Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/62

 The Country. 41 accentuate divergence of inclination, and thus enlarge the number of types whose vigorous relief and originality of features stand out from among their less favoured fellows. With the people whose country we have just described, everything was calculated to help on the growth of individual energy, and bring into existence beings capable, by foresight and decision, to withstand tyranny or fated doom. On the other hand, a land where cultivation is carried on by tilling a fertile soil, made productive by periodical rains or inundations whose recurrences may be looked for and predicted almost to an hour, the husbandman's work is terribly monotonous and mechanical. True, his body hardens as he bends his face to mother-earth, exposed to the extremes of heat and cold ; but there is nothing to awaken or stimulate the mind in a round of duties which are everlastingly the same, the order of which is known beforehand ; then, too, the minds of men so engaged are prone to slumber and become dull, so that the intellectual sluggishness of the rustic, more especially he who wields the plough, has become proverbial. True, Hellas also had her husbandmen ; but lands that could be tilled occupied a very small area, and did not yield grain enough for the needs of the population. When this increased, corn had to be imported from foreign lands, from Tauric Chersonesus, Asia Minor, and Egypt. Flats of any extent were rare ; with unspeakable toil, therefore, they strove to bring under cultivation the steep sides of their hills and ravines. What was denied to the ploughshare was obtained with the spade and hoe. By means of these implements many a plot of rye or barley appeared between the gaps of the rock. But very poor was the yield wrenched from the stony ground. The dwellers of this land found compensation in tree- and shrub-culture. Painfully and in the sweat of their brow they everywhere planted, even on the most craggy slopes, the walnut, vine, and olive. A notion may be gained as to the enormous amount of labour required and the comparatively small result of this kind of culture, by a visit to the south point of Laconia, now called Maina, where for thousands of years, un- molested by foreign invasions, it has been uninterruptedly carried on. The mountains which throw out to the southward the lofty mass of Cape Tenerus have almost perpendicular slopes which descend to the sea ; these are divided into multitudinous, long,