 Chapter 3 of Hellenic History. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mike Botez. July 2019. Hellenic History. By George Willis Botsford. Chapter 3. The Middle Age. Transition from Minoan to Hellenic Life. About 1200 to 750. At the time when migratory warriors were raiding the Egyptian Delta or colonizing Philistia, the Minoan civilization was fast-yielding to a more barbaric form of life. So notable was the decline that from about 1200 we may date the beginning of a new era, which was essentially a transition from Minoan to Hellenic life. The period thus defined bears close analogies with the later European Middle Ages, in that both were characterized not only by invasions of less civilized people, but also by a vast decline and an incipient recovery of culture. One Dorian and Ionian colonization and culture. For a long period after the beginning of this era, colonial expansion from the West to East across the Aegean Sea made progress. From Argolis and Laconia, immigrants first Achaean, and afterward Dorian made their homes in Melos and Thira, southmost islands of the Cyclades. In the same order, they occupied the choices parts of Crete, which came thus to the ethnic complexion described by Homer. There is a land called Crete in the midst of the wine-dark sea, a fair land and rich, begirt with water, and therein are men innumerable and ninety cities, and all have not the same speech, but there is a confusion of tongues. There dwell Achaeans, and there too Atheo Cretans, true Cretans, high of heart, and Sidonians there, and Dorians of waving plumes, and goodly Pelasgians, and among them is the mighty city of Knossos, wherein Minos rules in nine-year periods, he who had converse with great Zeus. Beyond Crete the Dorians pushed on to Carpathos, to Rhodes, and ultimately to the coast of the mainland. Among their cities on the Anatolian shore were Knidus and Halicarnassus, both thriving centers of industry and commerce. The Greeks who came to Crete were attracted to the area which had experienced the highest cultural development, to Knossos, Gortin, Festus and their neighborhood. In the east the Achaeo Cretans at Presos maintained their nationality and their language far down in historical times. In the west were Sidonians regarded by Homer as non-Greek, but certainly Dorian in the historical age. Because of the small number of Hellenic immigrants into this island, the process of assimilation was remarkably slow. Earlier perhaps than the Dorian colonization was the beginning of the movement from central Greece to the Kiklades, mentioned in the preceding chapter. Gradually this migration continued eastward till it reached and included the narrow strip of territory on the Anatolian coast afterward known as Ionia. On the site of Neolithic villages, these immigrants in the period of Minoan decadence founded small cities. Two colonists from Crete were added adventurers from the Kiklades and from various parts of the Hellenic peninsula. In fact it was a motley population that came and they made themselves more heterogeneous by mingling with the natives. They have no right to pride themselves on purity of descent, says Herodotus, considering that a large part of them are Abantis from Yubia, who have no share even in the name of Ionia and many of Arcomenus have been mingled with them, and Cadmians and Draupians and Phocians who seceded from their native state, and Molossians and Pelasgians of Arcadia and Dorians of Epidorus and many other races have been mingled with them. In those of them who set forth from the Britannion town hall of Athens and who esteemed themselves the most noble by descent of the Ionians, these I say brought no women with them to the settlement but took carrion captive women whose parents they slew. So far were the newcomers from aiming at racial purity that they not only married native wives but received carrion chieftains into their own nobility and even accepted them as kings. In a varying degree, this principle of race mixing holds for all Greek colonies, doubtless it was partly the composite nature of the population as well as the lovely climate, the most favorable in the world known to Herodotus, the rich soil, the highly articulated coast adapted to commerce, and the situation on the borderland between Hellenic and Oriental civilizations which made the Ionians for centuries the most brilliant and most versatile of Greeks in the age of their glory the standard bearers of the world civilization. Among their most noted cities were Phosia, famed for her early naval power and her distant western colonies, Ephesus where was built a great temple to Artemis, and Miletus an illustrious center of industry, commerce and intellectual life. In this new home the Ionians were more aggressive and more powerful than their Hellenic neighbors. On the south Dorian Halikarnassus and in the opposite direction Aeolic, Chios and Smyrna in time became ionized while commercial relations with Phoenicia gave the Semites the Ionian name in the form of Javan with which to designate the entire Hellenic race. On the Greek mainland the process of Hellenic assimilation was more rapid than elsewhere, apart from place names no clear trace of a native tongue has been discovered. In considerable stretches of the eastern coast of Peloponnesus, as in Trezen and Kinuria, the Ionian dialect long maintained itself, elsewhere in Argolis the Dorian speech prevailed both in the country and in Tirins, Mycenae and Argos. In the middle age Argos gained mastery over her rivals and ultimately imposed her hegemony upon the peninsula that bears her name. In Laquania our earliest historical light reveals a population essentially homogeneous in culture and in language. Some Mycenaean sites as a mycenaean therapnae were occupied by Hellenic cities, where as Sparta, destined to a leading place in Greek history, was a wholly new foundation. Similarly Attica which had contained a number of Mycenaean sites experienced as thorough an amalgamation of Hellenic and native races and at the same time became politically centralized in its chief city Athens. As the southmost section of the Aegean coasts and islands was occupied by the Dorian race, which was essentially one, though with slight differences of blood and dialect, so the Ionian name generally applied to the section extending from Attica to the Anatolian coast. Only as the Athenians awakened to a consciousness of their own superiority did they discard the Ionian name. In this section too of Aegean shores and islands, in spite of local differences in dialect and ethnic composition, the population was essentially one in language and in race, in political and religious institutions and in social customs. For a long time the mother peoples were more conservative, the colonies more progressive. The most fundamental transformations of this period were the blending of the immigrant culture with that of the natives, in the gradual emergence of the Hellenic world from the turmoil and relative barbarism following upon the Indo-European invasions. In the case of many an institution or custom it is difficult or even impossible with our present knowledge to determine the nationality of its several elements. Some aspects of the transition may be traced most distinctly in Crete. After the destruction of Knossos on Festus, we find the Cretans thoroughly impoverished and revitalized, as is proved by their utter inability to repair the damage. When these sites came to be reoccupied with poor dwellings, the Magnificent Palace was in like manner superseded by a smaller and cheaper home of the European type, built for a king of scant means and narrow sway. Art was the same in technique but all inspiration was gone. Naturalism yielded to stiff geometric patterns. This style after remaining in the background from the early Bronze Age now reasserted itself. The graceful spirals, octopi, flowers, leaves and tendrils of the Minoan culture were driven from the field by zigzags, triangles, checkers and meanders. The same changes were taking place throughout the Minoan area. They were in fact most pronounced on the Greek peninsula, Wednesday extended to the rest of the Aegean region. The artistic worth varied according to locality, from the barbarous specimens found in earlier Sparta to the far more graceful forms of Crete and Rhodes, where Minoan traditions were relatively strong. Everywhere the quality improved throughout the age. For obvious reasons, the Renaissance was speediest in Crete. Her artistic activity of this period is typified by the mythical Daedalus, whose fame finds an echo in the Iliad. Before the close of the period, however, the Cretans were outdistance by the Ionians, who having passed from the decadent Minoan to the geometric style rapidly emerged from this condition. Their