Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/102

Rh for the social feelings and sympathies. The historical interest of Greece does not begin therefore only at the point where details and dates become approximately certain, but with the first glimpses of that ordered life out of which the civilization of Europe arose. At a later stage the Greek commonwealths offer the most instructive study which the ancient world affords in the working of oligarchic and democratic institutions. Then, as the Roman power rises, culminates, and declines, Greek history assumes a new character and a new interest. From Alexander the Great dates the beginning of a modern Greek nation, one, not in blood, but in speech and manners. Two main threads link together the earlier and later history of civilized man. One passes through Rome, and is Latin ; the other passes through the new Rome in the east, and is Greek. In a sketch like the present it would be impossible to attempt a detailed narrative of facts, which, besides, fall to be considered under particular headings. The aim here will be rather to trace in outline the general course of the development, and to indicate, so far as a rapid survey permits, the leading causes and tendencies which were at work in its successive stages.

Six periods may be distinguished. I. The prehistoric period, down to the close of the great migrations. II. The early history of the leading states down to about 500 B.C. III. The Ionic revolt and the Persian wars, 502-479. IV. The period of Athenian supremacy, 478-431. V. The Peloponnesian War, 431-404, followed by the period of Spartan and then of Theban ascendency, 404-362. VI. The reigns of Philip and Alexander, 359-323 B.C..

I. The Prehistoric Period, down to the close of the great Migrations.

" Ancient Hellas," says Aristotle, " is the country about Dodona and the Achelous, .... for the Selloi lived there, and the people then called the Graikoi, but now the Hellenes" (Meteor., . 14). The name Graikoi probably meant the "old" or "honourable" folk (Curtius, Etym., 130). The Italians may have enlarged the application of this name, which they found on the eastern side of the Ionian Gulf. The moderns have followed the Romans in giving it to the whole people who, from very early times, have always called themselves Hellenes.

The evidence of language tells something as to the point of civilization which had been reached by the ancestors of Indo-European nations before the Hellenes parted from the common stock in Central Asia. They had words for "father," "mother," "brother," "sister," "son," "daugh ter," and also for certain affinities by marriage, as " father- in-law," " brother-in-law," " daughter-in-law." They lived in houses ; they wore clothes made of wool or skins ; as arms they had the sword and the bow; they had flocks and herds, goats and dogs ; they drove, if they did not ride, horses. They were a pastoral rather than an agri cultural people. They knew how to work gold, silver, and copper ; they could count up to a hundred ; they reckoned time by the lunar month ; they spoke of the sky as the Heaven-father. The first great migration from the common home was that which carried the ancestors of the Teutonic, Slavonic, and Lithuanian tribes into north -western Europe. The next was that which carried the ancestors of Greeks, Italian-, and Celts into southern and south-western Europe.

Language indicates that there must have been a period during which the forefathers of Greeks and Italians, after the Celts had parted from them, lived together as one people. Again, the Greek language, unique -in its character istic development, tells that the Hellenes, after the Italians had left them, must have long remained an undivided people. But to us this primitive Hellenic unity is prehis- toric. We first know the Hellenes as a race divided into Hellene two great branches, each with well-marked characteristics of its own, Dorians and lonians ; while those who have been less affected by the special causes which produced these divergences from an earlier common type are regarded as forming a third branch, and are called collectively JEolians. Further, we hear of a people distinguished indeed from the Hellenes, yet apparently felt (as by Thucydides) to be not wholly alien from them, a people represented as having been before them in Greece proper, on the coasts, and in the islands of the ^Egean, the Pdasgians. In Pelas- some Homeric passages, and those among the oldest, the ians - name Pelasgoi denotes a tribe of Achaean or /Eolian Greeks living in Thessaly (Iliad, ii. 081 ; xvi. 233). In other poetical texts of later date, and repeatedly in Hero dotus, Pelasgoi is a general designation for people of whom the Greeks knew little definitely, except that they had preceded the Hellenic dwellers in the land. In this second and vague use, " Pelasgian " is virtually equivalent to " prehistoric."

The highlands of Phrygia have the best claim to be Earlics regarded as the point of departure for the distinctively Hellenic migrations. In these fertile regions of north- western Asia Minor, the Hellenes, after the Italians had left them, may have lived, first as a part of the Phrygian nation, and afterwards as a separate people. From these First seats a great wave of migration seems to have carried over epoch, the Hellespont into Europe a population which diffused itself through Greece arid the Peloponnesus, as well as over the coasts and islands of the archipelago. In after ages, when the kinship, though perhaps dimly suspected, was no longer recognized, the Hellenes called these earlier occu pants of the land Pelasgians. It has been conjectured that in Pelasgos we have combined the roots of Trepav and e?/xi (770.). The name would then mean " the further-goer," " the emigrant." It would thus be appropriate as the name given by the Hellenes, who had remained behind in Phry gia, to the kinsmen who had passed over into Europe before them.

The second epoch of migration from the Phrygian high- Second lands appears to have been one by which single Hellenic e F cu - tribes, with special gifts and qualities, were carried forth to become the quickeners of historic life among inert masses of population, among those " Pelasgians " who had long been content to follow the calm routine of husbandmen or herdsmen. The ancestors of the lonians went down to the coasts of Asia Minor, and became the founders of a race whose distinctive powers found scope in maritime enter prise and in commerce. The ancestors of the Dorians passed into the highlands of Northern Greece, and there developed the type of hardy mountaineer which united the robust vigour of hunter and warrior with a firm loyalty to ancestral traditions in religion and in civil government.

Of these two branches, the Ionian and the Dorian, the Ionian was that which most actively influenced the early development of Greece. But the lonians themselves derived the first impulses of their progress from a foreign source. Those Canaanites or "lowlanders" of Syria, whom we call by the Greek name of Phoenicians, inhabited the long narrow strip of territory between Lebanon and the sea. Phoenicia, called " Keft " by the Egyptians, had at a remote period contributed Semitic settlers to the Delta or " Isle of Cap itor ; " and it would appear from the evidence of the Egyptian monuments that the Kefa, or Phoenicians, were a great commercial people as early as the 16th century B.C. Cyprus, visible from the heights of Lebanon, was the first stage of the Phoenician advance into the- Western waters ; and to the last there was in Cyprus a Semitic element side by side with the Indo-European. From Cyprus the Phoenician navigators proceeded to the southern 