Magna Graecia

“ Here whatever germs of culture were introduced from foreign parts gained new life, the Ionian study of countries and peoples became history as soon as Herodotus came into touch with Athens; the Peloponnesian dithyrambus grew into tragedy at Athens, the farce of Megara into Attic comedy; here the philosophy of Ionia and Magna Græcia met to supplement each other’s defects and prepare the way for the development of Attic philosophy; even sophistry was nowhere turned to such account as at Athens. ”

“ One of the most remarkable things about them is not only the smallness but the late rise of Attica, whereas Magna Graecia flourished in the eighth century. The Greeks were doing everything—piracy, trade, fighting, expelling the Persians. Never was there so large a number of self-governing communities. ”

“ But now, when he had finished his pot-boiler of Siena, he was going south to Naples, his "most interesting city of the modern world," and afterwards farther south to the Calabrian Hills, and the old dead world of Magna Graecia.
As a result of that journey he gave us "Magna Graecia." This book of itself is a sufficient proof that he was by nature a scholar, an inhabitant of the very old world, a discoverer of the time of the Renaissance, a Humanist, a pure man of letters, and not by nature a writer of novels or romances. ”

“ The early philosophers, who mostly engaged in speculations as to the physical universe, lived in various parts of Greece—Ionia, Magna Graecia, and Sicily—but in the fifth century we find that all teachers have a tendency to drift to Athens, and when about B.C. 300 and onward literature found a centre rather in Alexandria, Athens still maintained its prestige as the home of philosophy. ”

“ The Ionic philosophers of Asia Minor, and their successors in Magna Græcia, who had tried to grapple with the problems of the universe, gave place to the sophists{198} who abandoned the quest for abstract truth and devoted themselves to studies which had a direct bearing on the practical interests of life. They naturally gravitated to Athens as the intellectual capital of Greece, and found many young men who were eager to acquire the arts and accomplishments they professed to impart. ”

“ Greek literature, so far as we have hitherto followed its progress, was a common property of the different races of the nation; each race cultivating that species of composition which was best suited to its dispositions and capacities, and impressing on it a corresponding character. In this manner the town of Miletus in Ionia, the Æolians in the island of Lesbos, the colonies in Magna Graecia and Sicily, as well as the Greeks of the mother country, created new forms of poetry and eloquence. ”

“ Luxurious living, which was of course unknown at Sparta, was far less common at Athens, too, than in many other Greek states, such as Thessaly, and in particular Sicily and Magna Graecia. In these places the gastronomic art was cultivated to a high degree, and there were books in which the various kinds of joints and ragouts, fishes and sweets, etc., were enumerated in verse, sometimes in a comic manner and sometimes with due seriousness. ”

“ If we would form an adequate conception of the nation’s influence, we must take into account the numerous Greek colonies which were planted in Asia Minor and on the southern shore of the Black Sea, on the coast of Macedonia, along the Hellespont and Bosporus, and also in Sicily and Italy, where a new Greek world sprang up, which received the name of Magna Græcia. ”

“ All this was changed by the influence of Greek civilization, with which Rome was first brought face to face in the 3rd century B.C. owing to her relations with Magna Graecia. At first the results of contact with the older and more brilliant culture of Hellas were on the whole good. In the 2nd century B.C., when constant intercourse was established with the communities of Greece proper and of Asia Minor, “philhellenism” became a passion, which was strongest in the best minds of the day and resulted in a quickened intellectual activity, wider sympathies and a more humane life. ”

“ Now countries which are great plains or which have as a chief means of transport some great river like the Euphrates or Nile tend to become united under some common rule. The cities of Egypt and the cities of Sumeria, for example, ran together under one system of government. But the Greek peoples were cut up among islands and mountain valleys; both Greece and Magna Græcia are very mountainous; and the tendency was all the other way. When the Greeks come into history they are divided up into a number of little states which showed no signs of coalescence. They are different even in race. ”