artists adopted for vase paintings and ornamental work in ivory, bronze and silver, more lifelike representations of man and nature, with a tendency to processional and heraldic groupings, with a fondness for winged men, women and beasts and for human-headed animals. These features, commonly described as Orientalizing, may have been due to contact with the East in the early Middle Age, but had developed to a degree of artistic merit far superior to their Oriental patterns. Contributions to this stage of progress were made not only by Aegean Greeks, but also by the Phoenicians, who too were heirs of Minoan culture. Their geographical situation on a narrow coast made them a seafaring folk. On the downfall of the Cretan naval power, their mariners voyaged into the Aegean Sea, where they traded with the Greeks in the manner described by Homer. Their chief service to civilization was a transmission of writing from the Minoans to the Hellenies of the Middle Age. The Minoan linear script comprising word signs and syllable signs gradually drew simpler, chiefly through the dropping of characters. In Cyprus it was limited to syllabic signs, and in Syria a further step was taken when the number of these signs was reduced to 22, each standing for a single consonantal sound, whereas the vowels remained unrepresented. Receiving this script from the Phoenicians, probably about 900, the Ionians transformed it into a phonetic alphabet. Till the opening of the 7th century, however, its use remained extremely rare. Meanwhile, Greeks and Phoenicians continued to interchange wares and art patterns. As the Ionians were the more highly endowed race, it is likely that they gave more than they received, and that much which has, hitherto been described as Phoenician, should be credited to the Greeks. From the 9th to the 7th century accordingly, it was not the Phoenicians but the Ionians who were leaders in the Geometric and Orientalizing art which extended from the Euphrates to Italy and Sicily. In an age of general poverty, we find throughout the area, once my known, a remarkable tendency to refinement and luxury, among the nobles most noticeable in the Ionians. In peace, especially during the sumptuous religious festivals, they indulged in the luxury of trailing gowns of linen, richly dyeing colors from the purple mollusk, and adorned themselves with a profusion of jewelry. Their costliest and most artistic works still surviving are gold ornaments of various forms and silver cups, plates and shields, all richly decorated with scenes from mythical or real life. Everywhere too the Greeks of this period cultivated singing and enjoyed the music of the lyre and pipe. The geometric motive which prevailed till near the end of the period was derived in part from weaving, and the nobles and kings were robes adorned with in-woven or embroidered patterns in the prevailing art. In fact, the entire life of this area was undergoing a profound transformation, manifested as distinctly in dress, as in any other external feature of society. The laborer, conservative and economical, continued even in historical Greece to wear the waist cloth. The chiton, obviously a Semitic word meaning linen, was a newer garment sewn in the form of a sleeveless shirt, which covered the body and hips, and which could be girded in at the waist by a broad belt. A more stately chiton adapted to gods and kings, doubtless too the holiday attire of all who could afford the luxury, reached from neck to ankles. The tightness of the dress, whether short or long, is a heritage from Minoan costume. Still, more conservative was the garb of women. The goddess Artemis Orthea at Sparta wore a robe seemingly composed of a low cut waist with shoulder straps, belt and tight skirt of strongly Minoan aspect. A great innovation of the age, however, was the fibula, a safety pin of varying form and complexity, which brought about a revolution in dress. This method of fastening was used in the peplos, a woman's gown which reached from neck to feet. It was a rectangular cloth folded double above the waistline, and drawn up under the belt so as to form a pouch around the body. Gradually prevailing over all other styles, it became the Doric gown of the historical age. The hair of women and men alike grew long and hung down in several heavy strands on both sides of the face, held in order by a band encircling the head. Although these articles of dress began to appear early in the Mycenaean period, it was not till the middle age that they displaced the Minoan patterns. One of the most important constructive elements in the new civilization, which gradually emerged from the ruins of the old, was the rise of the iron industry. In the 14th century, this manufacture was well developed in the Hittite country of Eastern Asia Minor. The metal was mined in the region afterward known as Pontus, and the process of hardening it to steel is indicated by its use for sword blades. Thus writes a Hittite king to another person, probably the Egyptian pharaoh. As regards your writing to me for pure iron, there is no pure iron prepared in my storehouse. As soon as it is ready, I will forward it to you. Now I am sending to you an iron sword blade. The use of the metal for tools and weapons, extending westward, reached Crete in the 13th century, where iron axes, picks, swords and spearheads have been found in and about some beehive tombs of that age. Thus its use passed more slowly over the disturbed Aegean area, to Laconia, Attica and Thessaly and to their colonies. Its penetration into Laconia seems to have been especially slow. Although from the beginning of the period, bronze objects abound in Laconian deposits, no iron has been found in the strata below the 8th century. In fact the immigrants of Doric speech arrived in Peloponnes in the early transition from bronze to iron. While the metal was still scarce, the Peloponnesians like other Greeks began to use it as money. The pieces so employed were in the form of a spit or of a round bar. Still later came the use of this metal in tools and weapons. The superior power of steel in weapons of attack rendered necessary the strengthening of the defensive armor. The round or oval targe, reinforced by a central bronze boss, took the place of the huge man covering shield, which however lingered on by the side of the improved pattern. At the same time the warrior protected his head with a helmet topped by a high bronze crest, his body with a hubbock of metal plates that opened in front and behind, and bronze grieves for the legs below the knees. Those who had the means and the intelligence to procure the improved equipment gained through it a political superiority over their neighbors. The working of the iron mines in Mount Aigetus, which separates La Conia from Messenia, accrued to the advantage of the Spartans, who waged frequent wars of conquest to their weaker neighbors, with the result that before the end of the 8th century, they had brought all La Conia under their sway. In the intervals of peace, they exercised a prowess in hunting wild animals on the neighboring mountains. In like manner, the Ionians of Greece and the adjacent islands drew iron from the mines of Euboea and Serifos. As in the Minoan Age, the noble, equipping himself with heavy armor, rode to war in a car driven by his choir. When before the close of the period, the chariot was discarded, the noble bestowed his steed and rode to battle, his mounted squire by his side. Or he took command of a light galley propelled by oars and a mast and armed with a submarine ram for assailing the enemy's craft. Corresponding changes were taking place in religion. For a time, the cremation of the dead, doubtless accompanied by a weakening of belief in the power of ghosts, tended to supersede humation. But in the end, the burial of the unburned body, without wholly displacing the other form, prevailed though in tombs too small to be looked upon as dwellings. Men continued accordingly to worship the dead. Still greater reverence was paid to heroes, who, as sons or near descendants of the gods, were gigantic in stature and strength. Having lived mightily among men, they died and were buried. But their spirits remained powerful to harm or bless. Greatest of all heroes was Heracles, whose cult was already widespread over Hellas. Many heroes remained local. The Spartans worshipped Menelaos and Helen at a great hero shrine, Heron. On the left bank of the Eurotas, where is the chief hero of the Athenians was Thesias, to whom, while king, they ascribed the political unification of Attica. The Indo-European and Minoan religions gradually melted into one. The Northern invaders adopted Minoan Artemis and Aphrodite, apparently with little change. The immigrants to Miletus were as receptive of native cults as of native