Part 19 (2/2)

OTHER MEDITERRANEAN COLONIES

In Corsica, Sardinia, and on the coast of Spain Carthage also proved too obstinate a rival for the Greeks to gain much of a foothold. The city of Ma.s.silia (Ma.r.s.eilles), at the mouth of the Rhone, was their chief settlement in ancient Gaul. Two colonies on the southern sh.o.r.e of the Mediterranean were Cyrene, west of Egypt, and Naucratis, in the Delta of the Nile. From this time many Greek travelers visited Egypt to see the wonders of that strange old country.

RESULTS OF COLONIZATION

Energetic Greeks, the greatest colonizers of antiquity, thus founded settlements from the Black Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. ”All the Greek colonies” says an ancient writer, ”are washed by the waves of the sea, and, so to speak, a fringe of Greek earth is woven on to foreign lands.”

[28] To distinguish themselves from the foreigners, or ”barbarians,” [29]

about them, the Greeks began to call themselves by the common name of h.e.l.lenes. h.e.l.las, their country, came to include all the territory possessed by h.e.l.lenic peoples. The life of the Greeks, henceforth, was confined no longer within the narrow limits of the Aegean. Wherever rose a Greek city, there was a scene of Greek history.

30. BONDS OF UNION AMONG THE GREEKS

LANGUAGE AS A UNIFYING FORCE

The Greek colonies, as we have seen, were free and independent. In Greece itself the little city-states were just as jealous of their liberties.

Nevertheless ties existed, not of common government, but of common interests and ideals, which helped to unite the scattered sections of the Greek world. The strongest bond of union was, of course, the one Greek speech. Everywhere the people used the same beautiful and expressive language. It is not a ”dead” language, for it still lives in modified form on the lips of nearly three million people in the Greek peninsula, throughout the Mediterranean, and even in remote America.

LITERATURE AS UNIFYING FORCE; HOMER

Greek literature, likewise, made for unity. The _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ were recited in every Greek village for centuries. They formed the princ.i.p.al textbook in the schools; an Athenian philosopher calls Homer the ”educator of h.e.l.las.” It has been well said that these two epics were at once the Bible and the Shakespeare of the Greek people.

RELIGION AS A UNIFYING FORCE; AMPHICTYONIES

Religion formed another bond of union. Everywhere the Greeks wors.h.i.+ped the same G.o.ds and performed the same sacred rites. Religious influences were sometimes strong enough to bring about federations known as amphictyonies, or leagues of neighbors. The people living around a famous sanctuary would meet to observe their festivals in common and to guard the shrine of their divinity. The Delphic amphictyony was the most noteworthy of these local unions. It included twelve tribes and cities of central Greece and Thessaly. They established a council, which took the shrine of Apollo under its protection and superintended the athletic games at Delphi.

A NEW AGE

The seventh and sixth centuries before Christ form a noteworthy epoch in Greek history. Commerce and colonization were bringing their educating influence to bear upon the Greeks. h.e.l.lenic cities were rising everywhere along the Mediterranean sh.o.r.es. A common language, literature, and religion were making the people more and more conscious of their unity as opposed to the ”barbarians” about them.

THE GREEK WORLD, 500 B.C.

Greek history has now been traced from its beginnings to about 500 B.C. It is the history of a people, not of one country or of a united nation. Yet the time was drawing near when all the Greek communities were to be brought together in closer bonds of union than they had ever before known.

STUDIES

1. On the map facing page 66 see what regions of Europe are less than 500 feet above sea level; less than 3000 feet; over 9000 feet.

2. Why was Europe better fitted than Asia to develop the highest civilization? Why not so well fitted as Asia to originate civilization?

3. ”The tendency of mountains is to separate, of rivers to unite, adjacent peoples.” How can you justify this statement by a study of European geography?

4. Why has the Mediterranean been called a ”highway of nations”?

5. Locate on the map several of the natural entrances into the basin of the Mediterranean.

6. At what points is it probable that southern Europe and northern Africa were once united?

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