“ Thousands, driven from their homes, like the Puritans in the time of the Stuart tyranny in England, fled over the seas, and, under the direction of the Delphian Apollo, laid upon remote and widely separated shores the basis of "Dispersed Hellas." The overcrowding of population and the Greek love of adventure also contributed to swell the number of emigrants. During this colonizing era Southern Italy became so thickly set with Greek cities as to become known as Magna Græcia, "Great Greece." ”

“ And now, as the sunset colours—gold, scarlet, violet, and purple—are glowing upon the immortal rock, over the marble ruins, I marvel at “tiny” Athens and her “vast” name.
Alas, for Hellas and modern Greece!
Had her own people been as faithful as Oxford to the traditions of ancient Greece, what would have been the Eastern Question to-day? And for some, no doubt, it is this very honouring of Hellas that has been responsible for our fatal pro-Greek enthusiasms. If we recognise the superiority of the modern Turk, loyalty to Plato, to Aristotle, and to Socrates must forbid speech ”

“ Athens had never had a great statesman or soldier in her since the time of Phocion, but her philosophers and orators still went on discoursing in the schools, and for four hundred years at least Athens was a sort of university town, where the rich young men from Rome, Carthage, Alexandria, Asia Minor, and Syria came to see the grand old buildings and works of art, and to finish their education. For though the great men of Greece were all dead, their works, both in stone and in writing, still remained, and were the models of all the world, and their language was spoken all over the East. ”

“ The history of Athens includes in itself the history of the human mind. Science and art—erudition and genius—all conspired—no less than the trophies of Miltiades, the ambition of Alcibiades—the jealousy of Sparta—to the causes of the rise and fall of Athens. ”

“ Nothing so impresses the visitor to Greece—not the waters of the Ægean sea, with their myriad hues; not the Acropolis, eloquent with ruins; not even the lovely site of Athens itself—as the part which little Greece has played in the instruction of the world. With an area of less than twenty-five thousand square miles, not half of which is productive, and with a population of less than two and a half millions, this diminutive nation has a history without a parallel. ”

“ From Athens all through the islands of the Grecian Archipelago, we saw little but forbidding sea-walls and barren hills, sometimes surmounted by three or four graceful columns of some ancient temple, lonely and deserted—a fitting symbol of the desolation that has come upon all Greece in these latter ages. We saw no ploughed fields, very few villages, no trees or grass or vegetation of any kind, scarcely, and hardly ever an isolated house. Greece is a bleak, unsmiling desert, without agriculture, manufactures or commerce, apparently. ”

“ After the Persian wars the rivalship between Athens and Sparta is the most prominent feature in Grecian history. The confederacy of Delos gave to Athens supremacy over the sea, and the great commercial prosperity of Athens under Pericles, and the empire gained over the Ionian colonies and the islands of the Ægaean, made Athens, perhaps, the leading State. It was the richest, the most cultivated, and the most influential of the Grecian States, and threatened to absorb gradually all the other States of Greece in her empire. ”

“ To stabilize power in the early Mediterranean world, they have built up Crete at the expense of Greece, making Athens a ghost city, Plato a trivial fabulist, and putting all Greek culture in a minor key. ”

“ The Hellas of which it speaks is a cluster of autonomous cities in the Peloponnesus, the Islands, and Northern Greece, together with their colonies scattered over the coasts of Italy, Sicily, Thrace, the Black Sea, Asia Minor, and Africa. These cities care only to be independent, or at most to lord it over one another. Their political institutions, their religious ceremonies, their customs, are civic and local. Language, commerce, a common Pantheon, and a common art and poetry are the ties that bind them together. In its second phase, Greek history begins with the expedition of Alexander. ”

“ Beyond the Bay of Eleusis the eye that has not yet seen Athens turns inland in strained waiting for the Acropolis. Rising out of a still distant plain and bearing upon its crest the half-realized ruins of the Parthenon, the hill of the pilgrim’s desires becomes a reality—“and from a dream, behold, it is a waking vision.”
This journey, of scarcely eight hours, serves also to reveal a surprising amount of Greek territory. Taking it in the reverse direction, the train passes through Attica, Megara, the Isthmus and Argolis, and follows the entire northern coast line of Achæa. ”