blood. The desire to secure the protection of the local deities, in the good will of the Carians, went hand in hand with greed for the properties of these gods. Identifying their own sky deity Zeus, with the God of the Double Axe, they converted the shrines and sacred domains of the Carian deity to their own service. In a like manner, their Artemis usurped the property and various attributes of the great mother Sibaly. Elsewhere, Zeus was identified with the son of Cretan Rhea. The character and attributes of the archer Apollo, especially his healings, purifications and oracles, seem to be inconsiderable part Minoan. These are mere suggestions of that amalgamation, which with our present knowledge it is impossible to analyze in detail. At least we are warranted in assuming that no deity of historical Greece may safely be regarded as purely Indo-European or purely Minoan, and that the native race, endowed with a creative genius in religion as in art, contributed far more than the incoming northerners to Hellenic belief and ritual. The prevailing tendency today is to assign to the invading people the sunnier aspects of religion, while living to the natives the gloomy features including magic, the worship of ghosts, the doctrine of sin, and its purification by washing in blood. It is significant too that, as in the Minoan past, the great deities of the Middle Age were mainly goddesses, such as Athena at Athens, Artemis at Sparta and Ephesus, and Hera at Argos. The worship of these heavenly women was intimately bound up with the public life of the cities, wherein they severly made their homes. The dwelling of the deity imitated the European type of palace. In the 9th century, the Spartans erected to Artemis Orthia a temple consisting of a wooden frame with walls of unburned brick resting on a foundation of stone. The apex of the gabled roof was supported by an interior row of wooden columns running lengthwise through the center. It was a small building less than 15 by 30 feet in extent, designed mainly as a shelter for the deity and her utensils and gifts, whereas the worshippers gathered about the great altar outside. The goddess herself, represented by a piece of wood rudely carved, was so small that the priestess could hold it in her hands. In origin a nature goddess, she gave fertility to flocks and fields, and was patroness of youths in their athletic training, and of girls who worshipped her in choral song and in masked nocturnal processions. Summerly, the Dorians and Ionians, occupying the area once most thoroughly permeated with Minoan culture, wore its principal hares. In material civilization, religion, government, and social structure, they were essentially alike, and it was owing chiefly to developments beginning near the close of the middle age. Above all, to the brilliant growth of industry, commerce, and intellectual life among the Ionians, that in the historical period, the leading communities of the two races differed widely from each other. 2. Aeolian colonization and culture While Ionians and Dorians were occupying the central and southern parts of the Aegean islands and Anatolian coasts, the Aeolians of Thessaly and Biosia were engaged in a parallel movement of colonization. They settled in Lesbos, where Mithilini gained the first rank in population and power. Kios too, they occupied. On the adjoining mainland, they founded 12 settlements, among which were Kime and Smyrna. The Aeolian colonists had been but slightly touched by Minoan culture, and only in its decadent form. Most of them were men of new blood and fresh ideas, the first Europeans whom we can clearly know. In all probability, it is mainly their life that is pictured by Homer. His age, home, and personality are still under controversy. Are the epics attributed to him, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the work of one poet or of a long succession of menstruals? Whether an individual or a collective unit did Homer live on the Greek mainland or in the Anatolian colonies, soon after the close of the Minoan age, hence about 1100 or 3 centuries later? Do his poems picture a single phase or successive phases of culture? These problems are still pressing for solution. The present volume has no space for the details of the controversy. It must limit itself to the presentation of a view which seems to the writer most reasonable in the light of the known facts. Most probably the Minoans, like the contemporary Orientals, had a written literature of chronicles, songs, and epics. However, that may be centuries before Homer, a keen minstrel's chanted layers of war and adventure in the palaces of the glorious Minoan age. Through song and story, the memories of Minoan splendor were vividly retained to the end of the colonial period. Tradition may well have been aided by the survival here and there of an old palace and more abundantly of rich furniture, gold cups, inlaid swords, and other artistic objects preserved as heirlooms in the families of the great. In these ways, material from the Golden Age and from that of decadence came down to the time of Homer, who well knew the art, though not the artists. The minstrel predecessors of Homer lived in Thessaly and its neighborhood. The gods are therefore Thessalian, their home is Mount Olympus. The Thessalian local colouring is strong, and the political, social, and religious atmosphere is European rather than Minoan. Among the colonists to Asia Minor came Bards, with their lays and traditions, and there the struggle of the immigrants with a strange environment stimulated the poetic genius to heroic efforts. Among them was Homer, the supreme genius of epic song. His home was Smyrna or kiosk where dwelt Aeolians and Ionians mixed. His dialect, accordingly, combines those of the two races, while the life of his neighborhood is aeolic, modified by Ionian influence. He lived about 800 and may have composed both Iliad and Odyssey, not by incorporating earlier lays or by merely adding to an existing epic, but by totally new creations, yet from tradition contained in extant songs. After his time his poems underwent some changes, especially during the 8th and 7th centuries. Thus it happened that Homer's poems, which are mainly Indo-European, became the inspiration and literary models of the historical Greeks. The life he pictures is not homogeneous, but a mingling of the traditional and the ideal with contemporary facts. Leaving no long time after an age of colonization, Homer knew how a city was founded. The faecians evolved, he informs us, dwelt in Hyperia near the Cyclops, who continually vexed them. Thence the godlike Nausethus made them depart, and he carried them away and planted them in Scaria, far off from men that live by bread. And he drew a wall above the town, and built houses and made shrines for the gods and meted out the fields. He became king of the city, and at his death, his scepter passed to his son. The land was distributed on an aristocratic principle. Wooden pasture remained common to all, whereas special domains were reserved for the king and gods, while to the great men, the king's counsellors and commanders of troops in war, were granted large estates to be worked by their slaves, hired men, or tenants. The common freemen received the lot in the city for his dwelling, and in the country a field for cultivation. Such ownership of land as existed was vested in the family, and was not subject to transfer by sale. Slaves and common freemen lived the crudest lives, devoid of every comfort. The hut of the swine herd had no table, chair, or bed. Laertes, driven from the throne of Ithica, because of old age, retired to the country where he lived a poor man. My father abides there in the field, and goes not down to the town, nor lies he on bedding or rugs or shining blankets, but all the winter his lips were slipped the thralls in the house, in the ashes by the fire, and his clad in sore arraignment. But when the summer comes, and the rich harvest tied, his beds of fallen leaves are strewn lowly, all about the knoll of his vineyard plot. There he lies sorrowing. We see the same old man in the terraced vineyard, digging about a plant, clothed in a filthy chitin, patched and unseemly, with clouted leggings of oxide bound about his legs, against the scratches of the brambles, and long sleeves over his hands by reason of the briars, and on his head he wore a goatskin cap, or trudging home weary at night, to receive his food prepared by an old Sicilian woman. Out of keeping with his sorry life is the fact that he was the proprietor of a rich and well-ordered farm, that he had won for himself of old, as the prize of great toil in war. There was his house, and all about it ran the huts, wherein the thralls were wont to eat and dwell and sleep, bondsmen that worked his