PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 149 



oped colonial system had been extended over a larger space 

 than that occupied by the Greeks, stretching, although Avith 

 wide intervals between the stations, from the Persian Gulf to 

 Cerne on the western coast of Africa. No mother country 

 ever established a colony which was as powerful from conquests, 

 and as famed for its commercial undertakings, as Carthage. 

 But, notwithstanding this greatness, Carthage stood far below 

 that degree of mental and artistical cultivation which has 

 enabled the Greek colonial cities to transmit to us so many 

 noble and lasting forms of art. 



It must not be forgotten that many populous Greek cities 

 flourished simultaneously in Asia Minor, the ^Egean Sea, 

 Lower Italy, and Sicily ; and that, like Carthage, the coloni- 

 al cities of Miletus and Massilia again founded other colonies , 

 that Syracuse, when at the zenith of her power, fought against 

 Athens, and the army of Hannibal and Hamilkar ; and that 

 Miletus was, for a long time, the first commercial city in the 

 world after Tyre and Carthage. While a life so rich in en- 

 terprise was being developed externally by the activity of a 

 people whose internal condition was frequently exposed to 

 violent agitations, new germs of national intellectual develop- 

 ment were continually called forth with the increase of pros- 

 perity and the transmission to other nations of native cultiva 

 tion. One common language and religion bound together the 

 most distant members of the whole body, and it was by this 

 union that the small parent country was brought within the 

 wider circle embraced by the life of other nations. Foreign 

 elements were incorporated in the Hellenic world, without, on 

 that account, depriving it of any portion of its great and char- 

 acteristic independence. The influence of contact with the 

 East, and with Egypt before it had been connected with Per- 

 sia, and above one hundred years before the irruption of Cam- 

 byses, was, no doubt, from its very nature, more permanent 

 than the influence of the colonies of Cecrops from Sais, of 

 Cadmus from Phcenicia, and of Danaus and Chemmis, whose 

 existence has so often been contested, and is, at any rate, 

 wrapped in the deepest obscurity. 



The characteristics by which the Greek colonies differed so 

 widely from all others, especially from the less flexible Phoe- 

 nicians, and which affected the whole organization of their 

 system, arose from the individuality and the primitive dif- 

 ferences existing in the tribes which constituted the whole 

 mother country, and thus gave occasion to a mixture of con- 

 necting and separating forces in the colonies as well as ui 



