GREECE 



2600 



GREECE 



Returning from market 



a kingdom of j 

 Europe which occupies the east- 

 ernmost of the southern peninsulas of the con- 

 tinent. It does not rank among the great pow- 

 ers, but it has a heritage more glorious than 

 that of any other nation; for in the days when 

 the ancestors of the present-day English, Ger- 

 mans and French were still living in barbarism, 

 Greece was the one great country of the world. 

 Its art, its literature, its government were very 

 highly developed so highly that all the mod- 

 ern countries in all the centuries since have 

 been able to make little advance upon them. 

 When Greece is referred to, most people think 

 not of present-day Greece, with its strictly 

 modern problems to meet, but of ancient 

 Greece with its beautiful buildings, its inspired 

 poets, sculptors and architects, and its wars. 

 The writings of the modern authors of Greece 

 have never replaced those of Homer, Aeschylus 

 or Euripides; its most magnificent modern 

 structures have never rivalled the Parthenon, 

 the Erectheum or the Theseum. 



After the Balkan war of 1912-1913, the area 

 of Greece was 41,933 square miles, or a hun- 

 dred square miles smaller than Tennessee. 

 This was a large increase over its previous area, 



which had been but 25,000 square 



miles, or thereabouts, and the 

 population was also increased from about 

 2,600,000 to 4,400,000. Any statement of the 

 area of Greece includes that of the numer- 

 ous islands of the 

 Aegean Sea, 

 which are indus- 

 trially as well as 

 historically 

 closely bound up 

 with the main- 

 land. Had it not 

 been for these 

 "stepping stones" LOCATION MAP 



from Greece Fair Greece ! sad relic of de- 

 pastward tn parted worth ! 



3 Immortal, though no more; 

 Asia Minor, the though fallen, great ! 



Greeks would hardly have been tempted so 

 early to cross the Aegean and found their 

 colonies on the eastern shore (see subtitle 

 History, below). These colonies had a very 

 great influence on the history of Greece, for 

 they proved a strong temptation to the kings 

 of Persia, and thus involved Athens and its 

 allied cities in their .epoch-making struggle with 

 that country. 



Ancient Greece 



It is common to speak of Greece as a coun- 

 try, but it was not such in ancient days, in the 

 sense in which England or the United States 

 is to-day. It consisted, during the greater part 

 of its history, of a number of little independent 

 states, which were frequently struggling with 

 each other for supremacy. The geography of 

 the peninsula accounted in large measure for 

 this; tall mountains with their steep valleys 

 divided the little plains on which the various 

 settlements had grown up, and these prevented 

 that free intercourse which might have re- 

 sulted in a federation or empire. Very often, 

 when the term Greek is used in connection 



with art or civilization, it is Athenian which is 

 meant, for it was Athens which conferred upon 

 Greece much of its glory. The distinction, 

 however, is no longer sharply made. 



The People. The inhabitants of this won- 

 derful land of myth and history were called by 

 the Romans Greeks, but their name for them- 

 selves has always been Hellenes, a certain mys- 

 terious Hellen having been their ancestor, ac- 

 cording to the popular legend. Related though 

 they held themselves to be, there were four 

 well-defined Hellenic families or tribes, the 

 Achaeans, the Aeolians, the lonians and the 

 Dorians (which see). The two last-named 



