The Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, Text

by Edward A. Freeman

The immediate Greek world then as opposed to the outlying Greek colonies, consists of the shores of the Ægæan sea and of the peninsulas lying between it and the Ionian sea. Of this region a great part was exclusively inhabited by the Greek nation, while Greek influences were more or less dominant throughout the whole. But it would further seem that the whole, or nearly the whole, of these lands were inhabited by races more or less akin to the Greeks. They seem to have been races which had a good deal in common with the Greeks, and of whom the Greeks were simply the foremost and most fortunate, their higher developement being doubtless greatly favoured by the geographical nature of the country which they occupied. But a distinction must be drawn between the nearer and the more remote neighbours of Greece. It is hardly necessary for our present purpose to determine whether the Greeks had or had not any connexion with Thracians, European or Asiatic, with Phrygians and Lydians, and other neighbouring nations. ♦Nations more remote, but probably kindred.♦ All these were in Greek eyes simply Barbarians, but modern scholarship has seen in them signs of a kindred with the Greek nation nearer than the share of both in the common Aryan stock. We need not settle here whether all the inhabitants of the geographical district which we have marked out were, or were not, kinsmen in this sense; but with some among them the question assumes a deeper interest and a nearer approach to certainty. ♦Illyrians.♦ The great Illyrian race, of whom the Albanians or Skipetars are the modern representatives, a race which has been so largely displaced by Slaves at one end and assimilated by Greeks at the other, can hardly fail to have had a nearer kindred with the Greeks than that which they both share with Celts and Teutons. When we come to the lands which are yet more closely connected with Greece, both in geographical position and in their history, the case becomes clearer still. ♦Epeiros, Macedonia, Sicily and Italy.♦ We can hardly doubt of the close connexion between the Greeks and the nations which bordered on Greece immediately to the north in Epeiros and Macedonia, as well as with some at least of those which they found occupying the opposite coasts of the Ægæan, as well as in Sicily and Italy. The Greeks and Italians, with the nations immediately connected with them, clearly belong to one, and that a well marked, division of the Aryan family. Their kindred is shown alike by the evidence of language and by the remarkable ease with which in all ages they received Greek civilization. Into more minute inquiries as to these matters it is hardly our province to go here. ♦Pelasgians.♦ It is perhaps enough to say that the Pelasgian name, which has given rise to so much speculation, seems to have been used by the Greeks themselves in a very vague way, much as the word Saxon is among ourselves. It is therefore dangerous to form any theories about the matter. Sometimes the Pelasgians seem to be spoken of simply as Old-Hellênes, sometimes as a people distinct from the Hellênes. ♦The Greek nation.♦ Whether the Hellênes, on their entering into Greece, found the land held by earlier inhabitants, whether Aryan or non-Aryan, is a curious and interesting speculation, but one which does not concern us. It is enough for our purpose that, as far back as history or even legend can carry us, we find the land in the occupation of a branch of the Aryan family, consisting, like all other nations, of various kindred tribes. It is a nation which is as well defined as any other nation, and yet it shades off, as it were, into the other nations of the kindred stock. Clearly marked as Greek and Barbarian are from the beginning, there still are frontier tribes in Epeiros and Macedonia which must be looked on as forming an intermediate stage between the two classes, and which are accordingly placed by different Greek writers sometimes in one class and sometimes in the other.

§ 4. The Earliest Geography of Greece and the Neighbouring Lands.

♦The Homeric map of Greece.♦

Our first picture of Greek geography comes from the Homeric catalogue. Whatever may be the historic value of the Homeric poems in general, it is clear that the catalogue in the second book of the Iliad must represent a real state of things. It gives us a map of Greece so different from the map of Greece at any later time that it is inconceivable that it can have been invented at any later time. We have in fact a map of Greece at a time earlier than any time to which we can assign certain names and dates. Within the range of Greece itself the various Greek races often changed their settlements, displacing or conquering earlier Greek settlers; and the different states which they formed often changed their boundaries by bringing other states into subjection or depriving them of parts of their territory. The Homeric catalogue gives us a wholly different arrangement of the various branches of the nation from any that we find in the Greece of historic times. The Dorian and Ionian names, which were afterwards so famous, are hardly known; the name of Hellênes itself belongs only to a small district. ♦Tribal divisions of Homeric Greece.♦ The names for the whole people are Achaians, Argeians (Argos seeming to mean all Peloponnêsos), and Danaoi, the last a name which goes quite out of use in historic times. The boundary of Greece to the west is narrower than it was in later times. The land called Akarnania has not yet got that name, if indeed it was Greek at all. It is spoken of vaguely as Epeiros or the mainland,[3] and it appears as part of the possessions of the king of the neighbouring islands, Kephallênia and Ithakê. The islands to the north, Leukas and Korkyra, were not yet Greek. The Thesprotians in Epeiros are spoken of as a neighbouring and friendly people, but they form no part of the Greek nation. The Aitolians appear as a Greek people, and so do most of the other divisions of the Greek nation, only their position and relative importance is often different from what it was afterwards. Thus, to mention a few examples out of many, the Lokrians, who, in historic times, appear both on the sea of Euboia and on the Corinthian gulf, appear in the catalogue in their northern seats only.

