Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/71

of Rome (753 B.C.) has no historical value; we know on archæological evidence that there must have been settlements on the site of Rome long before that date, but when Rome began its life as a City-State we can hardly even guess. With regard to Greece we are in a somewhat better position. There archæological evidence, though it is still sub judice, has accumulated with astonishing rapidity of late years ; and the fruitful discoveries of Dr. Schliemann can be compared with the pictures of social and political life preserved in the Homeric poems. The result of this comparison, in spite of endless differences of learned opinion, both as to the archæological evidence itself and as to the relative age and value of various parts of the poems, can now be presented in a tolerably certain form. We now feel comparatively sure that there was a civilisation in Greece before that of the πόλις, and out of the ruins of which the πόλις probably grew; and that this civilisation, which may be called Achæan, and which is represented in Homer by the great kings of Mycenæ and Sparta, came to an end somewhere about the year 1000 B.C., and perhaps under stress of a Dorian invasion from the north. It is after that date that we may discern the beginnings of that later civilisation with which we are solely concerned. "There is a broad line dividing mythical from political Hellas, which seems to coincide with the great break made in the continuity of Hellas by the Dorian invasion. ... On the more recent side of that line we see vigorous communities, choosing their own governments, carrying on trade