Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/129

 io8 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. and the iEgialieis federation of the Ionian cities. Men of different origin and speaking different dialects, amongst whom blood-feuds were rife, were brought to admit certain principles of humanity, and take counsel of one another on matters of general interest : thus had sprung up habits which the emigrants took with them to their new country. Colonists of the same group formed themselves into unions ; the fact that their dwell- ings lay in close proximity to one another induced little acts of kindness and sundry dealings, such as are natural between neighbours ; it inclined them to lend each other 'moral support, and sometimes in great straits substantial aid against the common foe. The impulse towards that political spirit which marks out the Hellenes from the subjects of Asiatic monarchies, was given by these federative institutions, so admirably adapted to the nature of the country, out of which was to grow and to be tried in turn every possible representative form during the political history of independent Greece. In the following age towns will come into existence. In that period we find the village, which is no other than the town in its embryonic state; for it possesses that which constitutes the town : a domestic hearth, around which are performed the rites relating to ancestral worship ; these, when translated into the city, will be amplified along with the creeds upon which they rest. The public hearth will be conceived as uniting in itself all private hearths ; each of the many sparks which make up the flame will represent a lighted fire. Above the divinized ancestors of each family there will stand the revered hero, common to the whole clan or yevo^ ; and above the hero, he who, in virtue of a no less spontaneous hypothesis, will be regarded as the original author of all these generations of men, as the father of the fathers of all these clans, and as such will receive the most marked honours.^ Security, the fountain of wealth, will assure to European Hellas — far too full of able men to stand in fear of invasions, — as ^ It is scarcely necessary to mention in this place Fustel de Coulanges' admirable work, entitled La citk antique. In it the author expounds with much show of learning and rare power of analysis, how the family household was built up, how a group of families formed the tribe, and how out of the union of several tribes sprang the town, the building up of which was the ultimate effort attained by these several units, on the basis of common ancestral worship, infusing life into it, and setting thereon its peculiar stamp.