will. They watched the laborers plow, plant, reap, thresh, dig trenches, build stone fences, fell trees, and dispute over the boundaries of their fields. They produced nearly everything they needed. They rarely went to town to purchase bronze or iron for their forges, and they seemed to have been cut off from all political life. The city, the city was small, therein lived the king, the noble and wealthy with their household slaves, and the common agricultural class whose estates were conveniently near. There too dwelt potters, couriers, bronze myths, and a few merchants, who dealt in useful metals and in imported eastern luxuries. Into the harbor sailed Phoenicians, in their ships laden with countless gods, and while they traded they kidnapped children, profitably combining commerce with robbery. Among a people of action, the pirate was more steamed than the lazy merchant. The city was but rudely fortified. The palace was like the Mycenaean of simple form, consisting of a great hall with central hearth, bath and sleeping rooms, and a vestibule leading to a front court. The splendid furnishings described by Homer were either heirlooms or a mere memory of a richer and more cultured age. And the king, the Homeric government contrasts with the Minoan. The monarchy appears in its simplest elements, yet the enormous pretensions of the king may be a breath from the Minoan south. He was a near descendant, preferably a great grandson of Zeus or some other god. His honor too was from Zeus, lord of council, who cherished him, granted him glory, and furnished him even with thoughts. His scepter, the sign of his power, was made in heaven and given by a god to the founder of his dynasty. The people therefore prayed and hearkened to him as to a god. Here we have an approach to the Oriental God King. Among the Greeks of Homer's time, however, these vast boastings were empty. The king maintained his place only by superior personal ability, as in semi-barbarous life, and his power depended on the number of troops he led. Thus with Agamemnon followed the most and goodliest folk by far. And in their midst himself was clad in flushing bronze, all glorious and was preeminent amid all warriors, because he was goodliest and led folk far greatest in number. Relations were personal, and no theory of government or even idea of government in the abstract had yet a reason. Ordinarily, the kingship was hereditary, yet if the son was too young were otherwise incompetent, the scepter might pass to a brother or other relative. Occasionally, a new family came to the scepter. In Ithica, some kind of popular election was thought of to fill the throne of Odysseus, in case the natural hair should not succeed. For support, the king depended on the greatest state attached to the scepter, personal or family property, gifts from his subjects, his large share of booty and choice portions of sacrificial victims. He wore no crown or purple robe, but dressed and equipped himself little better than other nobles. The state. In this period and among these people, the state was a crude, undeveloped institution, with functions correspondingly few and ill-defined. The duty clearly conceived of protecting the population from foreign enemies made the king a general, the commander in chief of the army. The need of protecting the state itself from domestic foes, from treason and rebellion gave him judicial power. It was no less incumbent upon the government to avert the anger of the gods and to secure their good will and beneficence. From this need arose the king's priestly character. The rule is the fact that the state had not yet acquired the function of protecting the lives and property of the citizens. That was a private affair. One who slew another fled from the country to escape the vengeance of the murdered man's kin, or remained on condition of paying some acceptable to the kinsmen. With such things, the government had nothing to do. Likewise, it was incumbent on each individual to protect his own property from thieves and robbers. There were no police or officers of justice, and in time of peace, no army. It often happened, however, that the despotants brought their case for arbitration to the king, queen, or counsellors. In the famous trial scene pictured on the shield of Achilles, the question seems to be whether the slayer has paid the blood money to the kin. The folk were gathered in the assembly place, for their strife was arisen, two men striving for the blood prize of a man slain. The one claimed he had paid full atonement expounding to the people, but the other denied him and would take note. And both were feigned to receive judgment at the hands of an arbiter, and the folk were cheering both as they took part on either side. And heralds kept order among the folk, while the elders on polished stones were sitting in the sacred circle, and holding in their hands staves from the loud-voiced heralds. Then before the people, they rose up and gave judgment each in turn. And in the midst lay two talents of gold, to give to him who should plead most graciously. Probably the counsellor who received the loudest applause from the people was deemed the wisest judge. Here is the feigned beginning of popular jurisdiction, which culminated in the courts of Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. The council. The king was absolute only on the battlefield, where he exercised the power of life and death. It is true that there was no constitutional way of checking him or of calling him to account. But in point of fact he was limited by the council of elders and by the popular assembly. The members of the council, Bully, had the same honors and titles as the king. They too are scepter-bearing kings and fosterlings of Zeus. The king was himself a counsellor, and merely the first among equals. As the council was an essential element of government, the king was not so considered, as his presence was unnecessary to the assembly of that body or the transaction of business by it. Individual members rebuked him sharply, denounced him as unfit to rule, and often disobeyed his command. They were haughty, quarrelsome and insubordinate. The right to sit in council, the right to give advice depended on the wisdom of age. Hence the members were called elders, on lineage or success in war. The number was small, never more than a dozen. A man of influence in the community, especially with the ability to raise and command military forces, was sure to be given a place in the council by the king. And when, once a seat was established, it became hereditary. Usually the counsellors assembled round the table of the king, and began business after partaking of his hospitality. The discussion lasted till all agreed. The idea of voting or of majority was totally absent. There were no specialized functions or departments of administration. Individually and collectively, the counsellors assisted and limited the king in all his duties, military, judicial and religious. Though they had no legal way of coercing the king, their collective will generally prevailed. It required but a slight shift in the political balance to change the kingship into an aristocracy. In the absence of Odysseus, his country was kingless, virtually an aristocracy, at the mercy of turbulent, avaricious nobles, in whom the poet, whose sympathies were with royal family, could recognize no legitimate authority. The assembly of commons For the commons, the Zeus-nurtered prince cherished supreme contempt, but in practice he had to heed their will. In war, all fighters, in peace, all men, within or near the city, attended the assembly called by king or noble. Often, the question brought before them had previously been considered in council. They were usually such as affected the people and whose execution required their cooperation. The chief speakers were the king and counsellors, though commoners were not wholly debarred. The commons expressed assent by shouting. Their disapproval by silence points to remarkable self-restraint. Ordinarily, their opinion prevailed. In their gathering lay a germ of democracy, which was to grow and ripen to perfection in Greek states like Athens. The tendency of the time, however, was to abridge this influence in the aristocratic interest. In Ithaca, during the king's long absence, the nobles neglected to summon it. They themselves altogether went to the assembly place and suffered none others to sit with them, either of the young men or of the elders. By degrading the office of the king and by neglecting to call the assembly, or by restricting it to their own kinsmen and partisans, the nobles were already converting the monarchy into an aristocracy. Religion In the religion of Homer, we find a striking contrast with the Minoan Age. The people of whom he speaks feared no