of superstition. The worship in all was voluntary, and the large gifts emulously sent to them were the spontaneous offers of patriotic affection. Delphi was under the government of the Amphictyon'ic council; but this body did not limit its attention to the government of the temple: by its influence over the oracle, it acquired no small share in the affairs of different states; and it superintended the administration of the law of nations, even when the states represented in it were engaged in war.

The great public games were the Olympian, the Pythian, the Nemean, and the Isthmian. Foreigners might be spectators at these games, but Hellenes alone could contend for the prize. This right belonged to the colonies as well as to the states in the mother-country; and, as it was deemed a privilege of the highest value, it preserved the unity even of the most distant branches of the Hellenic race.

All the constitutions of the Grecian states were republican; but they varied so much in the different cities, that hardly any two were alike. In general, however, it may be stated, that in all the most severe public and private labors were intrusted to slaves; and in many, as Lacónia, agriculture was managed by them exclusively. This degraded manufacturing industry, and led to an undue depression not only of artisans and retailers, but even of master manufacturers. Foreign merchants were treated with unwise jealousy, and could never obtain the privileges of citizens. The right of coinage was reserved to the state; but it was not until a very late period that the Greeks began to pay attention to finance. Little or no taxation was necessary while the citizens served as voluntary soldiers; and the magistrates were rewarded with honor, not money. But when mercenary armies were employed, and ambassadors sent into distant lands, when the importance of a navy induced cities to outbid each other in the pay of their sailors, heavy taxes became necessary, and these brought many of the cities into great pecuniary embarrassment.

Another source of expense was the provision for public festivals and theatrical shows; to which was added, in Athens and other places, the payment of the dicasts, or persons analogous to our jurymen; though, instead of their number being limited to twelve, they frequently amounted to several hundreds, and had no presiding judges. This was doubly injurious; the multitude of the dicasts not only entailed a heavy expense upon the state, but the sum paid being small, few save those of the lower classes attended, whose decisions were not unfrequently guided by prejudice and passion, instead of law and justice.

The poetical nature of its religion, and the free constitution of its states, not only rendered Greece peculiarly favorable to the progress of literature, philosophy, and the fine arts, but gave these, in turn, a decided influence on the government. The tragic and lyric poets produced their pieces in honor of the gods; the comic poets at Athens discussed public affairs on the stage with a freedom, or rather licentiousness, which the wildest excesses of the modern press have never equalled; and the influence of the orators at Athens rendered them the leaders of the state.

The seeds of dissolution were thickly sown in the social system of the Greeks. The rivalry between the Dorian and Ionian races; the

turbulence and sedition natural to small republics; and the gradual decline of religion, followed by a consequent corruption of morals— rendered the duration of the constitution as brief as it was glorious.

SECTION VI.-The traditional History of Greece from the earliest Ages to the Commencement of the Trojan War.

FROM AN UNKNOWN PERIOD TO ABOUT 1200 B. C.

SACRED history, confirmed by uniform tradition, informs us that Thrace, Macedon, and Greece, were peopled at an earlier period than the other portions of the western world. The first inhabitants were tribes of hunters and shepherds, whose earliest approaches to civilization were associations for mutual defence against robber-tribes, and the Phoenician corsairs that swept the coast of the Ægean to kidnap slaves. The Pelas'gi were the first tribe that acquired supremacy in Greece: they were probably of Asiatic origin; and the first place in which they appear to have made a permanent settlement was the Peloponnésus, where they erected Sic'yon (*B. c. 2000), and Argos (*B. c. 1800). In'achus was regarded by the Pelas'gi as their founder: he was probably contemporary with Abraham; but nothing certain is known of his history.

To the Pelas'gi are attributed the remains of those most ancient monuments generally called Cyclopian. They are usually composed of enormous rude masses piled upon one another, with small stones fitted in between the intervals to complete the work. From the Peloponnésus the Pelas'gi extended themselves northward to Attica, Boeotia, and Thessaly, which they are said to have entered under three leaders, Achæ'us, Phthius, and Pelas'gus; though by these names we ought probably to understand separate tribes rather than individuals. Here they learned to apply themselves to agriculture, and continued to flourish for nearly two centuries. (From *B. c. 1700 to *B. c. 1500.)

The Hellénes, a more mild and humane race, first appeared on Mount Parnas'sus, in Phócis, under Deucálion, whom they venerated as their founder (*B. c. 1433). Being driven thence by a flood, they migrated into Thessaly, and expelled the Pelas'gi from that territory. From this time forward the Hellénes rapidly increased, and extended their dominion over the greater part of Greece, dispossessing the more ancient race, which only retained the mountainous parts of Arcádia and the land of Dodóna. Numbers of the Pelas'gi emigrated to Italy, Creté, and some of the other islands.

