150 COSMOS. 



Greece itself. These contrasts occasioned diversities in the 

 direction of ideas and feelings, and in the form of poetry and 

 harmonious art, and created a rich fullness of life, in which 

 all the apparently hostile elements were dissolved, according 

 to a higher law of universal order, into a gentle harmonious 

 unison. 



Notwithstanding that Miletus, Ephesus, and Colophon were 

 Ionic ; Cos, Rhodes, and Halicarnassus Doric ; and Croton 

 and Sybaris Achaic, the power and the inspired poetry of the 

 Homeric song every where made their power appreciable in 

 the midst of this diversity of cultivation, and even in Lower 

 Italy, in the many contiguous colonial cities -founded by differ- 

 ent races. Amid the most firmly-rooted contrasts in man- 

 ners and political institutions, and notwithstanding the fluc- 

 tuations to which the latter were subject, Greece retained its 

 nationality unbroken, and the wide domain of ideal arid art- 

 istic creations achieved by the separate tribes was regarded as 

 the common property of the whole nation.- 



It still remains for me to mention, in the present section, 

 the third point, which we have already indicated as having, 

 conjointly with the opening of the Euxine, and the establish- 

 ment of colonies on the basin of the Mediterranean, exercised 

 so marked an influence on the history of the contemplation of 

 the universe. The foundation of Tartessus and Gades, where 

 a temple was dedicated to the wandering divinity Melkart (a 

 son of Baal), and of the colonial city of Utica, which was older 

 than Carthage, remind us that the Phoanieians had already 

 navigated the open sea for many centuries before the Greeks 

 passed beyond the straits termed by Pindar the " Gadeirian 

 Gate."* In the same manner as the Milesians in the East, 

 by the way of the Euxine.t established relations of interna- 

 tional contact which laid the foundation of an inland trade 



* Strabo, lib. iii., p. 172 (B6ckh, Find. Fragm., v., 155). The expe- 

 dition of Colaeus of Samos falls, according to Otfr. Mailer (Prolegomena 

 zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie), in Olymp. 31, and according to 

 Letronue's investigation (Essai sur les Id6es Cosmographiques qui se rai- 

 tachent au nom d' Atlas, p. 9), in Olymp. 35, 1, or in the year 640. The 

 epoch depends, however, on the foundation of Cyrene, which is placed 

 by Otfr. Mtiller between Olymp. 35 and 37 (Minyer, s. 344, Prolegome- 

 na, s. 63); for in the time of Coljjeus (Herod., iv., 152), the way from 

 Thera to Libya was nQt as yet known. Zumpt places the foundation 

 of Carthage in 878. and that of Gades in 1100 B.C. 



t According to the manner of the ancients (Strabo, lib. ii., p. 126), I 

 reckon the whole Euxiue, together with the Mseotis (as required by 

 physical and geological views), to be included in the common basin ot 

 the great " Inner Sea." 



