Situated under the same parallels of latitude as the coast of Asia Minor, and the southernmost regions of Italy and Spain, Greece produced wheat, barley, flax, wine, and oil, in the earliest times of which we have any knowledge;[351] though the currants, Indian corn, silk, and tobacco, which the country now exhibits, are an addition of more recent times. Theophrastus and other authors amply attest the observant and industrious agriculture prevalent among the ancient Greeks, as well as the care with which its various natural productions, comprehending a great diversity of plants, herbs, and trees, were turned to account. The cultivation of the vine and the olive,—the latter indispensable to ancient life, not merely for the purposes which it serves at present, but also from the constant habit then prevalent of anointing the body,—appears to have been particularly elaborate; and the many different accidents of soil, level, and exposure, which were to be found, not only in Hellas proper, but also among the scattered Greek settlements, afforded to observant planters materials for study and comparison. The barley-cake seems to have been more generally eaten than the wheaten loaf;[352] but one or other of them, together with vegetables and fish, (sometimes fresh, but more frequently salt,) was the common food of the population; the Arcadians fed much upon pork, and the Spartans also consumed animal food; but by the Greeks, generally, fresh meat seems to have been little eaten, except at festivals and sacrifices. The Athenians, the most commercial people in Greece proper, though their light, dry, and comparatively poor soil produced excellent barley, nevertheless, did not grow enough corn for their own consumption: they imported considerable supplies of corn from Sicily, from the coast of the Euxine, and the Tauric Chersonese, and salt-fish both from the Propontis and even from Gades:[353] the distance from whence these supplies came, when we take into consideration the extent of fine corn-land in Bœotia and Thessaly, proves how little internal trade existed between the various regions of Greece proper. The exports of Athens consisted in her figs and other fruit, olives, oil,—for all of which she was distinguished,—together with pottery, ornamental manufactures, and the silver from her mines at Laureion. Salt-fish, doubtless, found its way more or less throughout all Greece;[354] but the population of other states in Greece lived more exclusively upon their own produce than the Athenians, with less of purchase and sale,[355]—a mode of life assisted by the simple domestic economy universally prevalent, in which the women not only carded and spun all the wool, but also wove out of it the clothing and bedding employed in the family. Weaving was then considered as much a woman’s business as spinning, and the same feeling and habits still prevail to the present day in modern Greece, where the loom is constantly seen in the peasants’ cottages, and always worked by women.[356]
The climate of Greece appears to be generally described by modern travellers in more favorable terms than it was by the ancients, which is easily explicable from the classical interest, picturesque beauties, and transparent atmosphere, so vividly appreciate by an English or a German eye. Herodotus,[357] Hippocrates, and Aristotle, treat the climate of Asia as far more genial and favorable both to animal and vegetable life, but at the same time more enervating than that of Greece: the latter, they speak of chiefly in reference to its changeful character and diversities of local temperature, which they consider as highly stimulant to the energies of the inhabitants. There is reason to conclude that ancient Greece was much more healthy than the same territory is at present, inasmuch as it was more industriously cultivated, and the towns both more carefully administered and better supplied with water. But the differences in respect of healthiness, between one portion of Greece and another, appear always to have been considerable, and this, as well as the diversities of climate, affected the local habits and the character of the particular sections. Not merely were there great differences between the mountaineers and the inhabitants of the plains,[358]—between Lokrains, Ætolians, Phokians, Dorians, Œtæans, and Arcadians, on one hand, and the inhabitants of Attica, Bœotia, and Elis, on the other,—but each of the various tribes which went to compose these categories, had its peculiarities; and the marked contrast between Athenians and Bœotians was supposed to be represented by the light and heavy atmosphere which they respectively breathed. Nor was this all: for, even among the Bœotian aggregate, every town had its own separate attributes, physical as well as moral and political:[359] Orôpus, Tanagra, Thespiæ, Thebes, Anthêdôn, Haliartus, Korôneia, Onchêstus, and Platæa, were known to Bœotians each by its own characteristic epithet: and Dikæarchus even notices a marked distinction between the inhabitants of the city of Athens and those in the country of Attica. Sparta, Argos, Corinth, and Sikyôn, though all called Doric, had each its own dialect and peculiarities. All these differences, depending in part upon climate, site, and other physical considerations, contributed to nourish antipathies, and to perpetuate that imperfect cohesion, which has already been noticed as an indelible feature in Hellas.
