78 THE SPLENDOUR OF GREECE 



and they were therefore the first to be civilized. The 

 Romans were the second nearest to the old theatre 

 of civilization, and so their phase of world-history 

 comes after that of the Greeks. They civilized the 

 Celts of France and Britain, and the light gradually 

 spread to the Teutons of the north (who were moving 

 steadily south) and the Slavs of the wild east. 



That is a bird's-eye view of the civilizing of 

 Europe which some readers may find useful. Now 

 let us take it a little more in detail: first Greece, 

 then Rome, and then a general survey. 



Greece was occupied by the northern fringe of the 

 Mediterranean race after the Ice Age — a simple 

 pastoral folk with a New Stone Age culture. They 

 got the use of bronze from Crete, and made progress. 

 In time colonists or adventurers from civilized Crete 

 landed on the tips of Greece and on the near coast of 

 Asia Minor, and founded cities and princedoms. 

 There were cities, with formidable walls, at Mycenae 

 and Tiryns, as well as at Troy. Some very beautiful 

 specimens of Cretan art have been found in Greece. 

 In other words, Greece was beginning to be civilized 

 (from Crete) long before the " Greeks " came. It 

 did not wait for any race with a " genius for culture." 



But from about 2,000 b.c. the early waves of the 

 advancing Aryans began to flow over it from the 

 north. They were not called "Greeks" — even the 

 name " Hellenes " was applied only to one tribe at 

 first — but we had better avoid here the names of the 

 successive waves of invaders. The first comers were 

 not too formidable or numerous, and they mingled 

 with the civilized folk and adopted their ways. We 

 get the chiefs and princes of the Homeric poetry — 

 still half Cretan, perhaps — with their carouses and 