ghosts, nor venerated heroes or fetishes, or the dead or monsters. The few abnormal creatures who existed in imagination were not the objects of worship. All the gods had human form, and with the exception of the lame-smith Hephaestus, all were models of beauty. They differed from men only in their superior stature, strength and physical perfection, in the character of their food and drink, ambrosia and nectar, in their dwelling place and life of these, and in their immortality. They needed sleep, suffered pain and were sometimes wounded by men in battle. Although Zeus's superior all were limited in knowledge and power. They pursued their several inclinations, now in disobedience to Zeus, now winning him by persuasion or cajolery. But times his throne like that of the mortal king was insecure, and again his vast superiority seems to indicate a growing monotheism. The Council and Society of the Gods. The great deities dwelt together as a family on the summit of Snowy Olympus. There they spent their time in happy feasting, or skimmed and quarreled. Or under the presidency of Zeus, father of gods and men, they sat in council on the destinies of humankind. Their society was a reflection from that of earth, yet fear from moral restraint. They had all the evil as well as good qualities of man. Indeed, the poet appears to take delight in holding up the frailties of some, as affordiety and aries to ridicule their relation with men. In their dealings with men they were moved by Caprice. They helped those whom they loved and brought misfortune on the objects of their hate, or upon those who neglected sacrifice or the fulfillment of a vow to them. Yet in a limited measure they were the protectors of right and the avengers of wrong. Yeah, and the gods, taken on all manner of forms in the likeness of strangers from foreign lands, wander through the cities, beholding the insolence and the righteous spirit of men. They rewarded the good, but loved not evil deeds. Morally imperfect, like human beings, these gods as Homer represents them, with their clear-cut athletic forms, their majestic beauty, their incessant free activity, were the chief inspiration of Hellenic sculpture from the sixth century through the period of its acme and decline. Priests and temples, seers. Homer knew no priestly caste or hierarchy. The gods were so near to men as to demand no intermediaries. The father prayed and sacrificed for the family, the king and nobles for the state, and each individual for himself. Here and there were temples, most of them doubtless, only large enough to shelter an image. Such a shrine was under the care of a priest, who, though dear to the gods, was as a rule not a noble, or in any way superior to other men. Seers were classed along with craftsmen. Kalkas, the most celebrated, refers to himself as a man of the inferior social rank. The nobles had not yet monopolized religion or converted it to a political instrument. The dead. In the treatment of the dead, and in their view of the spirit life, the Homeric Greeks were far removed from the Minoans. Vestiges of embalming may have been borrowed from the south, but the Aeolians of Homer always burned the body and deposited the ashes in a nerd, over which they heaped a cairn. On the top of this mound they set a pillar. In general opinion, all souls passed unconditionally to the realm of Hades in the far west, or beneath the earth, there to lead a shadowy, joyless existence. The shade of Achilles says, Speak not comfortably to me of death, glorious Odysseus. I should rather be upon the field as the servant of another, of one who had no land and little property, than a king of all the dead. Elysium. Once only the poet speaks of a future world of happiness, the Elysium plain in the extreme west, where life is easiest for men. No snow is there, nor yet great storm, nor any rain, but always ocean sandeth forth the breeze of the shrill west to blow cool on men. There dwells fair-haired Radamanthus, brother of Minos, and thither the gods will carry Manilaus, because he has Helen to wife, and through her is damned a son of Zeus. Thus this paradise is open to a few favorites of the gods. Morals. In moral living, the Homeric Greeks derived little aid from their deities. It is true that religion taught them to pity and protect stranger suppliants, to honor parents, to refrain from overwinning pride, and in a general way by precept rather than by the example of the gods, to cultivate righteousness. But their moral progress, whatever it was, must be attributed to purely human effort. Their virtues were preeminently military, above all physical strength and bravery. The bad man was the coward and weakling. Wisdom was the skill in the use of arms, or in the management of men, or shrewdness in daily life. The Greeks were proverbially deceitful, and Homer's gods and men indulged in clever lying. Yet Achilles exclaims, Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is the man who conceals one thing in his breast and speaks another. Patience, temperance, and self-control are commanded in the hero Odysseus. The spirit of justice and general good order within the state and the army is pronounced. The number of crimes is remarkably few, in view of the lack of supervision on the part of the government. Family life, perhaps the most charming feature of Homeric life is the love of husband and wife, of parents and children, the affection which binds the family together in a moral unity. This bond was drawn the closer by the circumstance that, unaided by the state, the family had to protect its own property and lives and avenge its wrongs. The father was head of the family, but the mother's place was equally honorable, and descent through her was highly esteemed. Her father had received for her hand a bright price in oxen, which went to her as dowry, and the lady of rank chose her husband from among the suitors. Women sat with men in the great hall and went about freely in city and country. Sometimes the queen alone held royal office. This honorable and influential place of woman was one to which Indo-European and Minoan sentiments and usages alike contributed. It is true that her pacific nature and her physical inferiority made her the prey of war, the victim of the brutal conqueror, and often her husband's lack of respect for the marriage bond subjected her to distressing humiliation. Yet, at least in the higher class, these disadvantages were in part made good by the love and honor. The chivalrous treatment and social power accorded her alike by kin, townspeople, and guests from other states. Chapter 4 of Hellenic history. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mike Botez. Hellenic History by George Willis Botsford. Chapter 4 Economic Growth and Colonial Expansion. BC 750-479. Agriculture. The decline of Minoan culture had been accompanied by vast depopulation, made good only in part by the infiltration of strangers. In the Middle Age, forests grew up over many a field that had once been tilled or occupied by human dwellings. As the Hellenies emerged from the darkness of that time, we find them at the close of the 8th century, chiefly engaged in grazing and agriculture. There remained abundant public land on the mountain slopes, on which the citizens freely pastured their flocks and cut wood for fuel and building. The arable fields were the property of king, gods, associations of various kinds, and citizen families. Our chief source for the beginning of this period is Hesiods, Works and Days. He instructs the peasant proprietor, first of all to get a cottage and a woman and an ox for plowing, and all necessary furnishings in his house. For neighbors do not like to land. Keep a sharp toothed dog, stint not his food, lest a day-slambering man rob thee of thy belongings. His advice is directed chiefly, however, to the small country-esquire, whose manor house stands near the group of slave cabins. Yet, even on such an estate, life is simple and full of toil. The Lord labors along with his slaves. They use a wooden plow drawn by a pair of steers, a matuk for breaking the clods, and a rude two-willed cart for conveyance. They have no mill for grinding grain. Wheat were more commonly barley and spelt, but crushed in a mortar after threshing it on a hard-beaten floor. Their grain and wine they stole for the winter in large earthen jars, as had been done in the Minoan Age. The labors of the seasons they regulate according to the movements of the stars and the phenomena of plant and animal life. The rising of Arcturus annouses spring, and when they see the snails climbing the plants, they sharpen sickles for the harvest. Life is an endless round of toil, with a slight relaxation in the coldest month, when the fierce northeast wind brings to earth many a lofty oak, and branching pine