Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/57

36 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. ments. This was not by any means the sole benefit which the Hellenes derived from the very peculiar configuration of the land in which their ancestors had chosen their seats. Under these favourable circumstances they were enabled to try the experiment of municipal rule, and show the world the splendid fruits it is capable of yielding with a happily-gifted people. In this form of government, town and state merge into each other, each head centre being an organic entity whose members are all more or less interested in the management of public affairs. Phoenicia alone in the Oriental world had something akin to it. Egypt, Chaldaea and Assyria numbered great cities far more populous and richer than any, even the most celebrated, which Greece could show ; but they were mere agglomerations of houses. The countless subjects of those Eastern monarchs were more pressed together at Memphis, Babylon and Nineveh than on any other points of the territory ; they lived crowded together in tall houses, within the shelter of fortified walls ; but neither in these towns nor in the districts surfounding them did they count as the free citizens of a commonwealth, having a share in the government. Whereas Sidon, Tyre, Uttica and Carthage were republics, independent commonwealths, animated during hundreds of years with a vigour, activity, and patriotism truly admirable ; yet, brief would be the list of Phoenician townships which played a part of any importance in the world's history ; moreover their thoughts were too exclusively turned towards a single object, the acquisition of wealth, to enable us to judge of this form of government from one specimen only. Far larger was the number of Hellenic townships. The sequel of this history will show how, from the eighth to the third century B.C., life throughout the Hellenic world was at once intense and scattered ; and what innate activity, organic power, and force of expansion were manifested in all these small commonwealths, dispersed as they were from the Euxine to the Pillars of Heracles, all over the Mediterranean shores. Then, too, the superior culture of the Hellenes imparted a dignity and variety to their free institutions which Phoenicia had never known. Minds which here were solely engrossed with how best to add to their gains, there became enamoured of the beautiful and true in life ; letters, philosophy, and science aroused reflection in them and speedily matured their intellect. Rhetoric placed eloquence at the service of private and public interests or wrongs