Note (return) — Chapter I

Then further, the peculiar configuration of Greece, the wonderful complexity of its coast-line, its peninsular forms, the number of its islands, and the singular distribution of its mountains, all seem to mark it as the theatre of activity, of movement, of individuality, and of freedom. An extensive continent, unbroken by lakes and inland seas, as Asia, where vast deserts and high mountain chains separate the populations, is the seat of immobility. 18 Commerce is limited to the bare necessities of life, and there are no inducements to movement, to travel, and to enterprise. There are no conditions prompting man to attempt the conquest of nature. Society is therefore stationary as in China and India. Enfolded and imprisoned within the overpowering vastness and illimitable sweep of nature, man is almost unconscious of his freedom and his personality. He surrenders himself to the disposal of a mysterious "fate" and yields readily to the despotic sway of superhuman powers. The State is consequently the reign of a single despotic will. The laws of the Medes and Persians are unalterable. But in Greece we have extended border-lands on the coast of navigable seas; peninsulas elaborately articulated, and easy of access. We have mountains sufficiently elevated to shade the land and diversify the scenery, and yet of such a form as not to impede communication. They are usually placed neither in parallel chains nor in massive groups, but are so disposed as to inclose extensive tracts of land admirably adapted to become the seats of small and independent communities, separated by natural boundaries, sometimes impossible to overleap. The face of the interior country,--its forms of relief, seemed as though Providence designed, from the beginning, to keep its populations socially and politically disunited. These difficulties of internal transit by land were, however, counteracted by the large proportion of coast, and the accessibility of the country by sea. The promontories and indentations in the line of the Grecian coast are hardly less remarkable than the peculiar elevations and depressions of the surface. "The shape of Peloponnesus, with its three southern gulfs, the Argolic, Laconian, and Messenian, was compared by the ancient geographers to the leaf of a plane-tree: the Pagasæan gulf on the eastern side of Greece, and the Ambrakian gulf on the western, with their narrow entrances and considerable area, are equivalent to internal lakes: Xenophon boasts of the double sea which embraces so large a portion of Attica; Ephorus, of the triple sea by which Bœotia was accessible from west, north, and south--the Eubœan strait, opening a long line of country on both sides to coasting navigation. But the most important of all Grecian gulfs are the Corinthian and Saronic, washing the northern and north-eastern shores of Peloponnesus, and separated by the narrow barrier of the Isthmus of Corinth. The former, especially, lays open Ætolia, Phokis, and Bœotia, as the whole northern coast of Peloponnesus, to water approach.... It will thus appear that there was no part of Greece proper which could be considered as out of the reach of the sea, whilst most parts of it were easy of access. The sea was thus the sole channel for transmitting improvements and ideas as well as for maintaining sympathies" between the Hellenic tribes. 19 The sea is not only the grand highway of commercial intercourse, but the empire of movement, of progress, and of freedom. Here man is set free from the bondage imposed by the overpowering magnitude and vastness of continental and oceanic forms. The boisterous and, apparently, lawless winds are made to obey his will. He mounts the sea as on a fiery steed and "lays his hand upon her mane." And whilst thus he succeeds, in any measure, to triumph over nature, he wakes to conscious power and freedom. It is in this region of contact and commingling of sea and land where man attains the highest superiority. Refreshing our historic recollections, and casting our eyes upon the map of the world, we can not fail to see that all the most highly civilized nations have lived, or still live, on the margin of the sea.