Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/130

The People. 109 also to Asiatic Hellas, until the rise of the Lydian dynasty of the Mermnadae in the seventh century b.c, peaceful possession of the coast ; agglomerations of houses, worthy the name of towns, will not only be multiplied, but thrive and increase in size as well. One after another they will procure the requisite appliances for carrying on such functions as are essential to social life. They will need a habitation sufficiently roomy to provide accommodation for citizens who shall assemble to discuss affairs of private or of general import ; halls for the meeting of magistrates, or representatives of the principal families, primates, elders of the people, ^r^fJLoyeporfres, as they are even now called, or under whatever name they may be known in this or that locality; then too they must have a market-place where folk can circulate at ease, arsenals, docks, and above all, temples, the magnitude and lavish decoration of which shall testify to the reverence accorded by the community to its gods. All this will take time, and cannot be accomplished in a day, either on the east or west side of the iEgean, in the islands, or the two continents ; but for one or two hundred years progress will be more rapid on Eastern Hellas than on European Hellas. Whilst Hellenism thus extended its domain towards the east and spread over a vast territory, wherein political and intellectual existence from the outset were to assume so rare an intensity, the ground it had gained on the European side was sensibly curtailed. Epirus and Thessaly had almost been emptied of their inhabitants by the irresistible impulse which had impelled northern tribes towards the south, and those that were left behind were inadequate to fill the gaps thus made. Henceforth, true Hellas, the Hellas where the free citizen lives under the sole authority of the law, will mark her frontier line at the Thermopylae and Ambracian Gulf. If Epirus and Thessaly are still reckoned as Hellenic countries, if their sons are admitted to those great national games, from whose lists Barbarians were sedulously excluded, they owed it largely to the halo surrounding the myths which originated in this region ; they were indebted for it to the reminiscences of early generations which first had heard the voice of Zeus in the murmuring oak-leaves of the Dodonian forests, whose gaze, fixed on the snowy peaks of Olympus, had thought to discern above the forests and ravines filled with impenetrable mists, above the rushing sound of