CHAPTER I. LAND AND PEOPLE
The character of every people is more or less closely connected with that of its land. The station which the Greeks filled among nations, the part which they acted, and the works which they accomplished, depended in a great measure on the position which they occupied on the face of the globe. The manner and degree in which the nature of the country affected the bodily and mental frame, and the social institutions of its inhabitants, may not be so easily determined; but its physical aspect is certainly not less important in a historical point of view, than it is striking and interesting in itself. An attentive survey of the geographical site of Greece, of its general divisions, and of the most prominent points on its surface, is an indispensable preparation for the study of its history. In the following sketch nothing more will be attempted, than to guide the reader’s eye over an accurate map of the country, and to direct his attention to some of those indelible features, which have survived all the revolutions by which it has been desolated.
THE LAND
The land which its sons called Hellas, and for which we have adopted the Roman name Greece,[2] lies on the southeast verge of Europe, and in length extends no further than from the thirty-sixth to the fortieth degree of latitude. It is distinguished among European countries by the same character which distinguishes Europe itself from the other continents—the great range of its coast compared with the extent of its surface; so that while in the latter respect it is considerably less than Portugal, in the former it exceeds the whole Pyrenean peninsula. The great eastern limb which projects from the main trunk of the continent of Europe grows more and more finely articulated as it advances towards the south, and terminates in the peninsula of Peloponnesus, the smaller half of Greece, which bears some resemblance to an outspread palm. Its southern extremity is at a nearly equal distance from the two neighbouring continents: it fronts one of the most beautiful and fertile regions of Africa, and is separated from the nearest point of Asia by the southern outlet of the Ægean Sea—the sea, by the Greeks familiarly called their own, which, after being contracted into a narrow stream by the approach of the opposite shores at the Hellespont, suddenly finds its liberty in an ample basin as they recede towards the east and the west, and at length, escaping between Cape Malea and Crete, confounds its waters with the broader main of the Mediterranean. Over that part of this sea which washes the coast of Greece, a chain of islands, beginning from the southern headland of Attica, Cape Sunium, first girds Delos with an irregular belt, the Cyclades, and then, in a waving line, links itself to a scattered group (the Sporades) which borders the Asiatic coast. Southward of these the interval between the two continents is broken by the larger islands Crete and Rhodes. The sea which divides Greece from Italy is contracted, between the Iapygian peninsula and the coast of Epirus, into a channel only thirty geographical miles in breadth; and the Italian coast may be seen not only from the mountains of Corcyra, but from the low headland of the Ceraunian hills.
Thus on two sides Greece is bounded by a narrow sea; but towards the north its limits were never precisely defined. The word Hellas did not convey to the Greeks the notion of a certain geographical surface, determined by natural or conventional boundaries: it denoted the country of the Hellenes, and was variously applied according to the different views entertained of the people which was entitled to that name. The original Hellas was included in the territory of a little tribe in the south of Thessaly. When these Hellenes had imparted their name to other tribes, with which they were allied by a community of language and manners, Hellas might properly be said to extend as far as these national features prevailed. On the east, Greece was commonly held to terminate with Mount Homole at the mouth of the Peneus; the more scrupulous, however, excluded even Thessaly from the honour of the Hellenic name, while Strabo,[f] with consistent laxity, admitted Macedonia. But from Ambracia to the mouth of the Peneus, when these were taken as the extreme northern points, it was still impossible to draw a precise line of demarcation; for the same reason which justified the exclusion of Epirus applied, perhaps much more forcibly, to the mountaineers in the interior of Ætolia, whose barbarous origin, or utter degeneracy, was proved by their savage manners, and a language which Thucydides[g] describes as unintelligible. When the Ætolians bade the last Philip withdraw from Hellas, the Macedonian king could justly retort, by asking where they would fix its boundaries, and by reminding them that of their own body a very small part was within the pale from which they wished to exclude him.
The northern part of Greece is traversed in its whole length by a range of mountains, the Greek Apennines. This ridge first takes the name of Pindus, where it intersects the northern boundary of Greece, at a point where an ancient route still affords the least difficult passage from Epirus into Thessaly. From Pindus two huge arms stretch towards the eastern sea, and enclose the vale of Thessaly, the largest and richest plain in Greece: on the north the Cambunian hills, after making a bend towards the south, terminate in the loftier heights of Olympus, which are scarcely ever entirely free from snow; the opposite and lower chain of Othrys parting, with its eastern extremity, the Malian from the Pagasæan Gulf, sinks gently towards the coast. A fourth rampart, which runs parallel to Pindus, is formed by the range which includes the celebrated heights of Pelion and Ossa; the first a broad and nearly even ridge, the other towering into a steep conical peak, the neighbour and rival of Olympus, with which, in the songs of the country, it is said to dispute the pre-eminence in the depth and duration of its snows. The mountain barrier with which Thessaly is thus encompassed is broken only at the northeast corner, by a deep and narrow cleft, which parts Ossa from Olympus: the defile so renowned in poetry as the vale, in history as the pass, of Tempe. The imagination of the ancient poets and declaimers delighted to dwell on the natural beauties of this romantic glen, and on the sanctity of the site, from which Apollo had transplanted his laurel to Delphi.
From other points of view, the same spot no less forcibly claims the attention of the historian. It is the only pass through which an army can invade Thessaly from the north, without scaling the high and rugged ridges of its northern frontier. The whole glen is something less than five miles long, and opens gradually to the east into a spacious plain, stretching to the shore of the Thermaic Gulf. On each side the rocks rise precipitously from the bed of the Peneus, and in some places only leave room between them for the stream; and the road, which at the narrowest point is cut in the rock, might in the opinion of the ancients be defended by ten men against a host.
On the eastern side of the ridge which stretches from Tempe to the Gulf of Pagasæ, a narrow strip of land, called Magnesia, is intercepted between the mountains and the sea, broken by lofty headlands and the beds of torrents, and exposed without a harbour to the fury of the northeast gales.
South of this gulf the coast is again deeply indented by that of Malis, into which the Sperchius, rising from Mount Tymphrestus, a continuation of Pindus, winds through a long narrow vale, which, though considered as a part of Thessaly, forms a separate region, widely distinguished from the rest by its physical features. It is intercepted between Othrys and Œta, a huge rugged pile, which, stretching from Pindus to the sea at Thermopylæ, forms the inner barrier of Greece, as the Cambunian range is the outer, to which it corresponds in direction, and is nearly equal in height. To the south of Thessaly and between it and Bœotia lie the countries of Doris and Phocis. Doris is small and obscure, but interesting as the foster-mother of a race of conquerors who became the masters of Greece. Phocis is somewhat larger than Doris, and separates it from Bœotia.
The peculiar conformation of the principal Bœotian valleys, the barriers opposed to the escape of the streams, and the consequent accumulation of the rich deposits brought down from the surrounding mountains, may be considered as a main cause of the extraordinary fertility of the land. The vale of the Cephissus especially, with its periodical inundations, exhibits a resemblance, on a small scale, to the banks of the Nile—a resemblance which some of the ancients observed in the peculiar character of its vegetation. The profusion in which the ordinary gifts of nature were spread over the face of Bœotia, the abundant returns of its grain, the richness of its pastures, the materials of luxury furnished by its woods and waters, are chiefly remarkable, in a historical point of view, from the unfavourable effect they produced on the character of the race, which finally established itself in this envied territory. It was this cause, more than the dampness and thickness of their atmosphere, that depressed the intellectual and moral energies of the Bœotians, and justified the ridicule which their temperate and witty neighbours so freely poured on their proverbial failing.