Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/53

I 32 Primitive Greece : Mycenian Art. whose statutes provided for all public and private interests on a footing of perfect equality. A very similar parallel to this is found in the history of the Swiss cantons, save that Switzerland is an inland country. Superficially Greece is smaller than Portugal ; but the turnings in and out, the bendings and windings of her shores, broken up by deep inlets of the sea, provide her with a length of coast- line far exceeding that of Spain. This omnipresence of the sea is one of the main causes by which is explained both the great part which Greece played in the world, and why that part, in kind and importance, differed from that which Switzerland was called upon to exercise. The dwellers of the Hellenic cantons met oftener ; they gathered together for the discussion of affairs of state, religion, and art, on far easier terms than could fall to the lot of Tell's countrymen, ere modern engineering suspended carriage-roads over precipices, and tunnelled mountains sides. Formerly, as many aged countrymen in Savoy and Switzerland will tell you, not a few lived and died who had never climbed the glaciers and rocky walls bounding the horizon to which their baby eyes had opened. Throughout the days of her independence, Greece had no roads deserving the name. She was indebted to her Roman masters for the first cart-roads that ever crossed her passes, — those for instance on the Isthmus, beyond Megara, — to whom tracks were so natural that they deemed no civilized country could be without them. Up to that time the Greeks had scarcely felt the want of them ; if their needs required them to make a journey from Piraeus to Corinth, how much simpler and more commodious at the same time to jump into a boat and set her sail to the wind, rather than toil until they were out of breath, urging and wearying their horses up a craggy hill or along the edge of precipices. Away from the plains occupying, as already observed, but a small surface of the ground, the best or at any rate most frequented paths were mule-paths ; these were very similar to those that prevailed in my youth, the difficulties and dangers of which are with me now. Well-engineered zig-zag roads are the rule at the present day. Whereas in modern as well as in ancient times it would have been hard to find, even outside regular sailoi:3, — no insignificant class taken by itself, — a man of Hellenic birth