and Caspian Seas with lakes, dry and half-dry, filled with salt- crystals, remains in the desert of the seas which once overspread this region. Here for the first time, he supposes, they would see and taste the precious mineral. But this is taking too much for granted. The fact remains, as Hehn himself admits, that the Greeks, at least, always associated salt with the sea. To Homer, men who do not know the sea are also men who mingle no salt with their food [Od. xi. 122). If salt had been known in the earliest times, language would have shown some trace of it ; for whenever its purifying and preservative qualities were discovered, salt was considered sacred by the nations of antiquity, and was sprinkled by them on their sacrifices, whilst sea-water was used in religious purifications (see under " Eleusinia," Hellas, p. 270, for an instance in point). (c) Fish. — Thirdly, there is no common name for fish, either for fish generally, or for special kinds, in the Aryan vocabulary (Schrader, Sprachvergleichung, pp. 1 7 1, 371). This is one great reason why the Aryans should not have come from the north of Europe, as main- tained by Dr. Penka, for the Scandinavian kjokken-moeddings are full of fish- and shellfish- remains, as proved by Professor Prestwich ; in them periwinkles, oysters, and mussels, as well as the bones of herrings and four or five other species of fishes, have been found. Assuredly, had these formed part of the usual diet of the Aryans before the Dispersion, their names would have been carried by the various members of the family to their new homes (Miiller, Biog. of Words, p. 117). [d) Navigation.. — A fourth inference may be drawn from the paucity of nautical terms in the common Aryan vocabulary. On this point no one has spoken more strongly than Dr. Schrader himself {Handelsgeschichte, p. 41). "Even supposing," he says, "that the Western Aryans had really reached the sea at a period in which, ethnologically, they still stood very near to each other, it by no means follows that they had at that period ventured to trust them- selves upon its stormy waves in the frail barks in which they sailed upon their lakes and rivers. The fact is, that the Indo-Germanic vocabulary knows only two terms for navigation in the very earliest times. These are Ship and Oar. Of agreement in such terms as boat, mast, sail, sail-yard, anchor, rudder, keel, there is not a trace in the collective languages, either between Greek and Latin, or between Slav and German, or between Slav and Lithuanian, &c., &c." Navigation, therefore, seems to have played a very subordinate part in the life of the old Indo-Germanic races ; and in accordance with the testimony of language is the fact that it is almost never mentioned in the A vesta, and but rarely in the Rig- Veda, the oldest Aryan book in existence (Schrader, Sprachvergleichung, p. 407). Summing up, now, our four facts, the argument may be put in a nutshell, thus : Is it credible that a primitive people, born and bred in sight of the sea, should have transmitted to their descendants no distinctive name either for the deep itself, or for its fish, or for its salt flavour, a flavour never forgotten when once tasted ? Further, is it credible that they should have handed down no name for the technical objects connected with a ship, or even for the winds which play so prominent a part in the seaman's life? (Schrader, Handelsgeschichte, p. 41). This clearly is a case in which the inference from the silence of language must be allowed due weight, and that inference would seem to be that, previous to the Dispersion, the Aryans had not seen the sea. Let us recollect, however, that the last word has not yet been spoken on the subject. 12 THE LAND to the proposer of retreat, as Diomedes, the Graeco- Aryan, said on a time to Agamemnon {Iliad, ix. 40 et seq.) : " Think ye, Sir, that all the sons of our race are cowards and weaklings ? Let those flee who will to flee ! As for me and mine, we shall stay, for with a God are we come. And as for this Thalassa, which scares ye all, over its waters we mean to go. They shall be to us PoNTOS, a Path, and a highway to that unknown land that lies beyond." ^ Whether the name originated in any such combination of circumstances or not — every significant name, let us remember, has a story behind it — we shall never know. Certain it is, however, that the word " Pontos " gives us a clue to the after-history of the people — a whole world of energy and determination lies hidden in it. For, the men who gave the name of " highroad," " uniting path," to the unknown deep, at a time when all the other European Aryans could find no better designation for it than the "barren," " the waste," the " dead water," were — whether they came from North or South — whether they gave the name during their migration, or after it — these men were the ancestors of a great and noble people. Precisely " of such stuff " were the Makers of Hellas. That the later Greeks recognised the effort required to attain the mastery over the sea is proved by the grand ode in the Antigone (Soph., Antig., 332 et seq.), in which Sophocles describes the wonders wrought by man — how he has furrowed Earth herself, the oldest of the gods, with the plough, and bridled the horse, and tamed the never-wearied bull of the mountain, and developed Speech, and organised cities. In the very front of these achievements, as first and fore- most of all, the great instance of the astounding boldness of Man, the poet places this — that man has made his way across the grey sea in the teeth of stormy winds and amid the surging billows. We do not need now to be told that seamanship was one of the arts developed by the Hellenes themselves, not one of those which they borrowed from the East. We assume that they succeeded the Phoenicians in the command of the Medi- terranean, and therefore we are apt to infer that they derived their seafaring knowledge from these first mariners. Not so. That Greek seamanship was entirely of native origin and home growth is proved by the testimony of language. The nautical terminology of Homer is rich and original, derived neither from a Semitic nor from any other Aryan source. The Greeks must have been at home on the sea before they knew the Phoenicians (0. Schrader, Handelsgesdiidite, p. 43). The Hellenes, in fact, like the English, could not help being sailors —their circumstances compelled it. Hellas, indeed, is not an island, but it resembles England in this respect, that but few places in the country are out of reach of the sea. Little Greece, whose superficial area is much less than that of Portugal, has a greater seaboard than that of Spain and Portugal taken together. A glance at a map will show the reason of this. The coastline of Spain and Portugal, and also of Italy, is comparatively regular, while that of Greece is jagged, contorted, and strongly marked by countless indentations — arms of the sea, bays, and gulfs. The irregularities of the coast of Greece are no less remarkable than are the irregularities of her surface. Everywhere the action of the sea is apparent in the formation of the land, which, indeed, is so cut up by the beating of the waves on either side (in combination with other physical ^ Pontos is thought to be related to patos, "a path," and allied to pons, pontis, "a bridge," not a barrier, "To the Greeks the sea is the uniting path (Gr. Curtius, op. cit., 349 ; Kuhn's Zeitschr., i. 34 ; Max Miiller, Science of Language, ii. p, 355). Fick (I. iii. p. 135) assigns as the meaning ol pontos, " broad, spread-out." If this meaning had been in the ininds of the Greeks, would they have. used the name to denote a narrow strait like Helles-pont? INTERCOURSE— PROGRESS— EXPANSION 13 causes) as to form not one great peninsula, like the Pyrensean or the Italian, but a succession of small peninsulas, sharply defined — such as Attica, the Argolic, Laconian, Messenian, and so on. This great highway, then, was open to all or nearly all. No, district of Hellas, except Arcadia, Phlius, and the Pindus range, is cut off from the sea. Every State possessed its link of communication with its neighbours and with the outer world, ^ That the Hellenes should have had intercourse with the outer world also was of great importance, and this the geographical position of the land ensured. The South-Eastern extremity of Europe, Hellas lies, as it were, between three worlds. Opposite stretch the most fertile parts of Africa — the Egypt of ancient days, with its mysterious religion, its curious art and learning. Nearer, across a sea studded with chains of islands, each of which, in the infancy of navigation, served as a stepping-stone to the mariner, lie the shores of Asia, the home of the earliest civilisation. To the west, separated only by waters whose breadth in some places does not exceed forty miles, is Italy, in these old times the representative of unexplored regions beyond. Thus stood Hellas, between the Old World and the New — the gateway, as it were, through which the primitive knowledge of the East was to enter upon a fresh and more vigorous life of progress in the West. But while her geographical position thus suggested great possibilities, there were not wanting indications, clearly marked indications, as to how these possibilities were to become actualities. To return once more to our old comparison : Just as the Hebrews were kept to their mission by stringent, legal, and social barriers — Divine commands, which prohibited them from mingling with the nations around — so, in like manner, were the Hellenes assisted by deterring natural barriers in keeping faithful to the mission entrusted to them. While Hellas was admirably placed for intercourse with the older nations of the world — the peoples who had preceded her in the march of civilisation — she was effectually prevented from seeking intercourse with races from whom she could learn nothing. From the rude barbarians of the north she was separated, as we have already seen, by her mountains ; and from the tribes on the west (who were only just beginning to feel their way upwards, when the Hellenes were already far advanced in culture), she was cut off by the nature of the coast — in early days an effectual hindrance to intimate communication. The western shores of Hellas are not well suited to naviga- tion. There are few natural harbours, and where the coast is not lined by rugged cliffs, it abounds in marshes and lagoons. With the features of Western Greece we shall become more familiar as we proceed. Here it is sufficient for our purpose to note that, during the earliest development of Hellas, intercourse with the outer world took place mainly on the eastern side, which is rich in deep bays and good natural harbours. ^ When the Hellenes began to be strong in themselves, and to emerge from mere tribal life, then ^ This even Arcadia contrived to procure for a time by the annexation of a coast-strip in Triphylia (Southern Elis), so that an old writer, Dicsearchus, could say with truth that all the States of Peloponnesus lay on the sea {Cic. ad Att, vi. 2). Arcadia, moreover, must in very early times have had communication with the sea, if, as Pausanias tells us (viii. 3, 5), she was the first to send out colonies to Italy {cf. E. Curtiu?, Pd., i. 167). 2 " We cannot fail to recognise the incomparably more favourable formation of the eastern side of Peloponnesus for commerce and intercourse by sea. The east is the front, the face of the peninsula, which is thereby directed and summoned, as it were, to connection with Asia — to take up and transplant the older civilisation of the East" (E. Curtius, Pel., i. 2l). The same rule holds good in an even more remarkable manner of Northern Greece, as we shall presently see. 14 THE LAND they came into active communication with the peoples of the west — but not until then. Thus, by a second set of natural circumstances {cf. p. ii, c), they escaped the danger of becoming barbarised, and the work of experimenting went on unchecked by alien influences. And now, since we have taken Progress as the key-note to this section — having said so much about the " watery roads" of Hellas generally, let us just take a brief glance at some of the special ways in which they may be supposed to have assisted in the development of civilisation and of the national character. I. Material Progress. One fact, to start with, is patent, viz., that whenever the different little communities of Hellas were ripe enough for intercourse with each other, the means of securing such intercourse were at hand without the necessity of keeping to the land. Had the Hellenes been restricted to the interior, progress would have been indefinitely delayed, for road-making in such a country as theirs is attended with great difficulties. On the shores of every part of the country, however, as we know, dashed the sea, with its deep blue waves — far more beautiful than our own grey northern waters. And, as we also know, the spirit of adventure, the courage to try and to trust the unknown element, was there equally with the opportunity. Without this, indeed, the opportunity in early days would have been useless. But, further, another motive, as strong perhaps as the love of adventure, urged on the primitive Hellene, and this was curiosity. It was no broad, limitless expanse of ocean that he looked out upon. Everywhere and from every part of Hellas (excepting the western coast of Messenia and Elis) one or more islands are to be seen, while beyond them the coast of another part of the mainland may often be descried. If, therefore, these first Hellenes obeyed the very natural instinct which bade them ask : What sort of land is that perpetually within sight ? — What manner of men may they be that dwell thereon ? — they could make the venture and satisfy their curiosity safely, for the goal was in sight, and the well-known mountain-peaks of their home would serve as landmarks to guide them back again. ^ Thus, the island-strewn seas of Greece, and her deeply-indented coasts — offering in their sheltered bays an experimental school for seamanship — were pre-eminently adapted to forward the development of navigation in the earliest times. Even the winds and the currents conspired by their regularity to assist. Certainly, the Archipelago is not without its dangers ; to the sudden squalls which sweep round its islands, its ancient name " -^gaean " is probably due.2 Their dread, moreover, of the opposing winds and currents which meet round one of the southerly points of Peloponnesus — Cape Malea, in Laconia — the Greeks expressed in the proverb : " Double Malea, and forget your home." That the Hellenes were familiar enough both on land and sea with the phenomena of great and mighty winds is amply proved by passages in their history, by the honours paid to Boreas, the North Wind, and by the curious survival of the earliest Nature-religion mentioned by Pausanias at Titane, in Achaia, where was an Altar of the Winds, and where were shown four pits in which the powers of the atmosphere were pacified and soothed by magical incantations (Paus., ii. 12, i). Nevertheless, during the summer months at least — the season of navigation — the mariner knew what to look for. He knew that "through the midst of the sea a current went from north to south, accompanied on both sides along the coast by contrary currents, and he made use of one or the other, 1 Neumann und Partsch, Physikalisch Geographie von Griechenland, ch. ii. 2 See Hdlas, p. 42. INTERCOURSE— PROGRESS— EXPANSION 15 according to the direction in which his vessel sailed " (Neumann und Partsch, o'p. cit., p. 149). Even the Etesia, again, the rough northern winds of July and August, are not exempt from this characteristic of regularity. The seaman knows exactly when to expect them, and can arrange accordingly. The name *' Etesia " itself means " yearly " or regularly-recurring winds. Granted that the early Hellenes made use of their *' highroad " only too frequently for the piratical attacks on one another of which Thucydides tells us (i. 5), there can be no doubt that intercourse by sea was a great factor in the development of civilisation as well as of piracy. The Hellene could launch his little skiff, and, taking with him such native products as would ensure for him a friendly reception, could visit, in the course of a week, a dozen sovereign States, and see for himself what each was doing, how it was governed, what progress it was making in the useful arts, and so on. Granted, again, that most of the little States were pretty much on the same level as regards technical skill, it nevertheless stands to reason, from the variety of natural productions in Greece, that one would excel in one department of industry, another in a second ; and, as has been well said, it was of far more importance to the primitive man that he should see, say, the art of dressing wool one stage further advanced than his own technique admitted of, than that he should see the most superb purple robe, wrought and coloured he knew not how (Neumann u. Partsch, op. cit,, p. 134). That the primitive Hellene did see such dazzling works of art as purple robes, fit for the shoulders of kings and chieftains, and that he must thereby have been rendered very much dissatisfied with his own rough, undyed, not- over-savoury sheep-skin coat, is an undoubted fact. And that he knew, moreover, of the existence of sharp swords and axes of metal, polished and ornamented in a way which, when compared with his own rude instruments, must have caused him (artist from the first) much grief of soul, is another undoubted fact. For he had only to permit the landing of strangers on his own coast, or to visit the factories of the same strangers at Corinth, or on the islands of Thasos and Cythera, or in certain other places, to see all these wonders for himself. The very same island-streams which were so helpful to the Greek sailors, were helpful also to these Eastern peoples — Phoenicians and Lycians — who paid them visits from time to time. Across the bridge formed by the islands of Rhodes, Carpathos, Casos, Crete, Cythera, with the intervening little islets, came the Phoenicians, and although their coming was anything but an un- mixed benefit to the Hellenes, as we shall presently see, yet there can be little doubt, not only that the latter learned from them in the material arts — weaving, dyeing, and working in metals — but that they were indebted to the Phoenicians for the introduction of the system of Weights and Measures afterwards used throughout the land, and of the Alphabet — the foundation of their literary enterprises.^ While admitting, however, that the intercourse with these Eastern visitors must have been stimulating to the Greeks, we must guard against attributing too much weight to this factor in their development, for they soon became independent of it. If they went to school to the Phoenicians, they speedily outstripped their teachers. 2. The Breaking^ down of Prejudice. — In yet another way did the "watery roads" of Hellas help on progress. By rendering intercourse easy, they brought the different little clans together, and so broke down prejudice by ^ See Hellas, p. 58. 1 6 THE LAND- making them acquainted with each other. In very early times, as we know, such acquaintance is feared rather than desired. This point is so important that, at the risk of wearying the reader, we must pause for a moment to consider it. Not only is there the testimony of history, but we have the evidence of language to prove that the Greeks of the earliest times were by no means ambitious to make the acquaintance of their neighbours. The words *' neighbour," as applied to an adjacent people, and " enemy " were, in fact, synonymous in ancient times. Says Dr. Schrader on this subject {op. cit., p. 4) : " The primitive man knows only the interests of his own district, of his own clan ; he considers, therefore, as his equals only those living with himself, those united by the same necessities, and the same traditions and customs [Satzungen, ius]. The stranger in a primitive community enjoys neither protection nor rights. Nay more, since at any moment invasion might come upon the land from without, * neighbour ' is essentially identical with ' enemy,' and the stranger is regarded with suspicion and hatred. Hence, to destroy him, or, at least, to keep him off the home ground, is a good work." " Surely," says the reader, " the Greeks were never on so low a level as this ! What about that beautiful relation of the host and the guest-friend, the xenia, that we find in Homer ? " Ah ! we are very far from Homer yet, and it is clear from the evidence of language that the Aryans, on their entrance into history, were still at the stage of distrust and suspicion, or but just quitting it. That the Greeks were ever on the level of the Scyths of the Pontus — who, as Strabo tells us (p. 300), sacrificed all foreigners, eating their flesh, and making drinking- cups of their skulls — we do not for a moment imply. Nevertheless, they shared this hatred of foreigners ; for the very word xenos^ which came to have so beautiful a meaning, is believed to have signified originally " the slayer," " the injurer," " the enemy." Nor were the Greeks alone in thus detesting foreigners, for our own Anglo-Saxon gaed^ with all the allied Northern words, and the Latin Tiostis, have the same root-meaning (Schrader, op. cit., p. 5 et seq.). So much for the testimony of language. Then we have it on the autho- rity of Thucydides that the earliest Hellenes kept up a kind of piratical warfare on their neighbours, and that, far from being ashamed of this, they gloried in it (Thuc, i. 5) ; those outside of their own community, that is, they regarded as fair objects of attack and plunder. This was the state of affairs in the earliest ages, and the same spirit in a milder form presents itself everywhere in historic times. It is very necessary at the outset that we should understand this, for it is closely connected with the peculiar development of Greek political life. It was only in his native State that a Greek had any rights at all. Outside of this, he was utterly help- less and friendless. Hence the intensity of affection with which every Hellene clung to his own Metro-polis, his Mother-city. Hence, also, the close con- nection in antiquity between political and individual liberty. It was the State alone that made the Hellene a freeman — outside of her he was not a man, but a "thing," possessed of no rights whatsoever. Here we have the roots of slavery as it exists in antiquity, and also of that distrust of the out- side world which regarded the outer world as a power that might bring a man into the terrible condition of slavery. Now we can understand how it was that the members of the little Parrhasian tribe, whose story we know,i preferred . ^ See ante, p. 7. INTERCOURSE— PROGRESS— EXPANSION 1 7 to wander out of Peloponnesus altogether, rather than become merged in the " new-fangled " Great City, where they had no certain guarantee that their status as citizens and freemen would be recognised. Now we can understand also how it was that the conservative Spartans kept up, even in later times, their early restrictions against foreigners — and let us recollect that a citizen of any other State (say, an Argive, an Athenian, or a Theban) was an alien on Spartan soil. Now also we can understand how it was that, even in liberal, cosmopolitan Athens, as in Rome, every resident foreigner required to be under the protection of a native citizen, who was, as it were, answerable before the law for him. This long digression proves that in antiquity there existed a spirit far more formidable than any mountain-walls to that progress which results from inter- national intercourse. Now, how was it overcome ? — for overcome it certainly was to a great extent. The answer to this belongs properly to the history of Greek experiments. Here we would only say that religion played a great part in effecting the change ; not only by the beautiful idea of Zeus Xenios — Zeus, the god of the sacred guest-right — but by bringing the various little peoples together in a peaceful way, and so developing the feeling of oneness, of nationality. That it was possible, however, for different cities to join in the worship of the same god — as, for instance, that of the Delian Apollo, or the Calaureian Poseidon — or to take part in the great national festivals which brought them together in a friendly and joyous manner — especially in that greatest of all, the festival of the Olympian Zeus, during which all hostilities ceased, and the " peace of the god " (the ekeeheiria = " holding of hands ") reigned throughout Hellas — that all this was possible was mainly due to the facility of intercourse by sea. Then, commerce followed in the wake of religion, and the Greeks found out that strangers had a good as well as a bad side. Viewed in the light of possible purchasers of the commodities which they had to offer, even " barbarians " became bearable. Thus, by bringing the various peoples together face to face, and making them known to each other, the " watery ways" did good service. The vague dread which lay at the root of the prejudice against foreigners vanished — in so far as it may be said to have vanished at all in antiquity — before the sunshine of a nearer intercourse. ^ 3. Colonisation. And thus was paved the way for that wondrous expansion which took place when the various peoples of little Hellas — either driven by political necessity or beginning to feel their native bounds too strait — sent forth colony after colony to found that Greater Hellas which sprang up on every adjacent coast : in Asia Minor and the Islands, in Southern Italy and Sicily, in Africa, in Thrace and Macedonia, around the northern shores of the savage Pontus itself, until, as Cicero puts it, Hellas appeared " woven as a border to the land of the Barbarians " {De j-epub., ii. 4). And now let us fancy (if we can) a Hellas without the sea — a Hellas pro- tected and overspread by mountains, as we know it, but lying inland, with no outlet except its narrow mountain-passes. Or imagine (if you like) a perfectly flat Hellas, with no internal obstacles to communication, but also lying inland. Would this wondrous expansion have taken place ? Doubtless to some extent it would, since expansion seems to be a law of the Aryan peoples ; but it would ^ This will be the more readily understood if we reflect on the change which the develop- ment of steam-navigation has produced in our own time in the ideas of John Bull regarding his neighbours on the continent of Europe — a change analogous in kind, if not in degree, to that which went on among the enterprising Greeks of antiquity. B 1 8 THE LAND have taken place infinitely more slowly, with infinitely more diflS.culty and suffering, without that brilliancy which forms so striking a feature of Greek development. Had the concourse of men belonging to different Hellenic races — ^olians, Achoeans, lonians — that streamed to the first great trading centres of the wider Hellas — Smyrna, Miletus, and the other Ionian coast-towns of Asia Minor — nothing to do with that wonderful phenomenon, the appearance of an ar^-dialect — of a Homer ? The influence of the sailor element — to put the argument on practical ground — is very distinctly traceable, if not in the Iliad, at least in the Odyssey, and the marvellous adventures of its hero. Moreover, it was in these first great centres that the beginnings, not only of Poetry, but of Science and Philosophy were made — intercourse with other minds stimula- ting thought and calling forth, like an electric current, greater warmth and more energetic activity (E. Curtius, Grosse und kleine Stddte, loc. cit.). The influence of the sea has been well summed up by a recent writer, K. Woermann, Die Landscliaft in der Kunst der alien Volker, p. 83 et seq., as follows : — "The sea and the sea alone is the element which unites the different isolated parts of the Hellenic landscape. One might almost say that no Greek city which became the representative of a thought helpful to progress {Kidturgedanke) lay far from the sea. Most of them lay immediately on the sea, or had, at least, from their Acropolis the sight of its blue waves. This is true, of course, as regards the Islands, which played a most important part in the development of Hellenic culture. But it is true also of the coast of Asia Minor, which is sharply marked off from the interior. This was inhabited by Greek races ; the character of the landscape harmonises with that of the rest of Hellas, and shares in this dependence on the sea. Similar bays run up here also into hilly coast-lands, and here, as there, the shores are bordered by a rich circle of islands both large and small. In fact, Hellas, the Hellas of the history of progress, consists mainly of three parts : the western coast-strips of Asia Minor, the eastern coast of the opposite peninsula (European Greece), and the Archipelago lying between. But the Archipelago is neither i;he smallest nor the most insignificant part of Hellas. Any one who has sailed through it and has observed its beautifully-formed islands as they appear one after the other, sometimes crowned with a joyous wreath of green, sometimes rising up in naked, often curiously carved-out rocks, at the foot of which the white foam dashes — ^gina, Syros, Melos, Andros, Pares, Naxos, Tenos and Myconos, Lesbos and Chios, as they present themselves to the traveller on the voyage from Athens to Smyrna and from Smyrna to Cape Malea — any one who remembers, moreover, the role which these islands played in the history of culture, some as having given birth to great poets or artists, others as the sites of much frequented sanctuaries, many intimately associated with the favourite myths of the Greeks — all important as intermediate anchorages between the eastern and the western mainlands of the old Hellenic world : on any one, we say, who has seen and reflected upon all this, the significance of these island-groups for ancient civilisation, and the significance of the sea as the means of spreading this civilisation, will be at once and decidedly apparent. To think of a Hellenic landscape in the fruitful time of Hellas without the sea is, therefore, hardly possible." Thus, in a third particular, the little land of Hellas was provided with exactly what she needed. Essential as were the protecting and dividing mountains in early days, they would have acted injuriously later by cramping and confining the energies of the race had not the glorious outlet of the sea ex- isted, to give scope to every latent power and lead on to countless experiments. INTERCOURSE— PROGRESS— EXPANSION 19 4. Development of Character. Most of us are familiar with Mr. Grote's famous dictum on certain aspects of the Greek national character. That " their position made the Greeks at once mountaineers and mariners " {Hist, of Greece, ii. p. 154), is a saying which conveys a good deal more than lies on the surface. We may still further express the effect of both factors on the Hellenic develop- ment by saying that '* the Mountains made the Greeks Maintainors — of the old ; the Sea made them Seekers — after the new " — in other words, Experi- menters. Pontos and pioneering are connected by more than alliteration. We can easily see this by examining the two types of character which, as Mr. Grote points out, undoubtedly predominated in Hellas. Amid his mountains the Greek grew up a shepherd and a hunter, with all the qualities coincident with the pastoral life : he was brave and hardy, simple, often boorish in his habits and tastes, conservative, a " stickler " for old customs, and desirous of moving on in the old groove. At the same time, within reach of every Greek (with the exception, as before mentioned, of the Arcadians and the mountaineers of Mount Pindus), within sight constantly of very many, was another element, differing altogether from solid mother earth — sparkling, flashing perpetually under the sunny sky, inviting and inciting him to try his luck upon it. Hence, we have also another element in the Hellenic character — the versatile, adventurous, quick-witted sailor-element ; the thirst for novelty, the inquisitive seeking after fresh ideas, the readiness of adaptation to new ways and new customs, the tolerance of what is unusual in the habits of others. The first type of character was seen most markedly in the Arcadian, who, shut up within his mountains, came least into contact with other peoples ; the last, in the Ionian of Miletus. Between these two extremes, there were many shades and varieties. It will easily be surmised, however, that experimenting, and with it, progress, went on more rapidly among peoples of the mariner- than amongst those of the mountaineer-type ; and this inference is borne out by facts. 5. Development of Liberty. Finally, there only remains to be noted that one influence of the sea which, to some minds, transcends all others. If the mountains gave the Hellene the instinct of sturdy resistance, of dauntless defiance, the sea breathed into him the ardour to do and to dare all in defence of his mountain-home : "The mountains look on Marathon And Marathon looks on the sea," and it was with these ''two voices" ringing in their ears that the Hellenes fought out the world's first and greatest battle in the cause of freedom. 1 To the Greek, the mountains and the sea were the double pledge that the country which they protected and encircled was the heritage of her children — theirs to enjoy in freedom. He would have been dull and passionless indeed through whose veins the blood should not have coursed more swiftly at the very thought of any attempt to wrest from him what the gods so manifestly had sealed to him as his own ! 1 If, as we learn, the first draft of these lines was — " Euboca looks on Marathon And Marathon looks on the sea " — Byron shewed his keen insight into Greek character by the alteration. (See Works, p. 637, ed. of 1837.) 20 THE LAND CLIMATE AND ENERGY Coming now to a closer inspection of the little land, we are reminded that there are certain conditions of more vital importance as regards Progress than even protection and the opportunity for expansion. One grand essential for successful work is, that the worker shall possess " a sound mind in a sound body." Doubtless from the first, as now, some of the world's best work was done by strong minds imprisoned within feeble bodies. Here, however, we are speaking of the race, and for the race it was all-important that it should be placed in conditions favourable to health and vigour. How did Hellas answer to this condition ? So remarkably that, in one case, it attracted the attention of the Hellenes themselves. Thus, Plato says (2\mceus, p. 24c; cf. also Critias, ^. the) — with a patriotic pride at which we may smile, but which nevertheless was quite justified — that Athena had selected Attica wherein to plant her chosen people, because she saw that the happy temperament of the seasons there would produce the wisest of men ; men who, like herself, would be lovers both of war and of wisdom — i.e., would possess the sound mind in the sound body. And of Hellas itself we are told by Herodotus (iii. 106), who, as we know, was a great traveller, that, beyond all other countries in the world, it enjoyed the most happily-tempered seasons — an opinion endorsed by competent judges, such as Aristotle and Hippocrates. There can, indeed, be little doubt that in ancient times the climate of Greece was much healthier than it is at present. The causes of this we shall see clearly as we proceed. Meantime, let us bear in mind that, while we accept the verdict of Herodotus on the country as a whole, Greece is a land of contrasts. To begin with, Northern Greece is divided, as regards general climatic and geological conditions, by the Pindus-range into two dis- tinct halves. Further south, Parnassus may be regarded as the point of separation. The eastern coast opens freely to the sea, and is dry and sunny ; whilst the western is rugged, inhospitable, and generally more moist. Then again, if we picture to ourselves the multitudinous little districts into which the country is broken up, it will be evident that by no possibility could the climate be equable or uniform throughout. There are coast-lands, such as Attica and Argolis, where both heat and cold are agreeably tempered by the sea-breezes ; Alpine-lands, such as Western Arcadia, .