386 



GREECE 



The Homeric poems relate events which the author 

 or authors supposed to be prior to the Dorian in- 

 vasion ; but the supposed facts belong probably to 

 the domain of myth, and the poems themselves 

 were certainly composed after the Dorian invasion. 

 Whether the remains discovered by Schliemann at 

 Troy, Mycente, and Tiryns date from before or 

 after the invasion is still a moot point. The 

 balance of opinion is in favour of the earlier period, 

 on the ground that nothing but such a political 

 cataclysm as the invasion could sweep away so 

 completely the very memory of the dynasties which 

 erected the marvellous monuments that remain to 

 us. But even if the earlier date be assigned to 

 these remains we are still in complete ignorance as 

 to the name and even the race of which they are 

 the sole memorials. It was once the fashion to 

 call everything dating from before the Dorian 

 invasion Pelasgic, and imagine that thereby all was 

 explained. The Pelasgi were a mysterious people 

 about whom nothing was known, and conjectures 

 Avere most divergent. Very frequently they were 

 identified with the common ancestors of the Greeks 

 and Italians. But a Gneco- Italian period and 

 people are now on the way to being discredited ; 

 and the Pelasgi, if we confine ourselves to facts, 

 were an insignificant tribe of Greeks. Finally, we 

 may dismiss the period antecedent to the Dorian 

 invasion by noting that in it the Phoenicians were 

 believed to have largely influenced Greek culture ; 

 but the extent of their influence is now universally 

 admitted to have been exaggerated, and it is a 

 question whether it must Hot be referred Avholly 

 to a later period. 



Of the Dorian invasion itself, what we know is 

 chat the tribe which had occupied Epirus moved 

 into the valley of the Peneus, and were henceforth 

 known as Thessalians ; that probably in con- 

 sequence of this the Arnfeans, who had occupied 

 Thessaly, were forced forward into the basin of the 

 Copais, where they are known to history as the 

 Bceotians ; while from Doris bands of warriors 

 kept crossing the Corinthian Gulf, finding their 

 way across Arcadia to the south and east of the 

 Peloponnese, and there forming Dorian settlements. 

 Possibly to the same period we may assign the 

 occupation of Elis by the ^Etolians. Attica lying 

 out of the direct line of impact, which was from 

 north to south, was unaffected by these movements, 

 except that fugitive families, especially of the same 

 Ionic race as the inhabitants of Attica, took refuge 

 there. On the other hand, it is to this movement 

 that the Dorian state, Sparta, which was to be the 

 great and victorious rival of Athens, owed its 

 orisrin, and indeed we may say its subsequent great- 

 ness. The constitution and the peculiar institutions 

 which made the Spartans a nation of soldiers are 

 indeed referred, rather by myth than tradition, 

 to a great legislator, Lycurgus. But they are in 

 truth partly Indo-European customs preserved 

 more faithfully by Sparta than by other Greeks, 

 and still more the outcome of the perpetual struggle 

 for existence which for generations was waged by 

 the handful of Spartans against the large numbers 

 of the native inhabitants. The Dorians settled in 

 Sparta were indeed but a garrison in the beginning ; 

 and, to the end, their national life was that of the 

 camp. Amongst the other consequences of the 

 Dorian invasion that which most calls for notice is 

 that in the various districts affected by it the 

 original inhabitants were reduced to slavery ; some 

 being like the Helots in Sparta, serfs attached to 

 the soil and belonging to the state rather than to 

 any individual owner, others like the Periceci, in 

 Sparta, enjoying personal freedom, local self- 

 government tliough not political rights ; and both 

 being very different from the bought slaves (fre- 

 quently or mostly foreign ) Avho formed the founda- 



tion on Avhich Athenian civilisation, for instance, 

 was based. 



The effects of the Dorian invasion, hoAvever, were 

 not confined to Greece proper ; amongst them must 

 be included the expansion of Hellas in the Avider 

 sense of the word, and the colonisation of the 

 coasts of Asia Minor. Not all the original in- 

 habitants of the districts invaded remained to be 

 enslaved : many fled over seas, the JEolians to 

 found the .^Eolian cities, the lonians to plant the 

 Ionic colonies south of the ^Eolian, while the 

 Dorians found their way by Crete to the shores 

 south of the Ionic colonies. Of the law that 

 colonies are more rapid in their development than 

 the mother-country, the most conspicuous example 

 is afforded by the Greek colonies in Asia Minor. 

 The seeds of literature, art, and philosophy Avere 

 all sown and first nurtured in the colonies, though 

 to come to maturity it Avas in many cases necessary 

 that they should be transplanted to the mother- 

 country. In political life and constitutional his- 

 tory the stages through which Greece proper went 

 were anticipated in the colonies ; the change by 

 which monarchy Avas set aside by aristocracy did 

 indeed perhaps take place about the same time at 

 home and in the colonies AVC have little evidence 

 how it took place anywhere but the change by 

 which aristocratical government was overthrown 

 and democracy established Avas incomparably more 

 rapid in the colonies. A colony is not the place in 

 which privilege flourishes ; tradition is less potent 

 and individual energy more certain of its reAvard 

 than at home. It was in the colonies, the Avestein 

 not the eastern, that the custom Avhich preceded 

 law was first reduced to writing, and the sole right 

 of expounding it AvithdraAvn from the privileged 

 classes. It was in the colonies also that tyranny 

 Avas first invented. A Greek tyrant Avas usually 

 an aristocrat who, under the pretence of relieving 

 the misery of the people, acquired a poAver which he 

 used for crushing his OAvn class and the people alike 

 beneath his own illegal, personal, and violent sway. 

 As he acquired his poAver by force, so by force he 

 maintained it, and so by force he lost it, generally 

 in a very brief time ; though AVC must not forget 

 that Syracuse under the tyrant Gelo defeated the 

 Carthaginian power, and under his successor, the 

 magnificent Hiero, almost made Sicily one state. 



The rapid, indeed the premature, development of 

 the Greek cities in Asia Minor is testified to by 

 nothing more clearly than by the large number of 

 colonies Avhich they, themselves colonies, founded. 

 The settlements on the Black Sea e.g. Sinope, 

 Trapezus, Cyzicus were their creation, as Avere 

 those in the remotest west e.g. Marseilles. Many 

 colonies, however, were founded direct from home : 

 the coasts of Macedonia and Thrace were colonised 

 from Eubcea, and it was the Chalcidians of Euboea 

 who led the Avay in the colonisation of the west 

 e.g. in Italy, Cyme and Rhegium ; in Sicily, 

 Naxos. A notable mother of colonies too Avas 

 Corinth : Corcyra, Leucas, Anactorium, Ambracia, 

 Apollonia, and Syracuse Avere all sprung from Cor- 

 inth, and themselves in their turn sent out colonies. 

 Thus all three of the basins of Avhich the Mediter- 

 ranean consists passed out of the hands of tlie 

 Phoenicians, who had hitherto monopolised them, 

 into the hands of the Greeks, as a rule Avith- 

 out bloodshed, for the Phoenicians Avere traders 

 and loved not fighting. But eventually the Car- 

 thaginians made a stand, and in 532 B.C., in 

 alliance with the Etruscans, defeated the Greeks 

 off Corsica, and secured the safety of their pos- 

 sessions in Africa and of the few towns left 

 them in Sicily. Great, however, as was the ex- 

 pansion of Hellas and her colonies, no Greek state 

 ever possessed a colonial empire ; the colonies 

 could not and Avould not be governed from home. 



