The Historians' History of the World 03

It was probably the tenacious resistance of the Achæans in Laconia that determined a large body of the Dorians to leave that district and turn to the east, where they completely subjugated Argolis and made Argos the centre of Dorian power in the eastern part of the Peloponnesus.

At the close of the Achæan period Attica was the canton which appeared to have the most settled and uniform structure. It now became a favourite refuge of migrant Greeks of many different tribes. This movement seems to have strengthened little Attica in a considerable degree, for tradition ascribes to these immigrants the successful resistance that Attica was able to make when the hordes of the conquerors finally approached her borders. But Attica was far too small and unproductive to retain the mass of fugitives as permanent settlers. So the movement was finally turned towards the islands of the Ægean and the coast of Asia Minor. According to tradition there had already been an Archæan (or Æolian) migration to Lesbos and Tenedos, from whence the Mysian coast and Troas were later colonised.

The most important Ionian colonies in the east were in the Cyclades, at Miletus, and at Ephesus. As their power continued to grow, the Ionians gradually Hellenised a broad strip of coast and in the river valleys pushed out a considerable distance to the eastward.

The Dorians also followed the movement of the other Greeks to the islands and to Asia. Their most important occupations were Crete, Rhodes, and a small portion of the southern coast of Caria, including the cities of Cnidus and Halicarnassus.

By the first half of the eighth century B.C., the Greek world had acquired the aspect which it retained for several centuries. The nation had greatly increased its territory by colonisation. But the district now called Thessaly was in possession of a race that showed little capacity to develop beyond a vigorous and pleasure-loving feudalism; and the Greeks of Epirus and the valley of the Achelous had been for several centuries shut out from the evolution into Hellenism. So apart from the newly risen power of the Bœotians, the future of Greece rested upon the two races that had been but little named in the Achæan period. The Dorians had become a great people. Argos had at first been the leading power of the Peloponnesus, both in religion and in politics. The Doric canton in the valley of the Upper Eurotas had made but slow and difficult progress, until, at the close of the ninth and beginning of the eighth century, that remarkable military and political consolidation was completed which is connected with the name of Lycurgus. This was the starting-point of a growth of Spartan power in consequence of which before the end of the eighth century the balance of Doric power was to pass from Argos to the south of the Peloponnesus.

Among the Ionians the Asiatic branch long remained the more important. The Ionian Greeks of the Ægean and of the Lydio-Carian coast, through their direct contact with the Orient, introduced to the Greek world new elements of culture of a varied character. Of a friendly and adaptable nature, they were specially fitted to be the traders and mariners of Greek nationality. Politically they became pre-eminently the democratic element of the nation, although there were powerful aristocratic groups among them. But with them the tendency appears stronger than among the other Greeks to allow full scope to personality, individual right, individual liberty, and individual activity beside, and even in opposition to the common interest.

The Asiatic Achæans appear in the historical period only under the name of Æolians. This name also came to be applied to those members of the Greek nation in Europe that could not be counted among either Dorians or Ionians.

The common name borne by the Greeks after the completion of the migrations is that of Hellenes. All the members of the various branches exhibit the Hellenic character, though only a few communities developed it in so ideal a form as the Athenians at the height of their historical greatness. A beautiful heritage of all Hellenes was their appreciation and enjoyment of art—of poetry and music as well as the plastic arts. A warm feeling not only for the beautiful, but for the ideal and the noble,—among the best elements also for right and harmoniously developed life,—and a fine taste in art and in ethical perception have never been denied the Greeks.