The Hellenic race was subdivided into four great branches, the Eolians, Ionians, Dorians, and Achæans, which, in the historic age of Greece, were characterized by many strong and marked peculiarities of dialect, customs, and political government; we may perhaps add, religious, or at least, heroic traditions, only that these appear to be connected rather with the localities in which they settled than with the stock from which they sprung. There were many smaller ramifications of the Hellenic race; but all united themselves to one or other of the four great tribes, whose names are derived from Deucalion's immediate posterity. It is the common attribute of ancient traditions to describe the achievements of a tribe or army as personal exploits of the leader;

and hence we find the history of the tribes and their migrations interwoven with the personal history of Deucalion's descendants.

Hel'len, the son of Deucalion, gave his name to the whole Hellenic race he had three sons, Æolus, Dórus, and Xúthus; of whom the first settled in the district of Thessaly called Phthiótis, and became the founder of the Eolian tribe; the second settled in Estiæótis, and there established the Dorian tribe; the third, expelled by his brethren, migrated to Athens, where he married Creusa, the daughter of king Erec'theus, by whom he had two sons, I'on and Achæus. After the death of Erec'theus, Xúthus was forced to remove to Egialeía (the province of the Peloponnésus afterward called Achaia), where he died. His son I'on, the founder of the Ionian race, became general of the Athenian forces, and lord of Ægialeía, to which he gave the name of Ionia. Achæus, the founder of the Achæan race, obtained possession of the greater part of the Peloponnésus, especially Argolis and Lacónia. The Eolian tribe spread itself over western Greece, Acarnánia, Ætolia, Phócis, Lócris, E'lis in the Peloponnésus, and the western islands. The Dorians, driven from Estiæótis by the Perrhæbians, spread themselves over Macedónia and Creté; a part of them subsequently returning, crossed Mount E'ta, and settled in Doris on the Doric Tetrap'olis, where they remained until they migrated into the Peloponnésus under the guidance of the Heracleída; an important revolution, which will soon engage our attention.

The Ionians inhabited Attica and Ægialeía; but they were expelled from the latter by the Achæans at the time of the great Dorian migration, and the name of the country changed to Achaia. The Achæans retained Argolis and Lacónia until they were expelled by the Dorians, when, as we have just said, they established themselves in Ægialeía.

From the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the fourteenth century before Christ, several colonies from Egypt, Phœnícia, and Phry'gia, settled in different parts of Greece, bringing with them the improvements in the arts and sciences that had been made in their respective countries, and thus greatly advancing the progress of civilization in Greece. The chief of these colonies were :

An Egyptian colony was led from Saïs in the Del'ta to At'tica by Cecrops (B. c. 1550): he is said to have introduced the institution of marriage and the first elements of civilization.

A second colony, from Lower Egypt, was led by Danaus, who fled from a brother's enmity, and settled in Ar'gos (*B. c. 1500). The fable of his fifty daughters is well known; but its historical foundation is altogether uncertain.

A Phoenician colony, under Cad'mus, settled in Boeotia, and founded Thebes, nearly at the same time that Cecrops established himself at Attica. He was the first who introduced the use of letters into Greece.

Pelops led a colony from Phry'gia, the northwestern kingdom of Asia Minor, into the Peloponnésus (*B. c. 1400): he did not acquire so large a kingdom as the settlers mentioned before; but his descendants, by intermarriages with the royal families of Ar'gos and Lacedæ'mon, acquired such paramount influence, that they became supreme over the peninsula, and gave it the name of their great ancestor.

Several circumstances, however, impeded the progress of civilization. The coasts of Greece were temptingly exposed to the Phœnicians,

Carians, and islanders of the Ægean, who at first made the art of navigation subservient to piracy rather than commerce; and the Thracians, the Amazons, and other barbarous tribes from the north, made frequent incursions into the exposed Hellenic provinces. To resist these incursions the celebrated Amphictyonic league was founded by Amphictyon, a descendant of Deucalion: the federation was constantly receiving fresh accessions, until it included the greater part of the Grecian states; deputies from which met alternately at Delphi and Thermop'ylæ.

Like Europe in the middle ages, Greece at this period was infested by bands of robbers, who deemed plunder an honorable profession, and some of whom exercised the most atrocious cruelties on the hapless passengers. The adventurers who acquired most fame by their exertions in destroying the freebooters were Perseus, Her'cules, Bellerophon, Theséus, and the Dioskoúroi Cas'tor, and Pollux, whose romantic histories form a very large portion of Grecian mythology.

