THE GEOGRAPHIC ASPECT OF CULTURE 163 



In connection with their maritime trade they also established great 

 overland routes, their caravans bringing gold from Ophir in southeast- 

 ern Arabia, and passing through Palmyra, Baalbec and Babylon, whence 

 they penetrated all the east. 



Although the Phoenicians were thus brought into intimate contact 

 with all the great nations of antiquity, their culture was essentially dif- 

 ferent. Forced to rely upon the sea for their livelihood, they developed 

 an industrious and hardy manhood in marked contrast to the dependent 

 attitude characteristic of nations relying upon agriculture for their 

 subsistence. In religion the same contrast was apparent, the religion 

 of the Egyptians and Assyrians being a crude and sensuous idolatry, 

 whereas the Phoenicians worshipped Hercules, a divinity whom the 

 Greeks said raised himself to Olympus by virtue of his own courage 

 and daring. In mathematics the Phoenicians developed commercial 

 arithmetic, necessitated by their enormous commerce. According to 

 Strabo, the Syrians applied themselves especially to the science of 

 numbers, navigation and astronomy. They were, in fact, the first to 

 notice the connection of the moon with the tides, and make a practical 

 application of astronomy to navigation. It is also said that the Phoe- 

 nicians regularly supplied the weights and measures used by their 

 neighbors, the Chaldeans. In all respects, therefore, their culture was 

 a natural consequence of the commercial spirit engendered by the sea. 



With the rise of Grecian culture, a new topographical principle 

 entered to alter the trend of development. Numerous mountain walls 

 fence off the Grecian peninsula into a large number of isolated districts, 

 each of which became the seat of a separate community or state, which 

 never coalesced into a single nation. Moreover the coast is indented 

 with numerous deep inlets, forming excellent harbors and giving every 

 inducement to commerce. So numerous and deep are these inlets that 

 the country is practically an archipelago, no place in Greece being 

 forty miles from the sea. To this combination of mountain and coastal 

 elements was largely due the versatility of the Greeks, while the exhil- 

 arating atmosphere and brilliant skies of Attica were also intimately 

 related to their intellectual vigor and attainments. 



The same principle of diversity is also met in the origin of the 

 Greeks. There was here no such inbreeding of native stock as char- 

 acterized Egypt and China, but at the outset a mixture of races, partly 

 autochthonous and partly foreign, from which there evolved a higher 

 type of intellect than had yet appeared. The diverse sources of their 

 civilization was acknowledged by the Greeks in their mythology. Thus 

 the introduction of agriculture was ascribed to Triptolemus; fire was 

 introduced by Prometheus from the Caucasus; iEschylus speaks of 

 iron as " Scythian " ; while Poseidon introduced the olive, the horse 

 and the arts of spinning and weaving. The foundation of the various 

 states was also ascribed to foreigners. Thus Athens was said to owe 



