The Historians' History of the World 03 [Greece to the Peloponnesian War]

The king offered sacrifice for the people and every father for his house and family. The religious ceremonies consisted chiefly of sacrifices and prayers. There were but few temples, but on the other hand every town had a piece of land set apart, on which there was an altar. They did not feel bound to these holy places for the worship of the gods, but often built an altar on some spot in the open field for prayer and sacrifice. The sacrifice consisted in burning some pieces of flesh to the gods and the pouring of wine into the fire; while the rest was consumed at a general and merry feast. Even the appointed religious feast days had quite a festive colouring: they feasted, drank, joked, held tournaments, and listened while bards sang of the deeds of heroes. There was no trace to be found among the religious ceremonies of the heroic Greeks of that wild, intoxicating character which generally existed at the feasts of the oriental people.

This was how the character of the later Grecian heroic age was formed. They were a vigorous people, with warlike tastes and simple customs, living under a mild heaven. All took part in public affairs, all were free, and, in spite of a certain inequality among them, they were all connected; and divided by no great contrasts in education, the community felt no kind of oppression. The limited population of the country and the possession of slaves permitted a careless and merry way of life. Rough work was unknown to the greater part of the populace. They exercised their bodies and steeled their strength with warlike undertakings, hunting, practice with arms, and wrestling. Their mental intelligence was directed to higher things through religious customs and soothsayers, and developed rapidly by means of the merry association of the nobility, frequent consultations about public affairs, and mutual military expeditions; and, above all, by means of the poetical stories related by the bards, who put into pleasant form what all felt, and were the real teachers of a higher mental culture; and lastly by means of the elevating power of music.

The Greek, under his bright heaven, looked upon life in the kind sunlight of the upper world as a real life; but that of the lower regions seemed to him, even if he obtained the greatest honours, and reigned like Achilles “over the entire dead as king,” only a sombre picture as compared with the upper world: he loved life and did not throw it ostentatiously away, where there was no necessity. He did not look upon flying from a stronger foe as disgrace; swiftness of foot was regarded by him as a heroic merit, like cunning and a mighty arm.d

GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE

If we endeavour to ascertain the extent of Homer’s geographical knowledge, we find ourselves almost confined to Greece and the Ægean. Beyond this circle all is foreign and obscure: and the looseness with which he describes the more distant regions, especially when contrasted with his accurate delineation of those which were familiar to him, indicates that as to the others he was mostly left to depend on vague rumours, which he might mould at his pleasure. In the catalogue indeed of the Trojan auxiliaries, which probably comprises all the information which the Greeks had acquired concerning that part of the world at the time it was composed, the names of several nations in the interior of Asia Minor are enumerated. The remotest are probably the Halizonians of Alyba, whose country may, as Strabo supposes, be that of the Chaldeans on the Euxine. On the southern side of the peninsula the Lycians appear as a very distant race, whose land is therefore a fit scene for fabulous adventures: on its confines are the haunts of the monstrous Chimæra, and the territory of the Amazons: farther eastward the mountains of the fierce Solymi, from which Poseidon, on his return from the Ethiopians, descries the bark of Ulysses sailing on the western sea. These Ethiopians are placed by the poet at the extremity of the earth; but as they are visited by Menelaus in the course of his wanderings, they must be supposed to reach across to the shores of the inner sea, and to border on the Phœnicians. Ulysses describes a voyage which he performed in five days, from Crete to Egypt: and the Taphians, though they inhabit the western side of Greece, are represented as engaged in piratical adventures on the coast of Phœnicia. But as to Egypt, it seems clear that the poet’s information was confined to what he had heard of a river Ægyptus, and a great city called Thebes.