Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/242

 226 HISTORY OF GREECE. an old and customary influence, his sterility of intellect and imagination, as well as his slackness in enterprise, his un- changeable rudeness of relations with the gods, which led him to scourge and prick Pan, if he came back empty-handed from the chase ; while the inhabitant of Phokrea or Miletus exem- plifies the Grecian mariner, eager in search of gain, active, skilful, and daring at sea, but inferior in stedfast bravery on land, more excitable in imagination as well as more mutable in character, full of pomp and expense in religious manifesta- tions towards the Ephesian Artemis or the Apollo of Branchidae ; with a mind more open to the varieties of Grecian energy anJ to the refining influences of Grecian civilization. The Pelopon- nesians generally, and the Lacedaemonians in particular, ap- proached to the Arcadian type, while the Athenians of the fifth century B. c. stood foremost in the other; superadding to it, however, a delicacy of taste, and a predominance of intellectual sympathy and enjoyments, which seem to have been peculiar to themselves. The configuration of the Grecian territory, so like in many re- spects to that of Switzerland, produced two effects of great moment upon the character and history of the people. In the first place, it materially strengthened their powers of defence : it shut up the country against those invasions from the interior, which succes- sively subjugated all their continental colonies ; and it at the same time rendered each fraction more difficult to be attacked by the rest, so as to exercise a certain conservative influence in assuring the tenure of actual possessors : for the. pass of Thermopylae, between Thessaly and Phokis, that of Kithaeron, between Bceotia and Attica, or the mountainous range of Oneion and Geraneia along the Isthmus of Corinth, were positions which an inferior number of brave men could hold against a much greater force of assailants. But, in the next place, while it tended to protect each section of Greeks from being conquered, it also kept them politically disunited, and perpetuated their separate autonomy. It fostered that powerful principle of repulsion, which disposed even the smallest township to constitute itself a political unit apart from the rest, and to resist all idea of coalescence with others, either amicable or compulsory. To a modern leader, accustomed to largo political aggregations, and securities for good