Greece enjoys a wonderful climate. The summer sun is hot, but morning and evening bring refreshing breezes from the sea. The rain average is low and regular, snow is almost unknown in the valleys. Hence there is a peculiar dry brightness in the atmosphere which seems to annihilate distance. The traveller is struck with the small scale of Greek geography. The Corinthian Gulf, for instance, which he remembers to have been the scene of famous sea-battles in history, looks as if you could throw a stone across it. From your hotel window in Athens you can see hill-tops in the heart of the Peloponnese. Doubtless this clearness of the atmosphere encouraged the use of colour and the plastic arts for outdoor decoration. Even to-day the ruined buildings of the Athenian citadel shine across to the eyes of the seafarers five miles away at the Peiræus. Time has mellowed their marble columns to a rich amber, but in old days they blazed with colour and gilding. In that radiant sea-air the Greeks of old learnt to see things clearly. They could live, as the Greeks still live, a simple, temperate life. Wine and bread, with a relish of olives or pickled fish, satisfied the bodily needs of the richest. The climate invited an open-air life, as it still does. To-day, as of old, the Greek loves to meet his neighbours in the market square and talk eternally over all things both in heaven and earth. Though the blood of Greece has suffered many admixtures, and though Greece has had to submit to centuries of conquest by many masters and oppressors, her racial character is little changed in some respects. The Greek is still restless, talkative, subtle and inquisitive, eager for liberty without the sense of discipline which liberty requires, contemptuous of strangers and jealous of his neighbour. In commerce, when he has the chance, his quick and supple brain still makes him the prince of traders. Honesty and stability have always been qualities which he is quicker to admire than to practise. Courage, national pride, intellectual self-restraint, and creative genius have undoubtedly suffered under the Turkish domination. But the friends of modern Greece believe that a few generations of liberty will restore these qualities which were so eminent in her ancestors and that her future may rival her past. Not in the field of action, perhaps. We must never forget, when we praise the artistic and intellectual genius of Greece, that she alone rolled back the tide of Persian conquest at Marathon and Salamis, or that Greek troops under Alexander marched victoriously over half the known world. But it is not in the field of action that her greatness lies. She won battles by superior discipline, superior strategy, and superior armour. As soon as she had to meet a race of born soldiers, in the Romans, she easily succumbed. Her methods of fighting were always defensive in the main. Historians have often gone astray in devoting too much attention to her wars and battles.
Plate II. OLYMPIA: VALLEY OF THE ALPHEUS
Alinari
The great defect of the climate of modern Greece is the malaria which haunts her plains and lowlands in early autumn. This is partly the effect and partly the cause of undrained and sparsely populated marsh-lands like those of Bœotia. It need not have been so in early Greek history. There must have been more agriculture and more trees in ancient than in modern Greece. An interesting and ingenious theory has lately been advanced which would trace the beginning of malaria in Greece to the fourth century. Its effect is seen in the loss of vigour which begins in that period and the rapid shrinkage of population which marks the beginning of the downfall in that and the succeeding century. In Italy the same theory has even better attestation, for the Roman Campagna which to-day lies desolate and fever-stricken was once the site of populous cities and the scene of agricultural activity.
The scenery of Greece is singularly impressive. Folded away among the hills there are, indeed, some lovely wooded valleys,[3] like Tempe, but in general it is a treeless country, and the eye enjoys, in summer at least, a pure harmony of brown hills with deep blue sea and sky. The sea is indigo, almost purple, and the traveller quickly sees the justice of Homer’s epithet of “wine-dark.” Those brown hills make a lovely background for the play of light and shade. Dawn and sunset touch them with warmer colours, and the plain of Attica is seen “violet-crowned” by the famous heights of Hymettus, Pentelicus, and Parnes. The ancient Greek talked little of scenery, but he saw a nereid in every pool, a dryad under every oak, and heard the pipe of Pan in the caves of his limestone hills. He placed the choir of Muses on Mount Helicon, and, looking up to the snowy summit of Olympus, he peopled it with calm, benignant deities.
In this beautiful land lived the happy and glorious people whose culture we are now to study. Some modernists, indeed, smitten with the megalomania of to-day, profess to despise a history written on so small a scale. Truly Athens was a small state at the largest. Her little empire had a yearly revenue of about £100,000. It is doubtful whether Sparta ever had much more than ten thousand free citizens. In military matters, it must be confessed, the importance attached by historians to miniature fleets and pigmy armies, with a ridiculously small casualty list, does strike the reader with a sense of disproportion. But for the politician it is especially instructive to see his problems worked out upon a small scale, with the issues comparatively simple and the results plainly visible. The task of combining liberty with order is in essentials the same for a state of ten thousand citizens as for one of forty millions. And in the realms of philosophy and art considerations of size do not affect us, except to make us marvel that these tiny states could do so much.
To a great extent we may find the key to the Greek character in her favourite proverb, “No excess,” in which are expressed her favourite virtues of Aidōs and Sophrosune, reverence and self-restraint. “Know thyself” was the motto inscribed over her principal shrine. Know and rely upon thine own powers, know and regard thine own limitations. It was such a maxim as this which enabled the Greeks to reach their goal of perfection even in the sphere of art, where perfection is proverbially impossible. They were bold in prospecting and experimenting, until they found what they deemed to be the right way, and when they had found it they followed it through to its conclusion. Eccentricity they hated like poison. Though they were such great originators, they cared nothing for the modern fetish of originality.