Climate.—The climate is generally mild, in the parts exposed to the sea equable and genial, but in the mountainous regions of the interior sometimes very cold. None of the mountains attain the limit of perpetual snow; but several retain it far into the summer. During summer rain scarcely ever falls, and the channels of the minor streams become dry. Toward the end of harvest rain becomes frequent and copious, and fevers become common.
Production and Industry.—The most important of the fruit trees are the olive, the vine, orange, lemon, fig, almond, citron, pomegranate, and currant grape. Its exports consist of currants, figs, olive oil, wine, cognac, tobacco, hides, lead, iron ore, magnesium, emery, marble, and sponges.
People.—The Greeks called themselves Hellenes, and the inhabitants of Italy called them Graeci. The modern Greeks are by no means pure-bred descendants of the ancient Greeks. Indeed, it has been maintained that from the seventh century A. D. there have been no pure Greeks in the country, but only Slavs. It is, however, pretty certain that the two and one-quarter million of modern inhabitants are descendants of the three races that occupied the soil at the time of the Roman conquest. They speak the modern Greek tongue, which is a greatly modified form of the old.
Education is free and compulsory, maintained by local taxation supplemented by State grants. Secondary education is somewhat backward, particularly in the country districts. There is a university of some repute at Athens, which is largely attended by Turks.
Government.—According to the constitution, which was framed by an assembly in 1864, the executive power is vested in the king and his responsible ministry; the legislature is a single chamber of deputies called the Boulé, elected by the people, and meets at Athens.
Cities.—Athens is the capital, population 167,500; the towns next in size are Patras, Piræus, and Trikhala, all above 20,000; and there are eight others between 20,000 and 10,000.
Athens, in the southeast of Attica, occupies an extensive area round the site and remains of the classical city, four and one-half miles from its harbor of Piræus, on the Gulf of Ægina. The city, which takes its name from Athena, “goddess of science, arts, and arms,” and its own patron divinity, was originally built on the Acropolis, a conspicuous limestone rock rising three hundred and twenty feet above the Attic plain, and afterwards spread out on the plain below. The Acropolis became the citadel and subsequently the site of a group of beautiful temples of the time of Pericles (fifth century, B. C.).
The ruins of the Parthenon, the Erechtheum, the temple of Nike Apteros (“Wingless Victory”), and the Propylæa, still remain to testify to the former glory of the Acropolis. Of the other ancient buildings the most notable are the Theseum (also of the Periclean period, and still almost perfect), and the fragments of the vast temple of Zeus (begun in 530 B. C. and finished by the Roman Emperor Hadrian), with the theater of Dionysus and other structures.
Not far from the Acropolis rose the hill Lycabettus (nine hundred and eleven feet), and the hillocks or ridges of the Pnyx and the Areopagus or Mars Hill. At a greater distance the plain is bounded by Hymettus (three thousand three hundred and sixty-eight feet), Pentelicus (three thousand six hundred and forty-one feet), and other ranges.
Athens was fabled to have been founded by the hero Cecrops. The most brilliant period of its history was when, after the Persian wars (fifth century, B. C.), Athens took the lead among the Greek states, became powerful by land and sea, was adorned by Pericles with most glorious buildings, and brought Greek literature and Greek philosophy to their highest development. Its decline dates from the disastrous conclusion of the Peloponnesian war (403 B. C.). It was plundered and ruined by Sulla in 87 B. C.; and neither under Byzantine nor Turkish rule ever attained any prosperity. In the days of its glory Athens had some one hundred thousand free inhabitants and twice as many slaves; when after the liberation of Greece Athens was made the capital of the new kingdom (1834), it was a wretched village of a few hundred houses. Since then it has had a prosperous growth, looks like a well built German town, with a fine royal palace, a marble stadium (restored), a university with over one hundred and fifty professors and lecturers and two thousand five hundred students, and a good deal of miscellaneous trade by the way of the Piræus. It is connected by rail also with Corinth, and the Athens-Larissa line brings Greece into railway communication with the rest of Europe. (See also under [ancient Greece].)