Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/74

The People. 53 described was eminently fitted to shelter and support the halting steps towards culture of the nation that should first settle and entrench itself in it, as behind an inpregnable stronghold. To prove how well founded were these forecasts, it will suffice to recall in a few broad lines what is known and what is divined of the early history of tribes which, whether under the name of Hellenes or Graeci, were called upon to play so important a part in the world. The People. Its History before the Dorian Invasion. Greece is turned towards the rising sun. The eastern coasts are much more deeply indented and hospitable than the western. Epirus and iEtolia are nothing but a crowd of rocky ridges marshalled out in serrated ranks, and of narrow defiles which leave insufficient space for a foot-path between them. The coast is unbroken and forbidding. How vast the difference in everything which meets us on the other side of Pindus! Here are the spacious plains of Macedonia and Thessaly, approachable by the Thermaian, Malian, and Pagasaean bays. The like contrast is found lower down. From the mouth of the Gulf of Patras, the sandy hills that form the coast of Achaea and -/Elis round off and split up into arrow-like masses, affording absolutely no shelter to ships ; whereas Attica and Argolis are favoured with a coast having numerous safe roadsteads and harbours, such as Piraeus. To the south and south-west jut out far into the sea the more rocky peninsulas ; here, too, islands cluster in greater number than anywhere else ; so that, compared with the -/Egean, the Ionian sea looks almost empty. The house, if the appellation be allowed, has not only its front turned towards Asia, but all its doors and windows open on that side as well ; in front of them are thrown, as so many stations and bridges, the Cyclades and Sporades. Given the peculiar distribution of outlines which mark the peninsula, we may expect that the history of its early inhabitants will turn out to have long been little more than the tale of their relations with Anterior Asia. As a matter of fact, neither tradition nor monuments warn us as to any influence having been brought to bear on Hellas in those far-off days, whether