Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/54

 The Country. 33 who, once at least in his life, had not left his native village or town for purposes either of war, business, religion, or pleasure : the two last incentives blended and joined hands together. The desire to consult some famous oracle or join festivals celebrated in honour of the great national deities, yearly set in motion thousands of Greeks, many of whom had to travel over great distances to reach their goal : from Tauric Chersonesus and the African shores, from Sicily and the Italian peninsula, even from outlying Gaul and Spain. In this old world of ours filled to overflowing, where everybody is more or less weighted by the duties of his profession or business, it is hard to realize what these festivals meant to the Hellenes, and the place they held in their existence. We may venture a guess at the nature of the conversations of men thrown together for a while ; the simple matters they had to tell and hear in return ; the questions and answers that would pass to and fro between relatives and friends that met after long separations, between strangers whom chance had brought together in the same lodging or around the same altar ; endless questions and answers listened to with rapt attention, but now and again broken in upon by the exclamations of amazed auditors. It would have been hard to devise aught better calculated to awaken the mind and keep it on the alert, than these meetings and displacements, as also to parry the injury to the spiritual and national union which, in time, distance and dispersion were likely to bring about. Then, too, their stock of knowledge and notions were freshened up in converse with those of their brethren who, like Odysseus, "had seen many cities and penetrated the minds of men." As to the Hellenes settled in small groups among Barbarians, in the most distant colonies, such as the oasis of Ammon, in the very heart of Sahara, after those quinquennial solemnities at Athens, Delphi, and Olympia, in which they all had taken part, they returned to their far-off seats, carrying with them the consciousness that they were more Greek than before ; not in feeling only, but in thoughts, manners, and language ; strengthened too, like the giant of their mythic lore, by having once again touched the maternal bosom of that land whose sons they were. Greece was thus both self-centred and scattered ; concentrated in Hellas, scattered and multiple outside her frontiers. In this VOL. I. D