associated with his name? And what was it in the civic life thus developed which made its atmosphere so incomparably favourable to the creative energies of the intellect? We cannot hope to answer these questions fully; but it is possible to suggest some considerations which may assist clearness of thought in regard to them.
First of all, we must remember the idea which lay at the root of Greek education generally in the period before the Persian wars. That idea was a free cultivation of the mental and bodily powers, not limited or specialised by a view to any particular occupation in after life. The main instruments of mental cultivation were poetry and music, both of them in a close connection with the traditional popular religion. The instruments of physical training were the exercises of the palaestra. When the youth had become a man, his mental education was tested in public counsel and speech, his physical training in military service for the State. This harmonious education of mind and body on certain prescribed lines created a general Hellenic tradition, which was constantly confirmed by the influence of the festivals, with their recitations of poetry and their athletic contests. Hellenes, to whatever part of Hellas they belonged, felt themselves united by a common descent, a common religion, a common language, and a common type of social life. The two first of these ties,—descent and religion,—were, for a Greek, interdependent; for Greeks conceived themselves as sprung from heroes, and these heroes