When we turn from tribes to cities, the difference is still greater. ♦Groupings of cities.♦ The cities which held the first place in historic times are not always those which are greatest in the earlier time, and their grouping in federations or principalities is wholly unlike anything in later history. Thus in the historic Boiotia we find Orchomenos as the second city of a confederation of which Thebes is the first. In the catalogue Orchomenos and the neighbouring city Aspledôn form a separate division, distinct from Boiôtia. Euboia forms a whole; and, what is specially to be noticed, Attica, as a land, is not mentioned, but only the single city of Athens, with Salamis as a kind of dependency. Peloponnêsos again is divided in a manner quite different from anything in later times. The ruling city is Mykênê, whose king holds also a general superiority over all Hellas, while his immediate dominion takes in Corinth, Kleônai, Sikyôn, and the whole south coast of the Corinthian Gulf, the Achaia of later times. The rest of the cities of the Argolic peninsula are grouped round Argos. Northern Greece again is divided into groups of cities which answer to nothing in later times. And its relative importance in the Greek world is clearly far greater than it was in the historic period.

The catalogue also helps us to our earliest picture of the northern and eastern coasts of the Ægæan and of the Ægæan islands. ♦Extent of Greek colonization.♦ We see the extent which Greek colonization had already made. It had as yet taken in only the southern islands of the Ægæan. Crete was already Greek; so were Rhodes, Kôs, and the neighbouring islands; but these last are distinctly marked as new settlements. The coast of Asia and the northern islands are still untouched, except through the events of the Trojan war itself, in which the Greek conquest of Lesbos is distinctly marked. ♦The Asiatic Catalogue.♦ In Asia, besides Trojans and Dardanians, we find Pelasgians as a distinct people, as also Paphlagonians, Mysians, Phrygians, Maionians, Karians, and Lykians. We find in short the nations which fringe the whole Ægæan coast of Asia and the south-western coast of the Euxine. In Europe again we have Thracians and Paionians, names familiar in historic times, and whose bearers seemingly occupied nearly the same lands which they do in later times. The presence of Thracians in Asia is implied rather than asserted. The Macedonian name is not found. The northern islands of the Ægæan are mentioned only incidentally. Everything leaves us to believe that the whole region, European and Asiatic, to which we are now concerned, was, at this earliest time of which we have any glimpses, occupied by various races more or less closely allied to each other. ♦Phœnician and Greek settlements in the islands.♦ The islands were largely Karian, but the Phœnicians, a Semitic people from the eastern coast, seem to have planted colonies in several of the Mediterranean islands. But Karians and Phœnicians had now begun to give way to Greek settlements. The same rivalry in short between Greeks and Phœnicians must have gone on in the earliest times in the islands of the Ægæan which went on in historical times in the greater islands of Cyprus and Sicily.

§ 5. Change from Homeric to Historic Greece.

The state of things which is set before us in the catalogue was altogether broken up by later changes, but changes which still come before the beginnings of contemporary history, and which we understand chiefly by comparing the geography of the catalogue with the geography of later times. ♦Changes in Peloponnêsos.♦ According to received tradition, a number of Dorian colonies from Northern Greece were gradually planted in the chief cities of Peloponnêsos, and drove out or reduced to subjection their older Achaian inhabitants. Mykênê from this time loses its importance; Argos, Sparta, Corinth, and Sikyôn become Dorian cities; and Sparta gradually wins the dominion over all the towns, whether Dorian or Achaian, within her immediate dominion of Lakonia. To the west of Lakonia arises the Dorian state of Messênê, which is the name only of a district, as there was as yet no city so called. As part of the same movement, an Aitolian colony is said to have occupied Êlis on the west coast of Peloponnêsos. Elis again was at this time the name of a district only; the cities both of Messênê and Êlis are of much later date. First Argos, and then Sparta, rises to a supremacy over their fellow-Dorians and over the whole of Peloponnêsos. Historical Peloponnêsos thus consists (i) of the cities, chiefly Dorian, of the Argolic Aktê or peninsula, together with Corinth on the Isthmus and Megara, a Dorian outpost beyond the Isthmus; (ii) of Lakonikê, the district immediately subject to Sparta, with a boundary towards Argos which changed as Sparta advanced and Argos went back; (iii) of Messênê, which was conquered by Sparta before the age of contemporary history, and was again separated in the fourth century B.C.; (iv) of Elis, with the border-districts between it and Messênê; (v) of the Achaian cities on the coast of the Corinthian Gulf; (vi) of the inland country of Arkadia. The relations among these districts and the several cities within them often fluctuated, but the general aspect of the map of Peloponnêsos did not greatly change from the beginning of the fifth century to the later days of the third.

♦Changes in Northern Greece.♦

According to the received traditions, migrations of the same kind took place in Northern Greece also between the time of the catalogue and the beginning of contemporary history. Thus Thessaly, whose different divisions form a most important part of the catalogue, is said to have suffered an invasion at the hands of the half Hellenic Thesprotians. They are said to have become the ruling people in Thessaly itself, and to have held a supremacy over the neighbouring lands, including the peninsula of Magnêsia and the Phthiôtic Achaia. It is certain that in the historical period Thessaly lags in the back ground, and that the true Hellenic spirit is much less developed there than in other parts of Greece. There is less reason to accept the legend of a migration out of Thessaly into Boiôtia; but in historic times Orchomenos no longer appears as a separate state, but is the second city of the Boiotian confederacy, yielding the first place to Thebes with great unwillingness. The Lokrians also now appear on the Corinthian gulf as well as on the sea of Euboia. And the land to the west of Aitôlia, so vaguely spoken of in the catalogue, has become the seat of a Greek people under the name of Akarnania. The Corinthian colonies along this coast, the city of Ambrakia, the island or peninsula of Leukas, the foundation of which is placed in the eighth century B.C., come almost within the time of trustworthy history. They are not Greek in the catalogue; they are Greek when we first hear of them in history. Ambrakia forms the last outpost of continuous Hellas towards the north-west; beyond that are only outlying settlements on the Illyrian coasts and islands.