^tolia, and Doris, with all the varying conditions of mountain-regions ; broad sunny plains, such as those of Thessaly and Messenia ; and deep cauldron-shaped basins, such as are met with in Eastern Arcadia and Boeotia, into which the mild sea-winds that make the charm of the coast-lands and islands do not often penetrate. As a consequence of this, in the different parts of the country, different seasons prevail at one and the same time. Thus, in Arcadia there may be deep winter-snows, whilst in Argolis and Laconia spring is unfolding in all its brightness, and in Messenia the sun is glowing already with summer heat. So much more severe, again, is the winter in Arcadia than in Laconia that Pausanias attributes the defeat of the Spartans — when on one occasion they had penetrated into Arcadia to make war on the men of Tegea — to the fact that they were not able to withstand the severity of an Arcadian snowstorm. Encumbered with their heavy armour and numbed by the cold, they were easily overcome (Paus., viii. 53, 10 ; cf. also CurtiusJ Pel.j i. pp. 52, 267). Yet Tegea lies but a little to the north of Laconia. We have also, on the authority of the historian Polybius, the often-quoted fact that the Arcadians practised CLIMATE AND ENERGY 2i music, not only as an enjoyment, but as a necessity — a softening remedy — against the harsh influences of their climate. Nevertheless, amidst all this diversity, the fact remains, that the climate of Hellas did tend to produce the " sound mind " in the " sound body," Physi- cally, the ancient Hellenes must have been a fine race. This is evident from the art-works which have come down to us. Where could Greek sculptors have found their ideals — the finely-cut profile and beautifully-proportioned figure which they modelled — save among the people? Even at the present day, these noble types are not extinct. They are to be met with still in the very districts which now groan under the worst climatic conditions, Boeotia and Arcadia.^ Of more importance still is the influence of the climate on the intelledual life of the Hellenes. Little as we are apt to think about it, climate, with all that it implies, plays a great part in the mental development of a people. In reflecting on the history of any nation, two factors must always be taken into account. These are (i) the race, the stock whence it has sprung, and (2) its physical surroundings — in other words, the ethno-graphy of the people and the geo-graphy of their land. Now, the Hellenes, as we have seen, sprang from the same great Aryan family to which we ourselves belong ; but if we consider for a moment the subsequent history of the various branches of that family — the Indian, the Celtic, the Teutonic, &c. — we shall see that some other circum- stance besides race determines the mental fibre of a people. The contrast between the contemplative inaction of the Indian Aryan, for instance, and the stirring energy of his Greek brother, would, as has often been pointed out (Polyb., iv. 20), be otherwise inexplicable. And this contrast is repeated in varying shades and degrees through all the different members of the Aryan family. No two nations have developed precisely in the same way — a fact which shews plainly that the influences which we class under the names of " climate," "geographical position," &c., are very potent in shaping the destiny of a people. To guard against misapprehension, however, lest any one should imagine that we are disposed to overrate the importance of these physical surroundings, let us repeat here the weighty and oft-quoted words of Lassen on this very subject (Indische Alterthiimskunde, i. p. 411; cf. also Humboldt, Kosmos, ii. p. 38). Speaking of the Aryans who crossed the Himalayas into India, he says : " It would be a great mistake to believe that physical influences — either alone or in greatest measure — determine the character of a people. India, like other countries, shews this clearly enough ; the tribes of the Deccan and the Yindhya races were exposed to the same natural influences as the Aryans, but they never rose independently to a higher development. We must, there- fore, recognise in the different nations a groundwork of character — an original spiritual bent — which may be developed and definitely helped or hindered by the exterior nature of the land, as well as by the events of history. This is the Genius of the Nations, breathed into them from the creation " — a genius, which, like that of the individual, may be modified by education and outward circumstance, but " never can be given." In our survey, then, we are considering physical conditions as influences which helped to mould the genius of the Hellenic people. And that such influences are, as stated above, exceedingly potent no student of history will ^ Speaking of the people of Phigalia in Arcadia, Sir Thomas Wyse says: "Painters need not here recur to ancient types for authority. The tradition is existing, and the man and the costume still live " {Excursion in the Peloponnesus, ii. p. 25- Compare also Hermann Bliimner, Privat-Antiq., § 4). 2 2 THE LAND deny. These very Hindu Aryans to whom Lassen justly attributes great intellectual ascendency themselves succumbed in the end to the enervating influences of the climate. We cannot, therefore, consider it as the result of mere " chance " that the lot of the great experimenters of the world should have been cast in a land the climate of which was admirably calculated to spur them into energetic action. The dolce far niente, the possibility of taking life easily, which lay within the reach of the Hindu Aryan, was not possible to any of the Greek Aryans, except the Messenians, and their fate we shall learn presently. '* 'Twill not be always summer, make you cabins ! " growls old Father Hesiod {Works a7id Days, 503). He spoke to those who knew the severity of a Boeotian winter,^ and " cabins " they accordingly made ; the arts of construc- tion flourished apace. " Work the works which the gods have marked out for men ! " he says in another place {Ihid., 397, 398), and there is not the slightest doubt that the keen blast of winter, the icy prick of mountain-winds, had its share in furthering this work, as well as the glorious brilliancy of the southern sunshine, or the invigorating breezes of the iEgsean. Let us make no mistake here. When we come to investigate their history, we shall find that the earliest makers of Hellas were great workers. They worked themselves. Their kings and heroes worked, even their gods they represented as working, doing with their own hands what we should now call " menial tasks." Poseidon, the noble Earth-Shaker, unyokes the immortal horses of Father Zeus from the car; Hera, the goddess-queen, herself harnesses her steeds to the chariot; Athena, daughter of segis-bearing Zeus, weaves with her own hands the splendid robe which she exchanges in time of war for the cuirass of the cloud-gatherer ; it is Hephaestus, the glorious lame god, who builds the palaces wherein dwell the other immortals {Iliad, viii. 440 ; 381, 382, 384-386 ; i. 6o7).2 Then, if we descend to earth, we find the same scenes enacted among the great and noble : the sons of King Priam yoke the horses to their father's chariot ; Odysseus, the man of many devices, chieftain of Ithaca, builds with his own hands the craft on which he sets sail from Calypso's isle — mark ! it is not provided for him by the goddess — and his nuptial couch he makes for himself of olive wood; Nausicaa, the Phseacian princess, not only superintends the washing of the household linen, but apparently herself shares the toil, paddles in the running stream, and treads the garments with her little royal feet as merrily as any of her maidens ; whilst her lady-mother, the queen, sits at home, and presides over the spinning of the women {Iliad, xxiv. 279; Od., v. 243; xxiii. 190 ; vi. 85 et seq., 52). So much for the testimony of Homer concerning the doings of the great folk in the days of chivalry. As for Hesiod, the poet of the people — a better exponent than Homer of the opinions of the " masses " — great is his contempt for " do-nothings ! " Non-workers are worthless creatures, "with whom both gods and men are wroth" — stingless drones, eating up the honey which others have amassed. " Work," he says emphatically, " is no disgrace, but sloth is a disgrace " {Works and Days, 303, 311). Far from being ashamed of necessary labour, the real Makers of Hellas gloried in it. They lifted the burthen of toil— as in the Homeric Hymn the princesses of Eleusis bear off the shining pitchers, which they have filled at ^ See the account of Thebes, Hellas, p. 1^ et seq. ^ Even in Imperial times the conception of the gods as active powers had not entirely died out, for Pausanias mentions (viii. 32, 4) that he saw at Megalopolis a group of the so-called "Working-gods" {Ergatai) : Athena Ergane, Mistress of Works; Apollo Agyieus, Way-god, guardian of highways and roads, &c. (see Hellas, pp. 120-129). UNIVERSITY ) ^«i CLIMATE AND ENERGY 23 the fountain for " the dear house of their father — with a noble grace," exult- ingly (Homer, Hymn to Demeter, 170). One could see, the old singer implies, that they were princesses by the very way in which they poised the jars ! ^ And coming down to later times, we find the Work-spirit of old Father Hesiod the distinguishing characteristic of the Hellenes throughout all their best days. There is nothing that strikes a thoughtful observer more in the great ruins on the Acropolis of Athens than the extreme thoroughness of the workmanship. Even the parts not originally intended to be seen are found to be as truthfully and carefully wrought as the portions of the design which were meant to be conspicuous. Hence we repeat again — the Makers of Hellas were great workers. When, at a later period, we find the Hellenes despising work — pluming themselves on the fact that they had no need to work, because there existed a body of in- ferior beings (slaves) expressly designed to relieve them from toil — we do not require a prophet to tell us that the un-malcing of Hellas was in progress. From a nation of Workers, her people had become, or were fast becoming, a "^ nation of Talkers. Our present inquiry, however, is concerned with happier times, and we can see that it was of the utmost consequence to the Hellenes, as Experi- menters, that their climate should have been such as enabled them to delight in work for its own sake. We say advisedly to delvjht in work ; for the Greek climate has another side as well as its sterner wintry aspect. We have dwelt specially on this, because it is undoubtedly that element which most assists in developing energy of character ; but the softer element had its share, and a no less important share, in making the Hellenes what they became. Suppose that Hellas, with its little mountain-regions, had lain, say, in our own latitude, the energetic spurs to action, keen frosts and wintry winds, would have been present in abundance. But would these rough agents ever have succeeded in " stimulating" the people into that wondrously harmonious development which is characteristic of all their work ? We venture to say that, making full allowance for the genius of the race, this question can only be answered in the negative. It is as much as we moderns living in northern regions can do — with all our present-day appliances for comfort — to obtain the mastery over our natural climatic conditions. How would this have been possible in the early ages of the world ? Fortunately for the world, Hellas does not lie amid the fogs and chill blasts of the Baltic and the North Sea, but in the warmer part of the temperate zone. The genial sunshine of the South was necessary to bring to maturity fruit so early developed as the Hellenic ; and Hellas is emphatically a land of the sun. The only part of the country in which a systematic study of the climate has been carried out as yet is Athens. The following table, however, giving the mean of a series of observations, made by Julius Schmidt (director of the Observatory), and extending over a period of twenty-four years, speaks volumes (Neumann u. Partsch, op. cit., p. 24) : — Athens has — Of clear days in the year, on which the sun is not hid for a moment 179 Bright days on which it is hid, perhaps, for half-an-hour . . 157 Cloudy days 26 Days when the sun is not seen at all 3 365^ ^ For the story of the visit of the goddess Demeter to earth, and her acting as nurse at Eleusis in the family of Oeleus, see Hellas, p. 258, et seq. 24 THE LAND Three hundred and thirty-six days of almost unclouded sunshine ! Contrast this with the meagre share which falls to our own lot in the pale north.^ Con- trast our mists and fogs and dull grey sky with the purity and transparency of the Attic air, the glowing blue of the Attic sky, and we shall cease to wonder at the early development of the genius of the race. In such a climate, under such conditions, the very burthens of life are lightened, its roughnesses are smoothed. True, Attica is not Hellas, and no other part of the country possesses in an equal degree the climatic conditions which gave Attica the pre-eminence. Nevertheless, the fact remains that in every district of Hellas, without excep- tion, the people could, as we have said, delight in work for its own sake. Their energies were neither lethargised by excessive heat, nor paralysed by excessive cold.^ The climatic diversities of the little States are, however, best considered in connection with a subject to which they stand in close relation — viz., the soil. NATURAL RESOURCES AND SELF-HELP "Yes!" says a reader, "climate is, of course, a weighty factor, but I should think that the fertility of the soil is even more important. Unless it were very fertile, and produced in abundance all that the people wanted, there would not be much leisure for experimenting." Is " much leisure/' then, a sine qua non in experimenting? True it is, that some of the greatest discoveries of our own time have been made by those who might have passed their days in inglorious ease had they been so minded. But again we must reflect that we are speaking here of the race in general — not of individuals — and is it not the case that, as a rule, everything which requires an effort is pursued most vigorously amongst those who have not much leisure, who are dependent for the means of subsistence on their own exertions, either of body or of brain, whose wits are sharpened by dint of exercise and the pressure of necessity ? If we examine into the history of Hellas, we shall find that precisely where the soil " produced in abundance all that the people wanted," there, " curiously enough," the experiments came to a sudden and untimely end. To this we shall refer presently. Meantime, let us note one very signifi- cant fact, viz., that it w^as quite as much by what she withheld as by what she gave that Nature helped -on "experimenting" in Hellas. This is evident from two considerations : — (i) In this curious little country — more, perhaps, than in any other — Nature demands the co-operation of man. Like a saucy beauty, she will neither smile nor be gracious, until her caprices have been duly honoured. If we reflect for a moment on the immense variety of physical conditions which obtain in Greece, we shall see that a uniform fertility is just as far from pos- sible as is a uniform climate. There are districts, such as Attica and Argolis, where a four-months' drought yearly prevails ; there are others, such as Boeotia and Eastern Arcadia, where the inhabitants are well-nigh deluged with the ^ The average number of sunny days in Germany (Breslau) is given by Professors Neumann and Partsch [Phys. Oeoy. von Griechenland, p. 24) as seventy-nine ; of cloudy days as 286 — seventy-nine days of sunshine against the 336 of Athens. 2 Speaking of the Greeks as art-workers, Mr. Ruskin says: "Northern hands and eyes are, of course, never so subtle as Southern ; and in very cold countries artistic execution is palsied" (Queen of the Air, p. 170). NATURAL RESOURCES AND SELF-HELP 25 watery element. Both phenomena will become very clear to us when we have inquired into their causes. Meantime, we can see that in neither case could Nature do much for man, until man had bestirred himself and paved the way for her operations. When man had done this — when the Athenians had devised that system of irrigation whereby the waters of the Cephissus were brought to their olive-groves and gardens ; when the Argives had become adepts in the art of well-digging ; when the Arcadians had found out how to regulate their floods by means of canals and dams — then indeed Nature deigned to smile upon their efforts. It may be safely aflSrmed that no climate in Europe so richly rewards labour bestowed upon the soil as does that of Greece, but the necessary conditions in every case must first be fulfilled. It is the neglect of these conditions — a neglect brought about by long ages of suffering and misrule — that brought Greece into the deplorable state from which she is even now but slowly emerging (see Appendix to this Section). Nothing is wanting, however, except the old care and skill, to make the coun- try what it was in antiquity. The healing, restoring, revivifying powers of the climate of Greece, where man works with the climate, are described as little short of miraculous. To return, however, to the first Hellenes. Can we not see how admirably fitted was this state of things to call forth the best powers, the assiduity, the ingenuity, of each race ? The Hellene knew that Nature could do little with- out his co-operation ; but he also knew that, if he did his part, Nature would do hers. He could therefore work on with the sure hope of success — a suc- cess not always granted to the children of more northerly climes. (2) Where "experimenting" of all sorts went on with most vigour was in districts such as Attica and Corinth, where the soil is poor and thin. In Attica earth is so precious a commodity, that in ancient times, when land was leased out, a clause in the contract prohibited the farmer from carrying any of the soil away (G. I. Gr., i. p. 93). Here as in Peloponnesus (where the proportion of hill to level ground is nearly as 9 to 10) (Curtius, Pel., i. p. 22), the terraced sides of the mountains bear witness to the indefatigable diligence of the inha- bitants. Not the most unwearied efforts, however, could induce Mother Earth to yield enough for the wants of an ever-increasing population, and conse- quently both Athenians and Corinthians were forced to look elsewhere for the means of subsistence. The Athenians discovered the advantages of their posi- tion as dwellers on the southern foreland of Northern Greece, facing the Isles and Asia ; the Corinthians discovered the amazing benefits which might be derived from their double sea. Who would waste time " picking stones out of an ungrateful soil " when such possibilities lay before him ? Surely no one with a head upon his shoulders! And so, the Corinthians set to work to develop their fleet ; they sent out colonies to the Ambracian Gulf, to Corcyra (Corfu), to Sicily and Thrace ; they were in the forefront of all material and artistic progress, and as a consequence their '* stony " city became the wealthiest in Hellas (ibid., ii. p. 516 et seq.). All the grain-markets of the East were at their service. The Athenians likewise set to work to develop their fleet and their seamanship, and well was it for Hellas that they did so. For in that last desperate struggle with the Persian, it was Athenian courage, and Athenian seamanship, and Athenian knowledge of winds and currents, that gained the day, and led the Barbarian in the Bay of Salamis into the very ruin which he had planned for others. The Athenians were not a whit behind the Corinthians in the march of material and artistic progress. They led the van in all things intellectual, and in a yet nobler cause — the cause of Freedom and of the Fatherland. 2 6 THE LAND Such is the history of two of the poorest and least fertile lands of Greece. Now let us turn to the richly-endowed lands, the lands which produced all that heart could desire, and so '' gave leisure " for experimenting. Of such rich and fertile countries, Greece can boast three — Thessaly, Boeotia, and Messenia. What does history tell us concerning their achievements? The chronicle is by no means a brilliant one. Thessaly, with her fat pastures and fertile plains, proved a good nursing-mother to many of the races of Hellas in their infancy ; l)ut, this accomplished, Thessaly folded her hands and considered her part done. In historic times, her fat pastures sent forth neither heroes, nor patriots, nor artists, nor men of letters. Boeotia certainly numbered many brave and distinguished men among her sons, therefore any inference in respect to her must be cautiously drawn. Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that, as regards the mass of the people, the epithets lavished on^ them by their polite Athenian neighbours, " Boeotian pigs," " Boeotian swine," were only too well deserved, and called out by Boeotian sensuality and sloth. The history of Messenia, again, is sadder than that of any other Hellenic State. The richest and most beautiful land of Greece, " watered by innumerable streams," as Euripides describes it {Straho, p. 366), abounding in corn, wine, and oil, ripened under sunny skies, with rich pasture-ground for flocks and herds— Messenia was yet the most unfortunate of all. The Messenians, and the Messenians alone of all the nobler peoples of Hellas, failed in working out their grand destiny. The Dorian nature itself, stern, energetic, practical, was not proof against the seductive influences of an enervating climate and rich soil. Yery early the Messenian Dorians displayed their want of " backbone," their in- capacity for self-defence, and fell a prey to their stronger brethren, the Spartans, who, on the colder, less fertile side of Taygetus, had coveted their sunny plains. The Messenians, too, were Hellenes, 'and protested against their chains. They, too, went into exile rather than submit to the oppressor ; but even when led back in triumph by Epaminondas and reinstated in their rights, the old fatal effect of the climate became visible again. Weak and undecided in character, the Messenians brought no blessing on Peloponnesus ; rather, by relying on outward assistance and alliance with Macedonia, did they hasten the downfall of Hellas. ^ From these instances it will be seen that, in the great work, fertility and natural wealth proved to be a hindrance rather than a help. As to the rest, it will also be seen that Hellas, as stated before, is a land of contrasts. In no way can this be better studied than by a comparison of two of the examples just cited, the neighbouring states of Boeotia and Attica. Side by side they stood with only the mountains intervening. On the one hand was Boeotia, true to its name. Land of Oxen, with its hollow basins and humid valleys, its teeming fertility and depressing vapours, its grey-and-black marbled cities. On the other was Attica, true also to its name, the Wave-hroken {i.e. coast-land), with its barren, thyme-covered, rocky hills, its light soil, its pure bracing atmos- ^ The above remarks, based on a remarkable passage in the Peloponnesos of E. Curtius (ii. p. 123 et seq.), seem at first sight to bear rather hardly upon the Messenians, who made a noble stand, from first to last, against the Spartans. But in no other way except on the theory of a " deterioration of fibre " under a semi-tropical sun can we account for the failure of the Dorians in Messenia. In Laconia, in Argos, in Corinth, in Phlius, they held their own sturdily. The same difference in physique and temperament has been observed in our own day between the peaceable planter of Kalamata and the fierce Mainote of the rugged Tayi>-etus peninsula. "^ For an equally remarkable example of a contrary influence, that of a sunless, cheerless climate, and its effect on the same Dorian race, see the sketch of the Dorian migration given a few sections further on. NATURAL RESOURCES AND SELF-HELP 27 phere, its deep blue sky, its '' violet-crowned " city, dazzling in the brilliant whiteness of her marble edifices. It seemed as though some higher power had intervened to restore the balance destroyed by the favouritism of Mother Earth. Parnes, like a wall, divides the two States ; but, as has been well said (Bishop C. Wordsworth, Greece, p. 150), Bceotia is on the northern, cheerless side, intellectually ; Attica on the southern, rejoicing and glorying in a sun- shine under whose influence all that was bright and beautiful in the world of genius came to maturity. Not without a struggle on the part of her inhabi- tants, however. The very efforts which they were forced to make to obtain from and by the sea the supplies denied them by the land, saved them from sinking into the inglorious ease of their wealthy Boeotian neighbours. It will be evident, then, from the foregoing that although, on the whole, ancient Hellas in many respects is accurately described as a land " not less rich than beautiful," a land whose "waters and forests teemed with life" (Thirl wall, Hist, of Greece, i. p. 31), it is nevertheless equally true to say that poverty was at home in many parts of it. The Hellenes had a proverb : " Hunger is a teacher of many things," and certainly it was " necessity " that suggested not a few of their experiments : their navigation, commerce, colonisation, were, as we have seen, in great part due to that stern but kindly Mother. " In Hellas," said Demaratus, the exiled Spartan king to Xerxes, " Want is our foster-brother, dwelling ever with us ; but," he adds, " Yalour is an ally whom we have gained by wisdom and strict laws " (Herodotus, vii. 102). In Sparta at least, then. Want and Yalour went hand in hand. Those who have but little will struggle to keep that little. This reminds us of the story, also told by Herodotus, concerning the men of Andros (viii. iii, 121). They, like most of the Islanders, had sub- mitted voluntarily to the Persian ; hence, immediately after the battle of Salamis, Themistocles levied upon them a money-fine. This they declined to pay, giving as an excuse that their island was troubled by two unprofitable gods, whom they could by no means get rid of — Poverty and Helplessness. Therefore, they said, they could not pay the sum demanded. Themistocles proceeded forthwith to besiege their city ; but the men of Andros knew so well how to defend themselves, that he was compelled finally to sail away without the expected contribution. Although we may not admire the unpatriotic conduct of the Andrians, it is quite clear that the dominant influences of the island were not Poverty and Helplessness, but the same that were at home in many other parts of Hellas — Necessity and Self-help. Turning now from the negative to the positive aspect of the matter — from what Hellas did not to what she did afford — we ask : " How did the little country, then, nourish her children? What tools did she provide for her workmen ? " Perhaps this, of all questions, is the one that most closely con- cerns a primitive race. In ancient times the connection between land and people was far more intimate than in our own day. Think only of the matter of food-supply. Noiv, the whole of the habitable globe is, practically, as one country ; the failure of the harvest in any particular part is speedily remedied by the abundance of another. In the earliest times, failure of the harvest too often meant — starvation. We moderns can only realise to ourselves the position of a primitive race by comparing it with that of castaways on some desert island. True, the Aryan of 3000 or 4000 years ago was a being very different in some respects from his brother of the present century — from the 28 THE LAND " castaway " point of view, a much more capable and independent being. Nevertheless, the prime wants of both are the same — food, shelter, clothing, the raw materials of all the adjuncts of a life above that of the animals. It must, consequently, have been in a very Robinson- Crusoe-like spirit that the primitive Hellenes surveyed the land in which they found themselves, and by dint of testing and experimenting, gradually appropriated all that could be made to minister to their wants. They would be forced to begin with the forests, for although we hold that the Aryans were not the first settlers in Greece — that races on a lower stage of civilisation had preceded them,i and cleared the land here and there — yet the real works of improvement, the draining of the swamps, opening up of roads, &c., doubtless awaited Aryan intelligence and Aryan energy. Forests they would find in abundance, for in the earliest times the slopes of the Greek mountains must have been clothed with well-nigh impenetrable woods. On the eastern side of Greece these had disappeared in certain districts, such as Attica, to a great extent in historic times ; but on the western side, where, as we have seen (p. 20), the climate is moister, some parts of Acarnania afford even in our own day an idea of primitive Greece as it must have presented itself to the eyes of the first Hellenes. " Everywhere," writes M. Heuzey of Acarnania in 1856, " everywhere we find forests, everywhere flowing water, everywhere a soil embarrassed at once by woods, by ravines, by mountains " {Le Mont Olympe et VAcamanie, p. 223). Were we to describe at length all that the Greeks found in their forests and valleys, or all that by experimenting they introduced into the land, this part of our subject would require a volume to itself, for Greece possesses a rich and most varied flora. The utmost that we can attempt here, therefore, is to notice briefly those natural productions which were of value as food, or of practical utility to them otherwise, or which, as the myths shew us, had forcibly struck their imagination. Of all the trees that clothe the mountains of Greece, first in the category of usefulness must be placed the Ooniferse — trees which grow well in a warm, sandy soil. Without their pines and firs — light wood, easily cut down with rude tools of stone or of bronze, and easily transported — Greek navigation could not have developed so early as it did. Strange to say, the Greeks, great sailors as they were, had few ships of oak. Oak-trees they had in plenty ; but, in the first place, oak-wood is hard to fell and work, and in the second, the Greeks had a prejudice (like all their prejudices, not without a touch of plausibility) to the effect that resinous wood resisted better than any other the action of sea-water. Hence, when they used oak-wood, it was mainly, as Theophrastus tells us, in the construction of light boats used on rivers and lakes ; if used for sea-going ships, they thought it would decay in the salt water. This mistake, however, cost them not a little; for their vessels of war, constructed at great expense, had no durability, and soon became unfit for service {Hist. ;plant, v. 4, 3 ; c/, Neumann u. Partsch, op. cit., p. 371). Of the trees mentioned by Homer as cut down for shipbuilding purposes — the oak, the white poplar, and the pine {Iliad, xiii. 389 ; xvi. 482) — the last was by far the most used. Probably the common strand-pine {Pinus halepensis), which grows on the Isthmus, in Attica, and elsewhere, w^as employed at first ; later, the Apollo-pine {Abies Apolli?m),^ which is found everywhere in Greece, and 1 See the quotation from Professor Max Mtiller on p. 46 of Hellas. '^ The Apollo-pine, according to v. Heldreich, is probably the elate of the ancients — the tree now called mbret, " the king," by the Albanians. It is, however, difficult to distinguish pre- cisely what species are indicated by the old writers. Thus peuJre = ' ' the fir," and pitys= "the pine," NATURAL RESOURCES AND SELF-HELP 29 itself, with its tall slim stem, seems to suggest the idea of a mast {Od., ii. 424). But not only was the pine-tree employed for shipbuilding. It served for con- structive purposes of all sorts — for houses and furniture, for bridges, chariots, oil-presses, casks ; pine and fir alike yielded resin, pitch, and tar ; from both, torches were made ; in later days fir-cones were steeped in wine to prevent it souring ; and finally, the kernels contained in the large cones of one species of pine were eaten as fruit, and ranked, even in historic times, amongst delicacies such as almonds and walnuts (Hugo Bliimner : Technologie und Terminologie der Gewerhti und Kunste hei Griechern und Edmern, ii, 283, 285 ; Neumann u. Partsch, op. ciL, p. 365 et seq.). Who can wonder that the early Hellene — perforce his own boat-builder, house-builder, and carpenter — loved the fir-tree, with her fragrance, her manifold uses, her light- and heat-giving properties ? That he dedicated her to Poseidon, god of the waves over which his little bark bore him, and crowned with her feathery foliage the victor in the Isthmian Games ? Who can wonder that the slender, graceful pine-tree appealed even more forcibly to his imagi- nation, that when wintry blasts played havoc in the pine-woods, he lamented over his favourite, and told of the untimely fate of poor Pitys, struck down by her jealous suitor, rude Boreas, the North-wind.^ More conspicuous than the pine among the forest trees of Greece, however, is the Oak. According to von Heldreich (op. cit., p. 15 et seq.), Hellas pos- sesses no fewer than ten species of oak, many of which are evergreen, forming woods of incomparable beauty, even in winter. Chief of all the varieties is the Valonian oak {Querents segilops), a magnificent tree with spreading branches, almost an evergreen, which grows everywhere, but is seen to greatest perfec- tion in Acarnania, where it clothes the plains and the sides of the hills, bear- ing large acorns, which are sweeter than those of any other sort, and now form (for tanning purposes) one of the most important articles of export in Greece. This variety is probably the pJiegos of the ancients,^ and it was also valued in early days — not so much, however, on account of its timber, as for other reasons. The oak, with its majestic proportions, the Greeks dedicated to Zeus — king of trees to the king of gods — and they regarded it as a special gift of the gods to men, but why? Because, as Hesiod tells us (TVorks and Days, 232), it bears "acorns on its summit, and bees in its middle " — that is, honey stored up by the wild bees in its hollow. With the uses of honey to a people who possessed no sugar we are all familiar. The Aryans made from it their 7net or mead — a kind of sweet intoxicating drink. ^ To picture the primitive Hellenes as acorn-eaters is, however, apparently repugnant to some modern writers, and accordingly attempts have been made of late to show that the edible "acorns" of the ancient Greeks were the fruit, not of the oak, but of the chestnut. But what are the facts? Simply (i) that the Hellenes knew the fruit of the chestnut (which they called Dios balanos = " Zeus' acorn ") before are used interchangeably ; and Theophrastus says expressly that what was elsewhere called peuke, the Arcadians called pitys. Both names are forms of the same word, and mean " pitch- tree," tree full of resin. (Von Heldreich, Die Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, p. 13 ; Theophr., iii., 9. 4 ; V. Hehn, Kulturpfianzen und Hausthiere in ihrem Uebergang aus Asien, p. 259, 3rd ed.) 1 For the myth, see Hellas, p. 249. 2 Fhegos is a name which has caused difficulty through its being confounded with the Latin fagus, "beech." The Greek name for the beech is, however, different {oxya). Most botanists consider phegos as = " oak with edible acorns." The general name for the oak is dr^s ; but this term is used to include, not only any timber-tree, but even trees like the olive. Taken in a special sense, rf?'^s="oak which sheds its leaves," prtnos = " evergreen oak" (Neumann u. Partsch, op. cit., p. 381). ^ See Hellas, p. 50. 30 THE LAND they knew the tree itself, from which it is inferred that the latter was not indigenous to Greece, but transplanted from its home in Asia Minor at a later date ; and (2) that the Arcadian and Acarnanian Greeks of the present cen- tury still eat acorns — roasted or even uncooked — facts vouched for by v. Held- reich, Fraas, and Heuzey (Hehn, op. cit.^ p. 341 et seq. ; v. Heldreich, op. cit., p. 16; Heuzey, ojy. cit. p. 239). We may therefore be tolerably sure that in a country like Greece, although acorns served in good years as food for the swine, yet that when the harvest failed — and also before the Greek Aryans had attained to proficiency in the tilling of the soil — acorns were by no means a despised food for human beings. Hesiod, indeed, says expressly, in the passage just quoted, that the gods gave them as a special blessing to the just, and Plato emphasises this still further (Mepub., ii. 363). In later times other species of oak were prized for the qualities which make them esteemed now. Thus, the ilex (prinos or evergreen oak) was valued for its hardness, and to it the Greeks applied their equivalent of our phrase, " hearts of oak " — andres prininon = " men steadfast, to be relied upon." Of its wood they made the keels of their triremes — i.e. that part which, in dragging up the vessel on dry land, was most exposed to friction, a process which the soft pine-wood could not resist. They found out also that oak-wood does not decay in earth, and consequently used it for posts and beams. Finally, gall-nuts and the red dye obtained from the Kermes variety (Quercus cocci/era) were known in antiquity, as was also the cork-oak of Arcadia (of which Pau- sanias tells us), with its thin light bark, which was used for the floats of anchors and nets. Thus by degrees, by experiment after experiment, were the different properties of the bounties of Nature discovered and turned to account (Theophr., V. 7. 