in the mountain dels. Or in the hottest summer, when the tuneful cicadae shrilly sing, it is permitted the Lord to rest in a shady grotto, while he eats his roast kid, or beef, and drinks his biblian wine well mixed with water. We catch but one pleasing glimpse of indoor life, where the unwedded, tender girl bites near her dear mother. After bathing and anointing herself with oil, she sleeps peacefully during the night, while out of the doors the homeless polypus knows his own foot in dismal haunts. Conditions in Attica were similar. Besides grain and grapes, this country produced an abundance of honey, figs, and olives. The oil was used for anointing the body, and in the preparation of food and much remained for exportation. The government carefully regulated the planting and care of trees, the location of hives, the digging of ditches, and the use of water from public and private wells. Country life grows difficult. The incoming northerners had infused hellas with a tremendous physical vitality. The rapid increase of population made country life more and more difficult. Peasant estates divided equally among the sands soon became too small to support a family even in a prosperous season. And when the crops failed, the situation of the poorer farmers grew desperate. Better it is, says Hesiod, to bring up but a single son, especially as hares often waste the estate in litigation, and the judges are ready to give the verdict to the one who brings the largest bribe. The common man in the hands of a magistrate is like an itingle in the hawk's clutches. It is well, therefore, eschewing litigation to work and save and avoid borrowing. In Attica, a mortgage pillar was placed on the farm of the debtor, and in failure to pay, the estate fell to the creditor. In such a case, the debtor generally became a tenant on the land he once had owned, paying his lord a sixth part of the produce. Further borrowing placed a mortgage on the security of his own person, or on that of his wife or children. Such debts were hopeless and served as a step to slavery. Some escaped their doom by flight. In Biosia, day-slammering highwaymen infested the roads. Round the Smith's Forge, or in the rude clubhouses of the village, gathered throngs of homeless beings who filled their idle hours with evil plots. Everywhere in Attica stood mortgage pillars, holding black earth in slavery. Many peasants, once free, toiled trembling under their master's caprices. Many others were sold often illegally into foreign lands. The agricultural population was fast falling into slavery. The liberation of the Attic peasantry by Solon will be considered in another chapter. The gloomy outlook filled the ocean poet with darkest forebodings for the human race. While, however, he was reiterating his only proposal for a cure, work and save, the problem was elsewhere finding solution in the growth of skilled labor. The rise of industry. During the Middle Age, the highly developed Minoan industries had almost disappeared. And in the semi-barbarism of the period, mankind reverted to the primitive custom of making at home nearly everything needed in house or field. The village Smith and Potter wrought for their immediate neighborhood. In the coast towns were shipwrights skilled in building the small round-bottomed boats of the time propelled by a sail and at most by 30 oars. With the help of his slaves, the Lord built his own house, and women wove the necessary garments. Only the rich could purchase a few luxuries, as tapestries, jewelry and medicine, from Ionian or Phoenician traders, or beautifully dyed woolens and linens brought from Lydia and Caria. Gradually, however, as life became more settled and wealth accumulated in the hands of lords, arose a demand for better wares than could be supplied by unskilled hands. To meet this need, some of the poor who felt cramped on their little farms, or were made homeless by economic oppression, began manufacturing on a small scale. Those who had skill and thrift grew wealthy. Many an impoverished Lord betook himself to such an occupation, and many a wealthy noble invested part of his capital in trade. Men of the same branch of industry banded themselves together for mutual encouragement and protection. The guild, thus arising, patterned itself after the gens, for blood was the firmest bond which united men. As the Alcmaeonidae were sons of Alcmaeon, the Smiths of Athens called themselves the Sons of Bronze, Kalkidae. There were two, the Praxyrgydae, handicrafts sons, and various other artisan guilds. In these times, work was no disgrace. In the fact that in early Attica, the guilds won political privileges speaks well for their reputation. Slavery. Hand in hand with skilled industry developed slavery. A workman who could buy a single slave for his shop became a capitalist on a small scale, which was generally enlarged with future purchases, till the master out-trivaled the old noble in wealth and could contend with him for political supremacy. The growth of industry was accordingly interwoven with the political and constitutional development of Greece. Lydian, Ionian, and the lesbian industries. The industries of the New Age had their principal origin in Ionia and her neighbor Lydia, a country of diverse natural resources. Hence, it was that in the 7th century, Lydian headbands, sandals, and golden ornaments for the person were among the most highly prized luxuries of Helas. Soon, however, these products were excelled by the brilliant efforts of Ionians and lesbians. Miletus won fame for her finely woven woolens of rich violet, saffron, purple, and scarlet colors and her rare embroideries for the decoration of hats and robes. Doubtless, her workshops produced a wide range of wares, not mentioned in history, such as were demanded by the increasing refinement of her civilization. Second only to Miletus were other cities of Ionia and Metellini on the island of Lesbos. Notably, Glaucus of Chios discovered a process for welding iron, which proved invaluable in the useful and fine arts. About the same time, certain Samians introduced bronze casting into Greece from the Orient. Egina and Calcus. Naturally, the extension of skilled industry over Greece was from east to west. Egina, whose scant soil forced the people to industry and commerce, produced bronze work, such as cauldrons, tripods, and sculptured figures and groups, in addition to small wares of various kinds. In Euboea on the strait of Euripus, Calcus became a thriving industrial city. With bronze obtained in part from neighboring mines and with purple mollusk caught in the strait, she manufactured wares for war and peace and costly dyes for kings and nobles. Corinth. In industry and commerce, Calcus had eventually to yield to Corinth, from early time renowned for wealth. Its citadel was acrochorinthus, a steep and lofty peak commanding a view of the Isthmus below and of a wide expanse of country all about. The two harbors, one on the Saronic Gulf, the other on the Corinthian, afforded easy commerce with the east and the west. To avoid the hazardous doubling of Cape Malia, ships were unloaded their freight, which under a toll to the city was transported across the Isthmus. Early dreams of a canal were idle, but in time was constructed a tramway for hauling ships across. The city was not simply a mart but a thriving center of industry, which produced vases showing oriental influence, bronze wares for utensils and arms, well woven and beautifully dyed woolen fabrics for clothing and tapestries. Even the Ionians not content with their rich native fabrics welcomed the Corinthian ropes of purple, sea green, hyacinth, violet and brilliant red. In the vases were exported wines, olive oil and toilet ointments. These activities were fostered by the government. The king had been supplanted by the members of his gents, the Bakiade, who, forming a close aristocracy, refused intermarriage with any other class. During their 90 years of rule, 647 to 557, they developed the useful and decorative arts to a high stage of excellence, and in friendly cooperation with Calcas, they extended their lines of traffic in various directions. Megara and Attica, immediately to the north of Corinth was Megara, a little city state with a narrow territory extending across the Isthmus. The soil was stony, scarcely fit for anything but grazing. This condition compelled the Megarians to manufacture, with their scant mains, coarse woolens and heavy potteries, and from both their narrow coasts to traffic with the east and west. In the 7th and 6th centuries, Attica remained essentially agricultural. It did export, however, oil and probably wine in beautifully painted vases. Her great industrial and commercial development belongs to the following period. Other centers of industry and traffic will be