GREECE 



2004 



GREECE 



form the watershed. To the west of these 

 there are north and south chains divided by 

 narrow valleys, but to the east there are east 

 and west ranges between which lie th ex- 

 tensive plains which have played the chief part 

 in Greek history. Macedonia, the plains of 

 Thepsaly, those of Thebes, of Athens, of Sparta 

 and of Messene were the centers of ancient 

 Greek life, the homes of the famous city- 

 states (see subhead The City-State, in HISTORY 

 division, below). Many of the mountains of 

 Greece have special associations: Olympus was 

 the fabled home of the gods; Parnassus, the 

 haunt of Apollo and the Muses; Hymettus 

 produced honey of rare quality, and Pentelicus 

 a beautiful marble. But the mountains are 

 worth visiting aside from their historic associa- 

 tions, for they have a beauty all their own. 

 At places, where the sheer mountain-walls rise 

 from the blue sea toward the bluer sky, the 

 grandeur of the scenery is almost unsurpassed. 



Greek rivers, too, are beautiful rushing 

 mountain torrents which are worthy of the 

 legends the old Greeks wove about them; but 

 they are too rapid for navigation, and are for 

 the most part merely temporary, carrying 

 water only during the rainy season, so that 

 they are not available for irrigation. The 

 Achelous, in the northern part, and the Al- 

 pheus, in the Peloponnesus, are the rivers of 

 chief importance. 



One of the largest lakes, Copais in Boeotia, 

 has had a bad influence, it is believed, on the 

 people who live near its shores. The Boeo- 

 tians, in ancient as in modern times, were the 

 slowest witted of all the Greeks, and scientists 

 now contend that this is due to the malaria 

 spread by the mosquitoes which Lake Copais 

 bred. Now the lake has been drained and con- 

 verted into farm land, and an improvement 

 in the mentality of the Boeotians is looked for 

 with confidence. 



History of Greece 



Its Beginnings. The very early history of 

 Greece is shrouded in mists, through which 

 only gradually gleams of light begin to break. 

 The very oldest inhabitants of the soil, who 

 were called by the later Greeks Pelasgians, 

 were little by little assimilated by these same 

 later Greeks, or Hellenes, as they called them- 

 selves, who came in from the north. Mar- 

 velous tales of the earliest age of history, the 

 so-called Heroic Age, survive tales of Her- 

 cules and Theseus, of the Argonauts and of 

 Perseus, of Troy and of Thebes (all of which 

 see) ; and recent excavations at Troy, at My- 

 cenae and on the island of Crete have made it 

 clear that this ancient time had a very real 

 civilization, long before the Greeks came into 

 the peninsula from the north. 



Greek Middle Age. About 1200 B.C., as 

 nearly as can be known, there began a period 

 which lay between two ages of culture and 

 prosperity, and thus corresponded roughly to 

 the Medieval Age of later Europe. Its char- 

 acteristic feature was the so-called Dorian mi- 

 gration, a movement of the rude, primitive 

 tribes of the northern fastnesses of Greece 

 south into the Peloponnesus. Chief of these 

 Dorian tribes were the Laconians, or Spartans, 

 whose main city developed into one of the 

 two great powers of Greece. Before this sweep- 

 ing wave of Dorians some of the tribes already 

 settled in Greece were crowded out, so they 

 crossed the Aegean into Asia Minor, where 



they founded those colonies which played so 

 large a part in later Greek history. Several cen- 

 turies later there was a new era of colonization, 

 and settlements were made in Sicily and in 

 Southern Italy, those in this latter country 

 being so numerous that the name "Great 

 Greece" (Magna Graecia) was applied to the 

 southern part of the peninsula. 



That this middle period was in no sense a 

 "Dark Ages" must be thoroughly understood. 

 It produced, for one thing, those great epics, 

 the Iliad and the Odyssey (both described in 

 these volumes), which by celebrating past 

 glories helped to rouse in the Greeks a feeling 

 of nationality, which was not strong enough 

 to prevent interstate conflict but which drew 

 them together when any outside enemy threat- 

 ened. It also saw the development from the 

 4 old tribal 'form of government through mon- 

 archy and oligarchy toward democracy, though 

 in no state was democracy actually achieved 

 during this period. 



The City-State. During this period there 

 was developed that most typical of all Greek 

 political institutions, the city-state. The Greek 

 cities were the elements about which the na- 

 tional history centered; contests between Ath- 

 ens, Sparta, Thebes and the lesser cities fill 

 old Grecian chronicles. They were not, how- 

 ever, such cities as those of the modern world. 

 Each city with its surrounding territory was in 

 effect a nation, very small but entirely self- 



