Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/256

 240 HISTORY OF GREECE. every Greek from understanding, and being understood by, every other Greek, a fact remarkable, when we consider how roiuvy of their outlying colonists, not having taken out women in their emigration, intermarried with non-Hellenic wives. And the perfection and popularity of their early epic poems, was here of inestimable value for the diffusion of a common type of language, and for thus keeping together the sympathies of the Hellenic world. 1 The Homeric dialect became the standard followed by all Greek poets for the hexameter, as may be seen particularly from the example of Hesiod, who adheres to it in the main, though his father was a native of the .ZEolic Kyme, and he himself resident at Askra, in the .ZEolic Bceotia, and the early iambic and elegiac compositions are framed on the same model. Intel- lectual Greeks in all cities, even the most distant outcasts from the central hearth, became early accustomed to one type of literary speech, and possessors of a common stock of legends, maxims, and metaphors. That community of religious sentiments, localities, and sacri- fices, which Herodotus names as the third bond of union among the Greeks, was a phenomenon, not (like the race and the lan- guage) interwoven with their primitive constitution, but of gradual growth. In the time of Herodotus, and even a century earlier, it was at its full maturity : but there had been a period when no religious meetings common to the whole Hellenic body existed. What are called the Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian games, (the four most conspicuous amidst many others analogous,) were, in reality, great religious festivals, for the gods then gave their special sanction, name, and presence, to recreative meetings, the closest association then prevailed between the feelings of common worship and the sympathy in common amusement. 3 1 See the interesting remarks of Dio Chrysostom on the attachment of the inhabitants of Olbia (or Borysthenes) to the Homeric poems : most of them, he says, could repeat the Iliad by heart, though their dialect was partially barbarized, and the city in a sad state of ruin (Dio Chrysost. Oral, xxxvi. p. 78, Reisk). toric. C. 1-2. p. 226, Gfdf fj.lv -ye KOV Trdvruf Traaj;<; jjffTU'oaovv navrj-yvpfuf tryepuv Hal bruvvpof olov OZv/ntiuv pv, 'OTiVftmof Zcvf TOV <T ev IlvtoZ,
 * Plato, Legg. ii. 1, p. 653 ; Kratylus, p. 406 ; and Dionys. Hal. Ars Rhe-