In Epirus at the outbreak of war about 15,000 Greeks, including a cavalry regiment and five batteries, the whole under Colonel Manos, occupied a line of defence from Arta to Peta. The Turks, about 28,000 strong, with forty-eight guns, under Achmet Hifsi Pasha, were distributed mainly at Iannina, Pentepagadia, and in front of Arta. On 18th April the Turks commenced a three days’ bombardment of Arta; but successive attempts to take the bridge were repulsed, and during the night of the 21st they retired on Philippiada, 26 m. distant, which was attacked and occupied by Colonel Manos on the 23rd. The Greeks then advanced to Pentepagadia, meeting with little resistance. Their difficulties now began. After some skirmishing on the 27th, the position held by their advanced force near Homopulos was attacked on the 28th. The attack was renewed on the 29th, and no Greek reinforcements were forthcoming when needed. The Euzones made a good defence, but were driven back by superior force, and a retreat was ordered, which quickly degenerated into panic-stricken flight to and across the Arta. Reinforcements, including 2500 Epirote volunteers, were sent to Arta from Athens, and on 12th May another incursion into Turkish territory began, the apparent object being to occupy a portion of the country in view of the breakdown in Thessaly and the probability that hostilities would shortly end. The advance was made in three columns, while the Epirote volunteers were landed near the mouth of the Luro river with the idea of cutting off the Turkish garrison of Prevesa. The centre column, consisting of a brigade, three squadrons and two batteries, which were intended to take up and hold a defensive position, attacked the Turks near Strevina on the 13th. The Greeks fought well, and being reinforced by a battalion from the left column, resumed the offensive on the following day, and fairly held their own. On the night of the 15th a retreat was ordered and well carried out. The volunteers landed at the mouth of the Luro, were attacked and routed with heavy loss.
The campaign in Epirus thus failed as completely as that in Thessaly. Under the terms of the treaty of peace, signed on 20th September, and arranged by the European powers, Turkey obtained an indemnity of £T4,000,000, and a rectification of the Thessalian frontier, carrying with it some strategic advantage. History records few more unjustifiable wars than that which Greece gratuitously provoked. The Greek troops on several occasions showed tenacity and endurance, but discipline and cohesion were manifestly wanting. Many of the officers were incapable; the campaign was gravely mismanaged; and politics, which led to the war, impeded its operations. On the other hand, the fruits of the German tuition, which began in 1880, and received a powerful stimulus by the appointment of General von der Goltz in 1883, were shown in the Turkish army. The mobilization was on the whole smoothly carried out, and the newly completed railways greatly facilitated the concentration on the frontier. The young school of officers trained by General von der Goltz displayed ability, and the artillery at Pharsala and Domokos was well handled. The superior leading was, however, not conspicuously successful; and while the rank and file again showed excellent military qualities, political conditions and the Oriental predilection for half-measures and for denying full responsibility and full powers to commanders in the field enfeebled the conduct of the campaign. On account of the total want of careful and systematic peace training on both sides, a war which presented several interesting strategic problems provided warnings in place of military lessons. (G. S. C.)
GREECE,[1] an ancient geographical area, and a modern
kingdom more or less corresponding thereto, situated at the
south-eastern extremity of Europe and forming the most
southerly portion of the Balkan Peninsula. The modern kingdom
is bounded on the N. by European Turkey and on the E., S. and
W. by the Aegean, Mediterranean and Ionian seas. The name
Graecia, which was more or less vaguely given to the ancient
country by the Romans, seems not to have been employed by
any native writer before Aristotle; it was apparently derived
by the Romans from the Illyrians, who applied the name of an
Epirote tribe (Γραικοί, Graeci) to all their southern neighbours.
The names Hellas, Hellenes (Ἕλλας, Ἕλληνες), by which the
ancient Greeks called their country and their race, and which are
still employed by the modern Greeks, originally designated a small
district in Phthiotis in Thessaly and its inhabitants, who gradually
spread over the lands south of the Cambunian mountains.
The name Hellenes was not universally applied to the Greek
race until the post-Homeric epoch (Thucyd. i. 3).
1. Geography and Statistics
The ancient Greeks had a somewhat vague conception of the northern limits of Hellas. Thessaly was generally included and Epirus excluded; some writers included some of the southern cantons of Epirus, while others excluded not only all that country but Aetolia and Acarnania. Extent of ancient Greece. Generally speaking, the confines of Hellas in the age of its greatest distinction were represented by a line drawn from the northern shore of the Ambracian Gulf on the W. to the mouth of the Peneus on the E. Macedonia and Thrace were regarded as outside the pale of Hellenic civilization till 386 B.C., when after his conquest of Thessaly and Phocis, Philip of Macedon obtained a seat in the Amphictyonic Council. In another sense, however, the name Hellas expressed an ethnological rather than a geographical unity; it denoted every country inhabited by Hellenes. It thus embraced all the Greek settlements on the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean, on the shores of the Hellespont, the Bosporus and the Black Sea. Nevertheless, the Greek peninsula within the limits described above, together with the adjacent islands, was always regarded as Hellas par excellence. The continental area of Hellas proper was no greater than that of the modern Greek kingdom, which comprises but a small portion of the territories actually occupied by the Greek race. The Greeks have always been a maritime people, and the real centre of the national life is now, as in antiquity, the Aegean Sea or Archipelago. Thickly studded with islands and bordered by deeply indented coasts with sheltered creeks and harbours, the Aegean in the earliest days of navigation invited the enterprise of the mariner; its shores, both European and Asiatic, became covered with Greek settlements and its islands, together with Crete and Cyprus, became Greek. True to their maritime instincts, the Greeks rarely advanced inland to any distance from the sea; the coasts of Macedonia, Thrace and Asia Minor are still mainly Greek, but, except for some isolated colonies, the hinterland in each case lies outside the limits of the race. Continental Greece is divided by its mountain ranges into a number of natural cantons; the existence of physical barriers tended in the earliest times to the growth of isolated political communities, and in the epoch of its ancient independence the country was occupied by seventeen separate states, none of them larger than an ordinary English county. These states, which are noticed separately, were: Thessaly, in northern Greece; Acarnania, Aetolia, Locris, Doris, Phocis, Megaris, Boeotia and Attica in central Greece; and Corinthia, Sicyonia, Achaea, Elis, Messenia, Laconia, Argolis and Arcadia in the Peloponnesus.
Modern Greece, which (including the adjacent islands) extends from 35° 50′ to 39° 54′ N. and from 19° 20′ to 26° 15′ E., comprises all the area formerly occupied by these states. Under the arrangement concluded at Constantinople on the 21st of July 1832 between Great Britain, Extent of modern Greece. France, Russia and Turkey, the northern boundary of Greece was drawn from the Gulf of Arta (Sinus Ambracius) to the Gulf of Volo (S. Pagasaeus), the line keeping to the crest of the Othrys range. Thessaly and part of Acarnania were thus left to Turkey. The island of Euboea, the Cyclades and the northern Sporades were added to the new kingdom. In 1864 the Ionian Islands (q.v.) were ceded by Great Britain to Greece. In 1880 the Conference of Berlin proposed a new frontier, which transferred to Greece not only Thessaly but a considerable portion of southern Epirus, extending to the river Kalamas. This, however, was rejected by Turkey, and the existing boundary was traced in 1881. Starting from the Aegean coast at a point
- ↑ See also Greek Art, Greek Language, Greek Law, Greek Literature, Greek Religion.