The Epirotic tribes, neighbors of the Ætolians and Akarnanians, filled the space between Pindus and the Ionian sea until they joined to the northward the territory inhabited by the powerful and barbarous Illyrians. Of these Illyrians, the native Macedonian tribes appear to have been an outlying section, dwelling northward of Thessaly and Mount Olympus, eastward of the chain by which Pindus is continued, and westward of the river Axius. The Epirots were comprehended under the various denominations of Chaonians, Molossians, Thesprotians, Kassopæans, Amphilochians, Athamānes, the Æthīkes, Tymphæi, Orestæ, Paroræi, and Atintānes,[360]—most of the latter being small communities dispersed about the mountainous region of Pindus. There was, however, much confusion in the application of the comprehensive name Epirot, which was a title given altogether by the Greeks, and given purely upon geographical, not upon ethnical considerations. Epirus seems at first to have stood opposed to Peloponnesus, and to have signified the general region northward of the gulf of Corinth; and in this primitive sense it comprehended the Ætolians and Akarnanians, portions of whom spoke a dialect difficult to understand, and were not less widely removed than the Epirots from Hellenic habits.[361] The oracle of Dodona forms the point of ancient union between Greeks and Epirots, which was superseded by Delphi, as the civilization of Hellas developed itself. Nor is it less difficult to distinguish Epirots from Macedonians on the one hand, than from Hellenes on the other; the language, the dress, and the fashion of wearing the hair being often analogous, while the boundaries, amidst rude men and untravelled tracts, were very inaccurately understood.[362]
In describing the limits occupied by the Hellens in 776 B. C., we cannot yet take account of the important colonies of Leukas and Ambrakia, established by the Corinthians subsequently on the western coast of Epirus. The Greeks of that early time seem to comprise the islands of Kephallenia, Zakynthus, Ithaka, and Dulichium, but no settlement, either inland or insular, farther northward.
They include farther, confining ourselves to 776 B. C., the great mass of islands between the coast of Greece and that of Asia Minor, from Tenedos on the north, to Rhodes, Krete, and Kythêra southward; and the great islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, and Eubœa, as well as the groups called the Sporades and the Cyclades. Respecting the four considerable islands nearer to the coasts of Macedonia and Thrace,—Lemnos, Imbros, Samothrace, and Thasos,—it may be doubted whether they were at that time Hellenized. The Catalogue of the Iliad includes, under Agamemnôn, contingents from Ægina, Eubœa, Krete, Karpathus, Kasus, Kôs, and Rhodes: in the oldest epical testimony which we possess, these islands thus appear inhabited by Greeks; but the others do not occur in the Catalogue, and are never mentioned in such manner as to enable us to draw any inference. Eubœa ought, perhaps, rather to be looked upon as a portion of Grecian mainland (from which it was only separated by a strait narrow enough to be bridged over) than as an island. But the last five islands named in the Catalogue are all either wholly or partially Doric: no Ionic or Æolic island appears in it: these latter, though it was among them that the poet sung, appear to be represented by their ancestral heroes, who came from Greece proper.
The last element to be included, as going to make up the Greece of 776 B. C., is the long string of Doric, Ionic, and Æolic settlements on the coast of Asia Minor,—occupying a space bounded on the north by the Troad and the region of Ida, and extending southward as far as the peninsula of Knidus. Twelve continental cities, over and above the islands of Lesbos and Tenedos, are reckoned by Herodotus as ancient Æolic foundations,—Smyrna, Kymê, Larissa, Neon-Teichos, Têmnos, Killa, Notium, Ægirœssa, Pitana, Ægæ, Myrina, and Gryneia. Smyrna, having been at first Æolic, was afterwards acquired through a stratagem by Ionic inhabitants, and remained permanently Ionic. Phokæa, the northernmost of the Ionic settlements, bordered upon Æolis: Klazomenæ, Erythræ, Teôs, Lebedos, Kolophôn, Priênê, Myus, and Milêtus, continued the Ionic name to the southward. These, together with Samos and Chios, formed the Panionic federation.[363] To the south of Milêtus, after a considerable interval, lay the Doric establishments of Myndus, Halikarnassus, and Knidus: the two latter, together with the island of Kôs and the three townships in Rhodes, constituted the Doric Hexapolis, or communion of six cities, concerted primarily with a view to religious purposes, but producing a secondary effect analogous to political federation.
Such, then, is the extent of Hellas, as it stood at the commencement of the recorded Olympiads. To draw a picture even for this date, we possess no authentic materials, and are obliged to ante-date statements which belong to a later age: and this consideration might alone suffice to show how uncertified are all delineations of the Greece of 1183 B. C., the supposed epoch of the Trojan war, four centuries earlier.
CHAPTER II.
THE HELLENIC PEOPLE GENERALLY, IN THE EARLY HISTORICAL TIMES.
The territory indicated in the last chapter—south of Mount Olympus, and south of the line which connects the city of Ambrakia with Mount Pindus,—was occupied during the historical period by the central stock of the Hellens, or Greeks, from which their numerous outlying colonies were planted out.