mentioned in other connections. Colonial expansion, about 750 to 550. With the economic development of the period is closely connected a great movement of colonial expansion. While in agricultural districts, the departure of immigrants lightened the burden of excessive population, the growth of thriving cities demanded not only an increased food supply, but an importation of raw materials from distant countries and markets for manufactured products. Added to the need of an outlet for the surplus population and the requirements of industry and commerce were the love of adventure and enterprise and the fortune-hunting spirit inborn in many Greeks. And as time went on, not a few were detached from their home countries by the political unrest which attended the evolution of government, from monarchy to aristocracy, tyranny and democracy. Minoan, Etruscan and Calchidic colonization. The Minoans had traded with Sicily and with Italy, as far north, at least as Campania, and had sent colonists either. The last remnant most probably was the Etruscan people, whose Minoan ancestors came to Italy no later than 800. Then the mariners of Calchis followed in the Etruscan past Campania for barter with the natives. About 750 they planted their first colony in Italy. The chief object was trade, as you may infer from its location on the little island of Pithecusae of the Promontori of Mycenum. Here the strangers could defend themselves far better than on the mainland. It was a lovely isle with beautiful landscape, rich soil and an exhaust less supply of the best clay to be found in Italy. From there they crossed over to the mainland and settled Cume, by ancient repute, the oldest Greek colony in the peninsula. Its founding, however, could have been no earlier than the middle of the 8th century. Long afterward Cume, in conjunction with some Athenians, settled Neapolis on the Bay of Naples. The Cumeans manufactured vases and metalwares for trade with the native Ossonians, in whose country they were settled and with the Latins farther north. Their fields unstintingly yielded grain, with which in after years they could relive the city of Rome when distressed with famine. Cumean culture. On the loftiest hill of the city, the Cumeans built a temple to Apollo, in which they erected a wooden statue no less than 15 feet in height. The shrine was the center of culture, which at that time was all religious. Here the Greeks continued to expand the myths of their race, making Odysseus, Ulysses, and other national heroes visit the shores of Italy in their wanderings. The volcanic character of the land suggested the presence of supernature, the terrific battle of the giants, for the ownership of a fertile neighboring plain, the cavernous mouth of Hades realm, and the mysterious abode of the sable, Apollo's prophetess, who wrote her oracles on leaves. This was the first Hellenic center of culture with which the Romans came in touch. Thence they borrowed the cult of Apollo and the art of writing, other calcidic colonies. Afterward the Cumeans with other colonists from the mother city founded Zancle, the sickle-shaped town on the Sicilian side of the Strait of Messini. In later years, after receiving an accession of immigrants from Messenia, it came to be named Messini, Messana. Other calcidic towns were Regium on the opposite side of the Strait, and Haimira on the northern coast of Sicily, far to the west of Zancle, Achaean colonies. Meanwhile, Achaeans from northern Peloponnese founded Sibaris in the instep of the peninsula. Built in a plain which was unhealthful yet marvelously productive, the town drew abundant wealth from the soil. Her people expanded by colonization and conquest, till, it is said, they ruled over four nationalities and twenty-five cities. In their final struggle with Croton, we are informed with undoubted exaggeration that they placed three hundred thousand men in the field. A colony on the west coast founded partly by them was Poseidonia, which now attracts a continual stream of tourists by its temple ruins. In a district malarial and thinly peopled, yet surpassingly fertile, stands the temple to Poseidon, impressive in its lowly majesty. Originally agricultural, the Achaeans developed great commerce, especially as intermediaries between Ionia and Etruria. Mylesian woolens of fine texture brought to Sibaris were transported across the peninsula to her coast colonies, where Etruscan merchants eagerly bought them. Croton, another Achaean city, acquired the territory inferior to that of Sibaris, but a superior fame for athleticism and war. Locary, a colony from Locris, remained purely agricultural, hence far inferior in wealth and population to the great Achaean cities. Here arose the first Indo-European law code, which tradition assigns to Zaleucus. Dorian colonies, Tarentum. In Italy, the Dorians made one settlement of primary importance, Tarentum, founded according to traditions from Laconia in the time of the Messenian Wars. It was on an excellent harbor in the instep of Italy northeast of Sibaris. The settlers rested from the native Yappygians a wide tract of land, in which they occupied themselves with farming and ship raising. Equally important were fishing and the preparation of purple dye. The Tarentines developed a great industry in weaving and dyeing fine woolens, as well as in vase making. Their wares they exported throughout the peninsula. The Greek colonists, and by no means least among them the Tarentines, profoundly affected the history of Italy. Syracuse founded 734. Among the earliest colonizers of Sicily were the Corinthians. Archaeus, a noble sailing from Corinth, left a band of settlers on Corkira. Then, proceeding to Sicily, he founded Syracuse on the island of Ortigia. The fountain Arethusa supplied copious fresh water, while the great and little harbors gave certain promise of a splendid commercial future. The colonists divided among themselves the adjacent territory, in larger states to be worked by serfs called Chillerians. We do not know the origin of this class, but evidently the natives, Sices, formed a great part of it. Far more numerous than their lords, they corresponded in status to the helots of Laconia described below. Thus, the society of the colony differentiated into great landlords, a middle class of merchants, and artisans, serfs, and purchased slaves. Soon the city outgrew the island and expanded over the neighboring plateau. Under favoring conditions of location and soil, Syracuse was destined in the days of her greatness to become the most populous and the most strongly fortified city in Europe. Acragas, Agrigentum, and other colonies in Sicily. Many other Dorian colonies from various cities were planted in southern Sicily, the most brilliant of which was Acragas. Its founders, after long toils bravely born, took by riverside a sacred dwelling place and became the eye of Sicily, and the life of good luck clave to them to crown their inborn worth. Their citadel was a lofty ridge, two miles from the shore. Beneath this shelter on the south, the city grew up on the high ground between two mountain streams, which joined below before flowing onto the sea. The river's estuary served as a harbor. There the jars of oil and wine produced in the rich fields above the city were loaded for shipment to the eager marts of Carthage, whence a back-returning stream of silver marvelously enriched the Acragantines. Other colonies of Sicily, to be named in the course of this narrative, need not be mentioned here. A wreath of Hellenic settlements nearly encircled the flowery island. Only in the west, the Phoenicians, receding somewhat before the aggressive Greeks, stubbornly maintained themselves. The importance of the western Greek colonies. The economic and cultural history of the Italian and Sicilian Greeks is closely twinned on the one hand with that of the mother country, on the other with that of Rome. They interest us not only for their own contributions to civilization and their reactive stimulus to older Hellas, but even more as a mighty factor in the civilization of Italy and through Italy of Central and Western Europe. Improved navigation and the far western colonies, Spain. The earlier voyages to these shores had been made in small round-bottom boats described above. In the 7th century developed a somewhat longer vessel, with flatter bottom furnished with 50 oars and armed with a bronze beak for attack. These improved ships conveyed the Samyans, and more actively the Phocaeans, in their distant voyages to Iberia, Spain, whose gold, silver, and copper attracted them. Beyond the pillars of Heracles in the stormy Atlantic, the Cassiterides Isles and distant Britain yielded tin, a metal chiefly prized as an ingredient of bronze. In the tin trade, the Phoenicians were intermediaries