Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/125

 I04 Primitive Greece : Mycenian Art. lost native land was aggravated by the hardship and the difficulty of settlement ; but ere long it spread everywhere, and attacked even such as were permanently settled, with more land, too, than they knew how to till. The restless impulse of migration was kept alive by the innate mobility of the race, the temptations which navigation held out for rich settlements, such as the early emigrants — so rumour said — had everywhere found. Wild tales were circulated as to the splendid opportunities thus opened out for desirable sites, the productiveness of the lands, the gains to be made by trade, on a vast continent the unknown depths of which concealed opulent commonwealths, themselves in relation with the great empires of the far East. From Epidaurus, Traezen, Argos, Megara, and Laconia, went out migrating bands wherein domi- nated the Dorian element. The Dorians spread in the southern Cyclades, Melos, and Thera ; in the Sporades, where, to name but the most important islands, they seized upon Cos and Rhodes ; in their advance they took in the Carian coast, and at the extremity of peninsulas easy of defence planted two cities, Cnidos and Halicarnassus, destined to a grand future. Detachments landed in Crete, where they met a large population already settled there, with families experienced in the art of government. Hence conflicts between invaders and invaded became inevitable ; the arduous valour however of the Dorians, coupled with superior military discipline, in the long run gave them the day ; they obtained a firm foothold in the land, and nowhere did the manners and institu- tions which were peculiar to them develop with greater originality. Considered as a whole, the movement of population which started from Epirus and terminated with the Dorian migration presents a well-defined character. In the beginning, northern Hellas subdues her southern sister ; this is followed by the reaction of European Hellas against the supremacy which Asiatic Hellas had acquired and long kept in her grasp, resulting in the brilliant success of her European sister. Two points of time are to be noted in the sequence of this evolution ; the first is the least known and consequently the most obscure. How is it possible, at this distance from the events, to estimate the effects which successive invasions, wholesale plunder, and devastation were likely to have on so vast, so prolonged a movement, upon which no light is shed by con- temporary witnesses ? In any case, we doubt not but that all these shocks and displacements wrought a temporary standstill,