2 ; Paus., viii. 12. i ; Bliimner, op. cit., p. 261 ; Neumann u. Partsch, op. ci^., pp. 371-382). In addition to the pine and the oak as forest-forming timber-trees, the Greeks had (although more partially) the red beech, which grows on Olympus and Pindus and in ^tolia. On their hillsides and in their mountain-glens, they had the ash, the haunt of the Melian Nymphs, from which in the earliest days the shafts of spears were made ; ^ the elm, the linden, the fragrant juniper (dedicated to Apollo ^), of which there are at least ten species, varying in size from a shrub to a tree ; while beside streams grew the willow, the alder, and the silver poplar — the last, to the child-like Hellene, the embodi- ment, with its glancing leaves, of the brilliant Heliadse, the transformed daughters of the sun.^ Finally, in marshy places were found the homely reeds and rushes, used for basket-making and mats ; and most important of all, by the Copaic Lake in Boeotia, grew the donax, or flute-reed, which helped so greatly in the development of music among the people. Probably the Hellenes possessed all these and more from the first. Therefore, with the means of providing shelter against the arrows of the frost and the rain, and for transporting themselves from place to place, with the materials for huts, furniture, boats, fuel, and light, they were amply supplied. ^ For the legend of the Melian Nymphs, see Bellas, p. 82. 2 For the myth, see Hellas, p. 137. ^ For the story of the transformation of the grief-stricken Heliadse, see the myth of Phae- thon, Hellas, p. 190. The white poplar was a tree of mourning, and as such it is appropriately placed by Homer around the dismal dwelling of Hades, together with the willows that cast their fruit before their season. Its leaves, however, formed the wreath worn by athletes, because the tree, although originally dedicated to Hades, became sacred to Heracles (Hercules), as a symbol of the victory which the hero gained over the powers of the lower world when he brought up to earth Cerberus, the terrible watch-dog of the abode of the dead (C. Bcetticher, Der Baumcultus der Hellenen, p. 441 et seq.). NATURAL RESOURCES AND SELF-HELP 31 Then, as to clothing. How must we imagine the primitive Hellenes to have been attired ? In very much the same manner as the primitive Aryans — that is, in sheep- and goat-skins,^ a fashion, as we know, followed by the Ozolian Locrians in historic times, to the disgust of their more fastidious and polished brethren. The warriors and heroes of each clan would probably appear in the trophies of their prowess — the skins of wolves and of bears — as did the Arcadians when, on one occasion, they came to the help of the Messenians, grim and fierce, armed with their hunting-spears. The wealthy men, *' the men of many cows," ^ would doubtless indulge in the shapeless coats of felt, which seem to have been the first stage in the tailor's art. These, again, would give place in time to the woollen garments, which, gradually advancing in fineness with the proficiency of the women in weaving, formed at all times the favourite garb of the Hellenes. Flax was cultivated in Greece, and that linen was worn in early days by men as well as women is evident from the linen corslet of Ajax Oileus. Later, however, linen apparel, as clothing for men, did not find so much favour with the European Greeks as among their Asiatic brethren. Finally, as to food. This probably consisted at first with the primitive Hellenes, as with their Aryan forefathers, of what Nature offered — the products of the chase, the milk of their flocks and herds, acorns and wild fruits. Of the latter, Greece now offers a great variety : raspberries, found on Olympus ; gooseberries, in the forest-zone of lesser heights ; barberries ; the cornelian cherry, with its pleasantly acid fruit ; and the berries of the Judas-thorn (Zizyphus vulgaris), which are uncommonly sweet, and somewhat resemble little olives in appearance (Neumann u. Partsch, op. cit., p. 400). However, as the small thorny shrubs peculiar to the dry hillsides and heaths, the Xerovuni of Greece, have increased in proportion to the destruction of the forests, it is doubtful whether the primitive Hellenes possessed all these desirable additions to their meagre fare. Three fruits they certainly knew — the blackberry, the arbutus (which Yarro reckons among the means of nourishment of primitive man), and the pear. The wild pear-tree is very plentiful in Greece, and in Peloponnesus so much so that this part of the country is supposed by some writers to have received the name of Apia from its abundance.^ Apple trees are rare, and met with only in the north. The climate, however, is too dry for these two fruits, neither of which came to perfection or was of importance to the later Greeks. To complete the tale of the natural bounties of Greece, however, we must not omit to add the wild herbs, those which fill the air with aromatic fragrance, as thyme and mint, and those which figure so largely as salads, &c., in the present dietary of the people. Without these humble friends, the long fasts of the Greek Church, rigidly observed by the lower classes in Greece, would be impossible. Von Heldreich gives several lists of these plants, which are very ^ See Hellas, p. 50. ^ Polyhoutes. See the note on primitive survivals in early Greece, Hellus, p. 49. ^ From apios, " a pear-tree." The name Apia, or the Apian land — used for Peloponnesus by the tragedians — the Greeks traced to Apis, the son of Phoroneus, an old king of Argos or Sicyon. It is now supposed to mean the Watery Land, in the sense of land surrounded by water. So Curtius identities Apia with the Sanscrit ap =aqua = " water" {Grundzitge, p. 463). It must not be confounded with Homer's apiSs gaiSs {II., i. 270; iii. 49), which simply means "the far-off land." It is probable that the three chief names, ancient and modern, for Peloponnesus refer to its situation as surrounded with water — Peloponnesus = " Pelops' Island " ; Apia = " watery land" ; Morea = "sea land" (see Hellas, p. 24). , At the same time, the deri- vation of Apia from apios, "the pear-tree," is not worthless. It has its root, as we have seen, in another piiysical fact, for which any traveller can vouch. 32 THE LAND numerous, and the collecting of which in the woods and on the hillsides, now forms one of the chief occupations of the women and girls of Greece. In antiquity, wild herbs, doubtless played as great a part amongst the poorer classes as at present, although they would seem not to have been to the taste of the rich. "Fools!" says Hesiod (WorJcs and Days, 40-41) of his "gift- devouring " kings, " Neither do they know how much more the half is than the whole, nor yet what great refreshment there is in a diet of marsh mallows and squills." ^ Mallows and squills! truly, it must have required the philosophic spirit to live contentedly on such fare. If Hesiod had any practical experience of it, this may help to account for the acerbity of temper apparent in the old poet at times, despite his philosophising. We may be tolerably sure that if the primitive Hellenes were often reduced to such a diet, it must have acted as a goad and a spur to their zeal in the prosecution of agriculture and of the peaceful arts, whereby they might raise themselves above the shifts and emergencies of a hand-to-mouth life. " Halt, for a moment, pray ! " cries a bewildered reader. " What an extraordinary picture you are drawing ! Surely there must be some mistake. What about the delicious fruits which Homer knew — the pomegranates, the sweet figs, the olives in their bloom, that tantalised Tantalus in the lower regions ? ^ Acorns and pine-nuts, marsh mallows and squills, forsooth 1 — your Hellenes might after all just as well have settled round the Baltic ! " Hardly ! for in that case they would have been obliged to wait longer for their delicious fruits. These appeared in Hellas in due time ; but, as the result of " experimenting." No one, we think, will venture to doubt this after the exhaustive researches of Victor Hehn. All the finer fruits of the Hellenes, which throve so " naturally " beneath the sunny skies of Greece as to be taken for veritable children of the soil, were in reality either " ennobled " by the process of grafting Eastern varieties on Greek stocks, or were introduced directly from the East.^ We are as yet, however, very far from the fruit-age. The nomad-stage must first be followed in the march of civilisation by the purely agricultural stage, for horticulture pre-supposes a state of society altogether different from that which obtains under primitive conditions. Even the beginnings of agriculture must have been attended with great difficulties — not only because of the dislike of the hunter or the shepherd to give up the life to which he had been accustomed and settle down to what, in his eyes, is monotonous drudgery, but for other reasons. To a nomad race land is common property ; no one 1 Asphodelos='^ the squill," the plant transferred by Homer to his lower world. From its soft name we are apt to imagine the asphodel-meadows which surround the House of Hades as an element of beauty in the picture. Far from this, they form the most appropriate of back- grounds to that most dismal of regions — the Land of Shadows (see the description of the plant in the section on the lower world, Hellas, pp. 282-83). 2 For the myth, see Hellas, p. 284. 2 Hehn takes as the motto for his remarkable work " Kulturpjlanzen und Hausthiere in ihrem Uehergang aus Asien nach Griechenland und Italien" (which has been so well translated into English by J. S. Stallybrass, under the title of Tfie Wanderings of Plants and Animals. from their First Home), the apophthegm of Schelling : "What is Europe but the stem, unfruitful in itself, on which everything must first be grafted, and which only thereby can be ennobled ? " and in this spirit his researches are pursued. To protest against any conclusions based on a learning so wide and varied as that of Hehn were a bold proceeding. Nevertheless, when e.g. he represents the ^me {op. cit., p. 262) as a foreigner on Greek soil, one is disposed to think that his theory is pushed too far. Prof. Grisebach ( Vegetation der Erde, i. pp. 313, 319) recognises, as native to the Mediterranean zone, eighteen species of Coniferse, of which elevea belong to the genus Pinus taken in the wide sense. NATURAL RESOURCES AND SELF-HELP 33 will take the trouble incurred in ploughing and sowing until there is a chance of his being permitted to enjoy the fruits of his toil in peace. The systematic tilling of the ground, therefore, implies a recognition of property in land, and much that this involves. Hence we find the introduction of agriculture into Greece associated in the myths with the first ideas of Law. Demeter, Earth- mother, the giver of the first precious seed-co rn, is also Thesmophoros, the giver of the first laws.^ ~^ These beginnings of agriculture, however, had, as is believed, been made by the Aryans before the Dispersion,^ and the Graeco- Aryans probably brought with them to their new home both wheat and barley. The former throve only in certain parts of Greece, where there is *a rich clay soil, as in the plain of Eleusis in Attica (here agriculture was supposed to have originated), and in Thessaly, Boeotia, Messenia, Laconia, and Argolis. Barley, however, will grow anywhere, and barley-cakes accordingly formed the staple food of the majority of the Greeks, even in historic times. Wh eaten bread was a dainty, reserved for high days and holidays. The third stage, the era of fruit-growing, seems to have been reached in Homer's time, for Diomedes, in speaking of his father's possessions in Argos, mentions not only wheatfields (stage ii.) and sheep (stage i.), but also orchards of trees [Iliad, xiv. 22). It is evident that here we have reached a stage of civilisation when the rights of the proprietor are fully recognised, and when, moreover, the country generally is peaceful and settled (Hehn, op. cit., p. 104 e^ seq.). The tiller of the fields looks for his harvest within a few months ; the planter of trees must wait years for a result (the olive, e.g., only begins to yield regularly in its sixteenth year, and only in its 4o-6oth year is in the fulness of its strength), and in early days, must be prepared to see his labour undone by an invading army, or some wild marauding horde. In a country like Greece, moreover, the horticulturist must have experienced peculiar difiiculties. The regulation of the water-supply, for instance, was at all times a fertile source of dispute, and any one attempting to draw off a portion of the precious element from the local stream by a canal for his own private use would be denounced as a traitor to the common weal. In any age of the world, again, there are never wanting those who set themselves against a new order of things, and we can easily understand how the introduction of fruit-growing would be opposed by the upholders of " things as they are," how the patriotic argument would be trotted out : " We, who own nothing but our flocks and herds, are ready to march at a day's notice rather than submit to a disgraceful peace, these men, who are constructing canals and planting trees, are binding so many fetters on the land. To preserve their property they will make any terms with the enemy, and drag us all into slavery. What sufficed for our fathers ought to suffice for us." And so on, arguments which recur again and again, under ever new faces, in every land, at every improvement-making epoch. The fruit-growing stage in Greece, however, accompanied by all sorts of experiments in planting, grafting, and irrigation arrived, and with it the Three Sisters that henceforth played so important a part in the economy of Hellas, the olive, the fig-tree, and the vine. The nations of Europe have been divided respectively into " beer-and-butter " and " wine-and-oil " consuming peoples. The Greeks belong to the latter class, and from first to last the olive was their most highly prized possession. It ^ Consult the article "Demeter," Hellas, p. 256 et seq. For the myth of Triptolemus, and the distribution by him of the seed-corn, see Hellas, p. 274. 2 See Hellas, p. 48. 34 THE LAND grows wild throughout Greece ; but, according to Hehn, the cultivated variety was introduced first from the East (op. dt., pp. 88 et seq.). If this be a fact, it speaks wonders for the horticultural experiments of the Greeks at a very early age indeed ; since there is evidence in the oil-presses found in the pre- historic remains on the island of Therasia, that the inhabitants of the village knew the olive — the fruit and its uses.^ The date of the volcanic outbursts that buried the primitive community of Therasia is fixed by geologists about 2000 B.C., and in any case, it must be placed very early. Hence, on Hehn's theory, intercourse with the East, and ennobling of the native species, must have been well advanced at this epoch. However this may have been, at the present day as in early times the wild kinds abound in the land. No place is too dry, no soil too ungrateful for the wild olive (kotinos), it is the veritable child of Greece. In the plains and mountain-gorges, on the hillsides, it is to be found by millions (von Heldreich, op. cit., p. 30). As the population increases, these wild plants are utilised by grafting, as they were to a certain extent in the olden time. Especially did the olive thrive in Attica; it loves sea-air and a light chalk soil, and both conditions are found there. With his barley-loaf, a handful of olives, and a draught of plentifully-diluted wine, the poor Athenian was as happy as a king. He wanted nothing more, the climate made him independent. The olive was the tree ^?ar excellence of the Athenians, and even now the groves of hoary patriarchs, some of which may have seen Athens in her beauty ,2 testify to the love of the people for their " best of all trees." Naught knew they of its foreign birth. It was the special gift, so they thought, of their patron-deity, Athena. In the legendary contest with Poseidon for the possession of Attica, when it had been decided that the land should fall to the producer of the most useful gift, Athena, so the story ran, struck her spear into a cleft of the Acropolis rock, and forthwith there sprang up the first olive-tree. Or, better still, according to another version, the spear itself became metamorphosed into an olive-tree, the emblem of War was transformed into the symbol of Peace. From this first-raised olive on the Acropolis a shoot was taken, and planted on the spot afterwards known as the Academy, the scene of Plato's teaching ; and from this, again, were descended the twelve famous Olive-trees sacred to Zeus Morios and Athena Moria (guardians of the propagated olives), which yielded the olive-wreaths and fine oil that formed the prizes of the victors in the Panathenaic contests. So sacred were these propagated olive-trees, parents of all the olive-groves of Attica, that if any one did but touch them, he fell under the ban of the State. Any slave seeing and reporting such an occurrence forthwith received his freedom. Thus, the olive-culture, sup- posed to have emanated from the Acropolis, remained under the control of the State. How important it became for Attica is well seen from the fact that, by the old Laws of Solon, no olive-tree might be dug up except for the purposes of some public festival, and even private proprietors were prohibited from removing more than two in any one year, except on the occasion of a death in the family {Lysias, vii. {peri seJwu); Demosth. in Macart. (43), 71 ; Bockh, Staatsliauslialt. der Athener, i. pp. 54, 421, 3rd ed.). The olive was associated with well-nigh every act of Athenian life ; an olive-wreath on the door of a house announced that a child was born into the world ; with olive-leaves the babe was surrounded and blessed in his cradle ; with olive-oil the athlete made his limbs supple for contest and for war ; with a 1 For a description of tills prehistoric Pompeii, see Hellas^ p. 64. 2 According to v. Heldreich, some of the olive-trees of Athens must be at least 1500 years old (Schliemann, Orchomenos, p. i). NATURAL RESOURCES AND SELF-HELP 35 wool-entwined olive-branch the suppliant approached the altar or the conqueror ; on olive-leaves, finally, both suppliant and conqueror were laid for the last long Thus the olive, with all its varied applications — its wondrous vitality and power of renewing its growth from its own roots, its hard, durable wood, its sustaining fruit, its pure oil, emblem of light and understanding — became to the Hellenes the symbol of culture, civilisation, progress, peace, and its leaves formed the crown of the victor in the national contests at Olympia, contests during which, as we have already seen, hostilities ceased, and the truce of the Olympian Zeus prevailed throughout Hellas (C. Boetticher, op. cit., p. 423, et seq.)} The alien origin of the fig-tree and the vine we are not concerned to dispute. The home of the former was probably Syria or Palestine ; the latter grows wild in Thrace, whither it may have been brought from Asia Minor. Both fruits certainly took very kindly to their foster-land, and both, as is evident from the myths, must have been introduced at a tolerably early date.^ The Athenians believed that the fig-tree was indigenous to their land. The wild fig, erineos, is common throughout Greece, picturesquely springing from the crevices of the rocks, and it figures in the myths ; but its fruit is worthless. The cultivated fig was supposed to have been the special gift of Demeter to the hero Phytalus, who had shewn the goddess hospitality ; the name Phytalus, however, which means simply " planter," betrays the origin of the story. Although of immense importance in a country like Attica, the fig-tree was, nevertheless, overshadowed there by its sister, the vine. This, too, according to the Sagas, was native to ^tolia and Attica, and a gift of a god to these districts. Undoubtedly, however, it found its way into both through Boeotia from Thrace, together with the worship of Dionysus (Bacchus). The evolution of this cult and the extraordinary developments, both religious and intellectual, which proceeded from this material germ, the fruit of the vine, form one of the most singular and striking episodes in the history of the human mind.^ A second group of fruit-trees which played a part in Hellenic myth and poetry is represented by the pomegranate, palm, and quince. The pomegranate, which now grows wild in Greece, must also have been brought into the country (probably in connection with some religious cult) at a very early period. Its original home is Syria, where, with its glowing hues, it took so conspicuous a place in the worship of the Phcenicians that its name among them, rimmon, was identical with that of their sun-god, Hadad-Rimmon (F. C. Movers, Die Phmnizier, i. p. 197 ; Hehn, op. cit., p. 206 et seq.). Among the Hellenes it was sacred to Hera. The palm-tree, found at the present day in some of the islands and as far north as Attica and Bceotia, was well known in antiquity, as is evident from coins and allusions. It was, however, prized more for its slender, graceful beauty (to which Odysseus compares the form of Nausicaa (OcZ., vi., 162 et seq.) and its shade than for its fruit, which, even in Messenia, does not ripen sufficiently to be of value as a food. The golden quince, introduced early from Crete (as its Greek name, Cydonian applSj shews), was a favourite fruit in Hellas. According to Hehn, the golden apples ^ The association of the olive with the coming of Peace is, however, very much older than the Athenian fruit-age. It is, as we all know, an olive leaf that the dove carries to Noah, as a token that the Almighty had brought peace upon the earth again. The tradition of the deluge in some form was common to both Aryan and Semitic peoples, (See Bellas, p. 98.) 2 The fig-tree is mentioned in the Odyssey although not in the Iliad. It is Thracian (not Greek) wine, which the Homeric heroes drink. (See Hellas, p. 60.) ^ Consult the article " Dionysus," Hellas, p. 229 et seq. 36 THE LAND of the Hesperides ^ were simply, in Greek imagination, " idealised quinces " {pp. cit., p. 2 11 et seq.). To sum up. At a late period the Greeks had most of the fruits now known round the Mediterranean, some of which, as the orange, found theu^ way into Europe as a result of the conquests of Alexander. In early times, however, they had probably only those mentioned : olives, figs, and grapes ; almonds (known to Homer), pomegranates, and quinces ; walnuts (called by the Greeks Persian or King's nuts ^), and chestnuts, both of which are now widespread over north and middle Greece — by no means a bad list, especially when we reflect that their acclimatisation was due to Greek energy and experimenting some thousands of years ago. To complete our tale of the Greek plant-world, just let us notice here briefly a third group of three, which played too important a part in Hellenic life to be overlooked. These are, the laurel, the myrtle, and the plane-tree, now so much at home in Greece that it is diflScult to realise the fact of their being foreigners. The first two were introduced very early into the country from the East, probably, like the pomegranate, in the train of religious cults ; planted at first round the sanctuaries of the deities whose symbols they were, they speedily became acclimatised and spread throughout Hellas. Daphne, the laurel, takes the first place. With its glossy leaves and aromatic berries — the odour of which was supposed to chase away decay and corruption — it was early consecrated to the god of light, Apollo, and was itself believed to represent his transformed love, Daphne.^ It became an indispensable adjunct in all rites of purification ; the god himself was obliged, according to the myth, after the slaying of the dragon Pytho, to repair to Thessaly, and bring thence a laurel-bough — a ceremony repeated every ninth year at Delphi. The more the Apollo-cult spread, the more did these fragrant evergreen woods spring up around his temples throughout Hellas. At the present day. Daphne, the laurel, grows wild in Thessaly, the home of Daphne, the maiden — varying in size from a shrub to a stately tree. As the god of light, Apollo is also the god of prophecy ; hence the laurel-staff became the emblem of the seer. As the god of harmony, and the leader of the muses, he is also the patron of singers ; hence the laurel-wreath belonged specially to bards and poets, and crowned the victor in the Pythian Games (Boetticher, op. cit., p. 338 et seq. ; Hehn, op. cit., p. 193 et seq.). The myrtle, however, rivals and even outshines the laurel in the variety of its associations. Its evergreen leaves, reddish-white blossoms, spicy berries — used before the introduction of pepper as seasoning in the Greek cuisine — and the fragrance from which it takes its name, made it a general favourite. It spread everywhere through Hellas, and now grows apparently anywhere, inland and by the sea-shore. The myrtle was dedicated chiefly to Aphrodite (Yenus), goddess of love and beauty. Hence, at that (to us moderns) most pathetic of domestic events, a Greek wedding — when the partners for life were about to see one another for the jirst time — myrtle-leaves, roses, and violets were strewn before them, emblems of unity, and of what each hoped the other might prove to be. Not to this alone, however, did the myrtle owe its popularity — it signified not only domestic, but political unity ; for it was sacred, in association with the goddess of love, to an attendant constantly found in the train of love — ^ For the myth, see Hellas, p. 219. 2 From their origin in the realms of the Great King. 8 For the myth, which doubtless originated in a play upon words, see under "Apollo," p. 130 of Hellas. NATURAL RESOURCES AND SELF-HELP si Fe/'tho, sweet persuasion. Consequently, whenever any desirable public work was consummated by the power of heart stirring and convincing words alone, the myrtle denoted that it had been effected by Aphrodite and her handmaid, Peitho. Thus is explained the otherwise inexplicable custom of the wearing of myrtle-wreaths by the archons (chief magistrates) of Athens, in the dis- charge of their official duties. Such wreaths — only removed when passing sentence of death — were a symbol of the unification of the twelve cities of Attica ; a fact said to have been achieved without bloodshed, through per- suasion alone, by Theseus. For the same reason, all the citizens who took part in the procession at the great Panathenaea, covered head, breast, and arms with myrtle 1 — emblem of unity obtained by peaceful means — whilst the old men, the Thallophoroi, bore olive-boughs in token that the unity had been brought about by the help of the goddess of peace, Athena, patron of the city. Such beautiful meanings did the Hellenes read into the humblest things. On every domestic occasion of importance — birth-rejoicings, weddings, banquets, sacrifices — myrtle- wreaths were worn. As sacred also to the gods of the lower world, the powers of the great Hereafter, the myrtle appeared at funerals, and myrtle-wreaths were worn at the annual procession of the mystics to Eleusis.2 In short, so important a part did the myrtle play in Hellenic, and specially iji Athenian life, that a section of the market-place at Athens was reserved expressly for its vendors (Bcetticher, op. cit., p. 445 et seq.). The said market-place was the most popular resort of Athens. Under its spreading, shady plane-trees, philosophers walked and talked, idlers lounged, and bargain-hunters chafifered and haggled. The planting of these planes in the Athenian Agora was one of the good deeds of Oimon, the son of Miltiades, and perhaps not that one which least insured his popularity. The plane is, in fact, the tree which wayfarers and travellers of all degrees in Greece have most reason to bless. Wherever a stream or a spring affords it the necessary sustenance, there the plane-tree spreads its noble branches and offers — beneath the dense, deeply-indented foliage to which it owes its name {platanos, " the broad-leaved ") — a cool retreat from the overpowering brilliancy of the blue sky and the broiling heat of a Greek noontide. Hehn claims for the plane that, although it is of Eastern origin, and came doubtless from the regions of the Taurus, yet that it was introduced by Aryan, not by Semitic races (o}?. cit., p. 255 ; A. Grisebach, Vegetation der Erde nach Hirer klimatischen Anordnung, i. p. 310). However this may have been, there can be no doubt that it took mar- vellously to its new home. Of the immense age and size to which it can attain in Greece, we have a notable example in our own day in the magnificent plane- tree of Vostitza (the ancient ^gium) in Achaia. This tree is probably older than the Ottoman empire ; its trunk measures 46 feet in circumference ; its branches extend for 150 feet; and its hollow trunk served as a prison during the War of Independence (Murray's Handbook to Greece, 1884, p. 549). Stack- elberg also relates that he saw near the Apollo-temple at Bassae (also in Pelo- ponnesus), a plane-tree whose trunk measured 48 feet round, and whose hollow was used by a shepherd as a fold for his entire flock (O. v. Stackelberg, Der Apollo-Tempel von Bassae, p. 14, footnote). What wonder then that, as Hehn says, the fame of the plane fills all antiquity ? We meet with it in Homer, for it is under a fair plane-tree whence flowed sparkling water that the great omen of the ten years' duration of the siege of Troy — the omen of the snake ^ For an account of the Panatheneea, see Hellas, p. 121. The carrying of the myrtle boutjhs explains how Harmodius and Aristogeiton were able to conceal the weapons with which to attack the tyrant. 2 See Bellas, p. 270. 38 THE LAND and the sparrows — was given to the Achaeans, as they tarried in Aulis (Iliad, ii. 307). We find it in Herodotus, in the story of the noble plane which so captivated the fancy of Xerxes on the march to Sardis, that he presented it with golden ornaments, on account of its beauty, and put it under the care of one of his Immortals (vii. 31), the Ten Thousand picked troops that formed the flower of his army. We find it, above all, in Plato, in that most charm- ing picture which he gives in the Plicjedrus of the summer resort of Socrates by the Ilissus — " the fair and shady resting-place full of summer sounds and scents " — with its " lofty spreading plane-tree, and the Agnus castas, high and clustering, in the fullest blossom and the greatest fragrance " ; the stream, deliciously cold, which flows beneath the plane-tree, the sweet breeze, and the chirruping of the grasshoppers, an ensemble which suggests to the philo- sopher all manner of quaint thoughts concerning Myths, Myth-maidens, and Muses. We might go on adding many trees and plants to our imported group of " thrice three " — our olive, fig-tree, and vine, our pomegranate, palm, and quince, our laurel, myrtle, and plane — trees, such as the cypress, of sufficient importance to be personified in the myths ; flowers, such as the rose and the lily, whose Greek names betray their Iranian origin. Enough has been said, however, to shew the gradual transformation of the hillsides and valleys of Hellas under the intelligent care of her sons. Many of the plants which we now look upon as peculiar to the countries round the Mediterranean are, in reality, as we have seen, only the foster-children of this region. What Hehn says of one of them (the oleander, op. cit., p. 358) is true of all. Once introduced, they knew how to help themselves, and put on the appearance of free children of nature. Chief among these are especially the ever- green species, which are best suited to withstand the ordeal of a four-months' drought. Armed with a strong outer-covering, their leaves are completely protected against excessive evaporation ; they preserve their sap, their texture remains unaltered, and although deprived of nourishment during the months of drought, such plants can wait until the autumn rains come to swell their cells and renew their life (Grisebach, op. cit, i. p. 285). Thus is explained the peculiar beauty of the woods of Greece, with their glossy shining foliage. The introduction of the Eastern varieties belongs to the history of the Greek experimenting rather than to a description of the land as they found it. Nevertheless, inasmuch as when the curtain rises in Homer, at the dawn of history, we find the Greeks already acquainted with most of them, it has been necessary to take account of them here. With the exception of the orange, the citron, the aloe, the cactus, the oleander, and one or two subsequent importations, the vegetation of Greece in the later classical period must have been very similar to the vegetation of the present day. Returning now from this digression to the all -important question of food- supply, as we have already had a glimpse of the diet recommended by one philosopher, let us take a glance at that approved of by another some 300 years later, and we shall learn thereby what was well within the reach of every Hellene. In the Bepuhlic of Plato, after Socrates has brought together into his ideal state his citizens, the husbandman, the builder, the weaver, the smith, and all the other craftsmen and traders who are to contribute their energy and toil to the common wesil(liepuh., ii.. Prof. Jowett's translation, vol.'iii. p. 243), he proceeds to describe their mode of life : " They will feed," he says, " on barley and wheat, baking the wheat and kneading the flour, making noble puddings and loaves ; these they will serve up on a mat of reeds or clean leaves, them- selves reclining the while upon beds of yew or myrtle-boughs. And they and their children will feast, drinking of the wine which they have made, wearing garlands on their heads, and having praises of the gods on their lips, dwelling together in unity, and having a care that their families do not exceed their means ; for they will have an eye to poverty or want." " But," interposes Glaucon, one of the respondents in the dialogue, "you have not given them a relish to their meal." NATURAL RESOURCES AND SELF-HELP 39 "True," says Socrates, "I had forgotten that; of course they will have a relish — salt, and olives, and cheese, and onions, and cabbages, or any other vegetables which are fit for boiling ; and we shall give them a dessert of figs, and pulse, and beans ; and they will roast myrtle -berries and chestnuts at the fire, drinking in moderation. And with such a diet they may be expected to live to a good old age, and bequeath a similar life to their children after them." " Yes, Socrates," says Glaucon, in comic dismay, " and if you were making a city of pigs, how else would you feed the beasts ! " The programme of the philosopher finds, therefore, as little favour with " Young Athens " of the classical period, as it would have found with " Young England " of the present day. Nevertheless, in early times the food of the people was almost exclusively vegetarian. Animal food was regarded as something extraordinary, and consisted mainly of the produce of the chase — the flesh of domestic animals being partaken of only as part of the feast which accompanied a sacrifice : this is proved by the curious passing over in later times of the name hiereia = ^^ sacred " (given at first to the victim slain for the sacrifice) to any animal slaughtered for ordinary food (Hermann Bllimner, Privatalterthumer, § 25, note 5). Notwithstanding, the Achseans of Homer were mighty trenchermen, and loved their roast meat and their honeysweet wine right well — when they could get them. In these degenerate days there is something refreshing in the poet's descriptions of the way in which the heroes make their repast. Take, for instance, the picture of the sacrificial meal in the First Book of the Iliad (458 et seq.), how the sons of the Achseans gather round the altar by the salt sea (one can almost feel the fresh wind blowing) ; the cleft wood burns, and the young men stand ready with their five-pronged forks ; and after the barley-meal has been sprinkled with pure hands, and the portions for the god have been duly burnt, and libation made of sparkling wine ; how they slice the rest of the victim, and roast it carefully with spits ! Then they fall to with might and main — nor, as the poet takes care to mention, is there any stint of the banquet, nor of the goblets crowned with wine, nor of the joyous song, the paean which they raise to the Far- darter. For those Hellenes who, in historic times, shared the tastes of the Homeric heroes the land made ample provision. The Alpine pastures afforded nourishment in summer to the flocks of goats and sheep which, in winter, descended to the sheltered valleys beneath ; the forests abounded in boars, fallow-deer, and other game offering sport which attracted the attention of the huntress Artemis (Diana) herself ; ^ and last, but not least, their seas teemed with fish — a food which suited the Attic climate, at least, better than did a diet of flesh. As regards the fiercer wild beasts, Greece had in very early times probably lions, and certainly wolves and bears ; so abundant were the latter that Arcadia is supposed to owe its name to them. Noxious snakes were found in the woods ; but harmless varieties exist near the warm springs, and it is to the latter class that the serpents sacred to Asclepios (^sculapius) belonged. Amongst a variety of song-birds common to Greece, the swallow and the nightingale were singled out, and in the Attic sagas appear as the trans- formed sisters, Procne and Philomela. The larger birds of prey, eagles ^ See the article on "Artemis" {Hellas, p. 139) ; and for the chase in mythic times, the story of Meleager and the Calydonian Hunt, Hellas, p. 144. 