Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/66

The Country. 45 the honour of having opened a free outlet to stagnant waters, and thus put an end to hot-beds of fever and pestilence, to heroes, the offspring of the gods. In saying that Heracles had slain the Lernian Hydra, the ancients showed that they had preserved the real signification of the myth ; in their language it meant that the swamp which poisoned the whole district of Argolis with its deadly fumes had been drained. The sudden changes of temperature which meet us in crossing from one district to another, or at different seasons of the year, the sharp contrast between inland and coast climate, are no small factors in making the race strong and hardy. Many children fall a victim to these climatic conditions ; infant mortality in Greece is proportionately large : we have no reason to think its having been otherwise in antiquity. Bodies capable of enduring and adapting themselves to such contrasts as these, acquire in the training rare elasticity and power of resistance. To the warm sickly Scirocco, charged with vapours and apt to unnerve the most strongly built, there succeeds a searching north wind which has often become icy cold in its passage across the Thracian plains. Cool breezes, whether they are sought among the hills or found in due time on the spot, will give the body its former tone, which the excessive heat of summer has somewhat impaired. As a rule the air is very dry ; there are districts, such as Attica, where the vapour contained in the atmosphere is extraordinarily feeble. The absence of moisture causes the contraction of the pores of the skin, the hardening of the flesh, and the acceleration of blood circulation, whose rapid flow excites the nerves and keeps them at work. Hence the Greeks were freer than other mortals from all that hinders and oppresses the motion of the mind. Fleshiness and fattiness of body were no less rare. The nation whose existence was destined to be passed amidst such influences as these, will have no need to load its stomach with animal food, or demand of stimulants the means of battling against low or very damp temperature ; like all southern people, more or less, it is sure to be abstemious ; moreover its poor soil will not fatten large herds. His staple diet therefore will mainly consist of milk, bread, vegetables, and fruit. An abundance of fish he can almost take up with the hand out of every bay and creek of his sea, whilst the rocks which form his coast