The Historians' History of the World 03

They were, moreover, at all periods characterised by a quick intellectual receptivity and an incomparable union of glowing fancy, brilliant intelligence, and sharp understanding. But mighty passion was coupled with all this. Party spirit and furious party hatred ran through all Greek history. The proud Greek self-assertion often degenerates into boundless presumption. Cruelty in war, even towards Greeks themselves, cunning and treachery, harsh self-interest and reckless greed are traits that mar the brilliant figure of Hellenism long before the Roman and Byzantine times.b

ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF ATHENS

In that part of earth termed by the Greeks Hellas, and by the Romans Græcia, a small tract of land known by the name of Attica extends into the Ægean Sea—the southeast peninsula of Greece. In its greatest length it is about sixty, in its greatest breadth about twenty-four, geographical miles. In shape it is a rude triangle,—on two sides flows the sea—on the third, the mountain range of Parnes and Cithæron, divides the Attic from the Bœotian territory. It is intersected by frequent but not lofty hills, and compared with the rest of Greece, its soil, though propitious to the growth of the olive, is not fertile or abundant. In spite of painful and elaborate culture, the traces of which are yet visible, it never produced a sufficiency of corn to supply its population; and this, the comparative sterility of the land, may be ranked among the causes which conduced to the greatness of the people. The principal mountains of Attica are, the Cape of Sunium, Hymettus renowned for its honey, and Pentelicus for its marble; the principal streams which water the valleys are the capricious and uncertain rivulets of Cephisus and Ilissus—streams breaking into lesser brooks, deliciously pure and clear. The air is serene, the climate healthful, the seasons temperate. Along the hills yet breathe the wild thyme and the odorous plants which, everywhere prodigal in Greece, are more especially fragrant in that lucid sky—and still the atmosphere colours with peculiar and various tints the marble of the existent temples and the face of the mountain landscapes.

Even so early as the traditional appearance of Cecrops amongst the savages of Attica, the Pelasgians in Arcadia had probably advanced from the pastoral to the civil life; and this, indeed, is the date assigned by Pausanias to the foundation of that ancestral Lycosura, in whose rude remains (by the living fountain and the waving oaks of the modern Diaphorte) the antiquary yet traces the fortifications of “the first city which the sun beheld.” It is in their buildings that the Pelasgi have left the most indisputable record of their name. Their handwriting is yet upon their walls! A restless and various people—overrunning the whole of Greece, found northward in Dacia, Illyria, and the country of the Getæ, colonising the coasts of Ionia, and long the master-race of the fairest lands of Italy—they have passed away amidst the revolutions of the elder earth, their ancestry and their descendants alike unknown.

The proofs upon which rest the reputed arrival of Egyptian colonisers, under Cecrops, in Attica, have been shown to be slender, the authorities for the assertion to be comparatively modern, the arguments against the probability of such an immigration in such an age, to be at least plausible and important. The traditions speak of them with gratitude as civilisers, not with hatred as conquerors. Assisting to civilise the Greeks, they then became Greeks; their posterity merged and lost amidst the native population.