Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/50

 The Country. 29 mountain, whose several peaks have each a name ; a gigantic mountain with a most complex construction, which in places bulges out and expands into parallel or divergent lines of moun- tains, whilst elsewhere it contracts into a single thick wall. Innumerable ravines scar and fashion its sides ; deep breaches pierce its often craggy walls and part the principal masses, whence spurs strike out in every direction, slanting away to the sea-shore, where they rise in sharp and steep needle-like masses. No elevated and spacious table-lands greet us here, as in Central Spain ; neither do we find a broad valley to be compared with the P6 valley, which by itself constitutes almost the whole of Upper Italy. Thessaly alone has plains of some extent. Everywhere else the name is applied to narrow spaces squeezed in by surround- ing hills, which die away in the mass high and low : such would be the Boeotian and Attic plains, or the flats of Argos and Sparta. A land which makes such calls on man's activity as soon as he steps out-of-doors, obliging him as it does to perpetual ascents and descents, offered no great temptation to the dwellers of any two inland districts to visit one another. What an immense advantage and relief at the same time, to have the sea near at hand, which would enable them to betake themselves wherever they pleased on the coast, provided they learnt how to steer a boat and handle an oar. Hence it came to pass, that in order to make the most of this natural resource, the different clans which built up the Hellenic nation were led to group themselves, and so to order their settlements as to have an outlook on the sea, making the establishment strong, keeping a watchful eye on its approaches, guarding it by ramparts, running up ** long walls,'* as they would say, to connect it with the chief centre, situated more or less inland. Every one felt that to allow the town to be cut off from the sea, was to deprive it of the air of heaven and doom it to certain death. The Arcadians are almost the only Greeks who chose their seats in the very heart of Peloponnesus, and thus found themselves for ever parted from the sea. The want of it is apparent through- out their existence. They felt no great interest in spiritual concerns ; their share in the progress of arts and letters was feeble ; they were looked down upon as people who, in the human race, had somehow lagged behind. If later they followed, at a distance, the march of civilization, this in part was due to the fact