40 THE LAND and vultures, seem also to have attracted much attention, and their flight was considered full of meaning, and taken as an omen. Finally, mention must be made of the humble murex or purple mussel, which procured for the Hellenes the visits of the Phoenicians, who used it in the production of the famous Tyrian dye. Last of all, we notice the still more humble sponge, which was known to Homer ; and the tortoise, which figures in that quaintest of all quaint myths, the story of the baby-thief, Hermes, and his invention of the lyre.^ Passing now from the organic to the inorganic productions of Greece, we come to a subject which touches us moderns more closely. What the Hellenes ate — whether they lived on a vegetable or an animal diet, whether they spiced their viands with the berries of the myrtle or of the pepper-tree — matters to us in reality not a jot. Neither does it concern us that the materials which they used in their shipbuilding experiments should have been perishable. But when we come to consider the Hellenes as architects and sculptors, we are roused to a perception of the fact that, within their mountains, they possessed a hidden store of a material which was precisely adapted, not only to develop their own artistic skill, but also to preserve specimens of that skill for the benefit of the after- world. Suppose, on the one hand, that the art works of the Greeks had been carved in some soft, crumbling stone — would these art works have lasted to our day ? Suppose, on the other hand, that Hellas had offered her children nothing but the harder stones, such as granite — would the Greeks have attained to that perfection in style which has made them the art teachers of the world ? ^ Both questions, humanly speaking, can only be answered in the negative. In their stores of marble — a material at once beautiful, durable, and workable — Hellas possessed an inexhaustible supply of the very material which her artists required to stimulate and encourage their efforts. Here, again, the land was made for the people, the people for the land — both, alike unconsciously, existed for posterity. We say Hellas possesses an " inexhaustible " supply of marble, and this appears practically to be the case. The whole of the eastern side of Greece is formed of calcareous rock and crystalline schists, in which layer upon layer of the most superb marble is embedded. Attica alone possesses three exquisite varieties — those of Pentelicus, Hymettus, and Laurium. Again, Boeotia, Laconia, and the Islands, each has its own distinctive kind. Most striking of all is the island of Paros, which is simply a marble mountain, containing a supply so apparently endless as to lead to the fable among the ancients that its exhausted layers filled up again (Strabo, c. 224, Bk. iv. 6). Nor are these marbles all uniform in texture and appearance. Nature seems to have intended to train the artistic eye by offering for selection a choice the most varied. Sometimes the marble is of the purest, most dazzling whiteness, as is that of Paros ; sometimes, after exposure in the air and polishing, it becomes of a faint golden hue, as in the marble of Pentelicus, seen in the temple of Theseus and in the ruins on the Acropolis of Athens. Or, again, the white background may be intersected by veins of colour : blue, as in the marble of ^ For the myth, see Hellas, p. 159, under " Hermes." ■^ ** Hard stones (such as granite) were used in Egypt, where human toil was of no account, and the greatest technical difficulties seemed to exercis^e a certain fascination, both in archi- tecture and in sculpture, and indeed with a mastery of technique, which even now excites the admiration of all competent judges. But it is recognised, on the other hand, that this using of hard stone did its part in hindering the development of Egyptian sculpture, and keeping it hack at a certain stage. The Greeks, on the contrary, seldom used such materials either in building or in sculpture" (BlUmner, 2'ech. und Term., iii. p. 10 et seq.) NATURAL RESOURCES AND SELF-HELP 41 Hymettus ; pale green, as in the Carystian marble {cipellino) of Eubcea ; or yellow and grey, as in that of Laurium. Yet again, it may not be white at all, but greyish-black, as in the marble of Boeotia ; black, as in that of Taenarium ; or red, as in the Rosso antico of Laconia. In addition to the foregoing, there were various hard-coloured stones also called " marbles " by the Greeks. Besides the red stone, which they knew as *' porphyry," there were the so-called " green marble " (green porphyry, Verde antico) of Laconia and Thessaly ; and the ophit (serpentine, so called from its appearance, resembling the spots on a serpent's skin) of the island of Tenos (Bliimner, op. cit.^ iii. pp. 8-50; Neumann u. Partsch, op. cit., pp. 209-223). Whether these well-nigh innumerable varieties were all known to the ancient Greeks or not is a question which we cannot discuss. One thing is certain that, for the most part, each canton and each island in early days was restricted to its own supply, and would probably become acquainted with its own local resources. More important for us to note is the fact that the Hellenes had the fine taste to avail themselves in their chief works exclusively of the pure varieties. They employed mainly the snowy white marble of Paros in their sculpture, the golden-tinged marble of Pentelicus in their architecture. The streaked and coloured varieties were left for the bizarre taste of the Roman period. Nor were marble and ordinary building- stones the only material that appealed to the artistic sense of the Greeks. In their beds of fine white Clay they possessed another, on which they practised long before they ventured to chip and hew the rocks for sculptural purposes. The clay of Greece was of the greatest service in the development of statuary, and it is certainly noteworthy that in Corinth and Sicyon, both the seat of vigorous art-schools, where for lack of marble casting in bronze was specially studied, clay suitable for modelling abounds. In the potter's art again (an art which, in early days before metals are freely worked, ranks among the most important to a primitive community i), it was of course indispensable. The Athenians, as we know, raised their Ceramic industry to the rank of a fine art, and to this result the fact that, in the clay of Cape Colias, they possessed most excellent material, easily worked and coloured, certainly contributed. Finally, the occurrence of natural pigments — a red chalk or ochre on the island of Ceos, and a white earth, resembling a ready-prepared white-lead, on Melos (C. Bursian, Geog. von. Griechenland, ii. p. 468 and 497, note 3) — must have helped not a little in the development of painting as well as of colouring generally. In turning to the Metals of Greece, and the extent to which they were known in early days, we touch upon a most interesting subject. It will, however, be better considered in connection with the experiments which the Greeks made in developing, as best they could, their natural resources. Here we would only point out that they possessed to a small extent both the precious metals ; silver was worked in the mines of Laurium, and gold obtained in early times on the islands of Siphnus and Thasos ; in the latter it was worked by the Phoenicians. Copper was obtained at or near Chalcis on the island of Euboea ; and iron was tolerably abundant, although not much worked, owing to the difficulty of obtaining fuel enough for smelting purposes. One fact, however, we ask the reader to note, viz. : that all the mineral wealth of Greece — her marbles and her metals — lies entirely (so far as is yet ^ For an account of the variety of articles made of earthenware in primitive times, see the description of those found at Hissarlik (Troy) by Dr. Schliemann, and on the island of Therasia by M. Fouque, in Hdlas, p. 64 et seq. 42 THE LAND known) on the eastern side of the land. Thus, all natural circumstances — the ruggedness of the western side, the attractiveness and resources of the eastern — combined to keep the Hellene who was capable of progress away from the rude west, and to throw him on the east, the side on which the historical development of the race was destined to take place. This brief resume of the chief natural productions of Greece will serve to shew what manner of land it was, and what the primitive Hellenes had to expect when they looked around them for their means of sustenance and shelter. We have pictured no soft region of uninterrupted summer, such as travellers describe in southern latitudes, where the fruits of Mother Earth drop of their own accord into the lap of her children. No ! — Everywhere and on everything in Hellas was stamped the doctrine of Work ! True, when we read the account given of some of the isles of the Archipelago, where grapes, figs, and other luscious fruits, left to themselves, will overhang the rocks, *' concealing the soil beneath with their wild luxuriance of fruit and foliage," we are apt to forget the sterner side of the picture. But the Hellene himself, in early days, was in no danger of forgetting it. Even the commonest necessities of life had to be won by energy^ — anything beyond these by experimenting. Certainly, from the first, Hesiod's cheerful diet of mallows and squills, varied by acorns and other wild fruits, was available for all. Long years of labour, however, were required before Plato's " noble puddings and loaves " could become possible, whilst the fruit-age — the time when the cultivation of olives and figs had attained to such perfection as to render these fruits a staple food for the people — represents, as we have seen, another long period, probably centuries, of watchful care and observation. In no way was the Hellene exempt from the common lot of man — work he must, and work he did. The only advantage which he possessed over the sons of more northerly latitudes was, that his work was pursued under happier conditions. If Nature would not do all for him, if she insisted on man's co-operating unceasingly with her, she yet came to his help in a thousand ways, and lightened his toil, so that it did not degenerate into absolute drudgery. Nevertheless, the law for Hellas was, help thyself in order that the Higher Powers may be able to help thee. " To him that hath shall be given." Appendix: The Present State of Greece. So desolate and forlorn an aspect do many parts of Greece now present to the traveller, that the question of a deterioration both in soil and climate has been seriously argued by scientific observers. Recently, however, as the result of more extended and careful investigation, thinkers, such as Hehn and others, have come to the conclusion that to no failure of vigour on the part of nature is this desolation to be ascribed. Rather must its causes be sought in the treatment which for ages the country has received at the hands of man. From her physical conditions, Greece is, as we have already seen, a land which impera- tively demands the co-operation of man — her months of drought call for artificial irriga- tion, her floods for restraint. When these conditions are not fulfilled — when the guiding and co-operating hand of Man is withdrawn — Nature languishes. Finally her beauty perishes. And what are the facts of the case ? Simply that for long ages such care and co-operation have been lacking to Greece. The country, for more than a thousand years, has been the sport of Fortune — overrun by barbarous hordes who knew nothing of, and would have cared less for, her past greatness. Goths, Huns, Avars, Bulgarian Slavs, have poured in turn over this unhappy land, and satiated their thirst for blood and for booty upon her. STIMULATION OF THOUGHT AND INQUIRY 43 What little hope of escape from misery remained to her wretched inhabitants in later days was for long years crushed out of them by the Turk. Can we wonder, then, that in certain parts Hellas became a desert ? — that her fruitful plains became swamps ? To the past ravages inflicted on the land, moreover, must be added another cause of desolation, which has been going on even in our own time, and under happier auspices — namely, the wanton destruction of the forests. These have been treated in reckless fashion, and used not only for ordinary and legitimate purposes, but ruthlessly by the charcoal- burners, a wild and intractable race, who, with the shepherds, are responsible for many a ruinous fire, and by the classes engaged in the preparation of the resin so much employed (as a preventive against souring) in the wine of Greece. For the sake of a trifling gain, whole forests have been destroyed. Says an eye-witness. Sir Thomas Wyse {Impressions of Greece, p. 232): "The pines and firs are not sapped only, which might do no harm, but hacked and gashed. The wound . . . allows the resinous fluid to flow out ; but the quantity given is slight while the tree is ruined. Death gradually creeps upward, withering, like a smouldering fire, branch after branch. Whole ranges of these blasted forests are to be seen in all parts of Greece." With the destruction of the forests, a continual deterioration has been going on, not only in wood, as such, but in agriculture and climate. The remarks on this subject by the same careful observer quoted above, for many years a resident in Greece, are most instruc- tive. As a direct consequence of the loss of the forests, "the rains," he says, "are not provoked, nor the streams collected and usefully distributed, nor the soil nourished, nor the temperature moderated. A fierce storm carries away all the soil, substitutes torrents and devastation for rivers and irrigation, burns up crops, and plants irremediable fever." All tliis could be remedied by care and attention. Says Victor Hehn {op. cit., p. 6) : "Alluvial earth can be collected in terraces on the mountains, choked-up river channels can be cleansed, bare heaths watered, swampy plains drained by canals. The forests, even, would in this happy climate in no very long period again clothe the slopes of the mountains — if they could only be protected from the goats which attack the young trees, and from fire," and from the carelessness of human beings. . . . " In this climate the creative and healing power of Nature is astounding." What the Hellas of our own day needs, therefore, is that she should once more be cared for and cultivated with the energy and ability of her first sons — a condition of things which peace and free- dom will bring back to her with time. STIMULATION OF THOUGHT AND INQUIRY In yet another way was Hellas adapted to the needs of a people destined to be seekers and inquirers — developers of ideas new to the world — and this was in the number of curious and * striking natural phenomena which she presented to their notice. Ages, many ages, before the Graeco- Aryans made their appearance upon it, the little land was a-preparing. Mighty agents were at work to fit it for their reception : earthquakes shook it, rent the Peloponnesus from the mainland ; and scattered the islands which formed the stepping-stones for their approach ; whilst forces, internal and invisible, threw up their bulwarks on the north and the encircling walls round each little chamber. And not only earthquakes, but floods, inundations on a gigantic scale, expansions and shrinkings again of the sea-limits, sinkings and raisings of the sea-bed (such as formed one isthmus, that of Corinth, by which the Peloponnesus was re-attached to the mainland, and destroyed another, that which, south of the Hellespont, is supposed to have once joined Europe to Asia i) — all had their share in marking out the present contour of the land. And not only flood, but fire was at work. Fiercely and wildly, from the depths of the sea, it sent up islands destined to ^ The union of the Black Sea with the eastern basin of the Mediterranean is a work of the Diluvial Age. In the Tertiary epoch, the Greek peninsula was joined to Asia Minor by a land- bridge of varying, but always very considerable breadth. This bridge of land lay originally, as stated above, to tlie south of the Hellespont (Neumayr, Zur Geschichte des ostlichen Mittel- meerbeckens, 1882 : Pt. 392 of the Virchow-Holtzendorff Collection, cf. Neumann und Partsch. p. 264). 44 THE LAND play their part in the world's history ; more gently and intensely, in the heart of the mountains, heat and pressure (aided by moisture or other of nature's mysterious agents) crystallised the raw material which formed their bulk, ordinary limestone, into the goodly stores of pure, fine-grained, brilliant marble which, as we have seen, the Hellenes discovered in their survey of the land. The physical explanation of some of these phenomena is not far to seek, for Greece lies in a volcanic zone, extending from the Caspian Sea to the Azores, and traces of the changes wrought by volcanic agency are everywhere visible. The Mediterranean is still " undermined by fire," which manifests itself not only in Vesuvius and Etna, but in the hot springs of Thermopylae and Troezen. The transverse fractures by which the Greek mountains are I'udely torn, the cauldron-shaped hollows into which they are scooped, the gloomy, tortuous glens by which they are pierced — all point to the action of some mighty internal force or forces, and to a transition -period of fierce elemental conflict, during which the formless chaos was reduced to its present proportions and fitted for the abode of man. Such scenes were undoubtedly calculated to awaken thought, and there is evidence that from the earliest times the Hellenes were struck by them and set themselves seriously to work to find out their cause. This early evidence is to be found in the myths, but it is not to be despised on that account. (i.) Volcanic Phenomena : — (a) Eruptions.— The elemental conflict which preceded the present order of things the Greeks depicted as war in heaven. A succession of three dynasties (two of which are deposed by force) — represented respectively by Uranus, the dim beginning ; Kronus, the Ripener ; and Zeus, Light and Wisdom — typify three periods supposed to have elapsed before the KosMOS — i.e. the world, regarded as a perfectly- arranged and beautifully- ordered whole — was complete. Before Zeus, the final ruler of the universe, attains to a permanent victory, therefore, he has many and fierce foes to contend with. The Titans, representa- tives of the rude forces which we have been considering — Earthquake, Fire, and Flood — offer him battle,^ but in the end he conquers and imprisons them. No sooner is this accomplished, however, .than a new enemy starts up, more to be feared than a dozen Titans. This is Typhon, the most terrible of monsters, graced with one hundred fire-spitting heads.'^ Him also, after a determined struggle, Zeus takes captive and buries beneath Mount Etna. Now whenever the giant turns himself in his subterranean dungeon, the mountain shakes and groans, and spouts forth fire. The imprisonment of Typhon is, therefore, according to the myths, the cause of volcanic eruptions. At first sight, we are inclined to smile at the explanation, and to think that, although imagination may have had a large share in the invention of the myth, yet that of "serious thought" there is in it not a trace. We remember, however, that every genuine myth has a kernel, and looking again a little more closely, we find that this myth is no exception to the rule. The kernel — the real explanation — lies in the name. Typhon (Smoke and Vapour) is neither more or less than a personification of pent-up gases and vapours striving to find an outlet. To the working of these pent-up vapours, and not to the corporeal struggles of any monster, it was that the Greeks attributed the phenomena of volcanic eruptions. Hesiod's description of the combat with Typhon is really what Preller has called it (Griechische Mytho- ^ For the spirited translation of Hesiod's Titanomachia, or Battle of the Titans, see Hellas, p. 87. ^ For the myth of Typhon, see Hellas, p. 89. STIMULATION OF THOUGHT AND INQUIRY 45 logie, i. p. 55), " one of the most remarkable allegorical pictures ever composed, of one of the grandest sights in nature — a mountain breathing forth fire." If the authoi' of the myth had doubled the number of Typhon's fire-breathing heads, he would have been guilty of no exaggeration, for Etna actually possesses 200 lesser cones, each of which is a miniature volcano in itself. As for the sounds sent forth by the monster — the roaring, bellowing, barking, hissing — all are simply an attempt to describe what has been characterised by those who have heard it as "utterly indescribable" — namely, first, the subterranean rumbling and grumbling of the steam forcing its way upwards in the funnel of the crater through the solid lava and othei* obstructions that bar its progress, and then the tremendous crash of the final outburst. So much for the truthfulness of the allegory. Is there, then, no evidence of serious thought in this nearly three-thousand- years'-old gaseous theory of volcanic explosions ? Yerily, it bears a marvellous resemblance to the conclusions arrived at by geologists of our own day.^ Where the fable arose is not known. Homer places it " in the land of the Arimoi" {Iliad, ii. 782), supposed to represent some volcanic district of Asia Minor ; but it was localised also in Bceotia, in Sicily as we have seen, and even transferred to the Caucasus. Typhon or Typhaeus was, in short, the mythical expression of antiquity for volcanic energy and its destructive effects. Pursuing the history of Zeus and his conflicts, we find him next engaged in the Gigaiitomachia, or Battle with the Giants — representatives of the minor disturbances still going on within the earth. The battle takes place in Phlegra, i.e. Fire-land, assigned by the ancients either to the peninsula of Pallene in Thrace, which bears evident marks of volcanic action, or to a spot in the Alpheius valley in Arcadia, where fire issues from the ground, and where, in historic times, sacrifices were offered to the Lightning, and Storm, and Thunder (Paus,, viii. 29, i), by whose aid Zeus won the victory. The Giants, too, are finally overcome by Zeus ; and with this conquest ends the elemental warfare : Light and Order rule the Kosmos — and now the phenomena of Fire appear no longer as destructive, but as beneficent and formative agents, personified in other mythic beings of a higher order. The centre of the Fire-myths in Hellas is the island of Lemnos, called in antiquity " Fire-island," where the Greeks had before their eyes a volcano, Mosychlos, which, if not actually erupting, continued to flame down to the time of Alexander. The whole island shews traces of its volcanic origin, and we need not be surprised, therefore, to find it connected with two groups of fire-myths. A temple near Mosychlos marked the spot, not only where the little Fire-god, Hephaestus (the Lightning) fell when his hard-hearted mother, Hera, flung him out of Olympus because of his deformity, his halting gait (i.e. the flickering of the flame, or the zig-zag course of the lightning), but also where Prometheus (the Fire-bringer) brought down his secret treasure to mortals — an offence which had to be expiated first by the noble Titan himself, and in historic times by succeeding generations of Lemnians.^ In later myths, volcanoes (not excepting Etna) and volcanic islands were associated with the glorious artist {klytoteclines) Hephaestus the Smith. They ^ " Even in the more stupendous manifestations of vulcanism, the lava should be regarded rather as the sign than as the cause of volcanic action. It is the pressure of the imprisoned vapour and its struggles to get free which produces the subterranean earthquakes, explosions, and outpourings of lava " (Geikie, Text-booh of Geology, p. 223 : 1882). The italics are ours. ^ For the fire-worship of the Lemnians and their yearly nine days' firelessness, see UellaSy P- 97- 46 THE LAND were his forges and workshops, where he toiled with his one-eyed assistants, the Cyclopes, daemons of the Fire and the Lightning. Another striking proof of the fidelity with which the Greeks adhered to Nature in their myths is to be found in the story which makes the little Hephaestus lie concealed in the sea until he is grown up.^ For not only are volcanoes commonly found near the sea, but those of the Mediterranean, including even colossal types such as Etna and Vesuvius, were in the beginning of their history (the infancy of Hephaestus) submarine craters which owe their present dimensions partly to the accumulation of ejected materials, and probably also partly to an eleva- tion of the sea bottom (A. Geikie's Text-hook of Geology, p. 223). (h) Upheavals of Land. — In another way volcanic phenomena forced them- selves on the notice of the Hellenes. Let us look at an instance of this : — We sail into a bay belonging to an island group in the yEgaean. Oval in form, it is shut in for two-thirds of its circumference on the north, east, and south by a large island shaped like a half-moon, whilst the western side is only partially closed by two smaller islands. The entrance into the bay makes a weird impression on the mind. As we leave the open sea, the water grows dark and darkei- in hue ; around rise precipitous rocks mostly pitch-black in colour, relieved by lighter bands ; high above, on the verge of the rocks, like nests hanging over the abyss, are perched the houses of the inhabitants, reached from the landing-places by winding paths. In the middle the bay is of immense depth, and from its bosom rise three little islets, black and desolate as the surrounding cliffs. Here, indeed, is a scene calculated to make even the most inconsiderate pause, and ask : What does it mean 1 The answer has been given by modern science. The black rocks towering upwards in such fearful steepness are the walls of a gigantic crater ; the bay in the middle is the water-filled abyss, formed by the falling in of the crater ; the three larger islands represent the rim of the crater, fragments of what originally formed one island of considerable size ; the three little black islets on the bosom of the bay are newforined land, sent upwards by the fiery Typhon who caused the catastrophe in prehistoric times, and has continued his activity, his tossings and his turnings, in the depths of the sea, down to the years of grace, 1866-1870. The reader will not need to be told that we are in the Bay of Santorin, and are contemplating its island-group — Thera (Santorin,^ called by Elie de Beaumont " one of the most remarkable and instructive islands in the world "), Therasia, and Aspronisi — for this corner of the ^Egsean Sea has become " classic " ground in a double sense to Europe (Fouque, Santorin et ses Eruptions. Cf also Neumann u. Partsch, op. cit., p. 274; Bursian, op. cit.^ ii. p. 520). Of the catastrophe itself and the terrible fate which overtook the inhabitants of the island, the Greeks of historic times knew nothing, and the myth by which they tried to account for the non-natural aspect of Thera is poor in the extreme. They represented it as having sprung from a clod of earth given by Triton to the Argonauts, who called the island Calliste, "the beautiful " — a name which shows that they preferred the verdure of its southern parts to the sombre region which interests us moderns. In another way, however, in relation to another class of myths, the Santorin gi-oup is exceedingly interesting — to those myths, namely, which tell 1 For the myths concerning Hephaestus, see article "Hephaestus" in Hellas, p. 1 12. •^ See the description of the Santo rin-group given in Hellas at p. 40, and the account of the prehistoric village on Therasia at p. 64. The modern appellation of Thera — Santorin — is a corruption of the name of the patron of the island, Sant Irene, martyred here in 304. STIMULATION OF THOUGHT AND INQUIRY 47 of the sudden appearance of islands. When we read of Delos rising from the waves to afford a birthplace for Apollo, or of Rhodes being upheaved to remedy an injustice done to Helios ^ — we smile again, and class such fables with the sudden growth of the famous beanstalk. Nevertheless, when the old poets told these stories — whether the phenomena were applicable to the islands in question, or not — they at least told nothing that was in itself improbable — as is proved by the rise of the little Kaimenis, or " burnt islands," in the Bay of Santorin in historic times. The same phenomenon may have occurred, and doubtless did occur, elsewhere during the ages in which the myths arose. An account of the appearance of one of these islets — probably the kernel of Palaea or Old Kaimeni — about 199 B.C., has been preserved by the old writers (Strabo, p. 57 ; Pliny, Nat. Hist., ii. 87, 202, cf. iv. 23, 70; Seneca, Quxst. Nat., ii. 26, 4 ; Pans., viii. 33, 4). It was preceded by flames, showers of stones, and clouds of smoke. Then appeared great rocks, and finally the peak of a burnt-out mountain showed itself. This increased its height, and grew to the size of an island. The Rhodians were the first to take courage and step on the new-formed land, which they called Hiera, the " Sacred," and dedicated to Poseidon (Neptune). From this narrative we can see how such an event would impress itself on the mind of an imaginative people — how land rising from unknown depths amid fire and flame would seem to be a fitting prelude to the birth of a god. Although these accompaniments are certainly not mentioned in the old Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo, this may well have been (from poetic motives) to emphasise what follows — for no sooner has the little god of light touched the earth than all Delos " flames in gold," like a mountain blooming with the flowers of the forest. {Of. F. G. Welcker, Griech. Gotterlehrej ii. p. 341.) Thera, however, is by no means the only scene of volcanic action in the ^gsean. The eruptions here seem to have followed an old line of fissure — beginning in the east with the islands of Thera, Melos, Cimolus, and Polyaegus, and continued in a succession of tiny islets, likewise of volcanic origin, westwards as far as Argolis and the small peninsula of Methana in Troezenia. They appear, judging from the variety of volcanic products thrown up, to be the result, not of one gigantic " hearth," but of several independent craters at work in the sea. Evidently, however, a connection exists, and Typhon has shown himself active at both the extremities, Thera and Methana, in historic times — at Thera, as we have seen, by island-formim/, at Methana by mountain- building. About the year 282 B.C. there was suddenly thrown up, as it were before the very eyes of the world, a gigantic mountain-mass, which modern observers have found to consist almost entirely of volcanic stone — a reddish- brown trachyte (Bursian, op. cit., ii. pp. 349-91 ; Strabo, p. 59; Ovid, Met., XV. p. 296 et seq.). (c) Hot- Springs. — There only remains for us now to notice briefly the hot- springs of Greece. These phenomena are to be found in several of the localities already mentioned — on Melos and Methana, and along ancient lines of cleavage, the results of earthquakes and volcanic action. Thus the most celebrated of all, the hot - springs of Thermopylae, which gave their name (Hot-Gates) to the famous Pass, form one of a series, continued eastwards in the sulphur-springs of ^depsus on the island of Euboea, and westwards in those of Hypata on the slopes of CEta, the capital of the little country of the 1 For the myth of the birth of Apollo, see Hellas, p. 124. For that of the appearance of Rhodes, see ibid., p. 190. 48 THE LAND ^-Enianes, a district included in Thessaly. All these yield warm salt-water, smelling strongly of sulphur, and depositing a sediment which covers the ground with a whitish crust; they were used in antiquity for medicinal purposes {e.g. Fiedler, Reise chirch GriecTicnland, i. p. 209). The springs of Hypata are not mentioned by the old writers ; but Bursian is of opinion that their healing effects may have contributed as much as the abundance in the locality of hellebore (a plant with which the ancients associated marvellous and baneful properties) to fasten in later days on Hypata in particular the general Thessalian reputation for witchcraft (Bursian, op. cit., i. p. 89). In the time of Plutarch, the baths of ^^Edepsus, in Euboea, which are the hottest of all, were the rendezvous of invalid or fashionable Greece. What concerns us, however, in our present inquiry is that the Greeks very early noticed these phenomena, and strove to account for them. The mythical explanation, viz., that Athena had caused them to spring up for the refreshment of the hero Heracles (Hercules), although not very satisfactory, is by no means so arbitrary as at first sight appears. Athena, as we know, was worshipped as Hygieia, the goddess of Health ; hence the myth, in its origin, was simply an allegorical way of describing the hygienic properties of the waters. Many of the hot-springs, therefore, are naturally connected with the Heracles-saga. Those at Thermopylae were specially sacred (together with the whole district) to the hero, and an altar was erected to him in the Pass (Herodotus, vii. p. 176). Along the other great line of cleavage, again, on the northern shores of the Corinthian Gulf, at the foot of Mount Taphiassus, flow sulphur springs, supposed to mark the spot where was buried Nessus, the centaur slain by Heracles. Finally, we meet with hot-springs again in Bceotia, at the north-eastern foot of Mount Laphystium, an extinct volcano,^ through the crater of which the hero is said to have emerged from the Lower World, dragging behind him the terrible Cerberus, watch-dog of the Infernal Regions — a feat which, according to Homer (Iliad, viii. 366 et seq.), he could not have accomplished without the help of Athena. (2.) Earthquakes and Disappearance of Land.— Passing now to the next series of natural phenomena — those connected with earthquakes — we come to a subject which touched the Greeks of the Historical Period much more closely than did the volcanic phenomena previously described. With the latter, indeed, it is closely connected ; for just as we know that Greece lies in a volcanic zone, so do we know also that this same zone has been called with equal truth " a great belt of earthquake disturbance." The Greeks had ample opportunity of becoming acquainted with seismic phe- nomena, both by actual experience and by what they saw around them. The country, in fact, as already pointed out, owes much of its present contour to the action of earthquakes. Evidences of dislocation are abundant everywhere ; and specially do the two great lines of cleavage at once attract attention — that which sundered Peloponnesus from the mainland, to which it remains attached, as it were, only by a thread ; and the no less remarkable rent on the eastern side, which tore the island of Eubcea from the continent. These are the effects of the elemental conflicts of prehistoric times, and far north, on the frontier, there exists a similar manifestation, which, beyond any other, seems to have stamped itself upon the Greek imagination as a con- sequence and result of some powerful interference with nature. 