THE PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 145 



as in all that belonged to ancient Greece, there existed a 

 mixture of uniting and dissevering forces, which by their 

 opposition imparted variety of tone, form, and character, not 

 only to ideas and feelings, but also to poetic and artistic 

 conceptions, and gave to all that rich luxuriance and fulness 

 of life, in which apparently hostile forces are resolved, accord- 

 ing to a higher universal order, into combining harmony. 



If Miletus, Ephesus, and Colophon were Ionic, Cos, 

 Rhodes, and Halicarnassus Doric, and Croton and Sybaris 

 Achaian, yet in the midst of all this diversity, and even 

 where, as in lower Italy, towns founded by different races 

 stood side by side, the power of the Homeric songs exer- 

 cised over all alike its uniting spell. Notwithstanding the 

 deeply rooted contrasts of manners and of political institu- 

 tions, and notwithstanding the fluctuations of the latter, 

 still Greek nationality remained unbroken and undivided, 

 and the wide range of ideas and of types of art, achieved 

 by the several races, was regarded as the common property 

 of the entire united nation. 



There still remains to notice, in the present section, the 

 third point to which I before referred, as having been, con- 

 currently with the opening of the Euxine, and the establish- 

 ment of colonies along the margin of the Mediterranean^ 

 influential on the enlargement of physical views. The 

 foundation of Tartessus and Gades, where a temple was 

 dedicated to the wandering divinity Melkart (a son of 

 Baal), and the colony of Utica, more ancient than Carthage, 

 remind us that Phrenician ships had sailed in the open 

 ocean for several centuries, when the straits, which Pindar 

 termed the " Gadeirian Gate" ( 2o6 ), were still closed to the 

 Greeks. As the Milesians in the East, by opening the 



