Page:A history of architecture on the comparative method for the student, craftsman, and amateur.djvu/105

 GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 47 V. Social and Political. — The early inhabitants were known to the ancients under the name of Pelasgi. Their civiHzation belonged to the bronze age, as is evident from the remains of it found at different points round the JEgean sea, viz., in Crete, at Hissarlik in the Troad, at Mycenae, Tiryns, and elsewhere. It fell before the iron weapons and greater courage of invaders from the North, viz., the Achaeans or Homeric Greeks. The war against Troy affords proof of an early connection of the inhabitants of Greece with Asia. The Achaeans in their turn succumbed to a fresh influx of invaders from the North, hardy mountaineers called Dorians, who established themselves at Sparta and elsewhere in the Peloponnese. In classical times the land was peopled by lonians (i.e., the old Pelasgic popula- tion), yEolians (i.e., descendants of the Achaeans), and Dorians. Dorian Sparta and Ionian (Pelasgian) Athens are the two principal factors in the drama of Greece. It was not till some 500 years after the fall of Troy that the new Hellenic civiliza- tion was evinced in the construction of the Temple of Corinth (B.C. 650), one of the earliest Doric temples known. As regards the people themselves, it is clear that the national games and religious festivals united them in reverence for their religion, and gave them that love for music, the drama, and the fine arts, and that emulation in manly sports and contests for which they were distinguished. It should be remembered that the people led an open-air life, for the public ceremonies and in many cases the administration of justice were carried on in the open air. The Greeks, as already indicated, were great colonists, and emigration, especially to the coast of Asia Minor and the Mediterranean, was a government measure dating from about B.C. 700, undertaken not only to establish trade, but also to reduce the superfluous population, and to provide an outlet for party strife. It thus came about that the colonies were often peopled with citizens of a more energetic and go-ahead character than those of the mother country ; and it will therefore be found that many of the important buildings of Greek architecture, especially in the Ionic style, are in their colonies of Asia Minor, and that this connection with the East had some influence upon their architecture. vi. Historical, — The poems of Homer, apparently a Pelasgic bard who sang for Achaean masters, give a picture of Greek life about the twelfth century b.c. Whether or no the war with Troy be an actual fact, the incidents related have a substratum of truth, and the tale probably arose out of the early conflicts of the Greeks in north-west Asia. The Hesiodic poems, circ. b.c 750, depict the gloomy prospects and sordid life of the Boeotian peasantry at a time when art was almost in abeyance. For the