GREECE 



2601 



GREECE 



families were most important in historic times. 

 All of these Hellenes had an intense pride in 

 their race and their ancestry, and looked with 

 a pitying contempt upon the barbarians, as 

 they called all non-Greek people. 



It is difficult to make general statements 

 about the ancient Greeks, so widely did they 

 differ among themselves in certain respects. 

 It may be recorded, however, that the Athe- 

 nians and all their neighbors in Attica were 

 quick and bright, while the Boeotians were so 

 slow and dull-witted that their name has be- 

 come proverbial for stupid people. Again, the 

 Athenians loved luxury, and they embellished 

 their homes and their city, but the Spartans 

 reduced life to its very simplest terms and 

 cared only for that which made for perfect 

 physical health (see ATHENS; SPARTA). But of 

 practically all the ancient Greeks it may be 

 said that they loved beauty with an intensity 

 so great that anything ugly caused them posi- 

 tive pain. The modern proverbs that "Beauty 

 is only skin deep" and "Handsome is as hand- 

 some does" would have found no response in 

 the Greek mind, for to them goodness with- 

 out beauty was a thing difficult to conceive. 

 It was because of this love of the beautiful that 

 the Greeks became the supreme architects and 

 sculptors of the world (see ARCHITECTURE; 

 SCULPTURE), and that their poets stand among 

 the greatest of all time (see HOMER; SAPPHO). 



Religion. The Greeks were a religious peo- 

 ple by instinct, and in early times their vener- 

 ation for the gods was profound and sincere. 

 The Apostle Paul, in his sermon on Mars' Hill, 

 declared, "Ye men of Athens, I perceive that 

 in all things ye are too superstitious," or as 

 later translations give it, "very religious." Of 

 late years much attention has been paid to the 

 religion of the ancient Greeks; scholars study 

 it because of the light it throws on history and 

 on Greek life, and general readers find it 

 fascinating because of its story quality. For 

 these people with the wonderful imagination 

 wove about their gods and heroes countless 

 tales which still keep the freshness of those 

 early days in which they were first told (see 

 MYTHOLOGY, subheads Greek and Roman). It 

 is impossible to consider the literature or the 

 art of Greece without reference to its mythol- 

 ogy, for the poet sang his loftiest hymns to 

 the gods, or told of their adventures in stately 

 verse; the architect reared exquisite temples 

 to them, their power and beneficence being his 

 inspiration ; and the sculptor carved them, from 

 the least to the greatest, in marble. The great 



Greek festivals, too, grew out of the worship 

 of the gods, and both tragedy and comedy had 

 their origin in religious observances. 



To be sure, the Greek gods were not such 

 beings as a modern worshiper could bow down 

 to; they were jealous, lustful and revengeful, 

 moved in all things by their own desires; but 

 they were always ready to reward real homage 

 paid to them. 



Education. The Spartans had worked out 

 for themselves a system of education which 

 differed from every other system in Greece, 

 as well as from those of modern states. Par- 

 ents had not first claim on their children ; these 

 belonged to the state. Baby boys were exam- 

 ined by a Council of Elders, and if they were 

 defective or weakly they were placed on the 

 open hillside to die. The result was a race 

 which closely attained to physical perfection. 

 At the age of seven the boys were turned over 

 to public officers, and their education was be- 

 gun. They did not learn to read and write, or 

 to care for literature ; they were not encouraged 

 to become orators, or even to converse, for 

 practically all of their education was physical. 

 To bear intense pain without flinching, to en- 

 dure privation, to fight, to run, to wrestle all 

 of these the Spartan boy was carefully taught, 

 for Sparta was a nation of warriors and cared 

 for no citizens who could not strengthen the 

 military arm. 



In Athens and--the remaining Greek states, 

 on the other hand, a far more rounded system 

 of education prevailed. Many private schools 

 existed, and in these the boys were taught 

 gymnastics, reading, writing, arithmetic, music, 

 and, in their later years, rhetoric and philoso- 

 phy. Probably the world has never seen a 

 better-educated class of men than were the 

 Athenians. 



Education, in every Greek state, was all for 

 the men. Although the women were not 

 abused, they by no means held such a digni- 

 fied position in their world as modern women 

 have gained. They were not closely confined, 

 as in Mohammedan countries to-day, but they 

 were not allowed to appear frequently in pub- 

 lic, or even to mingle with mixed gatherings in 

 their own homes. If it be true, as so often 

 said, that "a civilization can rise no higher than 

 the status of its women," this was a serious 

 fault in Greek culture. 



Slavery. This was the great curse of Greece. 

 Incredible as it may seem, there were many 

 more slaves in the larger industrial centers of 

 Greece than freemen, nor were the slaves 



