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works continue, being built on faith in men. But the vast fabric of Egyptian wisdom, its deep theologies, its mysterious symbolism, its majestic art, its wonderful science, remain only as its mummies remain and as its tombs remain, an enigma exciting and baffling our curiosity, but not adding to our real life.

CHAPTER VII.

THE GODS OF GREECE.

§1. The Land and the Race. § 2. Idea and General Character of Green Religion. §3. The Gods of Greece before Homer. § 4. The Gods of the Poets. § 5. The Gods of the Artists. § 6. The Gods of the Philosophers. §7. The Worship of Greece. § 8. The Mysteries. Ornhism. § 9. Relation of Greek Religion to Christianity.

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§ 1. The Land and the Race.

HE little promontory and peninsula, famous in the history of mankind as Greece, or Hellas, projects into the Mediterranean Sea from the South of Europe. It is insignificant on the map, its area being only two thirds as large as that of the State of Maine. But never was a country better situated in order to develop a new civilization. A temperate climate, where the vine, olive, and fig ripened with wheat, barley, and flax; a rich alluvial soil, resting on limestone, and contained in a series of valleys, each surrounded by mountains; a position equally remote from excesses of heat and cold, dryness and moisture; and finally, the ever-present neighborhood of the sea, — constituted a home well fitted for the physical culture of a perfect race of men.

Comparative Geography, which has pointed out so many relations between the terrestrial conditions of nations and their moral attainments, has laid great stress on the connection between the extent of sea-coast and a country's civilization. The sea line of Europe, compared with its area, is more extensive than that of any other continent, and Europe has had a more various and complete intellectual development than elsewhere. Africa, which has the shortest sea line compared with its area, has been most tardy in mental activity. The sea is the highway of nations and the promoter of commerce; and commerce, which brings different races together, awakens the intel

lect by the contact of different languages, religions, arts, and manners. Material civilization, it is true, does not commence on the sea-shore, but in river intervals. The arts of life were invented in the valleys of the Indus and Ganges, of the Yellow and Blue Rivers of China, of the Euphrates and the Nile. But the Phoenician navigators in the Mediterranean brought to the shores of Greece the knowledge of the arts of Egypt, the manufactures of Tyre, and the products of India and Africa. Every part of the coast of Greece is indented with bays and harbors. The Mediterranean, large enough to separate the nations on its shores, and so permit independent and distinct evolution of character, is not so large as to divide them. Coasting vessels, running within sight of land, could easily traverse its shores. All this tempted to navigation, and so the Greeks learned to be a race of sailors. What the shore line of Europe was to that of the other continents, that the shore line of Greece was to the rest of Europe. Only long after, in the Baltic, the Northern Mediterranean, did a similar land-locked sea create a similar love of navigation among the Scandinavians.*

The

Another feature in the physical geography of Greece must be noticed as having an effect on the psychical condition of its inhabitants. Mountains intersected every part, dividing its tribes from each other. In numerous valleys, separated by these mountain walls, each clan, left to itself, formed a special character of its own. great chain of Pindus with its many branches, the lofty ridges of the Peloponnesus, allowed the people of Thessaly, Boeotia, Attica, Phocis, Locris, Argolis, Arcadia, Laconia, to attain those individual traits which distinguish them during all the course of Greek history.

* Mr. Grote (Vol. II. p. 222, American edition) refers to Strabo's remark on the great superiority of Europe over Asia and Africa in regard to the intersection and interpenetration of the land by the sea. He also quotes Cicero, who says that all Greece is in close contact to the sea, and only two or three tribes separated from it, while the Greek islands swim among the waves with their customs and institutions. He says that the ancients remarked the greater activity, mutability, and variety in the life of maritime nations.

Such physical conditions as we have described are eminently favorable to a free and full development of national character. But this word "development," so familiar to modern thought, implies not only outward circumstances to educate, but a special germ to be educated. So long as the human being is regarded as a lump of dough, to be moulded into any shape by external influences, no such term as "development" was needed. But philosophical historians now admit national character to be the result of two factors, the original ethnic germ in the race, and the terrestrial influences which unfold it.* A question, therefore, of grave moment concerns the origin of the Hellenic people. Whence are they derived? what are their affinities? and from what region did they come?

The science of Comparative Philology, one of the great triumphs of modern scholarship, has enabled us now, for the first time, to answer this question. What no Greek knew, what neither Herodotus, Plato, nor Aristotle could tell us, we are now able to state with certainty. The Greek language, both in its grammar and its vocabulary, belongs to the family of Indo-European languages, of which the Sanskrit is the elder sister. Out of eleven thousand six hundred and thirty-three Greek words, some two thousand are found to be Sanskrit, and three thousand more to belong to other branches of the Indo-European tongues. As the words common to the Greek and the Sanskrit must have been in use by both races before their separation, while living together in Central Asia, we have a clew to the degree of civilization attained by the Greeks before they arrived in Europe. Thus it appears that they brought from Asia a familiarity with oxen and cows, horses, dogs, swine, goats, geese; that they could work in metals; that they built houses, and were acquainted with the elements of agriculture, especially with farinaceous grains; they used salt; they had boats propelled by oars, but not

* Mr. Buckle is almost the only marked exception. He nowhere rec ognizes the doctrine of race.

sails; they divided the year by moons, and had a decimal notation.*

The Greeks, as a race, came from Asia later than the Latin races. They belonged to that powerful IndoEuropean race, to which Europe owes its civilization, and whose chief branches are the Hindoos, the Persians, the Greeks, the Latins, the Kelts, the Teutonic tribes, and the Slavi. The original site of the race was, as we have seen in our chapter on Brahmanism, in Bactria; and the earliest division of this people could not have been later than three thousand or four thousand years before the Christian era. When the Hellenic branch entered Europe we have now no means of saying. It was so long anterior to Greek history that all knowledge of the time was lost, and only the faintest traditions of an Asiatic origin of their nation are to be found in Greek writers.

The Hellenic tribes, at the beginning of the seventh century before Christ, were divided into four groups, - the Achaians, Æolians, Dorians, and Ionians, — with outlying tribes more or less akin. But this Hellenic people had been preceded in Greece by another race known as Pelasgians. It is so difficult to say who these were, that Mr. Grote, in despair, pronounces them unknowable, and relinquishes the problem. Some facts concerning them may, however, be considered as established. Their existence in Greece is pronounced by Thirwall to be "the first unquestionable fact in Greek history." Homer speaks (Iliad, II. 681) of "Pelasgian Argos," and of "spear-skilled Pelasgians," "noble Pelasgians," "Pelasgians inhabiting fertile Larissa" (II. 840; X. 429). Herodotus frequently

* The ox is, in Sanskrit go or gaus, in Latin bos, in Greek Boûs. The horse is, in Sanskrit açva, in Zend açpa, in Greek ππos, in Latin equus.

The sheep is, in Sanskrit avis, in Latin ovis, in Greek öïs.

The goose is, in Sanskrit hansa, in Latin anser, in Old German kans, in Greek χήν.

House is, in Sanskrit dama, in Latin domus, in Greek dóuos. Door is, in Sanskrit dvâr or duâra, in Greek Oúpa, in Irish doras.

Boat or ship is, in Sanskrit naús, in Latin navis, in Greek vaûs. Oar is, in Sanskrit aritram, in Greek perμós, in Latin remus.

The Greeks distinguished themselves from the Barbarians as a graineating race. Barbarians ate acorns.

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