BY J. A. K. THOMSON LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1 NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY First Published in 1921 ( All rights reserved ) To MY MOTHER...

There have been many explanations of ancient Greece and its peculiar spirit. If I may say so, the only original thing about the explanation offered in this book is its want of originality; for it is the explanation of the Greeks themselves. They believed that Hellenism was born of the conflict between the Greeks and the Barbarians. As Thucydides puts it (I. 3), “Greek” and “Barbarian” are correlative terms; and Herodotus wrote his great book, “seeking,” as he says, “digressions of set purpose,”

It began in Ionia. It may in truth have been a reawakening. But if this be so (and it is entirely probable), it was after so long and deep a slumber that scarcely even dreams were remembered. The Ionians used to say that they remembered coming from Greece, long ago, about a thousand years before Christ—as we reckon it—driven from their ancient home on the Peloponnesian coast of the Corinthian Gulf by “Dorians” out of the North. They fled to Athens, which carried them in her ships across the Aege

The innumerable East was pouring out of Thessaly into the Malian Plain, flooding in by two main channels, the hill-road through the pass of Thaumaki and the coast-road along the shore of the westward-bending Gulf of Malis. First came the pioneers, then the fighters, then the multitude of camp-followers and trains of supply which had fed all those numbers over so many leagues of hostile and unharvested regions. On attaining the brow of the steep climb to Thaumaki, had one looked back upon the vie

The Greek world, like the English, was largely the creation of adventurous men. To follow in their track would be in itself a literary adventure of the most fascinating and entirely relevant to our subject, the conflict of the Greek and the Barbarian. Unfortunately for our delight the adventurers did not often write down their experiences; or if they did, their accounts have for the most part disappeared. There was a certain Pytheas of Massalia, that is Marseille, who about the time of Alexander

What was the special gift of Greece to the world? The answer of the Greeks themselves is unexpected, yet it is as clear as a trumpet: Eleutheria , Freedom. The breath of Eleutheria fills the sail of Aeschylus’ great verse, it blows through the pages of Herodotus, awakens fierce regrets in Demosthenes and generous memories in Plutarch. “Art, philosophy, science,” the Greeks say, “yes, we have given all these; but our best gift, from which all the others were derived, was Eleutheria.” Now what did

It needs imagination for the modern man to live into the atmosphere of ancient Greece. It ought not now to be so hard for us who have seen the lives and sanctities of free peoples crushed and stained. It should be easier for us to reoccupy the spiritual ground of Hellas, to feel a new thrill in her seemingly too simple formulas, a new value in her seemingly cold ideals. It is opportune to write about her now, and justifiable to write with a quickened hope. For all that, mental habits are the las

[ The scene is Sardis in Lydia. It is a populous settlement of reed-thatched houses clustering about a wonderful, sheer, enormous rock crowned by the great walls of the Citadel. Over against it, to the south, rises the neighbouring range of Tmôlos, whence issues the famous little stream of the Paktôlos, which, emerging from a gorge, rolls its gold-grained sand actually through the market-place of Sardis into the Hermos. Some miles away, by the margin of a lake, appear the vast grave-mounds of th

When Alexander the Great invaded India, that pupil of Aristotle interested himself in questions to the Gymnosophists, or native philosophers. To the eldest of these Gymnosophists (says Plutarch) he addressed the following conundrum: Which is older—the night or the day? The ancient man promptly replied, The day—by the length of one day. When Alexander demanded what he meant by such an answer, the sage remarked that he always gave that sort of answer to people who asked that kind of question. I th

Arnold expressed the difference between the Greek and the Celtic or Romantic spirit by the word Titanism . That is a very happy expression, happier even than Arnold knew, unless he knew what we said about the Titans. For Titanism is just Barbarism in heroic proportions. It is the spirit of the Old Kings—the “Strainers,” as Hesiod, etymologizing, calls them—who failed because they would not discipline their strength. With some of Arnold’s language about the Celtic character, and the “failure” in

