Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/171

 The Mediterranean World and the Early Greeks 1 3 1 leisure for continual exercise in the use of arms, tiiese nobles became also the chief protection of the state in time of war. Thus grew up a sharp distinction between the city community Conflict of and the peasants living in the countr)- — a division altogether coumry unknown in the old wandering life on the grasslands, where Fig. 71. The Walls of Homeric Troy, built about 1500 b.c. A section of the outer walls of the Sixth City in the mound of Troy (Fig. 58). The sloping outer surface of the walls faces toward the right; the inside of the city is on the left. These are the walls built in .the days when Mycenae was flourishing — walls which protected the old .F^gean inhabitants of the place from the assaults of the Greeks in a remote war which laid it in ruins after 1200 B.C., a war of which vague traditions and heroic tales have survived in the Homeric poems (p. 142), Schliemann never saw this Sixth City, the real Homeric city, which was not excavated until after his death. The walls of the houses of the Seventh City are visible here resting on those of the Sixth there were no towns. The country peasant was obliged to divide the family lands with his brothers. His fields were therefore small and he was poor. He went about clad in a goatskin, and his labors never ceased. Hence he had no leisure to learn the use of arms, nor any way to meet the expense of purchasing The peasant