Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/121

 loo Primitive Greece : Mycenian Art. The movement provoked by the invasion of the northern clans was fraught with other consequences. When nearly half Peloponnesus had fallen into the hands of the Dorians, there still existed, scattered up and down the country, fugitive bodies vainly trying to find habitations for themselves. The more productive tracts were no longer to be had ; thus, in Attica, where arable land and water are so scarce, the last-comers had scarcely any other choice save that of being relegated to the steep and stony declivities of heights that would ill provide them with the means of subsistence. Else- where, on the contrary, on the Asiatic coast, where broader valleys and more spacious plains exist than in narrow, small Hellas, there were vast spaces as yet unoccupied, fat alluvial soil that only awaited to have seed dropped in the furrows opened by the ploughshare to bring forth the richest crops. Then too, close at hand, were the islands of the Archipelago, certainly less fertile, but where at least one would be safe from the too-encroaching Dorian. If in the Achaean commonwealths and the territory of the Ionian federation alike, a large body of the humbler folk — shepherds, labourers, and artisans — had found it hard to forsake the mountain-side where browsed their goats, or the plot which they tilled, or the workshop which made them almost rich, if they had preferred to submit to a division of the land, or payment in kind, which latter was not without advan- tages of a substantial kind, this was by no means the case with the royal families, the Pelopidae, Nelidae, and others still. With them it had been exile rather than surrender of their rights. They did not wander forth alone ; but were accompanied by adherents who revered in them the glory of ancestors exalted in the strains of popular poetry. Under the auspices of these Achaean chiefs were especially gathered such bands as took to the sea in quest of new homes, either in the islands or on the shores of Asiatic Greece ; whence for centuries past successive batches of emigrants had started for European Hellas, colonizing it and domesticating on her soil the first germs of culture. With the occupation of Peloponnesus by the Dorians, the current of population was reversed; it then began- to flow from east to west, leading back thither, mixed with other elements, the descendants of Lycians, Carians, Leleges, and early lonians ; and thus the sons once more returned to the shores which their • "J • • • • • • • • • • • •