HOW

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THE GREEKS

OW Greek civilization originated cannot be determined with any degree of definiteness. The ancient Greeks were certainly a mixture of races, who ultimately evolved a remarkably unified idea of culture. But what the mixture was is not definitely known. The Cretan civilization which spread into Greece had little in common with that of the Greeks of the thousand years before Christ. Its art and architecture were mainly conventional; its political systems were those of Egypt and Assyria, with whom it had come into frequent contact-a system of castes, pageantry, and dynasties. Nevertheless, the existence of this great culture exercised a profound effect upon the subsequent history of Greece, because it had laid a foundation of vigorous craftsmanship in an area which was afterwards to produce the historic Greeks.

Somewhere between 2000 and 1500 B. C. invaders from the north, from the direction of what we now know as Macedonia, began to make their appearance in Greece. At first there was probably no definite invasion. It is almost a rule in history that before any definite invasion of a new territory takes place there is a long period of more or less peaceful penetration. In the beginning we have the settlements of adventurers and traders; then mercenaries are invited in by some chieftain anxious to get the better of a fellow chieftain, or perhaps a few families move a little farther up a mountain or a little to the other side of a pass. Then follow disputes and violence. From this it is not a far cry to definite invasion. By 1500 B. C. this latter process had almost certainly started in Greece, and the names of the various tribes of whom the invaders were composed are probably preserved for us in the lands which they conquered. There were Hellenes, Thessa

lians, Boeotians, Achaeans, Phocians, and Dorians. They appear to have mixed with the former inhabitants in varying proportions. Attica was not subdued, but met and received the invaders on equal terms: here the native race predominated. In Sparta, on the other hand, the invading Dorians kept their race pure. Mycenae was destroyed: the Mycenaean culture submerged: and the native languages gave way to the Aryan language of the invaders, which we call Greek. When Greece had been conquered, a task which took centuries to accomplish, the migrating tribes crossed the sea to the western coast of Asia Minor, where three groups of settlements-Aeolian, Ionian, and Dorian-preserve the names of the conquering tribes. In one of these migrations Troy was destroyed, and its siege, blended with the recollections of earlier battles, forms the subject of Homer's Iliad, the first epic of Europe, sung in the metre which the conquerors had brought with them from the north.

The Greeks crossed over to Asia Minor by sea, but some centuries were to elapse before they became a maritime people. The conquest of Greece, Asia Minor, and the Aegean Islands had probably been completed by 1000 B.C., but as late as 700 B. C. it is obvious from the writings of Hesiod that the Greeks regarded the sea with disfavour. Originally they were nomads counting their wealth by flocks and herds; then, as they formed settled communities, they became agriculturists, although for some time the work of tilling the fields and growing crops was left to the women, while the men tended the cattle or fought the battles of their tribe. As nomads they had no such thing as law; its place was taken by customs, such as the custom of the next of kin being responsible for revenging a murdered man. They were all split up into tribes and frequently there were subdivisions of the tribe. Each tribe had a king or leader, but generally speaking a kind of rough equality prevailed. There were no rich and no poor, and nothing approximating to government

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with the exception of a council of elders which decided some matters of tribal importance or arbitrated disputes, and an assembly of warriors which met annually or at some festival to decide migrations or the making of peace and war. When the Greeks settled into communities new problems faced them, such as the adjustment of the relations between rich and poor, and the passing of laws in order to protect the landowning class which had come into existence and power. The period from 1000 to 600 B. C. witnessed a determined attempt to grapple with these problems, and the difficulties of the task were complicated by the absence of writing, which necessitated the existence of such officials as 'rememberers' whose work it was to remember the terms of a contract or agreement, or the conditions of a treaty.

In course of time groups of villages coalesced to form cities, and the city-state was the only nation which the Greeks ever knew. Each city governed itself, had its own council and assembly, made peace and war, and raised its own taxes. In the centre of each of them, on an eminence, was the king's castle or acropolis or citadel. Down below, grouped around it, were the houses of the citizens, and the market-place where the king and council adjusted business and settled disputes. The council was composed of nobles or ' eupatrids' who had secured power and wealth for themselves by adding considerably to their lands by force, fraud, intermarriage, or oppression. The assembly consisted of the poorer citizens and of peasants from country districts which belonged to the city-state. It had little power in early times; as a matter of fact it did little more than confirm what the council had already decided. The council was the powerful body; and its members were the chief protectors of the state in time of war, for they alone could afford costly weapons and equipments. The peasants soon found it a waste of valuable time to attend the assembly, and their attendances became less and less frequent. When they were there they exercised no real

authority, and in the meantime their lands were being neglected. In many cases it was all that they could do to extract a bare livelihood from them, and it often happened that, in order to discharge debts which they had incurred, they had to sell themselves into slavery to some wealthy landowner. Slaves had no rights whatsoever, and could not vote in the assembly.

Politically, ancient Greece was always weak because of its division into city-states. At one time there were hundreds of them, all independent of one another, and, as in the Italy of the Middle Ages, the larger and more powerful cities were constantly trying to absorb the smaller and weaker ones. This tendency towards disunion was aided by the geographical configuration of the country; its mountains and deep bays kept communities apart. Thus local habits and dialects would develop, as distinct as those of North and South Germany, or of Brittany and Provence. Such differences made union difficult. Only two permanent unions were ever effected among the various groups of Greek city-states: one in Laconia under the leadership of Sparta, and the other in Attica under the leadership of Athens. Consequently Greek patriotism was narrow, but it was very intense. No people have ever loved their country more passionately than the ancient Greeks loved their cities. The Athenians of the time of Pericles did not regard their lives as their own, but as the property of the state.

There were, however, some influences which tended to bring ALL the Greeks together. There were the 'amphictyonies' or religious councils which controlled the great national temples or shrines such as that of Apollo at Delphi, or arranged religious festivals like the great annual festival of Apollo in the island of Delos. To these councils all the city-states sent representatives. The great games such as the Olympic Games were a further unifying influence, and the councils which controlled them were also representative