The Historians' History of the World 04

Meanwhile, in obscurity and gloom another Greece slowly arose in the mother-country. The immigrants, before whom the peoples of Agamemnon, Achilles, and Nestor—in so far as they were not enslaved by their rough masters—fled across the sea, had to begin from the beginning. The remains of the old civilisation stood in their midst, uncomprehended and mysterious as the Roman strongholds in the countries inundated by the flood of the Germani of the great migration. Where, as in Sparta, the forms of life fitted for migratory conditions were preserved in art, that primitive rudeness survived which (to take an instance) permitted the use of the axe only and not of the plane in the fashioning of a door-post. We recognise everywhere the oldest and lowest forms of religion—fetich-worship, totemism, a gloomy form of ancestor-worship; human sacrifice is frequent. Ornament has lost the sensuous delight in form proper to the Heroic period; it begins with lines and dots. The influence of the East must for a while have been totally arrested. How ill at ease an Asiatic Greek must have felt in this world is shown by Hesiod, who inveighs against his Heliconian village-home. He was the son of an immigrant Æolian. A large part of the country, not only the whole of the west coast, but also Thessaly the home of Hellen, i.e.

, of the whole nation, never again played an active part in civilisation. This, of course, had to come from the Greeks of Asia; and the cities of the eastern border in which the remains of the original population preponderated, Athens and Eubœa, to which the maritime city of Corinth was added from the Dorian cities, were the entrance gates to this civilisation. But the process of receiving and assimilating it was carried on in the main under the pressure of new modes of life, which we name after the Dorians. With regard to the older period we lack not direct evidence merely but credible information at almost every step: not till the beginning of the sixth century does it become possible to some extent to grasp this civilisation; but the institutions, their reflection in Heroic legend, and the character of the religion (not mere mythology) permit of a few inferences. The times were hard; for the most part a ruling class alone raised itself above the miserable, restless, joyless struggle for daily bread, and below it bondmen in many cases wore out a wretched existence. Not until the end of the period do men advance beyond the stage of primitive husbandry, and then not everywhere. Agriculture and cattle rearing remain the chief means of livelihood. The ruling class is warlike; where the mountains permit it, they pursue the sport of horse-racing, but for purposes of war horsemen are of little account. Highest in public esteem stands the physical exercise which in time of peace takes the place of military service; Greek gymnastics, of which Homer knows little, become hallowed by the competitive games which by degrees not only become the culminating moments of life but also evoke the first glimmer of public spirit.