Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/44

 The Country. 23 history alike apply this name more particularly to the country which bears it to this day, the easternmost of the three peninsulas which Europe projects in the south and seems to send out to meet Africa. It was this very small tract of land, now constituting the possessions of King George, which the Hellenic race long ago elected as its dwelling-place for all time, though often ravaged by invasions and conquests. There, though fated to be much given to disperse itself abroad and send out young swarms to spread where they could, it has ever maintained itself more compact ; there, too, the cities that played so brilliant a part in the Grecian world and strove for supremacy and the direction of affairs, Corinth and Sparta, Thebes and Athens, came into being and lived their lives; there, finally, were celebrated those Isthmic and Nemaean games which served to gather together the dispersed sons of Hellas. Hellas, as this peninsula is designated, is Greece properly so called, pre-eminent Greece ; by her side are other Hellas which, although they could not boast so central a situation, or to have played so commanding and continuous a part, were none the less sharers in and contributors to her glory. There is, first, Asiatic Hellas, whose happily-constituted sons, with the brilliant pliability and go which characterize the Ionian race, were more precocious than European Hellas ; she it was who inaugur- ated poetry and art, commerce on a large scale, and distant navigation. Then there is African Hellas, the Hellas of Naucratis and other cities, — peopled by Greek mercenaries, introduced into the country by the wars of Psammeticus, — whose situation lay between the mouths of the Nile ; but above all, the Hellas of Cyrene and its territory, with its powerful townships protected against Egyptian lust and Carthagenian jealousy by a sandy belt. This oasis, whence caravan roads started in every direction towards the interior, was a gate opened on the mysterious depths of the great southern continent ; through this opening a curiosity ever on the alert gathered many a data by which the boundaries of the inhabited world were enlarged, and more exact information was obtained in regard to the different races of men and climes. On the opposite shores is yet another Hellas, Western Hellas, running fringe-like along the bays and headlands of Southern Italy, and pushing her outposts to the mainland of Gaul and Spain. To her befell the honour of being Rome's educator. It is no part of our present story to say to what degree of power and