474 GREECE. 



morose in their joys. The Ionians lived among 

 holidays, they could do nothing without dance and 

 song. The Dorians founded Sparta, a repuhlic which 

 was in reality a camp, consisting of soldiers fed hy 

 slaves. The girls were educated to be viragoes ; the 

 boys to bear torture, like the Red Indians, with a 

 smile. The wives were breeding-machines, belonging 

 to the state ; a council of elders examined the new-born 

 children, and selected only the finer specimens, in order 

 to keep up the good old Spartan breed. They had no 

 commerce, and no arts ; they were as filthy in their 

 persons as they were narrow in their minds. But the 

 Athenians were the true Greeks, as they exist at the 

 present day ; intellectual, vivacious, inquisitive, shrewd, 

 artistic, patriotic, and dishonest ; ready to die for their 

 country, or to defraud it. The Greeks received the 

 first rudiments of knowledge from Phoenicia ; the 

 alphabet was circulated throughout the country by 

 means of the Olympian fairs ; colonies were sent forth 

 all round the Mediterranean ; and those of Ionia and 

 the Delta of the Nile, obtained partial access to the 

 arts and sciences of Babylon and Memphis. The 

 Persian wars developed the genius of the Greeks. 

 The Persian conquests opened to them the University 

 of Egypt. The immense area of the Greek world, 

 extending from the Crimea to the straits of Gibraltar, 

 for at one time the Greeks had cities in Morocco ; the 

 variety of ideas which they thus gathered, and which 

 they interchanged at the great Festival, where every 

 kind of talent was honoured and rewarded ; the spirit 

 of noble rivalry which made city contend with city, 

 and citizen with citizen, in order to obtain an Olympian 

 reputation ; the complete freedom from theology in 

 art : the tastes and manners of the land ; the adoration 