“ No doubt we come prepared to regard them with eyes coloured, and a fancy haunted by the beauties of Grecian literature. Possibly, it is under the spell of Homeric verse that our eyes grow humid with delight at the aspect of Aphrodite, that we behold divinity in Zeus or Phœbos Apollo; but this only proves that the fragments of Hellenic civilisation throw a light upon each other, and are parts of one great whole. Perhaps, too, no man ever enjoyed the sculpture of Greece as he should, unless conversant with her poetry—the right hand of her art. ”

“ Grecian art, like Grecian liberty, had lost its spirit and vitality, and the spoliation of public buildings and galleries, to adorn the porticos and temples of Rome, hastened its extinction.
We have now reached the close of the history of ancient Greece. But Hellas still lives in her thousand hallowed associations of historic interest, and in the numerous ruins of ancient art and splendor which cover her soil—recalling a glorious Past, upon which we love to dwell as upon the memory of departed friends or the scenes of a happy childhood—"sweet, but mournful to the soul." ”

“ Early in the 5th century, Greece plunged into a struggle for life or death with the Persian Empire—a struggle from which she emerged covered with glory, united and free. Her triumph is straightway sung in immortal verse, and historians arise to record her exploits. Athens, who faced the enemy at Marathon, Salamis, and Platæa, and drove him back crippled and disgraced to Asia, now becomes the leader of grateful Hellas, and the centre of literature and refinement. Blossom after blossom unfolds in her genial clime. ”

“ Contemporaneously with the accession of Peisistratus, this state of things becomes altered both in and out of Hellas,—the former as a consequence of the latter: for at that time begins the formation of the great Persian empire, which absorbs into itself not only Upper Asia and Asia Minor, but also Phenicia, Egypt, Thrace, Macedonia, and a considerable number of the Grecian cities themselves; and the common danger, threatening the greater states of Greece proper from this vast aggregate, drives them, in spite of great reluctance and jealousy, into active union. ”

“ Sparta, for example, has left us some noble lessons in simple living and devoted patriotism, but hardly a single great poet, and certainly never a philosopher or sculptor. When we examine closely, we see that the civilized life of Greece, during the centuries when she was accomplishing the most, was peculiarly centered at Athens. Without Athens, Greek history would lose three quarters of its significance, and modern life and thought would become infinitely the poorer. ”

“ Now, for the first time, the national Hellenic mind rose to the highest consciousness of noble independence and dignity. Athens concentrated within herself, as in a focus, the whole exuberance and many-sidedness of Greek life, and glorified it into beautiful unity. Now, for the first time, the deepest thoughts of the Hellenic mind were embodied in sculpture, and the figures of the gods rose to that solemn sublimity in which art embodied the idea of divinity in purely human form. ”

“ Greece, they love thee least who owe thee most.” The women are still pretty, and what is like a Grecian nose? Come, pilgrim, and see Athens in the days when it is not even a shadow of its former greatness, and ask yourself if power constitutes stability. Yes, go upon the Acropolis and gaze downward to the top of Mars’ hill, and look at the council stand of St. Paul; raise your eyes and turn them eastward, and if your imagination is as good as your sight, you will see the sea that in old times was covered over with the fleet of Alexander the Great. ”

“ The tragedians exhibit the genius of Athens in its maturity. The idyllists utter a rich nightingale note from the woods and fields of Sicily. But the Anthology carries us through all the phases of Hellenic civilization upon its uninterrupted undercurrent of elegiac melody. The clear fresh light of the morning, the splendor of noonday, the mellow tints of sunset, and the sad gray hues of evening are all there. It is a tree which bears the leaves and buds and blossoms and fruitage of the Greek spirit on its boughs at once. ”