The most celebrated events in this period of uncertain history are, the Argonautic expedition, the two Theban wars, the siege of Troy, the return of the Heracleídæ, and the migration of the Ionian and Æolian colonies to Asia Minor. It is not easy to discover the real nature and objects of the Argonautic expedition: it appears certain that in the thirteenth century before the Christian era, a Thessalian prince, named Jáson, collected the young chivalry of Greece, and sailed on an expedition, partly commercial and partly piratical, in a ship named Argo, to the eastern shores of the Euxene sea. The Argonauts fought, conquered, and plundered; they planted a colony in Col'chis, and their chief brought a princess of that country home to Thessaly. But though impenetrable darkness veils the nature of this expedition, there can be no doubt of its results. From the era of the Argonauts, we may discover among the Greeks not only a more daring and more enlarged spirit of enterprise, but a more decisive and rapid progress toward civilization and humanity.

The worship of Diony'sus or Bac'chus was established at Thebes by Cad'mus; and the Phoenician mythology is full of the miseries and crimes that debased and ruined the family of Cad'mus. E'dipus, the most remarkable of his descendants, having been removed from the throne for an involuntary series of crimes, his sons, Eteoc'les and Polyníces, seized the kingdom, and agreed to reign in turn. Eteoc'les refused to perform the agreement; and Polyníces being joined by six of the most eminent generals in Greece, commenced the memorable war of "the Seven against Thebes" (*B. c. 1225). The result was fatal to the allies; Eteocles and Polyníces fell by mutual wounds; and Créon, who succeeded to the Theban throne, routed the confederate forces, five of whose leaders were left dead on the field. After the lapse of about ten years, the sons of the allied princes, called the Epig'oni, marched against Thebes to avenge the death of their fathers. After a sanguinary conflict, the Thebans were routed with great slaughter, their leader slain, and their city captured. In consequence of these wars the Thebans were long odious to the rest of the Greeks, and they repaid this hatred by infidelity to the Hellenic cause during the Persian

war.

When the family of Pélops became powerful in southern Greece, they appear to have attempted to retaliate the injuries that had driven their ancestors into exile. In one of their plundering expeditions to the Phrygian coast, a young prince named Podar'kes was carried away captive, and detained until a large ransom had been paid for his liberation. From this circumstance, he was afterward named Príam, or "the purchased." At a subsequent period, Príam having become king of Troy, sent his son Páris, or Alexan'der, as an ambassador to the Peloponnesian princes, probably to negotiate a peace. He seduced Hel'en, the beautiful wife of Meneläus, king of Sparta, and conveyed her, with some valuable treasures, to Troy. The injured husband applied to his countrymen for redress. A large army, raised by the confederate kings, was placed under the command of Agamemnon, the brother of Menelaus.

Troy was at this time the capital of a powerful kingdom, possessing numerous allies and subjects. It mustered, according to Homer, an army of fifty thousand men; its walls could defy the imperfect machines then used in sieges, and its citadel was impregnable. Against this powerful kingdom the Greek princes undertook their expedition, with an army of about one hundred thousand men, conveyed in eleven hundred and eighty-six ships. These vessels were of very rude construction, having only halfdecks, and stones instead of anchors; the soldiers acted as rowers, and when they reached their destination the ships were hauled upon land.

The war was protracted ten years, during which several battles were fought under the walls of Troy; and we find that the military weapons used were in every respect similar to those employed by the ancient Egyptians. The city was finally taken by stratagem, and razed to the ground; most of the inhabitants were slain or taken, and the rest were forced to become exiles in distant lands. The victors, however, suffered nearly as much as the vanquished. During the protracted absence of the chiefs, usurpers had seized many of their thrones, aided by faithless wives and the rising ambition of young men. These circumstances necessarily led to fierce wars and intestine commotions, which greatly retarded the progress of Grecian civilization.

SECTION VII.-Grecian History from the Trojan War to the Establishment of the Greek Colonies in Asia.

FROM B. C. 1183 TO B. c. 994.

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We have seen how the posterity of Pélops, by various means, tained possession of the entire Peloponnésus, to the exclusion of the more ancient dynasties. Their rivals were the Perseída, who claimed, through their ancestor Per'seus, the honors of a divine descent, and who could boast of having in their family such heroes as Per'seus, Beller'ophon, and Her'cules. From the last-named hero a powerful branch of the Perseid family received the name of the Heracleídæ : they were persecuted by the Pelop'id sovereigns, and driven into exile. After having been hospitably received by the Athenians, they retired to the mountainous district of Dóris, and became masters of that wild and