The Historians' History of the World 03

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 Thucydidesg 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.