Note 345 — Chapter I · GENERAL GEOGRAPHY AND LIMITS OF GREECE.
Reading edition
Cicero (De Republicâ, ii. 2-4, in the Fragments of that lost treatise, ed. Maii) notices emphatically both the general maritime accessibility of Grecian towns, and the effects of that circumstance on Grecian character: “Quod de Corintho dixi, id haud scio an liceat de cunctâ Græciâ verissime dicere. Nam et ipsa Peloponnesus fere tota in mari est: nec prætor Phliuntios ulli sunt, quorum agri non contingant mare: et extra Peloponnesum Ænianes et Dores et Dolopes soli absunt a mari. Quid dicam insulas Græciæ, quæ fluctibus cinctæ natant pæne ipsæ simul cum civitatium institutis et moribus? Atque hæc quidem, ut supra dixi, veteris sunt Græciæ. Coloniarum vero quæ est deducta a Graiis in Asiam, Thraciam, Italiam, Siciliam, Africam, præter unam Magnesiam, quam unda non alluat? Ita barbarorum agris quasi adtexta quædam videtur ora esse Græciæ.”
Compare Cicero, Epistol. ad Attic. vi. 2, with the reference to Dikæarchus, who agreed to a great extent in Plato’s objections against a maritime site (De Legg. iv. p. 705; also, Aristot. Politic. vii. 5-6). The sea (says Plato) is indeed a salt and bitter neighbor (μάλα γε μὴν ὄντως ἁλμυρὸν καὶ πικρὸν γειτόνημα), though convenient for purposes of daily use.