1 The name "Laphystium" is thought by Forchhammer {Hell., p. 15) to mean "stone- producer" or "stone-discharger," in allusion to the showers of lava emitted by the crater (from tos="8tone," and phyo=''to produce," or physao =** to discharge"). Another, and a much more terrible significance (as we shall see shortly) was however attached to the name. For "Cerberus," see Hellas, p. 283. STIMULATION OF THOUGHT AND INQUIRY 49 Between two great opposing mountain masses — Olympus and Ossa — lies a hollow gorge, so narrow as in parts to afford space only for the river which flows along it beneath gigantic cliffs that tower above, on either side, to a height of nearly 1500 feet. This is the famous pass emphatically described both by its ancient name of Tempe, " the Cleft," and also by that which it bore in the Middle Ages — Lykostomo, " the Wolf's Jaws." Here, indeed, is a scene which, like Thera, might well make a thoughtful observer pause and ask : How did it originate ? What force rent those tremen- dous " Jaws " asunder ? To this the Hellenes themselves replied : A beneficent force ! for through these opened jaws was disgorged the flood of waters which would else have overspread the land and turned the fruitful plains of Thessaly into a standing lake. The Peneius, which discharges itself peacefully through Tempe into the sea, receives the waters of the other rivers of Thessaly, four in number, which in their turn collect and bear to it those of all the streams pouring down from the mountain walls of the Great Plain. The two Thessalian lakes, Nessonis and Boebeis, were thought in antiquity to be the sunken remnants of the great sheet of water which was supposed to have overspread the land in primeval times (Strabo, c. 430, vii. 5). "Thessaly," says Herodotus (vii. 139, cf. Leake, Northern Greece, iv. p. 513 et seq.), "is surrounded on every side by very high mountains ; to the east by Pelion and Ossa, the extremities of which are united together, to the north by Olympus, to the west by Pindus, to the south by Othrys. In the midst is the hollow Thessaly, watered by many rivers, of which the five principal, having joined their waters into one channel (the Peneius), are discharged into the sea through a narrow strait. It is reported that anciently the valley which gives passage to the river did not exist ; that neither the rivers nor the lake Boebeis had names, though the waters flowed as at present, and that they thus made Thessaly a sea (j^elagos)." Let us add that in these suppositions the old writers have been confirmed by modern geologists — without Tempe, there could be no Thessaly. Well, indeed, might the opening of the Wolf's Jaws appear an operation of the utmost importance to the Thessalians, and well might they shudder when, in after days, they heard of the cold-blooded possibility suggested by Xerxes : that, by merely shutting up the " Jaws " again — blocking the passage of the Peneius to the sea — it would be easy to dispose of a hostile Thessaly (Hero- dotus, vii. 130). The beneficent force to which the Hellenes assigned the " cleft " of Tempe was — the force of the sea. In the language of the myths, it was due to Poseidon. " The Thessalians say," remarks Herodotus in the passage just cited, "that Poseidon opened the channel at Tempe, through which the Peneius flows, and this will appear probable to those who believe that Poseidon shakes the earth, for the separation of the mountains, Olympus and Ossa, seems to me to have been caused by an earthquake." In these words of the historian, we have one of the leading theories of antiquity concerning earthquakes : viz., that they were caused by the rushing of the sea waves into hollow caves on the coast, whence penetrating far inland, they shook the solid foundations above, and produced the quaking and rending asunder of the earth's crust. This theory — although far removed from the truth — is neither so meagre nor so inadequate an explanation as it appears, for it is based upon another — which, from the standpoint of the ancients, was satisfactory enough : Poseidon (Neptune), " the Might of the Sea," becomes Enosichthon, "the Earth-shaker," because he is first GcBeochus, "the Earth-up- holder." To repeat here what the reader will find more fully discussed elsewhere,^ ^ See under "Poseidon," Hellas, p. 204. 50 THE LAND " Poseidon was supposed to hold up the earth, as Atlas supported the sky — an idea which originated in the fact that, seen from shipboard, the land appears to rest on the sea as on a foundation." It will be seen, therefore, that on this theory it is easy for the Earth-upholder to become the Earth- shaker at his pleasure ; and the awful suddenness and vehemence of an earth- quake, or an earthquake-wave, seemed in those early days only the natural outcome of the revengeful and implacable temper of the " dark-haired Earth- shaker," the choleric monarch of the sea. Poseidon, therefore, was worshipped in all parts of Greece visited by earth- quakes, and at Tempe a temple was erected in his honour, as Petrxus, "the Rock-cleaver," on the alluvial ground at the mouth of the Peneius. It was, however, along the southern part of the great line of fracture — the northern coast of Peloponnesvis — that the power of the Earth-shaker was most clearly manifested. Achaia, the smallest district of Peloponnesus, is merely a narrow seam of land, lying between the mountains and the sea, and best described by its prehistoric name of ^gialos or JEgialeia, "the coast-land." Concussions of earthquake, so travellers tell us, have tossed the surface of the little land into a multiplicity of forms — deep dells and craggy steeps, yawning ravines, and cloud-capped precipices (Dodwell, Tour through Greece, ii. p. 303). Seen from the sea, the spurs of the mountains, as they descend into the plain, lie in huge convulsed masses, or fall in abrupt terrace-fashion, like a succession of gigantic landslips (Sir T. Wyse, Excursion in the Peloponnesus, ii. p. 281). Here, in this district, sacred in early days to Poseidon, occurred in 373 B.C., two years before the battle of Leuctra, one of the most appalling catastrophes of ancient times — a fearful earthquake, by which the city of Bura was destroyed, and the neighbouring city of Helice, once the chief town of Achaia, completely swallowed up by the wrathful waves. This terrible fate overtook the city during the night, and when, next day, 2000 Achseans came together to bury the dead, they found to their horror not a trace of the city remaining — not a man nor a dwelling. The Hellenes regarded this as a judgment on the inhabitants, who had driven suppliants out of the sanctuary of Poseidon Heliconios and murdered them. Centuries later, the fishermen of the Corinthian Gulf declared that their nets often became entangled in the image of the god, standing sternly upright beneath the waves, as though testifying to the justice of the sentence on the doomed city (Pans., vii. 24, 7 ; Diodor., xv. 48).^ Hardly less dramatic is a similar event mentioned by Thucydides and others. About a century earlier (464 B.C.), in "hollow Lacedaemon, cleft with glens," occurred an earthquake, which detached one peak of Taygetus, destroyed Sparta, and buried more than 20,000 Lacedaemonians beneath the ruins. This event also was regarded as a punishment sent by Poseidon on the Spartans for the murder of certain Helots who had taken refuge as suppliants in his sanctuary at Tsenarum ; and it had far-reaching political consequences, for the enslaved Helots took the opportunity of the general terror (and probably, also, of the cause assigned to the catastrophe), and rose in rebellion. These Helots, mark you, were Hellenes, descendants of the Messenians whose country the Spartans had, as we have seen (p. 26), unscrupulously annexed. They established themselves on Mt. Ithome — not only the chief fortress, but the national sanctuary of Messenia — and there began the third Messenian War, a struggle which lasted ten years. When, finally, in the tenth year of the siege, the Messenians could no longer hold out, a powerful ally was at hand in the shape of a Delphic oracle current among the Spartans, which bade them " let the suppliant of Zeus Ithomatos go free " — a warning which resulted in ^ For a fuller account see under ' ' Poseidon, " Hellas, p. 206. STIMULATION OF THOUGHT AND INQUIRY 51 the regaining of their liberty, at the cost of exile, by the Messenian Helots. Nearly a century later (369 B.C.) their descendants were brought back and their wrongs avenged by Epaminondas (Thucyd., i. loi, 128, 103; Strabo, c. 367, vii. 6; Plut., Gim., 16). Between the terrible catastrophe of 373 B.C., which swallowed up Helice, and the year 1861 of our era, Peloponnesus has been visited by some thirteen earthquake-shocks, in which the city of Corinth was the chief sufferer, having been laid in ruins no fewer than three times — in a.d. 77, 522, and 1858. Nor has the northern half of Greece been exempt, witness the earthquake which occurred at Thebes in 1853 (T. F. T. Schmidt, App. iv. to Wyse's Excursion in the Peloponnesus), Now, wending our way eastwards, we have in the long narrow island of Eubcea a most remarkable phenomenon. Fragment for fragment, it corre- sponds precisely to that part of Middle Greece from which it was torn. Geological evidence shows that its mountains are continuations — end-masses — of the chains of the mainland : the steep heights of the promontory of Censeum on Euboea answer to those of (Eta ; the hot-springs of -^^depsus to those of Thermopylae ; a fertile strip on the coast to a similar strip in Locris (P. W. Forchhammer, Hellenika, p. 12); and at one place so closely does the island approach the mainland, that the strait between, the Euripus, was bridged over in ancient as in modern times. ^ The view that Euboea had formerly been one with the continent was held in antiquity, and is mentioned by Strabo, Pliny, and others (Strabo, c. 60, i. 19; Pliny, ii. 88, 204; iv. 12, 63). There are numerous allusions also to visitations of earthquake in historic times. Thus, Thucydides tells of one which happened in Euboea during the Peloponnesian War, and in which a portion of the island was swallowed up by the sea. The views of the historian are in curious contrast to the popular mythical theory of Herodotus, given above. Thucydides explains the occurence of the earthquake sea-wave (which, as we now know, is propagated together with the land-wave from the centre of the disturbance) by the force and rapidity of the rebound of the sea upon the land, from which it has just been repelled by the violence of the seismic shock (iii. 89). Thus, the phenomenon of Euboea, no less than that of Tempe, aroused thought and inquiry among the Hellenes, and that, if we are to believe our modern myth-interpreters, long before the age of Thucydides. It is quite possible that the event may have actually occurred within the memory of man (according to modern views, it must have taken place at a relatively late period) (Bursian, op. cit., ii. p. 349, 395) ; and consequently the story of the catastrophe may have been handed down as part of the great body of tradition embodied in the myths. However this may have been, Forchhammer, who has made the most elaborate study of the locality, sees the rending of Euboea distinctly set forth in the saga of the (Etaean Heracles (Forchhammer, op. cit., p. 16 et seq.). He takes up the story at the point where the hero has just returned in triumph with lole from the sacking of (Echalia, and is about to offer a sacri- fice of thanksgiving to Zeus on the promontory of Cenaeum. Lichas, the messenger of the forsaken wife, brings him the fatal robe which Deianeira, in her innocence, imagines will restore her husband's love to her. Heracles puts it on as his sacrificial garb ; immediately the sun beats upon it, the texture grows soft and fastens itself round him like a coat of wax ; the poison sinks ^ For an account of the Euripus and its fluctuating tides, which,^o jess than the island itself, engaged the attention of antiquity, see Hellas, p. 43. ^-- - 7- > v ' '^ ^^''^ 52 THE LAND into his veins and causes intolerable agony. Mountains and sea resound with the cries of the hero ; in a paroxysm of fury he seizes the unfortunate Lichas, and dashes him into the sea ; after him he throws the robe, tearing off with it the adhering quivering flesh. Then, in his despair, he has himself conveyed across the sea, carried to the summit of OEta, and placed upon the pyre whence his apotheosis finally takes place. This, by far the most dramatic and powerful of the numberless sagas con- cerning the hero, a story which Sophocles has invested with an intensely human interest, Forchhammer interprets thus : the long robe thrown oft' by Heracles is the island of Euboea ; the bringer of the fatal gift, Lichas, is represented by the little islets, the Lichades, between Euboea and the main- land ; the cries and groans of the hero are the fearful sounds that accompany the rending of earth's surface ; and Deianeira, the deserted wife, whose one fault is that she loved, not wisely, but too well, Deianeira is, what her name denotes, the " enemy of man," the destroying force of fire and earthquake. So much for modei-n myth-interpreters ! We shall not quarrel with the reader if he prefer Sophocles to Forchhammer. There only remains for us now to notice the disappearance of land. Of this in^connection with earthquakes, in historic times, we have already had two examples in Achaia and Euboea ; and, therefore, when Pausanias (viii. ;^;^, 4) tells us that Chryse, a little island near Lemnos, the supposed scene of the wounding of the unfertunate Philoctetes on the voyage to Troy, was swallowed up by the sea, there is no reason to doubt the truth of the statement. In fact, soundings taken between Lemnos and the continent would seem to indicate the presence there of submerged land (Choiseul-Youftier, Voyaye inttoresque dans V Empire Ottoman, ii. p. 218 et seq. Of. Neumann u. Partsch, p. 338). (3.) Phenomena connected with Water.— No less remarkable than the phenomena presented by the solid earth of Greece, are those of the liquid element on her surface. Just as we have seen land vipheaving and land vanishing, so now we shall see water appearing and water disappearing in apparently the most mysterious and inexplicable fashion. Torrents, big with the winter's rains, rush down the mountain-sides, form a league, swell into a mighty flood as though, united, they would devastate the land, and then — are seen no more. Rivers pursue an open-air course for miles, and then suddenly vanish, to reappear perhaps at some great distance. Lakes rise as if by magic, and then, as by a stroke of the enchanter's wand, where the waters stood, dry ground presents itself. (a) Rise and Fall of Lakes. — Lest the reader should think that we are drawing upon imagination, let us hear what an eye-witness of one of these astonishing sights has to say about it : " Suddenly," says Mr. Clark {Pelopon- nesus : Notes of Study and Travel, pp. 311, 312), "at a break in the forest, our eyes were greeted with a scene of which the charm was enhanced by the sur- prise. Two thousand feet below us lay a wide expanse of still water deep among the hills, reflecting black pine woods, and grey crags, and sky now crimson with sunset ... a lake seven miles long and seven miles broad, washing the base of famous Cyllene . . . worthy to be matched for size with Windermere, for beauty with Lucerne." Yes ; but how comes a lake to be washing the base of Cyllene ? — " a lake which as yet has been sung by no poet, mentioned by no historian, described by no geographer." There's the rub ! In vain does the traveller scan his map ; in vain does he jog his memory. The lake is no mirage of the desert. True, but it has, notwithstanding, no real existence, no right of tenure. With all its beauty, the water is an intruder and a despot which has taken possession STIMULATION OF THOUGHT AND INQUIRY 53 of the plain of Phoebus and ousted the unfortunate inhabitants, who are now encamped upon the northern hillside. Such was the appearance presented by the plain when visited by Mr. Clark in 1857. When seen by Colonel Leake in 1806 it was partly dry ground, partly swamp ; in the age of the Antonines it was dry (Pausanias, viii. 14, i ; Leake, Morea, iii., p. 135) ; and, further back still in antiquity, its meadows and cornfields supported a brave race who cultivated it assiduously. So im- possible did the rise of a " lake " appear even to a shrewd observer like Colonel Leake, that he speaks of certain water-marks on the hills around (attributed by Pausanias to a previous submersion) as giving rise to " the vulgar belief of the waters having once covered the whole Pheneatic plain." The water-line he supposed to be the result of evaporation ; but the " vulgar belief " for once proved right. ^ To what, then, are we to attribute the sudden appearance of the *' lake " ? Simply to the fact that the waters of Pheneatis have found the usual channels by which they make their escape to the river Ladon blocked up, and so have submerged the plain. To understand this we must call to mind once more the little " chambers " into which the country is divided, and specially its deep cauldron-shaped basins, surrounded on all sides by mountain walls which effectually hinder the flow of the rivers along " natural " channels. But for a certain peculiarity in these mountain walls, every hill-enclosed valley of Greece would be a Pheneus. The fortunate peculiarity which prevents this is the soft calcareous rock of which they are formed, and through which, in the course of ages, the waters have hollowed out for themselves subterranean passages from which they ultimately emerge into the daylight again, and either find their way to the sea or join a larger river. Whatever may be the differences between the western and the eastern sides of Greece, and to whatever geological age the mountains may belong, they one and all present this feature. Whether we go north and study the lake of Jodnnina (Pambotis) in Epeirus ; or east to that of Topolia (Copais) in Boeotia ; or south to the valley of Eastern Arcadia ; Pheneus, Stymphalus, Caphyae, Orchomenus, and the double hill-divided plain of Mantineia-Tegea — we find the mountains, without exception, affording this outlet to the waters of the district, the katabothra, or caverns by which they enter, and the subterranean canals along which they flow. It will be readily understood now how any obstruction to the mouth of these underground labyrinths — such as might be caused by fallen rocks, trees, and debiv's, or any internal alteration such as might result from an earthquake shock — would prevent the escape of the waters, and thus cause them to rise in the valley and form a " lake." The most typical instance of these phenomena is the famous Copais in Boeotia, better described by its other ancient name of the " Cephissian " Lake, for, most certainly, if there were no river Cephissus there would be no floods, and consequently no " lake " on a grand scale. ^ The Cephissus, in fact, forms ^ An old Romaic (modern Greek) prediction had foretold that the lake of Pheneus would never fill again until Greece had regained her liberty. Strangely enough when, in 1 82 1, the revolt of Ali Pasha (in which the Greeks took part) began, the lake did reappear. Whether this phenomenon was " assisted " or not we cannot say ; but who can wonder that the Greeks are somewhat " superstitious " ? •^ The ancients used the names Copais and Cephissus without any clear discrimination, yet in Copais (or Lake of Copae, at the north-east extremity of the basin) there is always some water, even in summer. Cephissus comprehends the whole tract of occasional lake* and marshes, enlarging or diminishing its boundaries according to the season (Leake, Northern Greece, ii., p. 158). See also Hellas, p. 14. 54 THE LAND the lake. One of the largest rivers in Northern Greece, it rises in the Phocian valley, receives all the snow-swollen torrents of Parnassus and Oetia — think what that means ! — and then proceeds to pour them into and swamp the northern Boeotian plain — a work in which it is aided by two smaller rivers, the Melas (or Black-stream) and the Probatia. The Copaic plain is really a deep basin sunk among the mountains, which hem it in on all sides, and in which some twenty katahotlira exist. These, however, are not sufficient to carry off the immense amount of water in winter, and consequently the forma- tion of the lake is an annual occurrence. Finally, by May the floods brought by the Cephissus and its allies begin to sink, and soon they have disappeared from the greater part of the plain ; they have found their way across it, pierced the boundary mountains on the eastern side, and discharged them- selves into the Eubcean Sea. Not, however, precisely as they came ; they have paid for their temporary occupation by a very precious deposit. The mineral particles which they brought down from the mountains in their im- petuous course, and the salts which they held in solution, have been left behind, filtered through in their passage across the plain, forming a soil of wonderful fertility — one of the richest, as we have seen, in all Greece. The Copaic basin thus reminds us of the Nile valley. To this annual overflow Bceotia was indebted for her wealth ; to it, also, as will easily be perceived, she owed her heavy, " fat " air, her mists and fogs — that crassus aer, in short, which in antiquity had passed into a proverb. (b) The Barathra or Katahotlira. — The foregoing notable instances will suffice to show the exceeding importance of these natural outlets for Greece. A brief description of them, therefore, will not be without interest. In antiquity they were called simply pits, barathra.^ The modern term, Katabothron, is now often applied to the whole of the underground passage, but erroneously, for this consists of (i) the barathron proper — pit or cavern into which the water descends ; (2) the canal or tunnel through which it flows; (3) the kephalaria (springs or heads) by which it reappears — the outfall. The barathra which receive the Cephissus on its way to Laiymna, are great caverns at the foot of precipitous rocks, some 20, 50, or 80 feet in height. Their size may be estimated from the fact that the stream which enters one of them is 30 feet broad and 4 to 5 feet deep. Strange to say, these outlets do not always occur where we should expect to find them — i.e. where the shores are low — but often where the mountains are highest and rockiest, and where they project farthest into the lake. The barathra thus being above the level of the lake-plain, the water can only enter when it has reached a certain height. Hence, in the month of August or earlier, four only of the Copaic katabothra are active ; several of them are quite empty, and may be inspected. During the Greek Revolution, these caverns served as temporary refuges for the women and children, until they could escape under cover of night to hiding-places more secure from the pursuit of the Turks (Forchhammer, op. cit., pp. 159-172 ; Leake, Northern Greece, ii. p. 281 ; Fiedler, op. cit., pp. 100-129 ; Bursian, op. cit., pp. 195 et seq.). How these mysterious, but most necessary, outlets were formed is still to a certain extent a matter of conjecture. The most probable hypothesis is, that the clefts are the results of earthquakes ; and, given an opening, no matter how small, through which the water could penetrate, the formation of the tunnel is easily explained by the chemical action of the water on the soft calcareous rock, assisted by the mechanical friction of any particles loosened ^ The Barathron at Athens was simply a pit, into which criminals were thrown. STIMULATION OF THOUGHT AND INQUIRY 55 but not dissolved by the stream, and carried along as sediment (Geikie, op. cit.^ pp. 351, 357). If we imagine this process going on for ages, we can under- stand something of the way in which the wonderful subterranean labyrinths within the Greek mountains were hollowed out. (c) Reappearance of the Rivers : the Kephalaria. — Tortuous labyrinths these underground passages are ; so much so, that it is often difficult to trace the progress of a stream from its entrance into the barathron to its exit at the outfall. In the two cases already mentioned — the waters of Pheneus, which join the Ladon, and those of Copais, which discharge themselves into the Euboean Sea — their course is clear, as in both cases a single mountain -ridge only is pierced through. It is supposed, however, that ultimately all the watery treasures of the shut-up basins of Eastern Arcadia, with but few exceptions, find their way by underground channels to the river Alpheius, either directly or indirectly, and are thus conveyed through Elis to the Sicilian Sea. A noble river is the Alpheius. Now diving into the heart of a mountain, now winding and twisting deftly, as though seeking to avoid the hill-dungeon, in a way which has gained for him his modern name " Sarantopotamos " (the Forty- river) — we are not surprised to find Alpheius the watery hero of Pelopon- nesus. It was even thought in antiquity that he continued his adventurous career beneath the sea itself, nor halted till he arrived at Syracuse in Sicily ^ (Bursian, ii. p. 288 ; Curtius, Pel., ii. pp. 249, 274, note 34). Perhaps the most curious instance of the dark underground journeyings of the Greek rivers is that of the little Arcadian Stymphalus, which pursues an independent course of its own, not west, but south-east. The Stymphalian plain is now occupied in its lowest part by a lake, formed by all the streams of the district, which have only one subterranean outlet. In antiquity, by means of dams (of which the remains are still to be seen) and probably of an artificial river-bed, the plain was drained, so that in summer no lake appeared, but simply one river, the Stymphalus, which, after a short, regulated course, disappeared (as the lake-waters do now) into the barathron at the western foot of Mt. Apelauron, to reappear — where, think you ? — in Argolis, at the eastern foot of Mt. Chaon, as the river Erasimis, "the Lovely," so called, doubtless, from the refreshing sight presented by the perpetual fulness of its rushing waters in that dry and thirsty land (Pans., viii. 22, 3 ; Bursian, ii. p. 195 ; Curtius, i. p. 201 ; ii. pp. 340, 364). This, at least, was (and is) the opinion held by the Greeks as to the source of the Erasinus, and there is no reason to doubt its correctness. The Erasinus pursues an open-air course from Chaon to the Argolic Gulf ; but other Arcadian waters (supposed by the ancients to come from a little swampy plain in the territory of Mantineia) — after piercing their way through Artemisium, and finding open-air progress blocked by Mt. Zavitza, which bars the coast — flow on for more than 1000 feet beneath the sea, and then suddenly leap upwards from their dark prison-house in the shape of a whirlpool, with a column of water whose diameter is estimated at 50 feet — the wonderful sweet-water fountain of Deine (Bursian, ii. p. 68 ; Curtius, i. p. 245 ; ii. p. 373).'^ This curious phenomenon — fresh water springing out ^ For the legend of Alpheius and the fountain nymph, Arethusa, with Shelley's pretty version of the story, see Hellas, p. 215. Some writers derive the name "Sarantopotamos" from the many tributaries of the river (so Clark, Pel.^ p. 152). An older name for Alpheius was Nyktimos, an allusion to his dark underground career. Alpheius was thus the Eiver of Night, before he became the Nourisher (ill). ^ It is now considered more probable that Deine owes its origin to the barathron of Par- thenium, with which it is in line (E. Curtius, Pel., ii. 373). In calm weather, Deine shows its presence only by the arched heightening of the surface of the waters, and the concentric circles around. S6 THE LAND of the salt waves — is met with also off the coast of Laconia, and in Northern Greece, in the Bay of Cheimerion, off the coast of Epeirus. The foregoing brief sketch of the exceeding wealth of water possessed by certain parts of Greece, will enable us to understand better that co-operation of man which we emphasised in a previous section (p. 24) as a necessary preliminary to the cultivation of the soil. What could Nature do for man, so long as the soil lay under water ? The essential condition, therefore, not only of tillage, but of life itself in such countries as Eastern Arcadia, is the regulating of the water. If the Hellene did not wish to see flocks and herds, houses and temples, swept away or submerged, the barathra must be kept clear and open, the mountain-streams directed towards them within confining bounds, flooding ' of the valley prevented by the erection of dams. Here, indeed, is a task for experimenters ! — a task requiring the greatest watchfulness and endurance. So dijfficult did its beginnings, the first draining of the land, appear to the later Hellenes, that, looking back on the canals and such other works of their ancestors as are still to be traced in the plains of Pheneus and Stymphalus, they attributed them to supernatural help — the assistance of Heracles. Four out of the twelve labours of the doughty hero, indeed, may be interpreted in this way (Curtius, ii. p. 506). (i) The slaying of the Nemean Lion is simply the regulating of the streams which pour down furiously from the mountains that shut in the narrow Nemean valley. Hemmed in between Mt. Apesas and the opposite projecting hills, they collect more quickly than the barathra c^n carry them off, and threaten destruction to man and beast. The cave in ' which the lion housed, with its two openings (by one of which the animal always slipped out) is, of course, the barathron with its entrance and its exit.^ (2) The destruction of the Lernsean Hydra — the great water-snake with poisonous breath and nine heads, which grew again as fast as they were cut off — is the effectual stopping-up or confining of the springs (ke}>}ialaria) which formed the swamp at the foot of Mt. Pontinus on the Arcadian frontier of Argolis, and which, as soon as they were repressed in one spot, forced their way through the soft moor soil at another. The poisonous breath of the monster is the miasma from the swamp (Preller, o^i. cit., p. 193 ; Curtius, ii. pp. 340, 369). (3) The subduing of the Erymanthean Boar — the fierce Arcadian mountain- stream, Erymanthus — is even a happier allegory, for the animal is not slain ; it is simply taken captive, i.e. confined within bounds and made useful (Curtius, i. p. 388). (4) The destruction of the Stymphalian Birds — monstrous creatures with brazen beaks and claws, that haunted the lake of Stymphalus, before the regulation of its waters, and lived on human flesh — is a vivid picture of the beneficent action of the sun's rays in dissipating the noxious vapours of an undrained soil (Paus., viii. 22, 3 ; Bursian, ii. p. 195 ; Curtius, i. p. 203). All these achievements took place in Peloponnesus. When we repair to Northern Greece, we find precisely the same kind of actions attributed to the hero. Especially significant is the saga of his wrestling with the river Achelous for the hand of Deianeira. The longest river of Greece, with a course of some 130 miles, Achelous was a rival worthy of the Sun-hero. In antiquity, it was considered the ruler of all the fresh waters of Hellas, and accordingly we find Homer speaking of "King Achelous" {Iliad, xxi. 194). ^ The mountains of this district are perforated with caves — a fact to which two of them apparently owe their names— Tretus, " the Pierced," and Coelessa, " the Hollow " (Bursian, ii. P- 35 ; Curtius, Pel., p. 468). STIMULATION OF THOUGHT AND INQUIRY 57 A noble river, it well merits the distinction, not only from its length, but from its depth and the volume of water with which it sweeps along to the sea. Even now, after its banks have been neglected for ages, it is navigable as far as the northern limit of the Acarnanian plain. The memory of its impetuous current, and of the many occasions on which it broke through all barriers and flooded the land, is preserved in the saga mentioned of the great struggle between the River-god and Heracles. Achelous comes to woo the princess in three different forms — now as a bull, now as a winding serpent, now in human shape with the head of an ox. At sight of such a suitor the unfortunate Deianeira gives herself up for lost, when Heracles appears upon the scene as a rival claimant for her hand. The two heroes wrestle together, and, after a fearful conflict, Heracles succeeds in breaking off the little horn of his adversary, whereupon the mighty River-god owns himself vanquished, and offers in exchange the Horn of Amalthea (Horn of Plenty), which Heracles presents to (Eneus, the father of Deianeira, and wins the maiden for his bride (Soph., Track. 9 et seq. ; 494 et seq. ; Preller, (^p. cit., p. 243). Now, the question for us is : Did the Greeks really believe in a personal conflict between the two superhuman heroes ; or is this, like the fable of Typhon, a myth with a kernel ? Let us hear how Strabo, the old geographer, interprets the story (c. 458; x. 19): Achelous, he says, like other rivers was compared to a bull on account of its noises and the bends in its channel, which are called its horns ; it was likened to a serpent because of its length and its windings ; it was said to have an ox's head for the same reason that it was called bull-faced. Heracles, who was not only of a beneficent disposition, but was going to marry (Eneus' daughter, forcibly confined the errant current of the river by dams and dykes, and thus drained great part of the Paracheloitis (the Acarnanian-,^ tolian plain) out of favour to CEneus. " And this/' adds Strabo, " is the Horn of Amalthea." In regard to the serpent- like windings of the river, Colonel Mure tells us that they are most extraor- dinary, sometimes taking the form of the letter S, at others that of C, or even that of a nearly perfect (W. Mure, Journal of a Tour in Greece, i. p. 402). Each patch of ground enclosed between these meanderings, and thus liable to be flooded, became, when the river was confined within its banks, a source of wealth and abundance. Here we have a perfectly intelligible, nay scientific, explanation of the myth, which is clearly a picture of the struggle, the " wrestling " of the first experimenters with Nature, before they had secured her co-operation and with it the Horn of Plenty. The impress of this terrible struggle is very distinctly marked on the religion of Arcadia, a religion which stands out in many ways in such sharp contrast with the clear sunny myths of other parts of Greece that it is im- possible to understand it without a reference to the nature of the country. This holds good more especially of the cult of Demeter, Earth-mother. In the beautiful Attic myth of the Mother and the Daughter, the consort of the Earth is (as is natural in that parched -up land) Zeus, god of the heaven and the rains. In the Ai-cadian version of the story. Earth is wedded to Poseidon, god not only of the floods but of the earthquake — here the beneficent agent to which the life-preserving barathra were supposed to owe their origin. The one version is, therefore, just as true to nature as the other. When we find, however, that in Arcadia Demeter is not only the mother of Persephone (Vegetation), but of the first horse, Areion, we are disposed at first to think that these old myth-makers had lost their wits, and to agree with Juvenal that the Arcadians were really no better than 58 THE LAND simpletons. Again we pause, however, for we reflect that the myths came into existence at a period when the Arcadians were, probably, no whit behind the other Greeks in intelligence. We recollect, moreover, that it was precisely in Arcadia that, as Pausanias tells us (viii. 8, i), he began to understand the myths. In this mysterious land he discovered that the fables of antiquity had a meaning, that wise men of old had spoken in riddles. What this hidden meaning was he kept to himself, but we can take the hint, and in the present case, at least, it is not difiicult to see that the story of Demeter and the horse Areion is simply an allegorical representation of the intimate union of Earth and Water in the heart of the mountains, and the birth, a few hundred yards farther on, of a little leaping, dashing, galloping cascade. The horse, in the language of the myths, always denotes the waves. The favourite name for Poseidon, as ruler of the waves, among the Greeks was, as we know, Hippios, " the Horseman," and bridled horses were sacrificed to him by being sunk in the sea, at the sweet-water fountain, Deine in Argolis, already mentioned (Paus., viii. 7, 2).^ The significance of the first horse, therefore, as a river is evident, and becomes all the clearer when we learn that Areion was given to Heracles, and that he helped that hero in his war against Augeias, king of the Eleans in Elis. Areion, in this connection, can only be one of the tributaries of the Ladon, which united with the waters of the plain of Pheneus to flood the low lands of Elis ; for it is from Pheneus that the expedition sets out (Paus., viii. 25, 7, 10 ; Curtius, Pel., 372). (d) The Drying-up of the Rivers. — No less noteworthy than the superabund- ance of water in some parts of Greece is the lack of it in others ; a state of things also calling forth, although in different ways, the forethought and co-operation of man. In Argolis, Attica, Achaia, indeed, generally through- out Greece, the rivers are merely deeply furrowed torrent-beds, full during a few months of the year, empty gullies for the remainder. This is due mainly to the porous nature of the chalk-soil, which, as in "thirsty Argos," absorbs or greedily drinks in the water — a phenomenon, we may be sure, that did not pass without notice. For the fulness of water Greek fancy invented, as we have seen, a variety of images. Water regulated, is the bridled horse or the tamed bull ; water overflowing in disease-spreading swamp and fen, is the snake or flesh- devouring monster ; water roaring and foaming down the mountain-side, sweeping all before it, is the bellowing, bull, or the wild boar, or the ferocious lion. No less fertile was early Greek imagination in devising reasons ivhy the precious streams should dry up or disappear. Sometimes the cause is hatred or revenge, as in the story of the fifty daughters of Danaus, the nymphs of the Argolic springs. They have been forced against their will to wed their impetuous suitors, the fifty sons of ^gyptus, whom they forthwith proceed to murder, burying their heads in the Lernaean swamp. The fifty suitors are the stormy winter-torrents of Argolis, which die in summer because their nymph- brides have cut off their heads — i.e. dried up their springs, which have gone to supply the lurking-place of the Hydra with its inexhaustible fulness of water (Preller, op. cit, ii. p. 47). For this deed the Danaides were punished in the Lower World by being condemned perpetually to draw water in vessels pierced with holes, a very appropriate reminder of the futility of their ^ For the constant association of the horse with Poseidon, see under "Poseidon Hippios" in Hellas, p. 205. STIMULATION OF THOUGHT AND INQUIRY 59 attempt to rid themselves of their lords, who, of course, came to life again with each returning rainy season. ^ Or the motive may be indignation^ as in the case of the little Boeotian river, Helicon, in which (so Pausanias tells us) the Maenades desired to wash their bloodstained hands after tearing the unhappy Orpheus in pieces.