Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/52

 The Country. 31 of the winds. ** The winds," writes Curtius/ '*are the legislators of the weather ; but even they, in these latitudes, submit to certain rules, and only rarely rise to the vehemence of desolating hurricanes. Never, except in the short winter season, is there any uncertain irregularity in wind and weather ; the commence- ment of the fair season — the safe months, as the ancients called it — brings with it an immutable law, followed by the winds in the entire Archipelago : every morning the wind arises from the coasts of Thrace and passes over the island sea ; so that men were accustomed to designate all the regions lying beyond that of these coasts as the side beyond the north wind. Often these winds (the Etesian) for weeks together assume the character of a storm, and when the sky is clear waves of froth appear as far as the eye can see ; but the winds are regular enough to be free from danger, and they subside at sunset : then the sea becomes smooth, and air and water tranquil, till almost imperceptibly a slight contrary wind arises, a breeze from the south. When the mariner at -/Egina becomes aware of this, he weighs anchor, and drops into the Piraeus in a few hours of the night. This is the sea-breeze sung by the poets of antiquity, and now called the Embates, whose approach is ever mild, soft, and salutary. The currents passing along the coasts facilitate navigation in the bays and sounds of the sea ; the flight of migratory birds, the shoals of tunny-fish reappearing at fixed seasons of the year, serve as welcome signs for the mariner." Sea and winds went hand-in-hand together in the building up of Greek unity ; the only unity she was fated to know before the Roman conquest ; political and administrative unity came to her with her Roman enslaver, Mummius, who numbered her as a Roman province. ** Greece," said Joseph de Maistre, Corinth, she was divided into a number of cantons forming as many independent states, whose boundaries were traced out by Nature. The most thickly populated, energetic, and richest of these commonwealths cast about how to subdue their neighbours, and for awhile they were successful. Their chief ambition however was to become the acknowledged heads of leagues of more or less importance, which culminated in the too tardy and therefore abortive attempt of the Achaean federation, ^ E. CuRTius, Greek History,
 * 'came divided into the world's being." Down to the fall of