between Greeks and natives. Colonies in Gaul. On the southern coast of Gaul, Phocaeans founded Masalia, Marseille, along the chief center of Hellenic culture in the western Mediterranean. Mother of a cluster of colonies in Gaul and Iberia, and school of the neighboring barbarians, who learned there to speak and write the Hellenic tongue. The Greeks of this region brought with them the Ionian laws, and from Ephesus the Cult of Artemis, whose temples rose in every city. We must accordingly regard the Phocaeans as the forerunners of Rome, in the work of civilizing southwestern Europe, northern Aegean colonies. A somewhat different interest attaches to colonial movements in other directions. The founding of settlements on the Thracian Sea, and along the Hellespont and Propontis, served merely to expand Aegean Hellas to its natural limits. In the occupation of the Calchidic Peninsula, the name itself suggests that Calchis took the lead, though Eritrea and Corinth participated. The country was rough, but the chief occupation was agriculture along with fishing. In later time, the timber of the region proved a source of revenue, and in the neighborhood were the mines of Mount Pangaeus. It was through these colonies that the Macedonians of the interior, a backward Hellenic people, slowly acquired the civilization of their progressive southern kinsmen. Colonies on the Hellespont and Propontis, meanwhile the Ionians were sailing through the Hellespont and the Propontis, and along the coasts of the Black Sea, to catch the tiny fish, to trade with the natives, and to plant settlements on all the shores. Miletus alone is said to have founded no less than 90 in this region. Most important, however, was Byzantium on the Propontis, the most famous among the colonies of Megara. It is situated on a spacious bay in touch with migrating shoals of fish, the nexusless source of wealth to the inhabitants. Their command of the strait enabled them to levy tolls on passing ships, while splendid opportunities for commerce, combined with a strong defensible position, further contributed to their prosperity. A thousand years after its founding this city, under the name of Constantinople, became the capital of the Roman Empire. Colonies on the Black Sea, although Hellenic settlements surrounded the Black Sea in a nearly unbroken chain, their civilization failed to penetrate far into the interior or materially to affect the natives. For such results, the settlers were all too few. To help us the Black Sea region, while offering little intellectual aid, furnished useful products, especially fish, timber, dyes, wheat, metals, cattle, and slaves. Naucratis, Egypt. In another direction, Greek enterprise was to bear rich intellectual fruit. About the middle of the 7th century, Psometicus had made himself master of Egypt, with the help of bronze-clad Ionian and carrion rovers of the sea. He and his dynasty were therefore most friendly to the Greeks. A settlement of Ionian traders, on the Canobic Channel of the Nile, they permitted accordingly to grow till it became the colony of Naucratis. Here, under the protection of the government, various Greek cities of Asia Minor and the neighboring islands together with Aegina established their warehouse for trade. The king enlisted many Greek mercenaries. The natives, whose country produced few grapes, enjoyed the wines imported from Greece, and sent in exchange the varied products of the Orient. A class of native interpreters acquainted with the Hellenic tongue grew up, who entranced the curious tourists with wondrous tales of folklore and religion and medical skill, of engineering and building achievement, in the erection of pyramid or labyrinth or temple, whose immensity and durability awed the impressionable Hellenic mind. The importation of papyrus into Greece cheapened writing material, while the elementary facts of geometry and astronomy, brought home by inquisitive tourists, stimulated the birth of Hellenic science and philosophy. To the opening of Egypt, therefore, we may trace in part the great intellectual awakening of Hellas, motive and effects of colonization. It is unnecessary in these pages to mention by name any one of the hundreds of other Greek settlements scattered along the coasts of the Mediterranean and of its tributary waters. The leading motive, as has been noticed, was economic expansion of trade and provision for the surplus population of a marvelously virile race. Among the effects were not only the bestowal of Hellenism in a varying degree upon the peoples of the Mediterranean basin, but also the enrichment of the Greeks themselves and, through contact with the world, their own stupendous advance in civilization. All that the Europeans and their colonists now are in the world, the Hellenies were then in the Mediterranean basin, carriers of civilization and reapers of political and economic profit through their vital and intellectual mastery. The founding and the organization of a colony, in the planting of colonies, the Greeks of this period, gradually developed a body of customs to which they felt morally bound. The founding city, Metropolis, Mother State, after obtaining the sanction of the Delphic Apollo, appointed as founder a citizen of noble family to conduct the colonists to their new home, establish the government, and after death receive worship as a hero. Often an invitation was issued to friendly neighbors to take part. A charter of incorporation was drawn up, which constituted the proposed settlement as a community, named the founder provided for the assignment of lands, and for other necessary matters, and regulated relations between the mother and daughter cities. The tie was fundamentally one of kinship, such as blinds parents and children. Well, I know that many colonies have been, and will be, at enmity with their parents. But in early days the child, a zine family, loves and is loved. Even if there come a time later when the tie is broken, still while he is in want of education, he naturally loves his parents and is beloved by them, and flies to his relatives for protection, and finds in them his only natural allies in the time of need. These words of Plato testify to the strong bond of filial sentiment, which showed itself in the participation in common religious festivals, in the reciprocal rites and honors, extended by each community to the member of the other, and in the general continuity of religious, social and political usages, and institutions of the old city in the new. A colony in the neighborhood of the mother state usually remained politically dependent, such as were the Athenian settlements of the 5th century, known as clerucius, lot holdings, but so strong were the decentralizing tendencies, that distant colonies became forthwith sovereign states, permanently united with the mother state, however, by the firmest bond of alliance known to the Greeks. The colonial movement tended accordingly to widen the sympathy beyond the narrow limits of city-state, while the experience gained in the framing of charters, and in the organization of new communities, stimulated the development of written law and constitutions, and ultimately the birth of political science. Commerce was greatly promoted by the invention of coinage. Early in the Middle Age, the Minoan currency was lost to the world, which in consequence returned to barter. After the introduction of iron, spits, obels of that metal, passed a small currency. In the 8th century, the Ionians reviving the Minoan custom, began to use as coins striated drops of electron, a natural amalgam of gold and silver. Probably they were before the Lydians in the adoption of a coinage. From the early 7th century, Ionian and Lydian issues may be approximately dated. West of the Aegean Sea, the Aegean Athens were the first to stamp coins. Their type was a two-dragma piece of about 194 grains, giving 97 grains to the drakma. The latter, considered equivalent to six current obels, would furnish silver for an American quarter of a dollar. This double drakma was called a turtis, from the figure of that reptile stamped on the face. It passed current not only in Aegean, but also for a long time in the Greek peninsula, on many of the islands, and in Hellenic colonies of Italy and Sicily. Caucus and Eritrea were not far behind Aegean in coinage. Among their earliest issues were various denominations in electron. Their standard coin, however, was a silver piece, weighing about 135 grains, and therefore much lighter than the Aegean Athens. Attic chronicles of later time regarded this piece too as a double drakma. It passed current in the numerous Ubeak colonies and was adopted by Solon as a standard for Athens. The silver contained in this drakma is worth in American money a trifle more than 18 cents. End of section 4