^ Determined not to give the wished-for cleansing, the river dived beneath the earth, to reappear as a coast-stream on the Corinthian Gulf (ix., 30, 8). Or, again, the reason may be /ear, as in the case of the Helisson, one of the rivers of Sicyon, which in summer is quite without flowing water. In it, according to the saga, the Furies had bathed, and so appalling was the vision of the swarthy, black-winged, fire-breathing Sisters with their writhing snake- locks that the little river disappeared to prevent a repetition of the unwished- for honour.^ Or, once more, the cause may be disappointed love, as in the case of the river Selemnus, in Achaia (Paus., viii. 23, i ; Curtius, i. pp. 405, 446). Selemnus was a beautiful youth who was loved by the sea-nymph Argyra (Silver-fount) so long as he continued beautiful. No sooner, however, did he begin (in the summer months) to lose his beauty and shrivel up than Argyra ceased to visit him (the river could no longer reach the sea), and finally with- drew her love from him. A truly Greek explanation, upon which the comment of most Greek youths and maidens would probably be : " And quite right, too ! How can ugly people expect to be loved ? " If the legend had arisen in the cold North, we should have had Argyra weeping an ocean of briny tears for the loss of Selemnus, ugly as he had become. The exaltation of the beautiful, however, is a deep-rooted feature of Greek nature, and bursts out, as in this little Mahrchen tale, in the most unexpected quarters. Thus in grouping together some of the legends concerning the fountains and rivers of Greece, we are struck by the extremely human conceptions attributed to them, or, rather, to their representatives. Hatred and revenge, indignation, fear, disappointed love — these are motives which touch the deepest springs of human conduct, and show how the early Hellene esteemed the springs and rivers of his native land. Water, sparkling and refreshing, was to him as to Pindar (Olymp., i. i) the best of all good things, the quickener of mind as well as of body, for the Muses themselves were originally fountain- nymphs.* (c) Rivers as Land- Builders. — One other peculiarity of the streams of this strange little land of contrasts must be mentioned. Not only are the rivers great destroyers, sweepers away of earth and arable land ; they are also, by virtue of this very property, great land-formers. Bearing with them, in their impetuous course from the mountains, both stones and earth, they deposit in the sea a foundation which gradually rises above the sea-level, and then, by many successive layers of detritus as well as by the growth of vegetation, forms a plain, which, in its inner and higher portion, is altogether beyond the reach of the sea (Geikie, op. cit., p. 388). In this way, through the slow course of the ages, were formed probably all the alluvial coast-plains of Greece : that of Argos, by the Inachus and other rivers ; the " Macarian," or Blessed, plain of Messenia, by the Pamisus ; the plain of Helos in Laconia, by the Eurotas ; the low lands of Elis, by the rivers of Arcadia ; the narrow coast- land on the north, by those of Achaia. These river-formed plains often take the shape of the Greek letter A, with the apex pointing inland and the base to the sea. Hence the name " delta," now usually applied to all such alluvial ^ See Hellas, p. 287. ^ For the story of Orpheus, see Hellas, p. 136. ^ See Hellas, p. 291. ^ See Hellas, p. 170. 6o THE LAND land at the mouth of a river, and first given by the Greeks themselves to that of the Nile. Such deltas are best studied in Greece along the Achaean coast, which owes its contour to the accumulations brought down by the wild torrents of the land. When we find the rivers of Hellas, therefore, figuring in the saga as national heroes and progenitors of races {e.g. the Inachus in Argos), this land-building property must be taken into account, for the alluvial soil so formed is amongst the richest and most productive in Greece. "King" Achelous was the great land-builder in the eyes of the Greeks. Like some human heroes with a violent temper, he persistently strove to undo the effects of his furious actions by " making up " for them in other ways, and the formation of the great Acarnanian-zEtolian plain, the Paracheloitis, is apparently due in no small measure (perhaps entirely) to the detritus brought down by him in his stormy career from Mt. Lacmon southwards. We may be sure that his activity did not escape the observation of the Greeks. It is noticed by Herodotus, Thucy- dides, and others among the old writers ; and in earlier days it plays its part in the saga of Alcmseon, the son of Amphiaraus the Seer. Like Orestes, Alcmseon has taken the life of his mother, in order to avenge his father's death, and is consequently pursued by the Furies. He wanders from place to place until the oracle reveals that there can be no rest for him, until he finds it in a land upon which the sun had not shone when the terrible deed was committed. This land he at length discovers in the alluvial new-formed plain at the mouth of the Achelous. Here accordingly, not far from CEniadae, Alcmseon settles, calling the land around, after his son Acarnan, " Acarnania." So, according to Thucydides, ran the old tradition about Alcmaeon (ii. 102 ; Pans., viii. 24, 8, 9).^ {d) Formation of Grottoes. — Not content with building up plains, piercing mountain-sides, and making subterranean channels, the energy of the Greek rivers has also expended itself upon excavating glittering caverns, the homes and haunts of the Nymphs, who, in Greek fancy, sit weaving the green mantle of earth. 2 The Greek hills abound in such caves and grottoes, the formation of which, like that of the peak caverns of Derbyshire, is due to the permeat- ing influence of water. Such caves were dedicated to the Nymphs and Pan, the Shepherd-god, and, accordingly, when the Athenians introduced the cult of the latter into their city, in gratitude for his supposed services at the battle of Marathon, 3 they gave him a congenial sanctuary in a grotto at the foot of the Acropolis-rock. The stalactites by which the hand of nature has adorned these grottoes take the most varied and grotesque shapes, suggesting all manner of fanciful thoughts and ideas — perhaps, in most cases, those in which originated the legend connected with the grotto. Thus, Ernst Curtius tells us of the stalac- tites in the Ox-hollow at Pylus — the scene, according to the local tradition, of the slaughtering of the oxen by the babe Hermes — that here they do not ^ To the ancients, this land-forming activity of the Achelous appeared much greater than, at least in historic times, it has really proved itself. For instance, Herodotus believed that half of the Echinades (see Hellas, p. ii) — a group of islands lying close to the mouth of the river — had become connected with the mainland by means of the agglomeration of soil brought down by the Achelous ; and Thucydides anticipated that all would ultimately be so joined (ii. ID ; Thucyd., ii, 102 ; Strabo, p. 458). He explains that the river could not escape to the sea directly, because these islands do not lie in a straight line ; hence, in its winding course the earth is kept back between them. During the last 2000 years, however — judging from the measurement which Strabo gives of the distance of CEniadae from the sea — the coast has under- gone little change. This may, however, be due to a deepening of the sea-bed. '^ See Hellas, p. 226. ^ See Hellas, p. 250. STIMULATION OF THOUGHT AND INQUIRY 6i form, as usual, free masses, but have been deposited on the walls in flat strips, eminently suggestive of spread-out skins {Pel., ii. p. 177). By far the most famous of the grottoes of Hellas, however, is the great Corycian Cave, in the highlands of Parnassus, above Delphi. This was sacred to Dionysus, Pan, and the Nymphs (Soph., J^7^^^r/., 11 26; ^sch., Eum., 22). The interior, which is 200 feet long, nearly 200 feet broad, and 40 feet high in the middle, is described as a " truly magnificent specimen of natural vault- ing — a natural cathedral," adorned by colossal stalactites, formed by the drop- ping water. The large hall leads into another, 100 feet in length.^ Both must have afforded ample space for the Delphians, who took refuge here from the Persians, as David and his men hid themselves from Saul — space not only for their treasures, but their families. Of the effect which such scenes must have had upon the imagination of the early Hellene, we can form some faint idea : " If any one doubted the influence which natural objects had exercised over Greek religion," says an eloquent writer (Dean Stanley, Art. " Greek Topography " in the Classical Museum, i. p. 69), "no more convincing answer could be given than by the sight of the fantastic white rocks and grotesque fir-trees on the approach to the cave, the wild and lonely character of the hills in which it is situated, and the stalactite figures, which, when dimly seen in the gloom of its long recesses, could hardly fail to suggest to the active imagination of Greek shepherds the vision of the mountain god with his attendant nymphs and satyrs." (e) The Styx. — That Greece is not without a grand instance of water in one of its most awe-striking forms is proved by the existence of the Styx, the famous waterfall in the north of Arcadia, below the highest peak of Aroanius (Chelmos). It is impossible to picture a more desolate region than this of the Styx. All life seems extinct ; nothing is to be seen but jagged mountain- peaks, with the torrent pouring down over a precipice 220 feet in height through a labyrinth of rocks, giving to all that it touches the dark hue which, perhaps, has won for it its modern name of Mauronero, or Black Water. The Styx, as we know, was a great power in Greek mythology. By it the gods took their solemn oaths, and to it in historic times (500 B.C.), Cleomenes wished to lead the chiefs of the Arcadian cities when about to form a league. This ceremony was probably proposed as the revival of an ancient custom, and if we accept this supposition, it explains the otherwise inscrutable fable of Styx and her children. According to Hesiod, in the War of the Gods, Styx (who is a daughter of Oceanus) is the first of the immortals to go over to the side of Zeus. Why Hesiod should have put forward Styx as the representative of Fidelity, becomes apparent if we imagine this weird and lonely waterfall as the centre of an Arcadian league, or warlike confederacy — the spot where chieftains and people were wont to meet to swear truth and loyalty to one another and the common cause. Read in this light, the allegory, as pointed out by Curtius,^ is replete with beautiful meaning, for Styx is wedded to Pallas, the wielder of the lance, i.e. to Yalour, and the children of Valour united to Fidelity are Zeal, Strength, Force, and Victory ; all of which powers give up the cause of Chaos, and range themselves on the side of Zeus — Wisdom, Light, and Order. ^ So Leake {Northern Greece, ii. p. 580). Tozer [Led. on Geog. of Greece, p. 115) gives the entire length as 330 feet. 2 See Hellas, p. 289 ; [Paus., viii, 17, 18; Herodotus, vi. 74; Curtius, Pel., i. pp. 163, 195. Whether the waterfall now described as the Styx is the Styx of Homer, of Hesiod, and of Herodotus is a point which has been debated (see Clark, Pel., p. 301). The explanation given in the text offers a very reasonable solution of a puzzling myth. 62 THE LAND To sum up now the various wonder-sights which met the eyes of the Hellenes: — when we find amongst them fire-breathing mountains — islands rising from the sea amidst smoke and flame — islands and fragments of the coast disappearing and leaving no trace behind — islands rent from the mainland by internal forces — mountains cleft in twain by the same means — rivers destroying and rivers building-up — rivers piercing the mountain-sides — plains transformed into lakes, and lakes into plains— hot-springs bubbling up through the earth, sweet-water springs amid the salt waves — (to say nothing of the thousand and one wonders, which space has compelled us to omit, of the sea itself) — when we find all these striking phenomena gathered together in this one little land, can we be surprised at that yet stranger phenomenon, the early development, the extraordinary acceleration (so to speak), of thought among the Greeks as compared with the progress of the other Aryan peoples who are supposed to have left the Old Home before or with them ? Each phenomenon was a goad and a spur in early days to mental activity, for each one presented a riddle which required an answer, each one roused the desire to know more about itself and about things in general. In this respect too, then — stimulation of thought and inquiry — Hellas was emphatically a land for experimenters. " Nay ! " objects a practical reader, " such an argument is one-sided. In what possible way can you prove that such phenomena as earthquakes and floods were in their rightful place in a land of experimenters ? Had I been designing the land, most assuredly I should have taken care to guard against such disturbers of the peace." No doubt you would have done so — and this possibly would have been the object of any designer among mortals ; but no such short-sighted policy watched over the destiny of the Hellenes. It seems to be the rule of life in every age and in every land, that the few must suffer for the many, and Hellas is no exception to the rule. Viewed in this light, we can see that there was not one amongst the phenomena noted which did not serve a purpose. We must always bear in mind the real meaning of the term " Experimenting." If the experi- ments to which we refer had been such as, say, the standardising of instruments in a laboratory — then, we admit, the presence of such phenomena as earthquakes and floods would have been decidedly out of place. But if what we mean by experimenting is the working-out of that grandest of all results, the formation of character — and that, not of an individual, but of an agglomeration of individuals, a Nation — then we think it possible to prove, on four very good grounds, that all the natural features of Hellas served a purpose, and a beneficent purpose. ( I ) The first link in this fourfold chain is the intellectual link — the creating of the desire to know. That the natural phenomena of Greece had this effect may, we think, be taken as proved, even by the short resume given in the preceding pages. Not a vanishing river, not an island fragment, that did not set some one speculating as to the "reason why." Naturally, in early ages such speculations take the form of myth and saga. Even in this form, how- ever, they are not to be despised. Apart from any happy guesses at truth which they may contain, the wealth of imagination stored up in the Greek myths, the varied and ever-fresh forms in which the same idea is clothed, are simply marvellous. Then in later days, when men began to approach Nature in what we call the " scientific " spirit, it is still the same phenomena that exercise the minds of thinkers. Especially do the mysterious forces at work in the earthquake receive attention. Historians like Thucydides, philosophers like Aristotle — each has his own theory. And in regard to the most terrible catastrophe on record — the disappearance of Helice — this event gave an STIMULATION OF THOUGHT AND INQUIRY 63 unheard-of impetus to the study of natural science, for Diodorus (xv. 48, 3-4 ; cf, Curtius, i. p. 45) tells us expressly that by reason of the very magnitude of the calamity, thinkers made strict investigations {peirontai = tested and proved, made experiments) into its probable physical causes. (2) The second link in the chain is what we may call the technical link — the causes which spurred on the Greeks to develop their systems of irrigation, of engineering, of architecture. We do not pity the Dutch of to-day because they are compelled constantly to be on the alert against their enemy, the sea, when we observe the ingenious way in which they continue to hold their own by means of their grand system of dykes. Then why should we pity the Arcadians on account of floods, which, disastrous and unpreventable (apparently) as they sometimes were, could yet, as a rule, be averted by a good system of drainage ? That the Arcadians were able to cope with the enemy is evident even now from a study of the valley of Stymphalus : "When we look at the whole district, with its ineffaceable traces of earlier habitation," says an eye-witness, E. Curtius (Pe/., i. p. 205), "we stand amazed at the comfortable way {Behaglichkeii) in which the ancients ensconced themselves in the midst of their weird, inhospit- able valley, and even conclude from this how well they contrived to overcome the natural evils of their position." The Arcadians, then, in this respect can dispense with our pity. As to the rest, their climate made them hardy and robust — the god of medicine, Asclepius himself, was represented among the Arcadians as a blooming youth — while the constant living in the presence of danger developed in them the intrepid, fearless spirit characteristic of the inhabitants of mountain regions. The Arcadians were the Switzers of antiquity. In regard to the still more formidable earthquake — a power with which no human force may cope — even the dread of this appears to have helped on experimenting. Such, at least, was the opinion of a thoughtful observer. Colonel Leake, who suggests that the constant liability of Peloponnesus to slight shocks may have been one of the causes which led to the development of the massive style and solidity of Doric architecture (Leake, Northern Greece, iv. p. 551)- (3) Our third, or etJiical link, is one which many readers will doubtless have anticipated. In days when as yet there was no objective standard of right and wrong, when might was right, and Faustrecht held sway in certain sections of society, was there no benefit to the world at large, think you, from the terrible local calamities which we have been considering ? One of the social experiments tried in antiquity on the largest scale, and defended a outrance by philosophers, was that of slavery. In Corinth alone the number of slaves was estimated at 640,000^ ; in Athens, at 400,000. Add to these the slaves of the other Hellenic communities and we arrive at a gigantic total of defenceless, " will-less chattels," as Aristotle would have called them, held at the absolute disposal of will-ful, all but irresponsible masters. If, into connec- tion with this condition of things, we bring the statement of Thucydides that the great Laconian earthquake, and the fall of the peak of Taygetus, were regarded as a punishment sent upon the Spartans for the slaying of certain suppliant helots (serfs) at Taenarum, we can see that these events were calcu- lated to rouse very curious feelings in the minds of the freemen of Greece. " Have a care ! " said the " judgment " to every despot in public or in private life, whether he would hear or whether he would forbear ; " the eye of your Master is upon you. Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." ^ This number probably includes the slaves employed in the trading settlements of the Corinthians {cf. Bursian, ii., p. 13, note 2). 64 THE LAND Awful, therefore, as was a catastrophe which, without a moment's warning, deprived 20,000 Spartans of life, the making of life bearable to the hundreds of thousands of " will-less " souls in the other scale far outweighs it in signifi- cance. So long as the terrible event was held in remembrance, the slave, the suppliant, the prisoner of war, women, the aged — all the weak and down- trodden — would have, we may be sure, some measure of justice meted out to them. By this conclusion we are " reading in " to the event no lesson which was not drawn from similar occurrences by the Hellenes themselves. ^ This we shall be able to prove shortly when we come to consider their ideas on the subjects of justice and retribution. Here we can but note in passing that such catastrophes seem to have formed a necessary part of the education of man. (4) The fourth link in the chain is the strongest of all, the link of religion. The seeking of God was, in St. Paul's view, the mission of the Greeks, and it was therefore necessary that they should have the opportunity of seeking Him in every possible way. We all recollect the episode in the life of the Hebrew prophet, who for the moment had lost faith and trust in God. He rfetires to Horeb, and the manifestations of the Divine Power pass before him ; the great and mighty wind, the earthquake, the fire. The prophet has been long trained in the divine school ; he estimates these phenomena at their true value and remains unmoved. It is not till he hears the still small voice that he recognises the presence of God and his own nothingness, and covers his face with his mantle. Precisely the same experience had to be made by the Aryan thinker. The wind and the earthquake and the fire had to pass before him, and of each he had to ask himself — " Is this God ? " Whether the Greeks ever attained to the recognition of the still small voice is a question of questions, to which we shall, perhaps, be able to find an answer when we come to consider the greatest of all Hellenic experiments, that Seeking after God, which we call their " religion." Meantime, let us note that, on this ground alone, it was necessary that all the phenomena of God's working in nature should pass before the Hellene, the awe-striking manifestations of His power as well as the gentler evidences of His providence. " I report as a man may of God's work — all's love, yet all's law." In no way did the All- Father leave Himself without witness in Hellas. BEAUTY Finally, there is one other question which we have to ask, and it is a very important one. Many of the experiments made by the Hellenes were in the domain of the beautiful, and we therefore find ourselves speculating as to whether the land were calculated to help them in this respect ; to rouse within them the idea of beauty, or not. "Can there be a doubt about it?" says the reader; "Hellas has both the mountains and sea, and when you have said this, you have said all." True ! That Hellas is a land of beauty, follows necessarily upon what has been already said. In her scenery, as in the conditions of the soil and climate, the law of contrasts, before referred to, holds good. Taking into account her ^ Thus, from the fate of Helice, Pausanias draws the inference (vii. 25, i) that the god of suppliants is not to be evaded. By the " god of suppliants " {'Ifc^crtos) he means, not the minor god, Poseidon, but Zeus, the god of the Greeks. BEAUTY 65 size, Greece possesses the most varied landscape in Europe.^ Monotony is impossible where the sea, running far up into the land, presents itself rest- lessly in unexpected quarters. Overhead, the sky offers the constant charm of mountain-lands, alternate sunshine and swiftly-passing cloud registering their changeful effects upon the hills around. Vegetation, also, obeys the general law. In place of the sombre uniformity of northern fir-topped hills, or the gorgeous iteration of the tropical forest, we have in Greece every variety of tree and shrub, from the oaks of Acarnania and the beeches of Pindus to the palms of Boeotia and the orange-trees of Messenia. If, on the one hand, we have nature in her sterner moods, Taygetus, with his torrent- ploughed gullies, his deep gorges and abrupt precipices, his lofty jagged peaks, covered with snow during the greater part of the year, we have, on the other, in familiar sights and sounds, a constant succession of beautiful images. Pelion, " quivering with foliage," its grassy sides gleaming with bright-leaved, brighter-fruited pomegranates ; the clustering vines of Euboea ; the fig-trees of Messenia ; the dark olive-groves of Attica, their silvery patriarchs sending forth winding roots in all directions ; the cool rills of Helicon ; " The flowery hill, Hymettus, with the sound Of bees' industrious murmur ; " the rush of mountain-streams, almost hidden in the spring-time by over- hanging shade of myrtle, oleander, and laburnum, beneath whose blossomed boughs the goats take shelter from the noontide sun ; the warbling of nightingales, invisible in their leafy coverts ; the measured beat of the waves upon the rock-bound coast — these and innumerable other scenes and sounds prove that Hellas has still much to charm both eye and ear.^ Much of the foregoing description, however, would be equally applicable to other countries, and if we would learn the great characteristic of the beauty of Greece, we must again fall back upon the two features which proved so momentous in the history of the land — the sea and the mountains. The unifying element in the development of the Greeks, the sea, is no less the unifying element in their landscape. The countless lonely valleys of Greece, her projecting peninsulas, her innumerable islands, great and small, isolated or in groups — all these disjointed limbs and scattered fragments of the land are blended together into one great and perfect whole by the blue sky above, and the glorious blue sea beneath. With its deep azure waters — waters blue as lapis-lazuli — its foam-crested waves, its dolphins sporting in the sunshine, the ^gsean Sea forms the essential background to every true picture of Hellas (K. Woermann, op. cit., p. 83 ; Kunst und Naturskizzen, pp. 144-145). Then the mountains ! — how shall we do justice to the wondrous variety of character — we use the word advisedly — which each displays ? Beginning with ^ " If a man is fond of the large effects of natural scenery, he will find in the Southern Alps and fiords of Greece a variety and a richness of colour which no other part of Europe affords. If he is fond of the details of natural scenery, flowers, shrubs, and trees, he will find the wild-flowers and flowering-trees of Greece more splendid than anything he has yet seen " (Mahatfy : Rambles and Studies in Greece, Pref., p. viii. 3rd ed.). '^ Among the " sounds that charm," the Athenians would certainly have included one which, to our ears, hardly comes under that category, viz., the chirping of the tettix, cicada or grasshopper. Far from being annoyed, however, at the monotonous crick-crick of their dearly-loved Fatherkins [Vdterchen, so Bergk interprets the word, op. cit., i. p. 128, note 208), it reminded them of their autochthonous origin, that they themselves had sprung, like the gods, from Mother Earth ; a supposed fact of which they were not a little proud : witness the golden grasshoppers wherewith they adorned their hair (see Hellas, p. 1 94). Accordingly, in Plato's famous description of the plane-tree by the Ilissus, the chirruping of the grasshoppers figures, as we have seen, among the sweet "summer sounds and scents " that filled the air. E 66 THE LAND the giants, we might say with equal truth of Olympus, of Parnassus, of Taygetus, that it is "majestic." And yet, each calls up before the mind a distinctly different picture, the majesty of which is all its own. Each, how- ever, assumes a different aspect in Greek fancy, and plays a different part in Greek history. Olympus, with its snowy precipices, towering to their full height of nearly 10,000 feet, and its huge buttresses, " many-folded," " divided again and again into minor ridges and valleys, thickly clothed with feathery woods" (Tozer, Researches in the Highlands of Turkey, ii. p. 5 et seq.) — impressing us both by its soaring grandeur and by its magnificent breadth — became the home of the national gods of Hellas. Parnassus, its summits enveloped " in rolling billows of cloud," overawes us by its mysteriousness no less than by its immense mass, and in its bosom lay Delphi — according to the Greeks the central point of Hellas, — the centre, at least, for ages, of the religion of Hellas. Taygetus, stretching its mighty crags in one unbroken line from Arcadia to the sea, a distance of 70 miles, strikes the imagination mostly by its strength ; and at its feet, protected as by a bulwark, lay Sparta, the home of those whose boast it was that their " walls " were their " menr And turning from the monarchs of the land, what diversity meets us among the " rank and file " of the Greek hills ! — Now they are forest-clad, their sides furrowed by many a silver streak, marking in winter the path of a foaming torrent, in summer its empty white-bleached bed, rosy with the glow of the oleanders that fringe its banks. ^ Now they are bald and naked, broken into a succession of marble peaks — clear-cut, dignified, and " aristocratic " — or crumbled and fashioned by the storms of the ages into the most fantastic shapes — each one glittering in the transparent atmosphere with all the changeful hues of the sunlight. To this clearness of the atmosphere of Greece, much of the witchery of the scenery is due. Take, for instance, Mr. Symonds' brilliant word-painting of the hills around Athens, where, as we .know, the air is specially pure and transparent: — "At dawn and sunset," he says, "the rocks array themselves with a celestial robe of rainbow-woven hues : islands, sea, and mountains, far and near, burn with saffron, violet, and rose, with the tints of beryl and topaz, sapphire and almandine, and amethyst" (J. A. Symonds, Sketches in Italy and Greece, p. 192, 2nd ed.) — tints that no doubt gained for the city her beautiful name of iostephanos, "the violet-crowned." ^ Poets and travellers have exhausted their imagination and their vocabulary in the effort to make stayers-at-home understand the fascination of the Greek mountains. To Gray's mind they were " inspiration-breathing " ; to Colonel Mure their beauty was best expressed by the word which we have already used, " aristocratic " ; to Thackeray the " chorus of hills," standing round about the scene of heroic deeds, spoke a language of its own. Most of all, however, do we feel the charm of the mountains in that little touch of Edward Lear— poet as well as painter — wherein he speaks of the faint blue hills, of exquisite shapes, the last link in the landscape betwixt heaven and earth {Journal of a Landscape Painter in Albania, p. 37). To get among the mountains, however, is dangerous ground, for writers as well as for climbers — they exercise a too-powerful fascination. Nevertheless, ^ The rhododaphne, or rose-laurel, with its lovely blossoms and shining leaves, now one of the most common (as it is one of the most beautiful) shrubs of Greece, is also one of those which we must omit from any picture of ancient Greece. It is not mentioned by any writer of classical antiquity, and according to Hehn (p. 358 et seq.) was probably introduced into the country between the time of Theophrastus and the last days of the Roman Republic. 2 For Dean Stanley's no less beautiful description of an Athenian sunset, see Bellas, p. 18. BEAUTY 67 before quitting them finally, let us just glance for a moment at one of the magnificent prospects to be enjoyed from their summits. Passing over the tempting heights of Pelion, of Parnassus, of Lycabettus, of Sicyon, of Acro- corinthus — all offering far-reaching views which have repeatedly drawn forth glowing descriptions — we select one, less widely known, perhaps, but present- ing all the salient features of a typical Greek landscape, the panorama which unfolds itself beneath the hills of Troezen. At the foot of the citadel-rock stretches a fertile plain, richly wooded and thickly planted with luxuriant vines, sinking gently towards two bays. In the midst, between these bays, rises the mountain isthmus of Dara — hill press- ing closely upon hill, and culminating in the broad series of bold rocky peaks constituting the volcanic mountain of Methana, one of the most strongly marked points along the Greek coast. To the left of Methana is the sea of Epidauros, beyond it are the famous Scironian Rocks of the Corinthian Isth- mus, and over these in the distance rises the great round head of Parnassus. To the right is the island of ^gina, whilst as a background stretches the coast of Attica, in all its length, to Cape Sunium. Close to the mainland is seen the famous island of Calaureia, surrounded by the sea. Imagine this picture now, in all its fulness of mountain, plain, coast, and islands, as it lies in glorious sunshine beneath the deep blue sky, embraced and permeated, as it were, by the rippling, glancing, sparkling sea, and we can form some idea, not only of the joyousness of the scene, but of its wondrous harmony. As E. Curtius, to whom we owe the foregoing description, justly says : "We have here one of the most magnificent views in Greece — a picture endless in its variety, yet ordered and arranged into one clearly-defined whole. That the early Hellenes themselves were by no means insensible to the charm of the scene, may be inferred from the name which the local saga gives to the daughter of the hero Troezen : Euopis= 'Fair-face'" (Curtius, Pel., ii. p. 431 et seq.). In her deep blue seas, then, her glittering mountain - peaks, her pure, transparent atmosphere, her island-fragments, and her picturesquely broken contour, Hellas possesses elements of beauty which are unchangeable. Far different is it, however, when we come to earth's surface. As we have seen (p. 42), the beauty of Greece as a cultivated land — the peaceful beauty of homestead and of orchards, of olive-grove, and terraced vineyard — is no longer what it was. Even her wild natural loveliness, the loveliness of woods and forests, has suffered cruelly at the hands of man. Enough remains, however, to charm and delight ; but before proceeding to feast our eyes upon the sylvan beauty of Greece, we must once more emphasise the fact to which we have already called attention, viz., that Hellas wears on her eastern side an aspect very different from that which she presents on the west. At no time, probably, could the brilliant, sunny (often burnt-up) east have vied, as regards her forests, with the moister, greener west.^ The planting of the olive-wood of the Cephissus valley of Athens was itself an experiment, for up to the age of Peisistratus, Attica, we are told, was bare and treeless. In Plato's days, the Athenian hills had already become bald and skeletonised (Dio Chrysostom, Or., xxv. p. 281c; Plato, Crit., 4). That there must have been a time, however, when Hellas abounded in scenes of the richest and wildest forest-beauty, is abundantly proved by the myths. The Nymphs who sit weaving in secret grottoes the green mantle of earth, the ^ The contrast between the two sides of Greece has been forcibly described by M. Heuzey. After leaving Delphi and the east, he remarks that his eyes, so long accustomed to naked rocks and brilliant sunshine, were as if " surprised " by the vegetation and the living verdure of Acarnania and the west [Le Mont Olympe et VAcarnanie, p. 223). 