Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/238

 222 HISTORY OF GEEECK. did in ancient times, is intimately connected with the structure of the country, and must from the earliest period have brought about communication among the otherwise disunited villages. 1 Such difficulties, however, in the internal transit by land, were to a great extent counteracted by the large proportion of coast. and the accessibility of the country by sea. The prominences and indentations in the line of Grecian coast, are hardly less remarkable than the multiplicity of elevations and depressions which everywhere mark the surface.' 3 The shape of Pelopon- nesus, with its three southern gulfs, (the Argolic, Laconian, and Messenian,) was compared by the ancient geographers to the leaf of a plane-tree : the Pagassean gulf on the eastern side of Greece, and the Ambrakian gulf on the western, with their nar- row entrances and considerable area, are equivalent to internal 1 The cold central region (or mountain plain. oporrediov) of Tripolitza, differs in climate from the maritime regions of Peloponessus, as much as the south of England from the south of France No appearance of spring on the trees near Tegea, though not more than twenty-four miles from Argos Cattle are sent from thence every winter to the maritime plains of Elos in Laconia (Leake, Trav. in Morea, vol. i. pp. 88, 98, 197). The pasture on Mount Olono (boundary of Elis, Arcadia, and Achaia) is not healthy until June (Leake, vol. ii. p 119) ; compare p. 348, and Fiedler, Beise, i. p. 314. See also the Instructive Inscription of Orchomenu?, in Boeckh, Staats haushaltung der Athener, t. ii. p. 380. The transference of cattle, belonging to proprietors in one state, for tem- porary pasturage in another, is as old as the Odyssey, and is marked by various illustrative incidents : see the cause of the first Messenian war (Diodor. Fragm. viii. vol. iv. p. 23, ed. "VVess ; Pausan. iv. 4, 2). 2 " Universa autem (Peloponnesus), velut pensante sequorum incursua natura, in montes 76 extollitur." (Plin. H. N. iv. 6.) Strabo touches, in a striking passage (ii. pp. 121-122), on the influence of the sea in determining the shape and boundaries of the land: his obser- vations upon the great superiority of Europe over Asia and Africa, in re- spect of intersection and interpenetration of land by the sea- water are remark- able: TI fiev ovv TZvpuTTT} iroXvaxTJUovEGTaTr] Traativ tart, etc. He does not especially name the coast of Greece, though his remarks have a more exact bearing upon Greece than upon any other country. And we may copy a passage out of Tacitus (Agricol. c. 10), written in reference to Britain, which applies far more precisely to Greece : " nusquam latius dominari mare nee litore tenus accrescere ant resorberi. sed influere penitus et ambire, el juqis etiam atque montibus i weri tdut itt suo"