Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/49

28 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. broken up into vast basins, such as Piraeus, whose sole com- munication with the main is by a narrow gullet, in which hundreds of ships can ride at anchor in all weathers. Moreover, the most part of these havens, great and small, open on large bays already fenced in by surrounding heights against the action of the pre- vailing winds ; there are even some, the Pagasaean and Ambracian Gulfs, notably the Corinthian harbour, which are so well closed in that, although high winds and a disturbed sea may rage outside, their existence is hardly suspected within. I know not if there exists another country in the world where sea and land mingle with such frequency and by so many different ways or so intimate a fashion, where for man's sake, so to speak, it makes so many advances to gratify his instincts of curiosity, or of lust, or roving for roving s sake. As soon as they were provided with the neces- sary tools for hollowing the trunk of a tree into a canoe, the inhabitants of such a country could not fail to grow familiar with the ocean ; they learnt to trust it, they demanded of it the means for opening up relations, first with their next neighbours, then with more distant folk ; in a word, with all those whose ap- proaches were, as said their poets, "by the watery ways." When the Greeks with the epic poems make their first appearance in recorded history, they are no longer timid mariners for whom a voyage across the Archipelago is a matter of concern ; some have already pushed their boats to distant Egypt and the still more distant shores of Sicily. Hellas has suffered many an ill turn of Fortune's wheel since those far-off days, but even during those centuries of greatest misery, she never broke her old com- pact with the sea. Everybody is aware of the importance which her trading navy occupies at the present day in the Mediterranean.' The very peculiar configuration of the country, broken up into crags and fantastical shapes as that of no other peninsula of Southern Europe, doubtless inclined the Greeks to lend a willing ear to the call of the sea ; that sea which, the better to reassure and attract them, seemed to soften its voice and lay aside its angry moods, as it glided in and out of the islands and promon- tories to the very heart of Hellas. To call Greece a hilly country is a misnomer. The whole of Greece is but a huge ^ Strabo already points out the advantages to be derived, and the destiny awaiting Greece, by reason of her peculiar coast-line, the hilly and varied nature of the country, its numerous headlands, havens, peninsulas, and islands.