63 THE LAND Dryads and Hamadryads who have theh' homes in the trees, the lurking Satyrs of Greek fancy, are the direct personifications of forest life. No one has appreciated this more than our own Wordsworth. ^ The forest scenery of certain parts, moreover, and that on the eastern side of Greece, is still exquisite, and affords, for instance, an idea of Helicon as it must have been in the days when, to Greek imagination, its sunny glades were the fitting haunts of the Nine Sisters. To a lover of nature, what an enchanting picture is that sketched by Sir Thomas Wyse of the woodlands of Eubcea {Impressions of Greece^ p. 247 et seq.) ; their great forest-ranges of every kind of timber-tree produced by Greece — pines, valonia, firs — mingling with the magnificent foliage of planes and all oriental forms ; their slopes, breaks, deep nymph-like dells, opening into glens, clad with ilex and other evergreens, and here and there sparkling with rivulets. How exhilarating is the breeze that wings its way in at every opening in the forest ! What glorious gleams flash in upon the traveller through the fir-trees, the deep blue sea beyond, with its frame- work of grand promontories and rugged islands, glimmering in amethyst haze in the vapours of the morning ! Within, as the day wears on, how delightful is the intense shade, broken here and there by strong rays of light revealing the infinite variety of foliage that forms the canopy overhead, "the gaunt half-shattered pines that still sturdily hold their own," and now and again block the onward course ; the luxuriant undergrowth of " shrubbery, brush- wood, glimmering bay, lofty, red-stemmed arbutus, and sharp myrtle, and bushy lentisk, and the red clusters of pomegranates, and the pale agnus-castus, and such clumps and scatterings of flowers at their feet, yellow, blue, white, blossoming like snow-flakes over the moss, or running up the wild branches amongst those thousands of trees, so joyous, and festal, and superabundant ! " Here, at least, we feel ourselves in the presence of " an exuberant and free- giving nature, from which nothing looks as though extorted." AcARNANiA is a district on the western mainland which has preserved its forests better than most parts of Greece, and we owe some descriptions of its scenery — none the less charming because somewhat paler than Sir Thomas Wyse's glowing picture — to the pen of Colonel Leake [Nortliern Greece, i. p. 164; iv. 19). Of all explorers the best, most modest, most thorough, Colonel Leake is not the man to wax sentimental on any subject whatsoever, and yet it is precisely he who tells us of this little known district — " Acar- nania's forest wide" — of its mountain-slopes clothed by oaks, the finest in Greece, festooned thick with clustering wild vines, and peopled by nightingales singing in the deep shade ; of the aromatic shrubs that make the air fragrant with the incense of nature ; of the torrents overhung by plane-trees ; of the glimpses obtained every now and again of the sea, never very far off in any part of Greece ; the lovely Ambracian Gulf, lighted up by the clearest of skies. ^ Acarnania, however, beautiful as it appears to us of the grey North, was to the Hellenes themselves but a wild, cheerless, outlying district. Let us, therefore, betake ourselves to the regions of the sunny south. Wending our way into the heart of Peloponnesus, we find ourselves with another traveller (W. G. Clark, op. cit., p. 155 et seq.) in the Pass leading from ^ See Hellas, p. 251. 2 It is Colonel Leake, also, who tells us that in his time on the mountain pastures in every part of Greece the shepherds might still be heard, as described by Theocritus, pouring forth a wild melodious strain from their pipes amid the murmuring of waters and the whispering of the wind through the pine-trees ; and he goes on to express his surprise that the aromatic scent of the pines in summer should not have been observed by Theocritus, since the poet notes the whispering sound referred to (Id., i. i). The prince of explorers, then, had after all a keen sense of the beautiful in nature as well as a keen eye for an old ruin ! BEAUTY 69 the north into a certain pleasant, hollow vale. Behind us is winter, before us the brightness of spring. " Now the branches interlacing seem to bar the way, now the thicket opens and leaves a green glade all blazing with scarlet anemones, while the winding path is recessed into many a shady covert starred with shy woodland flowers, on which the dew lies till noon. A jubilant clamour of singing birds — nightingale, thrush, linnet, mixed with notes that are un- familiar — rings around us on all sides. All sights and sounds remind us that we are in the prime of ' scarlet-blossomed spring.' " At length we attain the summit of the Pass, and begin by winding paths to descend its western side. Suddenly, in place of the " dainty vignettes^^ forest-glade, and alley to which our eye has been accustomed, there opens up a wide prospect, a panorama hardly to be surpassed in grandeur. Before us stands a giant mountain, stretching like a Titanic wall flanked with buttresses, in one mighty line far as the eye can reach. His hoary head is white with snow, but his slopes and the hollows between are clothed by a rare verdvire. At his feet lies a magnificent plain bathed in the sunlight, rich with forest and fruit-trees, with olive and vine, its brilliant green broken only here and there by red scars, the crumb- ling earth-banks between which, like a silver streak, a river is seen speeding its way through the vale into the distance beyond. Where are we ? we ask in wonder. Were Theognis, the exile, by our side, we should have the prompt reply : " By the sunny wave and winding edge Of fair Eurotas with its reedy sedge, Where Sparta stood in simple majesty." — {Theog. Gnom., 783 ; Frere's trans., p. 106). " What ! " says the reader, " this delightful spot the home of the stern Spartans — those grim warriors, those men of blood and iron, who banished from their lives all softness, all delight ? " Precisely. The lot of these " grim warriors " was cast in a wondrously pleasant place — the beautiful, bountiful, blossom-crowned vale of Lacedaemon ; and our amazement at the austerity, or, as you are pleased to call it, the " grimness," of the social experiment which they worked out, abates not a little when we see with our eyes the sweetness and the softness of its surround- ings.i At this day, as in the days of Homer, the plain of Sparta spreads itself out beneath the mountain-wall of Taygetus so joyously, so brightly, that hardly can the delighted traveller restrain the burst of enthusiasm which it inspires (Mure, op. cit., ii., p. 220 ; Wyse, Exc. in Pel., ii., p. 70 ; Clark, op. cit, p. 156). But time presses, and we hasten onwards and westwards. Our way lies again through " a well-wooded ravine where the thick trees are festooned with luxuriant ivy and wild-vine, and the babbling of the stream is mingled with the thick-warbled notes of innumerable nightingales." A few hours' ride brings us to Trypi, at the very mouth of the great Pass through Taygetus ; the Pass of Langada, the most splendid defile of Greece. Leaving behind us the orchards, vineyards, and olive-groves of this beautiful little village, and enter- ing the gorge, which grows narrower and still more narrow as we proceed, we climb the rugged path between lofty walls of rock and steeply falling torrent- beds, through the different zones of the mountain. Now we pass through a belt of fruit and forest trees, and little villages, and cornfields ; now the scene grows wilder — " high above us, as it were, looking down from the summits, ^ " During all the many rides I have taken through Greece, no valley ever struck me with the sense of peace and wealth so much as that of Sparta " (Mahaffy, Rambles, dec, p. 385). 70 THE LAND are great forests of fir-trees — a gloomy setting to a grandiose and savage land- scape." Yet even here, amid boulders and cliffs, in this bright spring-time, are flowers — pale anemones, irises, orchids, violets, and, where a stream trickles down, primroses. Higher still ! On we press through the gloomy region of firs, and find, above them still, green alpine meadows with springs of wondrously pure and sparkling water, over which rise the bare rocky peaks of the mountain. " At last we reach the top of the Pass, about 4000 feet high, marked by a little chapel to St. Elias, and once by a stone pillar stating the boundary between Sparta and Messene. It was, then, up this Pass and among these forests that the young Spartans had steeled themselves by hunting the wolf and the bear in peace, and by raids and surprises in days of war." Now we begin to descend the terrace-like slopes which form the western side of Taygetus, but have not proceeded far when the cry is raised, " Thalatta ! thdlatta ! " " The sea ! the sea." And like a glad surprise flashes before us a glittering gulf with its framework of mountains, whilst at our feet lies another magnificent plain, its green-edged river winding through it like a dark ribbon. The descent accomplished, the way begins to lead through high hedges of fig and gigantic cactus, " the air is moist and warm, like the air of a hot-house, and heavy with the scent of orange and lemon-flowers," and we need no seer to announce that we have arrived in Macaria, the " Blessed " Plain of Messenia — that beautiful land, whose very beauty and fertility proved its ruin (Clark, op. cit., p. 187; Bursian, o]). cit., ii. p. 104; Mahaffy, op. cit., p. 386; Wyse, Exc, i. p. 188 ; Boetticher, Auf GriecMselie Landstrasse). But the Messenian sun is too powerful for northern constitutions. Onward again ! we dive into the shade of overhanging woods, rich in varied green, dashed with the bright pink of the Judas-tree ; and then, wending our way northwards — once more with our old friend, Sir Thomas Wyse — we find ourselves on the way from Bassse to Audritzena {Exc.^ ii. p. 40). The scenes through which we pass remind us at every step that Hellas is not one but many countries. From a region of desolation, of harsh gnarled oaks and savage pines, we finally glide into one of great beauty — "the ideal of an Arcadian landscape. A series of gentle eminences, sweeping into soft, secluded valleys, wooded in the richest manner, with every variety of southern shrub — arbutus, lentisk, agnus castus, bay, and myrtle — timbered with luxuriant masses of oak and plane, now and then broken by dark-green clumps of fir and pine — fine pasturage intermingling below — the grand framework of the great Peloponnesian ranges around and above : these form the elements, of which every step presents a new variety. The red soil, recalling the fertile recesses of South Devon, and the close-foliaged pathways, revelling in all their freshness after a shower of rain, and exhaling their scented odours as we brush through them, complete this inland woodland picture " — a picture which only wants the mellow sound of the horn and the appearance of the huntress Artemis and her train — " The breathing roses of the wood, Fair silver-buskined nymphs " — to carry us back in imagination some thousands of years. These mosaics, pieced-in from the accounts of different eye-witnesses, will serve to give us some idea of Hellas — of the Hellas that unfolded itself to the eyes of the early Hellenes. Granted that some details of the picture must be omitted— the laurel, the myrtle, the oleander — all the grand essential features remain — sea, sky, and mountains. There remains also the wealth of wild flowers in forest and woodland, and lightly as we may esteem these humble BEAUTY 71 ministers of beauty, they played their part, nor were thrown away upon those who then beheld them, if, as Schiller tells us, the first work of art was the grouping of a nosegay, the second, the weaving of a wreath. ^ This brings us back to the question with which we started — a question to which we are now in a better position to give an answer : — Did Hellas, the land itself, help to develop in the people the sense of beauty which we are accustomed to associate with the Greeks ? Most assuredly, we reply, it did ; and this we may say nowadays without much fear of that contradiction which, not so very long ago, such a statement would have called out. No question, perhaps, connected with the ancient world has been more hotly contested than the one which we have just proposed to ourselves, and so important is it in our argument that, at the risk of wearying the non-aesthetic reader, we must linger over it for a few moments. For, if the Hellenes were insensible to natural beauty — if they " had no eye for the picturesque in Nature," as has been maintained — then we should be compelled to admit that, in this one respect, the land was not made for the people, that their experiments in the beautiful owed nothing to the beauty around. To an honest mind, such an assertion carries its own refutation with it. Nevertheless, at the outset of our inquiry, we must premise that the standpoint from which we moderns regard Nature is altogether different from that of the ancients. How could it be otherwise ? The eyes with which a youth looks Out upon the world are not those with which an old man contemplates it. The one seeks in it a scene for action ; the other a place of rest. And the parallel holds good, so far, for the youth and maturity of the race. Moreover, since the advent of Him who came to give an understanding to man 2 on this as on other things. Him who "read into" the lilies of the field that sweetest of all sweet meanings, the assurance of the Father's love, of the Great Artist's joy in His handiwork — Nature has worn an aspect very different from that which she presented to the ancient world ; the underlying unity, the peacefulness, the restfulness of Nature, were voices not heard in antiquity. But to recognise this — to say that the ancients did not hear the deepest, sweetest voices of Nature ; that in this as in other things the ancients " with- out us " were not " made perfect " ^ ; to say with a great poet of our own day that " The race of man Keceives life in parts to live in a whole " — is one thing ; to deny to the ancients the " seeing eye " is another. There is, we take it, abundant evidence to prove that if the ancients did not find in Nature that subjective pleasure which she affords to us moderns, yet they were keenly alive to her objective beauty. Let us, however, first examine the arguments of those who deny to them this seeing eye, and let us note that such arguments are mainly of a negative character. ^ Die Auswahl einer Blumenflur Mit weiser Wahl in einen Strauss gebunden — So trat die erste Kunst aus der Natur ; Jetzt wurden Strausse schon in einen Kranz gewunden. Und eine zweite hohre Kunst erstand Aus Schopfungen der Menschenhand, — {Die Kilnstler.) For the very pretty use of flowers made by the later Greeks, see the account of the Anthesteria, or " Feast of Flowers," in Hellas, at p. 240. 2 I St. John V. 20. ^ Heb. xi. 40. 72 THE LAND (i) First, then, we have the literary difficulty. If the Greeks had a love for Nature, it is asked, why did they not introduce passages in praise of the beauty of Nature into their literature ? " Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh " ; and, as a matter of fact, the purely eulogistic passages in Greek literature, such as the beautiful little sketch of the plane-tree by the Ilissus in the Phse,drus of Plato, already referred to (p. 38), or the no less beautiful picture of his birthplace by Sophocles in the (Edipus at Colonus, are few and far between. A weighty indictment ! — how shall we answer it ? We oppose our adver- saries on their own ground. A literary question must be fought out between critics, and on our side we bring forward an argument of one of the most famous champions of modern times. In some very well-known passages in his Laocoon (^§ 16-18), Lessing has conclusively shown that the ancients, or rather the great masters among the ancients, guarded much more rigidly than do we moderns the boundaries of the respective arts. The proper function of Poetry they conceived to be the narration of actions, that of Painting the description of visible objects. Time is the sphere of the poet, Space that of the painter. It is inevitable that these two functions and spheres should overlap to a great extent ; nevertheless, says Lessing : "I find that Homer paints nothing but progressive actions ; objects and single things he paints only through their share in these actions." In other words, objects of all kinds, including those which go to make up pictures of natural beauty, take a secondary place. Thus if the poet would describe to us the Shield of Achilles, with all its varied devices — its sun, moon, and stars, and great river of ocean, its pastures and sleek herds, its corn-lands, its cities, and joyous vintage festivals — he does not weary us with a minute account of the Shield itself, but lets us see it as it grows out of rough metal, stage by stage, under the hand of the glorious lame god, Hephaestus, with his bellows and furnace, his crucibles, anvil, and sturdy hammer {Iliad, xviii. 468 et seq.). The scenes upon the Shield, beautiful as they are, have no independent place in the poet's mind. They are all subordinate to the action and aim of Hephaestus — the making of a gift which shall be worthy of himself, and also worthily express his gratitude to Thetis, the mother of Achilles. This example must suffice ; but any one who will take the trouble to look through his Homer will see for himself that Lessing is right. Homer (for a very good reason, which we shall discover presently) is all action. Descrip- tions of natural beauty are brought in only for purposes of illustrating the action in hand or as a foil or a background to that action. We say then, on the first count, that the great reason why we find so few independent descrip- tions of scenery in Greek poetry is, that the Greeks did not consider such descriptions as coming within the sphere of poetry, properly so called. (2) Next appears the artistic difficulty. Granted (say the art-critics) that elaborate pictures of Nature had no legitimate place in Greek literature, how is it that they are so poorly represented in Greek art ? Why were the Greeks so very far behind us moderns in landscape painting ? This, indeed, is a most curious phenomenon, and one which at first sight appears inexplicable. Nevertheless, like many other difficulties, it vanishes when looked in the face. We bring forward as our first witness here an art critic who has devoted years to this very subject — landscape in ancient art — and has studied it on the spot, in the country itself — Karl Woermann (Bie Landschaft in der Kunst der Alter Volker, part ii., chap. 1). The result of his studies and his journeyings may be summed up in a nutshell, thus : — The reason that the Greeks did not excel as landscape-painters is, simply, that their land is not one which lends itself naturally to such delineation. BEAUTY 73 To understand this we must recollect that the culture and progress of Greece were thrown, as we have seen, mainly on the eastern side of the land, and consequently it was on this side — especially at Athens and Corinth — that the great art-development took place. Now, what are the characteristics of the scenery on the eastern side of Greece ? Bare rocks, bald mountain-peaks, a jagged, strongly indented coast, island fragments — all made beautiful, no doubt, by the deep blue of sea and sky and the effect of the sun-rays playing through the translucent atmosphere, but, nevertheless, all presenting an indi- viduality and a fragmentariness which, far from inviting depiction on a flat surface, most strenuously resist it. The very scenery of Greece has the character which we find implanted in the people ; it resents concentration, centralisation. Each mountain-peak, each headland, each island makes, as it were, an art experiment of its own, stands out by and for itself like a work of sculpture, and demands to be looked at on all sides and treated on its own merits. Vegetation, even, on this side of Greece shows the same independence ; it is met with, not so much in great masses as in isolated clumps or solitary trees, often of great beauty, which seem to claim attention for themselves. Far, therefore, from uniting the landscape into one great whole, vegetation on the eastern side rather heightens the impression of detachedness and indi- viduality. Thus, there is imprinted on the eastern side of Greece an intensely Plastic character, and this, as we know, was precisely the stamp which the Greek national art-genius took. From the moment when the Greeks threw off the swaddling-bands of oriental imitation, to the time of the Macedonian supremacy, throughout the best period, that is, of their art, they were beyond all else. Sculptors. Had their lot been cast in a land whose softly flowing coast-lines, gently swelling wooded heights, and general massiveness rather than sharpness of contour, lent itself readily to delineation on canvas, the art- result would probably have been different. As it is, the fact remains that, far from being irresponsive to the influence of Nature, the national genius, in the direction which it actually took, was most faithful and true to the nature actually surrounding it.^ And what shall we say, moreover, when we reflect that, in the opinion of another of the best modern art-critics (H. Brunn), some of the Greek sculptures were probably designed to represent laridscapes 1 This view is easily under- stood when we remember that, to the mind of a pious Greek, every object in nature had its divine representative ; every river its god ; every fountain its nymph. Hence, the sculptured figure of this divine being naturally took the place of the scene itself. Thus, Brunn interprets the figures on the western pediment of the Parthenon as personifications of the different features of the landscape of Attica {Die Bilclwerke des Parthenon, p. 23 e^ seq.). According to him, the river Ilissus, the Cephissus of Eleusis, the fountain Callirrhoe, the mountains Cithseron, Parnes, Pentelicus, Hymettus, with other Attic scenes, are represented there, the centre naturally personifying the Acropolis, as the religious and political heart of the land. The meaning of the groups on the pediments of the Parthenon has been variously and diversely interpreted. This explanation is, however, as reasonable as any hitherto propounded, when the design of the building is taken into consideration, viz., the glorifying of Athena as the patroness specially of Attica, her chosen land. If Brunn's view be correct, it confirms the foregoing remarks. Sculpture in Greece, on this ^ Other questions as to the way in which Greek art was influenced by the special nature around, such as the bearing of the transparent atmosphere on the subject of perspective, will be best discussed when we come to consider the Greek experiments in Art. 74 THE LAND assumption, actually took the place of landscape-painting, and fulfilled the design of the latter art in the minds of the Greeks themselves. (3) Finally, we are met by the — apparently — common-sense argument : Why, if the Greeks loved the country, did they crowd together into cities 1 Well, city life had certainly great attractions for the Greeks, and the Greeks of the classical period — on whose habits our critics have formed the objection quoted — were certainly a very sociable and society-loving people. But may we not find another reason for this supposed preference for city life in the fact that they had practically no choice 1 How long would our own enthusiasm for Nature last, if it had to be maintained in a region exposed every summer to the ravages of an invading army, as was the case in Attica during the Pelopon- nesian War*?! — a common-sense question to be taken into account in a " common-sense " argument. We may be sure that all Greeks, even later Greeks, were not so enamoured of the study of Man as was Socrates, and as for the first Hellenes, there is clear evidence they lived face to face with Nature, and loved her too. Now that we have considered the three negative objections to our position, and shown, as we believe, good reason why the Greeks did not write descriptive poetry, why they did not excel in landscape-painting, why they did not prefer country to city, let us just look at certain very positive facts, which will reveal to us a good deal of what they really did think about Nature, and what they saw in her. (i) First, then, we, too, bring forward our literary argument. We, too, maintain that, " Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh," and we point to the testimony of the great univritten literature of the Hellenes, the Language which they built up before written signs, and with these what we technically call " Literature," came into use among them. If many a word coined in the youth of the world may justly be regarded as a " poem " in itself, so may many a Greek place-name — the name of mountain, or river, or headland — be described as a "landscape" in itself, a scene in which some feature of nature is seized and treasured up. This is a subject so rich and full that we must reserve it for consideration in a more fitting place. ^ Here it is enough to note that such names exist in abundance, and that they could not by any possibility have been coined by a people with " no eye " for nature. But we go further than this. We say that, just as the influence of the Greek religion may be felt in Greek sculpture, so also may it be traced as affecting in a curious way Greek literature. The fact that every object had its divine representative precluded, in great measure, descriptions of the land- scape (Woermann). Thus, where a modern poet would wax eloquent over day- break, the rosy flushing of the sky, and the awaking of earth to new life, the Greek poet simply said that Eos — "rosy-fingered," " white- winged," "saffron- robed," "gold-enthroned," Eos — "the Dawn," had appeared. But we go further still than this. We maintain that a love of nature may be shewn in a hundred ways besides direct eulogy of nature ; and we say that such a love of nature is the essence of Homer. It is his very life-breath ; he cannot repress it. " But," says the reader, " how do you reconcile this assertion with the criticism of Lessing, which you have just brought forward as true ? " In judging any poet, we reply, the circumstances under which his work arose must always be taken into account ; and when we recollect that the Iliad grew ^ Thucydides says expressly that the country people of Attica felt keenly the trial of removal to Athens during the War (ii. 16). 2 See the section on Language. BEAUTY 75 up for the delectation of an audience composed almost conclusively of men of action, we can see very plainly how the rule pointed out by Lessing came to be a rule. Lengthy eulogies of scenery would have had no interest for the warrior knights and the huntsmen of the Heroic Age ; such men would have been simply bored by them. The poet or rhapsodist was bound to respect the susceptibilities of his audience. To have been a " bore," would have been to lose his influence. But, then, on the other hand, Homer was a poet, a maker, a creator. What, then, about that Inner Self whose dictates the poet is bound to respect more than the whims of any audience ? Homer was a true poet, and as such in sympathy with nature. The " shadowy mountains and the echoing sea" were never very far from his thoughts, and speak of them he must. How, then, does he get over the difficulty ? Genius will always find a way of escape. How does he at once satisfy his hearers and liberate his own soul ? By his wonderful Similes — the most striking and truthful of nature-pictures ever drawn. The Iliad is full of metaphors ; it has been computed to contain some 1 80, and of these;by far the greater proportion are taken directly from nature. And, let us note, they are mostly pictures of nature in action. Homer understood his audience. Those grim old warriors, who would not have tolerated a description of any object in nature merely for the sake of itself (such a description would have seemed to them perfectly unnecessary and tedious, seeing that they already k7iew it), could yet be roused into a furore of enthusiasm, such as we read of in later days in the Ion of Plato, by an association of this very object with some action or deed, with which they them- selves were in perfect sympathy. They, too, were Hellenes, and had a love for nature, in their own way. And how adroitly does Homer use this point of vantage ; how skilfully does he introduce his little bits of description ; how careful he is that he shall never be wearisome, that, as Lessing says, they shall always be subordinate to the narrative ; with what a verve do they dash in and carry all before them ! Then, when he feels sure that he has roused his audi- tors, and can count upon their patience, how he delights in his art, how he paints in details (often quite unnecessary for the purposes of the simile), and revels in his own reproductions of nature ! Simile follows hard upon simile. They pour from his brain, to use one of his own metaphors (Iliad, ii. 87), as pour the tribes of honey-bees from out the hollow rock, forth -swarming ever new, and fly, thick- clustered, on the flowers of spring. At every point of interest in the narrative, at every crisis in the fate of his heroes, Homer sees his opportunity, and is ready with his "Even as," or his "Like to." So we find that there are no elaborated similes in the first book of the Iliad,^ — the poet's hearers are not yet interested in the story ; but no sooner is this effected, no sooner are poet and audience thoroughly warmed to the matter in hand, than they begin. And once Homer has his flowing-haired Achseans fairly on the march, how the similes buzz about us, to be sure ! The poet has his revenge for the repression of the first book, and sends forth in the second, no fewer than five nature-pictures, " all in a breath," in the space of two-and- twenty lines {Iliad, ii. 455-476). So much as to the manner ; then as to the matter, the Stoff of his similes. Leaving on one side the pictures drawn from animal life, which are among the boldest and most striking, we find painted for us with rare truth and fidelity all those phenomena of a mountain-land with which we have already become acquainted. Fire in the forest on a mountain-side ; clouds motionless on a ^ Very perfect short ones, however ; as when Apollo in his wrath descends from Olympus "like to night" (47), or when silver-footed Thetis rises from the grey sea "like a mist" (359). See also, for a little bit of nature, the history of the sceptre of Achilles (234 et seq.). 76 THE LAND mountain-ridge while the might of the North-wind sleepeth ; mountain torrents rushing furiously in winter-flood to the plain, bearing dry oaks, pines, and much soil to the sea ; the boulder carried headlong with them ; the crashing of the winds amid the trees of the forest : each and .all are used to illustrate some point of the story (Iliad, ii. 455 ; v. 522 ; xi. 492 ; xiii. 136 ; xvi. 765). The simile of the boulder, brought to a halt in its eager descent, although by no means one of the most beautiful in Homer, affords a capital example of the poet's Schwung or " go." It illustrates Hector's onset at the ships of the Greeks, and the check which he meets with : — ^ " On pressed the Trojan masses : Hector led, Impetuous rushing, as a mighty stone Kent from the rock ; which from some mountain brow A torrent has dislodged, with furious flood Breaking the holdings of the giant crag : Bounding on high it flies ; beneath it yields The crashing wood ; on, ever on, it speeds Unchecked, apace, until it reach the plain : Then stays, perforce, its haste, and rolls no more." — Iliad, xiii. 136-142. Then how beautifully, how pitifully does the poet describe the death of his heroes ! When they fall, they fall like a poppy in a garden, that droopeth its head aside, heavy with fruit and with the showers of spring ; or like a young olive which a man has reared beside the water- springs : blooming and beautiful it stands, just bursting into white blossom, when suddenly there cometh a wind with much storm, wrencheth it from its place, and layeth it low ; or they are like to an ash-tree on the crest of a hill seen from afar : hewn down by the axe, it bringeth its delicate foliage to the ground ; or they fall as falls the oak, or the silver poplar, or the lofty pine, felled by the shipwrights on the hills with newly-whetted axe to build their craft {Iliad, y\\\. 306; xvii. 53; xiii. 178, 389 ; xvi. 482). But most beavitiful of all to the mind of us English folk are the sea-pictures of Homer ; and, verily, we think that the breath of his salt spray and the dash of his great waves on the rocky beach, have something to do with that at-liomeness which we feel in Homer. Just as with the phenomena of the mountains, so are the features of the sea brought into the action of the story. The strange, silent, resolute march of the Danaans before the attack, for instance, is as when a billow away out at sea first reareth its crest (in silence), then, breaking on the land with mighty roar, it rounds with arching head the rocky points, and spitteth forth afar the salt sea-foam. Or, when the Greeks themselves meet the onset of the foe, they present a front compact as a tower, like to a huge steep rock hard by the grey sea — a rock that abides the swift paths of the shrill winds and the swollen waves that break foaming upon it {Iliad, iv. 424; XV. 618). Or, again, look at this picture of the waves driven before the winds ; how it intensifies Hector's impetuous rush ! — " As clouds that of the white South bred Are by the West wind driven, what time he smites With headlong squall. On rolls the swelling wave, High flies the scattered spray beneath the force Of the wide- wandering wind. So frequent fell, Vanquished by Hector's might, his f oemen's heads." '^ — Iliad, xi. 304 et seq. 1 The translation is from the admirable Similes of Homer, by the Rev. W. C. Green (1877). 2 Mr. Green's translation, op. cit. See also another very beautiful passage descriptive of the lull before a storm {Iliad, xiv. 16 et seq.), where, in illustration of Nestor's irresolution, the poet speaks of the " dumb wave " awaiting the rising of the winds. -BEAUTY 77 The sea was known to Homer in all its varied moods and phases. He too calls it, as did our own ancestors, "the barren," ^ " the unharvested," " the unvin- taged " ; he, too, knows it as Thalassa, " the storm-tossed winter sea," which can keep a man prisoner, far from wife and home ; but well he knows it also as Pontos, "the path," and many a time must he have sailed over its " watery ways," on its " broad back." Then, what beautiful epithets he coins for it ! If it is to him the grey sea, or the loud-roaring, or the black sea, it is also the hoary, the wine-dark, the violet-hued, the purple, the echoing, the glittering, the boundless, the divine — and divine to the poet, in all ages, the sea must be. In yet another way Homer knew the sea — he knew it in a way which some critics would deny to him. Homer, they tell us, is " utilitarian " in his allusions to nature. What a nice word this "utilitarian" is, to be sure! how admirably it brings the Great Unknown down to the level of current criticism. Let us consider this : In the very opening of the Iliad when Agamemnon has dismissed the priest of Apollo with hard and contemptuous words — what does the old man do? Make his way to Troy, and tell his pitiful tale to Hector, the favourite of Apollo ? This is what he ought to have done, to keep the theory of the aforesaid critics upright. But what does Homer tell us that he did ? — " Silently he fared along the shore of the loud-roaring sea." And there, beside the tossing waves — to Homer, as to us, a reflection of the troubled soul — he tells his grief to Apollo himself. Verily, this one line outweighs volumes of shallow criticism (c/. H. Motz, Uehei' die Empfindung der Natursclionheit hei den Alien). The counterpart to this picture of dejection is given in the account of the return voyage of the Achaeans after expiation has been made for Agamemnon's insolence, and Chryseis of the fair-cheeks has been restored to her father. No sooner has rosy-fingered Dawn appeared, than the Far-Darter sends a favouring gale, and they set up the mast and the white sails swell in the breeze, and the dark wave shouts aloud around the keel as the ship speeds along to the wide camp of the Achaeans. Could • any description be more beautiful ? — bright Dawn, the white-winged ship, the glorious breeze, the dark wave shouting, " singing " aloud for joy, around the ship. All nature is in harmony with the glad hearts of the Achaeans ; now at length the wrath of the Far-Darter is appeased {Iliad, i. 477 et seq.). We might go on to tell of a certain scene in the Odyssey — the vine-hung grotto of Calypso, with its violet meadows and its silver streams — a scene which the poet describes as so beautiful that even a deathless god — Hermes — pauses before it in wonder and admiration (v. 73). But time presses, and we have said enough, we trow, to prove that Homer is the best interpreter both of himself and of his people. In his pages the love of nature is writ so large that he that runs may read, unless of set purpose he close his eyes. (2) Then, secondly, we, too, bring forward our artistic argument, and we main- tain that the peculiar development which Art took in Greece was due, in great measure, to the peculiar influence of Greek landscape. As regards this, there is not only the testimony of Greek sculpture, already considered, but of Greek architecture. To attribute the rise of these sister arts among the Greeks to the fact that in their marble-quarries abundance of superb material lay ready to hand, would be a sorry piece of logic. Undoubtedly, this very materialistic factor fits into the argument, that " the land was made for the people, the people for the land " ; without Greek marble, Greek artists could not have ^ See footnote to p, 10. 