Were it not for an original propriety in the distinction, it would be better not to speak at all of “Classical” and “Romantic.” This seems clearly to be the fault of modern criticism, which has hidden the path under so deep a fall of many-coloured leaves, that now one must spend a deal of time merely in sweeping them up. It is annoying how inapt are current terms of criticism to express the essence of ancient literature. I have hinted that it might almost be expressed in the word “realism,” and

The beginnings of Ionia, the earlier homes and the racial affinities of the Ionians, are still obscure, although the point is cardinal for Greek history. There is perhaps a growing tendency to find “Mediterranean” elements in the Ionian stock, and this would explain much, if the Ionians of history did not seem so very “Aryan” in speech and habits of thought. On the other hand the “Aryan” himself is daily coming to look more cloudy and ambiguous, and so is his exact contribution to western cultur

The Battle of Thermopylae as related by Herodotus (practically our sole authority) is an epic. Therefore in telling it again I have frankly attempted an epical manner as being really less misleading than any application of the historical method. This is not to say that the narrative of Herodotus has not been greatly elucidated by the research of modern historians, especially by the exciting discovery of the path Anopaia by Mr. G. B. Grundy. I have followed his reconstruction of the battle (which

Strabo IV. Herod. IV. 44. The Greek Tradition (1915), Allen and Unwin, p. 6f. Herod. IV. 151-153. For an account of the Oasis at Siwah, see A. B. Cook, Zeus , vol. I. Hymn ad Apoll. 391 f. Pind. Ol. 3 ad fin. Herod. VI. 11, 12, 17. Cf. Strabo on foundation of Marseille, IV (from Aristotle). Herod. III. 125, 129-137 (Demokêdês). Polycrates. Herod. II. 182 and III passim . Xen. Anab. I-IV. Pisidians. Cf. Xen. Memor. V. 2, 6. L’Anabase de Xenophon avec un commentaire historique et militaire , by Co

Aesch. Pers. 241 f. Herod. VII. 104. Pers. 402 f. Eur. Helen 276. Thuc. I. 3, 3 (“Hellenes” and “Barbarians” correlative terms). Herod. I. 136. Aeschines 3, 132. Letter to Gadatas, Dittenb. Syllog. 2 2. Herod. III. 31. Cf. Daniel VI. 37, 38. Ezekiel xxvi. 7. Herod. IX. 108-113. Cf. vengeance of Persians on Ionians, Herod. VI. 32. Herod. VII. 135. Herod. VIII. 140 f. “The ancients were attached to their country by three things—their temples, their tombs, and their forefathers. The two great bonds

Plato Resp. 329B. ib. 439E. Plato Resp. 615c. Xen. Hellen. VI. 4, 37. Plut. Pelop. 29. Herod. III. 50; V. 92. Herod. VIII. 26. Purg. XXIV. 137-8....

Od. III. 48. I may allow myself to refer, for more detailed evidence, to my article The Religious Background of the “Prometheus Vinctus” in Harvard Studies in Class. Philol. vol. XXXI, 1920. Cf. Prof. G. Murray in Anthropology and the Classics , ed. R. R. Marett. Theog. 126 f. Theog. 147 f. “ill to name,” οὐκ ὀνομαστοί. I think the meaning may be that to mention their names was dangerous—especially if you got them wrong. Cf. Aesch. Ag. 170. The Romans provided against this danger by the indigita

Plut. Alex. I. Il. II. 459 f. Il. IV. 452 f. Il. XIX. 375 f. Od. XIX. 431 f. Od. XIX. 518 f. Il. VI. 418 f. Il. XIV. 16 f. Il. XXIV. 614 f. Il. XIV. 347 f. Od. XI. 238 f. Pind. Ol. I. 74 f. Ol. VI. 53. Il. XXIII. 597 f. See my Studies in the Odyssey , Oxford, 1914. Il. III. 243 f. Il. XVI. 453 f. Od. XIX. 36 f. Od. XX. 351 f. ad Cererem 5 f. ad Dion. 24 f. Thuc. III. 38. ζητοῦντές τε ἄλλο τι ὡς εἰπεῖν ἢ ἐν οἷς ζῶμεν. On Elpis, see F. M. Cornford in Thucydides Mythistoricus , ch. IX, XII, XIII. O