78 THE LAND wrought as they did. But of far more importance is it for us to note, that the grand forms around — the Greek mountains, and the glowing hues in which their rocky peaks are bathed — stamped themselves, so to speak, upon the national genius. How many generations must have drunk in the beauty of the sunsets on the hills of Athens before a Pheidias appeared ! Had the clear- cut outlines of Greek hills nothing to do with that exquisite sense of proportion, of symmetry, which is so characteristic of all Greek art-work ?i Had the radiant tints of the " violet-crowned " city no share in suggesting the brilliant colouring wherewith the pure white marble of a Greek temple was crowned ? This brilliant colouring — so strange to us of the North, so appropriate to the glowing South — colouring " which threw around the Parthenon a joyous and festive beauty " — was but a reproduction of what Greek artists saw in the temple of nature. (3) Finally, there is the testimony of the Greek religion, and that in three ways : — (a) The very essence of the Greek religion lies in the fact that it grew out of the closest observation of nature — it was emphatically a religion which sought to find God in nature. The testimony of Greek mythology as to this is so overwhelming that we must leave it for consideration in its own place. Here we would only think for a moment of the beautiful myths which bewail the fall of the year, and express the joyfulness of the returning spring. (b) The subject-matter of such legends is, as we know, common to almost all nations ; but the influence of the special environment is visible in the form which the Greek versions take. That symmetry and sense of proportion already referred to, as displayed in Greek art, meets us also in Greek mythology. The myths of Hellas, as Welcker {Gr. Gotterlehre, i. p. 42) long ago pointed out, are remarkable for the absence of exaggeration, and in their clearly-chiselled form present a marvellous contrast both to the monstrosities produced by the Oriental imagination, and the mythologies of the North, grotesque and shapeless as the fogs and twilight that gave them birth. The Hellenic myths are perfectly symmetrical, and kept within bounds like their mountain-valleys or their sea itself, running up either into sharply- marked gulfs and bays, or, where stretching out into expanse, often limited by a visible background of hilly coast. (c) Lastly, a very remarkable key to Greek feeling is to be found in the sites chosen for temples and sacred places. The Greeks, as we know, grudged nothing, spared no cost in their religion. What was offered to the gods must be the best of its kind ; the purest marble, the highest artistic skill, were pressed into their service. We may, therefore, take for granted that the sites chosen for the sanctuaries on which so much care was lavished were selected with a purpose. And this was really the case. Wherever we find a spot peculiarly suited by its natural majesty to impress the worshipper with the solemnity befitting the presence of deity, there, precisely, do we find a temple or a shrine. Take one instance, a wild and solitary glen, lying in the heart of a moun- tain. At its western end the valley presents the appearance of a deep, semi- circular recess, a rocky amphitheatre, rising gradually from a stream which runs like a silver thread in a dark ravine at its foot, up to the mountain-wall. ' " The Greek mountains have, in part, in their 'working' on the mind the effect of Architecture" (Welcker, Oriechische Gotterlehre, i. p. 40). The whole of Welcker's section on the influence of the Land is most admirable, and to it we are largely indebted. No better summary has ever been written. See also Julius Hare's Guesses at Truth, i. p. 91 et seq. (ist ed.), quoted by Welcker in loc. BEAUTY 79 This wall, which forms the background, is in one part cleft in twain from top to bottom. The sides of the rent tower perpendicularly upwards in two tremendous precipices, between which is a yawning chasm, one of the most stupendous rifts in Europe. Thus, in all its savage grandeur, does the lonely glen of Kastri lie, hidden from the outer world, between the rugged arms of Parnassus and Cirphis, at the present day ; and thus did it lie before the eyes of those first Hellenes. What did they think of the spot? Did they pass it by with indifference ? The traveller approaching some 2,300 years ago could have supplied the answer. Suddenly, on turning a corner in the mountain-road, there would have burst upon him a vision of unequalled splendour : the great rocky theatre filled with the habitations of men, rising one above another, row upon row, tier upon tier, on wall- supported terraces, from the river to the mountain. Above, on one of the highest points, is a magnificent temple, the centre of attraction, its marble fagade of dazzling whiteness glancing under the morning sun in the reflected brightness of the glittering mountain-wall, which seems to gather as in a focus the sun's rays, and flash them back upon the scene beneath, lighting up countless objects of beauty, gods and heroes in bronze and in marble, fountains shaded by spreading plane-trees, laurel, and olive, tliesauroi pro- tecting national treasures committed to them. Here is a Lesche,i painted by the hand of a Polygnotus ; here a theatre, a Stadium, both the scene of many a stirring contest for the laurel-wreath ; there a Stoa adorned with sterner trophies, shields, and beaks of brass, tokens of fierce conflicts waged on land and sea. On the western ridge, with its grand view over the Amphissian Plain beneath, bounded by the Corinthian Gulf with the Arcadian Cyllene in the distance, is the meeting-place of the Amphictyonig League ; on the east is a group of temples. In the background, towering above the rock-hewn . fountain, Castalia, at their base, rise the two mountain peaks, Nauplia and Hyampeia, the giant guardians of the sanctuary, dedicated to the presiding deities of the place, Apollo and Dionysus, the Summer and the Winter-Sun. Such was Delphi, rocky Pytho, the treasure-house of the archer, Phoebus Apollo, as it lay in the olden time, the " centre " of the then civilised world (Paus., X.; Plut., de Pythice orac. ; Leake, Northern Greece^ ii. p. 550 et seq.\ Bursian, op. cit., i. p. ijo et seq.). Was there no " eye " or appreciation of natural grandeur displayed in the selection of the site? Take away the rocky amphitheatre, the gleaming Phsedriades, the awe and seclusion lent by the encircling mountain-walls ; place the temple in a plain, among the ordinary haunts of men — and, notwithstand- ing its own magnificence, its countless treasures of art, the illusion would be gone. The Hellenes knew this better than either you or I. Time would fail to enlarge on other and similar instances which rise to mind : the lonely shrine of Apollo the Helper, amid the mountains at Bassse, with its mossy oaks and its magnificent outlook over the whole of Southern Peloponnesus and the sea ; the valley of Olympia, with its coronet of low, encircling hills ; the stern Nemean Valley, with the altar-hill of Apesas ; the dark glen of Lebadeia, with its mysterious subterranean waters ; the " queenly" rock of the Athenian Acropolis, with its group of temples, crowned by silvery haze. Enough has been said to show that the Hellenes had, to say the least, quite as keen an appreciation of scenic effect, and the artistic possibilities afforded by nature, as any of their modern critics. * Connecting now the threefold link of evidence to be found in Literature, Art, and Religion, we cannot fail to see that, not only did the land answer 1 A sort of club-house or lounge. ^o THE LAND every requirement of those who were destined to be experimenters in the domain of the beautiful, but that these experimenters responded to its influence. Granted that the root of the matter lay within themselves, the root, Creative Energy, was nourished and strengthened by what it fed upon, Natural Beauty. " A grand nature elevates, a beautiful nature refines " (Welcker). Those who think otherwise would have us believe that the Hellenes, if their lot had been cast, say, amid the dreary monotony of the Russian steppes, would still have produced a mythology full of poetry, and erected a Parthenon. The truth is, that the Hellene drank in natural beauty as he breathed the common air, and would probably have considered it as little necessary to rhap- sodize over the one as over the other. The instinct to seize and appropriate the beautiful was as innate in him as was the instinct to reproduce what he thus appropriated ; but the receptive and the creative instincts operated, like all laws, both in the natural and the spiritual world, in their own way. " One Spirit — diversities of operations." Amongst ourselves, the beauty of nature impels one man to pour out his thoughts on paper ; another, to reproduce them on canvas. The Greek, in all the splendid . audacity of the spring-time of Art embodied his, above all, in marble ; and well it is for us moderns that he chose precisely this mode of experimenting. To sum up: What shall we say then to these things? If we find a land marvellously adapted to the people destined to inhabit it : — 1. A land, which shielded its people when as yet, in their infant days, they could not shield themselves. 2. A land, which provided that each race among the people should have fair play and full scope for its own individuality. 3. A land, which was so placed that its people might have free intercourse with the older civilisation, and little intercourse with barbarism. 4. A land, which offered the conditions of climate best fitted to develop energy of character. 5. A land, whose natural resources were such as to encourage enterprise and self-reliance. 6. A land, whose natural features were calculated to stimulate thought and investigation. 7. A land, finally, clothed in the rarest beauty, and stored with material ready to the hand of the artist. If we find all these conditions grouped together in one spot, what can we say but echo, though with a truer meaning, the conviction of Plato? Not Athena, but that Power of whose wisdom Athena was but an earthly shadow, Himself chose out the land for the people, and determined beforehand the bounds of their habitation — the mountains, the seas, and all that these implied to Hellas. If no visible ark of the covenant was borne before the Hellenes as before the Hebrews, certain it is that the same gracious All-Father had gone " before " them to seek out, not, indeed, a place of rest, but a place wherein, without let or hindrance, they might work their work. Finally, there is yet one feature of this wonderful land which remains to be noted, and that is — its size. Greece is one of the smallest countries of Europe — smaller than Ireland, smaller than Scotland. ^ When we recollect, 1 The area of Portugal =35,260 sq. miles. ,, Ireland =32,513 ,, ,, Scotland =26,014 ,, ,, ,, Ancient Greece excluding Epeirus, but including Euboea BEAUTY 8 1 moreover, that the space, small as it appears, was subdivided amongst a num- ber of independent States, each of which wrought out an independent history, when we reflect that the extent of Attica, that State which wrought out the greatest history of all, was only 740 square miles, or one-eighth the area of Yorkshire, 1 the contrast between the insignificance of the space and the significance of what was accomplished upon it heightens our conceptions of a people who have left a memory to fill all time. It seems, indeed, as though Providence, foreseeing the march of events — the discovery of a new world, with its boundless extent, its inexhaustible physical resources, and the infla- tion of ideas that would follow — had resolved to read a lesson to future ages by exhibiting on a few barren rocks, and in the microcosm which we call Hellas, the true law of historic proportion, the infinite and eternal superiority of mind over matter. ^ The area of Yorkshire = 5983 sq. miles. ,, „ Attica =: 740 „ §11— GREEK LANGUAGE FIRST EXPERIMEKT: THE LANGUAGE *' A TEULY remarkable experiment ! " objects an aggrieved reader. " Have you not just asserted that the Aryans brought with them into Greece a language so rich, so perfectly coined and stamped, that even to this day (to use the words you quoted) it is 'the very joy of the grammarian's heart?' What credit, forsooth, can belong under these circumstances to the Greeks? Once formed, language came naturally to them. From out a mountain of prologue, forth creeps — a mouse ! " Nay ! say rather, " Forth flies a nightingale ! " But are you quite sure that the Greek language as it has come down to us "came naturally" to the Greeks? How, then, do you account for the fact that no grand Thracian language, no rich Phrygian literatut-e, has likewise come down to us? The Thracians and the Phrygians were near neighbours of the Greeks, placed under very similar natural conditions. Both the Thracian and the Phrygian language belong, like the Greek, to the Aryan family. If the " natural " theory be true, it ought to hold good all round. No ! so far from a grand language coming " by nature " {phusei, as the Greeks would say) to any nation, it is, on the contrary, its first work of art (G. Curtius, 6rr. Ety., E. T., i, p. 26). The development of its language, says a great thinker, Wilhelm von Humboldt, is the first and most important step in the culture of any nation. It is the step which conditions all the rest, and this advance was made by the Greeks in the early period of which we have no record, except such as is to be found in the language itself. The oldest specimens of the Greek language which have come down to us are the Homeric poems ; but, as we have seen, centuries of development were at work on the language before it reached the stage of perfection in which it appears in Homer. Having said so much to justify our treating language as an experiment, we must nevertheless admit that, to a certain extent, our aggrieved reader is also in the right. The Greeks did not make their language ; they only developed it. They did not create roots any more than the jeweller creates the gold which he manipulates. They did not even set to work upon crude material, for it was not rough ore that the Grseco-Aryans brought with them into Greece ; the Aryan word-nuggets had already been purified, dressed, and shaped. What, then, did they do ? — wherein lies the experimenting ? In this, that they threw the nuggets afresh into the crucible of reflection and transformed them. To use what is perhaps a better simile, the Aryan roots and word-forms struck deep into the soil of Greek thought, and brought forth these new and more beautiful blossoms and fruit. Not, however, without effort on the part of the thinkers. " The Greeks," said George Curtius, " did not make their language themselves ; they had a rich inheritance, and they marvellously transfigured it " (Curtius, loc, cit). This " inheritance " came, as we have seen, from the Aryan mother- tongue, that old language that " died on giving birth to her daughters," and in the " transfiguring," the results of the process by which Greek became differ- FIRST EXPERIMENT: THE LANGUAGE 83 entiated from her sisters — the Sanscrit, Persian, Latin, Teutonic, Slavonic, and Lithuanian tongues — lies the gist of the experiment. Each of the sister- nations had to lead her own life, just as each human being has to live his. However much a child may receive from his parents at starting, his own character depends entirely on the use he may make of what he starts with. So in regard to language the inherent weakness or strength of a people shews itself in what it makes out of the word-talents entrusted to it. In this respect the Hellenes gave a glorious promise of their future. Surrounded on all sides by tribes that have not left a trace of any permanent culture, they alone struggled upwards (F. G. Welcker, Gi\ Gotterlehre^ i. 27), and worked out a medium capable of communicating the highest and noblest thoughts which man can conceive — a language worthy to be the true Ohristophoros, the Christ- bearer, the carrier of the " good news " of the revelation of God to man. We are apt to associate the development of a language exclusively with that of its written literature, but it cannot too often be emphasised that Greek existed in its beauty before writing was employed at all.^ From the very first the people seem to have loved their language and to have striven both to develop and to maintain it in its purity. From first to last the " web of words, deftly woven," exerted an enormous power over the emotional Hellene. He was no true hero who was not great in word as well as in deed, mighty in the Assembly as in the battle. The posses- sion of eloquence could even atone for that worst of deficiencies in the eyes of a Greek — lack of beauty, of personal grace and charm. So in the famous scene in the third book of the Iliad, where the old king Priam, with Helen and the Trojan elders, is surveying the Greek army in the plain below, and the con- trast between the tall, dignified Agamemnon, beautiful and royal, and the short, rugged, broad-shouldered Odysseus, is discussed, Antenor tells the story of the embassy of Menelaus and Odysseus to Troy. He relates how goodly Menelaus had towered above all present in the height of his stature, and how clearly and to the point in few words he had spoken ; how, when Odysseus of many devices rose up, he stood and looked down with eyes fixed on the ground, and moved his staff neither backwards nor forwards, but held it stiff like to a . man that knows naught ; one would take him for a churl, and no better than a fool. But when he sent forth his great voice from his chest, and words like to the snowflakes in winter, then indeed could no mortal vie with Odysseus, nor then did we wonder, beholding Odysseus' aspect, that he was the chosen spokesman of the Achaians {Iliad, iii. 2156^ seg.). And Odysseus himself, when, by reason of his weather-worn appearance, he is made the butt of insolence in the Phseacian assembly, answers the malapert youth who has attacked him in the following singularly beautiful passage : — " Stranger, thou hast not spoken well ; thou art like a man presumptuous. So true it is that the gods do not give every gracious gift to all, neither shapeli- ness, nor wisdom, nor skilled speech. For one man is feebler than another in presence, yet the god crowns his words with beauty and men behold him and rejoice, and his speech runs surely on his way with a sweet modesty, and he shines forth among the gathering of his people, and as he passes through the town men gaze on him as a god " \0d., viii. 166 et seq.). If the orator is thus treated by his countrymen in the eighth century, we need not be surprised when society grows more complex to find the building up of the State itself attributed to him. In the great ode to which we have so often referred (Soph., Antig. 354 et seq.), Sophocles reckons as one of the achieve- ^ Niebuhr maintained that the "golden age" of Greek was before a book had come into existence [Kleine Schrift, xi. 8), 84 GREEK LANGUAGE ments of man that he has taught himself, developed " speech and wind-swift thought, and all the moods that mould a State " ; and in this idea the poet is followed by the philosopher, Aristotle {Pol., I. ii., § 12). What the Hellenes thought about language is indeed best seen in the one fact that in Greek logos means not only ivord but reason, the highest and best gift of man as distinguished from the brutes {ta aloga = " creatures without reason "). A people who regarded " words " as the outward sign of the inward gift were not likely either to coin or to apply them indiscriminately or at haphazard. In later days speculations as to the origin of words — what they called etymo-logy = "the truth about words " — whether names sprang up of them- selves, of necessity, or were given arbitrarily by some one, seem to have been very attractive to the Greeks. Socrates (or Socrates-Plato in Crat., for it is impossible to separate that " double-star ") holds that " names have by nature a truth, and," he adds, "not every man knows how to give a name." The philosopher Democritus, a contemporary of Socrates (about 430 B.C.), describes words most picturesquely as " statues in sound." Heraclitus, another philo- sopher, who flourished about a century earlier, calls words the " shadows of things," images which reflect things and thoughts as a clear lake mirrors the *' surrounding hills" (F. Max Miiller, Sci. of Lang., ii. 334). Such meditative views of words however, beautiful as they seemed to the philosopher, do not suit the poet. To Homer, as to Sophocles, thought is " wind-swift," and its bearers, too, must be " winged." Homer's " winged words " are heralds sent forth with a message of peace and goodwill, or arrows launched by his heroes in keen, trenchant style, \Here, then, we have four difl[erent views of wh at the Greeks themselves took words to b e : truth itself , sculptured thoughts, deep shadows, winged It would not be an uninteresting task to attempt to range certain words under these different categories. One word rises unbidden in the memory as if belonging to all four, Aiithropos (man), " the upward looker." ^ Have we not in this word at once the "shadow" of a deep "truth," a "winged" reminder to each one of the race, a perfect piece of " sculpture " worthy to be placed beside that grand old Aryan word, Man, " the Thinker." True, the original meaning of the word was in later days neglected, like that of many another significant name. Nevertheless, arithropos, " the Upward Looker ; the aspirer to all that is noble and true," still stands out across the ages, for all that have eyes to see, "with upturned face and outstretched hands," a , majestic thought-statue. If we would, however, see in all their fulness what " words " were to the Hellenes, it is to Pindar that we must turn. The " journeys in the Muses' car," similes, metaphors, turnings of speech, by which he sets forth his vocation, his manner of working, his aims, are astounding. " No statuary " he, that he " should fashion images to rest idly on their pedestals!" {Nem., v. i et seq.). Nay ! of living glowing material will he fashion Ms images, and they shall be borne beyond seas " on the glorious gale of song." From every part of human life his analogies are taken. Now he bids " sow the seed of splendid words " ; again, his " shepherd tongue " would fain keep part of a brilliant flock in fold (ibid., Neyn., i. 13; 01. x. 8); now he is "labouring with his hand in the choice garden of the Graces" ; anon following the " Muses' plough" (ibid., Nem., X. 26 ; 01., ix. 26) ; now with sweet lute he " weaves the woof " of song ; now he can raise a " pillar whiter than Parian stone" {ibid., Nem., ix. 44, 811). ^ So Bergk (Lit.-Gesch., i. p. 127 ; note 206). FIRST EXPERIMENT: THE LANGUAGE SJ Now his words rush " like the wave sweeping down the rolling shingle " ; again they flow like "liquid nectar, the Muses' gift, sweet fruit" of his soul (ibid., 01. y vii. 7 ; xi. 9) ; now they '' kindle the beacon-blaze of honour " ; again they sprinkle the "kindly dew of hymns triumphal in the hope that even the dead may hear perchance the great fame of their descendant" (ibid., Isthm., iii. 61 ; Pyth, V. 96). He has arrows in his quiver, " swift arrows that have a voice for the wise " ; he can send " the swift speech of his tongue as it were a bronze-headed javelin " ; he aims at a far throw of the quoit ; if it be necessary, the true master of his art will " grapple in the strife, bending the words beneath his grasp, yielding not his ground as he wrestleth in speech, of gentle temper toward the good but to the froward a stern adversary " (ibid., pi., ii. 91 ; Neni., vii. 71 ; Isthm., ii. 357 ; Nem., iv. 93). Thus, things natural and supernatural, the Muses, and the Graces, the blaze of fire, the gale, the rushing wave, sowing, ploughing, weaving, and shepherd- ing ; the archer, the javelin-thrower, the wrestler ; all these images and many more than we have space to quote, are pressed into the service to illustrate the power of words, to show what they can do. As to there being anything which \^hey can not do, that certainly is an idea which never entered Pindar's mind. " As the refining of gold showeth forth all his splendours, so doth a song that singeth a man's rare deeds make him the Peer of Kings " {ibid., Nem., iv. 82). Such was Pindar's opinion of his art, and of his tools. Words. The Basis of the Experiment. — Lang uage was, as we have seen (p. Ss), the great mark of distinction bet ween the Hellenes and the tribes around — the ^<7ZojgQi\_ ^tonguek a i~FoIK7^r bar-bar-oi, " stuttering folk," as they called the latter. That their own symmetrical language had been built up on a basis common to several of these so-called " barbarian " tongues, never occurred to them. Plato, indeed, notices in the Cratylus that several words, such as fire, water, dog, were the same in Phrygian as in Greek, but he does not penetrate to the meaning of the coincidence ; he supposes that the Greeks had borrowed these words from the "barbarians." Seeing that the secret — the fact that words related to each other must have had a common ancestor — was not even guessed at until the eighteenth century of our era, we can hardly wonder that it was not discovered even by a Plato. To endeavour to shew how Greek became Greek — a language entirely distinct from Latin, Sanskrit, Gothic, and the other Aryan idioms — would be utterly out of place here. All that we can venture upon is to mention a few points of interest and refer the reader for the rest to the works of those who have made the subject a special study. The first point which we would emphasise is the mysterious nature of the process. We take a group of words, such as the following, all owning a common source, all descended from a common ancestor (Skeat's Handbook of Cognate Words) : — English. Greek. Latin. bear phero fero kin genos genus door thjra fores fell pella pellis heart ker cor wine , oinos vinum and we ask how the changes were brought about. Philologists point to Grimm's law, and bid us note that certain initial letters correspond in the sister-languages ; h in English to ph in Greek, and / in Latin, and so on, 86 GREEK LANGUAGE and they add that these changes take place with the greatest regularity in accordance with a fixed law. Still the mystery is not solved. We can see that certain results were obtained, we can also see the How of the process, but not the Why. Speaking of the changes which took place in the German dialects, Grimm (Geschichte der deutsche Sprache, ed. 1848, p. 276) says: "The variation does not merely affect one sound for a particular purpose, much more all sounds at once, without anything being gained thereby in the inner part (the heart) of language. It is a power, as it were, outside of the language which has produced this marvellous effect." Since Grimm's day our knowledge of the mechanism of language has increased wondrously, but still the impetus which gave rise to these variations remains a mystery. We may attribute them to the effect of climatic conditions, imperceptibly modifying the vocal apparatus, so that in a certain locality it becomes easier to pronounce some letters than others. This has its weight, and great weight, in the argument ; but what shall we say regarding a country like Greece, which had not one climate, but many ? The effects of climatic conditions undoubtedly show themselves in the various dialects of Greece ; nevertheless, Greek is a homogeneous structure with peculiarities common to itself, and to all the dialects. The only real answer to the question is Grimm's, the working of the mysterious power. There is in language, as in all else, that — " Divinity that shapes our ends, Eough-hew them as we will. " Throughout the whole development of the daughter-languages there is plainly visible, as philologists are beginning more and more to see, the reign of law. In his day. Pott {JEtymol. Forschungen, i. 12) could write that "even in letters there does not rule the lawlessness of presumptuous self-will {frechen WillMtr), but a reasonable freedom, limited by laws founded in the nature of the sounds themselves." And, in our own day, Brugmann (My. of Comp. Gi^ammar, trans, by Dr. J. Wright, i. p. vi) can say that it is the aim of philo- logists to seek for the reason of every exception^ even to these laws, " not occasionally only, but in every case and systematically." The reign of law in the development of language, then, is our first point. Secondly, we note that although there were thus provided certain grand channels within which and no others, the sound-stream of each people was to flow, yet that all " reasonable freedom " in the regulating of the channels is traceable, as is the case wherever man has to co-operate with the great Demi- urges, the Worker for the People. I. The Greek could go on building up as many new words as he chose, provided he remained true to the old law of word-building ; he could invent new forms, but they must be on the analogy of those already in existence. We must not think that the Aryans brought roots into Greece, or any other land where they settled ; far from that, the root period was separated by an interval of a thousand years or more from the period of the Dispersion ; the root and the other independent elements which constitute the inflexion- particles had become fused inseparably into words, coined and firmly stamped in the mother-tongue and "finished forms only were transmitted to the daughter-tongues." ^ Nevertheless, the Greek was doubtless perfectly con- ^ Bopp resolves a form like ^' dodesometha^^ into do-dd-sometha. Can it, now, be assumed that the affixion of these elements to the root do first took place in Greek ? Certainly not. The more thoroughly the comparison of the Indo-European languages has been prosecuted, the plainer the following principle has become — viz. that inflection was completed in the parent speech, "only finished forms were transmitted to the individual languages" (Delbruck (B.), Einleitung in das Sprachstudium, pp. 57, 176 ; see also Appendix). FIRST EXPERIMENT: THE LANGUAGE 87 scious of what constituted the essential part of most words, the part full of life and meaning as, e.g. the root do in didomi, " I give," and he could go on coining as many new words as he chose, so long as he kept to the old lines. 2. Then, again, the Greek was quite at liberty to please his ear, and please his ear he did. What we call vowel-gradation or " Ablaut " was tolerably well settled for him before he came into Greece. In Greek words a certain regular change of the vowel, both in roots and suffixes, is observable, as in — nemo, I pasture ; nomos, pasture ; steno, I groan ; st6nos, groan ; ameibo, / change ; amoib^, change ; and so on. "This vowel-change" {Gustav Meyer) "did not arise in Greek soil, but reflects, more or less faithfully, old vowel -relations already developed in the Indo-German period" {Griechische Grammatik, 2nd ed., 1886, § 4). These regular changes the Greek then retained, but he modified and added to them in various ways until the melodious Klang of the language satisfied his sensitive ear. Moreover, he did not scruple to throw overboard any sound that displeased him, and so the letter s fared badly in Greek hands. _ This iS shown by comparison with the sister-languages : — English. Greek. Latin. salt hdls sal seven heptd septem six h^x sex Apparently the hissing sound as an initial was sometimes distasteful to Greek ears, for the aspirate was then put in its place. 3. Finally, we note that the Greek exercised a great amount of freedom in the way of "contraction," which tended very considerably to alter both the structure and sound of the language. This desire to shorten long forms may be attributed either to laziness, or to the exercise of a " wise economy " of speaking-power, or to the universal tendency of human nature to take a " short cut " wherever it is practicable — as in our own " can't " for " can-not," " shan't " for " shall not," and so on. To whatever cause we may attribute it, certain it is that the Greeks went so far as gradually to omit altogether a letter, the digamma T, which does not figure in their alphabet. It represented the old u of the mother-tongue, and was generally spoken as a vowel, though sometimes written incorrectly as ^? or B (Brugmann, op. cit., § 163). It was evidently in use when the Homeric poems were composed, but not as a written character when they were first committed to writing, although the sound remained in most Greek dialects, as inscriptions prove, until far on in historic times. The omission of the digamma may be shown thus : — From the old root ^ ueq = " speak," came — Sanskrit : vacas = " speech " ; Greek : Fepos = " word " (epos) {ibid.y § 151); Latin : vocare. ^ The processes of shortening are well shown in the important word Zeus, the name for God, which the Greeks brought with them from the old home, answering to the Indian Dyaus, the Latin Ju-piter, the Teutonic Tiu, Zio, all from the root div, "to shine" — i.e. God of the Bright Heavens. The contractions arose thus : — Zeus, from Zeus, dieus (the Z from di) ; Dios, from DiFos ; Dii, from DiFi ; Dia or Zen. In Zen the F has disappeared entirely [ihid.^ §§ 361, 493). 88 GREEK LANGUAGE Without supplying the digamma, we should not be able to see that epos is sister to vacas, or neos {neFos, " new ") to novos. It must be admitted, however, that the Greeks went conscientiously to work with the shortening process, for the digamma, when omitted, is frequently replaced in some dialects by a compensation lengthening of the root-vowel, in others by the doubling of a consonant {ibid., § i66); facts worth noticing, inasmuch as they show thoughts and feeling at work in the development of the language. So much for a very dry subject. Let us pass on now to trace as far as we may some of the actual experiments in word-making, bearing in mind that the process went on vigorously to the days of Aristotle and longer. The language, as we have seen, was formed and made before Homer, and from Homer in the ninth century to the writers of the third century b.c. words were coined continu- ally on the old models as new wants arose, necessities pressed, civilisation, art, culture, philosophy developed, men's ideas expanded, their horizon enlarged. When Aristotle finds that the ethical vocabulary of the day is not adequate to express fully his ideas, what does he say ? " Peirat^on — we must experiment ! — we must try to coin names ourselves in order to make our argument clear and easy to follow!" (Arist., Eth. N. II., vii. ii), and that this was the course adopted by all great thinkers the Greek language shows. From Homer downwards the versatility of Greek genius and the multiplicity of subjects which enchained and delighted it afforded the widest of ranges and most ample of " pastures for words " {Iliad^ xx. 249). The Giving" of Names. — Following our Graeco- Aryans into Thessaly, then, it is evident that one of the first ways in which their powers of manipulating language could show itself would be, naturally, in the giving of names to the various objects met with.i They would be obliged, for instance, to find a name for the great mountain at the foot of which they settled. This would be by no means so easy as appears at first sight, for several designations, each of which contains a certain measure of " truth " about the mountain, are applicable to it. Thus they might have called it the " Broad," from its spreading ampli- tude ; or the "Woody," from its forests; or the "Many-folded," from its over- hanging ridges and valleys. Each of these epithets would have been correct to a certain extent, but none of them would have expressed that feature which is the characteristic of the mountain — its gleaming peaks, soaring over all adjacent heights, and visible in the dazzling brightness of their snows to an immense distance. ^ The name "^ lympus," " the shining " (G. Curtius, i. p. 330), must have come to the "poet'^ who made it like a flash of inspiration, and that it has remained to the present day shows that, as a name, it was a survival of the fittest.^ We may be sure that before that poet could induce his countrymen to look up and see the flashing of the silver spears above he would have some little trouble. There would doubtless be plenty of advocates for " practical " ^ The names of places — -mountains, rivers, promontories, &c. — always present a certain difficulty, and etymologies proposed in regard to them must be accepted with caution, inasmuch as such names may have been given by the earlier inhabitants of a land, and may contain elements not belonging to the language to which they are ascribed. Or they may even be due to visitors, as e.g. Malea, "the height," Taenarum, "smelting," but which, nevertheless, are probably of Phoenician origin. There are, h